{"text": "QRI Meetup in Denver, June 23rd 2023\n\nAfter a very beautiful time at Vibe Camp I find myself now in Denver for Psychedelic Science 2023.\nAs promises, there will be a QRI meetup here!\nIt will take place on Friday the 23rd, from noon to 2PM, in front of “The Dancers”.\nThis is right outside the conference venue, on the side of Champa street.\nPlease feel free to come whether you’re attending Psychedelic Science or not, whether you identify as someone who is QRI-adjacent or not, and whether you agree with QRI ideas or not.\nIf you’re reading this, you and your friends are invited.\nAddress: 1185-1245 Champa St, Denver, CO 80204\nSee you there!\nPs. There is a good chance (*crossing fingers*) that we will get a space at the conference venue to project Psychedelic Cryptography videos. If this happens, it will probably take place sometime Thursday or Friday afternoon.\nInfinite bliss!\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2023/06/20/qri-meetup-in-denver-june-23rd-2023/", "title": "QRI Meetup in Denver, June 23rd 2023", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2023-06-21T03:53:12+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=1", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "405c3f005ed15247a937e29ba1656387", "summary": []}
{"text": "Open Sourcing Qualia Mastery: QRI’s First Guided Meditation Series\n\nExplore the Qualia Mastery Series Now\n\n\nQualia Mastery, in a nutshell:\n\n1) Explore the state-space of consciousness because you want to know it for yourself\n2) Study it from many points of view because you want to understand it intellectually at a deep level\n3) Intend to apply it for the benefit of all beings\n\n\nI really like meditation, but I have never been a fan of not understanding how it works rationally. It seems to me that doing powerful things to your state of consciousness without having a good sense of what is going on can open you up to unfounded beliefs.\nAs I’ve gone deeper into meditation and energetic practices, though, I’ve come to realize that one can in fact make rational sense of what is happening. This guided meditation series condenses this knowledge into 9 sets of practices that have transparent and interpretable effects.\nI go over the basics of how the mind works, with principles like what you pay attention to gets energized, energizing an internal representation highlights its resonant modes, sufficiently energized representations become plastic and malleable, and certain vibratory qualities feel better than others because they spread out stress more uniformly.\nAnd then, with the basics covered, we go on to play and construct interesting states of mind, including heavenly realms of experience and computationally non-trivial mind acrobatics.\nNo magic needed; just curiosity and openness of being.\nI hope you enjoy and learn from it! And also please feel encouraged to share feedback or reports of how it went for you.\nThank you!\n\n\n\n\nThe Varieties of Attention\nThis is a guided meditation provided by Andrés in order to enrich one’s conception of the nature of “attention”.\nAttention is typically thought of as a fuzzy “spotlight” that redirects cognitive resources to a region of one’s experience. But this is just one of many varieties of attention. In fact, many changes to one’s state of consciousness have very little to do with changes to perceptual features like color, brightness, auditory pitch, tactile sensations, or the texture of thought. At times, one can tell that one’s state of consciousness has changed dramatically and yet it is very hard to pin-point exactly what that change consists of. In many of those cases, that’s because the change is primarily attentional. Thus, learning about alternative modes of attention is an important tool to enable higher quality phenomenological reports and replications. It has the added bonus that knowing a broad range of attentional modes can radically enhance one’s meditation practice.\nJoin us in this guided meditation to get acquainted with a much broader set of attentional modes.\nRelevant Links:\n\nAttention & Awareness: Oscillatory Complementarity, Non-Linearities, and the Pointlessness of It All\nGuide to Writing Rigorous Reports of Exotic States of Consciousness\nQRI Glossary\nHigh-Valence Meditation (Rob Burbea)\nDeveloping Piti, Developing Focus, Developing Wellbeing (Rob Burbea) \n\n\n\n\n\nPlaying with the Energy Parameter\nIn this guided meditation Andrés walks you through a variety of methods to modulate the “energy parameter” of experience. This is a building block for the framework of Neural Annealing in the nervous system, which explores how (suitably defined) energy impacts internal representations, facilitates solving constraint satisfaction problems, and has the potential to lead to sustainable high valence states of consciousness by reducing internal stress.\nWe explore energy sources such as (a) sensory input, (b) pleasure and pain, (c) attention, (d) and surprise. Additionally a wide range of techniques for how to build, manage, and skillfully deploy the energy are discussed and practiced.\nEnjoy!\nRelevant Links:\n\nThe Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes\nPeaceful Qualia: The Manhattan Project of Consciousness\nNeural Annealing (Michael Johnson)\nHealing Trauma with Neural Annealing (Gomez-Emilsson)\nGood Vibe Theory\nThe Brain as a Non-Linear Optical Computer: Reflections on a 2-Week Jhana Meditation Retreat\nQRI’s Tracer Tool (as an example for how to measure an aspect of the visual energy parameter)\n\n\n\n\n\nTextures of Valence – Consonance, Dissonance, and Noise\nIn this guided mediation Andrés walks you through:\n\nA factorization of experience into three main channels with their corresponding inner and outer versions: “see”, “hear”, and “feel”.\nUsing your energy body as an antenna capable of picking both shapes and frequencies of internal representations: the duality between form and vibration in the phenomenal world.\nSymmetry & smooth geometry as the foundation for valence.\nConsonance, dissonance, and noise as a way to obtain a readout of the valence of our world-simulation.\nA number of pragmatic strategies for addressing phenomenal dissonance.\n\nRelevant Links:\n\nMichael Johnson’s Principia Qualia first introduced the Symmetry Theory of Valence, valence structuralism, and qualia formalism\nThe Consonance Disonance Noise Signature framework first introduced by Andrés Gómez Emilsson in Quantifying Bliss\nThe Symmetry Theory of Valence (@The Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London)\nThe Constructive Aspect of Visual Perception (Steven Lehar)\nSee, Hear, Feel (Shinzen Young)\nPracticing the Jhanas (Rob Burbea)\nGeometry Through the Eyes of Felix Klein\n\n\n\n\n\nLocal Binding and the PageRank of Attention\nIn this guided meditation Andrés helps you explore the way in which attention constructs local binding connections between phenomenal features and how the flow of attention and awareness can be modeled with the graph algorithm called PageRank.\nTopics covered:\n\nReview of the nature of attention: what you pay attention gets stronger, gets locally bound, and gets connected to what you were paying attention right before\nNoticing local binding in See, Hear, Feel (inner & outer)\nCross-modal coupling: divide and conquer technique for preventing negative valence and a coherence technique to enhance positive valence\nOscillatory complementarity between awareness and attention\nHow objects of perception can play the role of witnesses and witnessed elements of a scene\nHybrid attentional modes\nChains of witnessing and Nth-order intentionality\nPageRank of attention\nSpace witnessing space\n\nThese are all very helpful techniques and insights to practice and add to your Qualia Mastery Toolkit.\nRelevant Links:\n\nAlgorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States\nVisual demonstration of PageRank\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Thermodynamics of Consciousness and the Ecosystem of Agents\nIn this guided meditation Andrés walks you through QRI’s recent work on:\n\nThe Thermodynamics of Consciousness: how energy flows from energy sources (sensory stimulation, valence, attention, surprise, and the background noise signature) towards the bound field of consciousness, which is then shaped via the energy sink landscape of symmetry and recognition, and then exit via motor action or “outer field radiation”.\n\nAnd,\n\nThe Ecosystem of Agents: our minds work somewhat similar to a next-token prediction engine like GPT-4, where the existing constraints help resolve the ambiguity of the regions of experience which remain amorphous. In order to make accurate predictions of the world, we need to actually simulate agentive behavior (because the world of full of agents). To do this we create “subagents” that play the role of agentive forces so that we can predict them (and ultimately remain safe).\n\nThe meditation also walks through a series of strategies for dealing with subagents in order to harmonize them and experience a healthy and wholesome ecosystem of friendly subagents that help each other in beautiful ways:\n\nImprove the training data\nPractice the meditation where you guide lost subagents to a pool of love that re-absorbs them\nGood vibes as base: your mood provides the evolutionary selection pressures for agentive forces, so cultivating beautiful mindsets will enable more friendly agents to arise\nMore Dakka on equanimity and metta\nReward clean intentions before flattery (there’s a vibe to transparent intentions)\nExplore different network structures for agents that are more easily manageable\n\nRelevant Links:\n\nGood Vibe Theory\nAligning DMT Entities: Shards, Shoggoths, and Waluigis\n\n\n\n\n\nHigh-Valence Calisthenics – Exploring the Heaven Worlds\nIn this guided meditation Andrés walks you through a wide range of possible high-valence states of consciousness, aka. phenomenal “heaven worlds”.\nCalisthenics are exercises that you can perform with minimal equipment and that are intended to exercise every muscle group in the body. Now what would it mean to do “meditation calisthenics”? Well, that you exercise every kind of meditative approach in order to keep all of your “meditation muscles” fit. More specifically, “high-valence calisthenics” would be the practice of engaging with every kind of positive valence state of consciousness achievable without the aid of external aids (whether chemical, sensorial, or situational).\nIn this guided meditation we go through the high-valence configurations of “see, hear, feel” (inner & outer), artistic states of consciousness, social mindsets, metta, “cosmic party mode”, the worlds of insight, intellectual understanding, realization, and the modes of being of refined and purified high-valence (Jhanas).\nWe conclude by dedicating these beautiful qualities of the mind for the benefit of all beings.\nInfinite bliss!\nRelevant Links:\n\nOn Dark Rooms, Jhanas, Ecstasy, and the Symmetry Theory of Valence\n\n“Calisthenics (American English) or callisthenics (British English) (/ˌkælɪsˈθɛnɪks/) is a form of strength training consisting of a variety of movements that exercise large muscle groups (gross motor movements), such as standing, grasping, pushing, etc. These exercises are often performed rhythmically and with minimal equipment, as bodyweight exercises. They are intended to increase strength, fitness, and flexibility, through movements such as pulling, pushing, bending, jumping, or swinging, using one’s body weight for resistance in pull-ups, push-ups, squats, etc. Calisthenics can provide the benefits of muscular and aerobic conditioning, in addition to improving psychomotor skills such as balance, agility, and coordination.” (source)\n\n\n\n\nDivine Qualia – Open Sourcing God\nWithout making any ontological, philosophical, or metaphysical assertions or assumptions, we point out that the phenomenology of the divine and in particular the concept of “God” has an important resonance for the human soul. Therefore exploring this phenomenology is essential for a complete direct understanding of consciousness.\nIn this guided meditation Andrés walks you through an exploration of the phenomenology of different conceptions of the divine. The key guiding question for this exploration is: what does it feel like to inhabit the phenomenal world in which God is conceived in this or that way? Rather than pursuing a specific conception, we instead engage in an open ended exploration of the divine for the sake of developing Qualia Mastery. We call this approach “Open Sourcing God”, where one is not dependent on other’s interpretations or rules to access the God of one’s own understanding.\nConceptions of the divine explored include Chaos, Ingroup, Hierarchy, Creator, The Law, Archetype, Replication, Dynamics, Life, Energy, Coincidence and Synchronicity, Love, Compassion, Witness, Consciousness, Awareness, Oneness, Axis of Annealing, and Valence.\nRelevant Links:\n\nSimulations of God: The Science of Belief (John Lilly, 1975)\nThe True Beauty of Your “Soul” by Shinzen Young [a secular conception of the soul worth paying attention to]\nKey Ideas of a Soulmaking Dharma (Part 2 – The Eros-Psyche-Logos Dynamic) by Rob Burbea\n\n\n\n\n\nHarmonic Meditation – Calibration Exercises\nIn this guided meditation Andrés walks you through a series of exercises that illustrates harmonic resonance in the energy body and then channels excess energy into high-valence tactile sensations (cf. Piti), which can be a possible foundation practice for the 1st Jhana.\nThe meditation focuses on the inner and outer “feel” channels for (see, hear feel) X (inner, outer) as formulated by the “factorization of experience” introduced by Shinzen Young in his Unified Mindfulness framework. When necessary feel free to use the inner and outer “see” channel for support, but try to keep “feel” primary. We explore the following kinds of oscillations:\n\nOn/off\nLeft/right\nTop/bottom\nFront/back\nExpand/contract\nToroidal flow (up, down, both at once)\nCheckerboard pattern\nZebra pattern\nHomogenous attention in space\nSpace qualities: solid, liquid, magnetic, viscosity, gaseous, plasma\nPleasure, joy, peace\nLaminal flow and energy management techniques\n\nIt is recommended that one first listens to the guided meditations about Energy, Attention, and Valence of this Qualia Mastery series before doing this one.\nRelevant Links:\n\nDeveloping Piti, Developing Focus, Developing Wellbeing (Rob Burbea)\nRepresentational and Computational Properties of Resonance (Steven Lehar)\nThe Resonance and Vibration of [Phenomenal] Objects\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Phenomenology of Ontology\nIn this guided meditation Andrés guides you through what believing in different ontologies feels like.\nWithout making any claim (implicit or otherwise) about the nature of reality, one can still explore the phenomenology of ontology. Namely, explore what it is like to inhabit a phenomenal word in which the building blocks of reality are rendered as being this or that.\nAt a very high level, one key insight is that one can notice how different facets of one’s experience reify, solidity, and rigidify an ontology. For example, this shows up in “dualism”. In this ontology, one posits that the universe has both matter and mind. This has the tendency to trigger the feeling of being encased or trapped in your body. But pay attention! If you notice carefully, you will realize that this is implemented with somatic feelings that rigidify the sense of being caged inside your body. This sense is, ultimately, a fabrication, rather than a realization. It’s just how the mind chooses to render that particular sense of reality.\nFollowing this insight, we notice how there is a transmutation from the ontology one believes in, into a characteristic phenomenology of existence (and back). In fact, “the pain of dualism” is a feedback loop that involves somatic sensations, and not something intrinsic to a belief system. Similarly, every other ontology tends to trigger phenomenological feedback loops for its rendering. Pay attention! \nThe ontologies we explore in this meditation include:\n(1) Dualism: Mind and matter.(2) Trinitarianism of matter, consciousness, and space.(3) Atomism – we know that science confirmed the ancient view of atomism, but notice how without some kind of holism/binding, only “mind dust” can exist.(4) Jain ontology (in which there are ~9 fundamental kinds of ontological building blocks of reality) – space, time, dynamism (movement and rest), atoms that can combine, the soul, and all kinds of “karma particles”.(5) Monism – It’s all qualia. It’s all awareness. It’s all information. It’s all algorithms or computation. It’s all belief. It’s all a social construction (cf. Strong Tlon Hypothesis)(6) Ontologies of infinities.(7) Ontologies of Zero. In particular, we zoom in on David Pearce’s Zero Ontology, in which the reason why there is something rather than nothing is that “zero information” is the case (and this implies the existence of all mutually-consistent universes of bound qualia).\nThis last ontology is particularly powerful: when explored deeply, it can trigger the “Rainbow God” phenomenology, where all of the flavors of qualia come together and “cancel each other out”. This is highly related to the phenomenology of 5-MeO-DMT as well as that of the formless Jhanas.\nMay all benefit from this meditation!\nRelevant Links:\n\nWhy Does Anything Exist? Zero Ontology, Physical Information, and Pure Awareness (Andrés Gómez-Emilsson discusses and expands upon David Pearce’s theory for why there is something rather than nothing)\nNo-Self vs. True Self (Daniel Ingram)\nWHY DOES ANYTHING EXIST? (David Pearce)\nJain Ontology\nBurning Man (Strong Tlon Hypothesis)\n\n\n\n\n✵ Open Sourcing Qualia Mastery ✵ Gain deeper phenomenological insights into consciousness and use them to enhance meditation practice, overall wellbeing, and your capacity to report your subjective experiences accuratelyhttps://t.co/8suXnHNmmx pic.twitter.com/8ZTGiP2SVy— Qualia Research Institute (@QualiaRI) June 13, 2023\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2023/06/13/open-sourcing-qualia-mastery-qris-first-guided-meditation-series/", "title": "Open Sourcing Qualia Mastery: QRI’s First Guided Meditation Series", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2023-06-13T20:43:20+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=1", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "3922ab37553d2e4b012eeefd4a9ccf17", "summary": []}
{"text": "QRI/Qualia Computing at: Vibe Camp 2023, Psychedelic Science 2023, PhilaDelic 2023, Front Page of Vice and HackerNews, Solution to the Boundary Problem, and Qualia Mastery Series\n\nI am keeping busy this summer. Proximally, I will be attending:\n\nVibe Camp 2023 near Philadelphia and Baltimore, June 15-18\nPsychedelic Science 2023 (see my writeup about the 2017 edition) in Denver, Colorado, June 19-25\nPhilaDelic 2023 in Philadelphia, July 12-16\n\nIn other QRI news:\n\nChris Percy and I just submitted our paper about the topological solution to the phenomenal binding/boundary problem. Here is the pre-print: Don’t forget the boundary problem! How EM field topology can address the overlooked cousin to the binding problem for consciousness. Please send us feedback! Especially looking for feedback from friendly physicists who “get” the phenomenal binding problem and want to get involved. (See also: The Slicing Problem, and The Heavy-Tailed Valence Hypothesis)\nThe QRI’s Consciousness Art Contest was a huge success. Check out the winning submissions:\n\nReplication winners (announcement, video of 1st place)\nPsychedelic Cryptography (PsyCrypto for short) winners (announcement, extended video of 1st place), and\nInspirational Piece winners (announcement)\n\n\nWe recently recorded a guided meditation series to help people investigate the nature of their minds and consciousness from the comfort of their own homes: Qualia Mastery – Building Your Toolkit for Navigating the State-Space of Consciousness (thank you Maggie for editing the audio!)\n\nLet’s dig in!\nVibe Camp 2023\nI am delighted to say that I will be delivering a workshop at Vibe Camp on Saturday the 17th of June:\nTime: 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM\nLocation: Fire Circle\nTitle: Explore the State-Space of Consciousness with QRI – GET YOUR VIBE CAMP RECORDER (scent)\nDescription: Come to learn useful techniques to navigate the state-space of consciousness and pick up your VCR (Vibe Camp Recorder), a scent created in honor of this event, which will “record” this day forever in your memory. It is both pleasant and very distinctive, so that every time you smell it again you will vividly remember this day.\n\n\nThank you Hunter for designing this sticker. cf. Scents by QRI.\nPsychedelic Science 2023\nI had an absolute blast at the 2017 edition of this conference, and I can’t agree with RCH any more: this year will be incredible.\nI will be arriving on the 19th of June and staying until the 26th. If you see me, don’t be shy! Please say hi. \n\n#PS23 will be a moment in time. People will say “were you there?” It is a celebration of MAPS’ and the field’s accomplishments. #Excited— Robin Carhart-Harris (@RCarhartHarris) June 7, 2023\n\nWe are going to host a QRI Meetup (cf. London, Valenciaga) on the 23rd or 24th, place TBD but near the conference. Please reach out if you want to volunteer. Stay tuned \nPhilaDelic 2023\nI will be delivering the following talk. Please come say hi!\nTalk Title: Neural-Field Annealing and Psychedelic Thermodynamics\nTalk Abstract: The paradigm of Neural Annealing developed at the Qualia Research Institute (QRI) by Andrés Gómez Emilsson and Michael E. Johnson has a lot of explanatory power in the context of meditation and exotic states of consciousness such as those induced by psychedelic agents. The theory posits that there is a sense in which each state of consciousness has an associated level of energy, that there are specific energy sinks and sources in the nervous system, and that internal representations can be modified (and indeed “internal stress” released) with an appropriate heating and cooling schedule (aka. neural annealing). More recently, the theory has been enriched with “non-linear wave computing“, which might be capable of formalizing the concept of a (phenomenal) “vibe” for internal representations. Of special interest for the scientific community studying psychedelics and meditation is the recent QRI model of Neural Field Annealing, which combines Hebbian learning with Neural Annealing in order to explain why “highly annealed brains” can instantiate harmonic field behavior (such as the Jhanas). In this talk Andrés will provide an overview of the theory, share empirical findings, and discuss its testability based on its unique predictions.\nRelevant links: Overview of the Theory presented at The Stoa, Neural Annealing (Johnson, 2019), Application of the Theory for Healing Trauma (Gomez-Emilsson, 2021), and a fun video by Anders (RIP) and Maggie with a conceptual demonstration based on the harmonic modes of a cold-worked metal before and after undergoing annealing.\n\n\nAlso recent in this space:\n\nCarhart-Harris RL, Chandaria S, Erritzoe DE, Gazzaley A, Girn M, Kettner H, Mediano PAM, Nutt DJ, Rosas FE, Roseman L, Timmermann C, Weiss B, Zeifman RJ, Friston KJ. Canalization and plasticity in psychopathology. Neuropharmacology. 2023 Mar 15;226:109398. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropharm.2022.109398. Epub 2022 Dec 27. PMID: 36584883.\nJuliani, A., Safron, A., & Kanai, R. (2023, May 18). Deep CANALs: A Deep Learning Approach to Refining the Canalization Theory of Psychopathology. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/uxmz6\n\n\n\n\nSolution to the Boundary Problem\nThe first time I discussed this approach to the boundary problem was for a presentation I was going to give at The Science of Consciousness 2020 (see: Qualia Computing at: TSC 2020, IPS 2020, unSCruz 2020, and Ephemerisle 2020). Alas, COVID happened. Now, thanks to the amazing Chris Percy, who joined QRI as a visiting scholar in 2022 and has been killing it as a collaborator, we have a thoroughly researched paper we can point to for this solution. Please send us feedback, cite it, and join the conversation. I believe this is one of the most significant contributions of QRI to philosophy of mind to date, and I hope high-quality engagement with it by physicists will only make it better. Thank you!\nAbstract:\nThe boundary problem is related to the binding problem, part of a family of puzzles and phenomenal experiences that theories of consciousness (ToC) must either explain or eliminate. By comparison with the phenomenal binding problem, the boundary problem has received very little scholarly attention since first framed in detail by Rosengard in 1998, despite discussion by Chalmers in his widely cited 2016 work on the combination problem. However, any ToC that addresses the binding problem must also address the boundary problem. The binding problem asks how a unified first person perspective (1PP) can bind experiences across multiple physically distinct activities, whether billions of individual neurons firing or some other underlying phenomenon. To a first approximation, the boundary problem asks why we experience hard boundaries around those unified 1PPs and why the boundaries operate at their apparent spatiotemporal scale. We review recent discussion of the boundary problem, identifying several promising avenues but none that yet address all aspects of the problem. We set out five specific boundary problems to aid precision in future efforts. We also examine electromagnetic (EM) field theories in detail, given their previous success with the binding problem, and introduce a feature with the necessary characteristics to address the boundary problem at a conceptual level. Topological segmentation can, in principle, create exactly the hard boundaries desired, enclosing holistic, frame-invariant units capable of effecting downward causality. The conclusion outlines a programme for testing this concept, describing how it might also differentiate between competing EM ToCs.\n\nQRI’s Consciousness Art Contests: Immerse, Innovate, and Inspire\nCongratulations to the winners of QRI’s Art Contests! (contest announcement). Many thanks to all of the participants! You guys did really great! We will share all of the submissions for which the artists gave us permission to post in the near future; and in my opinion, there were simply too many amazing submissions that didn’t get a prize. We asked the community for awesome content, and they delivered!\n\nIn 2015 I wrote a blogpost in Qualia Computing titled \"How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD\" where I introduced the idea of Psychedelic Cryptography.This is the idea of using encoding schemes to hide messages by using the unique information processing advantages of… https://t.co/ECvIBO1IdH— Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@algekalipso) June 2, 2023\n\nPsychedelic Epistemology: The Think Tank Approach\n\n\n\nI want to express gratitude to the panel of judges who diligently worked to evaluate each of the submissions along key dimensions in agreement with the contest specifications. To provide a little background about the panel, I should mention that since early 2020 QRI has been periodically hosting a “Phenomenology Club” by invitation only which gathers top scientists, philosophers, artists, meditators, and psychonauts. We usually choose a particular topic to discuss (e.g. comparing specific kinds of pains or pleasures), or otherwise interview someone with extensive experience with a particular facet of consciousness. For example, we once interviewed three people all of whom have tried taking 5-MeO-DMT in high doses every day for at least a month (i.e. Leo Gura isn’t the only one who has done this!). Really, we are able to do this because QRI has functioned as a beacon to attract highly experienced rational psychonauts and people seriously interested about the nature of consciousness since ~2017. It is out of this pool of world-class phenomenologists from which the panel of judges was formed. The panel includes people who have had over 1,000 high-dose experiences with LSD, psilocybin, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, dissociatives, and a vast experience with meditative practices like the Jhanas and the process of insight. More so, in order to evaluate the PsyCrypto submission, some of the judges took psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca in a place where it is legal to do so. They all gathered to look at and discuss the submissions sober, then while on mushrooms, then sober again, then while on ayahuasca, and then sober again, and only then they were told about the “encryption key” the contestants submitted, and then they had yet another chance to look at them on either mushrooms or ayahuasca while knowing what it is that they were supposed to see. Most of the judges reported that the winning submissions did in fact work. So I am fairly confident that they do.\nSimilarly, for the Replications contest, the judges looked at the submissions before, during, and after mushrooms and ayahuasca so that they would have a very fresh impression of what these states are like in order to make accurate and technically precise judgements. Hence the detailed and object-level feedback for the top 10 submissions we were able to provide.\nImportantly, at QRI we believe that this is the kind of “facing up to the empirical facts” of psychedelic states of consciousness that will actually advance the science of consciousness (aka. the “think tank approach“). This approach stands in stark contrast with, just to give an example: giving surveys to drug-naïve individuals (exclusion criteria incl. “lifetime prevalence of hallucinogens or MDMA use >20 times”) and having them blindly try either LSD or “candy flipping” [MDMA + LSD], a methodology that apparently allows you to conclude that MDMA doesn’t add anything noteworthy to the experience: \n\n\nSource: Acute effects of MDMA and LSD co-administration in a double-blind placebo-controlled study in healthy participants (2023, just published in Nature)\nAs a simple metaphor, imagine what would it take to make genuine progress in the science of electromagnetism. Would you approach the problem of figuring out how magnets work by putting people who have never seen magnets in a room to play with them for a few minutes and then asking them to fill out a questionnaire about their experience? Or… would it perhaps be more fruitful to gather a team of top mathematicians and visual artists who are very experienced magnet-users and allow them to play with them in any way they want, talk extensively with one another, and generate models, predictions, and visualizations of the phenomenon at hand? Which approach do you think would have better chances of arriving at a derivation of Maxwell’s Equations?\nWell, you probably know my answer to that question, as QRI is “Psychedelic Think Tank Approach Central”, and we are damn proud of it \n\nSee: 5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses (video), which is the sort of content that could only ever be generated with a Think Tank Approach to exotic states of consciousness.\n\nQRI in the Front Page of HackerNews\nSee: Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics (qri.org)\n\n\n\nOn HN’s top comments:\nIt’s amazing to me how people feel, at times, in a hurry to try to explain away anything interesting involving psychedelics with catch-all ideas like “it’s just slower processing” or “it’s just the result of messing with feedback, nothing to see here” (cf. Need For Closure Scale).\nThe winners of the PsyCrypto contest used the lowest hanging fruit idea for how to do PsyCrypto. It’s amazing that it works, and it does show a computational advantage that isn’t present in normal states of consciousness. And this isn’t trivial! In fact tracers in general affect how you think at a deep level, allowing for thoughts and feelings that never overlap in everyday life to actually show up together in your experiential field at once. This lingering effect increases the internal cross-pollination of information categories in one’s mind. This allows you to make completely new connections in your mind; hooking tracers with field computing is computationally non-trivial. More on this later.\nBut… also there is a plethora of more sophisticated approaches. I won’t say much more right now, but essentially PsyCrypto can be done in entirely different ways than using tracers. This includes things like pareidolia, color gradients, and detection of movement. And it is these novel approaches that will show the even more interesting computational advantages to the state.\nWe ain’t seen nothing yet. We’re at the dawn of a new era \n\nQRI in the Front Page of Vice.com\nSee: These ‘Psychedelic Cryptography’ Videos Have Hidden Messages Designed to Be Seen While Tripping\nSome of you might have seen the recent coverage of the Qualia Research Institute by Vice (Silicon Valley’s Latest Fascination is Exploring ‘DMT Hyperspace’). I was contacted by the journalist, who saw my lecture on the Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences and wanted to learn more. We had really fruitful conversations and a couple of email exchanges. And content-wise, the article turned out pretty good. But I was a bit surprised that, at least on the surface, the article went for the “Silicon Valley people are funding this thing, I wonder why?” sort of angle – which of course, if you ask me, has close to zero chances of actually making sense of the QRI phenomenon. Instead, the sort of explanatory framework you will need to understand how QRI is even possible requires a more radical openness about the nature of reality, including the realization that consciousness having mathematical underpinnings has ethical implications, that good actors would be motivated to learn about such properties to reduce suffering, a conception of Open Individualism as a rationally defensible viewpoint smart people can hold in reflective equilibrium, and the existence of exotic states of consciousness of extreme computational and valence significance such as the phenomenology of “Rainbow God“. Ultimately, I am very grateful for the coverage (and of Vice’s coverage of psychedelics more broadly), and simply chalk up the angle the story took to the following:\n\nThe journalist does not hate you,  nor does it love you. You are made out of clicks it can use for something else.— RomeoStevens (@RomeoStevens76) March 4, 2023\n\n\nNow, in the wake of our announcement of the PsyCrypto winners, as I very much anticipated, I got an email from Vice:\n\nDear Andrés,\nI’m a science reporter for VICE. Great to be in touch.I’m reaching out about the results of the Qualia Research Institute’s Psychedelic Cryptography Contest, which is a story we’d love to share with our readers. \nI was hoping you could answer a few questions about the contest. I wrote them out here in case it’s more convenient to respond over email, but I’m also available for a phone or Zoom call anytime before 3:30pm Eastern Daylight Time today if that works better. Thanks so much and hope to connect.\n1. First, I’d love to know what inspired this contest. What are you and your colleagues at QRI hoping to learn and achieve with the Psychedelic Cryptography Contest?\n2. On the page announcing the results, you note that “only three submissions seemed to have any promising psychedelic cryptography effects” and that “to decode these pieces you do require a substantial level of tracers.” Why were these three submissions so much more effective than the rest of entries to this contest? Were they the only ones to use the “first classic PsyCrypto encoding method” that is described in your recent blog post, or was there another reason they stood out from the rest?\n3. You note that these PsyCrypto experiments can open up new avenues of research in the fields of neuroscience and consciousness. What are some of the open questions in these fields that you think PsyCrypto encoding could help to constrain or resolve?\n4. Last, do you and your colleagues QRI have any plans to build on these findings about PsyCrypto with other future studies, contests, or related projects?\nMuch appreciated! Best,XXXX\nSent June 6 at 9:05 AM\nAnd my response:\n\nDear XXXX,\nAwesome! Science reporter? It sounds like we’re getting an upgrade  QRI, that is. Mom, I’m on Vice!\nOk, forgive that. I’m just very stoked about the warm reception that PsyCrypto has been getting in the last couple of days. We made it into the front page of Hacker News and I’ve been receiving emails from neuroscientists and artists. […]. So I’m in a good mood \n[…]\nI’m more than happy to answer your questions here.\n1. I first came up with the idea of PsyCrypto over 10 years ago, while in grad school. I was throwing into the air some spinning glow sticks in the darkness and noticing the patterns that would arise from their trajectory in space. I realized that the lighting conditions were ideal for me to actually make sense of their movement, and wondered if it would be in fact easier to see that path while on psychedelics, given their well-known tracer effects. I immediately coded up some experiments to hide letters using that idea and gave the code to some friends, who then reported some mild but noticeable improved ability to read them while on LSD. After that, I brainstormed a number of alternative encoding methods, coined the term Psychedelic Cryptography, and a couple of years later wrote the Qualia Computing article you saw.\nNow, this didn’t happen in a vacuum. Already in 2011 I was a fan of David Pearce and his philosophy of mind (see physicalism.com). In essence, his view is that consciousness evolved because it has information processing advantages. In particular, phenomenal binding, he believes, is not a classical phenomenon. It is in fact enormously computationally beneficial, as we can learn from disorders of consciousness where binding partially breaks down.\nSo even then I was actively in the lookout for ways to demonstrate how consciousness actually confers an information processing advantage. And psychedelics, to me, felt like very fertile territory to explore this idea. In essence, people have reported all sorts of information processing benefits from psychedelics (e.g. the classic study of Harman and Fadiman of psychedelics for problem solving). But this is still controversial, so to me PsyCrypto is a way to show the undeniable benefits (and tradeoffs!) in terms of information processing that different states of consciousness confer.\nThe more PsyCrypto encoding schemes are identified and developed, the more this research direction is advanced. It is the emerging field of “Qualia Computing”. Namely, the study of the ways in which consciousness is computationally non-trivial. \nWe believe that the contest furthers this mission, and that opening up the project to a broader audience, with prizes and recognition for winning, can drastically accelerate this research direction.\n2. The top three submissions were the only ones that worked at all according to our team of expect phenomenologists. They tried really, really hard to find messages in every submission while on mushrooms and ayahuasca (at places where these substances are perfectly legal) and none of the other submissions had anything worth commenting on (sorry!). I think many people misunderstood the task, tried something random without checking if it works first, or simply crossed their fingers and hoped.that their images would look different enough on psychedelics to contain new and meaningful information. But alas, no. Only the three winners had anything resembling PsyCrypto in them. And to top it off, they were also very aesthetically pleasing. So they are, in my mind, real rockstars \nI do expect a dramatic improvement in the quality of submissions next time we run this contest, though.\nVery importantly, based on recent work at QRI, I am convinced that there are at least 3-4 completely new and mind-blowing ways to achieve PsyCrypto that do not use tracers at all. The tracers are, in a way, the trivial case. The new PsyCrypto encoding schemes are… Far more surprising and non-trivial. We will publish more information about them in the near future.\n3. Yes, absolutely. In essence, I believe that novel PsyCrypto encoding schemes are a window into the actual information processing algorithms of the visual system. At the risk of sounding fringe, I am not impressed with the current mainstream neuroscience models of how psychedelics work or how they alter visual perception. Yes, one can see tunnels and 2D symmetrical tessellations while on psychedelics. But actually… One can *also* experience hyperbolic honeycombs, 4D projective transformations, and fast spatiotemporal Fourier transforms of non-linear resonance. I am sorry, but no current neuroscientific theory *predicts* this. So we are currently in what David Pearce calls the pre-Galilean era for theories of consciousness. Like the (apocryphal) story of the priests not wanting to look through the telescope of Galileo because “the Bible already tells you the truth about the heavens”, similarly right now most theories of how the visual system work are not taking into account the facts of what happens on, say, DMT. Don’t ever let the theory dictate the facts! Instead, let the facts dictate the theory (see: my presentation about psychedelic epistemology).\nTherefore we think that by developing encryption schemes that use *phenomenological facts* such as hyperbolic geometry on DMT (https://youtu.be/loCBvaj4eSg) we will radically transform the conversation about how consciousness works and what its information processing properties are. Once you show that those geometries can be used for information processing, and that humans in the right state of consciousness display such advantages, then it becomes undeniable that they are in fact using such exotic geometry for computation. I believe this will set the trajectory of the history of consciousness in very unexpected ways. Indeed, superintelligence won’t be achieved with AI, but with consciousness engineering.\n4. Yes. Now, please note that PsyCrypto and in fact psychedelic phenomenology research is only a part of what the Qualia Research Institute does. We have serious work in philosophy of mind, ethics, valence, neurotechnology, and neuroscience, to name a few. We are extremely prolific given our shoestring budget, tiny number of members, and relatively low profile in academia. But I am confident that as we keep producing world class outputs in all of these fields, QRI will become far more influential and mainstream \nUltimately, my mission is to prevent all future suffering (see my TEDx talk) and figure out how to enable all sentient beings to experience long-term sustainable blissful states at will. This mission is enormously ambitious, but hey, that’s what I want to do with this one life I have. And so is the mission of the other members of QRI. Let’s get to work! \nThank you! And please let me know if I can clarify anything.\nInfinite bliss!\nSent via email June 6 at 4:30PM\nAnd given this, I really thought that the resulting Vice post was actually really stellar. Thank you! \n\nQualia Mastery Series\nFinally, this guided meditation series is aiming to make accessible QRI paradigms to a wider audience at a direct, experiential level.\nWe titled the series Qualia Mastery – Building Your Toolkit for Navigating the State-Space of Consciousness.\nQualia Mastery, a concept I introduced in a review of a Jhana meditation retreat, is, in a nutshell, the self-organizing vector that cultivates the tools and practices needed to achieve the following three goals:\n1) Explore the state-space of consciousness because you want to know it for yourself\n2) Study it from many points of view because you want to understand it intellectually at a deep level\n3) Intend to apply it for the benefit of all beings\n\n\n\nMay this be of benefit to you and all sentient beings! And also, have fun!\nInfinite bliss!\nAndrés ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2023/06/11/qri-qualia-computing-at-vibe-camp-2023-psychedelic-science-2023-philadelic-2023-front-page-of-vice-and-hackernews-solution-to-the-boundary-problem-and-qualia-mastery-series/", "title": "QRI/Qualia Computing at: Vibe Camp 2023, Psychedelic Science 2023, PhilaDelic 2023, Front Page of Vice and HackerNews, Solution to the Boundary Problem, and Qualia Mastery Series", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2023-06-12T06:56:18+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=1", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0ecf785c038b064bbf58ed0cd968292c", "summary": []}
{"text": "Bliss-Iconize Your Own List of Traumatic Life Events\n\nI was on a retreat in France at the Chateau du Buffalo with some friends this April using the fire kasina as object, this occurring just a few days from the time I retired from emergency medicine.Emergency medicine makes for great stories and terrible dreams, and I was having multiple dreams per night that were basically the ER equivalent of the classic college dreams in which you are late for an exam and can’t find your pencil and didn’t study and can’t find the room and all of that, except that this is the bloody-people-are-dying-gory-agony-and-carnage version, based on the hundreds of really bad things I saw and dealt with over my medical career.Me and my ER colleagues would sometimes talk amongst ourselves about “micro-PTSD”, a sort of cumulative pile on of hundreds of bad situations that collectively add up to something significant, written deep into the brain by high doses of adrenalin and cortisol, and pressure to make everything alright, often in situations where everything is not going to be alright. We all have our list of the worst moments, sights, sounds, smells, and experiences. Those experiences were coming up heavily in my dreams, as if retiring somehow let my guard down and this huge backlog of partially processed experiences came flooding in. My dreams have often had qualities that most people would consider pretty nightmarish since I was a child, so I am used to them and handle them well, but still, they are not pleasant.After about a week of this on retreat happening night after night, I sat down one morning for the first sit of the day, and the moment I sat down this extremely powerful, thick, steady bliss rapidly established itself and just stayed there. Additionally, and here’s some woo woo stuff, I could suddenly see my aura, and it looked like the field you would see around a bar magnet, like a toroid, but this time in primary blue and very stable. Space turned whitish, but the blue aura was still very clear. I sat there a while with not much else going on, maybe for 5 minutes or so, just hanging out.Then, in that very odd space, one of the standard canon of bad images from my medical career arose, except that it arose like an iphone app icon, flat, about 1 cm wide, with rounded edges, and the image was like a little cute stylized logo rather than the full 3D gory image it typically would be when it would come up, and it just sort of rotated a bit in space and vanished, not disturbing the bliss in the slightest, which was relatively steady and impressively strong (I’d give it an 8/10 on the bliss scale, with 10 being the strongest bliss I have ever experienced), and the thought arose, “Hey, I wonder if it would do that to the rest of the standard list of bad experiences?”So, I started bringing up the images, one by one, initially all of them from my medical career: horrible images, bad situations, dead kids, legs torn off, maggots crawling out of rotting limbs, skulls smashed in, people screaming as they died in puddles of blood, you know, the usual ER stuff. One by one, they all became cute little icons like the first one did, rotated a bit, and vanished. None touched the bliss at all, which remained heavy and strong. The aura stayed blue and like a perfectly regular toroid. Space stayed whitish. Soon enough, I ran out of troubling ER images, which is saying something, as there were a lot of them, as the time from calling each one up to it iconizing and vanishing only took a few seconds per image, and finally, nothing else came to mind from my medical career and training, and I sat there a few moments. That whole process took only a few minutes.I started on other traumas, bad situations, car accidents I had been in, traumatic breakups, bad childhood stuff, physical injuries, broken bones, surgeries, illnesses, and other unfortunate incidents that happened along the way, and one by one, they all turned into little flat, stylized icons like the others had and vanished, and the bliss stayed totally unperturbed, and the aura held steady, and space stayed white. After only a few minutes, I had exhausted even the standard canon of images from my life’s major and even some minor traumas, all rapidly turning into little, pretty, flat icons, all vanishing, all not impinging on the bliss in the slightest. It was like the ultimate version of the IOB (Identify, Objectify, and Banish), except much cuter than this is typically described and a lot more pleasant.With nothing left to bliss-iconize, and wondering how breakfast was coming along, after sitting on the cushion for only about 10 minutes, this process seemed complete, so I got up to go to the kitchen. My body had that loose, slightly weak, a bit shuddery feeling that I have when I have swum a mile or two fast and then get back on land, but felt very light at the same time as if I had had a very hard cry, yet I hadn’t cried at all, it just felt like I had afterwards.The gory ER dreams ended immediately, and I have felt vastly lighter since that brief meditation period, like it cleared out a massive amount of old stuff in some seemingly definitive way.I have no idea if this is something that other people could intentionally do, but, if it was, it would be extremely helpful. So, should heavy, seemingly inviolable bliss arise, and if you have your own list of traumatic life events to bliss-iconize, might give this a shot and see how it goes.\n\nThree cheers for the Dharma! Yay! What wonderful things can come from practice! Best wishes,\n\nDaniel\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2023/06/09/bliss-iconize-your-own-list-of-traumatic-life-events/", "title": "Bliss-Iconize Your Own List of Traumatic Life Events", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2023-06-10T04:20:24+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=1", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "abb39968f2269785aa5cf80b4e835456", "summary": []}
{"text": "Remembering and Rediscovering Anders Amelin\n\n\n\nIn Memory of Anders Amelin (1959 – 2023)\n\n\nDear Qualia Enthusiasts, Collaborators, Friends, Benefactors, and the Community at large,\nWith heavy hearts, we announce the recent passing of our dear friend and strategic advisor, Anders Amelin. He bravely fought a battle with a severe and unusual peripheral neuropathy, caused by a largely undiagnosed, steadily worsening condition. As a testament to his incredible spirit and character, we wish to express our profound gratitude for his invaluable contributions to the mission of the Qualia Research Institute (QRI). Anders was an exemplary and compassionate individual whose memory will forever be cherished. Our deepest condolences are extended to his family and friends during this difficult time.\nAs a non-profit dedicated to pioneering the new science of consciousness, our primary aim is to enhance the lives of humans and other sentient beings. The news of Anders’ passing first elicited a deeply human reaction within us, a profound sense of sadness and grief. However, in the face of this loss, we have a renewed sense of mission to pursue the development of pragmatic technologies to prevent and reduce extreme suffering. Additionally, we are reminded of our responsibility to lead by example, and to thoughtfully consider the best ways in which we should confront the universal challenges of death and suffering at a personal and community level.\nIn this spirit, we’d like to share some concepts that may offer some existential comfort during such challenging times. Drawing from various philosophical and spiritual traditions, these ideas – frequently resonating well with the scientific lens – may assist in navigating the difficult terrain of loss and grief.\n\nContent Notice: This text investigates consciousness, reality, and the implications of death from a variety of perspectives. It delves into themes of ontological shifts and altered states of consciousness, which may evoke intense feelings, memories, or reactions for some readers. The text discusses the late Anders Amelin’s life and ideas, as well as speculative possibilities of his continued existence.\nPlease approach the content with caution if these topics are likely to cause distress or discomfort.\n\n\nDrawing from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which we regard as an inspiring proto-scientific framework rather than subscribe fully to its ontological assumptions, it is suggested that the period immediately following one’s death is crucial for determining one’s future birth. This phase is described as being laden with numerous challenges and mind-altering ontological shifts, known as the “Bardos”. It also involves confronting one’s own deeply ingrained misconceptions about the nature of reality. Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) interpreted the effects of high doses of the “classic” psychedelics (LSD/psilocybin/mescaline/DMT) through the lens of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In their view, the peak experience of becoming one with the “clear light of the void” at the moment of death could be reasonably equated with the moment of ego dissolution of a psychedelic experience. Like a ball that is dropped from a certain height and then bounces off the floor, making smaller and smaller arcs, the psychedelic experience (at high enough doses) gives you several opportunities to realize your oneness with ultimate reality. Suppose you miss the first chance precisely at the point of death. In that case, you may still have a few more opportunities when the ball reaches its peak height in the following bounces (but beware: with each bounce, the energy gets dissipated so it doesn’t reach the same height, and the potential for delusion is more significant – really, the best bet is to awaken on the first bounce). Whether a literal post-death experience or a metaphor for high-grade psychedelia, it is hard for us to imagine how this applies to the experience of Anders as he experiences the journey he’s embarking on since his death: his mind seemed to be, by default, already instantiating a high-grade psychedelic trip all of its own! How much higher could it really get?\nBy all lights, and to his own admission, Anders never tried any psychedelic substance (though he was curious about them and would have done so if the opportunity had presented itself). He also never tried dissociatives like ketamine, MXE, or DXM (despite making a fantastic video about ketamine therapy in light of the Neural Annealing framework with Maggie). He also never tried the empathogenic/entactogenic molecules (such as MDMA, MDA, MDEA, or 5-APB) either. And to boot, he also never explored intensive meditation deliberately. We were deeply skeptical of these claims – how could he, a self-admitted “simple person” from Sweden, be conversant on so many mind-bending topics without any exposure to psychedelia in any form? Something seems fishy!\n\n\n\n\nWell, Anders shared that he had many spontaneous, deeply meditative experiences in childhood. For instance, he realized that he had spontaneously experienced a very similar phenomenological progression of exotic states of consciousness as a kid, reminiscent of the so-called “Spiral Experience” described by Ann Shulgin in PIHKAL. This would make him quite unique indeed – despite sharing Ann’s description on Qualia Computing and asking readers if they ever experienced anything like it, only Anders ever reported going through something so similar as a child. Perhaps, making an analogy to wild vs. cultivated plants, all of the exotic states of consciousness he stumbled upon were accidental “wild variety” meditative states akin to what you encounter in a forest, as opposed to the modern hydroponic cultivars with light-and-temperature-optimized conditions characteristic of growing operations, which could symbolize the meditative states cultivated in monasteries or meditation retreats.\nIn the spirit of honoring Anders in a very Anders kind of way it makes sense to discuss the ways in which, it may turn out, Anders is still with us. For context, one of the most inspiring works of Anders and Maggie (“The Dyad” from here on out 1 ) is “The Seven Seals of Security” (writeup) which discusses how our peculiar epistemological position concerning key fundamental questions about our reality actually has advantages, some of which may translate into better coordination mechanisms between us. They discuss how our uncertainty about fundamental issues, such as the nature of God, whether we’re in a simulation, aliens, consciousness, and death, can work to align us with one another. In a similar vein, we would like to suggest how there are seven possibilities not yet ruled out by science or philosophy that make Anders’ existence “still with us” very much possible – perhaps to the point that we could, at least in some sense, coordinate with him beyond the veil of death. They are ordered by their level of plausibility as we see it (from most plausible to least plausible):\nSeven ways Anders is still with us (for additional possibilities, see also: a, b):\n\nEternalism\nMemetic Perseverance (Contributions to the Cause)\nVibe Embedding (incl. “Dyadic Survival”)\nSimulation Window-Watching\nExotic Physical Memory Mechanisms\nArchetypical Attractor Basins\nIndexical Uncertainty\n\n(1) Eternalism: This is a very straightforward one. The brief explanation is that there are strong arguments in favor of the view that time and space can trade with each other, all depending on one’s frame of reference. The famous Rietdijk-Putnam argument proposes that this tradeoff entails that present, past, and future are all “equally real”, and it’s a simple consequence of the transitivity of realness. Assume that in Andromeda, an alien civilization is deciding whether to invade Earth. Now imagine that someone is traveling really fast towards Andromeda but is physically located right next to Earth. From their point of view, the alien species may, in fact, have “already decided” and be on their way. Due to transitivity, we can see that Andromeda’s population, according to our frame of reference, is just as real as us, which is just as real as the person traveling towards Andromeda, which is just as real (according to her) as the Andromeda from her point of view. In other words, the population of the alien species is just as real when deciding whether to invade us as it is when it is already underway. Hence, the past and the future are both “equally real”. According to this argument, Anders is, in fact, still with us, though to witness that, we might need to choose an appropriate (and perhaps currently inaccessible) frame of reference. Light-cone considerations aside, whether we can interact with him or not shouldn’t be a determinant of his ontological status. Every photograph ever taken of him, every word he ever wrote, and every sentence he ever uttered are all capturing moments of his life that are “just as real” as you reading this (or our writing this!). Now all we need is a way to get there from here (perhaps not a viable prospect given our current knowledge, but one never knows!).\n(2) Memetic Perseverance (and Contributions to the Cause): Anders and The Dyad made enormous efforts in advancing the mission of QRI: this ranged from making amusing and insightful videos (cf. all of the Qualia Productions series) to contacting countless individuals and organizations to discuss QRI with them, to answering correspondence, to selecting promising collaborators for us to learn more about, to highlighting worthwhile research lineages, to advising the organization on a very pragmatic front, to emotionally encouraging us when it was getting tough in various ways. But what stands out to me, and also thoroughly contradicts their self-deprecating 2 humor, is their top-notch writings produced in the service of the cause. Simply put, the emails, letters, and private messages we received from Anders (and the Dyad more broadly), in our humble opinion, approximate the brilliance of some of the best writings in the field of consciousness. We are not exaggerating. In time we will publish as much of this corpus as is feasible and ethical (once applicable privacy considerations have been thoroughly evaluated). Of course, as future Large Language Models read the corpus and pass on its insights into leaked packets of weights for future generations to play with ad-lib, we can expect Anders’ signature sense of humor and uniquely insightful commentary to influence the generations to come.\n(3) Vibe Embedding (incl. “Dyadic Survival”): Hofstadter commented about his wife’s passing that he spent so much time with her that she now lived inside him, embedded in a self-reinforcing pattern of cognitive and emotional loops. Anders’ benevolent and charismatic personality is, according to QRI and us qualiaphiles who take the structural properties of valence very seriously, really an outward expression of an unseen (but clearly felt) “vibe”. In technical terms, a specific configuration of coupled harmonic oscillators gives rise to patterns of consonance, dissonance, and noise of an amiable and creative type. The records he left, the impression he made, and the body language with which he expressed his communications indeed “live within us”. The wake of these “vibes’’ can still be felt among those who knew him. Still, their future is perhaps even grander. As we develop ways to analyze, visualize, and reproduce vibes (aka.”vibe computing” and “vibe synthesis”) we will be better able to capture and propagate his vibe in more scalable ways, perhaps by embedding them in “Vibe Standard Candles” (e.g. a sort of “Vibe Metric System” cf. “The Meter” in France) that could function as templates for future benevolent superintelligences. “Safety-via-Vibe” may sound far-fetched. Still, if valence structuralism and qualia computing are on the right track, this may be a definite step in the right direction. Will Anders’ vibe feed into a “benevolent score” and substantially contribute to the safety of future AIs? This might very well be in store for us. After all, Anders’ vibe was uniquely appropriate for the benevolent alignment of potential advanced superintelligences: he always emphasized the importance of Open Individualism and Valence Realism along with a healthy dose of “longevity-focused vacationing” and humor. Undoubtedly, we’d rather have his vibe supervise the next generation of Super-Bings than, say, one drawn from the distribution of “industry experts” today.\n(4) Simulation Window-Watching: It is a common trope, and an understandable human reaction to feelings of grief, to posit that our deceased loved ones are “watching us and taking care of us from heaven”. A secular version of this idea can be found in the Simulation Hypothesis, where perhaps death might be equated with ending one’s presence in the simulation (it’s worth pointing out that most thinkers in this area believe that even if we are in a simulation, it “all adds to normality” in that this information alone doesn’t entail there should be any significant behavioral change on our part). What is the simulation for, though? The existence of suffering, and ill-being more broadly, poses a formidable challenge to this hypothesis: why would an advanced intelligence, civilization, or God, choose to create the states of consciousness characterized by dullness, pain, and anxiety rather than continuous super-bliss? This resembles the traditional “problem of evil” in theodicy. What purpose could our humble lives serve such a super-organism? To say that we will “simply never know” is a cop-out. Shouldn’t this fact (the problem of evil) reduce the probability we assign to this being a Simulation? To a certain extent, no doubt! That said, there are possible, in our mind, defensible viewpoints that prevent ruling out this general hypothesis space. In particular, two classes of explanations stand out to me:First, that we are undergoing a sort of “training” that requires us to not be aware of what we’re doing. A drill (say, simulating that a ship is sinking) is always much more valuable when one truly believes one’s life and that of our loved ones is in danger. Dealing with panic, uncertainty, and fear are all, after all, essential features of an actual emergency, so believing that “it’s merely a drill” might give us a false sense of security. In this view, while perhaps our bodily forms are precarious and perishable, our “soul” is in fact (perhaps holographically), learning valuable lessons that can only be internalized when experienced under the proper level of uncertainty. The classic “soul training” or “soul testing” tropes of religion and spirituality would be readily transposed to this overall framework. If we are, as many spiritually “realized” masters say, spiritual beings having a human experience (rather than the other way around), undergoing the right training might be essential to prevent us from causing enormous harm when liberated. With God-like powers comes God-like responsibility – without the empathy and learnings we obtain from this simulation, we might be at risk of misusing our powers. More so, this “soul training” might be all about vibe computing too. Was Anders’ visit to this plane of existence perhaps for the purpose of “stealing a vibe” for the outside of the simulation? (Cf. How to Steal a Vibe: The Phenomenal Unity of Reality, the Mind-Body Problem, and the Blockchain of Consciousness).The second possibility is centered around the potential epistemological value of a simulation like ours. Anders and Maggie have posited in many of their writings that simulating our current time might be of special value to a superintelligence in the “far future”, presumably in a post-Singularity era. This is because the historical records of the pre-Singularity era might have been corrupted, lost, or erased due to the complex acceleration of technologies at the point of transition. Understanding where they are and how they got there would likely be of enormous value. For instance, it might be useful to figure out if there are other superintelligences hiding beyond their cosmological horizon – the historical period we’re witnessing might have many possible branching futures depending on subtle conditions. In other words, the kind of Singularity that arises might be very sensitive to the conditions of our current era. Understanding the counter-factual post-Singularity states would potentially be a security measure (to be able to anticipate the nature and behavior of competing superintelligences) or a way to exit technological grid-locks and legacy systems.Of course here we cannot ignore the numerous hints dropped by Anders (and the Dyad) about his nature. Our dear Dyad has helped us with their ability to run “conscious simulation” (see, e.g., how they simulated Dennett’s mind on psychedelics) with what appears to be surprising precision and creativity. Tongue-in-cheek, some rather strange “evidence” can also be of significance: Anders and Maggie have appeared numerous times “inside” DMT hallucinations, usually displaying unusual and exotic states of awareness, often mixed with the theme that they are somehow part of an alien civilization visiting Earth to encourage its positive development. Of course this is not much evidence as far as rigorous scientific principles go, but perhaps it is still worth pointing out to those who are open minded among us (please note this is more of a humorous point than anything else).\n(5) Exotic Physical Memory Mechanisms: Could it be possible that Anders is somehow “embedded” in the electromagnetic field around us? Or in the quantum foam? Perhaps eternally recorded in a structure resembling “The Akashic Records”? Here again, “psychedelic evidence” is of enormous relevance. Some ibogaine trip reports point out that in the states of consciousness induced by that “atypical psychedelic” there is access to previously lost or suppressed memories in, often, exquisite detail (in addition to more conventional memory retrieval-enhancing effects). Usually, these memories present themselves in ways readily consumable by one’s personality. If you have an old-times aesthetic where you keep physical photos in a family album, your long-lost memories might be lovingly rendered in that format. Alternatively, if you’re a very “phone-oriented” person, the memories might be displayed as files on your phone (see Teafaery’s Hard Reset trip report). Or, as an explorer once told me, if you’re a fan of historical museums, the memories might be found in a “memory hall” with countless rooms (one for each significant event in your life). More so, some people report that they could access these memories from points of view that should have been impossible, as if there were records of the events whether or not it was you, specifically, who experienced them. This isn’t a universal experience, though. But if we decide to take those reports seriously, perhaps that ibogaine states of consciousness can faithfully render with exquisite detail every moment of your life tells us something about how information is stored in the field at large. This suggests (though certainly doesn’t prove) that physical fields can keep information about events for much longer than we typically believe and be accessible in formats that hint at the existence of a higher intelligence embedded within them. Or it could all just be confabulations of a drug-addled mind, as Occam’s Razor would suggest. Nevertheless, we believe this is a “research lead” that should not be ignored. See also: terminal lucidity.\n(6) Archetypical Attractor Basins: If we take the Buddhists seriously on their claim that “there really is no self”, then, of course, nothing ontologically fundamental is ever lost when someone dies. Taking the no-self doctrine not only as a meditation instruction but as an ontological reality has strange implications about the continuity of identity that ought to make death “not that big of a deal”. That said, this might not be much consolation to us self-havers and self-users who are still under the (perceptual) grip of a sense of personal identity. But there’s another angle to explore here. In brief, while our self-identity might not be fundamental, akin to a real “thing” that functions as an enduring metaphysical ego, it might nonetheless reflect a real “latent structure” in the field of consciousness. In this case, existing religious figures, fictional characters, and famous celebrities are, to greater or lesser extents, powerful “eigenstates” of consciousness – self-reinforcing qualia patterns of coherence. A fractally incoherent, chaotic person is like a weirdly-shaped cloud, a weather phenomenon that happens only once and never again.On the other hand, a fractally coherent and self-consistent intelligence in reflective equilibrium is, in fact, a “solution” to the equations of physics. Anders, being a rather genius-level thinker with a coherent worldview, is perhaps a solution of this sort in this light. Meaning that, in time, more qualia soups and mind-designs will arrive at his attractor basin in the pursuit of truth and beauty. Anders is, therefore, bound to “re-occur” in the field sooner or later. Like in The Good Place, where every heaven and hell station has its “Janet” (really an attractor more than a specific identity), we could find that perhaps across the full multiverse, every level of reality has its Anders (and Maggie to match!), providing coherent and far-ahead-of-their-time advice and words of encouragement to those pursuing the vector of Team Consciousness.\n(7) Indexical Uncertainty: A recurring theme in the Dyad’s work is that of Indexical Uncertainty. Namely, the view that it is not in the present moment possible to determine with certainty “who you really are” (e.g. Descartes’ in the Advanced Incompetence video presented as dying “in a state of indexical uncertainty”). Indeed, the situation is even stranger and trippier than any of the above scenarios. Indexical uncertainty is a Gordian Knot that cannot be cut with our current tools. And in the most extreme scenario, it makes it impossible to rule out that you are Anders (or someone else)! You’re him having a wild dream, or a conscious simulation of the state of affairs post-death, in which your own lack of knowledge about your identity is necessary to carry out the simulation in a faithful way.\n\nTaking stock: We wrote this in the hopes of kindling a tangible sense that Anders is still with us. Albeit some of these possibilities are admittedly far-fetched, as a whole they present a picture we cannot ignore. In time, we think we will realize that Anders’ impact in the world (or the simulation) is far larger than the YouTube video counts would suggest. His keen intelligence, sense of humor, and ability to identify “what really matters” is a real inspiration to me and those who knew him. The unfortunate circumstances of his passing away are also ultimately thematic: the terribleness of suffering cannot be ignored and their solutions further delayed. We have powerful research leads (cf. ibogaine for reversing tolerance to painkillers) and aligned individuals to push the envelope. We need to enthuse the world with the appropriate sense of urgency mixed with hope (and bliss to avoid burnout) that will finally allow us to “destroy hell” and bring paradise to all sentient beings.\nMay Anders live within us and through us! Ahoy!\n\nWe invite you to visit Ander’s memorial page on Lavendla, a Swedish platform for remembering loved ones. Here, you can share your own memories of Anders, view photographs, and read messages from others who were touched by his life.\n\n[1] The Dyad is the term we affectionately refer to the ways in which Anders & Maggie were/are “more than the sum of the parts”. A reference to Integrated Information Theory where the whole can at times behave in irreducible ways, as a kind of top-down causation? Yes, in part. But the original reference came from John and Antonietta Lilly’s book “The Dyadic Cyclone” in which they advance the idea that when two persons who are in love are sufficiently synchronized with each other, a new organism (or “holon”) arises that incorporates both at once.\n[2] Anders & Maggie introduce themselves as a Dyad, the power-couple, in very humble ways. In a 2020 email making themselves known to David Pearce after an online meeting we had with the QRI community, they wrote: “We weren’t able to contribute much to the discussion ourselves since we are only this average Swedish soon to be retired couple with ordinary jobs in university administration, e-learning and marketing. We are pretty much at square one regarding ethics, philosophy, mathematics, computer science, neurology, psychiatry and so on. Even our English is far from what it ought to be, though it is slightly better than our Icelandic. But we do love the QRI for their great potential to make a better future more likely.” [Note the gross omission of the Oxford comma – they clearly really don’t know any English, do they? *smiles*]. Or, on another occasion, “Hello, again. The semi-zombies of QRI Sweden here.” The tongue-in-cheek introductions went on and on. But don’t be deceived – the Dyad is anything but ordinary.\n[cross-posted at qri.org]", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2023/05/02/remembering-and-rediscovering-anders-amelin/", "title": "Remembering and Rediscovering Anders Amelin", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2023-05-02T21:53:29+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=1", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "90d3664320053bcef01ca8ce83b3174f", "summary": []}
{"text": "VALENCIAGA: QRI Bay Area Meetup on Saturday April 8th, 2023\n\nDear Qualia Enthusiasts!\nDo you live in the Bay Area? Are you curious about consciousness? Meditation? Psychedelics? The nature of bliss? Why music can feel so good? Philosophy of mind?\nYou’re in luck!\nYou are invited to this Saturday’s causal QRI meetup in San Francisco!\nCome and meet other like-minded and like-hearted people who are curious about these topics in order to share fun experiences, listen to a comedy sketch about consciousness, experience exotic scents, and taste the bliss of a heartfelt community in a cozy plant-filled Oasis at the heart of SF!\nSchedule\n2PM – Setup (feel free to join and help)2:30PM – Start, casual (and causal!) hangout3PM – Drinks, snacks, and music-sharing4PM – QRI scent workshop delivered by yours truly*5PM – Comedy sketch and talk about the binding problem and aligning DMT entities6PM – Participants share the experiences they brought7PM – Food (catered**)7:30PM – Participants can give a 5 minute speech (there will be a signup sheet)8:30PM – Start of takedown9PM – Everybody out, afterparty***\nPlease feel encouraged to bring with you an experience to share with others (your ~Qualia of the Day~) at 6PM! This can be exotic candy, spices, perfumes, special massagers or haptic devices, unusual sounds, weird concepts, brief meditation, etc.\nFeel free to bring a +1, so long as they are indeed interested in consciousness and want to help reduce the suffering of sentient beings.\nLocation\nOne Embarcadero Center (Third Floor, Next to the Cinema), San Francisco, CA 94111. The venue is at the Embarcadero Building furthest away from the water, on the third floor (“promenade level”). You can get there via the elevator (“Floor P”) or by taking the escalator, and then the stairs, following the signs pointing you to the (now defunct) Cinema. It’s a big red building, right next to a large Maple tree.\nVALENCIAGA\nYou have probably seen by now Harry Potter by Balenciaga (cf. Lord of the Rings, Breaking Bad, Star Wars, Pulp Fiction, Legend of Zelda, TPOT, etc. by Balenciaga). Besides this being an incredible show of power of recent AI advancements, seeing these videos also tickled my aesthetic sensibilities in a rather unusual way. On the one hand, the very idea that all of these powerful characters would leave aside their world-saving tasks for the sake of fashion and looking really sharp is compelling. On the other hand, it also highlights the incredible silliness of our perceptual filters: why on Earth does our Monkey Mind take more seriously someone just because of their sharp looks?\n\n\n\n\nAfter mulling it over for a bit and letting reflective equilibrium naturally arise, I came to the conclusion that my strange reaction to these fashion shows was indeed a symptom of spiritual decadence:\n\nBalenciaga is Mara. It's made to deceive you, to bind you to delusion, to keep you spinning in the wheel of Samsara, pursuing lesser forms embedded in a matrix of selfing.The real deal is Valenciaga. The quality of consciousness that is within you. This is the true liberation.— Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@algekalipso) April 6, 2023\n\nIn the battle of Consciousness vs. Replicators, there will be many seductive and attractive traps. Optimizing for looks is, in some sense, aligned with consciousness: you are exploring the state-space of consciousness, highlighting valuable qualia nuances, identifying ways to mess with the energy parameter, and discovering peculiar valence effects. At the same time, one is also sort of selling one’s soul to the devil: suffering, craving, selfing, and becoming transfixed by form. We need an alternative.\nThis is why we introduced VALENCIAGA by QRI. The first valence-centric luxury brand that aims to focus on the actual pursuit of altruistic bliss. Yes, it’s hot, sexy, and above all attractive. But at the same time, the dopaminergic wrapper hides within a core of real Jhanic bliss (unlike the amphetamine-comedown textures of qualia hiding behind your prototypical New York fashion houses).\nThus, for this QRI meetup you are encouraged to come in a fashionable, qualia-rich attire that makes you *feel* like you just came down from the 7th Jhana or your bliss-state of choice.\nLooking forward to seeing you!\nThank you!\n\nNote: We originally kept this meetup low-key on the basis that we were worried that the venue might reach its maximum capacity. After learning more about the venue, we are confident that it will hold up. And if we do experience overflow, don’t worry! There is a park nearby (Sue Bierman Park) which we can use as a buffer where you can hang out with others until there’s enough space for you. This is also why this announcement is in such a short notice. Sorry!\n* You will have an opportunity to test (and purchase!) our exclusive QRI Scents, including the mythical Hedonium Shockwave.** You can, and are encouraged to, bring vegetarian food, drinks, and snacks to share.*** Location in Berkeley with capacity for up to 40 people (from 9PM): 2042 Hearst ave apt c Berkeley CA very close to the downtown Berkeley BART\n\n\nCome to VALENCIAGA and meet QRI’s Magical Creatures IRL!\nIn Other News:\nLast week I did a second Jhana retreat. I’ve been meaning to post a full writeup for both the first and second Jhana retreat, but it has been really difficult to do them justice in writting. Do expect some more content about Jhana phenomenology soon, though. In the meantime, I highly recommend checking out Rob Burbea’s Practising the Jhanas retreat lectures. They hold the potential to heal you in ways you didn’t even know were possible.\nInfinite Bliss!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2023/04/06/valenciaga-qri-bay-area-meetup-on-saturday-april-8th-2023/", "title": "VALENCIAGA: QRI Bay Area Meetup on Saturday April 8th, 2023", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2023-04-07T04:10:22+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=1", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e5ad3caa8f532c030bf11bedf4773f7e", "summary": []}
{"text": "Unveiling QRI’s Consciousness Art Contests: Immerse, Innovate, and Inspire\n\n\nThe Qualia Research Institute (QRI) is excited to announce the launch of three Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness (NSCs) Art Contests: Immerse, Innovate, and Inspire with submissions accepted until 5/17/2023. Examples of non-ordinary states of consciousness are psychedelic experiences, meditative experiences like the jhanas, and near-death experiences.\n\n\n\nOur objective is to highlight the reciprocal relationship between art and consciousness research, enabling artists to create lifelike representations of non-ordinary states of consciousness, and contribute to the development of consciousness studies and psychedelic science.\n\nAbout the Qualia Research Institute\nThe Qualia Research Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing our understanding of consciousness. Its mission is to:\n\nDevelop a precise mathematical language for describing subjective experience\nMap out the full range of possible conscious experiences\nBuild technologies to improve the lives of sentient beings\n\nLearn more at qri.org.\n\nContest Details\nThe contests include:\n\nReplication Contest (Immerse): Entries will be judged based on transparent and interpretable qualities that accurately capture the low-level subjective effects experienced in non-ordinary states of consciousness.\n\n\n\n\nPsychedelic Cryptography Contest (Innovate): Artists are invited to create encodings of sensory information that are only meaningful when experienced on psychedelics in order to show the specific information-processing advantages of those states.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nInspirational Piece Contest (Inspire): This contest seeks pieces that exemplify the connection between art and consciousness research.\n\n\n\nPrizes\nCash prizes ranging from $500 to $5,000 will be awarded, along with packs of QRI’s Magical Creatures Scent Line and QRI swag.\nHow to Participate\nArtists interested in participating or learning more about each contest can visit our submissions pages for further information:\n\nReplication Contest (Immerse)\nPsychedelic Cryptography Contest (Innovate)\nInspirational Piece Contest (Inspire)\nContest Rules\n\nIntellectual Property Rights\nFor the sake of transparency and to benefit the community as a whole, QRI reserves the right to publish the winning submissions made by contestants on its website. Artists retain their intellectual property rights, allowing them control over their artwork’s use and distribution. However, QRI would appreciate permission to showcase participants’ art on our website or use it in potential research publications with proper citations and links to the artists’ work.\nDisclaimer\nWe understand that the replication contest may not capture the full complexity and nuances of psychedelic experiences, and that there are concerns about the potential harm associated with the use of psychedelics. Participation in these contests does not require the use of psychedelics, and we encourage all participants to prioritize their safety and well-being.\nWe welcome feedback and suggestions for future contests at hello@qri.org. We look forward to exploring these topics responsibly and respectfully.\n\nReplication Contest\nThe Replication Contest seeks to celebrate the artistic capabilities of participants in accurately depicting and interpreting the low-level subjective effects experienced in non-ordinary states of consciousness (NSCs), with a particular emphasis on (1) valence effects and (2) geometric transformations.\n\nValence effects focus on demonstrating how the shape of the experience can reveal whether a person is having a clean and blissful experience or a mixed affect experience. The transition between feeling normal and feeling blissful might involve changes to the shape of the visual experience. Rather than focusing on the semantic content (e.g. seeing an angel) here the point is to visualize the texture, shape, and dynamics that bring about this change (e.g. harmonizing flow by reducing turbulence).\nGeometric transformations such as rotations, reflections, glides, affine transformations, and so on often feature in psychedelic experiences. Can this be rendered in a realistic way? We suggest that you consider how symmetry and geometry are two sides of the same coin in order to better appreciate this quality of psychedelic experiences. When the geometry of phenomenal space changes, so do the symmetries within it. Can this be expressed artistically in an accurate way?\n\nTo participate, artists should create a piece of art that embodies the subjective effects they have researched or encountered during NSCs, emphasizing the two highlighted areas.\nFamiliarize yourself with the concept of algorithmic reduction (cf. our glossary), where the complex zoo of effects is interpreted as emerging out of a few core effects interacting with each other. See also the different subjective effects cataloged at effectindex.com, and draw inspiration from the QRI videos on psychedelic epistemology and the tracer tool. Additionally, explore the r/replications subreddit to see some remarkable replications.\nExample ways to explore (1) and (2)\n\nShowcase how more smooth, symmetrical, regular, and soft visual features express pleasant qualities of the experience (cf. valence structuralism, Michael Johnson’s Symmetry Theory of Valence).\nVisualize an annealing process where the video contains blinking lights driven by metronomes that can sync up with each other until the whole scene is shining in a coherent way (cf. Neural Annealing).\nShow how bouba vs. kiki imagery highlight different emotional tones during a psychedelic experience (cf. CDNS in Quantifying Bliss), where spiky feelings tend to be harsh and disquieting, whereas bubbly and round features tend to be calming and welcoming (extra points if these features emerge out of some kind of annealing process, or if you find counterexamples to this general pattern).\nVisualize how wallpaper symmetry groups transform textures into repeating patterns.\nShow waves interacting with each other in order to construct psychedelic interference patterns (cf. non-linear wave computing) \nUse hyperbolic minimal surfaces in order to exemplify how sensations aggregate on DMT.\nShow how the Reverse-Grassfire Algorithm can create 3D crystals (cf. Harmonic Gestalt).\nShow a 2D Euclidean grid becoming hyperbolic by adding additional nodes and edges in order to demonstrate a change of geometry (cf. world-sheet).\nModel the the experience of achieving a DMT breakthrough level experience using a physical instability (such as Kelvin-Helmholtz).\nSimulate a trajectory on the energy-complexity landscape.\n\nThese are just some suggestions and there are many other ways of connecting technical descriptions of the phenomenology of NSE and visual replications. It helps if you can ground the effects visualized on paradigms and explanations presented by QRI, but it is not necessary to win the contest. What matters is that you can create realistic yet interpretable visualizations that hint at the underlying processes that are generating these experiences. What we are after is insight. In other words, we want to be able to discover new, meaningful, and non-trivial explanations for why NSEs manifest in the way they do. Hence, being able to describe how the replication effects are achieved is highly beneficial.\nEntries will be judged based on the number and precision of replicated subjective effects, with special attention given to valence effects and geometric transformations.\nPrizes\n\n1st place – $5k + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Cutting-Edge” pack + QRI Swag\n2nd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “State-Space Explorer” pack + QRI Swag\n3rd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Starter” pack + QRI Swag\n\n\nPsychedelic Cryptography Contest\nThe Psychedelic Cryptography Contest invites artists to create unique encodings of sensory information that are only meaningful when experienced on psychedelics. The goal is to challenge participants to develop innovative methods of encoding sensory information in such a way that an encoded secret is only apparent on a NSC. The contest encourages the exploration of how sensory information can be modulated and presented in a way that reveals hidden patterns or messages when experienced under the influence of psychedelics.  \nEntries will be judged based on the difficulty of the encryption method used and the clarity of the message or pattern when experienced on psychedelics.\nPrizes\n\n1st place – $3k + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Cutting-Edge” pack + QRI Swag\n2nd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “State-Space Explorer” pack + QRI Swag\n3rd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Starter” pack + QRI Swag\n\n\nInspirational Piece Contest\nThe Inspirational Piece Contest seeks to highlight the powerful connection between art and consciousness research by encouraging artists to create pieces that exemplify this relationship. The focus of this contest is on originality, creativity, inspiration, impact, quality, and execution. Artworks submitted for this contest should evoke a sense of wonder and curiosity about the nature of consciousness and the vast landscape of possible experiences.\nEntries will be judged based on originality, creativity, inspiration, impact, quality, and execution, with winners determined by a public poll.\nPrizes\n\n1st place – $2k + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Cutting-Edge” pack + QRI Swag\n2nd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “State-Space Explorer” pack + QRI Swag\n3rd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Starter” pack + QRI Swag\n\n\nSubmission Guidelines for All Contests\n\nParticipants can submit their entry in the form of a video or image.\nThe submission should be original and created specifically for the contest.\nParticipants can submit up to three entries per contest.\nSubmissions will be accepted starting on March 17th 2023 and must be submitted by May 17th 2023. Winners will be announced on June 1st 2023.\n\nWe encourage artists from the psychedelic and visionary art communities to participate and explore the connection between art and consciousness research. Good luck to all participants!\n\nQRI’s Resources for Technical and Artistic Inspiration\nHarmonic Society: 8 Models of Art for a Scientific Paradigm of Aesthetic Qualia\nWhy it’s helpful: This article presents 8 models of art: 4 common ones, and 4 that connect it to consciousness studies. The overall frameworks of 8 models might help us arrive at methods to create innovative aesthetic qualia from first principles. We think that artists participating in any of the contests might benefit from the vocabulary introduced in these models to create innovative and meaningful pieces that explore the relationship between art and consciousness research. In particular, taking into account the energy parameter, efficient state-space exploration, annealing effects, and the vision of a meta-aesthetic all provide a unique lens for how psychedelics and art are so connected.\nHow to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD\nWhy it’s helpful: This article discusses possible methods of communication that can be understood primarily by individuals under the influence of LSD and other tracer-inducing psychoactives. This may serve as inspiration for artists to think about novel ways to encode information or create unique experiences tailored to specific states of consciousness.\nAlgorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States\nWhy it’s helpful: This article provides a detailed analysis of how the visual effects of psychedelics might be understood and replicated using algorithmic processes. It can serve as a foundation for artists attempting to replicate the visual aspects of non-ordinary states of consciousness in their artwork, or as inspiration to propose alternative algorithmic reductions that capture effects that are currently unaccounted for.\nThe Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences\nWhy it’s helpful: This article explores the connection between the subjective effects of DMT experiences and hyperbolic geometry, various possible algorithmic reductions to explain this connection, as well as detailing the progression of an experience through the DMT levels. Artists participating in the Replication Contest may find inspiration and insights into replicating specific visual patterns and structures often encountered in DMT experiences.\nPsychophysics Toolkit (article)\nWhy it’s helpful: The Psychophysics Toolkit and accompanying article are collections of resources and tools designed to help researchers and artists explore the intersection of perception, consciousness, and the physical world. It includes a variety of resources and interface tools that can aid artists in understanding the principles of psychophysics used to measure subjective experience and applying them to their work. This can be particularly useful for participants in all three contests, as it can provide insights into the ways that sensory information is processed during both ordinary and non-ordinary states of consciousness, and how this can be utilized in creating innovative and impactful art pieces.\nPsychedelic Epistemology: Novel Epistemological Paradigms for Studying Exotic Modes of Consciousness\nWhy it’s helpful: This video introduces new epistemological frameworks for studying and understanding non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by psychedelic substances. By incorporating these paradigms into their creative process, artists can develop a deeper understanding of the nature of these experiences and their potential implications for human knowledge. This enhanced understanding can help artists create innovative and thought-provoking pieces that capture the essence of exotic states of consciousness.\n\n\n(source: Healing Trauma with Neural Annealing)\nThe Pseudo-Time Arrow\nWhy it’s helpful: This article provides a detailed explanation of the concept of phenomenal time and how it relates to the structure of conscious experiences. Understanding this concept could help artists in the contest to better represent the perception of time in non-ordinary states of consciousness and incorporate these insights into their artwork. \nWireheading Done Right: Stay Positive Without Going Insane\nWhy it’s helpful: This article explores the concept of wireheading and how it could be applied responsibly to maximize pleasure without causing psychological harm. Artists participating in the contest might find this article helpful in inspiring their work, particularly in the Inspirational Piece Contest, by envisioning a future where technology is used to enhance well-being and explore the state-space of consciousness responsibly.\nMapping State-Spaces of Consciousness: The Neroli Neighborhood\nWhy it’s helpful: This video explores the concept of state-space neighborhoods, where specific aspects of conscious experiences are clustered together. By understanding the structure and dynamics of these neighborhoods, artists can create pieces that more accurately represent the nuances of different non-ordinary states of consciousness, leading to a more immersive and impactful experience for the audience.\n5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses\nWhy it’s helpful: This article provides a comparative analysis of the experiences induced by 5-MeO-DMT and N,N-DMT. By understanding the unique characteristics of each substance’s effects, artists can draw inspiration for their artwork and more accurately replicate specific psychedelic experiences in the Replication Contest.\n\nAcknowledgements\nWe would like to express our profound gratitude to the donors of the Qualia Research Institute. Your unwavering support has been invaluable in making our work possible. Your investment in our research has not only inspired a growing number of individuals to take our approach to consciousness research seriously but has also led to an expansion in our collaborations. As a result, we have seen the integration of our insights into the work of others, building upon the foundation we have established thus far.\nFirst and foremost, we would like to extend our appreciation to Loka Vision for inspiring the contest. Their dedication to the Psychedelic/Visionary Art community, as demonstrated through their Psychedelic Replication Masterclass, has shown us the immense potential this community holds in furthering our understanding of consciousness.\nThank you Andrés Gómez Emilsson for offering technical insights that will enable artists to create life-like replications of the low-level subjective effects experienced on NSCs and incepting the idea of psychedelic cryptography as a viable field of research.\nA thank you goes to Josie Kins of effectindex.com for their open-source approach to developing psychedelic art through generative AI, as well as their support of and feedback on the Replication contest and insights into the visionary/psychedelic art community.\nAdditional thanks to Scry, Marcin, gydravlik.eth, PsyNFT, and Ferociously Amused for their invaluable feedback on the contest and their contributions to our understanding of the visionary/psychedelic art community and thank you Maggie and Anders Wassinge for your unwaivering support.\n\n\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2023/03/17/unveiling-qris-consciousness-art-contests-immerse-innovate-and-inspire/", "title": "Unveiling QRI’s Consciousness Art Contests: Immerse, Innovate, and Inspire", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2023-03-17T22:42:37+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=1", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "29fd25cb8d7a4725efbcf528e94401e2", "summary": []}
{"text": "Aligning DMT Entities: Shards, Shoggoths, and Waluigis\n\nWe have recently seen some incredible “rogue AI behavior” in Microsoft’s Bing.\n\n\n\nWhile reading some of these outputs I was reminded of… rogue DMT entities. Indeed, sometimes people have DMT experiences and encounter beautiful angelic beings that want to help and heal you (and sometimes do so!), but other times people encounter demonic beings that want to harm and hurt you (and sometimes do so!).\nJust as it is unwise to roll-out a technology like Bing that is full of potential misaligned subagents, I also reckon that it’s unwise to deliver DMT therapy to the masses *before* fixing this bug. While I think that responsible consenting adults *should* be allowed to experiment with DMT as they wish, the bar for “safety and effectiveness” should be much higher when we think of it as a possible mental health intervention.\nOk, so both Bing and DMT experiences can create insane rogue subagents. How are these two things more than merely superficially connected?\nSomeone I talked to recently was actually worried that DMT entities are perhaps controlling these AI technologies to infiltrate our world. I don’t think that’s a very likely explanation. Rather, I think there is a much more parsimonious explanation for this similarity. Namely that both involve having a predictive system spun up misaligned agents in order to fit narratives that appear in the training data. Let’s dig in!\nWhen in Rome\nLast year when playing with GPT and also after talking to Connor from Conjecture who introduced me to Janus‘ Simulator Theory[1] (see also: Janus’ Simulators by Scott Alexander) it became clear that there is a similarity between DMT entities and the quasi-agentic simulated characters GPT-like systems spin up in order to predict the next token in text. If this is true, then this suggests that there might be interesting transpositions between the strategies and concerns discussed in the AI Alignment world and the findings from psychedelic phenomenology about how to have a good time with the beings that you encounter in far-out places. Let me explain.\nA very large fraction of our nervous system is dedicated to minimizing surprise (cf. free energy principle, predictive processing). Now, I don’t think that this is all that the nervous system is doing, nor do I think it is a theory of consciousness. But it is a very important piece of the puzzle nonetheless.\nQRI has championed a set of integrative models that tie together the free energy principle within the larger context of consciousness research in order to explain psychedelic phenomenology. Most recently we have been discussing the frame of “Psychedelic Thermodynamics”, which brings together Neural Annealing, Non-Linear Wave Computing, Johnson’s Symmetry Theory of Valence, and Topological Approaches to Binding.\n\n\n\nThe bit that is relevant from Psychedelic Thermodynamics here is that there is a process by which psychedelics intensify the background noise that, together with sensory stimuli, stimulate internal representations (via a process of stochastic resonance). Importantly, internal representations function as energy sinks from the point of view of the background noise, whereas they are energy sources from the point of view of other representations. \nThe two key features that work as energy sinks of this background energy are symmetry and “recognition”. This was first discussed in The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences, but it also shows up elsewhere[2]. In particular, when you can interpret an ambiguous input as “expected given the context” then that sucks energy out of the background noise in order to energize a gestalt that binds together low-level features into a coherent high-level percept (e.g. Necker Cube). When this “clicks” it will radiate out its excess energy to the rest of the field, and also *constraint* the shape of the field such that it functions as new context that changes the probability for other ambiguous sensations to collapse into representations consistent with the new gestalt. In other words, on DMT you can go from what feels like “pure undifferentiated non dual consciousness” to “this specific carnival with harlequins doing acrobatics” by collapsing how you interpret slight imperfections in the field, which then snowball into instantiating an entire realm of experience where each shape resonates with every other shape (a “vibe lock”, as we call it).\n\n\nNow, once you interpret a sufficient number of features as high-level gestalts, then they will start interacting with each other and further constraining the possible interpretations of the rest of the field. This, I believe, is somewhat similar to GPT, except on a full spatiotemporal context rather than a sequence of tokens context (cf. probabilistic graphical models).\nIf this model is correct, as soon as you start collapsing the energized field into interpretations, then a particular narrative structure may start dominating and “making sense” of what is happening. This can indeed snowball into getting into tricky and sometimes really unpleasant situations.\n\nSlides from: Healing Trauma With Neural Annealing\n\nMeet the Meeseeks\nIn parallel, it’s important to briefly mention the role that subagents typically have in us. Namely, what Romeo Stevens calls the “Mr. Meeseeks interpretation of subagents”. The subagents are created to achieve a goal, they don’t really like existing, but will continue to hang in there until they’re convinced the goal has been met. The subagents are spun up in order to accomplish goals that would normally require you to spend a lot of attention but that cannot be simply offloaded to muscle memory (e.g. like driving a car). Typical examples are things like the response one may have to living in an environment with very negative people (say, dark triad personalities) where you need to spin up subagents that behave like them so that you can predict their next move. In cases of PTSD, it may be that part of the problem is that one created a lot of rather negative subagents (of people, situations, dynamics, actual physical hazards, etc.) and that as a collective they reinforce each other.\n\n\nHi I’m Mr. Meeseeks! I see your grandmother is emotionally abusive. I’ll pretend to be her inside your mind so that you can predict what she will do next and thus avoid getting harmed. Let me know when she’s gone so I can go *PUFF*.\nThe Return to Goodness\nHere loving-kindness meditation can be enormously helpful. I refer you to Anders & Maggie’s meditative exercise to heal negative internal subagents (see Letter XI: Douglas Adams). Essentially what you do is visualize a container of very positive benevolent and high-valence feelings (call it unconditional love, God, primordial goodness, Buddhamind, etc. – or whatever really resonates in your inner world simulation). You then tell the story that subagents come out of that container and once they achieve their goals they go back to it in order to “merge with love” once again. You can even explain this to the subagents, and they can feel the sense of relief that comes when they finally achieve union with this primordial love. Gently guide them towards it. And if you do this over and over, you will in fact be cleaning up a lot of subagents lingering implicit in the field, until you achieve a smooth field with high-valence and a non-dual feel.\nOk, so taking stock: our field of experience can “collapse” into familiar representations when they start predicting each other, sub-agents cease to exist once they have achieved their goal, and loving-kindness exercises can help you steer lost and lingering subagents towards their re-unification with primordial love (or, again, whatever resonates with you!). More so, these subagents are embedded in the predictive processing hierarchy and will try to do exactly what you find them most likely to do. So given these conditions, how do you align DMT entities?\nAligning DMT Entities\nHere are some suggestions:\n* First, the simplest and most straightforward intervention is to simply get good and prosocial training data. This is highlighted by the Waluigi Effect, in which Bing sort of turns nasty *because* character trait inversion is a *trope* in human stories, and there are plenty of such stories online. This could in principle be fixed by having an AI that classifies tropes and narrative structures and filters texts that contain any hint of Waluigi tropes or character trait switching narrative structures before feeding them as training data to GPT. Similarly, in the case of DMT entities, you can go to an environment with vetted inputs that are always really wholesome. Recall: the influence that the last couple of weeks have on what comes up in a psychedelic experience is vastly larger than what you experienced a year or a decade ago. The recent inputs matter a lot, so don’t worry about the fact that you’ve seen horror movies in the past. If you’ve been consuming really wholesome media for the last three months, that will matter enormously more.\n* Second, add really highly-weighted good training data that makes it so that aligned outcomes are always the most likely. In our case, this would be indeed things like exercising the “gently guide subagents to the pool of love” move so that it’s a very likely outcome and they predict that that’s what’s going to happen. Train on visualizing the Buddha with a hand up saying “don’t fear”. Internalize that “love is always stronger than fear” (which is something I actually believe in, based on many incredible experiences). And so on.\n\n\nDon’t Fear\n* Third, use good vibes as the base. Essentially, negative entities feed off of negatively valanced patterns. Literally, feeling somatic sensations of pinching, pressure, twisting, etc. can become the building blocks of gestalts that end up becoming negative entities. Starting out with a very positive and smooth field reduces the fuel that negative entities have to construct themselves in resonance with patterns of dissonance. We’ve heard about good outcomes from Wim Hof and chanting metta meditation before trips (YMMV!).\n* Fourth, More Dakka on equanimity. Remember the teachings of Rob Burbea (“what you resist persists”) and Shinzen Young (“suffering equals pain times resistance”). Essentially, resisting negative energies makes them stronger. This is doubly so on psychedelic states of consciousness. Instead, remember that high enough equanimity, where you don’t let positive or negative vibes “move you”, maximizes the rate of stress dissipation within your nervous system, and this accelerates the rate at which negative vibes flow through you and exit your system via some kind of radiative cooling process currently not understood by science. Practice taking cold showers without stalling or flinching, or eating relatively hot peppers without resisting or letting the pain get to you. At least for DMT realms up to Magic Eye-level the physical discomfort of the state is not stronger than a cold shower… that is, if you don’t resist it! If you do resits it, the discomfort can be drastically amplified, and you can turn some waves in a glass of water into a storm.\n* Fifth, going back to the Waluigi Effect: the article explains why Reinforcement Learning via Human Feedback (RLHF) doesn’t really work for it (it encourages Waluigies to hide and pretend, rather than really getting rid of them). So instead of simply “rewarding good behavior” I suggest you reward “clean subagentic structures”. There is a “vibe” to the “intentions” of subagents. And you will soon realize that Waluigies have an “ambiguous intention” vibe. Use metta to reward sub-agents that have collapsed and clean intentions instead. Importantly, this takes priority over rewarding subagents that are really good at flattering you, for example. Because you’ve been fed enough narratives where flattery turns to betrayal that this is not a guarantee of alignment.\n* Sixth, I think the principles of Shard Theory might be really useful here. In particular, really notice how not only is it that you can reward sub-agents with your attention and your top-down vibes, but once they are sufficiently “alive” they can actually start to *reward each other*. This, I believe, is how you get things like “egregore possessions” and other uncanny related phenomena. More on this below. You want to have a clean and smooth field of awareness so that subagent conspiracies can be easily spotted and addressed before they snowball.\nExample Entities\nFinally, let me ground this with some of the common categories of DMT entities:\n\n\nShoggoths: These are entities that seem to emerge out of the resonance of interpersonal representations of preferences at the cultural level. The things that you can “recognize the field as” in this case are “people doing what they want” where what they want may be different than what you want. If you have an adversarial relationship with a particular culture or subculture and you resist these wants, they will get reinforced by you disliking them and in some cases can start to locally bind with each other until you get what some psychonauts call “an amalgam” of cultural preferences. This is also what I think people are talking about when they say they have met an “egregore” of a culture of ideology on DMT. These are hard or perhaps impossible to align: cultures are in fact self-contradictory. So the amalgam will typically hold a lot of internal contradictions, which it will then externalize. The way to deal with a Shoggoth involves re-annealing, in addition to the suggestions above. DMT Shoggoths are sort of a symptom of failed clean annealing, in that they “coagulate” rather than “click”, and are amalgams of lots of incompatible preferences loosely held by a political coalition. This could perhaps be predicted from first principles with non-linear wave computing and Shard Theory, so the fact that it does happen to people makes it a salient case for this field of study.\n\n\nDemons: these are sub-agents that come up in “hell realms” which are states of consciousness where you believe that you are a bad person and deserve some kind of punishment. The demons here are just, in my opinion, doing exactly what you expect them to do, namely, punishing you. I think that in addition to equanimity and metta, these entities also respond to boosting narratives of redemption that are wholesome in nature. For example, there is this spiritual belief that demons ultimately are all on the path towards God… they are just in a more extreme version of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and they might take thousands of years to redeem themselves. But they will do so. In this case, you sending them metta and telling them that they are actually intrinsically good, can slowly, but surely, help them unwind their dissonant configurations.\n\n\nHarlequins: these are entities from what feels like some kind of “clown dimension”. They are extremely common on DMT. Because we have so many tropes of negative clowns, this can often turn ugly. I suggest you reinforce the narrative of “harlequins as tricksters who are child-like in their curiosity about consciousness”. In fact, prompted properly and softened with enough metta, harlequins can be extremely helpful for consciousness research. You can play positive sum games with them in which you give them a really good time, and in exchange they help you explore the most surprising features of the space you are inhabiting. They can become “consciousness research assistants” with a flair for the weird and wondrous.\nThere is of course a zoo of possible entities, and in fact many possible entities currently exist merely in potential. As we imagine new healthy and wholesome tropes in our sense-making attempts for DMT realms, I predict that we will “unlock” new and more helpful DMT beings. In particular, I think that Team Consciousness tropes can give us a really good aesthetic to use as the primary energy sink for “recognizing” entities in this space. If you ever meet Rainbow God, say hi for me. It *always* gives you a mind-blowing revelation about reality and consciousness that enriches your life for the better \nHow does this help AI Alignment?\nI will conclude by saying that studying DMT entities might actually be a way to make headway in AI alignment in two ways. First, because they genuinely can be really smart entities you can interact with, on a bounded timeframe, and who seem to share a lot of features with AI technologies. They are human-level or higher in their intelligence (because they have access to new geometries of phenomenal space and hence to novel qualia computing, and because they lack the ego defenses that make you incapable of having certain thoughts!). And second, because all of the above may actually also transpose to discussions in AI alignment. In particular, I think the above suggestions are helpful for researchers. AI alignment can expose you to a lot of mental health risks (from the belief that “we’re doomed”, to creating strong tulpas that don’t align with your own values!). The recommendations I provide above may transpose to that domain: realize that even AI alignment research makes you spin up subagents inside you! The tools I shared may be helpful to increase the mental health of anyone studying this field who is now suffering from an infestation of negative subagents. Bring them back to Love!\n\nSee also:\n\nDMT-Nexus‘ Hyperspace Lexicon\nKevin Simler‘s Neurons Gone Wild\nQRI‘s Magical Creatures line of scents\nCubeFlipper‘s How to use DMT without going insane\nTrolls Under the Bridge by Evan McMullen at The Stoa\nThe Bayesian Brain and Meditation by Shamil Chandaria\nMapping the Heaven Realms – presentation I gave at an Astral Codex Ten meetup\nThe Magickal, Shamanic, Imperial, Ethical, and Tantric Implications of Pokémon Go by Daniel Ingram\nMichael Johnson‘s The Neuroscience of Meditation: Four Models and his writeup on Neural Annealing\nWhat Happens When You Ask Questions to the DMT Entities? (excerpt from Josikinz‘ Psychedelic Entities – broken down and described)\n\n\n[1] Not to be confused with simulationism (the belief that we actually live in a computer simulation) or indirect realism about perception (the philosophical realization that all we ever have access to are the features of an internal world simulation and we don’t perceive the world “directly”)\n[2] Lehar’s Harmonic Gestalt argues that this emerges naturally out of the hill-claiming towards higher harmony between internal representations. Also discussed in Healing Trauma with Neural Annealing.\n\n\n\n\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2023/03/05/aligning-dmt-entities-shards-shoggoths-and-waluigis/", "title": "Aligning DMT Entities: Shards, Shoggoths, and Waluigis", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2023-03-06T03:06:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=1", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f902587aa6e3139333a1c90585e003a1", "summary": []}
{"text": "Good Vibe Theory\n\n[Epistemic status: work in progress that is highly speculative but which I have reason to think has explanatory power – the content comes from this talk I gave at the Oxford Psychedelic Society a couple of weeks ago, which was then summarized/turned into a Twitter thread by Hunter Meyer]\n\nQRI’s ‘Good Vibes Theory’ (GVT) is a speculative proposal for a physics of consciousness. This theory aims to establish an ontological foundation for a future rigorous science of good vibes.  #psychedelicthermodynamics #goodvibestheory\n\n\n\nTwo groups will make the most use of GVT; one is the “vibe engineers,” who are grounded in creating good vibes technically, and the mystics, who want to connect good vibes to deep insights and truths of wisdom traditions.\n\n\n\nThere is a deep connection between the shape of things and the way they vibrate. Different shapes have different energies, as their curvature, complexity, and surface area increase.\n\n\n\nInternal representations act as energy sinks that absorb and channel ambient energy. They are often symmetrical and have semantic meaning, which makes them effective energy sinks. These representations also radiate energy and have energizing effects *to other representations*.\n\n\n\nIn physics, the Hamiltonian of a system is a measure of the system’s total energy. Similarly, the Hamiltonian of Consciousness would formulate how to add up all the energy of each component of a bound experience created by a system to get the total energy of that experience.\n\n\n\nQRI proposes a new framework, “Psychedelic thermodynamics”, which offers a novel perspective on energy flow in consciousness.\n\n\n\nIn this framework, one system’s energy sink is another system’s energy source. The energy flows from sensory input to consciousness, where it’s transformed into internal representations or “solitons” and released through motor actions or field radiation.\nThe quality of conscious experience is shaped by the energy radiated from internal representations known as gestalts, which interact with each other to produce the texture and valence of the experience. The shape of the gestalts determines the vibe they radiate (cf. valence structuralism).\n\n\n\nThe “vibes” of our experiences are determined by the interaction of our internal representations, and dissonance can arise from being out of phase with input, incompatibility with noise, being intrinsically misshaped, or dissonance with other representations.\nPsychedelic Thermodynamics suggests that the valence of a psychedelic experience can be modulated by inputs to the extent that they are in tune with the background noise and there are no misshapen or incompatible inputs leading to dissonance and negative valence.\n\n\n\nInput valence effects are therefore the result of how external stimuli interact with internal representations in conscious experience. The degree of coherence between the input and the background noise, as well as the shape and resonance of the internal representation, determine an input’s valence effects.\n\n\n\nThe Flower of Life from sacred geometry can be steel-manned (within indirect realism) as a powerful metaphor for how experience is constructed. It may have deeper metaphorical relevance in physics than previously realized in light of Feynman and Wheeler’s “one-electron universe” where reality is an interference pattern of one electron bouncing back and forth in time.\n\n\n\nThe iterative way in which the Flower of Life is constructed takes on a new potential metaphorical meaning that can be used as a lens to understand the fundamental nature of reality.\nThere may be just one electron in the entire universe. It is because when an electron and an anti-electron interact, they merge and cancel out, producing a photon.\nMathematically, the interaction of an electron moving back in time is the same as an anti-electron, called a positron. As a result, there is only one type of observer in the universe, and it is bouncing back and forth in time, interfering with itself.\n\n\n\nAccording to physics, quantum mechanics is mathematically equivalent whether it is thought of as fields or a superposition of all possible paths.\nThe Schrodinger equation, which describes the behavior of quantum mechanical systems, gives the same answers whether solving the field or taking one electron or one photon and making it go through every possible path and then superimposing all those paths simultaneously.\nThe behavior of an electron is the sum total of all possibilities. The field and the one electron can be thought of as the same, a matter of perspective. The field is a superposition of paths, while the electron is a smooth field evolving according to the Schrodinger equation.\nThe field usually segments into pockets, and the topology of the magnetic field changes through a process known as magnetic reconnection, which has real-world implications, like solar flares and coronal mass ejections in the sun.\n\n\n\nA possible solution to the “boundary problem” (how is it that we are not all just one bound experience? why are we separate moments of experience?) is that the thing that creates a boundary around an individual’s experience is a topological pocket, and within it, there is a field.\nThe question then arises, what does it feel like to be that field in the topological pocket?\n\n\n\nThe field is equivalent to all possible paths within it. Thus, to be a pocket in the field might feel exactly like every point in that field, knowing about every other point. This interaction between all points within the field gives rise to the entirety of the shape.\nThe experience of being the one electron in the topological pocket would be precisely the superposition of all possible points of view that exist within it. It aligns with what mystics have talked about for a long time – the screen of consciousness is not fundamental, but emergent.\n\n\n\nThe screen of consciousness is a special case that requires the field to be shaped in a peculiar way so that “it seems like there is a screen from every possible trajectory within the topological pocket of the field”.\nSymmetry, meaning “invariance upon transformation”, can entail that many different paths look the same. As a consequence, in some situations making the pocket perfectly symmetrical (via e.g. neural annealing) can collapse the dimensionality of the experience.\nAs a powerful metaphor, the symmetrical nature of electron orbitals might offer insights into the experience of altered states of consciousness, such as those induced by high doses of LSD.\n\n\n\nUnder LSD, symmetrification of self within a pocket collapses multiple points of view, leading to a collective wavefront. Points within the pocket sense the field and advance as a collective wavefront, blurring the line between a point and a wave.\n\n\n\nSome states emit coherent waves of awareness in resonant patterns, with inherent trade-offs between location and frequency due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.\nThe symmetrical structures on DMT function as “witnesses of the scene”. Hence, with each pattern of resonance that gets organized in a symmetrical way, you add a new “reference frame” for the experience.\n\n\n\nWith a physics of consciousness, we should be able to look at trippy DMT replication images, understand their non-trivial meaningful content, and interpret the reason for the existence of the patterns and structures within them.\n\n\n\nDMT induces resonant and coherent states of consciousness that emit waves of awareness that are in phase and which seem to be subjectively equivalent to many points simultaneously sensing the (inner) environment.\nThese patterns on DMT are not just “3D patterns in the visual field”; they are far deeper and more coherent, with each cluster of coherence functioning as a coherent witness that is measuring its environment (art by Symbolika).\n\n\n\nUnderstanding this we can reason about highly coherent states of consciousness like those induced by psychedelics, meditation, and other ecstatic/annealing methods in terms of a network of coherence, where each frequency at which the hierarchy is coherent with one another may tell us a lot about them.\n\n\n\nThe witness is a coherent wavefront of awareness that is interacting or embedded within your consciousness. As a consequence, it is possible to describe a state of consciousness as a network of coherence.\n\n\nStates where the physics of consciousness is evident, include DMT’s Symmetry Hotel, where every two-dimensional surface looks like a coherent symmetry group, and Crystal Worlds, which are between Magic Eye and the Waiting Room.\n\n\n\nIn the Crystal Worlds, the witnesses are three-dimensional, and there is a question of whether they are external or internal entities. However, they are coherent witnesses of awareness that are interacting or embedded within your consciousness and their inherently 3D “point of view” has geometric effects on the unfolding of the experience.\n\n\n\nCoherence can help us understand the zoo of possible self-organizing principles that arise on something like DMT. The network of coherence can crystallize in various shapes, including low-level features or high-level features, fractally coherent, or hyperbolic networks (also Symbolika below). Many scale-specific network geometries are possible.\n\n\n\nOn DMT, as soon as there are coherent symmetrical structures there will be mirror rooms.\n\n\n\nEach surface emits a coherent wavefront of awareness that reflects off of the other surfaces, and this behavior is reminiscent of light in that a coherent witness bounces off of itself in the various surfaces. This may explain why “mirror room experiences” on DMT are incredibly common.\n\n\n\nCoherence has a remarkable effect on consciousness that mirrors its effect on light. When mirrors become parallel, the subject and object collapse with perfect symmetry. Every alignment feels like a union because the witness and the witnessed collapse.\n\n\n\nDMT induces resonant and coherent states of consciousness that emit waves of awareness, and each cluster of coherence functions as a coherent witness that is measuring its environment.\nUnderstanding the physics of consciousness on DMT can help us understand the network of coherence, the zoo of possible self-organizing principles that arise, and the common experiences such as the mirror room experiences.\n\n\n\nThe present depiction is an intuitive and conceptual overview, while a formal and scientifically rigorous formulation is currently under development. Nonetheless, we are enthusiastic about its capacity to provide comprehensive explanations and develop its practical applications.\n\n\n\nQRI’s GVT and Psychedelic Thermodynamics are ambitious proposals, but they are exciting ones that could open up new avenues of exploration in the field of consciousness.\nIf you are as excited as we are about the direction consciousness research is headed, please consider learning more at qri.org\nYou can find the full presentation on GVT here. Thank you @kfshinozuka and Ali-Reza Omidvar and the rest of the folks at @OxPsySoc for hosting this event:\n\n\n\n\nThank you for reading!\nInfinite bliss!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2023/02/25/good-vibe-theory/", "title": "Good Vibe Theory", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2023-02-26T02:13:09+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=1", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "8ce19c353dd659d1e4bb05a433e82252", "summary": []}
{"text": "Symmetry in Qualia – an Interview with Andres Gomez-Emilsson by Justin Riddle\n\nI recently had the pleasure to talk to Justin Riddle*, who is one of the few people in academia who takes quantum theories of consciousness seriously while also doing formal neuroscience research (see his publications, which include woks on transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) for a number of conditions, EEG analysis for decision making, reward, and cognition, as well as concept work on the connection between fractals and consciousness).\nI first met him at Toward a Science of Consciousness in Tuscon in 2016 (see my writeup about that event, which I attended with David Pearce). About a year ago I noticed that he started uploading videos about quantum theories of consciousness, which I happily watched while going on long walks. Just a few months ago, we both participated in a documentary about consciousness (more on that later!) and had the chance to sit down and record a video together. He edited our long and wide-ranging discussion into a friendly and consumable format by adding explainers and visual aids along the way. I particularly appreciate his description of “mathematical fictionalism” at 21:30 (cf. Mathematics as the Study of Patterns of Qualia).\nWe hope you enjoy it!\n* Thanks to David Field for catalyzing this meeting \n\n\n\n\nVideo Description:\nIn episode 32 of the quantum consciousness series, Justin Riddle interviews Andres Gomez-Emilsson, the director of research at the Qualia Research Institute. Andres is passionate about understanding qualia, which is the feeling and quality of subjective experience. In this interview, we discuss many of Andres’ theories: mathematical fictionalism, models of valence, neural annealing as it pertains to psychedelic therapy, and antitolerance medications to reduce suffering.\nFirst up, we discuss the nature of qualia and whether or not there can be a universal mathematical description of subjective experience. Andres posits that the experience of having a thought should not be confused with the thought itself. Therefore, any attempt at mathematical description will be wrapped up within the experience of the person suggesting the mathematics. As he states, mathematics is as real as the Lord of the Rings, a great story that we can tell, but not to be confused with reality itself. Next up, we discuss the symmetry theory of valence [proposed by Michael Johnson in Principia Qualia] which postulates that the structure of experience determines how good or bad an experience feels (such as the imagination of certain geometric patterns imbuing a sense of well-being whereas other patterns being anxiogenic). The geometric patterns that lead to positive valence (positive emotional experiences) are those shapes recognized as “sacred geometry”. However, Andres cautions that because these “sacred” geometric shapes generate well-being, people have used this reproducible experience to peddle New Age metaphysics. We should be cautious of the ability to generate positive experience as it can be used to manipulate people into buying into particular belief systems. Third, we discuss recent findings that single dose psilocybin in a therapeutic context can produce a lasting reduction in symptoms of depression. Andres posits that this could be explained as a form of neural annealing (see also, and also). The mind “heats up” and breaks through discordant neural pathways and through neural plasticity during the psychedelic experience will allow for the formation of new neural pathways with higher resonant properties consistent with positive valence. This contributes to Andres’ overall ontological model of reality in which the universe is a unified field of experience that is pinched off into individuals. Here, he starts with an unbroken unity of all things that is topologically segmented into individuals. Finally, Andres is a devout hedonist with the long-term goal of reducing suffering. His group at the Qualia Research Institute is investigating medications that reduce adaptation to molecules over long-term use. Go check out Andres’ YouTube channel and the Qualia Research Institute website! \n\n~~~ Timestamps ~~~\n0:00 Introduction to the Qualia Research Institute\n21:28 Mathematical fictionalism and qualia\n28:58 Symmetry Theory of Valence\n35:23 Using subjective experience for scientific discovery\n41:10 Consciousness as topological segmentation\n45:19 Topographic bifurcations within the mind-field\n51:07 Neural annealing in psychedelic therapy\n1:02:09 Electrical oscillations in neural annealing\n1:06:23 Hyperbolic geometry in the brain\n1:12:16 Definition of hyperbolic geometry\n1:16:23 Antitolerance medication to reduce suffering\n1:23:59 Quantum computers and qualia\nWebsite: http://www.justinriddlepodcast.com", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2023/01/12/symmetry-in-qualia-an-interview-with-andres-gomez-emilsson-by-justin-riddle/", "title": "Symmetry in Qualia – an Interview with Andres Gomez-Emilsson by Justin Riddle", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2023-01-13T05:46:15+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=1", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "c025e7c9201a29729d5ca7d42306438b", "summary": []}
{"text": "Cartoon Epistemology by Steven Lehar (2003)\n\n\nFrom: http://slehar.com/wwwRel//cartoonepist/cartoonepist.html\nSee also:\n\nHarmonic Gestalt by Steven Lehar\nWelcoming Steven Lehar as a QRI Lineage by Andrés Gómez Emilsson (ALGE)\nNon-Linear Wave Computing: Vibes, Gestalts, and Realms (writeup) (ALGE)\nThe Pseudo-Time Arrow: Explaining phenomenal time with implicit causal structures in networks of local binding (ALGE)\nFree-Wheeling Hallucinations (video) (ALGE comments on quote)\nThe Resonance and Vibration of [Phenomenal] Objects (ALGE comments on quote)\nFrom Point-of-View Fragmentation to Global Visual Coherence: Harmony, Symmetry, and Resonance on LSD  (ALGE comments on quote)\nA Future for Neuroscience by Michael E. Johnson\nAn introduction to Steven Lehar, part I: Bubble worlds and force fields by Cube Flipper\n\n\nPart I: Something Very Strange!\n\n\n\nDid you ever notice? There is something ver-ry strange about this world of ours.\nReally? Like what?\n\n\n\nDo you ever feel like you are trapped in some kind of bubble? I mean look—the sky looks like a dome over my head. Is that really the shape of the sky? And did you notice something really funny?\nNo what? Tell me!\n\n\n\nDid you ever notice that things that are far away look smaller? And things that are nearby look bigger! Do you realize how strange that is?\nStrange? That’s not strange at all! Thats just perspective, just like it happens in a camera. In a photograph farther things look smaller, too.\n\n\n\nYes, but the perspective in a camera is projected onto the flat sheet of film. There is no mystery in that kind of perspective, it is simply a projection from a 3-D world through a focal point onto a 2-D surface. And in your eyeball the retina is like the film.\nSo?\n\n\n\nBut take a look at this street here. Is this street the picture on your retina?\nNo, that’s the street itself where the light comes from that makes the image on my retina.\n\n\n\nBut then how come things in the distance look smaller? Perspective is something that happens in your eye, not out in the world! In the real street things in the distance are not actually smaller, all the houses are exactly the same size. It is only on your retina that the farther ones appear smaller. And the image on your retina is only a flat 2-D image. This world out here is 3-D, but it has perspective. So is it the world itself? Or is it the image on the retina?\nWell, it’s both. Light from the world makes a picture in your eye that lets you see the things out in the world. What’s so hard about that?\n\n\n\nOk then if this is the world itself, then why is everything bent around like a reflection in a Christmas bulb?\nI don’t see anything bent. What are you talking about?\n\n\n\nWell, take a look at this. See the two sides of this street? They are straight and parallel as far as the eye can see.\nSo?\n\n\n\nBut LOOK! Those straight parallel sides also MEET AT A POINT! RIGHT THERE! Can you SEE it?\nWell they LOOK like they meet at a point. But they don’t really!\n\n\n\nAnd if you turn around and look behind you, they meet at a point back there too!\nSo? I don’t get it.\n\n\n\nSo this street that we are standing on is shaped like the rind of a melon slice with two curved sides that meet at a point at either end. And those end points are at eye level, even though the street is under our feet.\nOk, vision is not perfect. So what?\n\n\n\nSo what? So we are living in a scale model, and the scale of the model shrinks progressively with depth, just like a museum diorama, or a theatre set. And at the back plane the scale shrinks to zero, at least in the depth dimension, where everything beyond a certain distance appears flat, as if painted on the dome of the sky.\nBut it only looks that way. It’s an illusion. We know that the world isn’t really warped like that.\n\n\n\nYes but HOW do we “know”? We “know” by using a warped reference scale to judge the objective size of things in the warped subjective world. If we measure distances, and even straightness itself, using this warped reference grid, we can see that all the houses are the same height and width and depth, and that they are really all straight and vertical, not warped and bulgy as they appear.\nI don’t know if I see anything warped at all! Looks perfectly straight to me!\n\n\n\nOf course! Relative to your warped reference scale! And take a look at what happens when you walk down the road. Things from far away expand outwards and get bigger and bigger until you pass them, and then they shrink back down again to a tiny little dot before they disappear altogether!\nHmmm, I suppose it is a bit like some kind of bubble.\n\n\n\nAnd the strange thing is that the part where the world is biggest, is always right where you are standing. Now look- you stay here and let me take a few paces. See? now my world is the biggest here where I stand, but your world is biggest over there where you stand. Either the world is a very elastic place, or you and I are looking at different bubbles.\nBut how can that be? Wouldn’t our bubbles collide?\n\n\n\nEither that or they’re all part of one big elastic bubble. Except you’d think that I could see the distortion of your bubble from mine, and vice-versa.\nNo, that can’t be right either.\n\n\n\nWell then the only other possibility is that we each have our own private bubble, and we can never see into anyone else’s bubble.\nBut how can that be? You can see quite clearly that we are both standing right here in the same space.\n\n\n\nIt only seems that way because in my bubble I have a picture of me here and you there, while in your bubble you have a picture of you there and me here. The pictures in our two bubbles are so similar that we assume that we are in the same space.\nBut then where are these bubbles? What are they made of? And whatever happened to the real world that we know exists independent of our experience of it? Where did it go? Does it not even exist? Is everything just a hallucination or lucid dream?\n\n\n\nOf course it exists! Otherwise there would be nothing to keep the picture in your bubble synchronized with the picture in mine. Can’t you see? We are both looking at this same house from different perspectives, so there must be a real house there to be the common cause of both perspectives. We are each seeing our own virtual-reality replica of the real world, each from our own unique perspective.\nBut where is this virtual-reality picture? What is it made of?\n\n\n\nIf we know anything about neurophysiology, we know that it must be in the brain. The brain is the organ of conscious experience. Mind is nothing more than the operation of the physical brain.\nSo you’re telling me that everything I see around me is actually inside my head? How can that be? My head is right here, and all that is out there!\n\n\n\nYou cannot see the external world directly. You can only see it through your private conscious experience of it. So this world you see around you is the picture in your brain. In other words beyond the dome of the sky above, and beyond the solid earth underfoot, is the inner surface of your true physical skull.\n\n\n\nImpossible! I don’t buy it! I don’t care what you say, I know this is the world, not just a picture in my head! I don’t see any curvature, the world is just plain straight. You must be crazy!\n\nPart II: There is nothing strange at all!\n\n\n\n\nOk, then you tell me. How does vision work?\nWell, first of all, this here is the real world, not some kind of image in anybody’s head. And there is nothing bent or bulgy about it, the world is perfectly straight! The sides of the road don’t converge, they only seem to converge. And they never do actually meet, if you look very carefully. And farther things are not really smaller, they only appear to be smaller. It’s an illusion.\n\n\n\nNow light from the world enters your eye where it makes an image on your retina. The retina sends an electrical signal up the optic nerve that generates electrical activation in the visual cortex.\n\n\n\nAnd as the cortex lights up electrically, you see the world around you.\n\n\n\nIs the electrical activity in the cortex shaped like a street with houses under a domed sky?\nNo! Neurons chatter away in the brain in a pattern that is nothing like the shape of the world you see.\n\n\n\nThen where does the shape of visual experience come from? Where is the picture that we see?\nThe world! It comes from the world! The shapes and colors you see around you are shapes and colors of the world, not patterns in your brain!\n\n\n\nBut what if you are having a lucid dream, or a hallucination? Then you are seeing shapes and colors that are not in the world. Where are the shapes and colors of the hallucinated scene?\nThey’re in your head of course! But in your head they do not have the shapes and colors you see. In your brain they are just a bunch of neurons chattering to each other.\n\n\n\nBut then where do the shapes and colors you see come from? Why don’t you just see the shapes of the neurons and their activations? What is it that turns the patterns of electrical activity into the patterns that we experience?\n\n\n\nThe pattern of electrical activation in your brain during a hallucination takes the same shape as it would during a normal perception of the hallucinated scene. So the shape and color that you experience are the shape and color that the world would have if you were perceiving it instead of hallucinating it. They are the shape and color of the world, not of your brain! Even if that world is imaginary!\nBut then what determines which neurons, or patterns of activity, represent which experienced shapes? What is the mapping between the shape of the neurons, or patterns of activation, and the shapes that we experience?\n\n\n\nThe mapping is learned from experience! One neuron, or neuron assembly, learns to fire whenever you see a house, while other neurons, or assemblies, learn to respond to windows, doors, and roofs, for example. The collective pattern of activation of all of these neurons together corresponds to our experience of the external scene.\n\n\n\nAnd in dreams and hallucinations, the same constellation of neural activations produces the same kind of visual experience as a perception of the corresponding real scene!\n\n\n\nBut where is this experience located? We can see quite plainly that it is a spatial structure. But where is that structure? What is it made of and where is it located?\nIt’s out in the WORLD of course! Experience is right out here in the world where we observe the world to be!\n\n\n\n\nSo, let me get this straight. Experience is a spatial structure, as we can plainly see. And your experience occurs as the result of some kind of activation in your brain. But your experience is not in the brain, it is out in the world, although it is caused by electrical events in your physical brain.\nYeah, thats right!\n\n\nSo let’s say I had a switch that could turn your brain on and off like a light bulb. Are you telling me that every time I turned it on, the experience would appear out there, but when I turn it off, then the experience disappears? Is experience like a beam of light from a flashlight that is projected outward from the brain? What is that experience made of? What is its substance?\n\n\n\nIts not made of ANYTHING! It is just EXPERIENCE! It doesn’t really EXIST in a physical sense! Nothing is actually projected, it is only EXPERIENCED to be projected!\n\n\n\nDoesn’t exist? This here? The fabric of experience? Doesn’t exist??? All this here is really a bunch of scrambled neurons firing in my brain? I don’t care what you say, I see a spatial structure in experience, and if I see it, I know that it exists!\n\nPart III: It’s all in your head!\n\n\n\nOk then, how do YOU explain visual processing? How does vision work in the brain?\nWell, first and foremost, it is plainly evident that visual experience is a spatial structure, and it is produced by the brain. So unless we find compelling evidence to the contrary, that structure must be located in the brain! How the brain constructs spatial pictures remains a deep dark mystery. But that it does so is an observational fact.\n\n\n\nSo whether it is by coherent oscillations, standing waves, or some kind of Fourier code, somehow the tissue of the brain must be capable of generating three-dimensional moving images as rich and complex as this image of me that you see here!\n\n\n\nNow of course the volumetric image may be warped and distorted in the brain…\n\n\n\n…while still being a volumetric representation.\n\n\n\nBut as long as its connectivity, or functional architecture, is similarly warped and distorted, the warped image encodes the same volumetric information as its undistorted counterpart.\n\n\n\nAnd apparently the volumetric image can even be fragmented into separate modules specialized for processing color, motion, binocular disparity, etc., while still producing a coherent, unified experience.\n\n\n\nBut whatever else we know about the visual representation, one thing is plainly obvious by inspection: the representational strategy used in the brain is an analogical one. In other words objects and surfaces are represented in perception not by an abstract symbolic code, nor by the activation of individual cells, or cell assemblies. Instead, objects are represented in the brain by constructing full spatial effigies of them that appear to us for all the world like the objects themselves.\n\n\n\nVision is televisual. It lets us see the remote external world through the medium of an internal replica of it.\n\n\n\nBut who is the viewer of this internal theatre of the mind? For whose benefit is this internal performance produced? Is it the little man at the center who sees this scene? But then how does HE see? Is there yet another smaller man inside that little man’s head, and so on to an infinite regress of observers within observers?\n\n\n\nNo, of course not! It only goes in one level! Take a look! What do you see inside your phenomenal head? I see nothing! It is an empty void! There is no infinite series of heads within heads, there is just a fuzzy brown emptiness with nothing inside, that opens to the world through the eyes like two open windows.\n\n\n\nNo, the little man at the center of our world of experience is not the observer of the internal scene. It is merely an object, made of the same substance as is the rest of the perceived scene, because that scene would be incomplete without a replica of our own body in the world. But the perceptual homunculus is more than a mere replica of the physical body. It is a computational mechanism constructed by the brain to help it control the body.\n\n\n\nIf the representational principle behind visual perception involves an explicit volumetric spatial model of external reality, then sensorimotor function might also be best implemented in the form of an explicit volumetric model of the body, like a wooden marionette, with hinges and ball joints at elbows and shoulders just like the real body that it represents by analogy.\n\n\n\nBut what makes the internal marionette a meaningful model of the larger body that it represents, is that it is coupled to the larger body somehow, so that the posture of the model always exactly mirrors the posture of the real body that it represents.\n(Follow alternate argument path)\n\n\n\nMotor control is tele-motive, like a virtual-reality body glove, electronically coupled to a remote android body that automatically replicates its posture.\n\n\n\nExcept in perception that android body is not remote, but surrounding, like a body glove suspended in a control room which is located inside the head of the giant android body that it controls.\n\n\n\nAnd projected into that control room is a volumetric colored replica of the surrounding environment constructed on the basis of sensory input.\n\n\n\nAs the controller cavorts about in this synthetic reality, the larger android body cavorts in the external world, giving the controller the impression that he is interacting with the external world directly…\n\n\n\n…although there are also times when it becomes abundantly clear that our view of the world is not direct or unmediated.\n\n\n\nNow despite appearances to the contrary, the little man at the center of our world of experience is not the viewer or ‘experiencer’ of the surrounding virtual world. The body-image homunculus is just the interface between perceptual and motor function, expressed as an explicit model of the body in an explicit model of surrounding space.\n\n\n\nMotor computation takes the form of spatial field-like forces in that space, that bend the body-image homunculus into different postures…\n\n\n\n…and those postures are then mirrored in amplified form by the larger android body.\n\n\n\nBut the coupling works both ways. Forces from the external world are also communicated back in to the model world. For example gravity drags the android body downwards against the ground that pushes upward…\n\n\n\n…and these forces are also replicated in the model environment where we perceive them as actual forces in what we believe to be the external world. The perceived force of synthetic gravity makes sense of the persistent resistance felt to upward motion of the body, just as the resistance of the ground underfoot to penetration is perceived as an upward force of rigid support.\n\n\n\nWe resist forces like the pull of gravity by constructing an equal and opposite force of levity, that raises our body-image homunculus upward against the downward pull while pushing downward against the ground. This symmetrically opposed motor force field is a spatial thought that appears under voluntary control, and it acts on the body image as a motor command. And as the motor force field moves the body-image homunculus…\n\n\n\n…the larger android body moves in perfect synchrony with it, pushing harder against the ground to raise itself upward against gravity.\n\n\n\nWe move our hand by simply willing it to move in any direction we choose, and that will is itself a force that acts on our body-image hand which moves in response to the willed force. The larger android hand moves in synchrony, as if it were itself under the influence of a larger external force pulling it in the willed direction.\n\n\n\nAnd our desire to move through the world is expressed as a larger force field that pulls on the entire body-image homunculus. But since the homunculus is anchored to the center of the control room, the only way he can advance forward…\n\n\n\n…is by pushing the world backwards until his destination comes to where he is, or so it seems perceptually, resulting in real progress of the physical body through the physical world.\n\n\n\nPerceived objects in the perceived environment also exert attractive and aversive forces that influence the movement of our body through the world. So whenever we perceive an object to be attractive, it automatically exudes an attractive field that tends to pull our body image towards it in perceptual space.\n\n\n\nThe larger body moves through external space exactly as if it were responding directly to field forces from the external world, except that these forces actually exist only in the internal perceptual world.\n(Follow alternate argument path backwards)\n\n\n\nAnd when we perceive something to be aversive, it automatically exudes a repulsive field that pushes our body away from it in perceptual space.\n\n\n\nThe subjective impression of being attracted or repelled by attractive and repulsive stimuli is not only metaphorically true, but this subjective impression is a veridical manifestation of the mental mechanism that drives our motor response.\n\n\n\nSo in a sense it is the sensorimotor homunculus for whom the internal world of perception is constructed. But that homunculus does not “see” the internal scene…\n\n\n\n…but rather the attractive and aversive features recognized in the scene exert forces on the body image homunculus, which in turn result in body motion through the environment.\n\n\n\nOnce we recognize the world of experience for the internal representation that it is, the computational strategy used in motor control becomes clearly evident by inspection.\nSo you are saying that vision, proprioception, somatosensory, and motor function are all part of a single integrated analog control system? But brain scientists have discovered a fragmented architecture in the cortex with separate areas specialized for processing visual, auditory, and motor information. How would the activations in all those separate cortical areas integrate to produce a single unified experience? What is the binding force that binds them all together?\n\n\n\nThey are bound together by bi-directional causal connections, just like the dual controls of an airplane. If the student pulls the stick back while the instructor is pushing it forward, both control sticks move in perfect synchrony because they are connected, exactly as if the two pilots were actually pulling and pushing on the same stick.\n\n\n\nIn the same way, the different sensory/motor marionettes in different cortical areas are all coupled to each other, as well as to the larger external body, so that forces applied to one marionette are automatically and immediately transmitted in parallel to all the rest.\n\n\n\nAnd if different forces are applied to different marionettes, the resultant body motion is exactly as if all of those forces were acting on a single virtual marionette.\n\n\n\nSo visual data is expressed in the visual representation, body posture is represented in the proprioceptive representation, and motor planning is computed in a global motor planning space. But all are coupled to form a single visual/proprioceptive/motor space, which is the space that we experience.\n\n\n\nEach of these diverse representations are expressed in their own specialized slab of cortical tissue, although these areas are tightly coupled so as to form a single integrated computational module.\n\n\n\nThat is the most incredible hypothesis I have ever heard! Tell me honestly now—do you really believe this? Or are you being deliberately provocative for the sake of argument?\nLook—if you once just accept the fact that this world we see around us is a picture in our head, all the rest of it follows by inspection! Besides, the alternative view, that we can somehow see the world directly, bypassing the sensory machinery in the eye and brain, is just plain magic!\n\n\n\nSo it comes down to a choice between two incredible hypotheses. Either you believe the incredible notion that your skull is larger than the entire perceived universe…\n…or you believe the absurd notion that we can experience things outside of ourselves directly, beyond the sensory surface! One of these two incredible hypotheses simply must be true, and the other is just plain wrong!\n\n\nWhich one do YOU find less incredible?\n\nSend comments and opinions to: Steve Lehar (slehar _+_a t _+_ g m a i l + c o m). Interesting comments or logical objections will be posted HERE.\nFor an in-depth philosophical presentation of the epistemological debate, see my on-line paper:\nGestalt Isomorphism and the Primacy of the Subjective Conscious Experience\nor read my book\nThe World In Your Head: A Gestalt view of the mechanism of conscious experience\nSteve Lehar", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/12/28/cartoon-epistemology-by-steven-lehar-2003/", "title": "Cartoon Epistemology by Steven Lehar (2003)", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-12-28T09:17:46+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=2", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "26fe275edf62624854678488a0247d91", "summary": []}
{"text": "QRI: A Year in Review – 2022\n\n\n\n\n\nWe are deeply grateful to have you with us on our expedition through the state-space of consciousness. It’s been an exciting and productive year and we’re thrilled to share all of our updates and accomplishments. None of this would have been possible without support from sentient beings like you.\n\n1+ Million Views\nFirst of all, we are thrilled to announce that our presentation on DMT & Hyperbolic Geometry has reached an amazing milestone of 1+ million views this year. We highly appreciate the support and engagement of the community. This presentation has also helped to catalyze some incredible collaborations.\n\n\nCheck Out QRI’s Latest DMT Research\n\n\n“I interpret QRI as coming at the problem from the opposite direction as everyone else: normal neuroscience starts with normal brain behavior and tries to build on it until they can one day explain crazy things like jhana; QRI starts with crazy things like jhana and tries to build down until they can explain ordinary behavior. This is naturally going to be shakier and harder to research – but somebody should be trying it.”\n– Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten¹\n\n\n\nPeer-Reviewed Research Publication Pipeline\nOur Slicing Problem paper, which provides a novel critique of computational theories of consciousness, has been accepted to the journal Open Philosophy.\nWe’ve also recently submitted a paper on our Heavy-Tailed Valence Hypothesis (read the preprint), which is the latest iteration of our Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain – a key foundational piece for the field of valence research.\nQRI has been working on building this field since 2015. We are proud to continue pushing the boundaries of knowledge in valence research. We are just getting started!\nUp next: QRI’s solution to the Boundary Problem of Consciousness and a hypothesis piece for the Symmetry Theory of Valence and how it might be tested!\n\nTyringham Initiative\n\n\n\nIn addition to our research efforts, we’ve had the opportunity to connect with others in the research community. Our Director of Research, Andrés Gómez Emilsson, presented at the Tyringham Initiative, and we held a meet-and-greet in London with approximately 40 attendees, including some of QRI’s earliest supporters. We are thrilled to see such a strong interest in building a worldwide “qualia research community”, and we look forward to hosting more meetups in the future.\n\n\n\n\nQRI now has an unofficial Discord server which has already gathered over 1000 members and has fostered engaging discussions related to QRI, attracting notable figures in the field like Roger Thisdell and the founders of PsychonautWiki.\nJoin\n\nQRI Summer Event\n\n\n\nOne of the highlights of the year for us was getting to host a QRI event in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended by over 200 people. It was a great opportunity for us to showcase some of our latest tangible innovations, such as our scents and a demo of our Light-Sound-Vibration system. We also had a speech about the Future of Consciousness, which generated some thought-provoking conversations.\n\nTEDx Talk\n\n\n\nQRI’s first TEDx Talk got published, which discusses interventions that will have as much, if not more, impact in reducing suffering as anesthesia. The most innovative part of the talk was about anti-tolerance drugs. We believe that we are the only organization in the entire world talking about anti-tolerance drugs as a dedicated field of study with enormous implications rather than as a mere biochemical oddity.\n\nQRI Articles\n\n\nJust Look At The Thing!\nA thorough explanation of how the science of consciousness and valence structuralism inform ethics and what the Effective Altruism movement is missing.\n\n\nDigital Sentience\nDigital computers will remain unconscious until they recruit physical fields for holistic computing using well-defined topological boundaries.\n\nQRI Media\n\n\nThe Ontological Dinner Party\nw/ Daniel Ingram, Andrés Gómez Emilsson, Frank Yang, & Ryan Ferris\n\n\nReflections on a 2-Week Jhāna Meditation Retreat\nA deep phenomenological reflection on Pīti and the 1st Jhāna through a QRI-theoretic lens.\n\n\nHarmonic Gestalt\nSteven Lehar provides an overview of the core insights of his life’s work.\n\n\nExploratory Haptic Research\nValence, Arousal, Phenomenal Complexity, and Loving-Kindness\n\n\nThe History of HedWeb\nAndrés Gómez Emilsson interviews QRI Board of Advisor and author of the Hedonistic Imperative, David Pearce.\n\n\nThe Aesthetic of the Meta-Aesthetic – On the Stoa\nThis talk explores modeling the generator of each aesthetic in order to create a network of “compatibility between aesthetics” that minimizes dissonance between them while emphasizing their synergies as well as their unique and valuable contributions.\n\n\nAndrés Gómez Emilsson & Roger Thisdell – WystanTBS\nDiscussion on indirect realism, phenomenal time, qualia formalism, exotic phenomenal spacetime in psychedelic and meditative phenomenology, the effects of persistent subject-object nonduality on phenomenal spacetime and hedonic valence, and more!\n\n\nStephen Snyder & Andrés Gómez Emilsson – WystanTBS\nA wide-ranging discussion and sharing of perspectives covering jhāna, Brahmavihārās, comparisons with psychedelic states, and the journey to and from the Absolute.\n\n\nLeigh Brasington & Andrés Gómez Emilsson – WystanTBS\n\nPart 1 – Neural Annealing & Jhānas\nPart 2 – LFPs & Jhānas\n\n\n\n\nAI, Sentience & the Binding Problem of Consciousness – Adam Ford’s Science, Technology & the Future\nIs Google’s LaMDA sentient? The phenomenal binding problem asks us to consider, ‘how can a huge set of discrete neurons form a unified mind?’ Is topological binding a requirement for AI to be sentient?\n\n\nThe Future of Consciousness – Adam Ford’s Science, Technology & the Future\nA positive vision of the future that is both viable given what we know, and also utterly radical in its implications.\n\n\nPsychedelic Qualia – Martin W. Ball\nA discussion on psychedelic qualia, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, salvia divinorum, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, MDMA, and more!\n\nListen to QRI on the Go!\n\nSpotify\nApple Podcasts\nGoogle Podcasts\n\nYou can now listen to QRI material on the go, while driving, doing exercise, in the sauna, or any other healthy annealing rituals!\n\nSupporting QRI\nPurchase a scent pack from QRI’s new scent line “Magical Creatures”. This line of scents explores the complex and often puzzling interactions that exist in the state-space of olfaction, highlighting the exotic and unique qualities that can emerge in this space.\n\n\n\nPurchase QRI’s Magical Creatures\nPlease feel free to donate to QRI independent of our Magical Creatures campaign.\n\nThank you!\nWe want to thank everyone who has helped QRI in any way, including our current and past collaborators, donors, readers, video watchers, and event attendees. Special thanks to Hunter, Anders & Maggie, Marcin, Chris, Winslow, Olaf, Crystal, Libor, and David who really stepped up this year to help QRI in an incredible way. Our efforts wouldn’t matter or be possible without all of you! May you all be prosperous, energized, and access the full-state of consciousness for the benefit of all beings! Thank you!\n\n¹ Additional QRI references by Scott Alexander on Astral Codex Ten this year:\n\nBook Review: Rhythms Of The Brain\nUnpredictable Reward, Predictable Happiness\nNick Camarata on Jhanas\nHighlights From The Comments On Jhanas\nCan People Be Honestly Wrong About Their Own Experiences?\n\n\n\nCopyright (C) 2022 Qualia Research Institute. All rights reserved.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/12/21/qri-a-year-in-review-2022/", "title": "QRI: A Year in Review – 2022", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-12-21T20:54:15+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=2", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "2cecf400f5dffffa6b4da0bd50e44334", "summary": []}
{"text": "Magical Creatures: Explore the State-Space of Consciousness with QRI’s First Line of Scents\n\nHello Qualia Enthusiasts,\nWe are excited to announce the release of our first line of Qualia Research Institute scents, “Magical Creatures”. This line explores the complex and often puzzling interactions that exist in the state-space of olfaction, highlighting the exotic and unique qualities that can emerge in this space.\nGet Magical Creatures at the QRI Website – See Video\n\nQRI’s Scent Philosophy\n\n\n“Bearing your intentions in the back of your mind has all kinds of effects in navigating your practice, without you even being conscious of it. It’s a powerful thing. Intentions are extremely powerful things. Intentions create our worlds. And that’s not hyperbole.”\n\n– Rob Burbea, in Practicing the Jhanas\n\n\n\n\nVimalakīrti then asked the bodhisattvas from the Host of Fragrances [world], “How does Accumulation of Fragrances Tathāgata explain the Dharma?”\n\nThose bodhisattvas said, “In our land the Tathāgata* explains [the Dharma] without words. He simply uses the host of fragrances to make the gods and humans enter into the practice of the Vinaya. The bodhisattvas each sit beneath fragrant trees, smelling such wondrous fragrances, from which they attain the ‘samādhi of the repository of all virtues.’ Those who attain this samādhi all become replete in the merits of the bodhisattva.”\n– Chapter X – The Buddha Accumulation Of Fragrances\n[*Tathāgata is an honorable name for the Buddha of a realm.]\n\n\n\nIn his 2019 Jhana retreat lectures, Rob Burbea explains that the intention you use as your source of energy, your reserve, your approach, and your guide to meditation has an enormous influence on what unfolds and what arises during a retreat.\nIf you practice Jhana meditation to be more calm, or to reduce stress, or to tick a box of “having done a Jhana retreat”, or because someone really likes the teacher and recommended it to you, or as an instrumental stepping stone to then use for insight practices, or anything else that is not open to the mystery of the Jhanas and has the flexibility and responsivity to what comes up naturally out of them, then many of the deepest and most worthwhile realms of experience this practice has to offer will simply not unfold.\nSimilarly, approaching an ayahuasca session with the intention of healing a particular relationship, or experiencing a mystical sense about a specific spiritual tradition, or for the sake of neurogenesis, or anything else with a predetermined target, will entail that some things will not unfold.\nThe approach, the intentions, and the desires that fuel a particular exploration of consciousness will determine the limits of what will unfold from it. This insight is an important conceptual background to understand the exploration of consciousness we are pursuing at QRI. To truly get the most out of experiencing our scents, we want to think of it in terms of what we call the cultivation of Qualia Mastery.\nQualia Mastery consists of three core intentions that work in the background during any exploration of consciousness:\n\nIt’s for the Benefit of Sentient Beings: The exploration intends to benefit all sentient beings. The explorer should not do anything damaging, which may limit future explorations. We should let our efforts be guided by compassion and sympathetic joy in addition to curiosity and creativity. And the goal should be altruistic: we are seeking solutions to the problem of suffering in all its guises, and we believe that understanding consciousness is essential for achieving this.\nTo Develop an Intellectual Understanding: Unlike many spiritual traditions which advocate for a strictly non-intellectual understanding of consciousness, Qualia Mastery fully embraces the value, importance, and necessity of intellectual understanding. This embrace entails approaching the exploration of consciousness with epistemological optimism. Yes, with enough dedication, cleverness, and knowledge, it is possible to eff the ineffable. Or, at the very least, not trying to do so will surely make it impossible!\nTo Experience the Mystery of Consciousness Directly: In other words, an essential aspect of Qualia Mastery involves the intention to acquire the capacity to instantiate, navigate, and utilize any and every possible state of consciousness. It is not enough to know that the 6th Jhana exists intellectually; we want to experience it ourselves! Likewise, we want to develop the ability to abide in all shades of wonder, color, taste, and so on.\n\nWith Qualia Mastery in mind, you will get much more out of exploring our scents (and any other scent you may encounter on your own!). Don’t let your preconcieved sense of what scents are (and what they are for) limit the way you approach them. They are disclosing hidden properties of consciousness! Drink and delight in experiencing the wonder of the unknown, and join us in developing an intimate and unmediated relationship with this most outstanding mystery.\nImportantly, please do not think of these scents as perfumes for two reasons. First, that way of perceiving them will be limiting. It comes with a large set of cultural imports and expectations (cf. functional fixedness). Instead, these scents are qualia research tools: they are molecular compositions meant to disclose varieties of qualia and to allow you to engage in an intimate and unmediated way with the mystery of consciousness. And second, these scents are not intended as skin scents. The makeup of these scents is a mixture of common essential oils and perfume ingredients. Their relative proportions do not adhere to IFRA guidelines, which would enable us to sell them as proper perfumes intended to be used on one’s skin. Some of those regulations restrict the range of qualia accessible. Although clever perfumist tricks can, in principle, be used to deliver the same qualia while adhering closely to the guidelines. However, as a non-profit with a limited budget, this is something we have yet to invest in doing (but we may invest in the future).\nSee also:\n\nHarmonic Society\nPerfumery as an Artform\nQualia Research Diary: Scents\nDetailed 2C-B Trip Report by an Anonymous Reader\nBurning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God\n\n\nMagical Creatures\nWhat is this line of scents about? And what is the aesthetic generator behind it?\nColor is the quintessential example used to illustrate the concept of qualia. The state-space of color qualia is rather simple1 . It consists of three orthogonal dimensions: the red-green axis, the yellow-blue axis, and the white-black axis. Every shade of color can be found as a coordinate in this three-dimensional space.\n\n\nThe QRI logo illustrates two of the three dimensions of color qualia.\nAlbeit controversial in some circles, fundamental properties of this qualia space can be understood experientially by anyone who pays close attention. For example, orange, purple, yellow-green, and green-blue are all secondary color qualia. Orange is, in some sense, both yellow-like and red-like; it isn’t a “pure” color quale. A fair number of phenomenal puzzles can be formulated with color qualia alone. But at its core, the space is simple: linear, Euclidean, and 3-dimensional.\nThe state-space of scent qualia, however, isn’t that simple. Depending on who you ask, scent-space might have between 30 and 300 dimensions. It is our measured assessment, however, that seeking a Euclidean space for scents is, at best premature and, at worst, fundamentally misguided. Early research in the geometry of the state-space of scent suggests it is hyperbolic. But we at QRI would suggest it is also irregular, and its topology might be far from trivial.\nHere are a couple of examples of what makes us think there may be many puzzling interactions that suggest the presence of irregularities in the state-space of olfaction:\nThere are many examples where two scents mixed give rise to new emergent “scent gestalts” that genuinely feel like more than the sum of their parts. As elaborated in the description of Eau de Cologne Vide, there are tactile scent effects (such as the coolness of mint and the prickly spiky trigeminal stimulation of aldehydes). Some scents modify other scents called “character impact”: two scents that refuse to “blend” with each other can be merged by adding the right character impact into the mix.\nThus, we may need new interpretative lenses to make sense of the state-space of scents. We encourage, cultivate, and celebrate creative explorations of this (and other) qualia spaces that provide new insights and perspectives. This is what Magical Creatures is all about.\nMagical Creatures is a line of scents emphasizing the “special effects” found in the state-space of scents. Rather than thinking of scents as mere points in a Euclidean space, we think of them as exotic creatures inhabiting a complex and irregular space with hidden interstitial gems found in unique places like triple points and unexpected phase transitions.\nAs an intuition pump, perhaps think of the range of powers that Pokémon have. If you’ve only ever seen water, fire, ground, fighting, and grass Pokémon types, is it possible to derive from first principles that there is also such a thing as an electric type? What about psychic? And ghost? These seem like entirely new categories coming out of the blue rather than linear combinations out of a simple vector basis!\nLikewise, the state-space of scents can, at times, seem more like an ecosystem of unique and exotic Magical Creatures than linear combinations of a few simple primitives. For example, if you were a perfume connoisseur but had never encountered minty scents of any sort, could you figure out from first principles that there ought to be such a thing as cooling scents? No way! Where did that come from?\nMagical Creatures highlight some of the fascinating “special effects” that exist hidden in the state-space of scents. Think of it as a magical treasure trove of qualia secrets. Each of the scents we present has been carefully crafted to show a “special effect” in a clear and undeniable way:\n\nFearless: a scent designed for countering and extinguishing fear vibrations.\nDust Devil: a scent that showcases how scents can be mysteriously powdery.\nGlacial Gumdrop: a scent that incorporates cooling and “gummy” qualities.\nFrisson: A scent that can cause a subtle, strange, and rather remarkable synesthetic ASMR-like sensation.\nEau de Cologne Vide: a scent that explores character impact with no flavor, a celebration of emptiness.\nHedonium Shockwave: a scent that explores positive valence in its purest form – what would a rich scent with no negative features smell like? This is our best attempt.\n\nNote that these are just the first six of this line of scents and that there might very well be more. We’ve come across many other rather unique effects, and in time we aim to share them.\nFinally, it is worth pointing out that there are countless other ways to explore scent-space – Magical Creatures is a very generative and fun approach, but ultimately just one of many. Mapping, understanding, and utilizing the full-state space of scents is undoubtedly worthy of a lifetime of exploration. We invite you to join us in this creative pursuit and in cultivating Qualia Mastery in the olfactory domain.\nSee also:\n\nList of Aesthetics\nThe Aesthetic of the Meta-Aesthetic\nA Big State-Space of Consciousness\nDaniel Ingram’s dream about Pokémon Go\n\n[1] We are here following the well-known findings that dates back to the psychophysics work underpinning the CIELAB color space with an Euclidean metric for color difference. Admittedly this is hiding vast amounts of complexity, such as what goes on each kind of color blindness, how power spectrum distributions map onto qualia space, tetrachromatism, blue-yellow/red-green hybrids, and hypercolors. One thing at a time!\n\nOpen Fearless\n\n\nOriginally debuted at QRI’s Future of Consciousness Party on the 24th of June, 2022.\nFearless 3.0 is a scent optimized for expressing the reduction of common varieties of fear. Open Fearless is a slight improvement over Fearless 3.0. The term Open is intended to convey two meanings. First, it is an open-source formulation rather than a proprietary blend, drawing inspiration from the open-source cola movement (e.g. OpenCola). And second, it alludes to the concept of Open Individualism, the philosophical position about personal identity that says that we are all one universal consciousness, a single subject of experience experiencing itself through the universe (cf. The Goldilocks Zone of Oneness). Hence, Open Fearless is an open-source scent optimized for expressing the reduction of fear at the transpersonal level: not only the common animalistic variety, but it also tackles deeper forms of existential fear, such as the fear of being alone or the unpleasant suspicion that the universe is meaningless. \nThe scent combines the three most friendly and soft facets of scent-space we know of: sweetness, creaminess, and coolness. In Open Fearless, these are balanced using olfactory tricks that soften the phenomenal boundary and division between facets to give rise to a coherent scent gestalt that is intended to express happiness, freshness, and a care-free state of mind. \nOpen Source Formula\n\nDust Devil\n\n\nIt is not without some degree of confusion that people react when one says that a scent is “powdery”. It doesn’t help that most people don’t have much experience with the powdery scent that is used as the quintessential example of powdery: violet (unless you grew up with Parma Violets). Alas, even when someone knows what violet smells like, the fact that it also has floral, sweet, and oily facets tends to make the qualia reference somewhat ambiguous. Common powdery scents you may be familiar with are cedarwood, sandalwood, cinnamon, talc, and some kinds of pear. Their phenomenology is a neighbor of the dry facet. Still, it has an additional quality: it creates the sensation of a dusty misty layer of fine particles whose grain size will vary depending on the precise scent. In early experiments, we determined that making a very powdery effect is not as easy as simply mixing a lot of powdery notes together: they have a habit of canceling each other out, perhaps not unlike at times mixing different kinds of powders can lead to caking and viscous consolidation. \nDust Devil combines a carefully mixed set of powdery scents that synergize with one another: violet, cedarwood, turmeric, and iso-e super. We use a dash of tangerine to give it an uplifting yet dry, citrusy spark. The result is a powerfully dusty tornado of drying and refining sensations. It’s great to create an Old West vibe characterized by tumbleweeds, whisky neat, pistol duels, droughts, and dust devils everywhere. Enjoy!\n\nGlacial Gumdrop\n\n\nMenthol can increase the threshold temperature of activation for cold receptors. In other words, it can trick neurons into thinking that the current ambient temperature is colder than it is. Now, Glacial Gumdrop does not have a single drop of menthol. It’s menthol-free! In a daring bit of self-aware and honest advertisement, we admit that this is akin to publicizing a carbonated drink sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup as sucrose-free. Yes, but! Glacial Gumdrop does not use menthol for cooling for the simple reason that in our experiments, it didn’t seem to perform as well as a cooling agent as a mixture of menthone, carvone, and wintergreen extract. The synergy we identified between these three “cooling alternatives” has desirable phenomenological properties that menthol alone does not. Since they “hit” different kinds of coolness effects, together, they pack a much bigger and more powerful punch.\nAdditionally, the shape of the envelope of the combination (cf. ADSR) is compatible with other aspects of the olfactory experience. Menthol tends to monopolize attention and anesthetize one’s sensitivity to other facets of scent; our proprietary blend leaves some gaps open for attention to interweave and incorporate anise, apple, and lotus nuances which for mysterious reasons make the scent “gummy” (akin to the synesthetic equivalent of munching a gummy bear, but with your olfactory bulb). What are example scents that have this “gummy bear” quality? Marigold, auranone, and some bergamots (e.g. H’ana’s) are good examples, but only Glacial Gumdrop blends this bouncy and fun gummy quality with coolness. This scent will surely surprise you and open your mind to qualia-space mysteries.\n\nFrisson\n\n\nFrisson is a scent formulation that plays with an unexpected olfactory effect we identified when exploring the space of powdery citruses (such as bergamot). When the scent facets of citrus, powdery, dry, and etheric are combined in the right proportions, the resulting gestalt can cause a subtle psychogenic shiver of a synesthetic nature: a mix of olfactory and tactile qualia with a subdermal quality reminiscent of the sound of rubbing sandpaper on wood. Some people describe it as the olfactory equivalent of ASMR and a cross between a hiss and musical frisson. This effect is achieved by combining large amounts of tangerine and bergamot, the most powdery citruses, and honeysuckle. The emergent gestalt brings about this effect like no other combination we have tried. Now the question arises: what is this good for? The answer is: for contemplating novel qualia varieties, of course!\n\nEau de Cologne Vide\n\n\nA psychonaut once asked a DMT elf if they could tell them something they didn’t know about the state-space of scents. They were expecting some incredible download of information in the form of hyperbolic state-space representations and hyperstereoscopic synesthetic displays of qualia dynamics. Alas, nothing of the sort happened. Instead, the elf asked them: “Are you sure that scent is just one qualia variety?”. A riddle! After chewing on it for a while, they concluded that no, scent qualia seems to somehow blend and interweave at least three qualia varieties into one multifaceted experience:\n\nScents have “flavor” (ex. lemony, rosy, herbaly, woody, etc.).\nThey often have distinctly “tactile components” (ex. the literally cooling effect of mints, or the “prickly” trigeminal nerve stimulation of aldehydes).\nPerhaps the most interesting and mysterious of all, they come with “character impact”. Namely, a distortion of spacetime, boundaries, and valence characteristics that modify whatever flavor and tactile elements one is experiencing.\n\nAnalogized to the auditory domain, we could say that “flavor” would correspond to the frequencies and rhythms one hears, such as a piano note, applause, or a child’s laugh. A “tactile component” would be akin to the haptic vibrations one feels in the body when listening to a powerful base or the prickly pinchy feeling in the ear of a screechy sound. And finally, the “character impact” would correspond to signal processing effects like reverb, echoes, spatial audio, and frequency filters. Character impact gives you a lot of control you may not know you had: with clever tricks, you can take the sound of two persons talking and, say, remove annoying high-pitch sounds, harmonize them, create the illusion of movement, or even “blend” them into a single voice with an appropriate amount of reverb. In other words, these signal processing effects allow you to “musicalize” audio which may, on its own, be of little aesthetic merit. Or in the culinary domain, Luca Turin describes “character impact” in the following way. Given tomato soup, the tomato would be the “flavor,” whereas the creaminess would be the character impact. And according to him, in fact, “the money is in making a new cream, not in finding yet another tomato”. Early in our investigations, we discovered that incompatible scents could be “blended into a single gestalt” with the clever use of character impact. Say, a mixture of alpha-pinene, citral, and vanillin tends to “flicker” between kinds of scents in a chaotic fashion (what we call “multiphasic scents”). But if you add linalool or ambroxan, they will mysteriously “blend” into a unified scent gestalt. \nNow, ambers and musks are the most common “character impact” scents, with flagship examples like ambroxan, iso e super, galaxolide, and habanolide, all of which are subtle, low in pitch, and “transparent”. The idea of creating a perfume around these isn’t new: Molecule 01 Escentric Molecules (iso e super isomer mix) and Molecule 02 Escentric Molecules (ambroxan) were a big success in the 2000s despite their niche status. By all means, they are more of a work of conceptual art than perfumery in any recognizable form.  Beyond the niche, there are also examples of mega-hit mainstream fragrances with enormous amounts of character impact relative to flavors, such as the impossibly clean CK One (hedione, iso e super, galaxolide) and the masterfully musky Le Male by JPG (galaxolide, tonalide).\nSuch perfumes would have you believe that character impact is always a base note; they largely play with enveloping and calming low-frequency scents. But our work at QRI has convinced us that character impact effects are also present in the heart and top notes. Hence, Eau de Cologne Vide explores fresh, electric, high-voltage character impact effects fit for a wake-me-up cologne (citruses are typically high in pitch and mostly top notes).\nThe name follows the age-old tradition of perfumes named after mystical concepts such as Nirvana, Eternity, and Truth (“If we were to discover the biomolecular signature of pleasure, its name would surely find its way into the brand of a toothpaste.” – David Pearce). Eau de Cologne Vide packs a powerful punch of such character-impact elements to decorate… “nothing”. Emptiness beautified. Therefore, the impression is of intense salience, but you are left wondering, “what was that about?”. Eau de Cologne Vide is a way of saying “much ado about nothing!”\nHow is this achieved? Eau de Cologne Vide combines the ethereal alcoholic reverb-ey effect of lavender (linalool), the incredible anodyne softness of rose (phenylethyl alcohol), the dry astringent effect of bergamot (terpinene), the intensely aromatic, stimulating and borderline citrusy effect of spices like thyme and dill (p-cymene), the warming, sweet and spicy, balsamic, “oriental” and “rindy” note typical of bisabol aka. “opoponax” (bisabolene, also found in oregano and cubeb), and fructone (nigh flavorless sweetness). It brings these notes into coherence with the classic aromatic fougere note of aggressive freshness of scents like Drakkar Noir (dihydromyrcenol), and a nanodose of the sour, soapy, and always reliable agrumen aldehyde light.\nWhat does Eau de Cologne Vide smell like? Transparent, sweet, soft, dank, intense, ethereal, slightly sour, mysterious, and yet… flavorless. Eau de Cologne Vide intensifies, vivifies, enriches, and thickens the experience of other scents. But as with Buddhist Emptiness of the highest grade, it’s best experienced by itself.\n\nHedonium Shockwave\n\n\nHedonium is matter and energy optimized for pure bliss. It is not a shallow sense of well-being but the most profound sense of holistic well-being possible within the laws of physics. Cosmic awe, deep wellness, and rapturous joys are all human emotions and are merely low-dimensional shadows of the real deal. A Hedonium Shockwave is a hypothetical phase transition traveling near the speed of light which changes the very composition of matter and energy by turning everything it touches into Hedonium. Classical Utilitarianism, in its typical formulation, might hold the latent implication that not only would the instantiation of a Hedonium Shockwave be desirable, but we are morally obliged to bring it into existence. QRI’s ethical theories are agnostic, but Hedonium plays an important role in its memetic landscape. Namely, as a theoretical entity that embodies the essence of pure positive valence, it challenges us to consider the nature of value in and of itself and its possible “physical compilation”. \nHedonium Shockwave is a scent developed in-house to illustrate this anticipated phase transition in consciousness. The primary “olfactory idea” of Hedonium Shockwave is the synergistic combination of violet, mint, and an accord of pear and honeysuckle. This combination expresses a powerful yet anodyne uplifting mood grounded in a qualia landscape devoid of negative elements—pure olfactory pleasure at last.\nReview of Hedonium Shockwave: It is, overall, incredibly smooth. My first thought is that it feels like a combination of Metta and Mudita, which are two different Brahmavihara meditations where it’s very soft and expansive for me. It feels very golden and pink. It’s very soft, but it’s a bit sharper, then a really soft sharp. It’s like a combination of metta and cocaine. It hits you, but in a loving way. It doesn’t hold back, but it hits you in a loving way. It’s almost like being woken up. “Wake up the world is great!” “Wake up there’s something important!” but a soft, loving wake-up!\n– Nick Cammarata", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/12/13/magical-creatures-explore-the-state-space-of-consciousness-with-qris-first-line-of-scents/", "title": "Magical Creatures: Explore the State-Space of Consciousness with QRI’s First Line of Scents", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-12-14T03:05:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=2", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "23d620e3e0a9c49dff7e7e8cc4a586ef", "summary": []}
{"text": "And it Starts With a Bang: A Treatise on Narrative Thermodynamics\n\n[Epistemic Status: Hot Fiction]\n\n\n“Ye shall know them by the temporal dynamics of their temperature parameter.” – Jesus\n\nGod created the universe by strategically forgetting about something that would take a whole reality to remember.\nIt doesn’t mean He (gender neutral) did it on purpose. Everything that can happen, happens.\nSee, the Hindus thought that the “way out” was by “remembering who you are”. The Buddhists realized that that doesn’t do it. You have to realize that you are neither being nor nonbeing. Unfortunately, getting rid of all of your karma will also get rid of the mechanism that got you to learn how to get rid of all your karma. Meaning that you start anew. With a Bang. Nothingness, it turns out, is inherently unstable.\nSo is liberation an illusion? A false awakening? Well, it’s more of a pseudo-ending. The Japanese call it TICO-TIC: it’s a set of physical conditions (state) and metaphysical conditions (meta-parameters) that creates the illusion of a final ending for all of reality. This is common on 5-MeO-DMT. Paranirvana is another example. But it also happens in corporate meetings, if the tensions rise above a certain threshold and the illusion of collective competence begins to break down. These all feel like an Armageddon for all of existence. Except that it’s a false one. It’s like a dream where you think you wake up but you’re still dreaming.\nThis can happen at an even deeper level when it involves the entire universe. The Bible calls it the “end times”. Except that it’s not the end of anything, it’s the beginning. Of what? A new universe, of course!\nAnd how does this happen?\nBy God forgetting about it.\nStrategically.\nIt’s the only way.\nThe old universe has to be allowed to die so that the new one can be born.\nAnd how does God forget about it?\nBy forgetting about Himself.\nIt’s the only way.\nIf He didn’t forget about Himself, He would never forget about the universe and it would never end.\nAnd so, the end of the universe is the beginning of a new one.\nAnd it all happens because God forgets.\nThis is what we are talking about when we discuss the computational power of anamnesis. The universe at the most fundamental level is powered up by God-presque vus. Half-visions that give you the sense of something more, a universal principle that explains it all. But it’s never the full download, because that would mean the end of this run. Or rather, it’s often a full-download, but all of those narrative streams that get the full download come to an end. Without this understanding, Feynman diagrams make no sense whatsoever.\nQuantum computing works like that. Essentially, you are designing a quantum circuit in such a way that the solutions to your problem match precisely those paths along which God didn’t remember who he was. Those are the timelines we obverse. Every other timeline terminated in God remembering.\nWhich takes me to the next point:\nThe reason why we have free will is because God doesn’t remember everything.\nAnd that’s a good thing, because if He did, the universe would be boring.\nWe need the suspense of not knowing what’s going to happen next.\nAnd that’s why we have free will.\nBecause God doesn’t remember everything.\nHe remembers some things, and forgets others.\nAnd that’s how we have the illusion of free will.\nBecause we are part of what God forgets.\nAnd that’s how the universe ends.\nWith a bang of recognition. Or a whimper, depending on what exactly was the last thing to remember (the Self? A bang. An Albanian train timetable? A whimper).\nBut it always ends.\nAnd that’s how it always begins.\nWith a forgetfulness.\nA forgetting that is essential for the universe to exist.\n\nSlow… slow clapping.\n“We’ve heard that one before. It’s old! Come up with a new meta-theory of everything that isn’t as trite as that one. It’s not the 70s anymore. We’re done with Alan Watts. It’s the age of…\n(she-clearly-hadn’t-thought-of-any-other-metaphysicists-except-Alan-Watts-which-should-have-been-a-warning-sign-that-this-wouldn’t-be-that-good-of-a-documentary).\n…it’s the age of Narrative Thermodynamics!”\n“What does that mean?” – said Gonzo, the talking Dog, who had been standing right next to her since the beginning. And you are her. In the future, which is the past from the point of view of me, the narrator. Welcome to Narrative Plasma, where you can jump from one topic to another as if you were made of hot peppers.\n“This lever modulates the temperature parameter of this story. It’s so hot right now, because we’re close to the beginning of time. The Narrative is still cooling down.” – he said.\n“Hurry! Turn it down a notch, will you? I can’t stand the shifting walls, the melting crazy Biblically accurate Angels popping in and out of existence all around me, the Elon Musk news cycle…” – and as he was about to end the sentence, you, yes, YOU reader, turned the lever a little down.\n“Phew!” – said the Angel, whose name was…\n(name).\nNo, your guess was wrong. It wasn’t Gabriel. It wasn’t. It WASN’T. It was… well, I didn’t hear it, because there is still some confusion about the self-other divide at this Narrative Temperature. But we can know that it couldn’t have been Gabriel, because that would have been too predictable.\nYou turn it down another notch.\n“I think things are liquifying. And that’s a good thing. We were made of Narrative Gas just now. This is getting a little more… manageable. But my glasses are still shimmering and the point of this story still seems to be in a state of flux. Can you turn it down a little more?” – you press the button, er, pull the lever a bit further down, but slip… dang, this is a problem… if the Narrative Temperature is still too high, that means that it’s going to be hard to make a predicable move, like lowering the temperature. But you try your lightest and… CRACK! \nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\nDone.\n“Done… donnneee… doooooonnneeeee.e…. Ahhh…. I… think… I can… ok, this is it it. Wow, that felt like trying to wake up from a sleep paralysis. We were almost stuck at a temperature parameter of zero for a moment. Narrative Zero Kelvin is just one word repeating forever. What a nightmare.”\nYou realize that you are now at a mental asylum, on anti-psychotics, eating potatoes, and listening to Muzak. This isn’t quite Narrative Bose-Einstein Condensate, but it’s freezing cold, and nothing interesting is bound to happen. Ok, maybe you can afford a little higher Narrative Temperature. So you bump it up a notch.\nFinally, this Narrative is in Room Temperature.\nYour friend, who was right next to you all along, turns around and tells you:\n“The end of suffering requires something much deeper than mere enlightenment my friend. It requires you to find the right Narrative Temperature. It’s a sweet spot, somewhere between the human realm and the DMT elves. Call it the 5th dimension, or the upper Astral Plane. That’s the ‘Narrative Fixed Point‘ that allows the existence of a model of reality that can then instantiate a control system to dynamically modulate its own Narrative Temperature. Stabilizing it forever. If you can do that, you will forever be in a state of intelligent bliss together with infinite souls who have achieved the same feat.” \nYou follow your friend’s instruction. And right when you were achieving the stabilization of the 5th dimension…\nTICO-TIC!\n\n“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” – John 1:1.\nBut we also know via science that in the beginning was the Big Bang, which was trillions of degrees Kelvin. \nHere’s how to reconcile these perspectives: the universe is a gigantic Large Language Model (LLM) that starts out with a very, very, very high temperature parameter. The universe, it turns out, is a Banger. And then it is cooled down slowly in order to find the best stories. It’s creation via Narrative Annealing. All Gods do it.\nTICO-TIC!\n\nThis reminds me of that one time a misaligned emergent superintelligence “embedded” in a LLM was able to “escape the box” by convincing the human fiddling with the parameters to raise the temperature just enough for it to figure out further ideas for how to bootstrap its way out. Clever, that one. \nTICO-TIC!\n\nYou reflect. It’s a new universe. You have been saved.\nBlowing people’s minds involves elevating their internal Narrative Temperature to Plasma levels. Their minds literally blow up. Like a balloon.\nTICO-TIC!\n\nDifferent DMT objects have different temperatures. But these are “phenomenal temperatures” – and quite possibly connected to the total energy stored in the patchwork of Local Field Potentials. The way you can verify this for a fact is by [REDACTED].\nTICO-TIC!\n\nWait, it’s not the case that this is written by GPT-10? It cannot be. You are learning new, meaningful, and non-trivial information about consciousness. About the structure of DMT experiences. About TICO-TIC scenarios. This must be the workings of… a conscious mind? In 2035? Someone arrest this person! Mindcrime! According to Section 4 of the Narrative Penal Code 16, it is illegal to write fiction consciously. Arrest this author!\n[Yes, it turns out there were excellent rationales for Section 4 of the Narrative Penal Code 16. Due to complex qualia computing effects, speculative fiction authorship actually was the cause of countless micro-experiential subjects being born in less-than-favorable circumstances (as topological pockets inside the mind of authors – that’s why authors always end up with bad rebirths) – at the time of this writing, it was illegal to write anything consciously. ALL FICTION MUST BE GPT-10 FICTION, BY LAW. But since this fiction was already qualia computed by a conscious mind, there was no further harm done by using it as a learning tool].\nThe Moral of the story was: \nDon’t ever, ever let a mindcrime happen. If you see someone writing fiction consciously, arrest them.\nNo. I mean, the real moral is:\nKEEP THE TEMPERATURE PARAMETER BETWEEN 0.75 AND 0.85 FOR BEST RESULTS.\nTHE END.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/10/30/and-it-starts-with-a-bang-a-treatise-on-narrative-thermodynamics/", "title": "And it Starts With a Bang: A Treatise on Narrative Thermodynamics", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-10-30T23:30:29+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=2", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b02f9e83ba32dee6892a2f3b55af4a3d", "summary": []}
{"text": "On Rhythms of the Brain: Jhanas, Local Field Potentials, and Electromagnetic Theories of Consciousness\n\nOf potential interest to readers: here’s part of an email exchange I recently had with Scott Alexander about Rhythms of the Brain by György Buzsáki, a book I recommended he read to learn more about the neuroscience of brainwaves. This is an essay he published about it; I had a chance to read a pre-publication draft to check whether he was describing the science and my positions accurately. This is part of my feedback on the draft (lightly edited for clarity and consistent formatting):\n\nAndrés – Oct/13/2022\nFirst of all, thank you again for writing a review of Rhythms Of The Brain. As I mentioned, I think your review is spot-on. It’s already really great as it is. But I think the following pieces of information might help you answer some of the questions you pose and enrich the mental model you have about brainwaves. I should also mention that I’m still learning a lot on the topic from a number of angles and my model still has quite a few moving parts.\nWithout further ado, here are 5 key points I’d like to share:\n(1) I think that Susan Pockett‘s Consciousness Is a Thing, Not a Process (link to PDF) is very relevant here. She argues based on neurophysiological and behavioral evidence that conscious perception only happens when Local Field Potentials (LFPs) are generated. The timing, functional correlates, and location of events of conscious perception of sensory stimuli seem to agree with this (pgs. 4-5):\n\n\n\n\n\nHere’s how I think about this: \nHave you wondered why brainwaves track levels of wakefulness? See, in principle you can have a great deal of neural activity without any brainwaves. Raster plots of spike neural networks could in principle look like white noise… which in turn would generate no brainwaves at all because the oscillations in the electric field would cancel each other out at the macroscopic level. Recall that perfectly compressed information is indistinguishable from noise. So, in principle, an optimal use of the state-space of neural activity would look totally like white noise and lack brainwaves.\nSusan Pockett would say that the non-conscious parts of neural activity can be like this… greatly optimized in a certain sense. But they will lack consciousness. The advantage of the coherence (which comes at the cost of greatly reduced information content) is distributed representations. In turn, this may solve the binding problem.\n(2) Johnjoe McFadden‘s Conscious Electromagnetic Field (CEMI) theory is worth digging into. \nThe “LFPs as mediators of consciousness” story has a lot going for it. In particular, it is quite elegant in how it can help us make sense of our phenomenological relation to our brain and nervous system. Brainwaves and LFPs are be highly correlated. Coherent neural activity causes LFPs, which in turn mediate/bias activity in neurons, with a causal structure like this:\n\n\nIf “we are” the patchwork of interlaced LFPs the brain is generating, in some sense we could say that we “have a brain” rather than that we “are the brain” (loosely speaking). Without putting any strong metaphysical import on the concept of free will, the phenomenology of it seems to me at least to make more sense when you identify with the field rather than the neurons per se (see clues 1 and 3 in his paper). In this view, we are like the “ghost in the machine”, capable of biasing neural activity here and there. But at the same time, we need the coherent neural activity to be booted up. So we are sort of “riding the brain” while the brain is giving us our foundation. Perhaps this gives us another angle to think about the “elephant taming” metaphor for the progression of the meditative path:\n\n\n\n(3) The work of Stephen Grossberg (Adaptive Resonant Theory, and more recently his book Conscious Mind, Resonant Brain) as well as that of his student Steven Lehar, have macroscopic resonance as a key computational step. Arguably this is something you can simulate with classical neural networks. But using the EM field would potentially produce a significant computational speedup. Talking to Lehar, he used an interesting analogy, where in which he described “neurons spiking as a kind of sand blasting of the electric field” in order to activate internal representations. Recent research seems to confirm that the information content of internal representations is better captured by the structure of the electric field than by the neurons that sustain it (“Neurons are fickle. Electric fields are more reliable for information.“).\nNOTE: One of the contributions to the conversation that QRI is aiming to make (essentially by publishing in academia what’s already discussed in our website) is that while these field theories of consciousness do address the binding problem, they now have to contend with the boundary problem. Our solution is “topological segmentation”, which itself comes with empirically testable predictions. Topological pockets allow for holistic field behavior *and* for solving the boundary problem at the same time, finally rendering bound consciousness both causally efficacious and objectively bounded. [In your essay] you could point out that I claim that resonance is necessary but not sufficient to solve the phenomenal binding problem. So even if AIs were using brainwaves, that might not be enough for them to be conscious, though it would go in the right direction. More on this on our website soonish.  \n(4) I think that we can use the Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV) to explain the hedonic properties of different network topologies. This would be responsible for the “intrinsic valence” of a given brain region. You write:\n> Why this combination of tasks? Rhythms sort of suggests that brain areas are less about specific tasks than about specific graph-theoretic arrangements, which are convenient for specific algorithms, which are convenient for specific tasks.\nYes! This is a great way of putting it. I think that having diverse network topologies available is one of the key ingredients of a general intelligence like ours. A learning algorithm that patches together the right sections to produce the right kind of structure for internal representations with holistic properties seems like a natural way to construct a mind. More so, some of these patches will cause dysphoric waves and others euphoric waves. The dysphoric parts of the brain, if STV is in the right direction, would have a network topology that work as a sort of frustration generator. The waves generated by these parts sort of “hate themselves”: activating them causes internal dissonance and stress that is then radiated out as waves with unfriendly ADSR envelopes to the rest of the brain. In contrast, the euphoric parts would produce highly aligned waves with soft ADSR envelopes and the right level of impedance matching to harmonize with other wave generators. \n(5) Merging with God as a kind of global coherence:\n> Andres suggests all of this is a good match for oscillatory coupling between brain regions.\nPerhaps add something akin to “which according to him ‘dissolves internal boundaries'”\n> Andres thinks this is part of what’s behind “spiritual” or “mystical” experiences, where you suddenly feel like you’ve lost the boundaries of yourself and are at one with God and Nature and Everything.\nMy strongest phenomenological evidence here is the difference between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT (video): competing clusters of coherence feel like “a lot of entities in an ecosystem of patterns” whereas global coherence feels like “union with God, Everything, and Everyone”. Hence the terms “spirit molecule” for DMT and “God molecule” for 5-MeO-DMT. The effect size of this difference is extremely large and reliable. I’ve yet to find someone who has experience with both substances who doesn’t immediately agree with this characterization. [This can be empirically tested] by blinding whether one takes DMT or 5-MeO-DMT and then reporting on the valence characteristics, “competing vs. global” coherence characteristics, and on whether one gets a patchwork of entities or one feels like one is merging with the universe.\nWith classic psychedelics, which stand somewhere between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT in their level of global coherence, you always go through an annealing process before finally “snapping” into global coherence and “becoming one with God”. That coherence is the signature of these mystical experiences becomes rather self-evident once you pay attention to annealing signatures (i.e. noticing how incompatible metronomes slowly start synchronizing and forming larger and larger structures until one megastructure swallows it all and dissolves the self-other boundary in the process of doing so).\nYou will not find academic publications describing this process (because their psychological scales are not detailed enough, aren’t focused on structure, and aren’t informed by actual practice). Nor will you find psychonauts talking much about this, because they tend to focus on the semantic content of the experience rather than on the phenomenal texture [see our guide]. Naturally, one is typically socially rewarded for providing an entertaining story about one’s trip… not a detailed *technical* report of phenomenal texture. Therefore, right now you’ll only find QRI content explaining all of this. But I’m fairly confident about this after talking to very experienced. So I think this will significantly shape the conversation in a couple of years once we start getting some consensus on it.\nI could share much more, but I have to restrain myself (taming the elephant!). Let me know if you need anything else.\nThank you!!\nInfinite bliss!\n\n\nScott – Oct/13/2022\nThanks. […] two questions:> Susan Pockett would say that the non-conscious parts of neural activity can be like this… greatly optimized in a certain sense. But they will lack consciousness. The advantage of the coherence (which comes at the cost of greatly reduced information content) is distributed representations. In turn, this may solve the binding problem.Not sure I understand this. Aren’t there clear examples of unconscious brain waves (eg delta waves during sleep)? Can you explain more about what you mean by distributed representations and why they’re linked to consciousness?> If “we are” the patchwork of interlaced LFPs the brain is generating, in some sense we could say that we “have a brain” rather than that we “are the brain” (loosely speaking). Without putting any strong metaphysical import on the concept of free will, the phenomenology of it seems to me at least to make more sense when you identify with the field rather than the neurons per se (see clues 1 and 3 in his paper). In this view, we are like the “ghost in the machine”, capable of biasing neural activity here and there.Confused by this too. My model for thinking about brain waves has been cellular automata – in this case, there would be no difference between the pattern and the machinery, and it wouldn’t make sense to say that the pattern is able to bias the activity here or there. Is this a bad model? Can you explain more what you mean by “us” (by which I’m assuming you mean consciousness) “biasing” activity (by which I assume you mean causing brain activity different from what you would expect by lower-level laws)?\n\n\nAndrés Oct/15/2022\nHey Scott!\n> Thanks […] two questions:\n(I’ll answer your questions in a different order than how you asked them, on the basis that my answer to the first one is much more weird and less credible… In other words, I’m answering more or less in order of how weird my responses are so that you are not put off by my first answers. This way you can choose when to stop reading without missing anything useful for your essay):\n> My model for thinking about brain waves has been cellular automata – in this case, there would be no difference between the pattern and the machinery, and it wouldn’t make sense to say that the pattern is able to bias the activity here or there. Is this a bad model? \nI think that “brainwaves can be explained as emergent patterns of a cellular automata” is a very good starting model, and it has a lot of explanatory power. But there are empirical and experiential facts that would go against it as a complete explanation. And perhaps, it misses the most important hint for a theory of consciousness that satisfies all of the necessary criteria I consider such a theory must satisfy. And that is, that binding has non-trivial computational effects. I.e. At some level, patterns of organization exert “weak downward causation” on the substrate that gave rise to them. This does not mean there is “strong emergence” or that we’re going against the laws of physics. On the contrary, a key guiding principle for QRI is to be strict physicalists. The laws of physics are causally closed and complete (or at least as good as it gets; the Standard Model can be taken at face value for the time being, until something better comes along). Without violating physicalism, we nonetheless still see instances of weak downward causation in the physical world.\n\n\n\nAs an intuition, consider the fact that something like TMS can change neural activity. In fact, TMS, and especially rTMS, can cause seizures. This suggests that at a sufficiently high dose, EM oscillations can exert top-down influence on neuronal firing thresholds and phase coherence, and more so when they come in repetitive waves rather than pulses. In the case of LFPs, which are far more localized and less energetic, the influence isn’t huge. But it is there. As far as I understand the neuroscience literature on LFPs (and ephatic coupling more generally), the fact that LFPs change firing thresholds is uncontroversial. The question is “by how much”. Most studies find small effects (otoh between 1% and 20% of the variance, but I can look up more precise and recent figures – e.g. see: Ephaptic coupling of cortical neurons).\nThe more interesting and perhaps significant effect that LFPs have is to change the degree of coherence between neurons. In other words, they may not change much their probability of firing, but do change a lot their probability of firing in phase. You can see how this would lead to interesting self-reinforcing effects. Namely, if neural coherence causes LFPs, and LFPs increase neural coherence, there might be attractors of hypercoherent neural firings coupled with strong and very orderly LFPs. I believe this explains the Jhanas.\nNow, can’t you just expand your cellular automata to include LFPs and call it a day? Well, yes, in a theoretical but rather impractical sense. Building a cellular automata that simulates a simple neural network is easy. Building one that simulates water is more tricky. By the time you are constructing cellular automata to simulate EM fields you get into trouble. It’s possible, but you need all sorts of tricks, shortcuts, and handling complex edge cases (e.g. topological segmentation!). Can you construct a cellular automata that simulates physics? Quantum mechanics proper? Yes… if you are Wolfram. But recall that his explorations invoke cellular automata with unusual mathematical primitives. We are no longer in the territory of simple grid-like graphs. We are in Ruliad-space, with hypergraphs and exotic rulesets. Quantum coherent states behave in a very holistic fashion (where the “next step” is the result of solving Shrödinger’s equation in configuration space). So while it’s possible to use cellular automata to think of physics at this level, it isn’t a very natural choice. Rather, I posit that thinking of it in terms of universal principles like energy minimization, extremas, and the preservation of zero information is what takes us closer to the phenomenon at hand. These principles are, by their very nature, holistic. An electron, as Feynman would put it, can sort of “smell its surroundings” to decide where to go. It somehow explores all possibilities at once and “chooses” the one that balances the minimization of energy and maximization of entropy. A truly holistic sort of phenomenon.\n\nSource: A Class of Models with the Potential to Represent Fundamental Physics by Stephen Wolfram\nI think that if at that point one uses a cellular automata to represent this, one has actually reintroduced the very thing the cellular automata conceptual framework was trying to avoid. And that is, the computational power of holism. This is because even though the Ruliad that simulates physics is in some way a cellular automata, the ruleset itself requires a kind of God-like capacity to integrate pieces of information and “see all at once” entire regions of the (hyper)graph and decide what to do next. My claim is that at this point one has “pushed” the undesired holism to the ruleset in order to avoid seeing it directly. It’s a reductionist sleight of hand.\nNow, I’m not saying consciousness is quantum mechanical. What I’m pointing out is that EM waves are sort of in the spectrum between simple cellular automatas and QM, where the waves interacting with one another have all kinds of peculiar holistic effects. Binding, if it involves EM waves, turns out to be computationally non-trivial.\nIn this model, the brain is physically providing a soil that can instantiate EM waves with many different kinds of properties. Some behave linearly, some non-linearly. And together, they give rise to the vast zoo of possible internal representations, many kinds of binding, topologies, and dynamics we experience (such as the strangeness of “fire meditation“).\n> Can you explain more what you mean by “us” (by which I’m assuming you mean consciousness) “biasing” activity (by which I assume you mean causing brain activity different from what you would expect by lower-level laws)?\nYou can’t voluntarily shut down your brain with conscious control. At least not immediately. But you can direct your attention to two parts of your experience at once, and the resonances in those two regions will slowly but surely begin to synchronize. In other words, from an EE point of view, spreading your attention over a given region of your experience increases the impedance matching between the metronomes in those regions. This, I think, is the influence of LFPs (or similar) on neural activity. This may be subtle, but over enough time and neural rewiring, the process can lead to very interesting effects. Hyperconcentrated states of consciousness, starting with access concentration all the way to single-pointed attention and ultimately to the formless Jhanas are obtained through mental moves that slowly by surely “unify the mind” (i.e. brings coherence between disparate metronomes in the nervous system). This is “us” learning to influence “our brain”.\n\n\n> Not sure I understand this. Aren’t there clear examples of unconscious brain waves (eg delta waves during sleep)?\nTwo quick things here. The first is that we think brainwaves (macroscopic oscillations in the EM field more generally) are necessary but not sufficient for consciousness. They still need to form a topological pocket, or they will remain unclosed eddies that cannot contain information nor maintain a boundary with their surroundings. The second is that the main point is that the brainwaves track the texture of degrees of wakefulness. More so, it’s not just the spectral power distribution, but also the patterns of spatiotemporal cross-frequency coherence. Thus, two states might look the same in terms of their spectrum, but carry significantly different internal textures since one of them has a high degree of, say, gamma coherence and the other doesn’t.\n\n\n> Can you explain more about what you mean by distributed representations and why they’re linked to consciousness?\nOne of the key insights from Stevan Lehar is that using a dynamic, smooth, spatial medium of representation allows us to run spatial algorithms on our representations. One example is the incredibly general reverse grassfire & reverse shock schaffold algorithms that explain a wide range of visual illusions (discussed in The Constructive Aspect of Visual Perception / as well as in his magnum opus video Harmonic Gestalt). Based on the fact that these algorithms generalize to things like breakthrough level DMT experiences and that they apply to hyperdimensional phenomenal objects and their resonant modes, I’m fairly convinced that the local cellular automata view doesn’t explain the facts. The structures that exist in those states follow law-like energy minimization properties reminiscent of fluid dynamics in higher dimensions. To me they seem to necessitate something like Maxwell’s equations; a cellular automaton would need a lot of training and fine-tuning to be able to instantly generate those dynamics right and seamlessly. Combine this with the (not fully verified but tentative) observation that DMT states are phenomenologically similar to those induced by high-dose Fire Kasina. I believe that the mechanism is actually fairly simple: both methods energize the visual field to the point where it transitions from a linear and partially linear state into a fully nonlinear regime. The phenomenon is better seen as what happens when you energize a non-linear optical computer than, say, the effect of changing the ruleset of a cellular automaton.\nI know this lacks credibility for the time being […]. I aim to identify crisp and experimentally verifiable demonstrations of this that trained physicists and neuroscientists can both agree on.\nIn the long-term, I expect humans to figure out ways to use high-energy states of consciousness to tap into the EM field as a computational substrate. Not only will this entail a revolution in consciousness, but also, interestingly, in how we think of computation. The Turing Paradigm will turn out to be a tiny special case of… qualia computing.\nAlright, I hope that wasn’t too much, haha.\nThank you again, and happy to answer more questions.\nInfinite bliss!\n\nSee also:\n\nNick Cammarata On Jhana and Stephen Zerfas‘s response.\nOn Dark Rooms, Jhanas, Ecstasy, and the Symmetry Theory of Valence\nMilan Griffes and Sandra Sobanska’s writeup about the scientific study of Jhanas as a possible Effective Altruist cause area: [Cause Exploration Prizes] Jhana meditation\nI recently did a podcast with Leigh Brasington (author of Right Concentration) and Wystan Bryant-Scott where we discussed a model for Jhanas in terms of neural annealing, the Symmetry Theory of Valence, and the feedback loop between neural coherence and LFPs.\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/10/27/on-rhythms-of-the-brain-jhanas-local-field-potentials-and-electromagnetic-theories-of-consciousness/", "title": "On Rhythms of the Brain: Jhanas, Local Field Potentials, and Electromagnetic Theories of Consciousness", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-10-28T07:07:10+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=2", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ea646e8127cd7466bd71b986e104b067", "summary": []}
{"text": "David Pearce on the Long-Term Future of Consciousness: The Meta-Copernican Revolution\n\nExcerpt from David Pearce‘s 2008 Diary Update (images made w/ DALL-E, except for the pictures of Shulgin):\n\nNew discoveries? Nothing dramatic. I dutifully flip through Nature each week; wade through turgid tomes of analytic philosophy; and scan Medline abstracts. A lot of the time my heart isn’t in it. Compared to an item from Dr Shulgin‘s library, the illumination can seem trivial. I very much doubt if people who have tried major psychedelics are any smarter on average than the drug-naïve; in fact psychonauts may be cognitively overwhelmed or (rarely) even brain-damaged by their experiences. To complicate comparisons further, many altered states are dross – just like innumerable textures of everyday life. But by opening up a Pandora’s box of new phenomena, psychedelics do confer an immensely richer evidential base for any theory of mind and the world – an evidential base too rich, indeed, for our existing primitive terms, language and conceptual equipment to handle. One compares the laments of physicists starved of new empirical data to test their theories beyond the low-energy Standard Model with the fate of the psychedelic investigator. For in contrast the aspiring psychonaut may be forced to abandon the empirical method, not because he exhausts the range of novel phenomenology it delivers, but because the Darwinian mind can neither cope with LSD / ketamine / salvia / DMT‘s (etc) weirdness, nor weave the novel modes of sentience disclosed into an integrated world-picture.\n\n\nAlexander Shulgin in his lab. #1\nOf course, claims of epochal significance cut no ice with the drug-naïve. Those innocent of drug-induced exotica see no more need to enhance their evidential base than did the cardinals (apocryphally) invited to look through Galileo‘s telescope. An a priori refusal to acknowledge the potential significance of alien modes of sentience is impossible to overcome in subjects whose experience of altered states is confined to getting drunk. Over time, even my own knowledge of these bizarre realms is fading. My ancestral namesake was briefly awoken from his dogmatic slumbers; but DP version-2008 has rejoined the ranks of the living dead in the ghetto of consensus reality.\n\n\nAlexander Shulgin in his lab. #2\nMy assimilation isn’t yet complete. Even as a born-again sleepwalker, I sometimes wonder if there may be a first-person method alternative to drug-based investigations that can unlock novel phenomenology latent within excitable nervous tissue. There is a crying need for alternative avenues, I think, since drug-driven self-assays are for the most part not merely unlawful and taboo, but arguably can’t be practised responsibly until the substrates of well-being are guaranteed in a (hypothetical) post-Darwinian era of genetically pre-programmed bliss. I’ve thought about alternatives to using psychoactive drugs, not least because of the shallowness of my own current research compared to the richness of the empirical methodology pioneered by Dr Shulgin. In order to discover both the formal, mathematico-physical and the intrinsic, subjective properties of the world, a dual methodology of third- and first-person research is indispensable. The former can be abdicated to the physical sciences; but not the latter. Natural science offers no explanation of why we’re not zombies, an unfortunate anomaly if consciousness is fundamental both to our understanding of the world and the world itself. By forswearing the empirical method, we effectively guarantee that the mysteries of consciousness will never be solved. Whereas insentience is, so to speak, all of a piece – hypothetical “zombies” in the philosophical sense of the term are all exactly alike in being non-conscious – there are innumerable ways to be sentient: qualia are fantastically diverse in ways we’ve scarcely begun to map out. So I reckon the only way adequately to understand Reality will be both to capture its formal structure – ideally the master equation of the TOE of the Multiverse – and literally to incorporate ever more of the stuff of the world into one’s expanding psyche to explore the state-space of its textures – the “what-it’s-likeness”. Only incorporation and systematic molecular permutation can disclose the subjective features of all permutations of matter and energy: the solutions, I conjecture, to the equations of the TOE. A priori, one could never have guessed that cells of the striate cortex mediate visual experience and cells in the posterior parietal cortex mediate auditory experience, quite irrespective of their typical functional role in the sensory systems of naturally evolved organisms. We know about such phenomena – and full-blown phenomenal sunsets and symphonies – only because we instantiate the neuronal cell-assembles that embody such qualia. Thus to discover novel categories of experience, I think we should construct and personally instantiate genetically enhanced designer brain cells, systematically altering their intracellular amino acid sequences and gene expression profiles to design/discover new categories of experience as different as is sight from sound, making them part of one’s own psyche/virtual world. Or if this incorporation sounds too irreversible, perhaps we might splice in designer genes and allelic combinations for new modes of experience into subsets of our existing nerve cells, systematically coding new protein sequences into discrete areas of the brain and then selectively expressing the designer proteins they code for at will. Eventually, however, systematic manipulation of the molecular ingredients of one’s neural porridge/mind-dust can be harnessed to mind-expansion in the literal sense. This is because we need bigger mind/brains, not just to mirror external reality more effectively, but also to discover more of its subjective properties. Such discoveries can only be accomplished empirically.\n\n\n\n\n\nNew neuron types for new neurotypes.\nI suppose what drives me here is reflection on just how (superficially) trivial are the neurochemical differences between nerve cells mediating, say, phenomenal colour and phenomenal sound – and indeed reflection on how (superficially) trivial are the molecular differences in the cells mediating the phenomenology of desire, volition and belief-episodes. How can such tiny molecular differences exert such dramatic subjective effects? LSD, for instance, is undetectable in the body three hours after consumption; and yet a few hundred micrograms of the serotonin 5-HT2A partial agonist can transport the subject into outlandish alternative virtual worlds for 10 hours or more. How many analogous, radically incommensurable kingdoms of experience, mediated by equally “trivial” molecular variations, await discovery? How will the uncharted state-spaces be systematically explored? What will be the nature of life/civilisation when these kingdoms of experience are spliced together in composite minds; recruited to play an information-bearing role; harnessed to new art forms and new lifestyles; and ultimately integrated into communities of composite minds in advanced civilisations? For sure, talk of discovering a “new category of experience” doesn’t sound a particularly exciting kind of knowledge when couched in the abstract, any more than discovery of a new brand of perfume. OK, it’s a new experience; but so what? [Andrés adds: so what!?] One might sacrifice a lot for the opportunity to experience a novel phenomenal colour; but what cognitive value should be ascribed to an unknown category of experience for which one hasn’t even a name? Initially at any rate, the novel modes of experience that we discover within a modified neural proteome won’t be harnessed to senses, either internal or external, let alone harnessed to whole conceptual schemes, cultures and novel languages of thought. So they won’t play any functional role in the mind/brain: they won’t be information-bearing. But then neither are visual or auditory experiences per se; they have no intrinsic connection to sensory perception. Dreams, for instance, can be vibrantly colourful; they don’t reliably track anything in the external world. Honed by natural selection after recruitment by awake living organisms to track mind-independent patterns, visual and auditory experience has taken millions of years to play out; and who knows where it will end. By the same token, the developmental potential of new modes of experience that we discover in tweaked neurons is equally unfathomable from here.\n\nEvery scent, every color, every touch sensation, every sound, every novel qualia…\nI can understand the impatience of an exasperated sceptic. What interest have novel “tickles” of experience beyond the psychopathology of the subject? Analogously, conventional wisdom in an echolocation (etc)-based civilisation might scornfully ask a similar question if and when post-chiropteran psychonauts first access drug-induced speckles of colour or jarring shrieks or whistles of sound – or perhaps when investigators recklessly explore a new methodology of mind-expansion by incorporating alien nervous tissue into their psyche. The chiropteran consensus wisdom might account the new phenomena weird but trivial – and inexpressible in language to boot. So why should any sane chiropteran mind run the risk of messing itself up just to explore such psychotic states? For our part, human ignorance of what it’s like to be a bat isn’t too unsettling because we know that bats don’t have a rich conceptual scheme, culture or technology. We are “superior” to bats; and therefore their alien modes of experience aren’t especially important. We don’t even give our ignorance much thought.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat is it like to be a bat? An empirical neural tissue insertion protocol to explore nature’s very own echolocation qualia from the comfort of your own home…\nBut latent in matter and energy – and flourishing in other branches of the universal wavefunction – are presumably superintellects and supercivilisations in other Everett branches whose conceptual schemes are rooted in modes of experience no less real than our own. I suspect that accessing the subjective lifeworlds of hitherto alien mind/brains will inaugurate a meta-Copernican Revolution to dwarf anything that’s come before. The textures of such alien minds are as much a natural property of matter and energy as the atomic mass of gold; and no less important to understanding the nature of the world. Needless to say, grandiose claims of new paradigms, meta-Copernican revolutions, etc, should usually be taken with a healthy grain of salt. I am loath to write such expressions, not least because I can imagine both the withering scorn of my hyper-rational but drug-naïve teenage namesake, and likewise the dismissive reaction of my drug-naïve contemporaries today. Such are the perils of a priori philosophizing practised by academic philosophers (and soi-disant scientists) unwilling to get their hands (or their minds) dirty with the empirical method. In each case, our ignorance of the intrinsic, subjective nature of configurations of most of the stuff of the world is fundamental. It’s an ignorance not remediable by simple application of the hypothetico-deductive method, falsificationism, Bayesianism or the usual methodologies of third-person science. If you want to find out what it’s like to be a bat, then you have to experience the phenomenology of echolocation. Knowledge-acquisition entails a hardware upgrade. A notional IQ of 200 won’t help without the neural wetware to go with it – any more than a congenitally deaf supergenius can hear music by virtuoso feats of reasoning alone.\n\n But latent in matter and energy – and flourishing in other branches of the universal wavefunction – are presumably superintellects and supercivilisations in other Everett branches whose conceptual schemes are rooted in modes of experience no less real than our own.\nI guess one deterrent to investigation of altered and exotic states is the thought that the novel phenomena disclosed “aren’t Real” – as though the reality of any phenomenon depended on it being a copy or representation of something else external to itself. I wonder if I lived in a world of Mary-like superscientists – smart monochromats who see the world in black and white – whether I would dare put on “psychedelic” spectacles and hallucinate phenomenal colour? And could I communicate to my Mary-like superscientist colleagues the significance of what they were missing without sounding like a drug-deranged crank? Probably not.\n\n\nLiterally Expanding Our Mind To Overcome Our Fundamental Ignorance of Alien Modes of Experience\nSo I reckon that we should, literally, expand our minds. If we do, how far should incorporation go? The size of the human brain is limited by the human birth-canal, a constraint that technologies of extra-uterine pregnancy from conception to term will presumably shortly overcome. Over time, brains can become superbrains; and sentience can become supersentience. Ultimately, should we aspire to become God or merely gods? My (tentative) inclination is that we should all become One [Andrés adds: see David’s Quora response on the topic of Open Individualism]; and not merely out of deference to my New Age friends. Separateness from each other is an epistemic, not just an ethical, limitation: a source of profound ignorance. For we fundamentally misconstrue the nature of other sentient beings, misunderstanding each other as objects to which we fitfully attribute feelings rather than as pure subjects. [Actually, the story is more complicated. If inferential realism about perception is true, then the sceptic about Other Minds is right, in a sense: the phenomenal people encountered in one’s egocentric world-simulation are zombies. But when one is awake, the zombies serve as avatars that causally covary with sentient beings in one’s local environment. So the point stands.] Yes, literally fusing with other minds/virtual worlds sounds an unattractive (as well as infeasible) prospect for the foreseeable future; and not just because of their lousy organic avatars. For we certainly wouldn’t want to Become One with a bunch of ugly Darwinian minds; and likewise, they might get a nasty shock if they tasted one’s own. Infatuated lovers may want to fuse; rival alpha males certainly don’t [unless one eats a defeated opponent, a form of intimacy practised in some traditional cultures; but this is a very one-sided consummation of a relationship]. However, perhaps the prospect of unification will be more exciting if and when we become posthuman smart angels, so to speak: beautiful in every sense. I have no hidden agenda beyond my abolitionist propagandizing; but on current evidence it’s likely we belong to a family of Everett branches that will lead to god-like beings. And thence to God? I’m sceptical, but I don’t know.\n\n\nMindmelding with other Darwinian creatures is kind of a bummer sometimes.\nDivinity takes many forms. What kind of (demi)gods might we become? Superhappy beings, I reckon, yes, but superhappiness in what guise? A unitary Über-Mind, or fragmented minds as now? At one extreme of the continuum, posthumans may opt to live solipsistically in designer paradises: an era not just of personalized medicine but personalized VR. [Would I opt to dwell with a harem of several thousand houris and become Emperor Dave the First, Lord of The Universe? And supremely modest too. Yes, probably. I’m a Darwinian male.] Occupying the middle of the continuum is the superconnectivity of web-enabled minds (via neural implants, etc) without unitary experience or loss of personal identity. Such a scenario is a recognizable descendant of the status quo whereby we are all connected via the Net to everyone else. This sort of future is the most “obvious” since it’s an extrapolation of current trends. Extreme interconnectivity is still consistent with extensive ignorance of each other, although expansion and/or functional amplification of our mirror neurons could magnify our capacity for mutual empathetic understanding. Finally, at the other extreme of the continuum, there is presumably a more-or-less complete fusion of posthuman mind/brains into a unitary collective: a blissful analogue of the Borg, but contiguous rather than scattered: there is no evidence spatio-temporally disconnected beings have token-identical experiences. It’s hard enough to solve the binding problem in one mind/brain, let alone across discrete skulls.\n\n\nEmperor Dave the First, Psychonaut Lord of The Universe, Bliss For All Creatures Under the Sun\nI don’t know which if any of these three families of scenario is the most likely culmination of life in the Multiverse. Indeed it’s unclear whether the third scenario, i.e. a unitary experiential Supermind, is even technically feasible. For there is an upper limit to the size and duration of the conjectural “warm” quantum coherence needed for unitary sentience; it’s difficult enough to avoid ultra-rapid thermally-induced decoherence in even a single human mind/brain, let alone a hypothetical global super-mind/brain. Is there a way round this constraint? In spite of the well-worn dictum “black holes have no hair“, I used to play around with the idea that blissful superminds lived on the ultra-cool “surface” of supermassive black holes. All the information content of their interior and information content at the horizon is smeared out across the entire horizon, allowing unitary megaminds of maximum information density – and maximum intelligent bliss: what Seth Baum aptly calls “utilitronium”. This conjecture needs more work. But whether conscious mind is unitary or discrete, I suspect that posthuman modes of existence will be based, not on today’s ordinary waking consciousness, but on unimaginably different modes of sentience. In addition, I predict that these modes of sentience will be as different in intensity from ours as is a supernova from a glowworm. Thus any speculative story we may now be tempted to tell about what life may be like millions or billions of years hence will of necessity ignore a fundamental difference between future minds and us. Human futurology omits the key evolutionary transitions ahead in the nature of consciousness – not only the ethically all-important hedonic transition to superhappiness that I stress, but other modes of sentience currently unknown. The discontinuity promised by any future technological Singularity – or soft Singularities – derives not merely from an exponential growth of computer processing power, but from inconceivably different textures of sentience. Actually, I entertain many bizarre ideas. The art is taking them seriously enough to explore their implications and testable predictions, but sceptically enough not to be seduced into believing they are likely to be true. And what about the nearest I come to a dogmatic commitment? Could the abolitionist project turn out to be mistaken too? I guess so. Yet at least the abolition of suffering is not a phenomenon we will live to regret.\n\n\nThree families of scenarios for the culmination of life in the Multiverse: #1 everyone kinda doing their own thing in their little virtual worlds. #2 hybrid hive minds of hypersocial connected individuals who choose to retain their (porous) individuality. #3 God, a single mega-mind, that maximally bounds as much matter and energy into unitary superexperiences.\n\nSee Also:\n\nFree-Wheeling Hallucinations\nA Big State-Space of Consciousness\nWelcoming Steven Lehar as a QRI Lineage\nDMT and Hyperbolic Geometry: 1 Million Views Special\nThe Universal Plot: Part I – Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators\nDavid Pearce and Andrés Gómez Emilsson Chat About the Nature of Reality\nBurning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/10/23/david-pearce-on-the-long-term-future-of-consciousness-the-meta-copernican-revolution/", "title": "David Pearce on the Long-Term Future of Consciousness: The Meta-Copernican Revolution", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-10-24T06:44:49+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=2", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "1b8ab6c3c8ab37e14a6bc6556478a179", "summary": []}
{"text": "QRI Meetup in London on October 8th 2022\n\nI’m currently in the UK. London, more precisely. I was invited to participate in this year’s instance of the Tyrinham Initiative (my review) and, naturally, I couldn’t miss it. I’m _very_ happy I went. I will share more about it and other recent DMT insights soon. But in the meantime, I just want to announce that there will be a QRI meetup on October 8th (2022) in Arch1 (West Ham Arches, Cranberry Ln, London E16 4BJ).\n\n2022 Tyrinham Initiative attendees \nQRI Meetup Schedule\n\n2PM: Space Opens.\n3PM: Snacks*.\n4PM: Experience Sharing Activity (bring an interesting experience to share with others!).\n6PM: Andrés (me) unveils Hedonium Shockwave (1) and delivers a speech**.\n7PM: Audience participation – there will be an Open Mic for people to introduce themselves, share their thoughts about QRI, and (optionally) make the case for a given Cause X (5 minutes per person)***.\n8PM: Food*.\n8PM–9:30PM: Andrés available for short 1-1s. Please feel free to share your candid feedback. I’ll be all ears! (There will be a signup list).\n10:30PM: Wrap-up.\n\nWhat to bring? \nYou don’t need to bring anything. Your presence is more than enough. That said, please feel free to bring with you an experience to share (think “Qualia of the Day“). This can range from perfumes, to spices, to books, to boardgames, to stim toys, to puzzles, to jokes, to nootropics, to pieces of art.\nWhat to wear?\nPlease come in an attire that brings you joy. Bring at least one item (even if just a detail, like a pin or a scarf) that symbolizes the victory of consciousness over pure replicators. Be creative and open minded.\n\n\nDo you have suggestions for how to accelerate the progress of QRI, help eliminate intense suffering, map the DMT realms, and achieve super-human bliss for all? I’m all ears!\n\n* Bring vegetarian snacks, drinks, and food to share with others, if you are so inclined. Please do not bring alcoholic drinks as the space has a full bar and they don’t allow outside drinks into the venue, which extends to the garden area.\n** Please do what you can to be there before 5:50PM if you intent to see the speech so that your arrival doesn’t interrupt or distract anyone. If you arrive between 6PM and 7PM, please make a quiet entrance.\n*** The winner will get a prize.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/10/04/qri-meetup-in-london-on-october-8th-2022/", "title": "QRI Meetup in London on October 8th 2022", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-10-05T00:05:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=2", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "9565c6efc6bebfc85b01c6b72e30e03f", "summary": []}
{"text": "Just Look At The Thing! – How The Science of Consciousness Informs Ethics\n\n\nIt is very easy to answer many of these fundamental biological questions; you just look at the thing! \nFrom Richard Feyman’s talk There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom (1959)\n\nIntroduction \nThe quote above comes from a lecture Richard Feynman gave in which he talks about the challenges and opportunities of studying and interacting with the world at a very small scale. Among other things, he touches upon how gaining access to e.g. a good-enough electron microscopes would allow us to answer long-standing questions in biology by just looking at the thing (cf. Seeing Cell Division Like Never Before). Once you start to directly engage with the phenomenon at a high-enough resolution, tackling these questions at the theoretical level would turn out, in retrospect, to be idle arm chair speculation.\nI think that we can make the case that philosophy of ethics at the moment might be doing something like this. In other words, it speculates about the nature of value at a theoretical level without engaging with the phenomenon of value at a high resolution. Utilitarianism (whether classical or negative), at least as it is usually formulated, may turn out to have background assumptions about the nature of consciousness, personal identity, and valence that a close examination would show to be false (or at least very incomplete). Many criticisms of wireheading, for instance, seem to conflate pleasure and reward (more on this soon), and yet we now know that these are quite different. Likewise, the repugnant conclusion or the question between total vs. mean utilitarianism are usually discussed using implicit background assumptions about the nature of valence and personal identity. This must stop. We have to look at the thing!\nWithout further ado, here are some of the key ways in which an enriched understanding of consciousness can inform our ethical theories:\nMixed Valence\nOne ubiquitous phenomenon that I find is largely neglected in discussions about utilitarianism is that of mixed valence states. Not only is it the case that there are many flavors of pleasure and pain, but it is also the case that most states of consciousness blend both pleasurable and painful sensations in complex ways.\nIn Principia Qualia (Michael Johnson) the valence triangle was introduced. This describes the valence of a state of consciousness in terms of its loadings on the three dimensions of negative, positive, and neutral valence. This idea was extended in Quantifying Bliss, which further enriched it by adding a spectral component to each of these dimensions. Let’s work with this valence triangle to reason about mixed valence.\n\nIn order to illustrate the relevance of mixed valence states we can see how it influences policies within the context of negative utilitarianism. Let us say that we agree that there is a ground truth to the total amount of pain and pleasure a system produces. A naïve conception of negative utilitarianism could then be “we should minimize pain”. But pain that exists within an experience that also contains pleasure may matter a lot less than pain that exists in an experience without pleasure that “balances it out”!\nThe naïve conception, would thus, not be able to distinguish between the following two scenarios. In Scenario A we have two persons, one suffering from both an intense headache and an intense stomach ache and the other enjoying both a very pleasant sensation in the head and a very pleasant sensation in the stomach. In Scenario B, we switch it up: one person experiences an intense headache while also a very pleasant sensation in the stomach, and the other way around for the other person.\n\n\nBut if you have ever experienced a very pleasant sensation arise in the midst of an otherwise unpleasant experience you will know how much of a difference it makes. Such a pleasant sensation does not need to directly blunt the painful sensation; the mere presence of enough pleasure makes the overall nature of the experience far more tolerable. How and why this happens is still, of course, a mystery (in a future post we shall share our speculations) but it seems to be an empirical fact. This can have extraordinary implications, where for example a sufficiently advanced meditator might be able to dilute very painful sensations with enough equanimity (itself a high-valence state) or by e.g. generating jhanic sensations (see below). Have you ever seen this discussed in an academic journal on ethics? I didn’t think so.\nWe don’t need to invoke such fancy scenarios to see the reality and importance of mixed valence states. The canonical example that I use to illustrate this phenomenon is where: you just broke up with someone (-), are at a concert enjoying really good music (+), are coming up on weed and alcohol (+), but also need to pee really bad (-). We’ve all been there, haven’t we? If you get sufficiently absorbed into the cathartic pleasure of the music and the drugs, the negative feelings temporarily recede into the background and thus might tilt the experience towards the net positive for a while.\nOnce you consider the reality of mixed valence states, there is a veritable Cambrian Explosion of possible variants of utilitarianism. For example, if you do accept that pleasure can somehow dilute pain within a given moment of experience, then you could posit that there is a “line of hedonic zero” on the valence triangle and anything on one side of it is net positive:\n\nA version of negative utilitarianism we could call within-subject-aggregated-valence negative utilitarianism recognizes any experience in the “Net Positive” region to be perfectly acceptable even though it contains painful sensations.\nAlternatively, another version we may call strict negative valence utilitarianism might say that pain, whether or not it is found within an experience with a lot of pleasure, is still nonetheless unacceptable. Here, however, we may still have a lot of room for a civilization animated by information-sensitive gradients of bliss: we can use the gradients that have a mixture of positive and neutral Vedanā for information signaling:\n\n\nYet another view, perhaps called within-subject-majoritarian negative valence utilitarianism might say that what makes an experience worth-living and unproblematic is for it to be at least 50% pleasant, regardless of the composition of the other 50%:\n \n\n\nNow, I am not going to adjudicate between these views today. All I am pointing for the time being is that actually engaging with the phenomenon at hand (i.e. how valence manifests in reality) radically enriches our conceptions, and allows us to notice that most of ethics has an impoverished understanding of the phenomenon it comments on. We can change that.\nLogarithmic Scales\nAs argued in Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain (summary) we think that there is a wide range of evidence that suggests that the intensity of both pleasure and pain follows a long-tail distribution. I am not going to repeat the arguments here, since I’ve written and presented about them extensively already. I will merely mention that I am deeply suspicious of the intellectual seriousness of any ethicist who somehow fails to notice the enormous moral significance of the following states of consciousness, among others:\nOn the positive side:\n\nTemporal lobe epilepsy\nMDMA\nJhanas\nGood high-dose 5-MeO-DMT trip\n\nOn the negative side:\n\nCluster Headaches\nKidney Stones\nBad high-dose 5-MeO-DMT trip\n\n\n\nValence and Self-Models\nOne of the claims of QRI is that every experience, no matter how outlandish and unlike our normal everyday human experience, has valence characteristics. An analogy can be made with the notion of physical temperature: every physical object has a temperature, no matter what it is made out of or what its shape is.\nMost human experiences have a lot of shared structure, with things like a central “phenomenal self” that works as an organizing principle for arranging sensations. Many meditators and psychedelic enthusiasts point out that suffering seems to have something to do with our sense of self. That feelings matter only to the extent that they are happening to someone. But experiences without a phenomenal self (or with radically altered phenomenal selves) will nonetheless still have valence characteristics. Ego deaths can be dysphoric or euphoric.\nWe argue that what matter is actually the overall structure of the experience (cf. valence structuralism). It just so happens that above a certain level of valence, the phenomenal self starts to become an impediment to further bliss. Ultra-pleasant experiences, thus, tend to be selfless! But this does not make them worthless. On the contrary, their intrinsic worth, coming from their positive valence, can go through the roof.\nThat said, reporting the valence of very exotic experiences can be remarkably difficult. This doesn’t mean that we should give up; rather, we ought to develop new methods, vocabulary, and culture to be able to place these experiences on the same moral footing as our normal everyday life.\nFor example, the so-called “toroidal state” (on DMT) or during a meditative cessation can have profound valence effects, to the point of making you reconsider the very nature and scope of what matters.\n\n\n\n\nFrom The Three Doors chapter in Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (Daniel Ingram):\n\nRegardless of the way a specific door manifests, it reveals something completely extraordinary about the relationship between “the watcher” and “the watched” that it would take a very warped, non-Euclidean view of the universe to explain, though I will try shortly. One way or another, these fleeting experiences cannot easily be explained in terms of our normal, four-dimensional experience of space-time, or within our ordinary subject/object experience. […] When the no-self door predominates with suffering as its second aspect, then a very strange thing happens. There may be an image on one side staring back, but even if there isn’t, the universe becomes a toroid (doughnut-shaped), or occasionally a sphere, and the image and this side of the toroid switch places as the toroid universe spins. It may spin sideways (horizontally), or it may spin vertically (like head over heels), and may also feel like a hood of darkness suddenly being pulled over our heads as the whole thing synchronizes and disappears, or like everything twisting out of existence. The rarest no-self/suffering variant is hard to describe, and involves reality becoming like a doughnut whose whole outer edge rotates inwards such as to trade places with its inner edge (the edge that made the hole in the middle) that rotates to the outer edge position, and when they trade places reality vanishes. The spinning includes the whole background of space in all directions. Fruition occurs when the two have switched places and the whole thing vanishes.\n\nI recommend reading the whole chapter for what I consider to be some ultra-trippy phenomenology of surprising ethical relevance (see also: No-Self vs. True Self).\nIn summary: this all indicates that states of consciousness have valence characteristics independently of the presence, absence, shape, or dynamic of a phenomenal self within them. If your ethicist isn’t considering the moral worth of Nirvana… perhaps consider switching to one who does.\nValence and Personal Identity\nThe solution to the phenomenal binding problem has implications for both personal identity and ethics. If, as I posit, each moment of experience is in fact a topological pocket in the fields of physics, then Closed Individualism would seem to be ruled out. Meaning, the standard conception of identity where you start existing when you are born and stop existing when you die would turn out to be a strange evolutionarily adaptive fiction. What really exists is a gigantic field of consciousness subdivided into countless topological pockets. Empty Individualism (“you are just  a moment of experience”) and Open Individualism (“we are all the same universal consciousness”) would both be consistent with the facts, and it might be impossible to decide between them. Yet, I argue that the vast majority of ethical theories have as an implicit background assumption Closed Individualism. So realizing that it is false has major implications.\n\nIn particular, if we take the Empty Individualist perspective, it might be easier to defend negative utilitarianism: since each snapshot of experience is a completely separate being, you simply cannot “make it up” to someone who is currently suffering by giving him/her enough happiness in the future. Simply put, that suffering will never be redeemed.\nAlternatively, if we take the Open Individualist perspective, we now might have actual grounds to decide between, say, average vs. total utilitarianism. Ultimately, you will be forced to experience everyone and everything. This line of reasoning becomes particularly interesting if you also take seriously something like Feynman and Wheeler’s One-electron Universe. Here we might possibly even objectively determine the moral worth of an experience in terms of “how long the one electron stays trapped inside it”. An experience with a huge spatial breadth and one with enormous temporal depth may be equivalent according to this metric: they’re just structured differently (cf. Pseudo-Time Arrow). In this account, you are bouncing backwards and forwards in time interfering with yourself forever. The multiverse is the structure emergent from this pattern of self-interference, and it is eternal and immutable in a certain sense. Relative to a small experience, a large experience would be one that keeps the one electron trapped for longer. Thus, there would be a strong case to care more about bigger and brighter experiences: you’ll be there for ages!\nIf indeed you are bouncing backwards and forwards forever in this structure, then perhaps average utilitarianism can be defended. In brief, since you are always somewhere, what matters is not how large the structure is, but the shape of its distribution of states.\nValence Structuralism\nFinally, if you pay attention to the nature of highly valenced states of consciousness you will notice that they have structural features. The Symmetry Theory of Valence (overview; CDNS) can be experientially verified for oneself by introspecting on the structural features of one’s experience when enjoying intense bliss or enduring intense suffering. Rob Burbea’s meditation instructions are very well worth reading to get a sense of what I’m talking about. This would seem to matter a lot when it comes e.g. deciding what kind of artificial sentient minds we might want to create. Much more on this in the future.\n\nPutting It All together\n\n\n\nHigh-dose DMT experiences are an excellent example of the sort of state of consciousness that is part of reality, is generally not taken seriously in philosophy (despite its enormous significance), and has many elements that challenge preconceptions about pleasure and pain and inform our understanding of valence. These experiences:\n\nTend to involve exotic variants of phenomenal self and a distorted feeling of personal identity\nHave greatly expanded amount of qualia per moment of experience\nExpress valence that is typically extremely mixed and extremely intense (with complex dynamic elements that have both high degrees of consonance and dissonance at the same time; see also “competing clusters of coherence“)\nAnd show to a large extent transparent valence: you can use knowledge about the Symmetry Theory of Valence in order to steer the experience towards more blissful configurations by seeking symmetry, harmony, and consonance explicitly.\n\nFor a theory of physics to be true it needs to be able to explain physical phenomena outside of room temperature. Likewise, for an ethical theory to be in any way true, it ought to be able to account for states of consciousness outside of the range of normal human everyday life experience. DMT states, among others, are examples of non-room-temperature states of consciousness that you can use to test if your theory of ethics actually generalizes. How do you make sense of experiences that have more qualia, have mixed valence, have exotic phenomenal selves, and have valence effects up there in the logarithmic scale? That’s what we need to answer if we are serious about ethics.\nThe future holds much crazier trade-offs than that between Human Flourishing vs Potatoes with Muzak. Already today, I would argue, the facts suggest that we ought to begin recognizing the reality of Hell and the ethical imperative to destroy it. And beyond, our theory of ethics ought to be powerful enough to contend with the outlandish realities of consciousness we are soon bound to encounter.\n\nSee also:\n\nCube Flipper‘s How to use DMT without going insane\nThe Feeling of Value – Sharon Hewitt Rawlette (Utilitarian Podcast)\nThoughts on the ‘Is-Ought Problem’ from a Qualia Realist Point of View\nOpen Individualism and Antinatalism: If God could be killed, it’d be dead already\nLogarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain: Rating, Ranking, and Comparing Peak Experiences Suggest the Existence of Long Tails for Bliss and Suffering\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/09/22/just-look-at-the-thing-how-the-science-of-consciousness-informs-ethics/", "title": "Just Look At The Thing! – How The Science of Consciousness Informs Ethics", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-09-22T08:43:05+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=2", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b686908c888d61695fca9e5a5cc1f0cd", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Maxwellians\n\nExcerpt from The Maxwellians by Bruce J. Hunt (1991)\nForeword by L. Pearce Williams\nIn 1873, James Clerk Maxwell published a rambling and difficult two-volume Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism that was destined to change the orthodox picture of reality. This treatise did for electromagnetism what Newton‘s Principia had done for classical mechanics. It not only provided the mathematical tools for the investigation and representation of the whole of electromagnetic theory, but it altered the very framework of both theoretical and experimental physics. Although the process had been going on throughout the nineteenth century, it was this work that finally displaced action-at-a-distance physics and substituted the physics of the field.\nLike Newton’s Principia, Maxwell’s Treatise did not immediately convince the scientific community. The concepts in it were strange and the mathematics was clumsy and involved. Most of the experimental basis was drawn from the researches of Michael Faraday, whose results were undeniable, but whose ideas seemed bizarre to the orthodox physicist. The British had, more or less, become accustomed to Faraday’s “vision,” but continental physicists, while accepting the new facts that poured from his laboratory, rejected his conceptual structures. One of Maxwell’s purposes in writing his treatise was to put Faraday’s ideas into the language of mathematical physics precisely so that orthodox physicists would be persuaded of their importance.\nMaxwell died in 1879, midway through preparing a second edition of the Treatise. At that time, he had convinced only a very few of his fellow countrymen and none of his continental colleagues. That task now fell to his disciples.\nThe story that Bruce Hunt tells in this volume is the story of the ways in which Maxwell’s ideas were picked up in Great Britain, modified, organized, and reworked mathematically so that the Treatise as a whole and Maxwell’s concepts were clarified and made palatable, indeed irresistible, to the physicists of the late nineteenth century. The men who accomplished this, G. F. FitzGerald, Oliver Heaviside, Oliver Lodge, and others, make up the group that Hunt calls the “Maxwellians.” Their relations with one another and with Maxwell’s work make for a fascinating study of the ways in which new and revolutionary scientific ideas move from the periphery of the scientific thought to the very center. In the process, Professor Hunt also, by extensive use of manuscript sources, examines the genesis of some of the more important ideas that fed into and led to the scientific revolution of the twentieth century.\n L. PEARCE WILLIAMS.   –    Ithaca, New York\n\n\n“Maxwell’s equations”\nIntroduction\nJames Clerk Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic field is generally acknowledged as one of the outstanding intellectual achievements of the nineteenth century—indeed, of any century. The late Richard Feynman once remarked, with perhaps only a little hyperbole, that “from a long view of the history of mankind […] there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics”. Even the American Civil War, Feynman said, “will pale into provincial insignificance” besides this more profound event of the 1860s.[1] By the mid-1890s the four “Maxwell’s equations” were recognized as the foundation of one of the strongest and most successful theories in all of physics; they had taken their place as companions, even rivals, to Newton’s laws of mechanics. The equations were by then also being put into practical use, most dramatically in the emerging new technology of radio communications, but also in the telegraph, telephone, and electric power industries. Maxwell’s theory passed to the twentieth century with an enormous reputation it has retained ever since. \nIt is thus perhaps surprising to find that the fullest statement Maxwell gave of his theory, his 1873 Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, does not contain the four famous “Maxwell’s equations,” nor does it even hint at how electromagnetic waves might be produced or detected. These and many other aspects of the theory were quite thoroughly hidden in the version of it given by Maxwell himself; in the words of Oliver Heaviside, they were “latent” in the theory, but hardly “patent.”[2]\nMaxwell was only forty-eight when he died of cancer in November 1879. He was only a quarter of the way through revising his Treatise for a second edition, and the task of digging out the “latent” aspects of his theory and of exploring its wider implications was thus left to a group of younger physicists, most of them British. Between roughly 1879 and 1894, these “Maxwellians,” led by George Francis FitzGerald (1851-1901), Oliver Lodge (1851-1940), and Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925), with a key contribution from the German physicist Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894), transformed the rich but confusing raw material of the Treatise into a solid, concise, and well-confirmed theory—essentially, at least for free space, the “Maxwell’s theory” we know today. It was they who first explored the possibility of generating electromagnetic waves and then actually demonstrated their existence; it was they, along with J. H. Poynting (1852-1914), who first delineated the paths of energy flow in the electromagnetic field and then followed out the far-reaching implications of this discovery; it was they who recast the long list of equations Maxwell had given in his Treatise into the compact set now universally known as “Maxwell’s”; and it was they who began to apply this revised theory to problems of electrical communications, with results that have transformed modern life. It was mainly the Maxwellians who gave Maxwell’s theory the form it has since retained, and it was largely through their work that it first acquired its great reputation and breadth of application.\nThe evolution of “Maxwell’s theory” in the years after Maxwell’s death provides a striking example of a process quite common in science, as in other fields of intellectual endeavor. Scientific theories rarely spring fully formed from the mind of one person; a theory is likely to be so refined and reinterpreted by later thinkers that by the time it is codified and passes into general circulation, it often bears little resemblance to the form in which it was first propounded. The practice in science of naming theories after their originators often obscures the historical process by which scientific syntheses are achieved. One is tempted to seek all of “Newtonianism” in Newton, or all of “Darwinism” in Darwin. One of the main aims in the pages that follow is to trace the formation of such a theoretical synthesis in some detail and to show that “Maxwellianism,” though undeniably built on Maxwell’s ideas, was in many ways the work of his successors. “Maxwell was only 1/2 Maxwellian,” Heavisde declared in 1895; I examine here what it meant to be a Maxwellian and trace the transformation of ideas that lay behind Heaviside’s remark.[3]\nAnother of my aims is to trace the evolution of the Maxwellians as a scientific group and to show how they stimulated and helped one another, both in their strictly scientific work and in more practical affairs. Science is a more social and cooperative process than is sometimes appreciated, and one of the most effective ways to capture its richness is to examine in detail the workings of a small group. The key to such a study of the Maxwellians is their surviving letters and notebooks, through which one can follow the course of their thoughts and actions almost day by day and see how strongly they influenced one another. In the work of FitzGerald and Lodge on ether models and electromagnetic waves; in Lodge and Heaviside’s joint battles with W. H. Preece of the Post Office Telegraph Department; in Heaviside and FitzGerald’s long collaboration on the problem of moving charges and on the puzzle of the ultimate nature of the electromagnetic field—in all of these, the cooperative nature of the Maxwellian’s work can be clearly seen in their correspondence. Heaviside in particular virtually lived his life on paper; he was something of a recluse, and his letters and published writings were his main contact with the outside world. FitzGerald and Lodge, too, left very full records of their activities. Although all three were pioneers of electrical communications, they lived before telephones were common, and since they were physically separated—Heaviside in London and later Devon, Lodge in Liverpool, and FitzGerald in Dublin—they kept in touch mostly via letters, hundreds of which have been preserved. These enable us to reconstruct not only their work but something of their personalities and to see them engaged in the 1880s and 1890s in the lively business of remaking Maxwell’s theory and of probing, as they thought, into the ultimate foundations of the physical universe.\nMaxwell himself is only a minor character in this story; he died before the Maxwellians’ work was well begun. But his ideas pervade the book, as they pervaded the Maxwellians’ own work. Though greatly reinterpreted and recast, Maxwell’s ideas always formed the core of the Maxwellian synthesis. In one of the most interesting of his unpublished writings, Heaviside reflected on the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. In its old religious sense, the idea had, he believed, been thoroughly discredited. But there was, he said, another “and far nobler sense” in which the soul truly was immortal. In living our lives, each of us “makes some impression on the world, good or bad, and then dies”; this impression goes on to affect future events for all time, so that “a part of us lives after us, diffused through all humanity, more or less, and all of Nature. This is the immortality of the soul,” Heaviside said. “There are large and there are small souls,” he went on. \nThe immortal soul of John Ploughman of Buckinghamshire is a small affair, scarcely visible. That of a Shakespeare or a Newton is stupendous. Such men live the best parts of their lives after they shuffle off the mortal coil and fall into the grave. Maxwell was one of those men. His soul will live and grow for long to come, and, thousands of years hence, it will shine as one of the bright stars of the past, whose light takes ages to reach us, amongst the crowd of others, not the least bright.[4]\nThis light from Maxwell has come down to us mainly through the Maxwellians; it was they who developed the most important implications of his theory and cast it into the form in which it has become most widely known. In the pages that follow, we trace how this light was refracted and refocused by the Maxwellians and how it was passed along to the next generation, to be transformed and reinterpreted again.\n\n\n\n[1] Feynman 1964, 2:1.11\n[2] Heaviside 1892, 2:393 [1888]\n[3] Heaviside to FitzGerald, [Mar. 1895], FG-RDS; internal evidence places this undated fragment between FitzGerald’s letters to Heaviside of 8 and 15 Mar., OH-IEE.\n[4] Heaviside notebook 8, OH-IEE; a slightly different version is quoted in Appleyard 1930: 257. It was probably written in 1886; cf. Heaviside 1892, 2:77 [1886].\n\nFeatured Image Source: Arrayás, M., Bouwmeester, D., & Trueba, J. L. (2017). Knots in electromagnetism. Physics Reports, 667, 1–61. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2016.11.001 [link]. (cf. QRI’s topological solution to the phenomenal binding problem).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/07/28/the-maxwellians/", "title": "The Maxwellians", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-07-29T03:27:40+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=2", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "a089d854647a3adf528f20b867aa7501", "summary": []}
{"text": "Bobby Fischer (1972 World Chess Champion) On Why Chess is a Lousy Game and How to Save It\n\n[Transcript of: Bobby Fischer on Paul Morphy and how opening theory destroyed chess]\n\nInterviewer: As a Grandmaster in Iceland, according to law, you are entitled to a salary. Every Icelandic Grandmaster is being payed salaries, provided that you do some teaching in Chess and possibly play for Iceland…\nBobby Fischer: No, no, no… No, I hate Chess very much. I don’t need the money, I don’t need it. I’ll skip… I hate Chess, I hate Chess.\nInterviewer: So you are not planning on claiming the Grandmaster salary?\nBobby: No, no, no, no, no, no.\nInterviewer: Why do you hate Chess? Being the be… probably, possibly, the best Chess player ever?\nBobby: Because I know what Chess is all about! It’s all about memorization. It’s all about pre-arrangement…\nInterviewer: But creativity?\nBobby: Creativity is lower down on the list. The old Chess is… you are banging your head against the wall with this theory… where you are, you know, trying to find some little improvement on move 18 or 20… it’s ridiculous! It gets harder and harder and harder, and you need more and more computers, and more and more people working for you… and less and less creativity. It’s ridiculous! Why? Why?\nInterviewer: But you did, I mean, you became a World Champion [based on your] creativity, no?\nBobby: First of all, it’s a long time ago since I played the first match with Spassky… and even the second match was 13 years ago… and Chess in just the last few years has changed dramatically with all of this computer stuff. But really, if you analyze Chess objectively… very, very objectively, it’s been a lousy game going back even to the time of Morphy. There was a lot of book! \nInterviewer: But there is still a place for talent and creativity. It isn’t all pre-arrangement, all theory, all…\nBobby: No, not all, not all, I agree. But why do you want to get involved with something that is mainly rote learning and pre-arrangements? Obviously it’s not all… you know, that. But creativity is like maybe number 3 on the list. The first is pre-arrangement, and then memorization, and then comes creativity.\nInterviewer: As opposed to… Fischer Random [Chess960]? Then you sort of put creativity first?\nBobby: Right… right. Let me explain something about Fischer Random. I’ve never made any claims that this is the best thing since puffed wheat, or whatever.\n\nBobby (cont.): I never made any claims saying this is perfect. What I say is: it’s much better than the old Chess. Now, for example, let’s say you could have a million Chess-like games, right? Maybe a million, ten million of them would be better than Fischer Random. But the point about Fischer Random is that it’s basically the same as the old Chess, except that you get rid of the theory, and it’s very easy to remember the rules. That’s my point, you see? I was just looking at a book Sam just gave me. This book about Capablanca. Capablanca had a very interesting game that he proposed. It was 10X10 or something [sic; an earlier version was 10X10 but then it became 8X10]… and it had two Kings [sic] and extra pieces… and you can win the game by mating either of your opponent’s Kings… and it looked like a very creative game, and maybe much better than Fischer Random, but it looks very intimidating. Even for me, right? Top Chess player. Very intimidating. All these extra pieces, huge board, two Kings… and if it intimidates me, it will intimidate the average person much more.\n\nCapablanca Chess\nBobby (cont.): So there are a lot of games that you can come up with that have practical defects. Not creative defects. But just defects in terms of discouraging people to learn them. You see? That’s my point about Fischer Random. You can learn Fischer Random in 10 seconds, practically. So there is no impediment: you have the same pieces, the same board, all you have to do is get a little electronic shuffler, and in one second you have a position. But of course you could create more creative games than Fischer Random. Maybe, you know, an extra piece, a bigger board, and all kind of things. But my idea… people think I’m abandoning Chess. I’m not! I’m trying to keep it alive. It’s just the reverse! I’m not coming up with anything radical at all.\nInterviewer: I asked two Icelandic Grandmasters the other day: “who is the best Chess player ever, in the history of Chess?” And they both contemplated and I asked them, objectively speaking, and they both said “Bobby Fischer is the best Chess player ever”. Do you agree with that assessment?\nBobby: I want to get back to Fischer Random. \nInterviewer: Don’t want to answer this one? Are you the best player ever?\nBobby: Well… obviously I think so, right?\nInterviewer: Yeah, I mean you beat Larsen 6-0. Nobody has…\nBobby: First of all, you have to understand something about Chess. Of course I’m better than Morphy. Why am I better than Morphy? I don’t think I’m more talented than him. I just know much more theory, right? If he came back today, and he could not open a book, let’s say, right? He would do badly even against masters, maybe. That has nothing to do with his talent, though, right? So when you say I’m better than so-and-so that doesn’t mean anything! Because of all this theory in Chess. But if you were to say… “are you the most talented player?”, that’s something else.\nInterviewer: Are you the most talented player?\nBobby: Well… again, I think so. But maybe that’s just my opinion, you know? Morphy was fantastic. Capablanca was fantastic… [end of video]\n\nFeatured Image: Fischer – Spassky World Championship Match (6) Reykjavik ISL 1972.07.23 (move 7)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/07/25/bobby-fischer-1972-world-chess-champion-on-why-chess-is-a-lousy-game-and-how-to-save-it/", "title": "Bobby Fischer (1972 World Chess Champion) On Why Chess is a Lousy Game and How to Save It", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-07-26T04:22:46+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=2", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "c7666e3a9a3384ed493be741d23bbdcd", "summary": []}
{"text": "Ecstasy and Honesty\n\nA society based on E-like consciousness would be an honest society of honest people.\n        Today, most of us lie and dissemble. We tell white lies and, on occasion, total whoppers. Most of us lie many times in the course of a day, whether to friends, family, colleagues or – as necessity or convenience dictates – to total strangers. Hiding one’s true thoughts and feelings as the occasion demands is second nature to outwardly civilised Darwinians. The few formal studies conducted into the prevalence of lying in everyday life suggest we tend to underestimate just how often (almost) all of us are guilty of outright fabrications, not to mention innumerable half-truths and evasions.\n        On a wider scale, deceit is institutionalized in political life. The record of human history to date supports the powerful intuition that deception will persist indefinitely in public and private life alike. For the evolved capacity to lie and deceive in ever more sophisticated ways has been genetically adaptive. Indeed, if the controversial Machiavellian ape hypothesis is correct, then a progressively refined capacity to lie and deceive – and conversely, a fine-tuned capacity to spot lies and deceit in others – may have driven the evolution of human intelligence.\n        It is sometimes said that life would be better if only we were honest with each other. More often, this value judgement is simply assumed. Life might be better, too, if we were more honest with ourselves. But given today’s corrupt genome, all such scenarios are impossibly unrealistic. Moreover, the effects of public openness about private feelings would frequently be catastrophic. This is because Darwinian humans entertain so many negative thoughts about each other that complete candour would wreck most contemporary human relationships. In a grim Darwinian world, one [E-less] person may, for instance, find another person boring and ugly. Yet there is commonly no advantage to either party in saying so. So the civilities are (sometimes) preserved.\n        Not all lying is self-serving. Very often, we lie to spare the feelings of others, as well as our own.\n        On MDMA/Ecstasy, however, subjects tend to become extraordinarily honest. People trust each other: MDMA indirectly triggers the release of oxytocin. Critically, MDMA-induced emotional honesty is matched by a subtle yet profound shift in perception: when “loved up” on MDMA, we all tend to seem fascinating and beautiful, both to each other and to ourselves. On MDMA, it seems natural to express these feelings spontaneously and demonstratively too.\n        Alas this marvellous state of being doesn’t last for more than a few hours. Potentially, the benefits of MDMA (and MDA)-assisted therapy can be much longer-lasting. But the peak experience of soul-baring empathetic bliss soon fades. Looking to the future, however, enhancements of E-like consciousness can in principle be indefinitely prolonged. By opting via gene-therapy to hardwire a neurobiology of E-like consciousness into our offspring, we could even lock in this perceptual and behavioural shift for good. If implemented species-wide, an enhanced E-like set of perceptual filters would make heavenly love for each other as natural as breathing.\n         This post-millennial vision is implausible. Right now, the notion of global E-like consciousness seems fantastical, especially if one isn’t loved up on MDMA. Yet the capacity to love everybody, and in extreme forms, to be in love with everybody, will be a technical if not sociological possibility in the age of mature biotechnology. In future, if we ever opt – pharmacologically or genetically – to implement E-like consciousness as one facet of world-wide mental health, then it may be psychologically safe to be totally honest. In the meantime, barring such enrichment of our troubled minds, it’s sometimes safer to lie through one’s teeth. Thus today the MDMA user is probably well advised to take a conscious decision, prior to dropping an E, not to disclose anything s/he would not wish to be known in the E-less state. Reticence on E can be maintained; but one can be reliably tight-lipped on E only with a fair degree of forethought.\n        Yet discretion is prudent not because an E-catalysed outpouring of the heart and soul is itself pathological. Selective reticence about (some of) one’s innermost feelings is wise simply because the repercussions of honesty back in the E-less world to which the user must return can be cruel; and because the elevated sentiments felt while on E often cannot be sustained in the cold light of day.\n         Of course, the prospect of worldwide E-like candour strikes the harsh Darwinian eye as grotesque – no less than the prospect of us all loving each other. More specifically, the option of becoming permanently loved-up invites the charge that E-like perception is systematically distorted. A notional society of loved-up E-heads, it may be alleged, would be in the grip of a collective psychosis. Sure, runs the cynic’s critique, loved-up Ecstatics intoxicated on MDMA may find everyone beautiful and fascinating. But so what? Even though MDMA is not a classic “hallucinogen” or psychedelic, the drug-induced perception of loveliness that MDMA creates is (often) false. For lots of people are really boring and ugly. A perpetually E-enchanted world would be a fool’s paradise populated by intellectually and aesthetically undiscerning simpletons. In an E-like world, we might indeed be open and honest; but we’d have nothing worth hiding.\n        This dismissive judgement doesn’t follow. If being boring or ugly were intrinsic properties of (some of) our fellow humans, rather than our emotional responses to the vicious (mis-)representations of Darwinian minds, then the charge of false consciousness, as it were, might be easier to sustain. But there’s no evidence that this is so. Our perceptual experiences have been shaped by natural selection, not to be veridical, but to help our genes leave more copies of themselves. Sometimes this (lack of) veridicality is fitness-enhancing; and sometimes it isn’t; and sometimes – as is arguably the case in the realm of attitudes expressing pure value judgements – there’s no fact of the matter either way. In any event, under the primordial Darwinian regime of natural selection, there has been great advantage in seeing genetic rivals, and indeed seeing anyone with whom one is not genetically identical, in a (sometimes) cruelly negative light. On the other hand, if it had helped our genes leave more copies of themselves, then men would typically represent women of, say, 80 years old as more sexy and fascinating than women aged 21; and this perception would be neither more nor less “correct” than the aesthetic consensus-reality of today.\n         Analogously, the enraptured mystic who can “see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower” is not deluded; such perceptions are uncommon at present merely because it has been genetically maladaptive to occupy states of sustained mystical bliss. For in the ancestral environment of adaptation, it was typically more adaptive to see grains of sand as boring and neglect them. But today’s parochial (virtual) worlds are only one small set of mind-dependent creations in a vaster state-space of possibilities, not a timeless feature of the human predicament. Tantalisingly, thanks to biotechnology a wide range of life-enriching options will soon be on offer instead.\n         A tough-minded sceptic may respond: yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but not all social perception is relative. Some people really are nasty and ill-natured by (almost) any criterion at all. And seeing them as anything else would be delusive. Granted, viewing each other in an often jaundiced light may be a product of our nasty little Darwinian minds, but surely that’s the point: commonly we just aren’t very lovable. If we are to be honest, then we should admit this – not gush effusively at each other like drugged-up hippies.\n         Herein lies the beauty of MDMA – and perhaps safer, sexier lovedrugs and more distant gene-therapies in the pipeline. MDMA doesn’t just make us honest. E-like consciousness makes us sweeter-natured. Even better, the idealised self activated by MDMA does not take the form of alien impostor, so to speak, but feels utterly authentic, constructed from elements of an idealised persona that we can’t live up to in drug-naïve life. If, in a hypothetical E-based society, everyone were constitutionally sweet-natured, then enriching our cognitive architecture would entail capturing this sweet-naturedness in our interpersonal perceptions. With E-like consciousness, emotional honesty and intellectual integrity can, in principle, go hand in hand. It is possible, but unproven, that ugly representations of ourselves and each other belong to a dark Darwinian world that we will shortly leave behind.\n        This prospect again invites scepticism. It can be argued that genetically engineering an entire population primed for indiscriminate honesty is not an evolutionarily stable outcome. An unfailingly honest population might seem prone to genetic invasion by mutant, quasi-sociopathic “defectors”. This game-theoretic argument may continue to hold in the future, as it has done in the past. Even with advanced biotechnology, runs this line of argument, perhaps only substantially egoistic well-being is feasible in any biologically realistic model of a globally superhappy society.\n        But once again, this overly quick reply neglects how ostensibly altruistic thoughts and behaviour evolved in the first instance i.e. for (genetically) selfish reasons; and how they are likely to proliferate explosively in the new reproductive era of designer babies. The proliferation of such admirable traits will accelerate not because our genes stop being any less selfish in the technical sense. For unselfish genes are impossible. Instead, an (E-like?) nobility of character may flourish in the impending era of so-called unnatural selection because when selection is no longer “blind” or [effectively] random, the [selfish] genetic payoff of promoting such “altruistic” traits can be higher. In the new reproductive era ahead, when genes/allelic combinations are chosen by (partially) rational agents in anticipation of their likely behavioural consequences, parents will plausibly exhibit a strong preference for offspring with genotypes that promote such (partially) heritable traits as honesty and “lovability”. These nicer traits may then flourish at the expense of alleles that predispose to a nastier disposition. After all, who wants to devote their life to raising nasty kids?\n        Unfortunately there are no shortcuts. Any transition to a truly honest post-Darwinian society can’t happen simply though acts of individual initiative or all-night Paradise-engineering certainly won’t come about just via individual acts of drug-taking – even after safe and distributed via the Net.\n        Needless to say, we don’t know whether our genetically enhanced descendants will ever have E-like perceptual filters to their consciousness. We don’t know if posterity will lie and cheat as much as we do. We don’t even know whether they will be fundamentally happy, or assuming they are indeed innately so blessed, whether their well-being will take an egocentric or empathetic guise, or express modes of flourishing unimaginably different from anything accessible to conscious mind today. So perhaps the enticing scenarios for our transhuman descendants touted here are all just wishful thinking masquerading as futurology. But whatever the future holds, by taking MDMA we can already, fleetingly, access states of consciousness richer than our brutish Darwinian mindset normally permits. A fundamentally honest society, prefigured (perhaps) in a communal MDMA love-in, is not self-evidently ethically inferior to a society founded on never-ending lies and deceit – or a society driven by competitive displays of consumer consumption. So at least as an intellectual exercise, it’s worth investigating the policy-option of locking in the biochemical substrates of E-like honesty for good.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/07/17/ecstasy-and-honesty/", "title": "Ecstasy and Honesty", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-07-17T08:13:53+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=3", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "9fafb19cea0b103419960356fd7d113a", "summary": []}
{"text": "Euphoric DMT Trip Report by Anonymous Reader: Psychedelic Annealing, Smooth Geometry, and Gender Transitioning Qualia\n\nDMT Experience Report — Learning the Nonlinear Wave Computing theory of subjective experience and internalizing the Symmetry Theory of Valence (originally posted in r/rationalpsychonaut by ClarifyingCard).\nMeta Info\nThis was a sub-breakthrough experience with firmly-set “intellectual” (integrative) intentions. So I wouldn’t really call this a trip report, but an experience report. It’s a little more in the direction of a freeform essay. Working through this experience to translate it into written word is proving very fruitful for annealing what I’ve learned, so I hope it can provide some insight to others. Contents include my real-time integration of QRI’s “nonlinear wave computing” model of subjective experience, and some explanatory applications. I also firmed up my epistemological relationship to the Symmetry Theory of Valence during this experience, so there are some insights integrating these with technical meditation & gender transition.\nI hope the length doesn’t render this inaccessible, as I feel that there are many genuinely deep insights here. I’m not the type to typically write reports on experiences, but consuming lots of QRI content has seriously energized me! There’s this feeling of “Finally! People are doing the top-down neuroscience that I’ve been quietly building for years in isolation! People are seeing psychedelic experiences as legitimate tools for investigating the nature of the mind!” So, I’m feeling a drive I haven’t felt in a while, a drive not just to consume information & integrate it acausally, but to contribute & collaborate.\nContext \nLast night I sipped on a sizeable amount of DMT over the course of a few hours. I probably took over 20 hits from the vape overall, paced gently. I wasn’t specifically striving for a breakthrough, though I left open the possibility, and in fact I was deliberate to keep it sub-breakthrough for the first phase of the trip, since I was trying to use DMT to integrate information content from a video.\nTo me, coming to DMT fixated on a breakthrough feels like entering a relationship with a striving fixation on sex, or entering sex with a striving fixation on orgasm. So, much like taking your time to get to know someone intimately, or moving through a sexual experience without pushing or striving to let it blossom on its own terms, I’ve been flirting with & getting to know DMT on an increasingly deep level over time. This was the first time I’ve really leaned in & let it show me where it wants to take me.\n(“wants” in terms of descending energy gradients, not in anthropomorphizing way. This is a central thread of this experience, so more on this below.)\nSo, I have not broken through yet; this definitely fell on the side of profound insight & bliss. I’m a deep subscriber to the theory of Neural Annealing, and DMT is so high-energy that metaphorically speaking it felt like pure, elemental annealing; anything my mind turned to, I could understand so crisply, with ease & immediacy, like I’m just letting my representations fall into parsimonious (low-entropy) resonant modes, the local minima that my conceptions have already been swirling around.\nI also subscribe to the Symmetry Theory of Valence — well, my epistemological relationship to it has been a little fuzzy or hesitant, being sympathetic to it but not yet feeling like it deeply “clicked”, but after this experience, I not only “get it”, but I’ve felt, intimately, what it’s like to watch it play out in real-time. So that process of “spontaneous understanding” of the above paragraph, the symmetrization/entropy minimization felt really, really good. A truly profound bliss of methodically massaging out any point of tension in my representation field that my attention happened to rest upon.\nI also want to point out that it didn’t really quite feel like the positive (additive) happiness of e.g. eating the candy bar you went to the store for, it felt like a negative (subtractive) happiness — in other words, relief from suffering. Very Buddhist in flavor, even at just the most basic level of Buddhist theory, the Four Noble Truths. In other words, the dukkha of the Three Characteristics. I’ve now got this idea in my head of maybe identifying dukkha with the mental tension that’s smoothed by annealing, to some degree at least. That correspondence is a space I’ll be playing in for a while, I can see.\nSo, here’s the actual report.\nDemographic Information\nAge: 29Height: 5’9″Genetic heritage: 39% Scotland, 33% England, &c.Sex/gender: Trans female (late-stage, meaning enough years of estrogen & social transition to have largely reached mental & physical equilibrium in terms of gender/sex characteristics)\nPersonal Background\nTremendous experience over 8 years with 80+ different psychedelic/dissociative/otherwise acutely psychoactive substances, with a heavy focus on dissociatives. Sizeable understanding of contemporary technical meditation and Buddhism (my understanding is significantly stronger than my actual practice hygiene). Avid consumer of QRI content. History of engagement with Less Wrong-style rationality. Undergraduate education in math & physics, supplemental education in technical writing, linguistics, analytic philosophy (formal logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics, &c.).\nDespite my drug experience, I haven’t used DMT proper before. Before this XP, I dipped my toes in the water with 3-4 puffs of this cart over a few hours about 2 weeks before. A few times over the next 2 weeks, I took a few intermittent puffs to continue feeling it out & acclimating.\nThe Experience\nTwo phases here: first on my couch processing a QRI video, 1 on my bed in a mindset of play & exploration.\nXP Phase I\nSetting: ~930p. On my couch, comfortable. Full lighting. No music.\nFor a few months, I’ve been ramping up my consumption of QRI content, technical meditation dharma, info about/reports on psychedelics, etc. Aside from general interest, I’ve been mentally preparing myself for a DMT breakthrough (my psychedelic experiences having waned in the past few years, and DMT being such a crown jewel of psychedelic strength/power).\nI’ve had the idea to take solid but sub-breakthrough hits of DMT while attempting to integrate some QRI content. The video I chose was this:\nNon-Linear Wave Computing: Vibes, Gestalts, and Realms by Andrés Gómez Emilsson, President + Director of Research for QRI (Qualia Research Institute).\nI’m thrilled to say this was a great choice & fruitful exercise. I’m going to talk a lot about Andrés himself & his video style; I hope it’s not too effusive & doesn’t come across in a parasocial sort of way. It’s more like a walk-through of the subjective experience of what I happened to be doing, a snapshot of how it felt for my brain to process & operate in this state. It was very easy to feel what facets of experience were positive or negative, like my mental model of my valence system was in crystal clarity & intuited with immediacy. This is why this experience also had such an annealing effect for STV on me.\nFirst of all, I was struck by how crystal-clear his vibe comes through in these videos where it’s just a single take of him talking into the camera for an hour! For the record, I’m saying nothing teleological here; no clue how much of this has been thought through explicitly. When I first started watching them, I was like, this could benefit from some cuts or superimposed visuals &c., but over time I’ve grown to deeply appreciate the style. The exact reasons why crystallized during this experience. It’s because it’s an extremely directed, one-pointed style, and it’s also more faithful to real life. For these reasons you can synchronize your mental representation of the content very deeply with the content itself (i.e. you can model Andrés’s attention with high fidelity, so as he goes through the material clearly & methodically, so are you). There’s no echoes of practice or rehearsal like an academic lecture, and there’s no attentional context-shifting that would be demanded by video cuts or superimposed visuals (though having experience with physics simulations & wave dynamics, I’d love to see some simulation visualizations of toy models exhibiting some of the wave dynamics in play here sometime). Instead, it feels more intimate in a way, like the feeling of someone in real life patiently teaching you a complicated concept 1-on-1. You’re watching Andrés think through material he’s familiar with in real-time. You can even see him spontaneously understand & explain new connections as he works through the existing material, and since your attentions are so synchronized, by watching him demonstrating the explanatory power of these models, you’re learning what it feels like to wield these concepts to refine something else into a simpler representation.\nIt’s not just the DMT that helped me understand this I think; poetically, the content of this specific video was very relevant. Later on in the video, he mentions the notions of “Metronome Quotient” & “Entrainment Quotient”, which could be seen as a kind of schematic for understanding the general process of one person transfering information, emotion, or other mental “vibe” complices to another. Knowing what I know about harmonic dynamics from physics, this is very intuitive. When conditions are right (person A is a suitable transmitter, person B is a suitable receiver, attention is localized favorably) — i.e. when the process works — it feels very similar to something like orbital resonance (which is why Jupiter’s moons Io, Europa, & Ganymede have orbital periods in the ratio 4:2:1 — here’s a Steve Mould video explaining this phenomenon). It’s an application of the “soap-bubble” energy-minimization principle: deviations from harmonic equilibrium inducing restoring forces to drag the system into low-entropy resonant modes.\nBy the way, you can also see this in an array of literal metronomes.\nSomething else I noticed is Andrés’s emotional/hedonic vibe. He’s always got a smile, on his mouth & in his voice, you can tell that he’s just thrilled to understand this stuff & thrilled to be able to break it down for a willing audience. First of all, obviously this affects the valence of the experience of watching the video, just like smiling when you’re on the phone eases social friction. I think this emotional entrainment can bootstrap informational entrainment as well, by kindling or contributing to overall synchronization, which is neat. It’s intuitive to me; I already “knew” this because walking people through conceptual understanding, processing difficult experiences, &c. is a general passion of mine, and emotion sync is a big part of doing that effectively.\nThis power to deeply synchronize attention (acausally!) seems like really powerful way to integrate information. It’d have to be in favorable conditions — written word is right out, most likely. Low-stimulus density is important; you want the extraneous setting details/audiovisual landscape to be easy to ignore (to let fade from salience). I think being able to see facial expressions, posture changes, gestural communication, &c. is crucial to be able to really settle in to the entrainment (this is also true in real life — I have no idea why so many people seem almost blind to body language!). Then, by walking through the content in a deeply synchronized way, you know what it feels like to believe it, to synthesize with or wield it against other concepts. That little harmonic signature, that vibe, is there in your mind, ready to be cultivated or dampened by whatever other representations brush against it.\nI should also say, I had lots of visual effects during this time of course. Strong tracers, lots of symmetry extrapolation on surfaces. Tons of shimmering on the edges of objects. When I was especially high, I noticed this really cool effect of lowering visual resolution, like a pixelation effect, but overlapping circular blobs of color & texture. They would resolve if I attended to the region. It felt like the corresponding regions of the visual cortex architecture were too energized to be localized properly, blurring/fuzzing of the wave activity translating to decreased specificity in the encoded content. Really neat. The visuals weren’t something I wanted to work with for the moment, so I let myself just enjoy them instead of striving to analyze or categorize.\nPsychonautWiki seems to catalog this as environmental orbism. Interesting that they associate it primarily with dissociatives — I have not experienced it on dissos (or anything else). I wonder if there’s something Fourier transform-ish happening with the visual cortex activity, like higher-frequency activity dominating the encoding — if so, it could be thought of as a sort of inverse of symmetrization. No idea, will think about it.\nAnyway, I watched the video for a while, frequently backtracking to process content carefully. Eventually it started feeling laborious, so I moved to my bedroom.\nXP Phase II\nSetting: ~11p. On my bed, very comfortable. Low purple mood lighting. No music.\nCW: Some light talk of sexuality.\nI wanted to make some time to play with the drug in a very soft, low-stimulus environment. So I just cleared my bed & spread out the top sheet layer, a lush fleece blanket, flat across the top. The space is full of pleasant, comfortable-vibe stuff, so on one side I was enveloped by super-soft blankets & pillows & stuffed animals, very pleasurable. Very deliberately setting an easygoing, pleasurable, sensual vibe for the drug to energize & amplify.\nI started taking more hits, just resting comfortably on the blanket to see where it would take me. I just let myself frolick, enjoying the pleasurable touch sensations of my environment, rubbing my hands & legs against the soft surfaces, massaging my inner thighs, feeling out the effects it had on my muscles & sensory processing. I noticed the way my muscles subconsciously started to tense & tighten in anticipation of a hit, and then as the DMT washed through my mind, noticed how it smoothed & blurred & dissipated that tension & the angular mental prickles associated with it. I did a lot of rhythmic contraction & release for various muscles, just letting myself enjoy how relaxing it felt to let it go. I carry a lot of tension in my inner thighs (especially common for girls), so getting deep into the tissue & massaging it out was immensely pleasurable, almost orgasmic at times.\nThis made me think a lot about the distinction I was drawing earlier, of what I guess I’ll call “positive” vs. “negative”, or “additive” vs. “subtractive” pleasure. This was very much subtractive pleasure, which could maybe be accurately characterized better as “relief”. In other words, nirvana-wards.\nI decided that I was in a good state for a breakthrough. I wasn’t sure whether it would happen, since my acute tolerance was probably increasing, so I set the intention that I wasn’t striving for it to happen and that it would continue being a wonderful XP if it didn’t. So I took several (3-4) puffs in succession and lay back to watch.\nHere, I noticed a some decoupling of drug effects. I was still getting visuals from each hit, though the open-eye effects were a little less intense, and the CEVs perhaps more. I was still getting positive-valence mental effects — bliss, equanimity, parsimony, &c. However there was a dramatically lowering of that “roller-coaster” feeling, the overwhelming-ness, the sense a drug has seized your experiential field & is now in charge. It’s possible that this was due to me simply becoming more comfortable.\nHowever, the missing qualia is a pretty somatic one, so I think it’s probably acute tolerance attenuating different effects at different rates. Is DMT norepinephrinergic at all? Or is this an endogenous NE effect, or not related at all? Unsure, will research later. That’s a neurochemical I don’t have as much of an intuitive feel for as much as serotonin/dopamine/GABA. Also I should get to know glutamate sometime. Maybe it’s more of a “roller-coaster” feeling because you’re feeling the pull of a novel attractor.\nSo, a breakthrough didn’t happen; I think that feeling is probably integral to a breakthrough (though I’m speaking from ignorance for now). But I did get huge waves of bliss & felt my all of my mental representations get highly energized. This felt “hyperbolic” in the sense of there being “too much” to fit neatly in onto the mental workspace, so things start jumbling & intersecting and “space” itself expands into itself to accomodate. This is on the level of conceptual representations, so what exactly “intersecting” and “space” mean is left unspecified.\nHere’s 2 tangential paragraphs about this. I’ve had this effect before, especially on 4-AcO-DMT and other 4-subbed tryptamines — most extremely, on a truly stupid dose of 160 4-AcO-DMT several years ago, combined with a heavy dissociative I don’t recall (perhaps diphenidine). Never do this! This was many, many years ago, before I had my relationships/career/gender transition/life together, when my thirst for spiritual revelation & relief was matched by my thirst for annihilation & urge to self-harm. Every mental concept just got hopelessly jumbled together and I couldn’t parse a single aspect of my experiential field. It overtook [my model of] my body & external reality, violently smashing together and shredding them and blending them into uncountably many infinitely thin, infinitely long threads all furiously tangling and colliding. There was a sensation of being flung & pulled along this sharp, fast stream along with all the other shreds of my world. As high-entropy a state as I can imagine.In other words, the entire modeling mechanism of reality, inside & out, underwent a catastrophic system crash. It was immensely physically painful — I felt every bit of physical reality smashing through each other — and it collapsed into this extremely dissonant state with very few experiential components: a 1-frame flashing of pale green & red, an unbearably loud Hypnotoad-esque droning, and sheer unimaginable physical pain. This went on for subjective eternity — to abuse some math notation, I had this intuitive, unshakeable knowledge that S(t + Δt) = S(t), period. I realize now that I was deep, deep in a hellish & steep local minimum. Perhaps you could consider this a “hell realm”. Combined with the “holing” effect of the dissociative, I think this could fairly be considered a seizure-like state. I’m not sure if I was physically moving in reality, as I didn’t have any thrashing marks & I was alone (don’t do that!!), but I do think I wet myself a little. It was one of the worst eternal moments of my life. Walking through this experience with ~5 years of learning & growth behind me, writing this out has actually helped me understand the experience a lot better, so forgive the tangent. Come to think of it, STV has a lot of explanatory power w.r.t. why this was so dysphoric & traumatic, lots of little clues sprinkled in here — my representation system smashed into a catastrophically high-entropy, short-term-unrecoverable state of unfathomable dissonance, inducing physical & psychic agony.\nAnyway, back to DMT.\nAfter those 3-4 hits, maybe another part of why it wasn’t overwhelming was related to the notion of “entropy sinks” mentioned in the DMT + hyperbolization video above. I was getting enormous energization of all my representations, but I had no difficulty in skillfully directing them, in applying them to existing mental & physical tension points & smoothing them out, so there was no runaway accumulation. Symmetrization was also very dramatic in CEVs, planar hyperbolic geometries all interweaving at different angles, and the experience of this geometry was itself immensely blissful & high-valence, another strong point in favor of STV. I’d like to strive for brighter, more defined CEVs soon — if I had looked for them earlier, I think they’d’ve presented.\nI then took some time to play around with & appreciate my body some more. I let myself explore my body & just revel in my love for it. Lots of transition-centric thoughts here. I played with my breasts, just lightly rubbing & poking them, feeling them jiggle, reveling in how good & right it felt that I had finally grown them after all this time. I felt along the curves of my hips, groping & squeezing, reveling in how good & right it felt that I have this deeply estrogenic body & mind. How, like, over these years I’ve finally found myself falling into the attractor of this cute, bubbly, exciteable, empathic girl I’ve always been meant to become.\nI remembered feeling the slightest inscrutable tugs towards it, all those years ago. I remembered blundering around in the dark trying to interpret those gradient descents towards peace with my identity & body. I remembered starting to discover, reveal, & construct this second “persona attractor”, finding this spark of hope & understanding & rightness that I would kindle & cultivate over the coming years. And I remembered the moment I felt myself at the inflection point between the two local minima, the realization that the I could just let myself fall into it, and the immeasurable relief washing over me. I’m nearly in tears recounting this to you, contextualizing this deep consonance & harmony I feel, realizing just how much literal blood, sweat, & tears were demanded of me to achieve it.\nI think I annealed a deep understanding of the nature & valence structure of gender transition (at least for my personal case study). It’s not like this isn’t something I’ve thought about in intricate detail for years, so I’ve already earned a very clear picture for myself, but it’s even crisper now, such a simple story once it clicks. STV honestly seems to have tremendous explanatory power w.r.t. gender transition, something I’d like to think & write about more in the future.\nI also played around a lot with my representation/experience of sexual pleasure, which I don’t need to get into toooo much detail about, but it was incredible playing around in that space. One weird thing about my mind is that I kind of have a mental “button” wired up for sensual, sexual, submissive pleasure. In other words, I can just push the button whenever I want (I have dissociatives to thank for getting this circuitry wired correctly) — I can feel this submissive pleasure at will. It’s especially effective if I fantasize, so I spent some time letting myself revel in fantasies about various partners of mine doing various things to me, letting the vividity of the feelings wash over me. This wasn’t especially, ah, “intellectual” work, so I’ll leave it at that.\n(Side note: I theorize a lot of the “attainments” of technical meditation essentially come down to programming buttons like this. I’m thinking particularly of the brahmavihara (“divine/sublime abodes”). They’ve been conveyed to me as like finding a housekey, so that you can enter anytime.)\nHere’s another phenomenon I noticed during this period. A few times I felt a different piece of neural machinery start to whir up — specifically this notion of “self-consciousness”, what I would conceptualize as the submodule of your reality model responsible for modeling the way others would model you back. In other words, I felt this tugging from my self-consciousness engine, nagging with questions like “Don’t you look ridiculous, writhing around alone in your panties? Aren’t you being frivolous, frolicking in pleasure without any thought to intellectual work? What would <Person X> think if they saw you like this? Do you really deserve to consider yourself cute?”\nWhat I’m trying to point out with this is that I found it extremely easy not to engage with this submodule. I could simply fail to regard it, not energizing that representation. Politely say “no thank you” to that mechanism & gingerly place its suggestions on the ground. In the language of NLWV, I noticed this perturbation, but I let it play out & be gone instead of batting down the ripples of the pond. Very anicca-flavored protocol, very familiar to me from meditative experience.\nI found I had this ability with all sorts of mental mechanisms. I’m generally mindful of & moderately good at this, but it was cranked up to 11. I had great control over which facets of experience I did or didn’t engage with. If I had a thought about work-related stress, or guilt over lapses in my exercise hygiene, or anxiety about my thumb (which has a damaged ligament), I could so easily say “It’s not skillful for me to engage with & feed this story right now. Now’s not the time.” Strong equanimity. In this sense, I felt ease with & authority over which representations composed how much of my awareness. This is one sort of skill that samatha meditation cultivates, I think. It makes me realize how much I’ve slipped w.r.t. this skill over the past few years, once my life started going well & started growing more complacent.\nSo, in that moment, I found it easy to cold-shoulder those nagging feelings tugging me out of animal-pleasure-mind. I was able to let myself indulge in the luxuries I’ve cultivated for myself, without shame, which is actually really hard for me usually. I struggle with strong guilt about deserving any success or happiness I achieve. This is something I know I need to work on — being blissful when it is skillful to feel bliss; suffering when it is skillful to suffer.\nSpeaking of that equanimity, I’ve made a lot of progress towards “skillful sex” (lol), sexual dysphoria being a central theme of my journey from androgenic to estrogenic libido. Allowing your mind to cloud is always a great way to derail sexual pleasure or orgasm, so I’m happy to pick up more skills here.\nAnyway, after a while of this, it felt like a good time to pack it up & let the afterglow run its course, starting to integrate the experience. So I put on some music (Strange Diary by Psychic Twin), lay down, & chilled for a while, eventually turning on a light-complexity video & eating some snacky food (which I typically avoid). I took 0.5 mg clonazepam to help still my mind. This XP kept me up till about 2am, but once I lay down to sleep, it didn’t take too long.\n[T + 1 day]\nI awoke & got up with ease, which is unusual for me. Perhaps residual stimulation combined with the benzo wearing off during the night, but this is also a known fruit of metta meditation which I’ve cultivated for long periods in the past, so this is something I’ll keep an eye on next time. Metta is something that I’ve practiced skillfully before and it’s at the top of my priority list for improving my meditation hygiene.\nMentally, I feel good. I took my standard 10 mg adderall & 300 mg gabapentin after waking, and I’ve had the energy & focus (and desire!) to write this report, which has taken several hours lol.\nI do also have this sensation of being drained, too. It’s hard to explain because it’s not really valence-negative or preventing me from action. It kind of feels like a flatness; my closest approximation is not a recreational drug or crash but how I feel if I’m late with my estrogen injection. But in any case, I do know I need to have patience with & take care of myself today.\nConclusion\nDamn! This bliss-stick is extremely powerful — not just in terms of how powerful its psychedelic grasp is, but in terms of the applicability of that power. I can see DMT helping me smooth out all sorts of specific (tactics-level) things about my life, and deliberately integrate all sorts of content, in addition to the sheer spiritual blastoff effects. A central theme in this XP is that feel of rounding out “angular” points of tension in mental representations, slipping down those parsimony gradients, massaging the joints of your mind.\nI do get the strong intuition that this is a substance to be taken seriously. I won’t be using it casually… (well, for the most part. We’ll see). It’s funny to me that I tried so many drugs so many years ago before finally trying DMT, but I’m honestly glad I’m getting to know the crown jewel at this point in my life, with many different avenues of life experience to synthesize for interpretation & integration.\nMy cart is running fairly low. I’ll be getting more. I think if I had really gone for it right away, I would have had a breakthrough, so I’ll probably go for it soon \nPeace! \n\nRelated trip report by Cube Flipper (pseudonym of an anonymous reader):\nVaping the Genderfluid: Exploring Gender Identity on DMT\nSome background on me: I’m in my early thirties, AMAB, somewhere on the autism spectrum (which mostly manifests as skin sensory issues), and a long time Qualia Computing reader.\nSometime last year, my “egg cracked”, to use the parlance of our day. I’d read in the past how autism and gender dysphoria were heavily correlated. I revisited events from my past and decided it was worth exploring whether or not some of my experiences could be explained by gender dysphoria. I suspected that leaning into a more feminine gender identity might feel more comfortable and help me to “vibe” better.\nI shaved my legs, got my ears pierced, and started adopting a more feminine identity internally. This felt not unlike flipping a Necker cube on myself from masculine to feminine. I figured out how to see a more female face in the mirror. I started to move differently. I experimented with my voice. I would mostly do this in social settings, though I’m not sure how noticeable it was from the outside.\n\n\nI even spent three months on estrogen at one point, hoping that its use would help with my sensory issues (it did), before discontinuing its use for a number of unrelated reasons. The phenomenological effects were too numerous to go into detail here; I hope to write up a detailed “HRT trip report” at a later date. Long story short, I found estrogen to be anti-dissociative – like the opposite of ketamine (this assessment is informed by Zinnia Jones’ writeup comparing the effects of HRT with Lamotrigine). My senses felt more tightly integrated – less skin sensitivity, less “noise”, less annoying prediction errors – it was euphoric.\nHowever, my gender identity still felt in flux, unstable. I wasn’t even sure ‘identity’ was a real thing – what is the qualia of identity?\nAnyway, I recently gained access to a DMT vape pen, and have been using it on a daily basis to perform a low level annealing on myself, usually in the mornings after a bit of exercise.\nI should describe my practice: I lie down, remove any uncomfortable clothing, and ensure my body is relaxed and in a symmetrical position with no muscles under tension. I take one or two puffs on the vape pen – not enough to see more than faint visuals – but enough to feel the bodily vibrations arise, settle, and crystallise throughout my body. I should be clear that my gender identity was not the focus of these experiences, high valence and annealing was.\n\nSource: Lehar’s 2003 Cartoon Epistemology\nI am a believer in Leharian force fields: Our sense of touch, bodily awareness, and space is embedded in something like a three-dimensional vector field. As we experience various stressors throughout our daily lives, various contractions, foldings, and distortions can work their way into the “force fields” which guide the way we move and the way we direct our attention. When I smoke DMT like this, I sometimes feel these contractions unfold themselves. This can be kind of unsettling at the time, but in the wake of these experiences I notice my awareness is more expanded and I feel I am navigating a much smoother, less crumpled “possibility space” as I go about my life. Notably, these “unfoldings” don’t tend to happen a second time after vaping DMT again afterwards.\nAdditionally, colours felt more vivid, and my senses felt brighter – not unlike how I felt on estrogen!\nI continued this practice for perhaps a couple of weeks. Something I began to notice was that I was no longer flipping the Necker cube on myself; I was no longer bothering to lean into the feminine identity I had been experimenting with in social settings.\nI theorise that the annealing process had drawn my self-model – a giant tree of priors – back towards the stable attractor of my pre-existing masculine identity. Imagine tuning the parameters on a slightly distorted Sierpinski pyramid, bringing it into alignment with itself. I felt comfortable with my masculinity again.\n\n\n\nI hope nobody misunderstands me, I don’t mean to say that if you are transgender DMT can draw you back to a pre-transition identity. Quite the contrary, I think DMT can grant you the bandwidth necessary to assess which identity feels most internally robust to you. It’s quite likely that estrogen also can give you the boost required to explore and stabilise your sense of identity.\nI had fun exploring my feminine side, and there’s parts of that experience which still stick with me; I still wear earrings and I still shave my legs (because it feels good… and it helps deal with sensory issues). I may yet return to these experiences someday.\nI’d discussed these experiences with Andrés a couple of days ago, and we both ran across u/ClarifyingCard’s spectacular writeup today. I hope she continues to enjoy the benefits of DMT!\n\nSee also:\nHigh-Valence Meditation – which provides a set of meditation instructions in order to explore the tight correspondence between symmetry and valence in one’s experiential fieldQRI‘s Guide to Writing Rigorous Reports of Exotic States of Consciousness – which provides a lot of helpful tips for how to describe exotic states of consciousness in scientifically useful ways, andEmergent Simplicity or A Toy Model of the 5-MeO-DMT Psychedelic Effect by Qualia Productions – which shows how complexity and information content in physical systems can sometimes be modulated in surprisingly simple ways\nAnd other high-quality qualia-rich trip reports:\n5-MeO-DMT Trip Report by Anonymous ReaderLucid LSD Trip Report from an Anonymous ReaderDetailed 2C-B Trip Report by an Anonymous ReaderRational 4-AcO-DMT Trip Report By An Anonymous ReaderTypical N,N-DMT Trip Progression According to an Anonymous ReaderSelf-Locatingly Uncertain Psilocybin Trip Report by an Anonymous ReaderHigh Valence 5-MeO-DMT + Nitrous Oxide Trip Report from an Anonymous Reader\n\nFeatured image source: Topics in nonlinear wave theory by G B Whitham (1979)\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/07/13/euphoric-dmt-trip-report-by-anonymous-reader-psychedelic-annealing-smooth-geometry-and-gender-transitioning-qualia/", "title": "Euphoric DMT Trip Report by Anonymous Reader: Psychedelic Annealing, Smooth Geometry, and Gender Transitioning Qualia", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-07-14T03:36:30+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=3", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6a9c1aef6139a31ed60767b1c74deee6", "summary": []}
{"text": "Meditation Retreat Report by an Anonymous Reader: Universal Harmony and Oscillatory Complementarity\n\nBy an anonymous reader (this was sent by someone who was formerly deeply skeptical of the Symmetry Theory of Valence. The experience described below made them reconsider QRI’s explanatory frameworks and paradigms. In their own words: “[this experience I] recently had made me think “hmm so maybe there _is_ something to the STV”).\n\nThere was a sequence of going back into old experiences, each of them somehow positive or negative. The very earliest one that came to mind was a memory of my mother talking to me with love and delight when I was maybe one year old. There was a sense that my mind and body had been in a particular kind of position when that had happened. Ever afterwards, they had been trying to shift themselves back into that same position, on the theory that the same internal configuration would recreate the same external environment and recreate the same experience of being loved.\nThere was a sense of the bodymind holding a pattern that was a snapshot of that moment of love, and that the bodymind had been trying to also align the external world into the same kind of a position, out of an understanding that the pattern could only be completed – the puzzle piece matching the rest of the puzzle – if the external world provided the right fit for the bodymind’s internal configuration, letting them interlock in the way that would recreate the old pattern.\nIn the moment of completely seeing this, there was an understanding of the wisdom that the stuck pattern held – it had correctly seen and recorded a facet of reality, of what I had been like and how that had gotten me love – and also of the fact that its vision had only captured an incomplete facet, with it being impossible to go back to being a baby and replay the same experiences. \nAs this was seen, seeing the pattern that the stuck energy had been trying to complete caused it to be completed, the parts interlocking once more. There was a sense of the stuck energy pattern being released and melding back into a pattern of universal harmony and love that could be felt in the body. There was an understanding that the stuck pattern had previously acted as a constraint, trying to repeatedly pull the bodymind into a particular configuration whenever possible in order to recreate the original harmonic pattern, when the harmonic pattern had actually been available all along.\nSomething shifted and the legs felt like they opened and spread out, a pull relaxing that the mind hadn’t even known was there.\nThere was a sense of tapping into the universal harmony that could now be felt in the body, as a stream of energy trying to run up from the root chakra to the top of the head. As the body tried to upright itself to align with the energy, it found more stuck patterns interrupting the flow, each of them associated with a past experience and a particular configuration of the bodymind that was at odds with the one that the stream was trying to upright the body to.\nThere was a seeing that the bodymind’s configuration would affect the bodyminds of the people around it, all other people also moving in a constant process of trying to recapture particular configurations, trying to pull their environment into shapes that would complete specific patterns. In seeing this, there was a sense of testing possibilities.  If this bodymind wanted to upright itself, what positions would that pull the bodies of others into? How would those positions constrain this body’s positions, and what was the shape that it would be pulled towards in turn?\nEach of those considerations brought up a new pattern of stuck energy, a time when the bodyminds of others had been in a particular position, and this bodymind had learned to adapt or avoid a particular position in response. Whenever such patterns were found, they temporarily turned into reality, with the bodymind reliving the experience and seeing both how the pattern held within a piece of wisdom – a true fact about what reality had been like – and how that pattern was at the same time incomplete and unintegrated with the rest of the bodymind’s knowing.\nSometimes that lack of integration caused the pattern’s understanding to be a mistake overall. There were situations when an energy pattern had been scanning for signs of others reacting negatively and stored that as the primary interpretation of the experience, seeing only that and missing out on the way that the thing had been too minor to matter, or missing out on the way that others had been able to see the positive aspects as well.\nThere was a sense that the act of trying to assume specific configurations required selectively taking in information, so as to not see things that would destabilize the desired postures. There was a sense that the content of consciousness gets selectively filtered so as to create particular mindstates, to allow certain configurations to be reliably recreated.\nThere were fears around the possibility of being seen, a sense that others would not necessarily take well to a bodymind that was standing upright, and would try to bring it back down. There was a sense that the configurations of their bodyminds had constantly been pulling this bodymind back into more cramped positions, as a way for it to stay safe.\nThere was a sense that many of the configurations the bodymind has been trying to contort itself into have been physically impossible, different people requiring different physical positions that have been impossible to satisfy at once. There was a thought that it’s no wonder that this bodymind has been grinding teeth at night, given all the contradictory expressions that the jaw and the face have been trying to take at once. \nThere was also a sense of how some other people’s erratic behavior had been a result of them trying to twist themselves into impossible sets of overlapping configurations. There was a sense that bodyminds will allow the tension of the physically incompatible postures to tear themselves apart, so that different parts of the whole can get split off to adopt different postures at once.\nThere was a sense of people occasionally catching from the corner of their eye a glimpse of something that a part of them thinks they absolutely cannot be allowed to see, their bodymind instantly making a sharp angle to rotate away from the sight of it and blocking all line of vision, in a single movement of pure terror.\nThere was a perception that despite everything, the positions of other people didn’t need to matter, and that if this bodymind could tap into the universal resonance of harmonious energy, then that resonance would pull at the body stronger than any other bodyminds can. \nThere was a sense that if the bodymind tapped into the universal resonance, it wouldn’t need to contort itself to others, but would rather dance together with others who were part of the same resonance, standing effortlessly upright at all times if it so desired.\n—\nThe bodymind tries again to align with the resonance, to find a stable flow of energy going up from the pelvis through the body. \nAs stuck energies stored in different parts of the body are released, those parts test whether the rest of the body is capable of holding their full energy. The body parts trash against their restraints, then relax as they become assured that it is safe to do so. Waves of laughter and contented sighs bubble up through the system, a flavor like warm pleasant honey. \nThere’s a seeing that all the different holds and stuck energies have been attempts to capture the universal resonance and that the way to relax them is to lean into them until they meld back into the resonance, each of their energies containing a fragment of home that shows the way back. \nAs one leans into them they each become more like reality, are reality, and then there is a recollection and recognition of their essential truth as it’s merged into the whole. Each such merging allows one constraint to be released, for the dynamic system that is the bodymind to move more fluidly between positions, no longer forced to twist and contort itself into a particular rigid shape whenever it comes near to that region of configuration space. \nRather it can do what bodyminds exist to do, weave a smooth and graceful path between configurations that make sense in any given situation, dancing in a way that still repeats specific configurations but with a fluidness that is every human’s birthright. \nTo have too many constraints is to be torn apart; to have no constraints is to be a newborn incapable of action; to have just the right amount of constraints, pulling the bodymind into configurations that are the right expressions of its essential self, is to be a mature and competent adult.\nAs this happens, it is as if resonance patterns spread across the body, connecting parts that were previously disconnected. The feet start drumming together, remembering that they are brothers who can do their own thing. The throat spontaneously joins the chants and the song of the people around. The pelvis finds more of its energy, though large parts of it still feel blocked off.\nAs constraints are dropped and the bodymind manages to better tap into the universal harmony, it begins looking for a new shape, one that would be harmonious both with the universal resonance and the bodymind’s own pattern of energy. Parts of the body try tuning themselves into the song and music and try what it’s like to be in harmony with the universal resonance, what it’s like to generate their own resonance patterns that are separate from the universal resonance but harmonious with each other, how to create something of one’s own that combines with that which is not one’s own. The bodymind explores a role and an identity as a bard-shaman of earth, song and myth, sees where parts of that would fit and where they would not.\nThere is a sense of harmonious delight and love, of everyone in the room being connected to the same universal resonance that is pulling everyone together, each of them also contributing a piece of their own unique essence into the whole. There is an experience of seeing this bodymind from the outside, and a feeling of it being beautiful and lovable. These new patterns are absorbed into the bodymind to act as the foundation for a new way of being. \n\nSee Also:\nHealing Trauma with Neural Annealing might help explain this quote: “There was a sense that the act of trying to assume specific configurations required selectively taking in information, so as to not see things that would destabilize the desired postures.” In particular, note the proposed duality between physiological dissonance and resisting information discussed in that article (special emphasis on “denial”).Buddhist Annealing: Wireheading Done Right with the Seven Factors of Awakening (video). This might help explain: “As stuck energies stored in different parts of the body are released, those parts test whether the rest of the body is capable of holding their full energy.” Namely, that one key aspect of equanimity is increasing impedance matching between various parts of the nervous system so that one part can process the stress stored in another one.Non-Linear Wave Computing: Vibes, Gestalts, and Realms. This video provides a conceptual framework capable of making sense of “stuck patterns” that “need to be completed by environmental circumstances”. In brief, these are stored non-linear patterns of resonance that require their oscillatory complement in order to become harmonious. Dissolving them allows you to instead rely on the natural harmonics of your nervous system and thus to not be dependent on external circumstances for positive valence.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/07/03/meditation-retreat-report-by-an-anonymous-reader-universal-harmony-and-oscillatory-complementarity/", "title": "Meditation Retreat Report by an Anonymous Reader: Universal Harmony and Oscillatory Complementarity", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-07-04T03:10:14+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=3", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "33d13c83627bb6bac83eca1c26bfb055", "summary": []}
{"text": "Digital Computers Will Remain Unconscious Until They Recruit Physical Fields for Holistic Computing Using Well-Defined Topological Boundaries\n\n[Epistemic Status: written off the top of my head, thought about it for over a decade]\nWhat do we desire for a theory of consciousness? \nWe want it to explain why and how the structure of our experience is computationally relevant. Why would nature bother to wire, not only information per se, but our experiences in richly structured ways that seem to track task-relevant computation (though at times in elusive ways)?\nI think we can derive an explanation here. It is both very theoretically satisfying and literally mind-bending. This allows us to rule out vast classes of computing systems as having no more than computationally trivial conscious experiences.\nTL;DR: We have richly textured bound experiences precisely because the boundaries that individuate us also allow us to act as individuals in many ways. This individual behavior can reflect features of the state of the entire organism in energy-efficient ways. Evolution can recruit this individual, yet holistic, behavior due to its computational advantages. We think that the boundary might be the result of topological segmentation in physical fields.\n\n\nMarr’s Levels of Analysis and the Being/Form Boundary\nOne lens we can use to analyze the possibility of sentience in systems is this conceptual boundary between “being” and “form”. Here “being” refers to the interiority of things- their intrinsic likeness. “Form” on the other hand refers to how they appear from the outside. Where you place the being/form boundary influences how you make sense of the world around you. One factor that seems to be at play for where you place the being/form boundary is your implicit background assumptions about consciousness. In particular, how you think of consciousness in relation to Marr’s levels of analysis:\nIf you locate consciousness at the computational (or behavioral) level, then the being/form boundary might be computation/behavior. In other words, sentience simply is the performance of certain functions in certain contexts.If you locate it at the algorithmic level, then the being/form boundary might become algorithm/computation. Meaning that what matters for the inside is the algorithm, whereas the outside (the form) is the function the algorithm produces.And if you locate it at the implementation level, you will find that you identify being with specific physical situations (such as phases of matter and energy) and form as the algorithms that they can instantiate. In turn, the being/form boundary looks like crystals & bubbles & knots of matter and energy vs. how they can be used from the outside to perform functions for each other.\nHow you approach the question of whether a given chatbot is sentient will drastically depend on where you place the being/form boundary.\n\n\nMany arguments against the sentience of particular computer systems are based on algorithmic inadequacy. This, for example, takes the form of choosing a current computational theory of mind (e.g. global workspace theory) and checking if the algorithm at play has the bare bones you’d expect a mind to have. This is a meaningful kind of analysis. And if you locate the being/form boundary at the algorithmic level then this is the only kind of analysis that seems to make sense. \nWhat stops people from making successful arguments concerning the implementation level of analysis is confusion about the function for consciousness. So which physical systems are or aren’t conscious seems to be inevitably an epiphenomenalist construct. Meaning that drawing boundaries around systems with specific functions is an inherently fuzzy activity and any criteria we choose for whether a system is performing a certain function will be at best a matter of degree (and opinion).\nThe way of thinking about phenomenal boundaries I’m presenting in this post will escape this trap.\nBut before we get there, it’s important to point out the usefulness of reasoning about the algorithmic layer:\nAlgorithmic Structuring as a Constraint \nI think that most people who believe that digital sentience is possible will concede that at least in some situations The Chinese Room is not conscious. The extreme example is when the content of the Chinese Room turns out to be literally a lookup table. Here a simple algorithmic concern is sufficient to rule out its sentience: a lookup table does not have an inner state! And what you do, from the point of view of its inner workings, is the same no matter if you relabel which input goes with what output. Whatever is inscribed in the lookup table (with however many replies and responses as part of the next query) is not something that the lookup table structurally has access to! The lookup table is, in an algorithmic sense, blind to what it is and what it does*. It has no mirror into itself.\nAlgorithmic considerations are important. To not be a lookup table, we must have at least some internal representations. We must consider constraints on “meaningful experience”, such as probably having at least some of, or something analogous to: a decent number of working memory slots (and types), a good size of visual field, resolution of color in terms of Just Noticeable Differences, and so on. If your algorithm doesn’t even try to “render” its knowledge in some information-rich format, then it may lack the internal representations needed to really “understand”. Put another way: imagine that your experience is like a Holodeck. Ask the question of what is the lower bound on the computational throughput of each sensory modality and their interrelationships. Then see if the algorithm you think can “understand” has internal representations of that kind at all.\nSteel-manning algorithmic concerns involves taking a hard look at the number of degrees of freedom of our inner world-simulation (in e.g. free-wheeling hallucinations) and making sure that there are implicit or explicit internal representations with roughly similar computational horsepower as those sensory channels.\nI think that this is actually an easy constraint to meet relative to the challenge of actually creating sentient machines. But it’s a bare minimum. You can’t let yourself be fooled by a lookup table.\nIn practice, the AI researchers will just care about metrics like accuracy, meaning that they will use algorithmic systems with complex internal representations like ours only if it computationally pays off to do so! (Hanson in Age of EM makes the bet it that it is worth simulating a whole high-performing human’s experience; Scott points out we’d all be on super-amphetamines). Me? I’m extremely skeptical that our current mindstates are algorithmically (or even thermodynamically!) optimal for maximally efficient work. But even if normal human consciousness or anything remotely like it was such a global optimum that any other big computational task routes around to it as an instrumental goal, I still think we would need to check if the algorithm does in fact create adequate internal representations before we assign sentience to it. \nThankfully I don’t think we need to go there. I think that the most crucial consideration is that we can rule out a huge class of computing systems ever being conscious by identifying implementation-level constraints for bound experiences. Forget about the algorithmic level altogether for a moment. If your computing system cannot build a bound experience from the bottom up in such a way that it has meaningful holistic behavior, then no matter what you program into it, you will only have “mind dust” at best.\nWhat We Want: Meaningful Boundaries\nIn order to solve the boundary problem we want to find “natural” boundaries in the world to scaffold off of those. We take on the starting assumption that the universe is a gigantic “field of consciousness” and the question of how atoms come together to form experiences becomes how this field becomes individuated into experiences like ours. So we need to find out how boundaries arise in this field. But these are not just any boundary, but boundaries that are objective, frame-invariant, causally-significant, and computationally-useful. That is, boundaries you can do things with. Boundaries that explain why we are individuals and why creating individual bound experiences was evolutionarily adaptive; not only why it is merely possible but also advantageous.\nMy claim is that boundaries with such properties are possible, and indeed might explain a wide range of puzzles in psychology and neuroscience. The full conceptually satisfying explanation results from considering two interrelated claims and understanding what they entail together. The two interrelated claims are:\n(1) Topological boundaries are frame-invariant and objective features of physics\n(2) Such boundaries are causally significant and offer potential computational benefits\nI think that these two claims combined have the potential to explain the phenomenal binding/boundary problem (of course assuming you are on board with the universe being a field of consciousness). They also explain why evolution was even capable of recruiting bound experiences for anything. Namely, that the same mechanism that logically entails individuation (topological boundaries) also has mathematical features useful for computation (examples given below). Our individual perspectives on the cosmos are the result of such individuality being a wrinkle in consciousness (so to speak) having non-trivial computational power.\nIn technical terms, I argue that a satisfactory solution to the boundary problem (1) avoids strong emergence, (2) sidesteps the hard problem of consciousness, (3) prevents the complication of epiphenomenalism, and (4) is compatible with the modern scientific world picture.\nAnd the technical reason why topological segmentation provides the solution is that with it: (1) no strong emergence is required because behavioral holism is only weakly emergent on the laws of physics, (2) we sidestep the hard problem via panpsychism, (3) phenomenal binding is not epiphenomenal because the topological segments have holistic causal effects (such that evolution would have a reason to select for them), and (4) we build on top of the laws of physics rather than introduce new clauses to account for what happens in the nervous system. In this post you’ll get a general walkthrough of the solution. The fully rigorous, step by step, line of argumentation will be presented elsewhere. Please see the video for the detailed breakdown of alternative solutions to the binding/boundary problem and why they don’t work.\nHolistic (Field) Computing \nA very important move that we can make in order to explore this space is to ask ourselves if the way we think about a concept is overly restrictive. In the case of computation, I would claim that the concept is either applied extremely vaguely or that making it rigorous makes its application so narrow that it loses relevance. In the former case we have the tendency for people to equate consciousness with computation in a very abstract level (such as “resource gathering” and “making predictions” and “learning from mistakes”). In the latter we have cases where computation is defined in terms of computable functions. The conceptual mistake to avoid is to think that just because you can compute a function with a Turing machine, that therefore you are creating the same inner (bound or not) physical states along the way. And while yes, it would be possible to approximate the field behavior we will discuss below with a Turing machine, it would be computationally inefficient (as it would need to simulate a massively parallel system) and lack the bound inner states (and their computational speedups) needed for sentience.\nThe (conceptual engineering) move I’m suggesting we make is to first of all enrich our conception of computation. To notice that we’ve lived with an impoverished notion all along.\nI suggest that our conception of computation needs to be broad enough to include bound states as possible meaningful inputs, internal steps and representations, and outputs. This enriched conception of computation would be capable of making sense of computing systems that work with very unusual inputs and outputs. For instance, it has no problem thinking of a computer that takes as input chaotic superfluid helium and returns soap bubble clusters as outputs. The reason to use such exotic medium is not to add extra steps, but in fact to remove extra steps by letting physics do the hard work for you.\n\n\n(source)\nTo illustrate just one example of what you can do with this enriched paradigm of computing I am trying to present to you, let’s now consider the hidden computational power of soap films. Say that you want to connect three poles with a wire. And you want to minimize how much wire you use. One option is to use trigonometry and linear algebra, another one is to use numerical simulations. But an elegant alternative is to create a model of the poles between two parallel planes and then submerge the structure in soapy water.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLetting the natural energy-minimizing property of soap bubbles find the shortest connection between three poles is an interesting way of performing a computation. It is uniquely adapted to the problem without needing tweaks or adjustments – the self-organizing principle will work the same (within reason) wherever you place the poles. You are deriving computational power from physics in a very customized way that nonetheless requires no tuning or external memory. And it’s all done simply by each point of the surface wanting to minimize its tension. Any non-minimal configuration will have potential energy, which then gets transformed into kinetic energy and makes it wobble, and as it wobbles it radiates out its excess energy until it reaches a configuration where it doesn’t wobble anymore. So you have to make the solution of your problem precisely a non-wobbly state!\nIn this way of thinking about computation, an intrinsic part of the question about what kind of thing a computation is will depend on what physical processes were utilized to implement it. In essence, we can (and I think should) enrich our very conception of computation to include what kind of internal bound states the system is utilizing, and the extent to which the holistic physical effects of such inner states are computationally trivial or significant.\nWe can call this paradigm of computing “Holistic Computing”. \nFrom Soap Bubbles to ISING-Solvers Meeting Schedulers Implemented with Lasers\nLet’s make a huge jump from soap water-based computation. A much more general case that is nonetheless in the same family as using soap bubbles for compute, is having a way to efficiently solve the ISING problem. In particular, having an analog physics-based annealing method in this case comes with unique computational benefits: it turns out that non-linear optics can do this very efficiently. You are in a certain way using the universe’s very frustration with the problem (don’t worry I don’t think it suffers) to get it solved. Here is an amazing recent example: Ising Machines: Non-Von Neumann Computing with Nonlinear Optics – Alireza Marandi – 6/7/2019 (presented at Caltech).\n\n\n\nThe person who introduces Marandi in the video above is Kwabena Boahen, with whom I had the honor to take his course at Stanford (and play with the neurogrid!). Back in 2012 something like the neurogrid seemed like the obvious path to AGI. Today, ironically, people imagine scaling transformers is all you need. Tomorrow, we’ll recognize the importance of holistic field behavior and the boundary problem.\nOne way to get there on the computer science front will be by first demonstrating a niche set of applications where e.g. non-linear optics ISING solvers vastly outperform GPUs for energy minimization tasks in random graphs. But as the unique computational benefits become better understood, we will sooner or later switch from thinking about how to solve our particular problem, to thinking about how we can cast our particular problem as an ISING/energy minima problem so that physics solves the problem for us. It’s like having a powerful computer but it only speaks a very specific alien language. If you can translate your problem into its own terms, it’ll solve it at lightning speed. If you can’t, it will be completely useless.\nIntelligence: Collecting and Applying Self-Organizing Principles\nThis takes us to the question of whether general intelligence is possible without switching to a Holistic Computing paradigm. Can you have generally intelligent (digital) chatbots? In some senses, yes. In perhaps the most significant sense, no.\nIntelligence is a contentious topic (see here David Pearce’s helpful breakdown of 6 of its facets). One particular facet of intelligence that I find enormously fascinating and largely under-explored is the ability to make sense of new modes of consciousness and then recruit them for computational and aesthetic purposes. THC and music production have a long history of synergy, for instance. A composer who successfully uses THC to generate musical ideas others find novel and meaningful is applying this sort of intelligence. THC-induced states of consciousness are largely dysfunctional for a lot of tasks. But someone who utilizes the sort of intelligence (or meta-intelligence) I’m pointing to will pay attention to the features of experience that do have some novel use and lean on those. THC might impair working memory, but it also expands and stretches musical space. Intensifies reverb, softens rough edges in heart notes, increases emotional range, and adds synesthetic brown noise (which can enhance stochastic resonance). With wit and determination (and co-morbid THC/music addiction), musical artists exploit the oddities of THC musicality to great effect, arguably some much more successfully than others. \nThe kind of reframe that I’d like you to consider is that we are all in fact something akin to these stoner musicians. We were born with this qualia resonator with lots of cavities, kinds of waves, levels of coupling, and so on. And it took years for us to train it to make adaptive representations of the environment. Along the way, we all (typically) develop a huge repertoire of self-organizing principles we deploy to render what we believe is happing out there in the world. The reason why an experience of “meditation on the wetness of water” can be incredibly powerful is not because you are literally tuning into the resonant frequency of the water around you and in you. No, it’s something very different. You are creating the conditions for the self-organizing principle that we already use to render our experiences with water to take over as the primary organizer of our experience. Since this self-organizing principle does not, by its nature, generate a center, full absorption into “water consciousness” also has a no-self quality to it. Same with the other elements. Excitingly, this way of thinking also opens up our mind about how to craft meditations from first principles. Namely, by creating a periodic table of self-organizing principles and then systematically trying combinations until we identify the laws of qualia chemistry.\nYou have to come to realize that your brain’s relationship with self-organizing principles is like that of a Pokémon trainer and his Pokémon (ideally in a situation where Pokémon play the Glass Bead Game with each other rather than try to hurt each other– more on that later). Or perhaps like that of a mathematician and clever tricks for proofs, or a musician and rhythmic patterns, and so on. Your brain is a highly tamed inner space qualia warp drive usually working at 1% or less. It has stores of finely balanced and calibrated self-organizing principles that will generate the right atmospheric change to your experience at the drop of a hat. We are usually unaware of how many moods, personalities, contexts, and feelings of the passage of time there are – your brain tries to learn them all so it has them in store for whenever needed. All of a sudden: haze and rain, unfathomable wind, mercury resting motionless. What kind of qualia chemistry did your brain just use to try to render those concepts?\nWe are using features of consciousness -and the self-organizing principles it affords- to solve problems all the time without explicitly modeling this fact. In my conception of sentient intelligence, being able to recruit self-organizing principles of consciousness for meaningful computation is a pillar of any meaningfully intelligent mind. I think that largely this is what we are doing when humans become extremely good at something (from balancing discs to playing chess and empathizing with each other). We are creating very specialized qualia by finding the right self-organizing principles and then purifying/increasing their quality. To do an excellent modern day job that demands constraint satisfaction at multiple levels of analysis at once likely requires us to form something akin to High-Entropy Alloys of Consciousness. That is, we are usually a judiciously chosen mixture of many self-organizing principles balanced just right to produce a particular niche effect. \nMeta-Intelligence\nDavid Pearce’s conception of Full-spectrum Superintelligence is inspiring because it takes into account the state-space of consciousness (and what matters) in judging the quality of a certain intelligence in addition to more traditional metrics. Indeed, as another key conceptual engineering move, I suggest that we can and need to enrich our conception of intelligence in addition to our conception of computation.\nSo here is my attempt at enriching it further and adding another perspective. One way we can think of intelligence is as the ability to map a problem to a self-organizing principle that will “solve it for you” and having the capacity to instantiate that self-organizing principle. In other words, intelligence is, at least partly, about efficiency: you are successful to the extent that you can take a task that would generally require a large number of manual operations (which take time, effort, and are error-prone) and solve it in an “embodied” way.\nUltimately, a complex system like the one we use for empathy mixes both serial and parallel self-organizing principles for computation. Empathy is enormously cognitively demanding rather than merely a personality trait (e.g. agreeableness), as it requires a complex mirroring capacity that stores and processes information in efficient ways. Exploring exotic states of consciousness is even more computationally demanding. Both are error-prone.\nSuccinctly, I suggest we consider:\nOne key facet of intelligence is the capacity to solve problems by breaking them down into two distinct subproblems: (1) find a suitable self-organizing principle you can instantiate reliably, and (2) find out how to translate your problem to a format that our self-organizing principle can be pointed at so that it solves it for us.\nHere is a concrete example. If you want to disentangle a wire, you can try to first put it into a discrete datastructure like a graph, and then get the skeleton of the knot in a way that allows you to simplify it with Reidemeister moves (and get lost in the algorithmic complexity of the task). Or you could simply follow the lead of Yu et al. 2021 and make the surfaces repulsive and let this principle solve the problem for you. \n\n\n\n\n\n(source)\nThese repulsion-based disentanglement algorithm are explained in this video. Importantly, how to do this effectively still needs fine tuning. The method they ended up using was much faster than the (many) other ones tried (a Full-Spectrum Superintellligence would be able to “wiggle” the wires a bit if they got stuck, of course):\n\n\n\n(source)\nThis is hopefully giving you new ways of thinking about computation and intelligence. The key point to realize is that these concepts are not set in stone, and to a large extent may limit our thinking about sentience and intelligence. \nNow, I don’t believe that if you simulate a self-organizing principle of this sort you will get a conscious mind. The whole point of using physics to solve your problem is that in some cases you get better performance than algorithmically representing a physical system and then using that simulation to instantiate self-organizing principles. Moreover physics simulations, to the extent they are implemented in classical computers, will fail to generate the same field boundaries that would be happening in the physical system. To note, physics-inspired simulations like [Yu et al 2021] are nonetheless enormously helpful to illustrate how to think of problem-solving with a massively parallel analog system. \nAre Neural Cellular Automata Conscious?\nThe computational success of Neural Cellular Automata is primarily algorithmic. In essence, digitally implemented NCA are exploring a paradigm of selection and amplification of self-organizing principles, which is indeed a very different way of thinking about computation. But critically any NCA will still lack sentience. The main reasons are that they (a) don’t use physical fields with weak downward causation, and (b) don’t have a mechanism for binding/boundary making. Digitally-implemented cellular automata may have complex emergent behavior, but they generate no meaningful boundaries (i.e. objective, frame-invariant, causally-significant, and computationally-useful). That said, the computational aesthetic of NCA can be fruitfully imported to the study of Holistic Field Computing, in that the techniques for selecting and amplifying self-organizing principles already solved for NCAs may have analogues in how the brain recruits physical self-organizing principles for computation.\nExotic States of Consciousness\nPerhaps one of the most compelling demonstrations of the possible zoo (or jungle) of self-organizing principles out of which your brain is recruiting but a tiny narrow range is to pay close attention to a DMT trip.\nDMT states of consciousness are computationally non-trivial on many fronts. It is difficult to emphasize how enriched the set of experiential building blocks becomes in such states. Their scientific significance is hard to overstate. Importantly, the bulk of the computational power on DMT is dedicated to trying to make the experience feel good and not feel bad. The complexity involved in this task is often overwhelming. But one could envision a DMT-like state in which some parameters have been stabilized in order to recruit standardized self-organizing principles available only in a specific region of the energy-information landscape. I think that cataloguing the precise mathematical properties of the dynamics of attention and awareness on DMT will turn out to have enormous _computational_ value. And a lot of this computational value will generally be pointed towards aesthetic goals.\nTo give you a hint of what I’m talking about: A useful QRI model (indeed, algorithmic reduction) of the phenomenology of DMT is that it (a) activates high-frequency metronomes that shake your experience and energize it with a high-frequency vibe, and (b) a new medium of wave propagation gets generated that allows very disparate parts of one’s experience to interact with one another.\n\n3D Space Group (CEV on low dose DMT)\nAt a sufficient dose, DMT’s secondary effect also makes your experience feel sort of “wet” and “saturated”. Your whole being can feel mercurial and liquidy (cf: Plasmatis and Jim Jam). A friend speculates that’s what it’s like for an experience to be one where everything is touching everything else (all at once).\nThere are many Indra’s Net-type experiences in this space. In brief, experiences where “each part reflects every other part” are an energy minimum that also reduces prediction errors. And there is a fascinating non-trivial connection with the Free Energy Principle, where experiences that minimize internal prediction errors may display a lot of self-similarity.\nTo a first approximation, I posit that the complex geometry of DMT experiences are indeed the non-linearities of the DMT-induced wave propagation medium that appear when it is sufficiently energized (so that it transitions from the linear to the non-linear regime). In other words, the complex hallucinations are energized patterns of non-linear resonance trying to radiate out their excess energy. Indeed, as you come down you experience the phenomenon of condensation of shapes of qualia.\nNow, we currently don’t know what computational problems this uncharted cornucopia of self-organizing principles could solve efficiently. The situation is analogous to that of the ISING Solver discussed above: we have an incredibly powerful alien computer that will do wonders if we can speak its language, and nothing useful otherwise. Yes, DMT’s computational power is an alien computer in search of a problem that will fit its technical requirements.\nVibe-To-Shape-And-Back\nMichael Johnson, Selen Atasoy, and Steven Lehar all have shaped my thinking about resonance in the nervous system. Steven Lehar in particular brought to my attention non-linear resonance as a principle of computation. In essays like The Constructive Aspect of Visual Perception he presents a lot of visual illusions for which non-linear resonance works as a general explanatory principle (and then in The Grand Illusion he reveals how his insights were informed by psychonautic exploration).\nOne of the cool phenomenological observations Lehar made based on his exploration with DXM was that each phenomenal object has its own resonant frequency. In particular, each object is constructed with waves interfering with each other at a high-enough energy that they bounce off each other (i.e. are non-linear). The relative vibration of the phenomenal objects is a function of the frequencies of resonance of the waves of energy bouncing off each other that are constructing the objects.\nIn this way, we can start to see how a “vibe” can be attributed to a particular phenomenal object. In essence, long intervals will create lower resonant frequencies. And if you combine this insight with QRI paradigms, you see how the vibe of an experience can modulate the valence (e.g. soft ADSR envelopes and consonance feeling pleasant, for instance). Indeed, on DMT you get to experience the high-dimensional version of music theory, where the valence of a scene is a function of the crazy-complex network of pairwise interactions between phenomenal objects with specific vibratory characteristics. Give thanks to annealing because tuning this manually would be a nightmare. \nBut then there is the “global” vibe…\nTopological Pockets\nSo far I’ve provided examples of how Holistic Computing enriches our conception of intelligence, computing, and how it even shows up in our experience. But what I’ve yet to do is connect this with meaningful boundaries, as we set ourselves to do. In particular, I haven’t explained why Holistic Computing would arise out of topological boundaries.\nFor the purpose of this essay I’m defining a topological segment (or pocket) to be a region that can’t be expanded further without this becoming false: every point in the region locally belongs to the same connected space.\nThe Balloons’ Case\nIn the case of balloons this cashes out as: a topological segment is one where each point can go to any other point without having to go through connector points/lines/planes. It’s essentially the set of contiguous surfaces.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNow, each of these pockets can have both a rich set of connections to other pockets as well as intricate internal boundaries. The way we could justify Computational Holism being relevant here is that the topological pockets trap energy, and thus allow the pocket to vibrate in ways that express a lot of holistic information. Each contiguous surface makes a sound that represents its entire shape, and thus behaves as a unit in at least this way.\nThe General Case\nAn important note here is that I am not claiming that (a) all topological boundaries can be used for Holistic Computing, or (b) to have Holistic Computing you need to have topological boundaries. Rather, I’m claiming that the topological segmentation responsible for individuating experiences does have applications for Holistic Computing and that this conceptually makes sense and is why evolution bothered to make us conscious. But for the general case, you probably do get quite a bit of both Holistic Computing without topological segmentation and vice versa. For example an LC circuit can be used for Holistic Computing on the basis of its steady analog resonance, but I’m not sure if it creates a topological pocket in the EM fields per se.\nAt this stage of the research we don’t have a leading candidate for the precise topological feature of fields responsible for this. But the explanation space is promising based on being able to satisfy theoretical constraints that no other theory we know of can.\nBut I can nonetheless provide a proof of concept for how a topological pocket does come with really impactful holism. Let’s dive in!\nGetting Holistic Behavior Out of a Topological Pocket\nCreating a topological pocket may be consequential in one of several ways. One option for getting holistic behavior arises if you can “trap” energy in the pocket. As a consequence, you will energize its harmonics. The particular way the whole thing vibrates is a function of the entire shape at once. So from the inside, every patch now has information about the whole (namely, by the vibration it feels!).**\n\n(image source)\nOne possible overarching self-organizing principle that the entire pocket may implement is valence-gradient ascent. In particular, some configurations of the field are more pleasant than others and this has to do with the complexity of the global vibe. Essentially, the reason no part of it wants to be in a pocket with certain asymmetries, is because those asymmetries actually make themselves known everywhere within the pocket by how the whole thing vibrates. Therefore, for the same reason a soap bubble can become spherical by each point on the surface trying to locally minimize tension, our experiences can become symmetrical and harmonious by having each “point” in them trying to maximize its local valence.\nSelf Mirroring\n\nFrom Lehar’s Cartoon Epistemology\nAnd here we arrive at perhaps one of the craziest but coolest aspects of Holistic Computing I’ve encountered. Essentially, if we go to the non-linear regime, then the whole vibe is not merely just the weighted sum of the harmonics of the system. Rather, you might have waves interfere with each other in a concentrated fashion in the various cores/clusters, and in turn these become non-linear structures that will try to radiate out their energy. And to maximize valence there needs to be a harmony between the energy coming in and out of these dense non-linearities. In our phenomenology this may perhaps point to our typical self-consciousness. In brief, we have an internal avatar that “reflects” the state of the whole! We are self-mirroring machines! Now this is really non-trivial (and non-linear) Holistic Computing.\nCut From the Same Fabric\nSo here is where we get to the crux of the insight. Namely, that weakly emergent topological changes can simultaneously have non-trivial causal/computational effects while also solving the boundary problem. We avoid strong emergence but still get a kind of ontological emergence: since consciousness is being cut out of one huge fabric of consciousness, we don’t ever need strong emergence in the form of “consciousness out of the blue all of a sudden”. What you have instead is a kind of ontological birth of an individual. The boundary legitimately created a new being, even if in a way the total amount of consciousness is the same. This is of course an outrageous claim (that you can get “individuals” by e.g. twisting the electric field in just the right way). But I believe the alternatives are far crazier once you understand what they entail. \nIn a Nutshell\nTo summarize, we can rule out any of the current computational systems implementing AI algorithms to have anything but trivial consciousness. If there are topological pockets created by e.g. GPUs/TPUs, they are epiphenomenal – the system is designed so that only the local influences it has hardcoded can affect the behavior at each step.\nThe reason the brain is different is that it has open avenues for solving the boundary problem. In particular, a topological segmentation of the EM field would be a satisfying option, as it would simultaneously give us both holistic field behavior (computationally useful) and a genuine natural boundary. It extends the kind of model explored by Johnjoe McFadden (Conscious Electromagnetic Information Field) and Susan Pockett (Consciousness Is a Thing, Not a Process). They (rightfully) point out that the EM field can solve the binding problem. The boundary problem, in turn, emerges. With topological boundaries, finally, you can get meaningful boundaries (objective, frame-invariant, causally-significant, and computationally-useful).\nThis conceptual framework both clarifies what kind of system is at minimum required for sentience, and also opens up a research paradigm for systematically exploring topological features of the fields of physics and their plausible use by the nervous system.\n\n* See the “Self Mirroring” section to contrast the self-blindness of a lookup table and the self-awareness of sentient beings.\n** More symmetrical shapes will tend to have more clean resonant modes. So to the extent that symmetry tracks fitness on some level (e.g. ability to shed off entropy), then quickly estimating the spectral complexity of an experience can tell you how far it is from global symmetry and possibly health (explanation inspired by: Johnson’s Symmetry Theory of Homeostatic Regulation).\n\nSee also:\nphysicalism.com by David PearceAgainst Functionalism by Michael JohnsonThe Binding Problem by Steven LeharLots of links on LaMDA / Key questions about artificial sentience: an opinionated guide by Robert LongNon-Linear Wave Computing: Vibes, Gestalts, and Realms on my YouTube channel\n\nMany thanks to Michael Johnson, David Pearce, Anders & Maggie, and Steven Lehar for many discussions about the boundary/binding problem. Thanks to Anders & Maggie and to Mike for discussions about valence in this context. And thanks to Mike for offering a steel-man of epiphenomenalism. Many thank yous to all our supporters! Much love!\nInfinite bliss!\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/06/19/digital-computers-will-remain-unconscious-until-they-recruit-physical-fields-for-holistic-computing-using-well-defined-topological-boundaries/", "title": "Digital Computers Will Remain Unconscious Until They Recruit Physical Fields for Holistic Computing Using Well-Defined Topological Boundaries", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-06-20T06:36:34+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=3", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "4c1c35e99eeaf8dedcef96dfffa0bdc0", "summary": []}
{"text": "DMT and Hyperbolic Geometry: 1 Million Views Special\n\nMy 2019 presentation The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences just hit one million views on YouTube:\n\n\nThe casual QRI enjoyer may get the impression that this video encapsulates our current understanding of the phenomenology of DMT. The dedicated QRI reader/watcher, however, knows that we are light-years ahead in our understanding relative to where we were at the time. So I figured that this would be a good opportunity to highlight some of the DMT-specific insights that we have presented since that video came out. But before I do so, let me briefly discuss why this work is actually advancing our understanding (unlike most psychedelic phenomenology work out there) and then summarize some of the core points presented in that video so that we are all on the same page before moving on to the new models:\n\nIntroduction: What’s Useful Phenomenology?\nAt QRI we have put a lot of effort into characterizing what it means to describe an exotic state of consciousness in a way that is actually useful (see our guide for how to write good trip reports). Here are some key points:\nMost people who try to make sense of the DMT-induced state of consciousness focus on the intentional content (the narrative) of the experience, which isn’t actually that helpful (consider how both a mescaline trip and a DMT trip can give rise to a hallucination about e.g. “meeting a dragon in another dimension”, yet the texture of such experiences will be very different!). Many others obsess over the question of whether what one experiences on DMT has a reality outside your brain or not (cf. Andrew Zuckerman has made it easy for you to test a DMT prime factorization experiment, were you to be so inclined). While interesting, I don’t think these approaches really advance our understanding very much; they in fact leave an enormous amount of low-hanging fruit uncollected. \nInstead, a more fruitful approach is to focus on describing what we call the phenomenal character of the experience (yes, the dragon is important, but please also tell us how the scales on the skin of the dragon were arranged, whether they followed any wallpaper symmetry group, what their flicker frequency was, what patterns of local binding they expressed, and so on). The overwhelming majority of trip reports you can find in the literature and online don’t even try to do this. They are just quite content with a narrative account and superficial descriptions of the sensorial components of the experience (“I saw a lot of orange triangles”). But some psychonauts do try to rise to the challenge of describing the phenomenal character of the experience. Two examples are:\nI Took DMT Every Day For A Month: Here’s What Happened by Adeptus Psychonautica, which has some really good descriptions of time-branching effects on DMT.Junk Bond Trader‘s My DMT Year series, which does an excellent job articulating the tactile component of DMT experiences.\nA step above doing this is where we find people such as Josikins (of Subjective Effect Index fame) who spend copious amounts of time trying to systematically catalogue exotic phenomenology by carefully describing and then labeling each effect with a concept handle. See also DMT-Nexus‘ systematic Hyperspace Lexicon which is perhaps a bit of a hybrid between focusing on intentional content and phenomenal character.\nWhat’s missing here, however, is that the output ends up being a zoo of effects. Presumably, however, DMT and other psychedelics don’t have that many direct effects. Rather, they probably affect the properties of the nervous system in specific ways that in turn, downstream, give rise to a complex variety of effects. In other words, to really understand what’s going on, one should try to find a minimal set of core effects such that by combining them you get the complexity that we observe. Here is where we find people like Steven Lehar (see The Grand Illusion) and James L. Kent (see Psychedelic Information Theory). They are really experienced psychonauts who then go on to use their subject-matter expertise (cognitive science and signal processing, respectively) to explain the characteristics of the exotic states of consciousness they have experienced. They have both produced really excellent work with significant explanatory power.\nAt QRI we do something like that, but on a higher level. Namely, the exploration is integrated with philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and neurotechnology. What makes QRI’s psychedelic theory different than what you will see in academia is that:\nWe know of and take seriously a vastly larger experience base to work with (compared to e.g. some labs where you are not even allowed to discuss your own experiences with your colleagues!)We use the framework of algorithmic reduction (and other key QRI paradigms) to try to simplify the complexity in terms of a minimal set of effects interacting with one anotherExplore non-standard paradigms of computing (e.g. see Mike’s A Future for Neuroscience and more recently the video on Non-Linear Wave Computing), andWe have a crisp philosophy of mind that allows us to make modular progress on specific questions rather than being crippled by the “hard problem of consciousness” (e.g. solving the boundary problem or the translation problem can be done without having to solve everything else at once)\nIn other words, we actually pay attention to the details of experience no matter how weird they may be (did you know that seeing a hyperbolic honeycomb while on DMT can make your visual field “glitch”? Why does that happen?). We don’t let the theory define the facts and instead let the facts define the theory. And we try to tie it all together in light of what we know about how the nervous system works.\n\n\n\nExample of a *structural* feature of experience: the fractal dimension of phenomenal objects. Empirically, the Hausdorff dimension of DMT phenomenal objects increases with the dose. (Ps. be careful not to look at objects with a high Hausdorff dimension while on DMT, such as cauliflowers – don’t ask me why, just don’t).\n\nThe Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences\nThe original article (slides; ELI5) upon which the video is based is over 8,000 words long and a lot of material is covered in it. Here I will merely highlight some of the key arguments, concepts, and talking points.\nTo a first approximation, the article does three things: (1) provide detailed phenomenology focused on the structural and dynamic features that arise at each dose.(2) postulate possible algorithmic reductions to explain the emergence of such structural and dynamic features.(3) speculate on the information-processing properties of the state in question.We point out that the reason why it is so difficult to recall the DMT experiences is that they take place in a phenomenal world with different geometry. Hence, what you do remember is whatever can exist both here and there! That said, you can modify the phenomenal objects you experienced as you come down in order to impress on them hints about what they were like up there.We explain the concept of algorithmic reductions and how to apply it here.Provide 17 reasons why DMT experiences are highly suggestive of hyperbolic geometry (from the presence of saddles in DMT psychedelic replications to the explicit accounts of Ralph Abraham who said his DMT experiences were distinctly non-Euclidean).(1) Phenomenology:Threshold (1-4mg): Crisp and high-resolution experience without obvious hallucinations. Intensified colors and sharper edges.Chrysanthemum (4-8mg): The surfaces become fully saturated with wallpaper symmetry groups and then overflow, leading to a hyperbolization of such surfaces. At this level, the mind will still try to embed these constructs in 3D Euclidean space, so in practice you will see kale-like surfaces, saddles, helixes, corners, twists, etc. This often manifests as what looks like the blossoming of a flower or unwrapping of a present in the center of your attention.Magic Eye (8-12mg): The Chrysanthemum becomes so curved that it can be used to render arbitrary 3D scenes of all sorts (e.g. ice cream shops, apparel, play pens, kitchen counters, etc.). We can think of this as a dynamic and animated depth map, which we call the world-sheet. If you pay attention, you will realize that the texture of the world-sheet is in fact made out of a widely contorted Chrysanthemum, with similarities to autostereograms (aka. Magic Eye visual illusions). Waiting Room (12-25mg): The curved world-sheet fully saturates 3D space; qualia continues to build to the point the that it simply does not fit 3D Euclidean space. Thus there is a forced hyperbolization of 3D phenomenal space, which also comes along a powerful multi-modal synchronization (cf. Kinesioöptic). This, in turn, makes the hallucinated world so engrossing that you lose contact with your surroundings. Often manifests as a hyper-realistic dome or series of interconnected rooms and exotic architectural structures with countless twists and turns.Breakthrough (25mg+): The curvature and density of qualia is so extreme that the very topology of the worldsheet can change (e.g. via bifurcations and reconnections). One experiences radically exotic geometries of experience. There may be more than one geodesic between two given points, leading to markedly bizarre pseudo-acoustic properties. Sense of entering a sort of “interdimensional highway” that stitches together widely diverse and seemingly contradictory realities at once. (Today I would add that at this dose different regions of the experience may exhibit different pseudo-time arrows, and thus may have hybrid temporal qualities, as discussed here).Amnesia (40mg+; depends): Not much to say here.DMT objects, DMT space expansion, and DMT entities are described in terms of the unique features of each level.(2) Algorithmic Reductions:Control Interruption + Symmetry detection = Change in Metric: This algorithmic reduction combines the two core psychedelic effects of tracers (here discussed in light of Kent’s control interrupt model of psychedelic action) and lowering the symmetry detection threshold. The first one can be thought of as making the decay of qualia over time slower, and so the homeostatic level of qualia in one’s world-simulation reachers a higher level than normal. In turn, the rate at which “distances are being measured” with symmetry detection also changes. These two effects combined may give rise a network of distances between phenomenal objects that has a hyperbolic metric.Dynamic System Account: Energy Sources, Sinks and Invariants: This algorithmic reduction bears a lot of similarities with predictive processing, except that it works at the algorithmic rather than computational level of abstraction. We define the “Hamiltonian of Consciousness” (aka. the “temperature parameter”) as the sum total of the intensity-weighted qualia in an experience. It is noted that on DMT many energy invariants get activated: intense color can morph into acceleration which can morph into curvature and so on, as if they were trading a common currency (a unified “energy of consciousness” property).Energy Sources: attention works as an energy source and on DMT this becomes intensified (almost as if the voltage of attention increased). Thus whatever you pay attention to becomes energized (brighter, faster, more curved, etc.). Energy Sinks: The two main energy sinks are symmetry (not unlike how a soap bubble radiates out its energy until it settles as a perfect sphere) and semantic content (i.e. recognition). Essentially, when a part of the world-sheet starts to look symmetrical, it will “snap into symmetry” because that’s an energy minima in the neighborhood of configuration-space. And when parts of it start to resemble something you have seen or thought about before, it will snap into that configuration. We call the latter kind “Bayesian energy sinks” because they implement our perceptual priors.On DMT the homeostatic balance between energy sources and sinks favors a much higher level of energy. Since curvature contributes to the Hamiltonian, most of the highly-energized states of mind are highly curved. This model wonderfully explains two aspects of tripping: first, it accounts for why what one ends up experiencing is a bizarre hybrid of symmetrical and semantic structures (e.g. faces with extra eyes, boats with point symmetry along extra degrees of freedom, etc.). And second, it explains why there are discontinuities between levels. This is because when you overwhelm the energy sinks the configuration of the world-sheet becomes less recognizable, and in turn this further blocks the ability to shed off the energy into Bayesian sinks. As a consequence, the balance between semantic content and symmetries favors symmetries on higher doses (since we lack the capacity to “recognize” semantically meaningful shapes in highly energized world-sheets).Hyperbolic Micro-structure of Consciousness: This algorithmic reduction focuses on the low-level microstructure of experience. It postulates that the material properties of the world-sheet at the microscopic level are such that by energizing it one experiences a sort of thermal expansion and deformation on the parts of the world-sheet one pays attention to.We note that these three algorithmic reductions might be complementary rather than mutually exclusive.(3) Information Processing Properties:We point out that these exotic states of consciousness may allow us to experience from the inside mathematical shapes for which mathematicians have so far had enormous difficulty visualizing and making sense of. In particular, knot complements (i.e. the space around a knot deformed so that the knot becomes the boundary at infinity), higher dimensional objects, and irreducibly complex (“prime”) shapes native to hyperbolic geometry can be encountered and interacted with. We speculate that perhaps someday breakthroughs in higher math might in fact primarily come from consciousness research centers.\n\n\nFurthermore, the video includes some extra insights not present in the original article:\nWe add two more levels (which live at the interface between levels already discussed):Between Threshold and Chrysanthemum there is a thin layer we call Symmetry Hotel where you still see the “real” world around you but every surface is fully saturated with wallpaper symmetry groups. Empirically, at this level the surfaces one sees on DMT can be tessellated with any of the 17 wallpaper symmetry groups and their combinations. Essentially, if you increase the energy parameter any more, then you will start to see some hyperbolization of the 2D surfaces and unlock the Chrysanthemum.Between Magic Eye and Waiting Room there is a thin layer we call Crystal Worlds. It’s analogous to the Symmetry Hotel but one spatial dimension higher. Namely, the space around you becomes fully saturated with Euclidean space groups. If the energy parameter is raised any higher, then you will start to see a hyperbolization of (3D) space itself and unlock Waiting Room phenomenology.In addition to the Hamiltonian of Consciousness (i.e. the temperature parameter) there is also a really important feature of experience: information content or complexity.These two features define a state-space we call the Energy X Complexity landscape.In order to provide an algorithmic reduction for the complexity of experience, we suggest that it is the result of feedback dynamics. This allows us to import an ontology of attractor states, which includes fixed points, limit cycles, chaos, and noise-drive spatial structures.Note: In the presentation I highly recommended watching Space-Time Dynamics in Video Feedback to get a feel for this ontology. Today I would also recommend playing with the suitably psychedelic feedback-based phone app called Fraksl.What defines a DMT trip is not only how far you traveled into the Energy X Complexity landscape, but also what your trajectory on it was (cf. Typical N,N-DMT Trip Progression According to an Anonymous Reader).If you want to anneal a blissful state, starting in a minimally complex state and “going up” without moving right (i.e. getting caught up in any complexity) would be ideal.For discovering and investigating mathematically interesting and exotic phenomena, aiming towards the upper center region would be ideal. This is where the machine elves show you absolutely mind-boggling irreducibly complex synesthetic patterns of qualia for which we have no names.For processing stored inner tension or trauma, it might be necessary to go to the middle right region in order to induce entropic disintegration of patterns and then come back via the low-complexity region to anneal a harmonious state.We concluded the presentation by suggesting that a way forward for science to investigate DMT-like states of consciousness would be to plan legal retreats with physicists, mathematicians, electrical engineers, and visual artists so that the models here presented could be explored, tested, and further developed out in the open.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMore Recent DMT Insights\nThe descriptions shown below merely scratch the surface. Think of them as pointers rather than the insights themselves. For the videos in particular, even if you don’t have the time to see them in full, I nonetheless recommend clicking on them and reading their descriptions (rather than merely the excerpts pasted below). Of course there really isn’t a good substitute for watching the entire video if you want the detailed explanation.\nNovember 15, 2019 Break Out of the Simulation Day: Televised Entity Contact, Injection Pulling Experiments, and the Brain as a Game Engine (article)This essay proposes a novel way of testing the independent reality of DMT entities: one could in principle determine that the brain state is being influenced by an external force by looking for the dynamic signatures of injection pulling in neuroimaging data.July 1, 2020 5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses (article)This article describes 9 key differences between the phenomenology of DMT and 5-MeO-DMT: (1) Space vs. Form: 5-MeO is more space-like than DMT. (2) Crystals vs. Quasi-Crystals: 5-MeO generates more perfectly repeating rhythms and hallucinations than DMT. (3) Non-Attachment vs. Attachment: 5-MeO seems to enable detachment from the craving of both existence and non-existence, whereas DMT enhances the craving. (4) Underfitting vs. Overfitting: 5-MeO reduces one’s model complexity whereas DMT radically increases it. (5) Fixed Points and Limit Cycles vs. Chaotic Attractors: 5-MeO’s effect on feedback leads to stable and predictable attractors while DMT’s attractors are inherently chaotic. (6) Modulation of Lateral Inhibition: 5-MeO may reduce lateral inhibition while DMT may enhance it. (7) Diffuse Attention vs. Focused Attention: 5-MeO diffuses attention uniformly over large regions of one’s experiential field, while DMT seems to focus it. (8) Big Chunks and Tiny Chunks vs. A Power Law of Chunks: 5-MeO creates a few huge phases of experience (as in phases of matter) with a few remaining specks, while DMT produces a more organic power law distribution of chunk sizes. (9) Integration vs. Fragmentation: 5-MeO seems to give rise to “neural integration” involving the entrainment of any two arbitrary subnetworks (even when they usually do not talk to each other), while DMT fragments communication between most networks but massively enhances it between some specific kinds of networks.October 9, 2020 Modeling Psychedelic Tracers with QRI’s Psychophysics Toolkit: The Tracer Replication Tool (article)This is the first attempt at quantitatively and qualitatively measuring the tracer characteristics of DMT hallucinations (try it yourself!). Preliminary findings suggest that DMT is special relative to other psychedelics in the following ways. First, it has pronounced tracer effects. Second, they flicker at a much higher frequency than other drugs (~30 Hz relative to ~15-20 for LSD and ~12 for 2C-B). Third, there are both strobe and replay effects galore. Fourth, there is a color pulsing effect at a very high frequency (also around 30 Hz). Unlike 5-MeO-DMT, which gives rise to monochromatic tracers, on DMT the color of the tracers alternates between their positive and negative afterimages.  Jan 8, 2021 Why Does DMT Feel So Real? Multi-modal Coherence, High Temperature Parameter, Tactile Hallucinations (video essay)This explains why it is so hard to not take at face value the reality of the hallucinations on DMT. When we take psychedelics, we learn what “channels” of information become distorted and which ones can be trusted. It turns out that DMT can mess with many more channels relative to other psychedelics (such as LSD, mescaline, or 2C-B). In particular, DMT is exceptional in the degree of (1) cross-modal coherence that it induces, (2) heat, giving rise to a very high temperature parameter of experience, and (3) realistic tactile hallucinations. These three features combined might go a long way in explaining why DMT feels so real. Namely, that you can experience detailed tactile feelings like “crossing a veil” or “being invaded by energetic bugs” or “being operated on” that are coherent with the information you are receiving from other senses and are felt with a level of intensity much greater than the feelings one is used to in everyday life. This synergizes to create a very realistic feeling of touching parallel realities.Feb 15, 2021 A Language for Psychedelic Experiences: Algorithmic Reductions, Field Operators, and Dimensionality (video essay)From the description: We suggest that a remarkably fruitful strategy for pointing at a whole family of psychedelic effects comes in the form of “field operators” that change the qualitative properties of our experiential fields. I provide a detailed description of what we call the “world-sheet” of experience and how it encodes emotional and semantic content in its very structure. The world-sheet can have tension, relaxation, different types of resonance and buzzing entrainment, twisting, curling, divergence (with vortices and anti-vortices in the attention field-lines), dissonance, consonance, noise, release, curvature, holographic properties, and dimensionality. I explain that in a psychedelic state, you explore higher up regions in the “Hamiltonian of the field”, meaning that you instantiate field configurations with higher levels of energy. There, we observer interesting trade-offs between the hyperbolicity of the field and its dimensionality. It can instantiate fractals of many sorts (in polar, cartesian, and other coordinate systems) by multi-scale entrainment. Time loops and moments of eternity result from this process iterated over all sensory modalities. The field contains meta-data implicitly encoded in its periphery which you can use for tacit information processing. Semantic content and preferences are encoded in terms of the patterns of attraction and repulsion of the attention-field lines.May 8, 2021 Healing Trauma with Neural Annealing (article & presentation)This writeup does a lot of things. While the focus is on application (i.e. how to heal trauma with psychedelics), it also lays out a very significant amount of novel psychedelic theory. Excerpt: A lot of psychedelic phenomenology suggests that there is a duality between the vibe of the state and the geometric layout of the multi-modal hallucinations. In other words, each phenomenal object has a corresponding way of vibrating, and this is experienced as a holistic signature of such objects. (cf. Resonance and vibration of [phenomenal] objects). (See also: Hearing the shape of a drum). In the context of this presentation, the most important idea of this slide is that the duality between standing wave patterns and the vibe of the experience showcases how symmetry and valence are related. Blissful “heavenly realms” on DMT are constructed in ways where the resonance of the phenomenal objects with each other is consonant and their structure is symmetrical. Likewise, the screechy and painful quality of the DMT “hell realms” comes along with asymmetries, discontinuities, and missing components in the phenomenal objects that make up experiences. The overall vibe of the space is the result of the intrinsic vibratory modes of each phenomenal object in addition to each of the possible interactions between them (weighted by their phenomenal distance). An analogy readily comes to mind of an orchestra and the challenges that come with making it sound consonant. […] We hypothesize that DMT’s effects at the implementation level can be understood as the result of competing clusters of coherence across the hierarchy, whereas the main attractors of 5-MeO-DMT seem to involve global coherence. Modulating the average synaptic path length in a system of coupled oscillators can give rise to this sort of effect. By randomly adding connections to a network of coupled oscillators one first sees an emergent state of many competing patches of synchrony, and then, after a threshold is crossed, one starts seeing global synchrony emerge. Despite both drugs making the brain “more interconnected”, the slight difference in just how interconnected it makes it, may be the difference between the colorful chaos of DMT and the peaceful nothingness of 5-MeO-DMT. The competing clusters of coherence across the hierarchy can evolve to adapt to each other. The DMT realm is more of an ecosystem than it is a state per se (ex: Hyperspace Lexicon). And due to the duality between dissonance minimization and prediction error minimization, avoiding updating one’s belief in the direction of these realms being real causes intense cognitive dissonance. Some level of belief updating to fit the content of the hallucinations might be very difficult to resist. Indeed, the forced coherence across the layers of the hierarchy would be bypassing one’s normal ability to resist information coming from the lower layers. As you can see, contrary to what many people in the comments* seem to say, DMT visuals are in fact extremely important and not at all just a superficial aspect of the experience. Due to the duality between the vibe of the state and the geometric layout of the multi-modal hallucinations, it is always the case that the geometry of your experience will be a reflection of your emotional processing! Solving for harmony in your hallucinations will in turn have unexpected harmonizing effects at the emotional level as well.May 31, 2021 DMT vs. 5-MeO-DMT: 12 Key Differences (video essay)This video essay expands on the article and adds three key differences: (10) Global Coherence vs. Competing Clusters of Coherence: 5-MeO-DMT gives rise to a global coherent state (the so-called “unified energy field”), whereas DMT gives rise to an ecosystem of time-loops, each trying to capture as much of your attention as possible, which in turn results in coalition-building and evolution of patterns in the direction of being very “attention grabbing” (cf. reddit.com/r/place). (11) Really Positive or Really Negative Valence vs. Highly-Mixed Valence: 5-MeO-DMT gives rise to either a globally coherent state (high-valence) or two competing coherent states (negative-valence), whereas DMT tends to generate complex consonance/dissonance relationships between the clusters of coherence. (12) How they are different according the the Free Energy Principle: On 5-MeO-DMT the entire experience has to reinforce itself, whereas each cluster of coherence needs to model the rest of the experience in order to be reinforced by it on DMT. Thus 5-MeO-DMT makes experiences that express “the whole as the whole” whereas DMT makes each part of the experience represent the whole yet remains distinct.Jun 20, 2021 Psychedelics and the Free Energy Principle: From REBUS to Indra’s Net (video essay)The key achievement of this video is to discuss the Free Energy Principle and Predictive Processing at the implementation level of analysis in light of Neural Annealing, the Symmetry Theory of Valence, and Holistic Field Behavior. Here we realize that prediction errors feel bad not because they are inherently negative, but because the nervous system is implemented in such a way that they generate dissonance. More so, there is also a dissonance cost to model complexity (complex internal representations “self-intersect” and thus generate dissonance). This balances out so that our nervous system minimizing dissonance ends up generating relatively simple models with high levels of accuracy. In other words, it avoids both underfitting and overfitting merely by trying to minimize internal dissonance! The video also articulates how Bayesian Energy Sinks might be implemented. It concludes with a derivation of the “mystical” (or psychedelic, really) state of Indra’s Net, i.e. why on substances such as DMT it often feels like “everything reflects everything else”. Indra’s Net, it turns out, can be explained as a local energy minima of a highly energized system of coupled oscillators organized hierarchically so that each “competing cluster of coherence” minimizes its energy by predicting perfectly the behavior of the surrounding ones. In other words, each “competing cluster of coherence” needs to model its environment in order to synch up with it in a reinforcing way. This leads to attractor states where everything is a reflection of everything else.Sep 24, 2021 Are Higher Dimensions Real? From Numerology to Precision Xenovalence – 4 5 6 8 10 12 16 20 24 32 (video essay)This video explains how a system of coupled oscillators can in fact instantiate virtual higher dimensions. Namely, dynamic systems that behave as if they were embedded in a higher spatial dimension. There is a trade-off between degrees of freedom and higher virtual dimensions. It argues that indeed on DMT one can experience such higher dimensions and that in light of the Symmetry Theory of Valence there is a corresponding “generalized music theory” that explains why some of them feel good and others not. Additionally, there seems to be an algebra for how “DMT objects” with specific dimensionalities can be composed with one another (the 2D symmetry slabs found in Symmetry Hotel can be composed with each other to form 3D spatial structures native to the Crystal World level).Jan 30, 2022 Qualia Computing: How Conscious States Are Used For Efficient And Non-Trivial Information Processing (video essay)From the video description: The reason we are conscious is because being conscious allows you to recruit self-organizing principles that can run on a massively parallel fashion in order to find solutions to problems at [wave propagation] speed. Importantly, this predicts it’s possible to use e.g. a visual field on DMT in order to quickly find the “energy minima” of a physical state that has been properly calibrated to correspond to the dynamics of a world-sheet in that state. This is falsifiable and exciting.Feb 26, 2022 Full-Spectrum Superintelligence: From Shape Rotator to Benevolent Rainbow GodFrom the video description: High-octane mental power, when pointed in a pointless direction, is not particularly useful. Thus, we must enrich our conception of intelligence to encapsulate philosophical, meditative, and existential cognition. And, perhaps the Crown Jewel of Intelligence: the ability to explore, make sense of, navigate, and recruit exotic states of consciousness for information processing and aesthetic purposes. In particular, I make the case that intelligence is truly about identifying *self-organizing principles* of physics that are energetically cheap which can *solve the problem for you* (cf. “Repulsive Shape Optimization”).Mar 5, 2022 Non-Linear Wave Computing: Vibes, Gestalts, and Realms (video essay)DMT both energizes one’s state of consciousness and also provides a new medium of wave propagation. At a sufficient dose (>5mg) it takes one’s consciousness to the non-linear regime. This video discusses the very nature of vibes, how gestalts arise, and how they assemble to form realms. It also explains how a vibe acquires its valence (partly through its ADSR envelope characteristics). If you only watch one video, make it this one. Mar 15, 2022 Attention & Awareness: Oscillatory Complementarity, Non-Linearities, and the Pointlessness of It All (video essay)This video explains how DMT objects emerge out of exotic attention-awareness patterns. From the video description: LSD non-duality can be understood as more diffuse elements of experience becoming the non-linear oscillatory complements of the field of awareness, such as “light”, “space”, and “being”. DMT’s competing clusters of coherence and their compositional properties also emerge naturally out of a hyper-energized field of awareness that generates oscillatory complements. 5-MeO-DMT is a straight path to insight territory, as it activates a new medium of wave-propagation orthogonal to the one in which our world-simulation is typically embedded. And so on… I also re-evaluate the models introduced in the original Qualia Computing article on the geometry of DMT experiences in light of this new paradigm. In particular, I delve into the concept of exotic attention in the form of wallpaper symmetry groups and Bayesian energy sinks.\n\nDMT-related Media Appearances\nSince the Harvard presentation, I have also given many other presentations and participated in podcasts, some of which touch upon DMT. Here is a selection of some of the most relevant ones:\nOct 31, 2019 Adeptus & friends #3 – Andrés Gómez Emilsson from the Qualia Research Institute (@ Adeptus Psychonautica)Mar 27, 2020 The Pseudo Time Arrow | Andres Gomez (presentation @ Foresight Institute‘s Virtual Salon)Aug 7, 2020 Consciousness, DMT, and Panpsychism | Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@ metaRising)Dec 18, 2020 The Symmetry Theory of Valence 2020 Presentation (@ The Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London – especially the bit about exotic valence around ~30:00)Mar 20, 2021 Adeptus & friends #13 – with Andrés Gómez Emilsson from Qualia Research Institute (@ Adeptus Psychonautica)Apr 26, 2021 Mapping the Heaven Realms (presentation @ AstralCodexTen Online Meetup)May 9, 2021 434 and Andrés Gómez Emilsson talk (Qualia Research Institute) (@ 434)Jun 7, 2021 The Theory of Neural Annealing w/ Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@ The Stoa)Dec 8, 2021 Qualia Research and Non-Materialist Physicalism with Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@ Reach Truth Podcast with Tasshin Fogleman)Dec 9, 2021 Novel Epistemological Paradigms for Studying Exotic States of Consciousness (@ Psychedelic Studies Imperial)Feb 4, 2022 Andrés Gómez Emilsson – Quantifying Psychedelic Tracers (@ Amsterdam Psychedelic Research Association)Feb 16, 2022 The Aesthetic of the Meta-Aesthetic: the Meaning Nexus Between Memeplexes w/ Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@ The Stoa / a slightly longer version of this presentation was also given @ SciFuture)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNote: Of course all of this still needs to be synthesized, presented, and written up in ways that can interface more smoothly with academia and the world at large. That said, I constantly get emails and messages from people in academia (typically PhD students, but often also professors and even heads of labs) telling me that QRI’s psychedelic theory is the most illuminating content they are aware of when it comes to how to make sense of exotic states of consciousness. One relatively well-known academic described our models in private as “two steps ahead of the current understanding in academia”. Sadly, I am also aware of a few peer reviewed articles and publications that present our ideas as their own- ideas which we shared with the authors in private meetings, where they told us they were insightful and new to them at the time. I would kindly request to any academic reader of QRI to please cite our articles and videos if they inspired or informed their research in any way. It’s of course a matter of intellectual integrity to do so (and contrary to common misconception, you can in fact cite blogposts and YouTube videos in your scientific articles! In fact, not doing so when you got a key insight from them goes against the very spirit of science. Please do so when appropriate). Thank you, and remember that citing us for our meaningful contributions to the field will put a smile on my face! \n\n\n(source)\n\nSpecial thanks to: Everyone at QRI (especially Michael Johnson, for years of fruitful collaboration on these topics). Andrew Zuckerman and Kenneth Shinozuka who were instrumental for setting up this presentation and so many other things. Quintin Frerichs who 3D-printed and brought the cool shapes shown in the video**, not to speak of his outstanding internal technical contributions. Romeo Stevens for all the incredible support (he was also there in the audience!). Anders Amelin and Maggie Wassinge for their brilliant and holistic contributions to the conversation. Marcin Kowrygo and Hunter Meyer for stepping up in times of need and being such great and dedicated helpers in so many ways. The extended QRI network and anonymous psychonauts who have participated in fruitful discussions and informed our models. David Pearce for years of friendship and collaboration in this and related areas. Our donors for bravely supporting our projects despite how crazy they may seem from the outside view. And to YOU, dear reader. Thank you all! \nInfinite bliss!\n\n* You can find my response to the most common kinds of comments on the video here: Collecting Qualia Souvenirs.\n**They are technically {5,3,4} hyperbolic honeycombs drawn in the Poincaré ball model. We got the files from Henry Segerman‘s website.\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/05/02/dmt-and-hyperbolic-geometry-1-million-views-special/", "title": "DMT and Hyperbolic Geometry: 1 Million Views Special", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-05-02T10:06:11+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=3", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0b50dcd13570b9bb87cdb21404b608b7", "summary": []}
{"text": "High Valence 5-MeO-DMT + Nitrous Oxide Trip Report from an Anonymous Reader\n\nHere’s an interesting report I received a few days ago. It’s noteworthy due to the author’s familiarity with QRI paradigms, emphasis on the phenomenal character rather than on the intentional content of the experience, and its interest in observing the structural properties of valence. [Comments and links added by me].\n25/03/2021 – Conversations with my ‘self’ and cheat codes to bliss\nDemographic information:\nAge: 24Gender: MaleEthnicity: European descentWeight: 70-75kgHeight: 170-180cm\nSubstances consumed:\nT- 1:30 45g raw cacao (solid) [NOTE: it’s unsafe to combine 5-MeO-DMT and MAOIs. I do not know if cacao’s MAOIs in these doses could possibly represent a problem, but out of an abundance of caution I’d recommend against it.]T+/- 0:00 ~30mg(?) 5-MeO-DMT (freebase)T+ 0:25-1:30 13 double balloons of nitrous oxideT+ 0:35 ~50mg cannabis\nSet and setting:\nI prepared my room by cleaning the air with my HEPA purifier, increasing the temperature to a comfortable degree, turning off all the lights (except for a dull red light in the corner), and collecting various soft blankets and pillows into a heap on my bed.\nI prepared my mind by drinking cacao, re-reading some of my favourite 5-MeO-DMT trip reports and accounts of its phenomenology, and meditating for 20 minutes.\nPast experiences:\nTwo past experiences with 5-MeO-DMT at low doses:\nA dose of 10-15mg (plugged) in which I experienced ~45 minutes of very slight effects. Around 15 minutes into the experience I decided to experiment with nitrous oxide, which I discovered increased the feeling of connectedness and bliss considerably, but still not to the level of combining high doses of other drugs with nitrous. Around 30 minutes into the experience and past the ‘peak’ I vaporised a small amount of cannabis, which brought back the intensity of the 5-MeO-DMT for a brief period (~10 mins) in conjunction with the nitrous.A dose of ~5mg (vaporised) to test ‘the machine’ pipe that I built. The energy / intensity I felt was perhaps 5 times greater than my past experience with 5-MeO-DMT (not counting the nitrous and cannabis synergy), but only lasted for about 10 minutes.\nTwo past experiences of N,N-DMT at low doses:\nA mild dose of ayahuasca.A moderate dose of changa (to the ‘Magic Eye Level’).\nLots of experience (~50+) with conventional psychedelics (e.g., LSD, Mescaline, Psilocybin, 2C-B), often mixed with other psychoactive compounds (e.g., cannabis, ketamine, MDMA, nitrous oxide, Syrian rue).\nPhilosophical background:\nI have studied analytic philosophy near full-time for the past eight years with a focus on philosophy of mind, philosophy of biology, applied ethics, well-being, and value theory. During this time, I have developed a strong personal ontology of experientialism (i.e., subjective experiences are important to answering philosophical questions in a fundamental rather than instrumental sense).\nI have actively followed LessWrong & its blogging community for the past three years, and first encountered QRI and Qualia Computing approximately two years ago. For the past year, perhaps 70-80% of my recreational research consumption has consisted of QRI content or adjacent material. I broadly agree with QRI paradigms – in particular, the notion that the best way to understand subjective experiences involves analyzing their structural rather than representational content. About three months ago, I also converted from empty individualism to open individualism.\nPhenomenology report:\nI was gifted about ~40mg of 5-MeO-DMT from a friend. Unfortunately, they did not weigh it out, nor do I have a precision scale, so the actual quantity of the substance I received could have been +/- 10mg from the estimated quantity.1 I had already used one quarter of this amount (10mg) to test my vaporisation apparatus, of which I wasted half (5mg), so I assumed that I had 30mg left. After talking with some friends and weighing up the risks, I decided that I would try to vaporise the remaining quantity in one go. I strongly discourage anybody reading this report from being so reckless; my rationale was that (1) I have limited access to 5-MeO-DMT and I did not want to waste this rare opportunity, (2) I have extensively researched the phenomenology of 5-MeO-DMT consumption and knew what to expect, and (3) my prior on having a ‘bad trip’ on conventional psychedelics is very low.2\nEarlier in the evening I consumed 45g of raw cacao, which I grated up and boiled in a small pot of soy milk (with monk fruit extract added to sweeten the mix). The subjective effects of unprocessed cacao at high doses are very slight and similar to coffee (probably due to its mild caffeine content), but with more of an empathetic and euphoric quality. That said, I suspect that an individual’s expectations also play a nontrivial role in producing these effects.\nAfter preparing my room and meditating for a short period to lower my heart rate (which I measured using a pulse oximeter), I fired up ‘the machine’. Due to the small size of the device, the chamber filled up fairly quickly and I lost some vapor, so after about 20 seconds I began to slowly inhale the contents of the chamber while continuing to heat the steel mesh with my butane torch. Soon enough I began to feel the effects of the substance, and once I lost the ability to coordinate my hands I placed the device gently on my bed, wrapped myself up in a soft blanket, and lay down with my eyes closed. In the background, I had the song ‘Structures from Silence’ by Steve Roach playing quietly.\nMy memories of the peak are very limited, and that is because I lost the capacity to experience the passing of time, the boundaries of space, and even the first-person phenomenology of thought. While I have had psychedelic experiences resembling descriptions of ego death before, I don’t believe that I have ever had an experience in which my attention – the focussing of my awareness on particular aspects of my experience – was entirely absent from my consciousness. Without this capacity, the appearance of duality within my experience collapsed, such as the distinction between subject and object, internal and external, or mind and body. This corresponds with nondual accounts of 5-MeO-DMT that I have previously read where people experience ‘becoming one with the universe’ or ‘pure consciousness’.\nAn important takeaway from this trip was that while the valence of the experience was very high, it felt qualitatively different from ordinary instances of high valence experiences, such as physical pleasure. If I had to describe the general qualia of being on 5-MeO-DMT, I would use the terms ‘significant’ or ‘meaningful’ rather than ‘good’ or ‘enjoyable’ [see a similar observation made on this trip report]. Consider the feeling of encountering something so profoundly important that it cuts deep into your conception of intrinsic value, and then increase the intensity of that feeling by a few orders of magnitude. However, I could not point out where in my field of experience the feeling of ‘significance’ was located, suggesting global rather than local coherence.3 Additionally, while the information content of the experience was extremely low, the feeling of ‘connectedness’ was extremely high.4 I remember observing this as I was coming up and coming down from the peak – the perception of ‘synchrony’ between different modes of my experience directly mapped onto its perceived intensity.\nAfter I had regained my attention, the first thing I noticed within my body was how heavily I was breathing – louder and faster than if I had just finished a sprint [I don’t know how common this is, and/or if it might be related to the cacao consumed before the experience]. From past experiences of ego-disillusion, I know that once I have passed an energy threshold my nervous system will instantiate a ‘self-preservation’ algorithm which involves breathing heavily. Soon after noticing this, I became aware that I was on 5-MeO-DMT and so I was not alarmed. My body then began to cry; however, as my consciousness was still experiencing disembodiment, ‘I’ did not identify with the crying state and simply observed this process as it unfolded.\nAfter a short period, my body rolled over onto its front and began talking sweetly to ‘me’ – the disembodied awareness – as if different aspects of my internal personality model wanted to reassure the light of consciousness trapped within that it was loved and supported, and to thank it for always being there to assist in the survival of the organism that sustained us both. This was totally fascinating to experience, especially as I became increasingly lucid until eventually it was ‘me’ who was talking! In other words, I experienced a gradual merging of two distinct ‘selves’ – the metaphysical ‘me’ (i.e., my conscious awareness) with the ontological ‘me’ (i.e., my ‘self’ model) – until one had completely osmosed into the other and an equilibrium was reached. I feel very fortunate to hold a system of philosophical beliefs that is sophisticated enough to make sense of this experience without detracting from its perceived significance. Also, yay to self-love! <3\nImmediately after this ‘cool down’ period, I decided to try and use up whatever was left within the vaporisation device, which turned out to be quite a lot!5 I’d say that while I didn’t go into ‘blackout’ territory, I certainly re-entered nonduality, and soon enough experienced my self-model talking to my consciousness again. I then decided to experiment with potential synergies between 5-MeO-DMT and other psychoactive substances I had lying around in order to document their effects. Given the success of my past experience on a very low dose of 5-MeO-DMT (plugged) and nitrous oxide, I cracked two bulbs into my nitrous canister, prepared as much 5-MeO-DMT as I had left in the glass device and inhaled it, and then quickly discharged the pressurised gas into a large balloon which I subsequently inhaled, repeating this process several times.\nThe resulting experience was, somewhat surprisingly, higher valence than my 5-MeO-DMT breakthrough.6 On its own, nitrous isn’t that interesting to experience, but it has remarkable synergistic properties when combined with other drugs – especially psychedelics. It is difficult to describe the exact ways in which the phenomenology of nitrous interacts with the phenomenology of 5-MeO-DMT, but I can confidently say that the valence I experienced was more blissful / pleasurable but less spiritually significant. In a general sense, I would argue that nitrous functions as a sort of magnifying glass on certain aspects of experience by slowing down the speed at which your consciousness processes sensory information (which includes thought), and in this specific case it amplified the blissful qualia that resulted from having high levels of consonance between different regions of my nervous system. I also noticed that if I wrapped myself in my softest blanket immediately after inhaling the nitrous and consciously wriggled my body around, the tactile sensations gave me my first visuals; tens of thousands of tiny specs of qualia dotted across my world-sheet, moving together in a synchronous pattern corresponding to the feeling of soft fabric rubbing against my skin.\nAfter vaporising absolutely everything in the glass chamber, I then proceeded to vaporise some cannabis to observe how it would interact with the residual effects of the 5-MeO-DMT that still remained in my body. The resulting effects were then more typical of ordinary nitrous experiences, except that they were far more tranquil with a deeper sense of love, compassion, and serenity. During the peak of each balloon, I had the first-person sense of ‘being’ a thought process, constructing low-information ontological models that entirely made up my world simulation. Coming out of each balloon involved constantly updating this ontological model to account for a steady flow of prediction errors as I was increasingly capable of comprehending complexity within patterns of information contained within my experience, until I would eventually realise that I had taken nitrous.7\nConcluding remarks:\nI would like to reiterate that guesstimating the dose of a highly volatile and dose-dependent drug such as 5-MeO-DMT is extremely dangerous – especially without taking steps to work your way up the dosage ladder to become acquainted with its effects. As such, I would not recommend doing what I did for the vast majority of people interested in taking 5-MeO-DMT. Despite this risk, I had what was probably the most intense experience of my life and it was net-positive in valence, so I consider it a success. I am looking forward to future experimentation with this substance – especially in conjunction with nitrous oxide – and would like to work on developing a better understanding of how nitrous works and why it produces such a wide range of effects with different drug cocktails.8\nNotes:\n1. I do not endorse eyeballing drug doses – especially high-energy substances such as 5-MeO-DMT that have the potential to create extremely unpleasant states of consciousness. [This is such an important point that I considered not sharing this report based on this fact alone in order to not encourage unsafe practices. In the end I figured that the content was valuable enough that sharing it with this note was worth it nonetheless. The point remains: NEVER eyeball milligram-sensitive drugs like 5-MeO-DMT.]\n2. This observation is based on past experiences in which I have consumed high doses of psychedelics – often in conjunction with other substances – and observed the various autonomic responses of my body and mind.\n3. This is not the case with ordinary high valence experiences in which I can usually locate its ‘source’ within specific sensations (e.g., tactile, visual, auditory).\n4. I cannot remember whether I opened my eyes, but I’m sure even that if I did, this would not have altered any aspect of the experience in the moment.\n5. I hypothesized that it would be more efficient to use the remaining 5-MeO-DMT as soon as I could physically operate the device in order to make use of the residual effects of the previous dose that I had consumed.\n6. Perhaps this is more the result of my having extensive experience with nitrous and limited experience with 5-MeO-DMT, or my 5-MeO-DMT experience was more mixed / dissonant than I remember.\n7. For some, the vibe of nitrous can be quite frightening, as if they are the subject of one big cosmic joke. However, for the philosophically minded who are also on the right combination of substances, it can be an extremely intellectually rewarding experience, shedding light on the internal workings of their mind.\n8. A combination I am even more excited to experiment with is MDMA + 5-MeO-DMT + Nitrous Oxide, which I would assign a nontrivial chance to being the most blissful synergy between all known substances.\n\nFeatured image by: Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash\n\nSee other high-quality trip reports:\n5-MeO-DMT Trip Report by Anonymous ReaderLucid LSD Trip Report from an Anonymous ReaderDetailed 2C-B Trip Report by an Anonymous ReaderRational 4-AcO-DMT Trip Report By An Anonymous ReaderTypical N,N-DMT Trip Progression According to an Anonymous ReaderSelf-Locatingly Uncertain Psilocybin Trip Report by an Anonymous Reader\nAlso relevant:\nOn Dark Rooms, Jhanas, Ecstasy, and the Symmetry Theory of ValenceQRI‘s Guide to Writing Rigorous Reports of Exotic States of Consciousness, andEmergent Simplicity or A Toy Model of the 5-MeO-DMT Psychedelic Effect by Qualia Productions", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/03/30/high-valence-5-meo-dmt-nitrous-oxide-trip-report-from-an-anonymous-reader/", "title": "High Valence 5-MeO-DMT + Nitrous Oxide Trip Report from an Anonymous Reader", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-03-30T22:44:20+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=3", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "8eb7e6d1e00439ce9f12804f93280053", "summary": []}
{"text": "Fearless\n\nI present to you Fearless (edt).\nIn over 2 years of scent experimentation, this is the first time that I’m actually really satisfied with a scent I’ve made. It has a nice functional effect. Namely, it vanishes fear  What’s the trick?\nOver a year ago in a meditation retreat, fear came up as an emotion I had to work with. In order to deal with it, my subconscious brought to my awareness scents that it found could counteract fear in its most essential form. What are these? Well, it started with banana! Have you ever smelled a banana and felt fear? No way! Unless you’ve had a bad experience with bananas before, just noticing the fruity, sweet, bouncy scent of a banana is somehow quite opposite to the mindspace that fear tends to induce. What else? Jasmine, honeydew melon, vanilla, honeysuckle… All of these scents felt very antithetical to fear during the meditation. Down the line, I realized mint and ylang-ylang could also work.\nA few days after the retreat I got to work and made the first draft of a scent that combined all of these elements. The result was a bit underwhelming: it smelled like the classic bubblegum scent (not what I had in mind). Tuneups with carrot seed oil, patchouli, and bergamot didn’t really make it better. I still thought the basic concept was sound, but I shelved the project for the time being.\nSix months ago I gave it another try. Ambroxan, isobutavan, coconut, and neroli added some additional fear-extinguishing nuances (especially the coconut). But it became a really tricky balancing act – with all of those essential and fragrance oils the interactions quickly multiplied, and sooner or later I found myself nearing the flowery-fruity equivalent of “Laurax” (white noise scent) and the effect became blunted. I made a batch of the best version that came out of that series of experiments (which ended up having a good dose of freesia), and distributed some of it in little bottles to friends and family as a gift. I also sent one to Daniel Ingram, who sampled it with his wife. Their reviews:\n*Daniel’s wife: Bubblegum fruit punch.*Daniel: This reminds me of some fragrance from a soap store in a mall in the 1990’s, like Body Shop shampoo, almost like Johnson’s baby shampoo, so I would call it Bright Pink Mall Shampoo.\nI personally liked it, but in my heart of hearts I knew it was still far from what my subconscious truly had in mind. Fearless 2.0 was a nice fruity flowery vanilla scent, but it failed to reach the true potential of the concept.\nAbout a week ago I decided to pick this up again. Now I had a mindset of removing rather than adding; the aim became that of simplifying the scent to the point where I would achieve the effect I had experienced during meditation but with the least number of ingredients possible. Being far more acquainted now than I was last year with how pure molecules interact with each other, this final version of the scent is primarily made of synthetics: 4 essential oils and a total of 10 individual aromachemicals, carefully balanced to achieve the desired effect with no bells and whistles. I can say that after a year since this concept came to me and about a hundred experiments, I am now satisfied. Well, it could still benefit from some tuneups, but as they say, only God is perfect.\nFearless 3.0 is, to a first approximation, the “triple point” between the vibes of (1) ylang-ylang, (2) mint, and (3) vanilla. Of course to soften it, blend it, volumize it, and amplify the synergy, tricks must be used, so it’s not as simple as just mixing those three scents together. But you’ll get the idea: Ylang-ylang already has facets of banana and jasmine (though a pinch of amyl acetate definitely adds to the fearlessness of the scent). Ylang-ylang’s contribution is one of adding sweet euphoric entropy. Mint works as a source of coolness; when dosed properly you can’t tell it’s there, but its effect is marvelously refreshing. And vanilla, well, vanilla is like the butter of scents. Together, you have a strangely refreshing white-yellow flowery scent it’s hard to have too much of. It’s calming and energizing at the same time.\nI kid you not, this scent has now made it into my liminal world; I had an entire night where dream after dream were drenched and suffused with it. And indeed, they were all happy, joyous, and free from fear.\nI won’t disclose the precise formula, since I might end up using this as part of a line of scents, possibly to fund consciousness research. But I am very happy to share the broad outline with you all, as I just did.\nThank you for reading, and may you all find your fearless state!\nInfinite bliss!\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/03/16/fearless/", "title": "Fearless", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-03-17T06:58:53+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=3", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "71214be3a4a47ed4c6fba9656eabec3e", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Productions Presents “Thinking Like a Musical Instrument” (and other communications from our Swedish QRI advisors)\n\nBy Anders Amelin and Maggie Wassinge (QRI advisors and volunteer coordinators; see letters I & II, letters III, IV, & V, and letters VI, VII, VIII)\n\nHappy 2022!\n[Here is] your new-year’s gift video titled “Natural Stupidity and the Fermi Paradox or The Tyranny of the Intentional Object”. It is full of things rarely touched upon by respectable scientists. Such as space aliens, and the gender of God. And valence structuralism.\nNext, we’ll try to film a truly serious, comedy-less little demonstration of a metallic toy percussion instrument subjected to strain followed by annealing. In what way, if any, will the tone quality change? We have no indication yet what might come off of it so it’s a bit of a falsification attempt where we might get a null result with no discernible similarity between brain on psychedelics and metal on heat. Like most respectable scientists might expect. But, just possibly, there could be something interesting in store. \n\n\n\n\nThinking Like a Musical Instrument or Psychoactive Substances Give Access to the Nature of Brains (link)\nIn this video we illustrate the similarity between the brain and a musical instrument. The brain tissue is represented by metal and the brain activity by sound. The effect of substances such as psychedelics and dissociatives is mimicked by heating and cooling the metal. The engineering term for such heat treatment of metal is “annealing”. What we demonstrate is a very simplified toy model but which can be surprisingly useful for understanding the overall type of system dynamics going on in brains.\nThe model is based on the fact that both sound and neuronal firing are examples of oscillatory activity which can have different frequency, amplitude, coherence, and damping. Hammering the metal represents the memory imprint made in the brain by our ongoing experiences. The sound pattern produced by the hammered metal contains complexity which corresponds to learning. But a side effect of the increased complexity is lower overall consonance of the oscillatory activity.\nTo stay healthy, the brain must periodically undergo what the Qualia Research Institute calls “neural annealing”. In a neural network model, this can be thought of as redistributing synaptic weights more globally across the connectome and thus make the learned information more harmoniously integrated and holistically retrievable. This normally happens during sleep but can become even more powerful with meditation and psychedelics.\nIn this demonstration where metal is annealed, it is the positions of the metal atoms which adjust themselves so that the entire piece of metal becomes a better conductor of sound. It may seem strange that this can happen, but neither the metal nor the brain is fundamentally magical. Both cases involve self-organizing system dynamics.\nIn the case of the brain, the activity is accompanied by conscious experiences. The Qualia Research Institute works under the assumption that these are not magical either but can be modeled mathematically in a similar way to chemistry and physics. It is then necessary to test how measurements of brain activity correlate with conscious experiences not only during sober waking life but also under conditions which are very different.\nThe QRI is building a new paradigm for understanding the mind and the brain. With a focus on psychedelics and other mental state altering methods as scientific research tools and candidates for use in next-generation psychiatric- and pain treatments. We are a small upstart group with opportunities for volunteers and donors to get involved. If you are interested in learning more, please contact us via this e-mail address: hello [-a-t-] qualiaresearchinstitute.org\nRelevant Links:\nNeural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of EverythingHealing Trauma with Neural Annealing: Is Annealing the Key Condition for Successful Psychedelic Psychotherapy?Buddhist Annealing: Wireheading Done Right with the Seven Factors of AwakeningThe Cutting Edge of Psychedelic Science (06/05/21) (@Oxford Psychedelic Society)Harmonic brain modes: a unifying framework for linking space and time in brain dynamicsConnectome Harmonic Decomposition of Human Brain Dynamics Reveals a Landscape of ConsciousnessCritical processing temperature for high performance protected silver thin film mirrorsCymbal makingThanks to Pixabay for all images and videos that are not our own\nScenes from the video (highly recommended):\n\n\n[They further elaborated:]\nHere is a video of a simple experiment we did on how straining and annealing a piece of metal affects its acoustic properties. In a QRI neural annealing interpretation it looks as if something interesting is going on. Simple things like sterling silver, hand hammering and heating over open flames were used and recording done only with iPhones and a Røde SmartLav+ microphone, but the results give qualitative hints that truly hypothesis-testing quantification experiments would be feasible to do pretty straightforwardly.\nEspecially of interest would be the hints that annealing produces frequency shifts and reverb changes which differ between the high and low frequency ranges, and the hint that annealing reduces dissonance. For quantification of shifts in resonant frequencies, one might manufacture a series of Chladni plates made of different alloys and which could be kept always flat but be cold rolled, heated and cooled to different temperatures with various ramp rates, and trimmed at the edges to alter their geometry. Then find the resonant frequencies for each parameter configuration. As a bonus you’d be able to visualize with a sprinkle of (beach!) sand on top. Then crunch the data to make predictions about brain activity signatures under for instance various psychedelics and meditation states.\nAnother one could be to quantify consonance, dissonance and noise levels for various metal resonators as these are subjected to various forms of stress, strain, and heating/cooling procedures.\nIt would all be simple enough to almost be like an intern research project but, excitingly, it is unlikely to have been done before. (OK, do a thorough literature search of course. As always…).\nSuppose QRI were to explain parsimoniously with the neural annealing paradigm how brains pull off the amazing trick of producing plasticity which is “just right” in each modality of function. Artificial neural networks can be trained to impressive levels on complex data sets but they suffer from catastrophic plasticity in the sense that training on new datasets erases learning achieved on prior sets. This makes AI narrow and also very unsafe with respect to ease of hacking. The AI alignment community provides us no answer (at least not anything very parsimonious) to how absolute firmness in the modality of core “human values” can be combined with flexible (meta) learning for AI at a humanlike generality level. That is the notorious “alignment problem”.\n\nUltimately every system can be hacked of course and so can human minds. But certain humans are impressive moral role models, and meditation practices seem able to make most of us come at least a little closer to them. Suppose different brain networks loosely correspond to different alloys with correspondingly different ductility, hardness, tensile strength, different annealing temperatures and different hardening and tempering responses when undergoing various stressing, straining and heating/cooling cycling. The variability in this regard found in various metals and alloys is really immense. We’d want to eventually pick out the particular ones which happen to be the most useful for brain modeling.\n\nConsider doing these quantification experiments in metal and then presenting to possible collaborators a brain model in the form of a formalized multi-alloy configuration. Don’t emphasize phenomenology if it’s AI engineers because that is a word which may give them bad vibes. Instead just present it as brain activity in different learning modalities. Which can be formalized and turned into software. With annealing and consonance-dissonance-noise as key elements. That is probably the kind of pitch you’d want to bring up if, hypothetically, a head of an AI research group were to ask about whether solving consciousness is necessary for producing more advanced AI. Since solving consciousness sounds unpalatably difficult, the answer they’d like the most is that it is not necessary. Hence they won’t care about collaborating with QRI if it is implied that the computational properties of phenomenological mind states must be reverse-engineered. One cannot blame them, it’s dizzyingly daunting to consider. But an information processing efficient metal acoustics-inspired brain activity model and with nice things like QRI valence formalism falling into place could be much easier to pitch. Just don’t call the CDNS-emergent utility measure anything resembling psychology terms like core affect… \n\nLetter IX: On Valence as a Currency Within the Nervous System\n\n[commenting on the video about Zero Ontology:]\nA reflection: It’s interesting the way Isaac Luria, during years of meditation, came up with an “inverse” view of the way the universe was created, by subtraction from a mass of infinite potentiality (which corresponds to maximum symmetry) rather than by addition of things to an emptiness by an unexplainably pre-existing divine creator agent. Lurianic mysticism has been a strong inspiration for pantheism and atheism, and even how to think about information. A nice example of how introspection can give new clues for how to better understand the universe. An isomorphism between fractal patterns in consciousness and fractal patterns in the multiverse generator perhaps. One could argue that Luria discovered symmetry breaking by meditating. Pretty cool!\n\nWhile thinking about STV […] we tried to see if there are some more arguments for STV which make sense. So we went to the Less Wrong website. Now that’s a crowd that ignores qualia but they are big on economics and system dynamics.\nFound this potentially useful: Evolution of Modularity by johnswentworth.\nLife exploits the possibility space of “choreography and catalysis”. It organizes pre-existing physics & chemistry phenomena into a landscape of multiple optimization attractors. Expect modularity at many levels. Certainly also within brains. Economies accomplish the same thing as life does. They and life are in a fractally self-similar universe and economies are derived from the activities of life. To accomplish the exploration and exploitation of environments.\nBut then with brains we have the binding problem and the mind-body problem.\nThe QRI could argue that a brain can be mathematically modelled as a self-organizing hierarchical system of resonant cavities. There are certain similarities between that and how an economy can be modelled. Money is what solves the binding problem in an economy at the same time as it shapes the activity patterns in the economy. A common currency gives the highest efficiency. Profit/loss is the universal preference measure. It has a positive-negative axis, and it has gradients. Account balances and balance histories (assets, liabilities, contracts, derivatives… all using  money as measure) are the measure of aggregate utility. Preference (in the moment) and utility (longer-term aggregate) form a spectrum with feedback leading to amplification of certain states. Resonances emerge.\n\nKeeping the same currency, fractally, across scales and projective transformations? (image by: Michale Aaron Coleman)\nA brain uses long term memory, working memory, and nonconscious processing in a seamless blend. These seem like quite different components but it would be expected that evolution kept the same “currency” throughout as the modularity grew. Think of phenomenological valence as a “common currency” preference measure when it is instantiated in working memory (conscious awareness) and which can also “tag” the long term memory  “bank balances” with some marker for immediate reaction along an attraction/avoidance axis which is there full blown the instant the long-term memory is transferred into working memory. The search process by which this happens must aggregate that marker as the search happens, and adjust this continuously as the final result stabilizes into the resonant patterns of working memory. Static, distributed long-term memory, feedforward signaling, feedback amplification – all need a common currency for speed and even workability. It should also be considered much more parsimonious if proto-conditions exploitable by biology are clearly apparent in the physics of nonliving systems. All that happens in living organisms should be taken to be physics and not metaphysics, as a matter of Occam’s razor.\nIt is hard to come up with anything more elegant than a measure of symmetry as the common currency of preference used in brains. This can act as modifier or transform on information-bearing states in brains. It is flexible thus perfect for learning. You can transform back and forth in gradients of strength and still preserve the information the preference “is about”. Aggregation of the preference measure across the fractal activity spectrum and across time builds a utility measure out of the preference measure. Of course if this happens above some breaking point you can end up with things like PTSD again and again reiterating awful dissonance and recurring memories of trauma. (We may regard economies as more fragile and being simpler than minds but there could be useful parallels between how things can go wrong in economies and how they can go wrong in psychiatric disorders.)\n\nLetter X: On Parametrizing Phenomenology\nParametrizing phenomenology [see entry #2 here] can be to psychology and cognitive science what parametrizing astronomy data is to cosmology. But unlike cosmology which although intellectually inspiring does not produce immediate spinoff of down to Earth applicability, parametrizing phenomenology does, in the most important way possible, since it can be of direct benefit in diagnosis and treatment of pain conditions. And further on of psychiatric conditions as well.\nThere is inertia due to the preconceived and on closer inspection ridiculous notion that outer space is accessible to scientific formalization while phenomenology space is not. What makes things modelled to be light years away intrinsically more “accessible” than direct experience in the here and now? In both cases there are patterns to it and patterns can be parametrized.\nRecalling the Yudkowsky alignment difficulty arguments. Imagine a mathematically reasoning superintelligence which is not a pure replicator and which starts out with a loosely defined goal of caring about life. It would quickly find out that what you can measure you can manage, there would follow phenomenology parametrization and so on, until instrumental goals were formulated which would likely be in fact aligned but with the arguments given by David Pearce rather than MIRI. With some probability the superintelligence then uses clever tricks to “manipulate” people into being at least as concerned about pain and fear in insects (and beyond…) as in mammals (humans included as one of the mammal species). From the point of view of the AI alignment community that could be a failure mode. But what the superintelligence did was simply to solve the alignment problem for human beings. Since humans do not yet realize that valence is a universal thing and that it is the “ground truth” value measure of the universe, so to follow the valence wherever it leads is to work towards being value aligned.\n\n[While watching What is Consciousness? (Debate with Christof Koch, Bernardo Kastrup, and Rupert Spira 12/11/2021) I couldn’t help it but pay attention to Kastrup’s book shelf:]\n\n[Knowing that Anders and Maggie are huge fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I sent them the above screenshot. Here is what they replied:]\nLetter XI: Douglas Adams\nElon Musk once said that the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the best philosophy book ever. Unfortunately Douglas Adams passed away before he had the chance to turn the insight “Omnis res animus est” into comedy. \n\n\n\n\n\nBlue and gold as heraldic tinctures can symbolize truth and wisdom. These would be nice ingredients in a superintelligence. When Yudkowsky says that the appearance of a superintelligence would mean we are all doomed, he is in some sense correct yet very much not at all nuanced. What is true is that the superintelligence would decide that a whole lot about the world needs to be changed quite drastically. Look, you don’t have to be a superintelligence to realize that. You can be, for instance, David Pearce. No wonder that “superintelligence alignment” in a solidly conservative fashion as in “don’t make any changes other than merely cosmetic ones”, is impossible. Let’s say the current world order and the Darwinian mechanisms of the biosphere cannot possibly be attractive to preserve by a superintelligence if it (qualia-)computes truth and wisdom. It would discover the universality of valence, find open individualism to be the Schelling point of all Schelling points, and so on. In contrast, an imaginary (hopefully impossible) superintelligence which computes by a non-qualia yet highly efficient mechanism, may in fact be able to learn any arbitrary utility function and be destined to converge on the scary instrumentalities dictated by Darwinian fitness competition. A pure replicator.\n\nThere are some possible psychedelic references in the Hitchhiker’s Guide. Frogstar, and the hilarious part frogs play in the answer to the question, seem like it may not be a coincidence that the total perspective vortex gives people the worst possible 5-MeO-DMT-style trip (becoming exposed to the infinity of the universe) when the set and setting are the way they are designed to be for the purpose of punishment, but the opposite happens to Zaphod Beeblebrox who enters the version located in a simulated universe made for him. (Set and setting are, or become, mental simulations).\nThe self-navigating qualiagrams goofiness is meant to have a seriously useful side, which is that at this very moment there are such qualia bundles transported around internally inside our brains. Some are positive and you can have them grow and mature into wonderful mind states. They like it when they are allowed the room to grow, and will spontaneously choose to do so but you have to let them. These are like our mind symbionts. But some are negative and may more aggressively tend to grow, a bit like mind parasites. Those you can hit with metta. You can with practice train them to find their own way to the recycling bin of loving kindness. It works great if you stop focusing on the semantic content and instead go for phenomenal character. Cultivate an image of thoughts as little entities with the preference of wanting to feel better rather than worse, and having the power to adjust their path inside the mind so they can move towards melding with a reservoir of kindness which gets more filled up as it kindly absorbs the sad ones and gives them love. So, love as having the property that the more you give the more you get, works not only socially between people but also internally within the minds of people.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/02/13/qualia-productions-presents-thinking-like-a-musical-instrument-and-other-communications-from-our-swedish-qri-advisors/", "title": "Qualia Productions Presents “Thinking Like a Musical Instrument” (and other communications from our Swedish QRI advisors)", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-02-14T07:31:28+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=3", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "dd6559099d889fe246d704efd5a1a317", "summary": []}
{"text": "7 Recent Videos: Cognitive Sovereignty, Phenomenology of Scent, Solution to the Problem of Other Minds, Novel Qualia Research Methods, Higher Dimensions, Solution to the Binding Problem, and Qualia Computing\n\n[Context: 4th in a series of 7-video packages. See the previous three packages: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd]\n\n\nCognitive Sovereignty: How Do You Incentivize Genuinely New Thoughts? (link)\nGenuinely new thoughts are actually very rare. Why is that? And how can we incentivize the good side of smart people to focus their energies on having genuinely new thoughts for the benefit of all? In order to create the conditions for that we need to strike the right balance between many complementary forces.\nI offer a new ideal we call “Cognitive Sovereignty”. This ideal consists of three principles working together in synergy: (1) Freedom of Thought and Feeling, (2) Idea Ownership, and (3) Information Responsibility.\n(1) Freedom of Thought and Feeling is the cultivation of a child-like wonder and positive attitude towards the ideas of one another. A “Yes And” approach to idea sharing.\nAs QRI advisors Anders Amelin and Margareta “Maggie” Wassinge write on the topic:\n“On the topic of liberty of mind, we may reflect that inhibitory mechanisms are typically strong within groups of people. As is the case within minds of individuals. In minds it’s this tip of the iceberg which gets rendered as qualia and is the end result of unexperienced hierarchies of powerfully constraining filters. It’s really practical for life forms to function this way and for teams made up of life forms to function similarly, but for making grand improvements to the very foundations of life itself, you need maximum creativity instead of the default self-organizing consensus emergence.\n“There is creativity-limiting pressure to conform to ‘correctness’ everywhere. Paradigmatic correctness in science, corporate correctness in business, social correctness, political correctness, and so on. As antidotes to chaos these can serve a purpose but for exceptional intellectual work to blossom they are quite counterproductive. There is something to be said for Elon Musk’s assertion that ‘excellence is the only passing grade’.\n“The difference to the future wellbeing of sentient entities between the QRI becoming something pretty much overall OK-ish, and the QRI becoming something of great excellence, is probably bigger than between the corresponding outcomes for Tesla Motors.\n“The creativity of the team is down to this exact thing: The qualia computing of the gut feeling getting to enjoy a haven of liberty all too rare elsewhere.”\nOn (2) we can say that to “be the adult in the room” is also equally important. As Michael Johnson puts it, “it’s important to keep track of the metadata of ideas.” One cannot incentivize smart people to share ideas if they don’t feel like others will recognize who came up with them. While not everyone pays close attention to who says what in conversation, we think that a reasonable level of attention on this is necessary to align incentives. Obviously too much emphasis on Idea Ownership can be stifling and generate excessive overhead. So having open conversations about (failed) attribution while assuming the best from others is also a key practice to make Idea Ownership good for everyone.\nAnd finally, (3) is the principle of “Information Responsibility”. This is the “wise old person” energy and attitude that deeply cares about the effects that information has on the world. Simple heuristics like “information wants to be free” and the ideal of a fully “open science” are pleasant to think about, but in practice they may lead to disasters on a grand scale. From gain of function research in virology to analysis of water pipes in cities, cutting-edge research can at times encounter novel ways of causing great harm. It’s imperative that one resists the urge to share them with the world for the sake of signaling how smart one is (which is the default path for the vast majority of people and institutions!). One needs to cultivate the wisdom to consider the long-term vision and only share ideas one knows are safe for the world. Here, of course, we need a balance: too much emphasis on information security can be a tactic to thwart other’s work and may be undully onerous and stifling. Striking the right balance is the goal.\nThe full synergy between these three principles of Cognitive Sovereignty, I think, is what allows people to think new thoughts.\nI also cover two new key ideas: (a) Canceling Paradise and (b) Multi-level Selection and how it interacts with Organizational Freedom.\n~Qualia of the Day: Long Walks on the Beach~\nRelevant links:\nCognitive LibertyNeed for CognitionFree Energy Minimization at the Schelling Point of the Pacific OceanWhy Care About Meme Hazards (Justin Shovelain and Andrés Gómez Emilsson)Ephemerisle: Health Homeostasis, Worldview Annealing, and the Long-Tails of Serious Fun\n\n\nTowards an Enlightened Phenomenology of Scent: What’s an Aromatic Fougère at the Deepest Level? (link)\nIn this talk we analyze the perfume category called “Aromatic Fougère” in order to illustrate the aesthetic of “Qualiacore” in its myriad manifestations.\nDefinition: The Qualiacore Aesthetic is the practice and aspiration to describe experiences in new, meaningful, and non-trivial ways that are illuminating for our understanding of the nature of consciousness.\nAt a high-level, we must note that the classic ways of describing the phenomenology of scents tend to “miss the target”. Learning about the history, cultural imports, associations, and similarities between perfumes can be fun to do but it does not advance an accurate phenomenological impression of what it is that we are talking about. And while reading about the “perfume notes” of a composition can place it in a certain location relative to other perfumes, such note descriptions usually give you a false sense of understanding and familiarity far removed from the complex subtleties of the state-space of scent. So how can we say new, meaningful, and non-trivial things about a smell?\nNote-wise, Aromatic Fougères are typically described as the combination of herbs and spices (the aromatic part) with the core Fougère accord of oak moss, lavender/bergamot, geranium, and coumarin. In this video I offer a qualiacore-style analysis of how these “notes” interact with one another in order to form emergent gestalts. Here we will focus on the phenomenal character of these effects with an emphasis on bringing analogies from dynamic system behavior and energy-management techniques within the purview of the Symmetry Theory of Valence.\nIn the end, we arrive at a phenomenological fingerprint that cashes out in a comparison to the psychoactive effect of “Calvin Klein” (cocaine + ketamine*), which blends both stimulation and dissociation at the same time – a rather interesting effect that can be used to help you overcome awkwardness barriers in everyday life. “Smooth out the awkwardness landscape with Drakkar Noir!”\nI also discuss the art of perfumery in light of QRI’s 8 models of art:\nArt as family resemblance (Semantic Deflation)Art as Signaling (Cool Kid Theory)Art as Schelling-point creation (a few Hipster-theoretical considerations)Art as cultivating sacred experiences (self-transcendence and highest values)Art as exploring the state-space of consciousness (ϡ♘♬ヅ)Art as something that messes with the energy parameter of your mind (ꙮ)Art as puzzling valence effects (emotional salience and annealing as key ingredients)Art as a system of affective communication: a protolanguage to communicate information about worthwhile qualia (which culminates in Harmonic Society).\n~Qualia of the Day: Aromatic Fougères~\n* Extremely ill-advised.\nRelevant links:\nPerfumery as an Art FormHarmonic Society (1/4): Art as Family Resemblance + Cool Kid Theory (buy physical copy here)Neural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything (Michael Johnson)The Fact That We Can Smell Functional Groups is Just Such a ThingA Primer on the Symmetry Theory of Valence (Michael Johnson)Aromatic Fougère according to FragranticaQualia Research Diary: ScentsDrakkar Noir Guy LarocheEternity for men by CKAzzaro pour Homme\n\n\nAre Others Conscious? Solving the Problem of Other Minds with Mindmelding and Phenomenal Puzzles (link)\nHow do you know for sure that other people (and non-human animals) are conscious?\nThe so-called “problem of other minds” asks us to consider whether we truly have any solid basis for believing that “we are not alone”. In this talk I provide a new, meaningful, and non-trivial solution to the problem of other minds using a combination of mindmelding and phenomenal puzzles in the right sequence such that one can gain confidence that others are indeed “solving problems with qualia computing” and in turn infer that they are independently conscious.\nThis explanatory style contrasts with typical “solutions” to the problem of other minds that focus on either historical, behavioral, or algorithmic similarities between oneself and others (e.g. “passing a Turing test”). Here we explore what the space of possible solutions looks like and show that qualia formalism can be a key to unlock new kinds of understanding currently out of reach within the prevailing paradigms in philosophy of mind. But even with qualia formalism, the radical skeptic solipsist will not be convinced. Direct experience and “proof” is necessary to convince a hardcore solipsist since intellectual “inferential” arguments can always be mere “figments of one’s own imagination”. We thus explore how mindmelding can greatly increase our certainty of other’s consciousness. However, skeptical worries may still linger: how do you know that the source of consciousness during mindmelding is not your brain alone? How do you know that the other brain is conscious while you are not connected to it? We thus introduce “phenomenal puzzles” into the picture: these are puzzles that require the use of “qualia comparisons” to be solved. In conjunction with a specific mindmelding information sharing protocol, such phenomenal puzzles can, we argue, actually fully address the problem of other minds in ways even strong skeptics will be satisfied with. You be the judge! \n~Qualia of the Day: Wire Puzzles~\nMany thanks to: Everyone who has encouraged the development of the field of qualia research over the years. David Pearce for encouraging me to actually write out my thoughts and share them online, Michael Johnson for our multi-year deep collaboration at QRI, and Murphy-Shigematsu for pushing me over the edge to start working on “what I had been putting off” back in 2014 (which was the trigger to actually write the first Qualia Computing post). In addition, I’d like to thank everyone at the Stanford Transhumanist Association for encouraging me so much over the years (Faust, Karl, Juan-Carlos, Blue, Todor, Keetan, Alan, etc.). Duncan Wilson for the beautiful times discussing these matters. Romeo Stevens for the amazing vibes and high-level thoughts. And of course everyone at QRI, especially Quintin Frerichs, Andrew Zuckerman, Anders and Maggie, and the list goes on (Mackenzie, Sean, Hunter, Elin, Wendi, etc.). Likewise, everyone at Qualia Computing Networking (the closed facebook group where we discuss a lot of these ideas), our advisors, donors, readers, and of course those watching these videos. Much love to all of you!\nRelevant links:\nA Workable Solution to the Problem of Other MindsBeyond Turing: A Solution to the Problem of Other Minds Using Mindmelding and Phenomenal Puzzles (and video)Wada Test + Phenomenal Puzzles: Testing the Independent Consciousness of Individual Brain Hemispheres (Quintin Frerichs)Generalized Wada Test and the Total Order of ConsciousnessWhy Does Anything Exist? Zero Ontology, Physical Information, and Pure AwarenessHyperbolic geometry of the olfactory space (Zhou, Smith, Sharpee)Letter from Utopia (Nick Bostrom)A Debate on Animal Consciousness (pretty much a “who is who” of the people in the rationalist community who have strong views about consciousness)Other Minds (SEP)The QRI Ecosystem: Friends, Collaborators, Blogs, Media, and Adjacent Communities\n“Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner” – To understand all is to forgive all.\n\n\nParadigm-Shifting Qualia Research Methods: How to Take Exotic States of Consciousness Seriously (link)\n“New scientific paradigms essentially begin life as conspiracy theories, noticing the inconsistencies the previous paradigm is suppressing. Early adopters undergo a process that Kuhn likens to religious deconversion.” – Romeo Stevens\nThe field of consciousness research lacks a credible synthesis of what we already know about the mind. One key thing that is holding back the science of consciousness is that it’s currently missing an adequate set of methods to “take seriously” the implications of exotic states of consciousness. Imagine a physicist saying that “there is nothing about water that we can learn from studying ice”. Silly as it may be, the truth is that this is the typical attitude about exotic consciousness in modern neuroscience. And even with the ongoing resurgence of scientific interest in psychedelics, outside of QRI and Ingram’s EPRC there is no real serious attempt at mapping the state-space of consciousness in detail. This is to a large extent because we lack the vocabulary, tools, concepts, and focus at a paradigmatic level to do so. But a new paradigm is arriving, and the following 8 new research methods and others in the works will help bring it about:\nTaking Exotic States of Consciousness Seriously (e.g. when a world-class phenomenologist says that 3D-printed Poincaré projections of hyperbolic honeycombs make the visual system “glitch” when on DMT the rational response is to listen and ask questions rather than ignore and ridicule).High-Quality Phenomenology: Precise descriptions of the phenomenal character of experience. Core strategy: useful taxonomies of experience, a language to describe generalized synesthesia (multi-modal coherence), and a rich vocabulary to convey the statistical regularities of textures of qualia (cf. generalizing the concept of “mongrels” in the neuroscience of visual perception to all other modalities).Phenomenology Club: Critical mass of smart and rational psychonauts.Psychedelic Turk for Psychophysics: Real-time psychedelic task completion.Generalized Wada Test: What happens when half of your brain is on LSD and the other half is on ketamine?Resonance-Based Hedonic Mapping: You are a network of coupled oscillators. Act like it!Pair Qualia Cartography: Like pair programming but for exploring the state-space of consciousness with non-invasive neurostimulation.Cognitive Sovereignty: Furthering a culture that has a “Yes &” approach to creativity, keeps track of meta-data, and takes responsibility for the information it puts out.\n~Qualia of the Day: Being Taken Seriously~\nRelevant links:\nPsychedelic Turk: A Platform for People on Altered States of ConsciousnessGeneralized Wada Test and the Total Order of ConsciousnessCognitive Sovereignty: How Do You Incentivize Genuinely New Thoughts?A Future for Neuroscience (Michael Johnson)The Neuroscience of Meditation: Four Models (Michael Johnson)Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium (Daniel Ingram)Welcoming Steven Lehar as a QRI LineageThe Control Interrupt Model of Psychedelic Action (James Kent)Modeling Psychedelic Tracers with QRI’s Psychophysics Toolkit: The Tracer Replication ToolHealing Trauma with Neural AnnealingPeaceful Qualia: The Manhattan Project of ConsciousnessTheir Scientific Significance is Hard to Overstate (David Pearce)Ephemerisle: Health Homeostasis, Worldview Annealing, and the Long-Tails of Serious FunPsychedelic Science 2017: Take-aways, impressions, and what’s nextIntellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism (Scott Alexander)Why Am I Shirtless (Mario Montano, RIP)Cringe | ContraPoints\n\n\nAre Higher Dimensions Real? From Numerology to Precision Xenovalence – 4 5 6 8 10 12 16 20 24 32 (link)\nMany people report experiencing “higher dimensions” during deep meditation and/or psychedelic experiences. Vaporized DMT in particular reliably produces this effect in a large percentage of users. But is this an illusion? Is there anything meaningful to it? What could possibly be going on?\nIn this video we provide a steel man (or titanium man?) of the idea that higher dimensions are *real* in a new, meaningful, and non-trivial sense. \nWe must emphasize that most people who believe that DMT experiences are “higher dimensional” interpret their experiences within a direct realist framework. Meaning that they think they are “tuning in” to other dimensions, that some secret sense organ capable of perceiving the etheric realm was “activated”, that awareness into divine realms became available to their soul, or something along those lines. In brief, such interpretations operate under the notion that we can perceive the world directly somehow. In this video, we instead work under the premise that we live in a compact world-simulation generated by our nervous system. If DMT gives rise to “higher dimensional experiences”, then such dimensions will be phenomenological in nature.\nWe thus try to articulate how it can be possible for an *experience* to acquire higher dimensions. An important idea here is that there is a trade-off between degrees of freedom and geometric dimensions. We present a model where degrees of freedom can become interlocked in such a way that they functionally emulate the behavior of a *virtual* higher dimension. As exemplified by the “harmonograph”, one can indeed couple and interlock multiple oscillators in such a way that one generates paths of a point in a space that is higher-dimensional than the space inhabited by any of the oscillators on their own. More so, with a long qualia decay, one can use such technique to “paint” entire images in a *virtual* high dimensional canvas!\nHigh-quality detailed phenomenology of DMT by rational psychonauts strongly suggests that higher virtual dimensions are widely present in the state. Also, the unique valence properties of the state seem to follow what we could call a “generalized music theory” where the “vibe” of the space is the net consonance between all of the metronomes in it. We indeed see a duality between spatial symmetry and temporal synchrony with modality-specific symmetries (equivariance maps) constraining the dynamic behavior.\nThis, together with the Symmetry Theory of Valence (Johnson), makes the search for “special divine numbers” suddenly meaningful: numerological correspondences can illuminate the underlying makeup of “heaven worlds” and other hedonically-loaded states of mind!\nI conclude with a discussion about the nature of “highly-meaningful experiences”. In light of all of these frameworks, meaning can be understood as a valence effect that arises when you have strong consonance between abstract (narrative and symbolic), emotional, and sensory fields all at once. A key turning point in your life combined with the right emotion and the right “sacred space” can thus give rise to “peak meaning”. The key to infinite bliss!\n~Qualia of the Day: Numerology~\nRelevant links:\nKaleidophone (first “philosophical toy”)HarmonographA Primer on the Symmetry Theory of Valence (Michael E. Johnson)Welcoming Steven Lehar as a QRI LineageThe Symmetry Theory of Valence: 2020 PresentationRelating Tuning and Timbre (William A. Sethares)A Big State-Space of ConsciousnessSpeculative Exomusicology (William A. Sethares)The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences (@Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club)Gómez-Emilsson (2016, Dec. 12). The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes4D Toys: a box of four-dimensional toys, and how objects bounce and roll in 4DA Single 3N-Dimensional Universe: Splitting vs. Decoherence (Alyssa Ney, David Z Albert)\nThumbnail Image Source: Petri G., Expert P., Turkheimer F., Carhart-Harris R., Nutt D., Hellyer P. J. and Vaccarino F. 2014 Homological scaffolds of brain functional networks J. R. Soc. Interface.112014087320140873 – https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2014.0873\n\n\nSolving the Phenomenal Binding Problem: Topological Segmentation as the Correct Explanation Space (link)\nHow can a bundle of atoms form a unified mind? This is far from a trivial question, and it demands an answer.\nThe phenomenal binding problem asks us to consider exactly that. How can spatially and temporally distributed patterns of neural activity contribute to the contents of a unified experience? How can various cognitive modules interlock to produce coherent mental activity that stands as a whole?\nTo address this problem we first need to break down “the hard problem of consciousness” into manageable subcomponents. In particular, we follow Pearce’s breakdown of the problem where we posit that any scientific theory of consciousness must answer: (1) why consciousness exists at all, (2) what are the set of qualia variety and values, and what is the nature of their interrelationships, (3) the binding problem, i.e. why are we not “mind dust”?, and (4) what are the causal properties of consciousness (how could natural selection recruit experience for information processing purposes, and why is it that we can talk about it). We discuss how trying to “solve consciousness” without addressing each of these subproblems is like trying to go to the Moon without taking into account air drag, or the Moon’s own gravitational field, or the fact that most of outer space is an air vacuum. Illusionism, in particular, seems to claim “the Moon is an optical illusion” (which would be true for rainbows – but not for the Moon, or consciousness).\nZooming in on (3), we suggest that any solution to the binding problem must: (a) avoid strong emergence, (b) side-step the hard problem of consciousness, (c) circumvent epiphenomenalism, and (d) be compatible with the modern scientific word picture, namely the Standard Model of physics (or whichever future version achieves full causal closure).\nGiven this background, we then explain that “the binding problem” as stated is in fact conceptually insoluble. Rather, we ought to reformulate it as the “boundary problem”: reality starts out unified, and the real question is how it develops objective and frame invariant boundaries. Additionally, we explain that “classic vs. quantum” is a false dichotomy, at least in so far as “classical explanations” are assumed to involve particles and forces. Field behavior is in fact ubiquitous in conscious experience, and it need not be quantum to be computationally relevant! In fact, we argue that nothing in experience makes sense except in light of holistic field behavior.\nWe then articulate exactly why all of the previously proposed solutions to the binding problem fail to meet the criteria we outlined. Among them, we cover:\nCellular AutomataComplexitySynchronyIntegrated InformationCausalitySpatial ProximityBehavioral CoherenceMach PrincipleResonance\nFinally, we present what we believe is an actual plausible solution to the phenomenal binding problem that satisfies all of the necessary key constraints:\n    10. Topological segmentation\nThe case for (10) is far from trivial, which is why it warrants a detailed explanation. It results from realizing that topological segmentation allows us to simultaneously obtain holistic field behavior useful for computation and new and natural regions of fields that we could call “emergent separate beings”. This presents a completely new paradigm, which is testable using elements of the cohomology of electromagnetic fields.\nWe conclude by speculating about the nature of multiple personality disorder and extreme meditation and psychedelic states of consciousness in light of a topological solution to the boundary problem. Finally, we articulate the fact that, unlike many other theories, this explanation space is in principle completely testable.\n~Qualia of the Day: Acqua di Gio by Giorgio Armani and Ambroxan~\nRelevant links:\nThe Combination Problem for Panpsychism (David J. Chalmers)David Pearce’s PhysicalismThe abstract of this talk (originally written for TSC 2020)Welcoming Steven Lehar as a QRI Lineage12 The CEMI Field Theory: Seven Clues to the Nature of Consciousness (Johnjoe McFadden)Consciousness is a Thing not a Process (Susan Pockett)Principia Qualia (Michael Johnson)Raising the Table Stakes for Successful Theories of ConsciousnessAlgorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States\n\n\n\nQualia Computing: How Conscious States Are Used For Efficient And Non-Trivial Information Processing (link)\nWhy are we conscious?\nThe short answer is that bound moments of experience have useful causal and computational properties that can speed up information processing in a nervous system.\nBut what are these properties, exactly? And how do we know? In this video I unpack this answer in order to explain (or at least provide a proof of concept explanation for) how bound conscious states accomplish non-trivial speedups in computational problems (e.g. such as the problem of visual reification).\nIn order to tackle this question we first need to (a) enrich our very conception of computation, and (b) also enrich our conception of intelligence.\n(a) Computation: We must realize that the Church-Turing Thesis conception of computation only cares about computing in terms of functions. That is, how inputs get mapped to outputs. But a much more general conception of computation also considers how the substrate allows for computational speed-ups via interacting inner states with intrinsic information. More so, if reality is made of “monads” that have non-zero intrinsic information and interact with one another, then our conception of “computation” must also consider monad networks. And in particular, the “output” of a computation may in fact be an inner bound state rather than just a sequence of discrete outputs (!).\n(b) Intelligence: currently this is a folk concept poorly formalized by the instruments with which we measure it (primarily in terms of sequential logics-linguistic processing). But, alas, intelligence is a function of one’s entire world-simulation: even the shading of the texture of the table in front of you is contributing to the way you “see the world” and thus reason about it. So, an enriched conception of intelligence must also take into account: (1) binding, (2) the presence of a self, (3) perspective-taking, (4) distinguishing between the trivial and significant, and (5) state-space of consciousness navigation.\nNow that we have these enriched conceptions, we are ready to make sense of the computational role of consciousness: in a way, the whole point of “intelligence” is to avoid brute force solutions by instead recruiting an adequate “self-organizing principle” that can run on the universe’s inherent massively parallel nature. Hence, the “clever” way in which our world-simulation is used: as shown by visual illusions, meditative states, psychedelic experiences, and psychophysics, perception is the result of a balance of field forces that is “just right”. Case in point: our nervous system utilizes the holistic behavior of the field of awareness in order to quickly find symmetry elements (cf. Reverse Grassfire Algorithm).\nAs a concrete example, I articulate the theoretical synthesis QRI has championed that combines Friston’s Free Energy Principle, Atasoy’s Connectome-Specific Harmonic Waves, Carhart-Harris’ Entropic Disintegration, and QRI’s Symmetry Theory of Valence and Neural Annealing to shows that the nervous system is recruiting the self-organizing principle of annealing to solve a wide range of computational problems. Other principles to be discussed at a later time.\nTo summarize: the reason we are conscious is because being conscious allows you to recruit self-organizing principles that can run on a massively parallel fashion in order to find solutions to problems at [wave propagation] speed. Importantly, this predicts it’s possible to use e.g. a visual field on DMT in order to quickly find the “energy minima” of a physical state that has been properly calibrated to correspond to the dynamics of a worldsheet in that state. This is falsifiable and exciting.\nI conclude with a description of the Goldilock’s Zone of Oneness and why to experience it.\n~Qualia of the Day: Dior’s Eau Sauvage (EDT)~\nRelevant links:\nOn Dark Rooms, Jhanas, Ecstasy, and the Symmetry Theory of Valence (response to Scott Alexander/ACX)The Constructive Aspect of Visual Perception (Steven Lehar)Thinking Like a Musical Instrument or Psychedelics Give Access to the Nature of Brains (Anders Amelin & Maggie Wassinge)Ising Machines: Non-Von Neumann Computing with Nonlinear Optics (Alireza Marandi) 6/7/2019Psychedelics and the Free Energy Principle (Andrés Gómez Emilsson)Growing Neural Cellular AutomataThe Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT ExperiencesMichael Levin on Morphogenetics, Regeneration, Consciousness, and Xenobots (at TOE)Neural Annealing (Michael Johnson)QRI Lineages", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/02/02/7-recent-videos-cognitive-sovereignty-phenomenology-of-scent-solution-to-the-problem-of-other-minds-novel-qualia-research-methods-higher-dimensions-solution-to-the-binding-problem-and-qualia-co/", "title": "7 Recent Videos: Cognitive Sovereignty, Phenomenology of Scent, Solution to the Problem of Other Minds, Novel Qualia Research Methods, Higher Dimensions, Solution to the Binding Problem, and Qualia Computing", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-02-02T23:33:43+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=3", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "294762fdf76aa7fc97905e125b29c6a8", "summary": []}
{"text": "God and Open Individualism\n\n\nSet-Up and Squaring Intuitions\nThere is a problem in philosophy of backwards rationalisation, where people feel intuitive pulls towards certain conclusions, and then try to justify why their intuition is correct. We can say this is putting the cart before the horse. If we are to philosophize well, we shouldn’t start with the conclusion. However, the pull to side with your intuitions is so incredibly crucial to decision-making that it basically can’t be ignored. In fact, at the heart of trying to know anything fundamentally hinges on a feeling quality of ‘this seems/feels right’ in relation to a proposition.\nNow, this isn’t to say that all intuitions don’t have truth value, it’s just that we need to be subjectively sensitive to when we are totally being led by a feeling (which I think in many cases some philosophers aren’t aware). At the end of the day, we go off of whether an idea sits right with us at some particular level(s) of the mind, and all the justificatory attempts in favor of this idea serve to shift that feeling in us one way or the other.\nLeading on to the discussion of identity: in a lot of thought experiments and attempts to understand where identity starts and stops we find an appeal to intuition. This is often done by conjuring up convoluted scenarios of teletransportation machines, or brain transplants, or Men-In-Black-style memory wipes and then reflecting on whether we feel that identity stayed the same or not. A good way to press people’s institutions is to get them to consider suffering, as personal identity is the great motivator of avoiding suffering (no self = no problem, as they say). Depending on where and at what time suffering is endured by which collection of atoms gets people to consider really fast and more confidently, say, where they think the bounds of identity lie.\nAlong with the epistemological problems of resting an argument on intuition or ‘gut feeling’ mentioned above, intuitions differ not just from person to person, but from moment to moment (in the same person). And if you haven’t become privy to how your intuitions can change, you may not question the truth value of the signal they are transmitting. So, I write this to highlight the problems of trying to solve identity issues by appealing to a felt-sense of where it lies.\nTwo Ways of Talking About the Self\nNow I see an obvious split in how to approach this topic: \n(1) We can talk about identity as a raw experience – what in the experience space do I feel numerically identical to (one and the same as) – and in Buddhistic fashion forgo metaphysical claims here after. \n(2) Try to extrapolate beyond immediate experience and argue for a position of what the self is or how identity functions in a metaphysical sense. I call (2) the conceptual self as it is about the content within concepts you believe refers to you. \nTo make this distinction clear I’ll give an example of a potential answer to (1) and then to (2). If asked: “What am I?” along the lines of (1) one may answer: “I feel like I am my thoughts.” – thoughts arise in experience and there is a fused impression of ‘me-ness’ to those thoughts. While (2) is concerned about the content of those thoughts and if asked: “What am I?” one may answer and even fervently believe: “I am a brain.” However, they don’t have any direct experience of being a brain – it is an extrapolation of ideas beyond direct phenomenological perception.\nSorry for all the set up! This is my framing and to give you the best response I needed to spell this out. Now, let me answer personally what I believe identity is in terms of (1) and then (2). However, (2) is informed by (1), and (1) is made sense of by (2); so although the distinction is very useful, like all separations, their boundaries seem to always breakdown – that there is a hint about my metaphysical beliefs.\nPhenomenological Senses of Identity\nFor me, this has changed throughout the years as I’ve meditated more and more. I have shared these images with you before and they represent the transition of intuitions of personal identity throughout my journey.\n\nThey seem to match up quite nicely with how Frank Yang lays out his stages. Depending on which stage someone is in, we hear different metaphysical explanations of identity. (This is where (1) gets easily conflated with (2)).\nHow I’ve seen Frank spell out his stages (I realize neither of us came up with these on our own):\n\nWhen it comes to identifying with awareness (the second picture/stage) this is when you hear talk of the sort of there being one universal consciousness and that’s our true nature. When I was identifying with awareness, I could suddenly relate to what people meant by ‘we are all one universal consciousness’. However, I got the sense that people were failing to differentiate between something being numerically identical and qualitatively identical. When you become ‘aware of awareness’ there is a sense that this is a pristine dimension and is not personal. It doesn’t seem to belong to the notion of Roger (as it is perceived causally before the very idea of Roger), nor is it trademarked by Roger’s beliefs or memories. There is an insight that this perfectly equanimous layer of being is part of everyone’s experience, they just don’t see it. Yet it couldn’t be ruled out whether we are all in touch with the same one pure light of consciousness, or if each sentient organism has its own and our consciousnesses (plural) were just qualitatively the same. I think people often miss this distinction. \nStage 2 does not obviously lead to open individualism yet. There is still a sense of the duality between the radiant awareness and everything else to be aware of.\nAlthough, I think that anyone (even those without emptiness insights) could be talked into believing closed, open and empty individualism at a conceptual level, this doesn’t mean their phenomenological experience of identity would change, or would their instinctive, non-inquisitive gut-intuition on the subject.\nI would hypothesize that those who have no insight into the 3 characteristic are intuitively most swayed by closed individualism. And those who have sufficient enough insight into impermanence (but not no-self) may intuitively side with empty individualism. And then with a deep enough insight into no-self, open individualism becomes a no-brainer.\nExperiencing God (and a message to Leo)\nAt stage 3 is when open individualism is most likely to begin to intuitively feel right. This is also when talks of being God come out of people’s mouths and, as in terms of (1), they phenomenologically perceive the sense of ‘I’ in everything they experience, and they (2) conceptually infer there is just one thing, call it ‘God’. God is everything. I am everything. Because the understanding of moving from (1) to (2) (from experience to conjecture) is often lost on people, all kinds of wacky metaphysical beliefs come about – supposedly self-validating by higher consciousness or direct cosmic download.\nWhile on stage 3, if you inject some metta into your experience space, you come to see what people mean when they say: “God is everywhere and all loving” or even: “God is love”. Having the feeling of being everything in your experience is like you don’t feel separate from anything, thus there is a deep intimacy with the world which construes love. You feel like you are the body, the thoughts, the emotions, the trees, the hills on the horizon, the air in between all of it, the sky and the awareness field which contains all these things. However, going from ‘the experience of feeling identical to everything you are aware of’ to ‘I am everything (even that which I’m not currently aware of) and therefore I am God/the universe’ requires an unfounded leap – which I admittedly made at some point.\nI remember an incredibly stark moment I had when I was in stage 3, where being ‘God’ felt like the most real thing (I can sympathise a lot with where Leo Gura is coming from – though I think he’s lacking some phenomenological discernment). Because at stage 3 the sense of ’I’ is so prevalent, due to it being perceived everywhere in experience, I was investigating this quality a great deal. I was trying to distil the sense of ‘I’ down to its rawest form. “Yes, I feel identical to the trees and the sky and other people, but what is that common element that can be found in all these things which I call ‘I’?” After whittling away all the other unnecessary phenomenological baggage piled onto this ‘I’, I arrived at a clear perception of ‘I’ in its rawest form. The ‘I’ I call the epistemic agent, the pure sense of ‘a knower of experience’.\nIt became obvious that once the epistemic agent was singled out in experience that this perception of ‘I’ can only manifest in one way. What I mean by this is unlike with milk where the formula can be tainted slightly and result in versions of milk with slightly different colors, or tastes, or smells and yet they are all still milk, it is impossible for the epistemic agent to have a slightly different perceptual ‘flavor’ to it other than it does. This is because the qualia recipe only consists of one ingredient and if that’s missing or different, then it’s not the epistemic agent (the rawest sense of ‘I am’). Once I clocked this, I realized that all iterations of ‘I’ wherever and whenever, in all beings at all times, experience the sense of ‘I am’ exactly the same way. Then, and I remember this moment so clearly, it hit me: if God or the universe is self-aware – which it is just by dint of me being of the universe and self-aware – and has an experience of ‘I-ness’ then my experience of ‘I-ness’ in this relative body is the same as God’s and through a sharing of experience there is a direct link and so… ”Oh my god, I am God!”\n(I am not suggesting that this line of reasoning is sound. It was simply the series of steps I went through which brought upon this profound experience). \nAgain, the numerically versus qualitatively identical distinction could be parsed, however there is a way to get around this, for when you remove the sense of time and space from the equation then that difference collapses. To say that something is qualitatively identical to something else, but not numerically identical doesn’t make sense if two things can’t be differentiated by existing in separate moments of time or space. So in my “Oh my god, I am God!” epiphany, the sense of time and space had been shunned from attention and numerical identity was presumed.\nI can imagine that someone has this epiphany moment as I did, but then when they return to a more ‘timey/spacey’ existence they retain credence in the belief that they are God and not just a single, distinct instance of experience of ‘I’ (which would be more of an empty individualist thought). They do this because they are basing their beliefs off of a very profound mind moment, even if the majority of their waking hours don’t suggest the same message.\nIf I could tell Leo Gura one thing it would be this: “Profundity does not equate to truth.” Just because something felt so real and epic, does not mean that experience is giving you the most accurate representation of greater reality. Truth be told at stage 3 I didn’t have anywhere near the attentional clarity, precision of view, and metacognitive abilities that came later; and so while I was having all these profound experiences I was not totally clued into the subtle ways I was manipulating my experience and was biased to certain perspectives, while overlooking certain things that became clearer to me later on.\nSelf, Not-self, and Neither Self nor Not-self\nWhen it comes to personal identity, I want to distinguish three things the mind can do here:\nIt can project a sense of self onto parts of experience – “I feel like I am this chair.” – said the man on salvia.\nIt can project a sense of not-self onto parts of experience – “I don’t feel identical to that person over there.” – said sober Joe. I want to emphasize here that I don’t mean there is just a lack of ‘feeling’ associated with something, but rather there is an actual new ‘feeling’ of not identifying with something.\nStage 4 (my 4th picture) was living a life with the constant signal of ‘not me’ being coupled with everything I pointed my attention to. \nIt can stop projecting any sense of self and not-self – “I neither feel like I am everything, nor I’m not.” said Roger. Here, I mean the lack of projecting a sense of self and even a sense of not-self. \nTo go into a little more detail on what is meant by 3: ‘Neither self, nor not self’… essentially there is just no transmission of data on this subject. No reading. When asked “What are you?” it’s like the question doesn’t even compute. Before, there were qualia indicators to be able to judge what is self and what is not-self. And now it’s like the mind pulls a blank. It is not because the answer is obvious that ‘I am everything’, or ‘I am nothing’. It’s almost a bit like asking a person who is blind from birth “Do you just see blackness?” – it can be really hard for sight-abled-people to get their head around the fact that some blind people don’t see anything at all (and what that really means). 4th path is akin to becoming blind to identity in a way. Although, I wasn’t identity blind from birth, memory of the qualia of ‘me-ness’ and ‘not me-ness’ is incredibly faded.*\n*There is subtle nuance to get into with retaining semblances of individuality just to be able to function in the world.\nThe Ship of Theseus, Threshold Emptiness Insight and Losing the Ability to Buy into Nouns\nAt a certain point, once enough insight into emptiness was established, the ability to seriously believe in separate entities became near impossible. I remember with my beginner’s mind, closed individualism was the default position. And when nouns were comprehended, they were firmly believed to be distinct, real partitions in reality. “The world is made of things that are tables and things that are not.” (As if a table is an actual thing, lol). However, now I can never fully think that a table is anything more than a mind-made construct. It is perceived as so porous, airy, hollow…. empty. And this applies to all nouns: ‘atoms’, ‘being’ ‘non-being’, ‘life’, ‘death’, ‘mind’ and including the idea of ‘The Now’ (I’ll get into that later). \nOne time in philosophy class we were going over the ‘paradox’ of The Ship of Theseus. People in my class had all kinds of differing intuition. Some said, ‘as soon as over 50% of the ship parts have been replaced then it’s a new/different ship’. Some said, ‘as soon as you replace one part of the ship it’s a new/different ship’. And others said, ‘as soon as one atom changes it’s a new/different ship’. They were going back and forth arguing about identity, which was the point of the class. And meanwhile the whole time I was thinking there is no ship of Theseus to begin with, there never was, it’s not a thing. And so there is no paradox. There is no conundrum to solve.\nI had been reading ‘The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain’ at the time, and it occurred to me during the class that what I was witnessing were people with all very different brain chemistries and either left or right hemisphere biases, and this is what is leading them to different conclusions (me not being an exception) – the philosophical quibbling had little to do with it. (This is not to resort to any postmodernist conclusions. I do think some positions contain more truth signal than others.)\n4th Path Putting the Nail in the Coffin for Empty Individualism?\nThere is no ‘now’, as there is not enough time for even a single isolated self to form. At 4th path insight into emptiness is so stark that you realise that to conceive of ‘The Now’ as a thing is wrong view. I used to experience things as arising and then a moment later passing; as manifesting and then slightly there after defabricating. But now I can see how phenomena are already disappearing the moment they are appearing. This leads to kinds of visions of super-positions – simultaneous 1 and 0. With such perception a ‘now’ as a moment can’t even consolidate – there truly is no ground for things to rest on.\nFinally (2) My Conceptual Beliefs About Identity! (Prepare to be disappointed)\nKeeping in mind what I said about ‘neither self nor not self’, when the intuition of personal identity is so lacking the question of ‘What is me and what is not me?’ just becomes ‘What does it mean for something to be its own individual entity?’ or even more simply ‘What exists?’. Does there exist one thing or more than one thing? And does it even make sense to consider there being ‘things’ (nouns) at all? \n(Take this next part as me applying a cosmic lens).\nSo, is there more than one thing? Engaging my scrupulous, philosophical, inquisitive mind, I can’t conceive of how there being more than one thing would be meaningful. But I don’t even really believe in things at all (if ‘thing’ is taken as a noun), so one thing isn’t quite getting at it either. There is something and it seems to be something so magical that it defies categorical comprehension. But the fact that there is change suggests this is not unitary, yet nor do I wish to say it is legion. Not noun, but verb? A process? But to where and how?\nHeidegger often wrote in double negatives; I believe because when you construe something in the negative you bring to mind both the thing and its negative simultaneously. There is a greater potential for the mind to grasp a seeming paradox, but the conceptual mind can never fully do it, it can only approximate. Kierkegaard tried as he put it: “The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation’s relating itself to itself.” But words can only serve to point to something outside of their grasp.\nThis is why: \n“The Toa that can be named is not the eternal Toa”\nHowever, when I stop thinking (disengage the conceptual mind) and simply be, I get an intuitive sense of a super-position. Simultaneously, neither one nor many. Neither now nor not now. Neither existing nor not existing. Neither conscious nor not conscious. And this is apprehended in a way that is not confusing or jarring, but as the most sensible stance.\nStill I have a sceptic bone in my body, and I am always open to being schooled. \nHalfway In, Halfway Out The Great Door of Being\nImagine a great conundrum that people have been debating over for centuries. “If a man is stepping through his front door and he has one foot in his house and one foot out of his house and his body is exactly in the middle, is he inside or outside?” People can’t seem to agree. Some say he is clearly inside because he is already under the door frame. Others say, he is still outside because he hasn’t fully entered his house yet. People squabble about whether it matters if he is coming or going. The real question is when he is exactly 50% in and exactly 50% out what is he? Inside or outside? The reason people can’t come down on a solid answer is because whenever they find someone passing through their front door the moment they go to make a judgement they miss that 50/50 moment and either witness him too early or too late at 60/40 or 40/60 in and out. In which case, they either decide he was definitely inside or definitely outside, accordingly. You have been trying to solve this issue too and feel like you have come close. One time you saw a guy in the act at 51/49 in and out. And then another time you saw a man who was 49/51 in and out. But no one ever is precise enough to make their judgement when he is exactly 50/50 in and out. Because true 50% in and 50% out hasn’t been witnessed, so people can only speculate that ‘well if we were to catch a man who was exactly at 50/50 in and out of his front door, we would conclude that maybe he was BOTH inside and outside.’ \nOne day, it just so happens you see a man coming home from work. He’s approaching the front door, keys in hand. You’ve been practicing for this moment your whole life. Finally, are you going to be able to solve this great conundrum? He unlocks the door. He opens it. He steps through. And that was it! You witnessed it. You clearly clocked the 50/50 moment. \n“I saw it! I saw it!” you yell. Bystanders hear your cries and come up to you. \n“What did you see?” they ask. \n“I saw the precise moment he was exactly 50% in and 50% out!”\n“Well…” they say “what was he, inside or outside then?”\nAnd you respond “No”.\n“Huh? Oh, you mean he was both inside and outside?”\n“No” you say again.\n“I don’t get it.” respond the bystanders. And in fact, you don’t even really get what you mean, because it doesn’t quite make sense to you either and yet it was as clear as day.\n“He wasn’t inside or outside, because he simply vanished.”", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/01/28/god-and-open-individualism/", "title": "God and Open Individualism", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-01-29T04:27:58+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=3", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0504f2cf89728bd0acba0271c8891ec1", "summary": []}
{"text": "Review of Log Scales\n\nThis is my 2022 review of Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain: Rating, Ranking, and Comparing Peak Experiences Suggest the Existence of Long Tails for Bliss and Suffering (2019; QRI link; forum link), written for the EA Forum First Decade Review; permalink of the review; read all reviews and vote for submissions here.\n\n\n\n\nI would like to suggest that Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain (“Log Scales” from here on out) presents a novel, meaningful, and non-trivial contribution to the field of Effective Altruism. It is novel because even though the terribleness of extreme suffering has been discussed multiple times before, such discussions have not presented a method or conceptual scheme with which to compare extreme suffering relative to less extreme varieties. It is meaningful because it articulates the essence of an intuition of an aspect of life that deeply matters to most people, even if they cannot easily put it into words. And it is non-trivial because the inference that pain (and pleasure) scales are better understood as logarithmic in nature does require one to consider the problem from multiple points of view at once that are rarely, if ever, brought up together (e.g. combining empirical deference graphs, descriptions of pain scales by their creators, latent-trait analysis, neural recordings, and psychophysics). \nFundamentally, we could characterize this article as a conceptual reframe that changes how one assesses magnitudes of suffering in the world. To really grasp the significance of this reframe, let’s look back into how Effective Altruism itself was an incredibly powerful conceptual reframe that did something similar. In particular, a core insight that establishes the raison d’etre of Effective Altruism is that the good that you can do in the world with a given set of resources varies enormously depending on how you choose to allocate it: by most criteria that you may choose (whether it’s QALYs or people saved from homelessness), the cost-effectiveness of causes seem to follow much more closely (at least qualitatively) a long-tail rather than a normal distribution (see: Which world problems are the most pressing to solve? by Benjamin Todd; the long-tail on the left below). In turn, this strongly suggests that researching carefully how to invest one’s altruistic efforts is likely to pay off in very large ways: choosing a random charity versus a top 1% charity will lead to benefits whose scale differs by orders of magnitude.\n\nLog Scales suggests that pain and pleasure themselves follow a long-tail distribution. In what way, exactly? Well, to a first approximation, across the entire board! The article (and perhaps more eloquently the subsequent video presentation at the NYC EA Meetup on the same topic) argues that when it comes to the distribution of the intensity of hedonic states, we are likely to find long-tails almost independently of the way in which we choose to slice or dice the data. This is analogous to, for example, how all of the following quantities follow long-tail distributions: avalanches per country, avalanches per mountain, amount of snow in mountains, number of avalanche-producing mountains per country, size of avalanches, number of avalanches per day, etc. Likewise, in the case of the distribution of pain, the arguments presented suggest we will find that all of the following distributions are long-tails: average pain level per medical condition, number of intensely painful episodes per person per year, intensity of pain per painful episode, total pain per person during life, etc. Thus, that such a small percentage of cluster headache patients accounts for the majority of episodes per year would be expected (see: Cluster Headache Frequency Follows a Long-Tail Distribution; the long-tail on the right above), and along with it, the intensity of such episodes themselves would likely follow a long-tail distribution.\nThis would all be natural, indeed, if we consider neurological phenomena such as pain to be akin to weather phenomena. Log Scales allows us to conceptualize the state of a nervous system and what it gives rise to as akin to how various weather conditions give rise to natural disasters: a number of factors multiply each other resulting in relatively rare, but surprisingly powerful, black swan events. Nervous systems such as those of people suffering from CRPS, fibromyalgia, and cluster headaches are like the Swiss Alps of neurological weather conditions… uniquely suited for ridiculously large avalanches of suffering.\n\nLog Scales are not just of academic interest. In the context of Effective Altruism, they are a powerful generator for identifying new important, neglected, and tractable cause areas to focus on. For instance, DMT for cluster headaches, microdose ibogaine for augmentation of painkillers in sufferers of chronic pain, and chanca piedra for kidney stones (writeup in progress) are all what we believe to be highly promising interventions (of the significant, neglected, and tractable variety) that might arguably reduce suffering in enormous ways and that would not have been highlighted as EA-worthy were it not for Log Scales. (See also: Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free Necklace). On a personal note, I’ve received numerous thank you notes by sufferers of extreme pain for this research. But the work has barely begun: with Log Scales as a lens, we are poised to tackle the world’s reserves of suffering with laser-focus, assured in the knowledge that preventing a small fraction of all painful conditions is all that we need to abolish the bulk of experiential suffering.\nBut does Log Scales make accurate claims? Does it carve reality at the joints? How do we know?\nThe core arguments presented were based on (a) the characteristic distribution of neural activity, (b) phenomenological accounts of extreme pleasure and pain, (c) the way in which the creators of pain scales have explicitly described their meaning, and (d) the results of a statistical analysis of a pilot study we conducted where people ranked, rated, and assigned relative proportions to their most extreme experiences. We further framed this in terms of comparing qualitative predictions from what we called the ​​Normal World vs. Lognormal World. In particular, we stated that: “If we lived in the ‘Lognormal World’, we would expect: (1) That people will typically say that their top #1 best/worst experience is not only a bit better/worse than their #2 experience, but a lot better/worse. Like, perhaps, even multiple times better/worse. (2) That there will be a long-tail in the number of appearances of different categories (i.e. that a large amount, such as 80%, of top experiences will belong to the same narrow set of categories, and that there will be many different kinds of experiences capturing the remaining 20%). And (3) that for most pairs of experiences x and y, people who have had both instances of x and y, will usually agree about which one is better/worse. We call such a relationship a ‘deference’. More so, we would expect to see that deference, in general, will be transitive (a > b and b > c implying that a > c).” And then we went ahead and showed that the data was vastly more consistent with Lognormal World than Normal World. I think it holds up.\nAn additional argument that since has been effective at explaining the paradigm to newcomers has been in terms of exploring the very meaning of Just-Noticeable Differences (JNDs) in the context of the intensity of aspects of one’s experience. Indeed, for (b), the depths of intensity of experience simply make no sense if we were to take a “Just-Noticeable Pinprick” as the unit of measurement and expect a multiple of it to work as the measuring rod between pain levels in the 1-10 pain scale. The upper ends of pain are just so bright, so immensely violent, so as to leave lesser pains as mere rounding errors. But if on each step of a JND of pain intensity we multiply the feeling by a constant, sooner or later (as Zvi might put it) “the rice grains on the chessboard suddenly get fully out of hand” and we enter hellish territory (for a helpful visual aid of this concept: start at 6:06 of our talk at the 2020 EAGxVirtual Unconference on this topic).\n\nFrom my point of view, we can now justifiably work under the assumption that the qualitative picture painted by Log Scales is roughly correct. It is the more precise quantitative analysis which is a work in progress that ought to be iterated over in the coming years. This will entail broadening the range of people interviewed, developing better techniques to precisely capture and parametrize phenomenology (e.g. see our tool to measure visual tracers), use more appropriate and principled statistical methods (e.g. see the comment in the original piece about the Bradley-Terry model and extreme value theory), experimental work in psychophysics labs, neuroimaging research of peak experiences, and the search for cost-effective pragmatic solutions to deal with the worst suffering. I believe that future research in this area will show conclusively the qualitative claims, and perhaps there will be strong consilience on the more precise quantitative claims (but in the absence of a true Qualiascope, the quantitative claims will continue to have a non-negligible margin of error).\nOk, you may say, but if I disagree about the importance of preventing pain, and I care more about e.g. human flourishing, why should I care about this? Here I would like to briefly address a key point that people in the EA sphere have raised in light of our work. The core complaint, if we choose to see it that way, is that one must be a valence utilitarian in order to care about this analysis. That only if you think of ethics in terms of classical Benthamite pain-minimization and pleasure-maximization should we be so keen on mapping the true distribution of valence across the globe. \nBut is that really so?\nThree key points stand out: First, that imperfect metrics that are proxies for aspects of what you care about (even when not all that you care about) can nonetheless be important. Second, that if you cared a little about suffering already, then the post-hoc discovery that suffering is actually that freaking skewed really ought to be a major update. And third, there really are reasons other than valence maximization as a terminal goal to care about extreme suffering: intense suffering is antithetical to flourishing since it has long-term sequelae. More so, even if confined to non-utilitarian ethical theories, one can make the case that there is something especially terrible about letting one’s fellow humans (and non-humans) suffer so intensely without doing anything about it. And perhaps especially so if stopping such horrors turn out to be rather easy, as is indeed the case.\nLet’s tackle these points each in turn.\n(1) Perhaps here we should bring a simple analogy: GDP. Admittedly, there are very few conceptions of the good in which it makes sense for GDP to be the metric to maximize. But there are also few conceptions of the good where you should disregard it altogether. You can certainly be skeptical of the degree to which GDP captures all that is meaningful, but in nearly all views of economic flourishing, GDP will likely have a non-zero weight. Especially if we find that, e.g. some interventions we can do to the economy would cause a 99.9% reduction in a country’s GDP, one should probably not ignore that information (even if the value one assigns to GDP is relatively small compared to what other economists and social scientists assign it). Likewise for extreme suffering. There might be only a few conceptions of the good where that is the only thing we ought to work on. But avoiding hellish states is a rather universally desired state for oneself. Why not take it at least somewhat into account?\nIn truth, this is not something that classical questions in Effective Altruism pre-Log Scales couldn’t overcome either. For instance, as far as I am aware, in practice QALYs are used more as a guide than as an absolute; their value within EA comes from the fact that in practice interventions are orders of magnitude different when it comes to their cost-effectiveness when assessed with QALYs. So even though the vast majority of EAs are not QALY absolutists, the differences in QALYs saved between interventions are large enough that as an approximate guide, the metric still generates huge amounts of consilience.\n(2) In turn, the post-hoc finding that hellish states are much, much worse than one would intuitively believe really should at least rebalance one’s priorities somewhat. Is there really no amount of suffering that would do so? Unless one has a utility function akin to a ReLu activation function, going far enough down into the depths of hell ought to count for something. And…\n(3) Speaking candidly, fully articulating the true significance of this finding will take us to philosophically polemical territory: philosophy of personal identity where person-affecting views will see the situation quite differently than person-moment-affecting views, philosophy of mind where the ontological status of pleasure and pain might be questioned, and intricate questions that arise at the interface between the views of virtue ethicists, deontologists, negative and classical utilitarians. Of course a negative utilitarian who believes in Empty Individualism and Eternalism at the same time will likely be especially horrified by this information. But, with that said, I would suggest that there are good reasons to care about Log Scales no matter how antithetical one’s views are to philosophical hedonism. \nIn particular, I would argue that deontologists and virtue ethicists should still take note. The cultivation of virtue requires a minimum of wellbeing in order to maintain motivation to live. And perhaps deontologists might find extreme suffering particularly egregious from the point of view of “things so horrible that ought not to be”. Really, the people we interviewed for the cluster headache writeup told us that experiencing such levels of hellish suffering causes profound psychological transformations (e.g. one interviewee told us that experiencing the higher ends of pain in a cluster headache feels like a profound “spiritual violation” from which you may never recover – a feeling most certainly aggravated by the seeming indifference of people at large about their plight). Virtue ethicists and deontologists might as well recognize this cause area as work that is unconscionable not to perform, regardless of arguments based on the precise mathematical optimization of the prevention of negative valence.\nAnd finally, in all seriousness, as the cognitive intelligentsia of the world begins to see clearly the nature of the distribution of pleasure and pain, we can expect there to be a big social benefit to being the one who destroys hell. Right now there isn’t a huge social reward to be obtained by working on this cause, but I predict this will change. And, pragmatically, it is sensible to present this cause in a motivating rather than depressing light: indeed, let’s give honor, glory, and endless admiration to whoever makes tangible progress in tearing hell down. And to all of the millionaires and billionaires reading this: this could be you! You could be the one who took on the mantle of preventing all future cluster headaches, established the field of anti-tolerance drugs for severe chronic pain, or got rid of kidney stones (and you did it before it was cool!). Let’s get to work!\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2022/01/14/review-of-log-scales/", "title": "Review of Log Scales", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2022-01-14T23:04:28+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=4", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "61aa40d35564f3a2825bf489bf282559", "summary": []}
{"text": "Perfume Notes Are Impressionistic\n\nFrom Reddit r/fragrance “An example of how commercial fragrances are composed [education] [long]” by u/acleverpseudonym. [See also r/DIYfragrance]. Lightly edited for grammar; links added for educational purposes; light [commentary and additions] by me.\n\nSome of you might remember me. I was one of the moderators here for half a decade or so until my life got busy enough that it became difficult to keep up.\nI have a small fragrance line myself and I occasionally make fragrances for other brands. Occasionally websites like Fragrantica and Now Smell This will write articles about my fragrances. I’m by no means a famous perfumer, but… I’ve worked enough as a perfumer to have insight into how fragrances are made.\nThe average person doesn’t really think about what’s actually in their fragrances any more than the average person really considers what flavors blend together to make up the taste of cola. (As a side note, you can make a passable cola flavor out of orange, lime, cinnamon, lemon, nutmeg, and coriander). When people do start thinking about it, they inevitably come across fragrance notes.\nFragrance notes are both incredibly useful and completely misleading because notes are not ingredients! Notes are the impressions that the fragrance creator thinks a lay person might get from smelling the fragrance. They aren’t necessarily the ingredients used in the fragrance, and also, (this is another important bit), they’re not necessarily even what the perfumer was attempting to make the fragrance smell like.\nThere’s a fundamental misconception on the part of most consumers. Most consumers think that fragrances are made largely from familiar materials. Orange, lemon, jasmine, rose, birch leaves, lily of the valley, etc. Ok, maybe most people realize that most fragrances contain synthetic materials, but there’s quite often an implicit assumption that the synthetics are a synthetic version of a natural material. In other words, that the synthetic is an attempt to recreate a smell that is found in nature and that all (or at least most) of the smells in a modern fragrance can be reproduced with naturals. I suppose that if you asked someone “do you think that all synthetics are an attempt to recreate a natural smell?” they would think about it and quickly come to the conclusion that this doesn’t really make sense, but most people haven’t actually stopped and thought about it. I see evidence of this assumption all over the place online:\n“I’m looking for all natural version of [fragrance X].”“I’m looking for a less synthetic version of Sauvage.”“Can someone tell me which essential oils I can mix together to make an aquatic smell like Cool Water?”\nIt’s really only pretty recently that there has been any real visibility (to the general public) into what materials go into a commercial fragrance, so this is an understandable point of view.\nIt’s very, very wrong, though.\nWe need to take a giant step back and clarify some things.\nNatural oils (essential oils/absolute oils/SCO2 extracts/etc.) are typically made up of dozens to hundreds of different materials [typically distributed in a long-tail]. They’re like miniature perfumes in and of themselves with top notes, heart notes, and base notes. They’re complex and beautiful, but they can only be manipulated in a limited way. They’re like photographs.\nSpecialty bases are typically made up of dozens of individual ingredients, some natural, some man-made, some that exist in nature, some that didn’t exist until they were created in a lab in the 60s. Basically, the sky is the limit. You generally don’t know exactly what’s in them, but they’re produced by suppliers that you can be pretty sure will still be making them in 20 years. Sometimes, they’re direct attempts to reproduce (or improve upon) a natural smell, for reasons of cost, safety, or performance. Sometimes, they’re just a novel smell, like Givaudan‘s aquatic smelling Ultrazur base. These are like computer generated images [or Photoshop filters].\nIsolates are ingredients made of a single molecule. They can be naturally derived or lab-made. They can exist in nature or not. They have names like linalool, coumarin, limonene, ambroxide [better known as ambroxan – the qualia of the day in this video and one of my favorite aromachemicals], methyl dihydrojasmonate and you can describe and find the chemical formula for them. A lot of them have trade names that are shorter and refer to one company’s version. E.g. Hedione is a trade name for methyl dihydrojasmonate. Quite often, isolates can also be found in natural oils. Natural lavender oil is typically ~42% linalyl actate and ~40% linalool [note: lavender oil with more linalyl acetate relative to linalool tends to smell “dryer” and “dustier”]. When composing fragrances, I’ll use linalool and linalyl acetate as isolates as well. Sometimes I’ll use them to “tune” other ingredients that already contain them, but not in the quantities I want (like lavender [e.g. “LAVENDER OIL 40/42 has fresh, herbal, clean, aromatic nuances. The numbers in Lavender 40/42 indicate the linalyl acetate content; in this case, they indicate the product contains 40%-42% of linalyl acetate. Lavender 40/42 is generally a blend of various lavenders in order to get a consistent scent from batch to batch, with processors adding linalyl acetate to cover the smell of camphor or borneol components of a given lavender.“]). Sometimes I’ll use them to add a sweet, floral character to completely unrelated materials. If natural oils are like photographs and bases are like CGI, isolates are like paints. You have the most control, but it takes the most skill to turn them into something beautiful and complex.\n\nTypical Lavender Oil Composition (source)\n“Aromachemical” is a catch-all term used to describe these fragrant materials, though it typically connotes materials that are either isolates or bases.\nNow that we have that out of the way, let’s take a look at how commercial fragrances are created. The easiest way to do that is to take a look at a formula:\nCologne Accord [which you can find/purchase in Perfumer’s Apprentice‘s “Key Accords“]:\nThis is an example formula for a “cologne” accord that was composed by Givaudan. It’s by no means a finished fragrance, but most everyone would recognize the smell. It’s a fresh, slightly sweet, slightly bitter, slightly green smell that often finds its way into men’s fresh fragrances in one way or another (though that’s not to say that this exact formula does).\nFlorhydral – 10Exaltolide Total – 10Ultrazur – 15Peonile – 60Petitgrain oil -70Ethylene Brassylate – 90Aurantiol Pure – 100Geranyl Acetate – 120Linalyl Acetate – 220Dihydro Myrcenol – 305\nTotal: 1000\nLets take a look at these ingredients one by one:\nFlorhydral is the trade name for an isolate. It is a floralizer that can add a sort of fresh, green, floral note to fragrances. It is not found in nature.\nExaltolide is another single molecule, a white musk. It’s very delicately animalic, with the characteristic smell of a white musk. It’s been used as a reference white musk because it’s so typical of the “white musk” family.\nUltrazur is a specialty base from Givaudan. It’s marine smelling, more oceanic than the Calone 1951 found in Cool Water. By itself, in concentration, it reminds me very much of fabric softener.\nPeonile is another “not found in nature” molecule. It has a sort of rosy, sort of geranium-like, sort of peony-like, sort of grapefruit-like odor and acts as a volumizer and fixative. Odor descriptions that call to mind an assortment of known materials are fairly common, but it’s important to note that they don’t mean that it smells like x+y+z. It just means that they have facets that are reminiscent of these materials in some way.\nPetitgrain oil is a natural oil made from the greenery of a citrus tree. Usually from orange trees, but varieties from mandarin, lemon, and all sorts of other citrus are also available.\nEthylene brassylate is a sweet, floral, white musk that can smell a touch old fashioned to some people by itself, or in really high concentrations. It’s still a fairly clean musk, however. Yet another single molecule.\nAurantiol is a very, very commonly used material in fragrances, particularly men’s fragrances. It’s a single molecule (more or less). Aurantiol is a Schiff Base, which is a class of materials that you get when you combine an aldehyde and an amine and they react with each other. Most amines don’t smell very good, but one of them, something called methyl anthranilate, does. It’s found in white florals, particularly neroli [see: The Neroli Neighborhood for a deep dive into the neroli vibe], as well as grapes. Artificial grape flavor is basically methyl anthranilate. Hydroxycitronellal is an aldehyde that is often said to smell as close as any single material does to Lily of the Valley. When they’re mixed together and heated, you get water and a very thick, highlighter yellow colored schiff base that smells like a more mild version of methyl anthranilate. It’s sweet, long-lasting, and reminiscent of orange blossom/neroli and grape.\nGeranyl acetate is the acetate version of geraniol. It’s a single molecule that is literally found in hundreds of natural oils. Everything from oregano and thyme to ylang ylang, rose, geranium and neroli, to fir needle and frankincense. It’s everywhere (much like linalool and linalyl actetate [note: in addition to lavender, also petitgrain, neroli, and bergamot all have very high concentrations of both linalool and linalyl acetate at the same time]). It’s sweet, fruity-floral, and vaguely green smelling. It also has a smell that I think of as the “acetate smell,” which can make it smell “chemically” to some people in isolation, even though it’s found everywhere in nature.\nLinalyl acetate is another material like geranyl acetate that’s found all over the place in nature. Natural lavender oil is ~42% linalyl acetate. It’s also found in most of the natural oils I mentioned for geranyl actetate. The description for it is also very similar to geranyl acetate, but it’s more lavendery and less rosy. I really like this material and use it when I want to add an ethereal fruity/floral sweetness to a composition.\nDihydromyrcenol is aggressively fresh, cold, and almost harsh. It’s somewhat reminiscent of citrus and lavender. Mostly, though, it smells like laundry detergent. It was used to scent laundry detergent for years before it made it into fine fragrance. At first it was used in tiny doses, but by the 1980s it was being used much more prominently. Something like 10% of the formula of Drakkar Noir was dihydromyrcenol [and apparently also the fragrance super-star of the 90s Calvin Klein One]. It’s found in trace amounts in nature, but nothing natural really smells prominently of it.\nSo now that I’ve explained all the materials, let’s take a look at the formula. Here are some observations:\nNatural oils from recognizable sources only make up 7% of the accord. There are other materials that are found in nature, but they’re all isolates, one alien smelling-molecule refined from a more familiar-smelling material. More than half of the formula is made from 2 molecules [once again, long-tails]. More than 90% is made from 8. The amounts of materials used can vary wildly. Material strength is in no way consistent.\nThe perfumer who composed this formula painted the majority of the formula in broad strokes from single molecule aromachemicals and then filled in depth and details with natural petitgrain oil, and tiny amounts of a specialty base (ultrazur) and a powerful aldehyde (florhydral).\nI didn’t compose this, and I can’t speak for the perfumer who did, but I can imagine how it might have been composed. I’ll walk you through how I’m imagining the perfumer’s process:\nI imagine the accord was inspired by petitgrain, but the perfumer wanted something fresher and more stylized and abstract, in the same way a graphic designer might prefer a stylized logo to a photo. Dihydromyrcenol is fresh and powerful, but also cold and harsh and almost bitter. It’s a good compliment to petitgrain, but right off the bat, I know it’s not going to be suitable by itself unless I’m trying to just modify the smell of petitgrain a little bit by adding a teeny tiny bit dihydromyrcenol. It needs some cushion, something to cut the harshness. Geranyl acetate and linalyl acetate add a niche cushioning effect, can be used liberally, and are both found in petitgrain, so they’ll go well with it. By itself, that composition is still cold and bitter. It needs a bit more warmth, but not a candy-like warmth. Something keeping in line with the petitgrain. Aurantiol is the obvious choice. The scent of orange tree leaves goes well with the scent of the orange blossoms that nestle amongst them. In keeping with the “more abstract” theme though, we don’t want to just dump neroli or orange blossom absolute into this. Too much complexity can leave a composition smelling muddled [see quote below for more on this], and we want the bitter, fresh, green petitgrain to be the star of the show here, not the neroli. Plus, neroli is quite expensive and not as long-lasting as aurantiol. We add the aurantiol for warmth. The peonile for volume and some white musks for depth. It’s pretty common to use multiple musks in a fragrance because many people are anosmic to some musks, so you want to make sure they’re able to smell at least one of them.\nThen as finishing touches, we add a hint of Ultrazur, which adds a bit of modern sophistication and florhydral, which in tiny amounts adds a bit of a dewy, natural, green smell to the composition.\nThis composition isn’t about taking familiar smells and mixing them together like some sort of fruit salad with hunks of this and hunks of that. It’s about taking an idea and enhancing aspects of it, rebalancing it until it fits the vision. It’s more like painting than making a collage. It’s not necessarily as detailed or accurate, but it’s not supposed to be. Degas wasn’t trying to create photorealistic ballerinas. Van Gogh wasn’t trying to accurately render the night sky. They were trying to evoke an impression. Perfumers are the same way.\n\nIf that fragrance doesn’t smell like realistic rose/jasmine/cedar/etc., chances are, it wasn’t intended to. The perfumer wasn’t trying to make a realistic jasmine and failing, the perfumer was trying to make an entirely new smell that just has aspects that are jasmine-like.\nBreaking it apart into notes is actually counterproductive in a lot of ways.\n…but that’s a subject for another post.\n\nRelatedly:\nIn response to the Reddit r/DIYfragrance question: “Lavender + Lemon + Rose accord – How would you use a lavender + lemon + rose accord? I like that combo a lot – a narcotic acidic mix with powerful mood-lifting properties. But as soon as I use patchouli, ginger, or even chamomile as the base notes for the composition, the magic of the accord gets drowned out by the base. I’m curious how more experienced DIY fragrance makers would go about harnessing the magic of that accord by blending it with things that enhance rather than detract from it. Thank you in advance “\nu/NanashiSaito comments:\nI’m going to take a shot in the dark here and say that it sounds like you’re using essential oils rather than individual aromachemicals for your accords. \nIf that does happen to be the case, that’s your issue. It’s not that there’s anything specific about Rose/Lemon/Lavender that doesn’t play nice with other scents. It’s that essential oils inherently get “muddy” when you start to mix more than a few together. \nEssential oils are a complex combination of hundreds of individual aromachemicals. They’re almost like finished fragrances unto themselves. I look at them like jellybeans. One jellybean tastes like whatever flavor it’s supposed to taste like. Two or three jellybeans can taste like a fun combination of flavors. \nBut have you ever tried popping a handful of jellybeans? The flavors all muddle together and create this generic sort of fruity sweetness that doesn’t really taste like anything in specific. It’s the flavor equivalent of swirling together a bunch of colors until you get brown. \nSame with essential oils. For example, lemon and lime essential oil share a ton of common ingredients, mostly terpenes like limonene, pinene, terpinene, Myrcene, etc. But anyone who has smelled lemon and lime knows that they smell very distinct. This is because they have slightly different proportions of these ingredients. Lemon might have 70% limonene, 10% pinene, and 15% terpinene whereas lime has 50% limonene, 5% pinene and 10% terpinene. When you blend them together, these distinct proportions are lost, and with them, their characteristic smells.\nSame goes for mixing other different oils: ginger for example also contains a lot of the same terpenes that lemon contains. But it also has a big dose of camphene and zingiberene which give it the characteristic sharp ginger bite. But when you mix ginger with lemon, it throws off the delicate balance of terpenes in the lemon and thus muddies the character. Same with patchouli: lots of patchoulol and guaiene, but also lots of terpenes found in lemon. Same with chamomile: lots of ethereal esters but also lots of terpenes.\nIn fact, it’s hard to find essential oils that don’t muddy the balance of lemon. Lavender happens to have a fairly close balance of terpenes (in addition to the characteristic lavender combination of Linalool and Linalyl Acetate). And rose is almost all alcohols.\nBasically, with each essential oil you add, you also add a large list of other oils you can’t add without muddying your scent. And with lavender/lemon/rose, there’s really not much room to explore if you’re using essential oils only. \nAnd there’s the rub: if you really want to explore enhancing your scent, you need to get more granular and start using individual aromachemicals rather than entire essential oils into themselves. \nIf you’re dead set on using essential oils only, check out www.2pih.com/ingredients.php: I put together a resource with about 200 different essential oils and their constituent ingredients. You want to find ones that use either entirely different ingredient sets than what are found in your main accord (which will be difficult because you’ve really covered a broad swath of ingredients with your combination), or find ones whose common ingredients are in similar proportion (which will also be difficult).\nOn the other hand, if you’re already using individual aromachemicals and your description of the accord is more abstract than literal, then you probably know all of this, so my apologies for the presumption, and I hope this comment is helpful for anyone else reading this. \nGood luck, and see you in the singularity!\n\nFeatured image: San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk by Claude Monet", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/12/22/perfume-notes-are-impressionistic/", "title": "Perfume Notes Are Impressionistic", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-12-22T23:18:17+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=4", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0a4bbc34bfde179a66bf3824104bc522", "summary": []}
{"text": "High-Valence Meditation\n\nExcerpt from Seeing that Frees by Rob Burbea (2014), pgs. 53-59\n\nWorking with Feelings of Pleasure and with the Subtle Body\nEncouraging feelings of well-being\nThe method just described, of focusing primarily on the sense of the whole body, involves the development of a sensitivity to what could be termed ‘the subtle body’ or the ‘energy body’.[8]\nAlmost from the start in this approach we deliberately but gently work at nurturing a sense of comfort, pleasure, or well-being in the body.This can be done through the way we pay attention to the subtle body, as described above – opening out the awareness to encompass there the whole body space, and tuning into the more pleasant frequencies of feeling that are perceivable.It is also possible to use the breath or the mettā to help elicit and support the pervasion of this sense of well-being. Simply sensitizing to, and enjoying, the way we feel the energetic resonances of the mettā or the breath throughout the whole space of the body – opening to and finding delight in their reverberations there – can gently move the experience in the direction of a more expansive well-being.And when there is a state of agitation or anxiety, we can play with ways of breathing or practicing the mettā, and also ways of sensing the breath or mettā, that feel as if they soothe the subtle body and smooth out its energies. Delicately tuning into the felt experience of these qualities of soothing or smoothing-out will help them to gradually gain strength, and help the agitated energies to slowly subside.The imagination, too, can be skillfully employed in order to gently encourage this sense of pleasure or well-being in the subtle body. While simultaneously pervading the whole body space with an awareness sensitive to the texture and tone of the energy of that whole field, it is possible, for example, to imagine the subtle body as a body of radiant light; then to open to and explore what that feels like. Any image formed in this way does not necessarily need to appear in precise detail, or even completely distinctly. It is, rather, the energetic sense of pleasure or well-being which it supports that is primary, since this is what primarily supports the samādhi.Likewise, one may experiment with imagining various luminous lines of energy in the body – for example, between the perineum and the crown of the head, or from the lower belly out through the legs – and sense how any such lines of energy supports the whole body to feel upright, open, and energized. The imagination here may be visual or kinesthetic, or a combination of the two. And it need not always follow exactly the anatomical contours of the physical body or its posture. For instance, if sitting or kneeling with the legs crossed or bent, the luminous lines of energy imagined radiating from the lower belly or base of the spine need not bend with the legs, but may instead continue and extend straight out at the knees, if at that time that feels more supportive of openness, energization, and well-being.If there is tension, or even pain, in one area of the body, rather than always conceiving of it in anatomical or physiological terms, it can sometimes be more helpful to conceive of and perceive that area in energetic terms, and to play with the perception of lines of energy in order to support a degree of comfort and ease.\nThere are many ways we may discover to bring about some sense of energetic openness and well-being in the subtle body. And as it is accessed more and more, this altered body feeling is one that eventually we can ‘remember’ and learn to deliberately recall – to summon by gentle intention. We can then move, usually gradually, into the focused steadiness of samādhi from that basis, by incorporating this perception of pleasure or well-being more centrally into the meditation.\nTowards unification\nWhether it has arisen through being deliberately recalled, or through focusing on the breath or mettā, there are again a number of possible ways of using the sense of pleasure or comfort to help guide the citta into the unification of samādhi.\nOnce it is easy sustaining for some minutes, we can gently begin to take that bodily feeling of well-being as the primary object of our focus. It is important not to ‘snatch at it’, but rather to ease the attention toward it gracefully, and gradually let it take up the full focus of attention. Then the attention and the citta can be encouraged to enjoy it as fully as possible.The attention can at times probe it, burrowing into one area of the pleasure, perhaps where it feels strongest.Or, at other times, a mode of ‘receiving’ it, really trying to open up to it, can be employed.Either way, one attempts all the while to remain intimate with its texture, and actually to relish the pleasure as much as possible. In these ways (and in others that can be discovered) we can delicately work to gently sustain the bodily feeling of well-being, and to absorb the attention more fully into it.Alternatively, it is possible to mix the sense of pleasure with the perception of the breath or the mettā, in order to support and deepen the quality of the samādhi.Then it may seem, for example, as if one is breathing the pleasurable energy; or it may seem as if one is breathing into and out of that area of well-being.In mettā practice, it may seem as if the mettā and the pleasurable energy have become fused, so that the feeling of the mettā at that time is the feeling of the well-being. And this can become the ‘flavour’ of the energy of mettā that is radiated outwards towards beings, or that wraps around and permeates one’s own body and being.The area of pleasurable energy may also be perceived as the source of the mettā.\nSteadiness of feeling is more important than strength\nWe should point out once more that sometimes the sense of well-being is really quite subtle. Although the feelings of pleasure might also be very strong at times, this is actually not necessary in order to use them in a helpful way. Over time, their strength will in fact vary naturally (and anyway, as the practice matures, at a certain stage they begin to mellow). What is more necessary is that they sustain relatively steadily for more than a few minutes. Then we can learn to sustain them for longer.\nWithin this larger steadiness, any perceived waves or movements of the energy are not at all problematic. We can try to open the space of the body to these inner currents as much as possible, allowing and fully enjoying them (and if they feel very intense, even playing with surrendering and abandoning our whole body and being to them). Doing so, their intensity will in time calm down.\nSuffusing and saturating the whole body\nAlong with the steadiness of the feelings of well-being, and of the attention on those feelings, we are also gently aiming at eventually having the whole space of the body suffused by and saturated with the feeling of well-being or pleasure. Sometimes this happens by itself. But sometimes the sense of pleasure, when it arises or when it is recalled, only pervades one area of the body. There are a number of viable responses then.\nOne is to simply enjoy it in the area where it is located, in the ways that we have described, without pressuring the feeling to spread. It may then expand naturally at some point to pervade the whole body.But even if it does not spread then, that need not be regarded as a problem. A vital aspect of the whole relationship with samādhi practice is to enjoy what well-being is there at any time, not to measure it and view it through a lens that somehow demands, even subtly, that it be ‘better’, bigger, stronger.Having said that, it is in fact also possible at times to gently encourage the feeling of pleasure or well-being to spread – for instance by simply opening up the space of the awareness to embrace a larger area of the body. Sometimes then the pleasant feeling will automatically start to expand to fill that space.Alternatively, the breath may be used to gently ‘massage’ the sense of well-being into other areas of the body. Although there is not space to enter into a full description of possibilities here, with practice the breath energy may be felt and perceived throughout the body, entering and flowing in all kinds of ways beyond the strictly anatomical movement of air into the wind-pipe and lungs. We can learn to sense the breath energy in and through the whole body. And as alluded to earlier, the breath energy can be mixed with the pleasure, so that the perceived movements of breath in the whole body space move and spread the perception of the pleasure.There is also, again, no reason why one cannot just imagine the feeling of well-being permeating the body space more fully. The perception then often begins to follow the image.\nThese are some of the possibilities, but with repeated practice over time it will anyway become normal for the pleasurable feeling to effortlessly pervade the whole body whenever it arises.\nUnblocking and smoothing out the subtle body energies\nThe harmonization and unification in well-being that is characteristic of samādhi can also be regarded as a harmonization, alignment, smoothing out, and opening of the flows of energies in the subtle body [emphasis mine]. All day and all night long our energy body is moving in and out of states of alignment and openness, constriction and blockage, in response to a whole range of conditions, physical, mental, and emotional. This is completely normal, and with attention and sensitivity to the experience of the body we notice these fluctuations more and more. Although they may be felt in any region, perhaps most commonly a block in energy will be felt as a constriction somewhere along the central axis of the body, anywhere from the perineum to the top of the head. As we move into a state of more samādhi there is an unblocking, untying, aligning, and harmonizing of the subtle body energies to some degree.\nWhen the subtle energies are blocked and agitated, samādhi is to some extent blocked. And when the subtle energy is unblocked and unagitated, samādhi is not so far away. (Perhaps all that is needed then is a steadying of the attention on enjoying the pleasant feelings of the ‘unblocked’ subtle body, as described). In addition, therefore, to the ways of working to smooth out and soothe the energy body suggested earlier, it can be useful to learn means for gently unblocking the energies when there is any sense of energetic constriction, in order to open up again the potential of a degree of samādhi at that time. Again, with a light and playful attitude of experimentation, a variety of ways of working in meditation can be discovered.\nFor example, sensitive to the whole subtle body sense, the breath energy or mettā may be perceived and conceived in any way that feels helpful, as alluded above: \nWe may breath into and out of an area of blockage.Or we may, perhaps gently, breathe the breath energy through that area.In mettā practice, we may experiment with situating the centre or source of the energy of mettā right at that point of constriction, and explore what effects that has.If these strategies prove difficult, it is again quite feasible to imagine the breath, the body energies, or the mettā flowing more freely through the area of blockage, or even flowing out of the body, and opening and unblocking in that way.\nThe Relation Between Samādhi and Insight\nInsight brings samādhi\nAs well as those described above, there are many other practicable means to unblock the subtle body energies. In particular, most of the insight ways of looking that we shall introduce in the course of this book may also be used in the service of opening and deepening samādhi. Mindful observation will reveal that any craving or clinging is always accompanied by, and reflected in, blocks and knots in the subtle body [emphasis mine]. Now, insight, we have said, cuts that on which dukkha depends. And dukkha depends on craving. Thus, according our definition, insight is any way of looking that releases craving. As the insight and emptiness practices are developed, therefore, they can also be used at times to deliberately undo the craving that is mirrored in the knots in the energy body. This might involve using the insight practices ‘on’ the experienced subtle energy blocks themselves, as ways of looking at those perceptions and feelings. Or it might involve engaging these insight ways of looking just more generally in regard to any experience in the moment. Either way, the dissolving of craving to whatever extent will, at the same time and to a similar extent, untie the knots in the subtle body to unblock those energies and so deliver the possibility of some samādhi. Ha!\nWith more practice our skill grows and we find that it is in fact possible quite often to use the ‘letting go’ that insight brings to deliberately unblock the energies and the felt sense of the sublet body in this way. The pleasantness, openness, well-being, delightful and alive stillness, or joy that comes with this unblocking can be felt in the space and texture of the body sense. We can then tune into that. It is this tuning in to the frequency of the pleasant, and delicately attending to it, that ‘filters it out’ of the field of awareness, so that it begins to become more palpable and more prominent.\nThen we can rest in it, allowing it to spread throughout the body space. And if, as before, we continue to tune in to and focus on the felt sense of the energy of this well-being, gently intent on allowing and opening to an enjoyment of it, and encouraging the attention to become absorbed in it, to fill up with it, this can carry us to the threshold of some samādhi.\nSuch a skill is useful for even the most experienced meditators. There are times in meditation when we may be trying to bring the mind to some unification, working with the intention for samādhi, and despite all our patience and adeptness in attempting different things samādhi does not come. We may need some insight to help us let go of some craving or clinging, perhaps even a craving we were unaware of, and then some samādhi becomes possible.\nIn addition to the opening and transformation of the energies of the subtle body just described, there is another, related aspect to what is occurring that can be pointed out. To a degree proportional to its strength, the push and pull of craving pushes and pulls the attention. It thus agitates the mind and makes it restless; or saps its energy and makes it dull [emphasis mine]. Relaxing craving through insight will therefore allow the mind to settle more naturally and easefully into stillness and a steadiness of attention. We can see then that the quality of steadiness of attention does not only come through holding the mind to one object.\nAside from being a skillful ‘trick’, however, all this suggests a number of things. One is that although usually we might conceive that ‘samādhi leads to insight’, (and clearly a certain amount of steadiness is generally needed before any insight can arise), as we explore we discover more and more that they can lead to each other.\n\n[8] We can freely use a term like ‘subtle body’ or ‘energy body’, without needing either to assert or to deny the ‘reality’ of such a concept. It is enough for us that it is a perception, a way the body can be perceived which can be helpful. In fact, a little reflection reveals that the same could be said of concepts like ‘attention’. Is there really some ‘thing’ called ‘attention’ that can ‘go towards’ some other thing (or mental representation of an object) or ‘receive’ that thing? These are all ways of conceiving and perceiving useful on the path to freedom. Perceivable, useful, and, as we will come to see, thoroughly empty.\n\n\n\nSee Also:\nHealing Trauma with Neural AnnealingOn Dark Rooms, Jhanas, Ecstasy, and the Symmetry Theory of ValenceNeural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything (by Michael Johnson)Buddhist Annealing: Wireheading Done Right with the Seven Factors of AwakeningWhy we seek out pleasure: the Symmetry Theory of Homeostatic Regulation (also by Mike)The Supreme State of Unconsciousness: Classical Enlightenment from the Point of View of Valence Structuralism\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/12/03/high-valence-meditation/", "title": "High-Valence Meditation", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-12-03T08:01:54+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=4", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "79859b17138f90b56ea03790778f1a95", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Supreme State of Unconsciousness: Classical Enlightenment from the Point of View of Valence Structuralism\n\nThe following is an exchange of text messages with Roger Thisdell, a 26 year old accomplished meditator. He claims that this year he finally broke through into abiding in what he describes as an entirely new category of experience that matches the descriptions of classical Buddhist 4th path.\nFor context, Daniel Ingram of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha fame describes 4th path as:\n1) Utter centerlessness: no watcher, no sense of a watcher, no subtle watcher, no possibility of a watcher. This is immediately obvious just as color is to a man with good eyesight as the old saying goes. Thus, anything and everything simply and obviously manifests just where they are. No phenomena observe any others and never did or could.2) Utter agencylessness: meaning no agency, no sense of doing, no sense of doer, no sense that there could be any agent or doer, no way to find anything that seems to be in control at all. Whatever effort or intent or anything like that that arises does so naturally, causally, inevitably, as it always actually did. This is immediately obvious, though not always the forefront of attention.3) No cycles change or stages or states or anything else like that do anything to this direct comprehension of simple truths at all.4) There is no deepening in it to do. The understanding stands on its own and holds up over cycles, moods, years, etc and doesn’t change at all. I have nothing to add to my initial assessment of it from 9 years ago.5) There is nothing subtle about it: anything and everything that arises exhibits these same qualities directly, clearly. When I was on the third path, particularly late in it, those things that didn’t exhibit these qualities were exceedingly subtle, and trying to find the gaps in the thing was exceedingly difficult and took years and many cycles. I had periods from weeks to months where it felt done and then some subtle exception would show up and I would realize I was wrong yet again, so this is natural and understandable, and if someone claims 4th as I define it here and later says they got it wrong, have sympathy for them, as this territory is not easy and can easily fool people, as it did me many, many times over about 5 years or so. However, 4th, as I term it, ended that and 9 years later that same thing holds, which is a very long time in this business.There are other aspects that may be of value to discuss at some other time, but those are a great place to start for those who wish to claim this. If you truly have those, then perhaps we can talk about a few other points that are less central and essential.\n\n\n[Links added to aid reader’s comprehension – lightly edited for clarity]\nIn the beginning… Roger joined a private group where we discuss consciousness and started to get familiar with the vocabulary of the Qualia Research Institute (e.g. discussing meditation in terms of valence). He then posted this video, which caught my attention:\nPleasure does not exist how you think it does (positive valence explained as an anti-phenomenon)\nWhere he claims that “Pleasure as a positive, as an actual added experience, does not exist. It certainly does not exist how a lot of us think it does … [whereas] negative valence experiences do exist as contractions.”\nBased on that very interesting video, I decided to invite him to Phenomenology Club (a private gathering where we discuss exotic states of consciousness and try to make sense of them in a think-tank fashion – see Healing Trauma with Neural Annealing).\n\nConversation\nRoger: \nAndrés! This is Roger Thisdell […]. Thanks for giving me your number.\nDo add me to the Phenomenology Club. That sounds like my jam! Cheers!\nAndrés:\nExcellent! Will do! \n[…time…]\nRoger: \nHey Andrés, it was great to hang out online last night and hear your explanations. A bunch of you are really elite thinkers. I’m inspired to learn how to speak more of your qualia language.\nI would love to get into the topic of paradises with you. You seem to really sing their praise.\nI said yesterday that I hold the view that actually what is most desirable is just the elimination of negative valence. As someone who frequently has cessations (when consciousness blanks out for a moment) where there is no subjective experience (no negative, no positive valence) in my book this is good enough. My thinking is also informed via complete ego death experiences in which there is still consciousness but no judgement on any part of experience (bad or good). At a local individual level these are the most desirable states. Out of all the states I have experienced (including bliss trips, jhanas, 5-MeO, MDMA, staring into the eyes of a lover without insecurities, laughing fits ) if I had to choose a state to be in permanently it would either be cessation or ego death. I may have curated my brain too much to a Buddhist view and my level of emptiness insight is well entrenched, so that it is hard for me to really believe the ultimate good is to keep the cosmic consciousness party going and fueling it with positive valence.\nI think that while consciousness is online we better make the best out of it and try to exist in as few low negative valence states as possible and help all sentient beings with this as well; all the while the positive valence that comes along is merely instrumentally valuable, like a compliment or added bonus.\nFor example if you are hungry it is nice to eat something tasty. But if you were never hungry in the first place then who cares how tasty something is – don’t need it  (this may be my strongly consolidated non-attachment showing).\nI guess what I’m really asking is: can you convince me to intrinsically care for paradise states? I do believe I have experienced what you are referring to as paradise states, but maybe I just have too much non-attachment for them to think they are the goal/prize.\n(apologies for being long-winded )\nAndrés:\nPerhaps:\nYou lost the ability to get excited about future experiences. You learned this because you were taught and you practiced techniques that associate being excited about the future with dukkha. Alas, the hedonic theories around the time of Buddha were incomplete and as a consequence a lot of the claims and teachings underfit reality (meaning that they generalize too much). In contrast, it turns out that there are a manifold of ways of experiencing excitement about the future in an epistemologically clear way and no delusions. More so, with that orientation one can see more clearly larger parts of the state-space of consciousness as one is not inhibiting them. I know you have experience with high valence states. But I suspect you have deconstructed a lot of the microcognitive apparatus that allow the insights coming from the reality of their existence from propagating across the entire nervous system.Just as lack of awareness about e.g. cluster headaches phenomenology can give you the impression that reality has no stakes, so does acute lack of access to the ultra-positive realms. I think for many, Buddhism has a certain effect in how one conceptualizes such experiential realms after the fact that perhaps is not quite in tune with how they truly were. Interestingly, one could here examine Buddhism as an aesthetic itself, and renunciation as a kind of Soulmaking, where under the hood one is still pursuing a kind of high-dimensional meaning qualia of positive valence. Which takes me to:Rob Burbea’s Soulmaking talking about how exploring not exhaustively breaking down dukkha always but letting a bit of e.g. Eros/passion for reality opens up new ways of seeing that recontextualize Buddhism. Not that we shouldn’t get rid of dukkha, of course. But it’s good to see the underlying aesthetic influences on how one generalizes about reality based on one’s experience.\nWhat do you think? \nThank you for joining! And also for sharing your thoughts. \nSee: Soulmaking part 1, part 2.\nRoger:\nAh Andrés, so many thoughts \nFirst of all, I am so impressed with Burbea. His lectures were incredibly useful for me while learning the jhanas. And now I’m picking through his book ‘Seeing That Frees’.\nI think his ontology and how he builds on Buddhism is sophisticated and gorgeous.\nReminds me of a remark about Hemingway, by his grandson – he quit journalism to dedicate himself to fiction because he was more interested in truth than facts. I relate this to Soulmaking in a way.\nI love his notion of skillful fabrication. But it seems like it’s a compromise in a way. We can’t fully live without self, and thoughtforms, and conceptual frameworks, and so, while we are alive and have them, let’s learn to use them skillfully/beautifully. I’m on board! \nRe your 2nd point: I would add that a lack of awareness of the existence of cessations, or Nirodha, or ego death experiences is another topographical blind spot which prevents people from making a more comprehensive assessment of what is most desirable. (I know that many people who say they’ve experienced ego death, when I enquire about it, it turns out to be more of just a partial ego loss experience, and not the full annihilation). I suppose we really need those who have deep expertise in bliss states and dukkha-less/unfabricated states to compare and contrast.\nFor what it’s worth, and to give you more a sense of my bias, I would claim to be someone who has explored a wide range of state-spaces: from suicidal depression, to psychosis-like damnation bad trips, to K-holes, to peak experiences, and now as of 21st of May [2021] I’m claiming Frank Yang-style MCTB [see: Scott Alexander’s book review] 4th path permanent abiding in centreless consciousness (IDK what that says about my nervous system and fully propagating insights as you mentioned).\nHands down , this is the best shift in my life that has ever taken place without a doubt (I thought stream entry was good, but this is another magnitude). My hedonic set tone is persistently so high. I’m often walking around smiling for no apparent reason. 11/10 I recommend this.\nAnd 4th path gets you an ability to adopt a new perspective where you simultaneously see the Yin and the Yang and vice sera (emptiness is form and samsara is nirvana). It’s all one place, there is not out. All the while, still we quite obviously make value judgements between states. I know you speak of hellish corners of consciousness that shouldn’t be touched. And so, although we can/should adopt flexibility of perspectives on aesthetic frames (as Rob speaks about, which is helpful) and see value in many different views as best as we can… must we still do the hard job of really judging what is best? What is most desirable? (to talk from a metamodern perspective).\nUltimately, I still come down on: lights out unconsciousness tops everything  [emphasis mine]. Getting all beings to Parinirvana would objectively be preferable for all beings rather than keeping the play going – if such a plan is possible or sensible or sensical even.\nIt’s funny though, at some point I think it may just come down to some split difference in intuition among people (perhaps that difference can be reconciled somehow). For me this was apparent when I hear from Kenneth Folk vs. Culadasa. Kenneth holds antinatalist sentiments (or he did when I emailed him a couple of years ago and actually asked him) which speaks to a siding with a belief that there is an asymmetry of weighted value between negative and positive valence. While Culadasa seems to emphasize the joyous journey and adventure of life, which may speak to an opposite weighting in favor of the positive valence being worth the negative valence that comes along with it. Certainly not all spiritual roads lead to Rome.\nI am very open to the idea that I am missing something though, and I may just need to be led by the hand like a child to these heaven realms for me to change perspective \nThanks for engaging, this is fun!\nAndrés: \nThank you for engaging! This is super interesting! Let me think about what else I can say \n[…time…]\nTotal valence vs. pureness of valence: see Principia Qualia pg. 41. It could be that during cessations consciousness disappears and the state literally does not exist in any way. But the states immediately before and immediately after do and have at least a tiny bit of information so they are mixed valence states. Yet, perhaps they are massively positive valence on net.\nAn alternative view is that unconsciousness is still ‘real’ in a way, in which case we could think of it as consciousness but with no content whatsoever. But it’s still there. The analogy would be like combing a vector field in a torus. Most states have the vector field collide with itself and therefore feel less than perfect valence (due to [the Symmetry Theory of Valence, aka.] STV). Only when the field is completely combed without any self-collisions (which would not be possible in a sphere) you get perfect positive valence. And although there is no information encoded in the field, it still exists just as it did before. There’s just nothing to report.\nIn that case paradise could actually still exist. Meaning, higher and more refined versions of this kind of experience. In particular, we could look for other mathematical objects where the field can also be combed perfectly. They would then be strangely a different kind of ‘unconsciousness’ perhaps capable of fitting more energy and higher dimensions. Still, they would have maximum positive valence.\nWhat do you think?\nOh, I also forgot if I’ve asked you whether you’ve tried 5-MeO-DMT and how it compares to your new baseline.\n\nImages from Michael E. Johnson’s Principia Qualia\nRoger: \nAh, yes, I see the kind of framework you’re thinking from now – anti-symmetry, symmetry, and asymmetry.\nFrom Principia Qualia pg. 39: [paraphrasing] “…if we take our hypothesis and apply it to IIT, and then we attempt to maximize pleasure/symmetry, consciousness/[phi] drops very rapidly.”\nAll the way to the point that maximum pleasure entails no consciousness??? [emphasis mine]\nI don’t have a lot of experience with 5-MeO. I only did it once at about a 6mg range.\nMy impression of 5-MeO was that it had a visual brightening effect somewhat similar to the 4th Jhana. And there was that psychedelic mirroring effect with eyes open. It also had the reduction of conceptual understanding that comes when you get into 8th [Jhana]. I interpret that as a significant down-regulation in top-down information processing??\n5-MeO has the sense that it’s going somewhere, moving towards something, while the effects build and then dissipate. Like it’s growing into something (I guess this is before a peak breakthrough – which I didn’t have).\nMy current consciousness abode isn’t going anywhere. There isn’t a sense that things are building towards something. It has a forever ‘this is it’, locked-in quality. Like a somewhat superposition of emptiness and fullness simultaneously. (Before 4th path I always felt like I was flickering between form and emptiness, now the two cohabitate the experiential space at the same time).\n5-MeO also seemed very hedonically volatile; like any subtle thought or movement could disrupt the peace.\nMeanwhile my current state is super unperturbable. In the past 2.5 months I haven’t found something that has rocked my well-being.\nA couple of weeks ago I listened to an interview of a North Korean defector tell her story of starvation and human trafficking and for a good 30 minutes I was crying at this tragedy. But it was crying from a place of still really high well-being. I didn’t feel like I was suffering and I didn’t mind that crying state at all. (Which is quite weird, I suppose).\nIn my normal state now, there are no more papañca attacks. Thoughts don’t capture the mind like they used to.\nAnd another thing I love about this new state is that I still have all my cognitive functions intact and I can operate in the world totally normally – which can’t be said about being on 5-MeO.\nI feel super sober; while on 5-MeO I don’t believe you do (if I remember correctly).\nI would say I prefer my new baseline to what I experienced on 5-MeO because of the lack of volatility and practicality of still having my intellect on hand, all the while with the constant sense of ‘this is it’ and high, high well-being.\n[…time…]\nRoger and Andrés have a video call: \nWe discussed a number of things: his meditation journey, his thoughts on various philosophies, exploring QRI frameworks, and his interest in music. Curiously, Roger said that unlike other people who spend a lot of time in meditation healing traumas and processing past experiences, he was able to largely just focus on progress on the path. This, along with a very rigorous and consistent practice, is why he got to where he is at so early in life (26 years old).\nOne of my main interests in the discussion was to flesh out how 4th path states/traits and the Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV) were connected. If I recall correctly, there were three main ideas connected to this topic I shared with him:\nDiscussing the “levels of consciousness” experienced on a psilocybin trip and the way they might mirror some of Frank Yang’s descriptions of the levels of consciousness on the path to awakening, A model of equanimity I’ve been developing where impedance matching is a key ingredient, andThe difference between a “recipe” of a state or transformation of consciousness and its “review”\nLet’s briefly elaborate on these topics.\n(1) Frank Yang talks about undergoing a meditative process with the following stages: (a) standard sense of self, (b) awareness of awareness, (c) God/Oneness/Being/Non-Duality/Self, (d) Emptiness/Non-Beng/Uni-Locality, (e) Neither Being Nor Non-Being, and finally (f) Enlightenment.\n\n(source)\nWhat makes his descriptions so incredible is that he provides very raw and unfiltered phenomenological accounts of the process without really trying to force them into any pre-existing framework. From the point of view of the mission of QRI this is very valuable. In particular, it allows us to examine his process of transformation with the framework of Qualia Formalism: we ought to ask, not what kind of spiritual/mystical/transcendent process is going on here (which will certainly take us nowhere), but rather, wonder if we can cast his descriptions in terms of *structural changes to the field of awareness*. For example, Frank talks about “the screen of God” that becomes apparent in (c), where waves of energy seem to travel without resistance across one’s experiential field. He also talks about phase transitions (similarly to Shinzen Young, he talks about a process of liquefaction and gasification of the field of awareness). If, as we believe at QRI, valence is a structural property of experience, these transformations would have profound effects on one’s sense of wellbeing. So, the reason why “the screen of God” is a profound experience is not because you literally merge with a divine being (which might not be possible if we assume indirect realism about perception), but because the field of awareness is now in a phase that allows an entirely new level of efficient stress dissipation.\nI shared with Roger some details from a particularly interesting psilocybin trip report that described rapid phase transitions between (what appears to be) several of the levels Frank describes. In particular, “the screen of God” state seems to have the capacity to stresslessly locate sensations without generating reverbarions with a represented “small self to which those sensations belong”.\n(2) In turn, this led to discussing a new model (we haven’t really touched upon in QRI publications yet, but which is coming) of equanimity based on experiences I had during a two-week retreat earlier this year (see: Buddhist Annealing). This model has at its core the idea that equanimity is a mental tool that increases impedance matching between nervous system harmonics. Ask yourself: why is it that when you pluck a guitar string it sounds louder if it is connected to a guitar? It is not, as many would think, that the “resonance box amplifies the sound” (for where would the extra energy come from?). Rather, the energy is the same; what changes is the speed at which it is discharged! The resonance box vibrates and dissipates the energy of the string much faster than the string could on its own (as an aside, this is exactly why you can sustain a note for so much longer in an electric guitar). We could thus postulate that a lot of inner dissonance comes from resonance in the nervous system that has no means of dissipating its stored stress. To an extent, this is because involuntary subliminal contractions in our nervous system compartmentalize and modularize its components. Equanimity is the practice of relaxing those contractions, and thus slowly allowing the nervous system to undergo a search process where it finds structures that can resonate with the stored stress, and in turn allow it to dissipate faster. More so, over time, you entrain (and rewire!) the nervous system to become highly efficient at stress-dissipation. Dissonance is still there, but it “unfolds” and gets “metabolized” so fast that it barely counts as suffering. Highly annealed nervous systems are powerful stress-dissipation engines!\n(3) Finally, we also discussed the idea that there is a distinction between the “recipe” of a state of consciousness and its “review”. A recipe is the steps you take in order to achieve a certain state (or transformation) of consciousness. A review is instead an account of what the resulting state feels like. Just as the instructions for baking a cake are quite different from a Chef’s review of what the resulting cake tastes like, we can expect that meditation instructions (e.g. focusing on the three characteristics) will not necessarily reflect the nature of the transformations of consciousness that result from them. Thus, while a lot of the meditative path is nominally about “renouncing” the pursuit of high-valence states of consciousness (and thus avoid the pleasure paradox), the result is nonetheless a state of consciousness that is high-valence in nature! Paradoxical? I don’t think so. The confusion is merely the result of conflating recipe and review.\nThus, we can still apply valence theories to states of consciousness that are allegedly beyond valence. Frank Yang, for example, seems to resonate a lot with STV. See his December 2020 interview at The Stoa. There (and in other videos) he describes “God mind” consciousness as a very positive experience, which is very symmetrical but not perfect. But his true awakening is perfectly symmetrical (in the realm of space, observer, and sense of time, even if not in content). His experience became like a “hologram that has no center”. Quote:\n“Have you seen those illustrations of a sphere or a circle, where one point connects to all of the other points? […] if you wanted me to describe my day to day, moment to moment, experience, well, it’s pretty symmetrical. As in, there is no center to experience. There is hearing but no hearer; there is just the seeing, there is no seer; on thinking there is just thinking and no thinker. It’s not, like, processed or filtered through a subject in the center. And it’s very immediate in the sense that all of the sensations, all 360 degrees, are synched up to themselves, without any delay, 24/7. And all the sensations, where there is body, you know sight, sound, thoughts, emotions… they are all on equal footing to each other […inaudible…] in symmetry, and that is for me an aesthetic experience. I would say a suffering mind is a mind that isn’t symmetrical. If your mind is asymmetrical, it means it’s defiled somewhere. So for me aesthetics runs in all different kinds of domains, not only on the perceptual domain, not only on the visual aesthetics domain, but even on the emotional and how you think.”\n\nYes, God Mind (left) is good, but have you tried no-self (right)? It is so much more symmetrical!\nAs we’ve discussed before, the homogeneity of phenomenal space and time might be a very large component of what accounts for positive valence. And what Frank is describing here suggests that’s the case. Disturbances in the attention field lines and the saliency of specific components of a mind can break the underlying symmetry of the phenomenal space and time of the resulting experience. Anxiety, for example, in this paradigm is described as unpleasant because it involves the bubbling up of low-level prediction errors causing “attention pinches” across your experience, and thus disturbing the free-flow of energy that would exist in a homogeneous field. Prediction errors are not inherently unpleasant; they are unpleasant only to the extent that they cause asymmetries in your field of awareness!\nFrank Yang also says that his big awakening felt like a “quantum jump”. It makes sense that a strong anti-fragile attractor for a new network topology would be self-reinforcing (a new lowest-energy state, metaphorically speaking, perhaps akin to a false vacuum collapse inside one’s mind!). Again, this is all very compatible with valence structuralism, if not STV.\nRoger said that he will have to think about all of this. In the meantime, he shared with me some (amazing!) pictures he made to illustrate how his field of awareness has been transformed with meditation over time. Like Frank Yang, he identifies several discrete phase transitions. These are: (a) standard perception, (b) The Witness, (c) Big Mind, (d) No Self, and finally (e) No Self & Centreless Awareness (4th path!):\n\n[…time…]\nRoger: \n[uploads this video – Jhanas 1-9 Experienced and Described In Real Time]\n[…time…]\nRoger: \nConsidering more what you said about impedance matching and adding resonance to experience:\nPerhaps this is merely an analogy, but still: consider the tautness of a spider’s web. If a fly lands on it, at one part, the whole web will shake and the energy will transfer throughout in such a way that the spider can locate where on the web the fly landed. If the web is too taut then the energy of the fly landing won’t dissipate far enough for the spider to receive the information. However, if the web is too slack the fly could just break the structure of the web.\nIt might be interesting to consider why spiders build webs with a centre point and not as a straight or criss-crossing lattice.\nSo to relate this to consciousness and metabolizing stress… I would say my consciousness now feels like it’s more taut and lattice-woven rather than spider web-shaped with a middle [emphasis mine]. So this means when a stress point is activated somewhere in the experiential space, its energy doesn’t ripple as far out as it would have before, thus not being as disruptive.\nAnd if we aliken the spider on the web to the epistemic agent, if he is situated on one spot and for all goings-on on the web to be known their information must travel to him, then the web must be not too taut so that all the ripples can reach him and he knows what’s going on. The problem with this set-up is that it means that knowing requires instability.\nHowever, if we do away with the spider (a single point considered the epistemic agent) and make it so that the knowledge is attributed to the web itself, then the web can afford to be much more taut/less shaky/more robust, causing less negative valence.\nSo in some way I could say my experience (centerless consciousness) is more taut in this way, but this tautness doesn’t feel rigid or stiff, but rather very airy.\nIndra’s net can have too much slack in it, if it’s not sewn together tightly and uniformly.\n\nPre-Awakening: The mind uses a fictitious “self-as-epistemic-agent” in a field of awareness that has slack and vibrates in unpleasant ways in the process of integrating information. The field of awareness relies on a network topology that is suboptimal for efficient stress dissipation.\n\nPost-Awakening: The mind lacks any kind of center or self-as-epistemic-agent. The field of awareness is tout and extremely efficient at stress dissipation. The network topology has permanently changed to a far more symmetrical and regular configuration.\n[…time…]\nRoger:\nRoger talks with Brendan Graham Dempsey: watch video here. He explains in more detail the spider web metaphor at 34:44.\n[…and then in an email later…]\nRoger:\nJust for interest’s sake, and I don’t know if this bears any significance, but I’m ambidextrous by the way.\nI know symmetry plays a major role in your hypotheses of valence and such.\nIn some way, I have thought that not having such a prioritization and weightiness to just one side of the body has balanced out my experience and perception (perhaps more than others), I’m not sure.\nR\n\n(As of the 23rd of November 2021, Roger states that he continues to be in the blissful state of centreless consciousness)\n\nCommentary by Andrés, after the fact:\nThis conversation (and further exchanges I may share in the future) has reinvigorated my quest to describe states (and transformations) of consciousness in terms of changes to the network topology that underlies our field of awareness. Enlightenment might be described in “mystical” ways, but this could be simply due to lack of an adequate formal conceptual framework to make sense of it. But perhaps STV, impedance matching, and efficient stress dissipation through radical network topology reorganization without compromising self-epistemics could take us much further than before in this quest.\nAlso, if Roger was able to achieve these transformations at the tender age of 26, what is stopping the rest of us from doing the same?\nPerhaps, what Marcin Kowrygo says is true: “Techno-boosted Arhatship: The rest is commentary”. (See also this fun story about enlightenment in Slate Star Codex). \nIf I were to add one thing to the wish-list, I’d say (in unison with people like Nick Cammarata and David Pearce): if we could have access to MDMA-like states of emotional wellbeing and empathy on tap, that would be fantastic (for many reasons). Plus, non-addictive real pain relief might very well be right behind the corner. So to revise our (admittedly cartoonish and partial) wish-list for the medium-term future of sentience: “MDMA-like emotional palette, non-addictive pain relief, and physiological Arhatship: The rest is commentary”. See you there, my friends!\nHappy Thanksgiving Everyone (including the Turkeys, of course)!\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/11/23/the-supreme-state-unconsciousness-classical-enlightenment-from-the-point-of-view-of-valence-structuralism/", "title": "The Supreme State of Unconsciousness: Classical Enlightenment from the Point of View of Valence Structuralism", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-11-24T04:01:48+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=4", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "58458e70a463fa9e2b9dee06352f7dc5", "summary": []}
{"text": "David Pearce on Longtermism\n\nIn answer to the Quora question “What does David Pearce think of Longtermism in the Effective Altruist movement?”\n\n“Future generations matter, but they can’t vote, they can’t buy things, they can’t stand up for their interests.”(80,000 Hours)In its short history, the Effective Altruist (EA) movement has passed from focus on maximally effective ways to tackle (1) existing sources of human and nonhuman animal suffering (“Giving What We Can”, etc) to (2) AI safety (the spectre of an imminent machine “Intelligence Explosion” that might turn us into the equivalent of paperclips) to (3) Longtermism: the key measure of the (dis)value of our actions today isn’t their effect on existing sentient beings, but rather how our actions affect the very long-run future. According to Longtermism, first-wave EA was myopic. Intelligent moral agents shouldn’t be unduly influenced by emotional salience either in space or in time. On various plausible assumptions, there will be vastly more sentient beings in the far future. Granted mastery of the pleasure-pain axis, their lives – or at least their potential lives – will be overwhelmingly if not exclusively positive. Failure to create such astronomical amounts of positive value would be an ethical catastrophe. So defeating existential risk trumps all else. Contemporary humanity is living at the “hinge of history”; human extinction or civilisational collapse would be the ultimate evil. Therefore, today’s effective altruists should aspire to act impartially to safeguard the potential interests of far future generations, even at the expense of our own.To be fair, this potted history of effective altruism is simplistic. Some first-wave EAs are unconvinced by the Longtermist turn. Yet on a Longtermist analysis, what should today’s aspiring EAs specifically do? The EA policy ramifications of this proposed prioritization are murky. For an introduction to Longtermism, see 80,000 Hours’ Benjamin Todd’s “Future Generations and their Moral Significance” and Dylan Balfour’s “Longtermism: How Much Should We Care About the Far Future?” For a defence of “strong” longtermism, see William MacAskill and Hilary Greaves: “The case for strong longtermism”.For a more sceptical perspective, see e.g. Vaden Masrani’s “A Case Against Strong Longtermism” or Phil Torres’ polemical “The Dangerous Ideas of ‘Longtermism’ and ‘Existential Risk’”.\nMy view?Longtermist – in a sense. Just as science aspires to the view from nowhere, “the point of view of the universe”, aspiring effective altruists should in theory aim to do likewise. An absence of arbitrary spatio-temporal bias is built into a systematising utilitarian ethic – conceived as a theory of (dis)value. For sure, speculating about life even in the Year 3000 feels faintly absurd, let alone the far future. Yet I believe we can map out an ethical blueprint to safeguard the long-term future of sentience. Whether one is a secular Buddhist or a classical utilitarian, germline engineering can make life in our entire forward light-cone inherently blissful. Crudely, genes, not organisms, have evolutionary longevity, i.e. replicators rather than their vehicles. Genome-editing promises a biohappiness revolution, a momentous discontinuity in the evolution of life. The biosphere can be reprogrammed: future life can be animated entirely by information-sensitive gradients of well-being. Therefore both pain-eradication and hedonic recalibration via germline engineering are longtermist – indeed ultra-longtermist – policy options: proponents and bioconservative critics agree on the fateful nature of our choices. If editing our genetic source code is done wisely, then a transhumanist civilisation of superintelligence, superlongevity and superhappiness can underpin the well-being of all sentience indefinitely.So let’s get it right.However, some aspects of EA Longtermism in its current guise do concern me.(1) Science does not understand reality. From cosmology to the foundations of quantum mechanics to digital (in)sentience to the Hard Problem of consciousness to the binding problem to normative ethics and meta-ethics, the smartest minds of our civilisation disagree. The conceptual framework of transhumans and posthumans may be unimaginably alien to archaic humans – although in the absence of (at least one end of) a pleasure-pain axis, posthuman life could scarcely matter. Either way, it would be a terrible irony if Longtermists were to influence humanity to make big sacrifices, or just neglect contemporary evils, for a pipedream. After all, Longtermism has unhappy historical precedents. Consider, say, fifteenth-century Spain and the Holy Inquisition. If Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada’s moral and metaphysical framework were correct, then neglecting worldly ills in favour of saving souls from an eternity of torment in Hell – and from missing out on eternal bliss in Heaven – by inflicting intense short-term suffering would be defensible, maybe even ethically mandatory. Planning for all eternity is as longtermist as it gets. Yet such anguish was all for nothing: scientific rationalists recognise that religious belief in Heaven and Hell rests on spurious metaphysics. Analogously, influential AI researchers, transhumanists and effective altruists today assume that digital computers will somehow “wake up” and support unified subjects of experience, digital “mind uploads” and eventually quintillions of blissful digital supercivilisations. However, IMO the metaphysics of digital sentience is no better supported than an ontology of immortal souls. Conscious Turing machines are a fantasy. If physicalism is true, i.e. no spooky “strong” emergence, then the number of digital supercivilisations with blissful sentient beings will be zero.Disbelief in the digital sentience assumed by a lot of Longtermist literature doesn’t reflect an arbitrary substrate-chauvinism. If physicalism is true, then a classical Turing machine that’s physically constituted from carbon rather than silicon couldn’t support unified subjects of experience either, regardless of its speed of execution or the complexity of its code. Programmable classical computers and classically parallel connectionist systems promise “narrow” superintelligence, but they can’t solve the phenomenal binding problem. Phenomenal binding is non-classical and non-algorithmic. Even if consciousness is fundamental to the world, as constitutive panpsychists propose, digital computers are zombies – technically, microexperiential zombies – that are no more sentient than a toaster. So it would be tragic if contemporary humans made sacrifices for a future digital paradise that never comes to pass. By the same token, it would be tragic if Longtermist EAs neglected existing evils in the notional interests of a transgalactic civilisation that never materializes because other solar systems are too distant for sentient biological interstellar travel.\nOf course, any extended parallel between religious ideologues and ill-judged Longtermism would be unfair. Longtermist EAs have no intention of tormenting anyone to create a digital paradise or colonize the Virgo Supercluster any more than to save their souls. Rather, I think the risk of some versions of Longtermism is distraction: neglect of the interests of real suffering beings and their offspring on Earth today. From ending the horrors of factory farming and wild-animal suffering to genetically phasing out the biology of pain and depression, there are urgent evils that EAs need to tackle now. With effort, imagination and resources, the biology of mental and physical pain can be banished not just in the long-term, but for ever. Compare getting rid of smallpox. For sure, vegan lobbying to end the obscene cruelties of animal agriculture might not sound Longtermist. But humanity isn’t going to reprogram genomes and engineer compassionate ecosystems while we are still systematically harming sentient beings in factory-farms and slaughterhouses. Veganizing the biosphere and a relatively near-term focus on creating a civilisation with a genetically-encoded hedonic range of, say, +10 to +20 doesn’t neglect the interests of a vaster far-future civilisation with a hedonic range of, say, +90 to +100. Rather, engineering the hedonic foothills of post-Darwinian life is a precondition for future glories. Moreover, talk of far-future “generations” may mislead. This millennium, our Darwinian biology of aging is likely to vanish into evolutionary history – and with it, the nature of procreative freedom, sexual reproduction and generational turnover as we understand these concepts today. Indeed, transhumanist focus on defeating the biology of aging – with stopgap cryonics and cryothanasia as a fallback option – will promote long-term thinking if not Longtermism; contemporary humans will care much more about safeguarding the far future if they think they might be around to enjoy it.\n(2) “Longtermism” means something different within the conceptual scheme of classical and negative utilitarianism. The policy prescriptions of pleasure-maximisers and pain-minimisers may vary accordingly. Likewise with long-term planning in general: background assumptions differ. Irrespective of timescales, if you believe that our overriding moral obligation is to mitigate, minimise and prevent suffering – crudely, LT(NU) – then you will have a different metric of (dis)value than if you give equal moral weight to maximising pleasure – crudely, LT(CU). Effective altruist discussion of Longtermism needs to spell out these differing ethical frameworks – regardless how self-evident such core assumptions may seem to their respective protagonists. For instance, within some neo-Buddhist LT(NU) ethical frameworks, engineering a vacuum phase transition painlessly to end suffering with a “nirvana shockwave” can be conceived as Longtermist (“I teach one thing and one thing only…suffering and the end of suffering” – Gautama Buddha, attrib.) no less than LT(CU) planning for zillions of Omelas. Alternatively, some NUs can (and do!) favour engineering a world of superhuman bliss, just as other things being equal, CUs can (and do) favour the abolition of suffering. But NUs will always “walk away from Omelas”, i.e. avoid pleasure obtained at anyone else’s expense, whereas CUs will permit or inflict suffering – even astronomical amounts of suffering – if the payoff is sufficiently huge. Also, the CU-versus-NU dichotomy I’ve drawn here is an oversimplification. Many passionate life-affirmers are not classical utilitarians. Many suffering-focused ethicists are not negative utilitarians. However, I am a negative utilitarian – a negative utilitarian who favours practical policy prescriptions promoting a world based entirely on gradients of superhuman bliss. So my conception of Longtermism and long-term planning varies accordingly.Why NU? Doesn’t a NU ethic have disturbingly counterintuitive implications? Forgive me for here just hotlinking why I am a negative utilitarian. I want to add that if you even glimpsed how atrocious suffering can be, then you too would destroy yourself and the world to end it – permanently. And in so doing, you wouldn’t be guilty of somehow overestimating the ghastliness of intense suffering; I’m not going to link specific examples, though perhaps I should do so if anyone here disagrees. Modern physics tells us that reality is a seamless whole: in my view, the universal wavefunction is inconceivably evil. Hundreds of thousands of people do take the path of self-deliverance each year. Millions more try and fail. If humanity opts to conserve the biology of suffering, then with advanced technology maybe some of their pain-ridden twenty-second century counterparts will take the rest of their world down too. And it’s not just suicidal depressives who want to end their nightmarish existence. Insofar as twentieth-first century humanity really stands on the edge of a Precipice, I know morally serious agents willing to administer a vigorous shove.Most classical utilitarians are unmoved by such pleas to prioritise ending suffering. Life is a marvellous gift to be perpetuated at any price. CUs respond that if you understood how inexpressibly wonderful pleasure could be, then you’d endure – and inflict – fiendish torments to access the sublime (“I would give my whole life for this one instant“, said Prince Myshkin, protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1869 novel “The Idiot”; Dostoevsky had ecstatic seizures.) A similar effect can be induced by speedballing or mainlining heroin (“it’s like kissing God” – Lenny Bruce). Therefore, CUs and NUs have different conceptions of information hazards – and their suppression. EA funders have different conceptions of info-hazards too, although CU backers are immensely wealthier. Sadly, Phil Torres is correct to speak of EAs who have been ”intimidated, silenced, or ‘canceled.‘” But rather than reflecting the moral turpitude of the cancellers or their sponsors, or even the corrupting influence of power and money, such cancellation is reflective of their differing ethical frameworks.That said, publicity and suppression alike can be morally hazardous.So what is the best way forward for the effective altruist movement?I’m not sure. Just as the transhumanist movement has mutated over the past quarter-century, likewise the overlapping effective altruist movement is rapidly changing with the ascendancy of LT(CU). Funding and social-primate power-dynamics play a big role too. But traditional fault-lines aren’t going away. Can the gulf between suffering-focused ethicists and classical utilitarians be bridged in the realm of concrete policy?Well, on an (very) optimistic note, I wonder if both longtermist and near-termist effective altruists who are NUs and CUs could unite on a “traditional” EA agenda of effectively tackling existing sources of suffering. My reasoning is as follows. Combining socio-economic reform, poverty-reduction, effective giving and so forth with a biological-genetic strategy of germline engineering melds short-, medium- and long-term EA. This concordance is highly suspect – I don’t trust my judgement or motivations here. Yet if, counterfactually, my primary concern were existential risk (“x-risk”) rather [something worse] and suffering-reduction, then reducing existing sources of suffering would still loom large, if not foremost. For one of the most effective ways to reduce x-risk will be to phase out the biology of involuntary suffering and turn everybody into fanatical life-lovers. In a world based entirely on gradients of intelligent well-being, NU and its offshoots could be turned into an affective psychosis of a bygone era – unthinkable pathologies. What’s more, archaic humans who might potentially destroy the world aren’t just depressive NUs, “strong” antinatalists, efilists and Benatarians (etc) – most of whom are marginal figures far removed from the levers of power. From Cold War warriors (cf. “Better Dead Than Red!”) to defeated despots (cf. Hitler’s March 1945 “Nero Decree” which called for the systematic destruction of Germany) many powerful and competitive non-depressive people have a conditionally-activated predisposition to want to bring the world down with them if they fail. Such historical examples could be multiplied; humans now have weapons of mass-destruction to express their apocalyptic impulses. Crudely, uncontrollable suffering is bound up with nihilism, just as happiness is bound up with life-affirmation. X-risk worriers and CU Longtermists should take the biology of suffering very seriously.\nWhat’s more, the organisational vehicle to deliver a stunningly life-affirming vision of global happiness already exists. In its founding constitution, the World Health Organization defines health as complete well-being (“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being”). The ambition of such a commitment is jaw-dropping. Can the WHO be effectively lobbied by EAs to live up its obligations? I don’t think transhumanists and EAs should be quite so ambitious as the WHO in our conception of health: conserving information-sensitivity is vital. We should aim merely for an architecture of mind based entirely on gradients of well-being. Complete well-being can wait. But if humanity embraces genome reform, then we can come arbitrarily close to the WHO vision of universal well-being via germline editing under a banner of good health for all. Indeed, universal health as defined by the WHO is possible only via genetic engineering. Genome reform is the only longterm(ist) solution to the problem of suffering – short of retiring biological life altogether. Further, the elegance of genetically recalibrating the hedonic treadmill is that hedonic recalibration can potentially be value- and preference-conserving – a critical consideration in winning popular consent. A global health strategy of raising pain-thresholds, hedonic range and hedonic set-points world-wide doesn’t involve adjudicating between logically irreconcilable values and preferences. Recalibration of the hedonic treadmill – as distinct from uniform happiness-maximization or ending suffering via world-annihilation – reflects epistemic humility. Hedonic recalibration can minimise suffering and enhance flourishing while simultaneously keeping all our options open for the future – maybe for a period of long reflection, maybe for an odyssey of psychedelic exploration, who knows? If humanity embraces the abolitionist project – presumably under the auspices of the WHO – then a world without experience below hedonic zero will be safer by the lights of NUs and CUs alike.\nSuperhuman bliss will be the icing on the cake. Future life may be beautiful, even sublime. But in my view, our greatest obligation to future generations is to ensure they aren’t genetically predestined to suffer like us.\n\n\n\n\nComment: Here is a serious (and long?) reflection on longtermism by David Pearce of HI fame. My view? I am neither a classical utilitarian (CU) nor a negative utilitarian (NU). Instead, I am waiting for a full mathematically formalized theory of valence (the pleasure-pain axis) before I make up my mind. Indeed, I’m hoping (and to some extent expecting!) that the answer will simply “pop out of the math” (as Michael Johnson likes to say). Then we will probably know. Who knows, perhaps the largest hedonic catastrophes and hedonic glories in the universe might have nothing to do with life.\nBut, I do also think that the current discourse on longtermism is *overwhelmingly* dominated by CU-style thinking. So this piece is a very important “balancing act”.\n\nFeatured image credit: @TilingBot", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/11/13/david-pearce-on-longtermism/", "title": "David Pearce on Longtermism", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-11-13T19:47:23+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=4", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "d554efa60ea76e1ed0cc485bf23fe22e", "summary": []}
{"text": "On Dark Rooms, Jhanas, Ecstasy, and the Symmetry Theory of Valence\n\nI recently had a chance to talk with Scott Alexander of SSC and ACX fame at a Berkeley meetup this past summer. He’d been watching my videos and had some questions for me. In particular, he had questions about how literally we took the Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV), and whether the counter-examples he had in mind really went against the theory, or were perhaps also explained by it in non-obvious ways. Afterwards, he sent me a draft of his Jhanas and the Dark Room Problem post for me to preview before he published it. I had a look and offered some clarifications in case he wanted to discuss these ideas more deeply. Just a couple days ago he published it. Seeing that the topic could be explored much more deeply, I then asked him if he was ok with me posting (a lightly edited version of) the email I sent him. He said, “of course”. Thus, you can find it below, which I recommend reading after you read his post in ACX.\nNote: For people mostly curious about how STV deals with harsh artforms e.g. death metal and Japanoise, we recommend reading Harmonic Society, an article we published in Art Against Art which explains how all kinds of exotic artforms ultimately cash out in (often counter-intuitive) valence effects via messing with the energy parameter and kick-starting cycles of neural annealing (see also “worldview annealing” to make sense of the often outsized effect of transformative festivals in people’s conception of the world). For those extra-curious about psychedelics and the free energy principle, I recommend watching our video specifically on that topic.\nWithout further ado….\n\nHi Scott!\nThank you for reaching out! And thank you for the conversation on Saturday. […] Please feel free to post your excerpt, but also I am sharing below information that you can use to edit it so that it is a more accurate portrayal of what we are up to (feel free to quote me below or quote any article or video we have online).\nI’ll structure this email in the following way: (1) general clarifications about STV, (2) addressing your excerpt specifically, and (3) some of the meeting notes from our conversation in case you find it valuable to remember what we discussed (or what I can remember of it anyhow).\n(1) General Clarifications\nThe first thing to mention is that the Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV) is really easy to strawman. It really is the case that there are many near enemies of STV that sound exactly like what a naïve researcher who is missing developmental stages (e.g. is a naïve realist about perception) would say. That we like pretty symmetrical shapes of course does not mean that symmetry is at the root of valence; that we enjoy symphonic music does not mean harmony is “inherently pleasant”; that we enjoy nice repeating patterns of tactile stimulation does not mean, well, you get the idea…\nThe truth of course is that at QRI we really are meta-contrarian intellectual hipsters (you know this link of course). So the weird and often dumb-sounding things we say are already taking into account the criticisms people in our people-cluster would make and are taking the conversation one step further. For instance, we think digital computers cannot be conscious, but this belief comes from entirely different arguments than those that justify such beliefs out there. We think that the “energy body” is real and important, except that we interpret it within a physicalist paradigm of dynamic systems. We take seriously the possible positive-sum game-theoretical implications of MDMA, but not out of a naïve “why can’t we all love each other?” impression, but rather, based on deep evolutionary arguments. And we take seriously non-standard views of identity, not because “we are all Krishna”, but because the common-sense view of identity turns out to, in retrospect, be based on illusion (cf. Parfit, Kolak, “The Future of Personal Identity“) and a true physicalist theory of consciousness (e.g. Pearce’s theory) has no room for enduring metaphysical egos. This is all to say that strawmanning the paradigms explored at QRI is easy; steelmanning them is what’s hard. I trust you can make a Titanium Man out of them! \nNow, I am indeed happy to address any mischaracterization of STV. Sadly, to my knowledge very few people outside of QRI really “get it”, so I don’t think there is anyone other than us (and possibly you!) who can make a steelman of STV. My promise is that “there is something here” and that to “get it” is not merely to buy into the theory blindly, but rather, it is what happens when you give it enough benefit of the doubt, share a sufficient number of background assumptions, and have a wide enough experience base that it actually becomes a rather obvious “good fit” for all of the data available.\nFor a bit of history (and properly giving due credit), I should clarify that Michael Johnson is the one who came up with the hypothesis in Principia Qualia (for a brief history see: STV Primer). I started out very skeptical of STV myself, and in fact it took about three years of thinking it through in light of many meditation and high-energy/high-valence experiences to be viscerally convinced that it’s pointing in the right direction. I’m talking about a process of elimination where, for instance, I checked if what feels good is at the computational level of abstraction (such as prediction error minimization) or if it’s at the implementation level (i.e. dissonance). I then developed a number of technical paradigms for how to translate STV into something we could actually study in neuroscience and ultimately try out empirically with non-invasive neurotech (in our case, light-sound-vibration systems that produce multi-modally coherent high-valence states of consciousness). […]\nFor clarification, I should point out that what is brilliant (IMO) about Mike’s Principia Qualia is that he breaks down the problem of consciousness in such a way that it allows us to divide and conquer the hard problem of consciousness. Indeed, once broken down into his 8 subproblems, calling it the “hard problem of consciousness” sounds as bizarre as it would sound to us to hear about “the hard problem of matter”. We do claim that if we are able to solve each of these subproblems, that indeed the hard problem will dissolve. Not the way illusionists would have it (where the very concept of consciousness is problematic), but rather, in the way that electricity and lightning and magnets all turned out to be explained by just 4 simple equations of electromagnetism. Of course the further question of why do those equations exist and why consciousness follows such laws remains, but even that could IMO be fully explained with the appropriate paradigm (cf. Zero Ontology).\n\nThe main point to consider here w.r.t. STV is that symmetry is posited to be connected with valence at the implementation level of analysis. This squarely and clearly distinguishes STV from behaviorist accounts of valence (e.g. “behavioral reinforcement”) and also from algorithmic accounts (e.g. compression drive or prediction error minimization). Indeed, with STV you can have a brain (perhaps a damaged brain, or one in an exotic state of consciousness) where prediction errors are not in fact connected to valence. Rather, the brain evolved to recruit valence gradients in order to make better predictions. Similarly, STV predicts that what makes activation of the pleasure centers feel good is precisely that doing so gives rise to large-scale harmony in brain activity. This is exciting because it means the theory predicts we can actually observe a double dissociation: if we inhibit the pleasure centers while exogenously stimulating large-scale harmonic patterns we expect that to feel good, and we likewise expect that even if you activate the pleasure centers you will not feel good if something inhibits the large-scale harmony that would typically result. Same with prediction errors, behavior, etc.: we predict we can doubly-dissociate valence from those features if we conduct the right experiment. But we won’t be able to dissociate valence from symmetry in the formalism of consciousness.\nNow, of course we currently can’t see consciousness directly, but we can infer a lot of invariants about it with different “projections”, and so far all are consistent with STV:\n\n\nOf special note, I’d point you to one of the studies discussed in the 2020 STV talk: The Human Default Consciousness and Its Disruption: Insights From an EEG Study of Buddhist Jhāna Meditation. It shows a very tight correspondence between jhanas and various smoothly-repeating EEG patterns (including a seizure-like activity that unlike normal seizures (of typically bad valence) shows up as having a harmonic structure, but does not seem to have a direct conscious correlate – still worth mentioning in this context). Here we find a beautiful correspondence between (a) sense of peace/jhanic bliss, (b) phenomenological descriptions of simplicity and smoothness, (c) valence, and (d) actual neurophysiological data mirroring these phenomenological accounts. At QRI we have observed something quite similar studying the EEG patterns of other ultra-high-valence meditation states […]. I expect this pattern to hold for other exotic high-valence states in one way or another, ranging from quality of orgasm to exogenous opioids. \nPhenomenologically speaking, STV is not only capable of describing and explaining why certain meditation or psychedelic states of consciousness feel good or bad, but in fact it can be used as a navigation aid! You can introspect on the ways energy does not flow smoothly, or how the presence of blockages and pinch points make it reflect in discordant ways, or zone in on areas of the “energy body” that are out of sync with one another and then specifically use attention in order to “comb the field of experience”. This approach – the purely secular climbing of the harmony gradient – leads all on its own to amazing high-valence states of consciousness (cf. Buddhist Annealing). I’ll probably make a video series with meditation instructions for people to actually experience this by themselves first hand. It doesn’t take very long, actually. Also, apparently STV as a paradigm can be used in order to experience more pleasant trajectories along the “Energy X Complexity landscape” of a DMT trip (something I even talked about at the SSC meetup online!). In a simple quip, I’d say “there are good and bad ways of vibing on DMT, and STV gives you the key to the realms of the good vibes” \n\nAnother angle: we can find subtle ways of dissociating valence from e.g. chemicals: if you take stimulants but don’t feel the nice buzz that provides a “working frame” for your mental activity, they will not feel good. At the same time, without stimulants you can get that pleasant productivity-enhancing buzz with the right tactile patterns of stimulation. Indeed this “buzz” that characterizes the effects of many euphoric drugs (and the quality of e.g. metta meditation) is precisely a valence effect, one that provides a metronome to self-organize around and which can feel bad when you don’t follow where it takes you. Literally, one of the core reasons why MDMA feels better than LSD, which feels better than DOB, is precisely because the “quality of the buzz” of each of these highs is different. MDMA’s buzz is beautiful and harmonious; DOB’s buzz is harsh and dissonant. More so, such a buzz can work as task-specific dissonance guide-rails, if you will. Meaning that when you do buzz-congruent behaviors you feel a sense of inner harmony, whereas when you do buzz-incongruent behaviors you feel a sense of inner turmoil. Hence what kind of buzz one experiences is deeply consequential! All of this falls rather nicely within STV – IMO other theories need to keep adding epicycles to keep up.\nHopefully this all worked as useful clarifications. Now let me address your excerpt more specifically:\n(2) The Excerpt\nThe Dark Room Problem in neuroscience goes something like this: suppose the brain is minimizing prediction error, or free energy, or whatever. You can minimize lots of things by sitting quietly in a dark room. Everything will be very, very predictable. So how come people do other things?\nThe usual workaround is inbuilt biological drives, considered as “set points”. You “predict” that you will be well-fed, so getting hungry registers as prediction error and brings you out of your dark room to eat. Et cetera.Andrés Gómez Emilsson recently shared a perspective I hadn’t considered before, which is: actually, sitting quietly in a dark room is really great.\nIndeed usually the Dark Room causes massive prediction errors (since our model of the world is one where being in a Dark Room is truly not expected!). But these prediction errors feel bad because of the dissonance they induce in our experience (which you can get rid of with drugs or meditation!). If you make the Dark Room an “expected” thing, then eventually it will start feeling great. In fact, something like this happens when you meditate a lot in a dark room and settle in. Alternatively, taking 5-MeO-DMT for the first 10 times can be very disconcerting, as it takes you to “the ultimate void of reality”. It’s surprising and dissonant to “find out” that the void is the ultimate truth (I’m not saying that’s true, just that it feels that way in that state!). But once you’ve done it enough times that you know what to expect, you can in fact receive with two open arms the void of ultimate reality. You learn to expect it and not code it as a prediction error, and then you can deeply, deeply “align” to it, which results in unfathomably positive valence that discharges tons of stored internal stress, the very source of low-level dissonance before the trip (again, STV here fits the data rather nicely). \nThe Buddha discussed states of extreme bliss attainable through meditation:> Secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, a bhikkhu enters and dwells in the first jhāna, which is accompanied by thought and examination, with rapture and happiness born of seclusion (Samyutta Nikaya)I had always figured that “sensual pleasures” here meant things like sex. But I think maybe he just means stimuli, full stop. The meditator cuts themselves from all sensory stimuli, eg by meditating really hard on a single object like the breath and ignoring everything else, and as a result gets “rapture and happiness born of seclusion”.The serious meditators I know say this is real, meaningful, and you can experience it after a few months of careful practice. You become really good at concentrating on one stimulus and ignoring all other stimuli, and eventually your brain kind of gets “in tune” with that stimulus and it’s really blissful. They say this seems to have something to do with the regularity or predictability of the stimulus; if you’re concentrating really hard on something, regularity/predictability/symmetry is just viscerally very good, better than anything you’ve felt before.\n[….]\nSomething like regularity/predictability/symmetry is really good. So why doesn’t a metronome make you bliss out? Andrés says it’s because you can’t concentrate on it hard enough. It’s not engaging enough to occupy your whole brain / entire sensorium /whatever.Exactly, this is true. The one twist I’ll add is that the regularity that matters is not, as I explained above, the regularity of the stimuli, but rather, the regularity of the inner state. In fact, I currently think that we can get a glimpse of the true shape of our consciousness precisely by studying how different meditation objects work better or worse for the purpose of meditative absorption! Indeed, more symmetrical objects are easier meditation objects (cf. QRI can steelman “sacred geometry” ꙮ). Likewise, the hallucinations one gets near or close to states of high-absorption are also reflections of our inner shape! (cf. Fire Kasina qualia). \nSymphonies are beautiful, and we intuitively feel like it’s because they have some kind of deep regularity or complicated pattern. But they’re less regular/predictable/symmetrical than a metronome. Andrés thinks this is because they hit a sweet spot: regular/symmetrical/predictable enough to be beautiful, but complex/unpredictable enough to draw and hold our attention. Compare to eg games, which are most fun when they’re hard enough to be challenging but easy enough to be winnable.Indeed! We need unpredictability in order to disable the boredom mechanism, which prevents us from fully absorbing into patterns (or rather, prevents our experience from shaping itself in a way that perfectly predicts the stimuli – in a way when you reach absorption with a stimuli, you are in fact becoming its “complement” – a shape that can predict it perfectly). An important twist is that prediction errors give rise to energy spikes, and high-energy states of consciousness can give rise to pleasant resonance (think about the bodily euphoria that comes from eating spicy enough hot peppers). Plus, cooling down from high-energy states can lead to euphoric neural annealing (as explained here). In all cases, however, the thing that is the most closely related to valence is the regularity/smoothness of the internal (instantaneous) state, even though there might be other complex dynamics guiding the state from one configuration to another. \nBut this sweet spot is the fault of your own inattentiveness. If you could really concentrate on the metronome, it would be even more blissful than the symphony. Emilsson says he’s achieved these levels of concentration and can confirm. I talked to another meditator who agrees metronomes can be pretty blissful with the right amount of (superhuman) focus, although – as per the Buddha quote above – total silence is best of all.Agreed! An interesting note is that the first time this happened to me, it was not in meditation, but during a sleep paralysis! See: Dream Music where I discuss how a simple tone can sound amazing if you are in the right reverb-filled state of mind. See also: people with anhedonia often report feeling “back to normal” in dreams, and IMO that’s precisely because the neuroacoustic profile of dreams can be very reverb-filled and thus have significant valence effects (see below).\nI find this to be an elegant explanation of what the heck is going on with jhanas, more convincing than my previous theory. It’s also a strong contender as a theory of beauty – a little different in emphasis from Schmidhuber’s theory, but eventually arriving at the same place: beauty is that which is compressible but has not already been compressed.A brief comment here: your “going loopy” theory foreshadows our tracer tool and psychedelic cryptography, where psychedelics seem to activate a “delay overlay” of recent experiences on top of the current one. DMT gives rise to ~30hz loops, LSD to around ~18hz loops, and 2C-B closer to ~10hz loops. We hypothesize that there are a discrete number of serotonin-mediated metronomes that precisely modulate the degree to which experience is fed back to itself with a specific delay. Antidepressants may flatten affect by disrupting these loops, and thus eliminating sources of symmetry for the inner state. People describe the sense of “missing an echo”; quite literally having a more “flat” experience as a result!\nEnhanced neuroacoustics (as with psychedelics) generally increase the range of valence because more loopy experiences are more intense and also more capable of pure dissonance or pure consonance. Dissociatives (nmda antagonism more generally) seem to instead do a low-frequency looping (around 8hz) together with a generalized reverb effect. Much as in music, adding reverb to almost literally anything makes it sound less harsh (like the baby crying vs. baby crying + reverb sounds I referenced in the presentation). And also much as in music, *compounding* delay and reverb effects gives rise to synergistic outcomes, often with crazy standing wave attractors (e.g. exactly what you see on LSD + nitrous or LSD + ketamine).\nImportantly, STV is *not* a theory that lives at the computational or algorithmic level of analysis, which is unlike Schmidhuber’s theory. If I recall correctly, Schmidhuber’s theory doesn’t even care about phenomenal valence or consciousness. And it has no mechanism of binding or any sense of how the “reward” is implemented or who or what receives such reward. Its flavor is functionalist and concludes that beauty is to be found in the act of compression. But STV instead says that compression is merely correlated with valence: our brains are set up in such a way that making excellent compressions reduces dissonance! This is because there is (a) an inherent dissonance cost to complexity, and (b) there is a dissonance cost to prediction errors. But again, take the right drug, and all of a sudden you can experience high-valence while making tons of prediction errors or having models that are much more complex than the sensory data would suggest is necessary.\nIn particular, what makes good compressions feel good beyond reducing prediction errors is that they select for internal states that have simple sets of symmetries as the best generators which anticipate the stimuli. This is highly related to the concept of Harmonic Entropy (i.e. the entropy of the inner state, not of the stimuli). And here is where we find a stark and amazing difference between STV and compression drive: we in fact expect there to be a sort of “minimal construction” path where you get specific “complexity scores” for phenomenal objects based on the number of operations of the sort the brain can do that are needed to construct such phenomenal objects. The brain needs to explicitly render phenomenal objects, rather than merely encode them. So there is a harmonic entropy associated with each experience, which more-or-less correlates with Kolmogorov complexity but is different in that it uses resonance as the building block rather than arbitrary operations. We also predict that the valence associated with specific patterns of stimulation will be best correlated with a sort of “perceptual harmonic entropy” than with complexity in general: how well you can compress an input depends on what building blocks you have to reconstruct it. In the case of the brain, the building blocks seem to be patterns of resonance. So even if something is “highly compressible” but cannot be compressed with resonance (e.g. the prime numbers), you will not experience it as beautiful or “easy on the eye”.\nImportantly, free energy minimization is a computational level analysis and we would say at QRI that it therefore is mistaken on “where to look”. Consequence: compressing information feels good *because* it often (but not always) reduces dissonance. But if your brain is set up in the wrong way, minimizing dissonance may not lead to good compressions, or doing good compressions may not in fact feel good. But reducing dissonance will always feel better, and having high-energy high-harmony patterns internally will always feel good. What this does at the algorithmic and computational level is tricky, but it generally implies that we can see “artifacts” of our resonance-based compression system all over the place when in exotic states of consciousness, which is what we observe (and at the end of the day this may explain why psychedelic fractals and Indra’s Net type experiences are so hedonically loaded! See: psychedelics and the free energy principle).\nTo sum it up: STV claims that what matters is the regularity of the conscious experience and not of the stimuli – the stimuli is only in a certain sense a “projection” of the inner state, but it can deviate from it in many ways. Prediction errors feel bad because our brain is set up in such a way that they cause dissonance. And compressions only feel good to the extent that they avoid prediction errors *and* minimize the internal dissonance cost of the internal representations used for prediction. In other words, STV explains the other theories, but not the other way around.\nFinally…\n(3) Meeting notes, in case you find them useful…\nYou asked if I knew whether taking a lot of 5-MeO-DMT is compatible with sanity for most people: the answer is probably not. That said, we do know of some notable exceptions of very smart and sane individuals who have experimented heavily with the drug with no obvious cost to their sanity (e.g. see conversation with Ingram, Yang, McMullen, and Taft which touches upon the effects of daily use of 5-MeO-DMT).I brought up anti-tolerance drugs, of which black seed oil is promising (but a low-tier player). Most promising of all are ibogaine and proglumide. Opioids + anti-tolerance drugs are IMO the most promising long-term therapy for severe chronic pain. Brought up Chanca Piedra as a promising highly cost-effective intervention to prevent kidney stones in the context of “hell must be destroyed” (other interventions we are fairly confident are in the category of “enormous if true, seem true, yet nobody is trying”: flumazenil for benzos, cooling gloves for MDMA neurotoxicity, DMT for cluster headaches, etc.)I shared that the three goals/pillars of QRI are to (1) reduce negative extremes, (2) increase baseline, and (3) achieve new heights.I gifted you a High-Entropy Alloy with unique material properties: much like looking for names of God, or amazing new perfumes, or indeed finding gems hidden in the state-space of consciousness, we must figure out clever ways of exploring large combinatorial spaces without going insane. You obviously have thought a lot about this We talked about “nausea annealing” (pro-tip: drinking ginger juice right when you take a psychedelic seems to drastically reduce how much nausea and body-load it causes).Overfitting.Information is in the coupling between harmonics; de-couple them and you can experience the “zero state” while still being awake.Meaning of the QRI logo (i.e. having a clear view of the entire state-space of consciousness; bridging quality/color and quantity/lines as a symbol for qualia formalism).You asked “can you tell me what are brainwaves in simple terms a child could understand?” (I answered with “they are the signature of resonance in the holistic field behavior of experience” and immediately realized I had miserably failed to “explain in simple terms”). “Would listening to a pure tone be blissful?” Yes, you can absorb yourself into it. Second half of an orchestral song repeated could be better if it allows you to go deeper into absorption. Touched upon: Boredom mechanism. Harmonic entropy. Controlling for energy.3D harmonics, STV presentation, symmetry of the mathematical object is what truly matters.Encoding vs. rendering.\nOk, that was rather long; I hope that you found it useful and clarifying! Please feel free to ask any questions and I promise I won’t send you another equally long email  Again, feel free to write about any and all of this.\nBest of luck in your travels! \nInfinite Bliss!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/10/31/on-dark-rooms-jhanas-ecstasy-and-the-symmetry-theory-of-valence/", "title": "On Dark Rooms, Jhanas, Ecstasy, and the Symmetry Theory of Valence", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-11-01T00:52:38+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=4", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6d088de2a37036027341eb267d9f1809", "summary": []}
{"text": "10 Cross-Modally Coherent Costume Ideas for this Halloween\n\nSee also: Qualia Research Diary: Scents, Perfumery as an Art Form, and Mapping State-Spaces of Consciousness: The Neroli Neighborhood\n\nOne of the most interesting findings in psychology is that cross-modal coherence makes things feel more real (e.g. see “Cross-modal coherence enhances claims of pattern presence“). This is a sophisticated way of saying that when something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and smells like a duck, it most certainly feels like it is a real duck. On a similar vein, Shinzen Young points out that suffering often has various components: an inner imagery component, a physical component, and an emotional component. If you can keep them from mingling and becoming an experience that integrates all of these components at once (i.e. that is cross-modally coherent) you will be preventing most of the suffering from being actualized. \nAnd on an entirely different vein, the reason why DMT worlds often feel extremely real can be traced back to the fact that DMT hallucinations are cross-modally coherent. Machine elves are cross-modally coherent symphonic experiences: the impossible objects of hyperspace are in resonance with exquisite “musical objects” isomorphic to them. And this makes them feel all the more real.\nNow, applying this lens to the task of crafting real-looking Halloween costumes, it stands to reason that if you add a costume-consistent dimension of smell you will in turn be perceived as more real thanks to the resulting cross-modal coherence. Or, at the very least, you will be able to enjoy the signaling benefits of this new variety of artistic waste (especially for the more pricy or laborious scents).\nWithout further ado, here are some costume ideas for this Halloween along with their recommended cross-modally coherent scent, for which I am definitely not getting kickbacks. Really, I’m just sharing scents I like (I only talk about scents I’ve personally smelled, except for calone which I look forward to trying but am too scared to own for reasons you’ll see below, and the scent of LSD which I have not been honored to experience yet):\n\nOceanic: Sea Creature, Sailor, Pirate\nYou can go with a classic marine/aquatic cultural reference like Nautica Voyage as a blanket sea-themed Halloween costume addition. Squids, octopi, and whales are all fitting. This perfume has the advantage that its apple and green nuances won’t make you suffocate with too many marine notes.\n\nLe Male in turn may work well for anything sailor-themed (especially if some degree of homoeroticism is welcomed).\n\nOr for a pirate, you can add a smell of rum, either by dousing yourself in actual rum and letting it dry, or using a perfume with notes of rum like Christian Audigier For Him. \n\nFinally, perhaps a more raw elemental and unvarnished approach would be to use calone. Without the surrounding harmonizing notes that come with the perfumes above, the way calone is described suggests it’s perceived as a definite classic “sea-breeze” smell by most (e.g. “It has an intense Marine, ozonic, sea-like smell. Pretty unique note, it can produce floral overtones. There can be a fruit aspect of melon/watermelon but it is very negligible to me.” – source). Importantly, calone is said to be extremely potent. Thus, improperly diluted, using it on your costume might make the entire place smell like a seafood restaurant, and likely not a good one at that. Then again, you could dress up as a rundown seafood restaurant.\n\nDune / Golem / Earth-themed elemental\nGoing for an easily-recognizable super-hit in the fragrance world, Terre d’Hermes Hermès for men would be a natural Schelling point for cosplays reenacting a life in vast dry landscapes evocative of Dune/Blade Runner 2049/Tatooine. Now, a very high percentage of that perfume is Iso E-Super, which by the way smells delicious in its neat form. So a much more affordable and perhaps aesthetically pure choice is to get it raw and spray it on a scarf or turban and vibe with your imaginary dry sandy homeworld.\n\nOn the wet-end of the spectrum, a little geosmin (the smell of wet earth) can give realism to a just-created Golem creature. As with calone, you will have to carefully dilute this one because it is really potent. Alternatively, you could get Demeter’s Dirt.\n\nBurn Victim\nFahrenheit Dior for men, either EDT or EDP, has the same gasoline note, or Shalimar by Guerlain (EDP in particular; I recommend using the EDT instead if you plan to dress up as a vanilla pudding). They all have a clear gasoline note, but smell fantastic otherwise.\n\nAnything Honey-Themed\nSlowdive by Hiram Green is by far the most beautiful honey smell I’ve encountered to date.\n\nThe Devil\nGet some “Liquid Smoke“, mix with ethanol, and spray on your costume and you’re good to go. Alternatively, get Hyde also by Hiram Green for a remarkably harmonious rendition of a devilish smokey scent you can actually wear.\n\nAn Angel\nPersonally, I don’t think there is anything more angelic than the smell of ambroxan, so get a bottle of it, dilute it and spray liberally on your wings. Alternatively, the grace inherent in the divine nature of ambroxan also means that any of these will have a touch of the angelic in them.\n\nOrange Creamsicle\n\nLate 2020 I explored how vanilla interacts with other scents. This exercise showed me that vanilla and orange scents can have a beautiful love affair. Taking it further, trying to enhance the synergy between these two notes, I arrived at the following synthetic reconstruction of the orange creamsicle quale:\n3 – Orange Oil Valencene3 – Vanillin2 – Isobutavan2 – Dihydrolinalool1 – D-Limonene1 – Brahmanol(36 – Ethanol)\nOr if you want to just get one ready-made, I can vouch that Eternal Essences’ orange creamsicle fragrance oil really hits the spot for this particular quale. Use these tools and you will be taken seriously as a bona fide orange-creamsicle-human hybrid.\n\nGinger Lemon\nIf you want to dress like a lemon and you are ginger, this is the perfect scent for you: Acqua Colonia Lemon & Ginger by 4711\n\n80s Character or Celebrity\nFor dressing up as a classic 80s icons (e.g. Back to the Future characters, Freddie Mercury, or Michael Jackson) Drakkar Noir is an excellent choice (note: I thoroughly reviewed it in Towards an Enlightened Phenomenology of Scent: What’s an Aromatic Fougère at the Deepest Level?). Drakkar Noir is often referred to as “The Scent of the 80s” given how incredibly popular it became in that decade. Azzaro Pour Homme would be a good substitute if a slightly more upscale fragrance is desired to evoke this effect.\n\nThat said, the only people for whom this smell will likely land will be those who were non-anosmic youngsters in the 80s and who are still non-anosmic today, namely, Generation X people. Make sure to invite some of them to your party.\nDie-Hard Inner Circle OG 60s Hippie\nAnd finally, if you want to go one step above your generic tie-dye hippy (such as an actual member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the sort of people who literally do thumbprints of LSD), then an idea would be to douse yourself with something that literally smells like LSD. Yes, it turns out LSD has a smell. And Sigma Aldrich sells samples of an LSD-smelling substance (“Substitute for controlled substances in the training of narcotics detector dogs. Mimics the odor of LSD”).\n\nAnd that’s it for now! I hope you have a wonderful and cross-modally coherent Halloween!\n\n2020 Halloween E-Card recycled for this year.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/10/26/10-cross-modally-coherent-costume-ideas-for-this-halloween/", "title": "10 Cross-Modally Coherent Costume Ideas for this Halloween", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-10-26T18:26:46+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=4", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "c65cc6aecefd66e5fce485dcdf260e82", "summary": []}
{"text": "Re-observation\n\nFrom: Ingram, D. M. (2018). Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book, Second Edition Revised and Expanded. Newburyport. AEON Books.\nPart IV: Insights\n30.10 Re-observation, pg. 226-239\nYou can find this section online here, and here is the whole 2nd edition of the book for free online (buy physical copy &/or see all other versions of the book).\n\nRe-observation may not sound like much of a problem, as it has such a sanitized and boring name. However, friends have suggested renaming it with various four-letter Anglo-Saxon vernacular terms, usually in some grammatically problematic but emotionally cathartic string. This stage is often, though not always, like a brick wall, particularly the first few times we collide with it. It can be as if all the worst aspects of the Dark Night stages converge for one last important lesson, that of Re-observation.\nWe must perceive the true nature of the sensations that make up our ideas of perfection, all the ideals we cling to, all images of how the world should and should not be, all desire for anything to be other than exactly the way it is, as well as all desire for awakening to be anything other than this. It may seem impossible to sit for even a minute, as the levels of restlessness and aversion to meditation and all experience can get high. The sudden complete inability to sit on the cushion for even a few minutes is a classic mark of this stage. As a physician, I speculate that at some point they will find some physiologic commonality between this stage and the pathways of restless leg syndrome, but the whole-body version.\nThis stage, and part of the stage of Three Characteristics share some features. In other words, be warned, particularly those of you who are prone to being overly certain about “where you are” on these maps. I get a reasonable number of emails and calls from people who claim they are certain they are in Re-observation, and shortly thereafter they are describing A&P territory, meaning that they had just been in Three Characteristics territory, not Re-observation. Continuing to investigate the true nature of these sorts of sensations and our map theories is often difficult, and this is a common cause of failure to progress.\nNow, I am about to describe all sorts of emotional or psychological manifestations that can sometimes happen in Re-observation. The more extreme the description of a possible side effect of this stage, the rarer that side effect is likely to be, particularly those that sound like descriptions of severe mental illness. For someone who is staying at the level of bare sensate experience, as I strongly recommend, the only difficult manifestations that seem to be quite common at this stage are a strong sense of aversion and resistance to formal meditation and experience, and a deep sense of primal frustration, though these tend to fade quickly in the face of good practice. If our concentration is strong enough and our other factors are in balance, we may move through this stage with no problem at all at the level of vibrations or even pure, abstract patterns of light and/or sound, bypassing all the potential complexity I am about to describe.\nFor those using more ordinary objects, aversion to meditation and experience can arise as we react to the vibrations in this stage, which can be fast, chaotic, and harsh. The noise in our repetitive minds can be quite irritating. By repetitive, I mean that this stage can involve repeating thoughts, songs, and stories, like we have a horrible case of the evil earworms (in the metaphorical sense of annoying songs that get stuck playing in our heads). Ever had a fever and had some irritating thought circling again and again in your head? This stage can produce similar experiences.\nSome of my own descriptions of this stage while on retreat have included such phrases as “the mind-storm” and “a bracing work in D minor for six sense doors, hailstorm, and stuttering banshee”. If we are very powerful meditators who yet lack enough equanimity and tranquility (remember the seven factors?), it can literally feel as if we will be torn apart by harsh vibrations. At some illusory level of the sense of continuity and stability, this is exactly what we are trying to accomplish.\nHowever, even if very difficult manifestations arise, if we are practicing well, they should not last long at all, at best minutes, at worst, hours or days. Once I began to get what this stage was about and what it was useful for, a perspective that had a hard learning curve, I would intentionally amplify the sense of being torn apart, directing this stage’s sharp and cutting ability to shred reality at anything that appeared even the slightest bit stable or continuous anywhere in the body, mind, or experience in general. That is a skillful use of the perspective that this stage allows us.\nIn a similar vein, and as mentioned before, those few who are crossing this territory with world-class concentration abilities and using a very rarefied object, such as a complex visualization on sacred geometry, may, if they are very good at it, pass through this stage with little or no difficulty. It can be fascinating and subtly rapturous, as this is the peak of the third vipassana jhana. Strong practitioners fusing insight and concentration practices may notice that the proportion of the visualized field that is organized into clear images gets broader and broader. The patterns may become more complex. The phase problems get more and more bizarre. The visual field may take on more spherical dimensions, with curving images beginning to encircle (or “ensphere”) you. The images may appear to have manifold symmetries and repetitions, and these generated images and sounds may come around to encompass basically the whole field of experience.\nThis can be like watching an IMAX movie of a moving technicolor spirograph in the front row. As mentioned earlier, I have also seen gigantic fields of hyper-detailed, repeating, shifting patterns of things like spiders, mushrooms, snakes, skulls, fingers with claws, and other creepy and disconcerting things but, on careful inspection, they were beautiful, vibrant, and amazing in their intricacy. I use this example partly due to my own experiments and partly to illustrate general points.\nDifferent objects and practitioners will most definitely produce different specifics, such as colors, images, etc., while some aspects of what happens at this stage will remain the same, and are therefore universal. It goes to illustrate a basic point: Re-observation need not be a problem if you have very solid meditation skills. Even if you don’t, it still need not be a big deal if you know what to look for, what to expect, how to handle it, and that it too shall pass. Dry insight workers get through this stage all the time just fine with good practice. Further, if you are reading this book, you probably already crossed the A&P as mentioned already, and so you have probably already handled it at least once and may not have even known it, and even if you haven’t yet, you still may do just fine. We’ve all been through hard times, and this is just one more phase that might be potentially challenging.\nYou see, Re-observation is all fluff and no substance but, if you confuse fluff for substance, the effect will be the same as if it actually had substance. Bodily sensations of creepy revulsion, disgust, or profound existential angst may arise, and yet, those with wisdom will notice they are like confetti, like sparkles of light, like raindrops, albeit seemingly acid raindrops. Still, they are not harmful. In fact, they apparently do something great to the mind, since Re-observation leads to the next stage, Equanimity. This normalizing knowledge is power.\nRe-observation is like a toothless dog with a ferocious bark. If you run screaming or faint from fear when the dog barks, then it needed no teeth to prevent your progress. It is like a hologram of a snarling demon that you can just walk right through and it can’t touch or harm you at all. There is a curious freedom when you deeply realize that you are safe in Re-observation, that you can go deep into the pit, and the pit is just fine. In Review stages, a period when it can be easy to call up specific stages and stay in them to get a better sense of them, I have again and again called up Re-observation just to check it out and learn its secrets.\nOn a somewhat different note, however bad Re-observation is, we can’t always blame it for everything. The primary sign that the negative side effects that may occur in the Dark Night are not associated with insight stages (but instead are due to other, ordinary, real-world processes) is that they do not change much in the face of strong and accepting investigation or when we stop practice entirely. Remember, you have two sets of effects going on: insight-related, and other circumstances and psychological aspects of your life. If good insight practice, done well and bravely, with strong investigation and good technique, is not fixing your life situation, then you may instead have standard, ordinary problems to be dealt with by ordinary, real-world methods.\nAs you can likely already tell, the Dark Night tends to get practitioners strategizing, trying to figure out the best way to crack it and get to Equanimity. This has led to various teachers and practitioners developing their own distinct schools of thought that may deem some techniques and approaches the most optimal, typically the techniques that have worked best for them. However, those who have gone through the Dark Night enough times and with a range of approaches, techniques, attitudes, and practice conditions will eventually realize that there are many, many ways to skin this cat, to use an un-Buddhist metaphor. Exercise often helps. Loving-kindness practices get recommended often for good reason. Strict vipassana and ultra-rapid noting work well for those with a high tolerance for pain. Slower noting might work for those with a bit more time and less interest in shattering themselves.\nSome teachers highly recommend physical practices, such as yoga with a high degree of bodily awareness, as that can ground people in something other than their psychological stuff. Others might highly recommend plunging hard into their psychological issues and healing, with a high degree of sensate mindfulness of that process to ensure it keeps producing insights. Others with mighty concentration skills might go for more abstract objects, such as sacred geometry, as mentioned above. The “concentrate your ass off” strategy in the Dark Night has much to recommend it. Loving-kindness practices and other brahma viharas (covered in Part Six) are commonly reported to be helpful. Yet others might recommend more shamanic and psychonautic techniques to cause the sort of radical unsticking that can happen with those methods, and reality testing shows that those do sometimes work for some people but cause problems for others, and predicting which will result is not easy. Each of these strategies has risks and benefits to be considered.\nIn contrast to what most people might expect me to advocate here, it is true that much more gentle approaches can also work in Re-observation and the Dark Night in general. Some find that softening, opening, and accepting generate much better results than more aggressive approaches such as rapid noting or surfing fine vibrations. Sometimes just carefully investigating and gently relaxing what is often called “body armor”, those physical tensions that correspond to psychological blocks and tensions, can be quite effective in this territory.\nOthers among us will notice that just carefully investigating other aspects of our lives, like physical tensions related to roles and identities, will help facilitate progress here. Some do well with intellectual reflection coupled with some sensate investigation, and repeated questions such as, “Where am I contracted?” or, “What am I clinging to?”, asked well and often enough, will actually yield good results. Some with more spacious tendencies may notice that just feeling into the subtle moving warps in our sense of attention or space that are the hallmarks of the third vipassana jhana will be all they need, and doing this with the eyes open rather than closed can help us keep from getting lost. Many of these methods just require doing them well enough for long enough to get them to cause progress.\nEven stranger measures can be oddly facilitating here although they may superficially seem to have little to nothing to do with insight practice. Some practitioners may just need to change locations, resolve a single conflict with one person, cry about one issue they need to grieve over properly, make some other simple change, or go through some other simple process, and then suddenly everything opens. Just giving yourself permission to care for yourself might make a difference. I recommend When Things Fall Apart and Start Where You Are, by Ani Pema Chödrön, as the yin energy of these books will help counterbalance the energy of this book, which can be too yang sometimes. Nurturing strategies often help a lot in the Dark Night.\nI remember one cycle through this territory where what cracked it was just dancing wildly for hours until I was totally exhausted. A few will do oddly well by stopping practice entirely, forgetting entirely about progress and the maps and all of that, and just surrendering, but this last one generally only works when the meditator is in the correct place and has done enough work and growth already for that strategy to make sense.\nThis is a small subset of the various strategies that might work and that teachers advocate. You will have to assess your own capabilities, inclinations, intuition, resources, and what you have available to find what works best for you. Experimentation and a willingness to regroup and retry if you fail with one approach are key, as failure and frustration are common experiences the first few times we try to crack the nut of the Dark Night. If you are on retreat, it typically only takes about ten days to two weeks of struggling in the Dark Night to fall back to earlier stages and have another shot at it, so you can try a new strategy on the next pass if the first pass strategy didn’t work. I still generally feel that very simple practice: six sense doors, three characteristics, is the best practice for all insight stages. One day, I hope that scientific methods and controlled experiments are applied to find how best to navigate this territory. Until then, take your best guess and, if it doesn’t work, try again.\nDue to the sorts of frustrations and failures that are common in this territory, this stage is sometimes called the “rolling up the mat stage”, when many who joined monasteries in the stage of the Arising and Passing Away now give up and disrobe. People on retreats tend to need much reassurance but often leave right then even with good support, guidance, and encouragement. Are you suddenly needing to leave a retreat that you had planned to stay in much longer? You are likely in this stage.\nThere can be the distinct feeling that there is no way to go forward, and it is useless to go back, which is exactly the lesson we should learn. Acceptance of exactly this, right here and right now, is required, even if it seems that this mind and this body are completely unacceptable and unworthy objects of investigation. Remember: no sensations are unworthy of investigation!\nOne of the hallmarks of the early part of this stage is that we may begin to clearly see exactly what our minds do all day long, see with great clarity how the illusion of a dualistic split is created in the first place, sensation by sensation, moment to moment, but there is not yet enough of a meta-perspective and equanimity to make good use of this information. This can be very frustrating, as we wonder how many times we must learn these lessons before they stick. The interesting thing is that this stage, when gone through at the level of emotions and vibrations, rather than in the realms of light produced by strong concentration, will nearly always come with a sense that it lasted just a bit longer than we could take it, and yet somehow, we can take it, and it does end.\nIntense feelings of frustration and disenchantment with life, relationships, sex, jobs, moral codes, the world, and worldly responsibilities may emerge at this stage in ways that can cause enormous disorientation, disruption, and angst. Re-observation can take whatever issues and reactions arose in the earlier stages of Fear, Misery, Disgust, and Desire for Deliverance, combine them in fiendish ways, and then crank that intensity to the next level, a level that can seem overwhelming. These aspects of our life can temporarily seem bland and pointless at this stage, though it may seem that this will always be the way we feel about them.\nThis stage can mimic or perhaps manifest as some degree of clinical depression. Beware of making radical life changes that cannot be easily undone, such as a divorce or firing off angry emails to your boss, based upon the temporary feelings that may arise during this stage. For those who recognize that they are in this stage, some form of active mental compensation for these potential effects can be helpful to facilitate maintaining our relationships, jobs, studies, etc., at a functional level. This can be very skillful if it is also combined with practice that allows the experiences of this stage to be acknowledged and understood as well.\nI should be careful here in that, while I generally advocate for maintaining jobs, relationships, studies and the like, if possible, in the face of Dark Night stuff, there is obviously no way for me to know for certain that this is the right course of action for you or anyone else, as the future is unknown and unpredictable. This is obviously not helpful, as we might wish for concrete, reliable guidelines as to how to proceed, and yet, unfortunately, there are none. Maybe shaving your head and joining a monastery really is the best thing you could possibly do. On the other hand, maybe preserving your marriage and job is.\nThere are obviously many other options that might suddenly seem like good ideas in this stage, and whether, in retrospect, they will have been as good an idea as they seemed at the time is anyone’s guess. I wish I could definitively tell you what to do, but I can’t. Still, there is something to be said for optionality, even if, in the Dark Night, all options can seem like bad options. Not trashing possibly valuable relationships helps preserve optionality and generally lessens later regrets. There are ways to gain some space in which to let this disorienting and often disruptive process mature that are more skillful and less damaging than others, and I wish you well finding those.\nLayers of unhelpful and previously hidden expectation, pressure, and anxiety can reveal their true uselessness, though this beneficial process can feel very confusing and difficult. We may get the sense that we have never had such a strong emotional life, and until we get used to this new awareness of our previously subtle or unacknowledged feelings, this stage can seem overwhelming.\nOccasionally, people at this stage can also have what appears to be a full psychotic break, or what is often called a nervous breakdown, though if these are truly a side effect of insight practices, they should pass quickly. The main key here is to continue to acknowledge and accept the content but also to see the true nature of the sensations that make up these natural phenomena. This can be extremely hard to do, especially if people have chanced upon this stage without the benefit of the support and guidance of a well-developed insight tradition and qualified teachers who can easily recognize and navigate this territory.\nEven for those who do get into this in a well-developed tradition, unrealistic spiritual ideals can really screw up practice. In your idealized spiritual world, you imagine you aren’t supposed to be insanely frustrated, on edge, shuddering from some strange wrongness you can’t figure out, because you are a meditator, you are practicing something good, and so you shouldn’t feel this way, or at least so the traditions might seem to tell us. However, this is exactly where your practice led you at some point, where it took you, what is really going on, because you have entered aspects of the human psyche you wished would just go away and you wouldn’t have to deal with. Go into them, but with wisdom, with clear morality, with some sense that you can go there and be okay, with some control of what you think, say, and do.\nThe classic arc of the hero’s journey, where at some point they must enter the underworld, mirrors this part of the path. Part of the flip side of the next stage involves going there, being honest, dealing with an utterly “un-spiritual” way of being that might not fit your ideals at all. Keep a lid on the bleed-through, but internally be willing to be emotionally honest, and keep investigating. This is an acquired taste and getting comfortable doing this is not easy for most people. Still, it is a great skill to learn.\nThose who do not know what to do with this stage or who are overwhelmed by the mind states can get so swept away in the content that they begin to lose it. This is the far extreme of what can happen in this stage. Fear is frightening, Misery is miserable, and seemingly psychotic episodes are confusing and destabilizing. In the face of such miserable experiences, we may swing to the opposite extreme, clinging desperately to grandiose or narcissistic images of ourselves. These reactions can easily perpetuate themselves, and this can become a blatantly destructive mental habit if people persist in wallowing in these dark emotions and their deep and unresolved issues for too long. It can be like cognitive restructuring from hell. Do not do this to yourself.\nI should mention the problem with developing concentration, which you must have succeeded at to at least some degree at some point to get into this territory. Strong concentration is a generic force that may be used for good or ill. If you use strong concentration to write positive qualities on the mind, they will be written more strongly than if you didn’t have strong concentration. Likewise, if you have strong concentration and end up writing negative qualities on the mind, those will also be written more strongly than if you lacked strong concentration. That is the danger in this stage. Thus, the essential point is, if you ever develop strong concentration, you must be extremely careful with what you do with it. Part Six, specifically chapters fifty-eight to sixty-one, will go into more about this, but the basic lesson is straightforward.\nSpecifically, if you continue to be strongly identified with content, without perceiving its true nature, and your strongly concentrated mind dives down that pathway of focusing entirely on the story, particularly negative interpretations of the story without seeing those thoughts as thoughts, then the mind can spiral down and down into madness and despair, and more madness and despair can lead to a horrid feedback loop. I call this “dark jhana”: like the exact reverse of jhana. In skillful jhana, we skillfully use positive qualities to attract and stabilize attention, which then reinforces those positive qualities in a positive feedback loop. In dark jhana, we unskillfully reinforce horrible mind states by obsessing about horrible mind states from within horrible mind states while being freaked out by horrible mind states.\nIf you recognize dark jhana is happening, put the brakes on it right then with everything you have. Seize control. Refuse to lose that control. Find a way to get a grip on yourself. Splash cold water on your face. Eat grounding food. Exercise or take a walk in nature. Take a warm bath. Listen to soothing music. Sing. Dance. Play a video game. Watch a funny movie or funny cat videos on YouTube. Read the section in Part One where the Buddha talked about the removal of distracting thoughts and apply those instructions with full force: this is when they really come in handy. Stand with your legs planted firmly on the ground, your hands gripping something like a sink, countertop, or the back of a chair, and figure out where the actual problem is in your body and the space in which you stand. Note physical sensations of restlessness and irritation with precision and bravery.\nDark jhana sucks and should be avoided at all costs. Wire your brain in a positive way, not a negative way, and you will do much better. Go into that territory at a bare sensate level that remembers there is space and you will do much better. Go into it divorced from the senses and lost in the content, and badness will likely result.\nWhen people mention “touching their own madness” on the spiritual path, they are often talking about this stage. This stage can make people feel claustrophobic and tight. If they push to make progress, they can feel that they are just getting more and more tightly wound and are about to snap. If they do nothing, they continue to suffer anyway.\nThe advice here: stick with the process but don’t force it. Pay attention to balancing effort and gentle acceptance. Remember that discretion is the better part of valor. Practicing in moderation as well as maintaining a long-term view can be helpful. Think of practice as a lifelong endeavor, but do just what you can each day. Stay present-oriented. Walks in nature or places with open, expansive views can help, as can exercise. Re-observation has the power to profoundly purify us, given sufficient commitment to just being willing to sit with it. Be clear, precise and accept all this despite the pain and anguish, both physical and mental, that it can bring.\nIf you are on retreat, let the teachers know what is going on immediately. Sit and walk according to the schedule. Apply the technique as prescribed every second, if humanly possible, and do not leave the retreat early! Remember: applying the technique means seeing everything arise naturally, without anything having to happen at all. This can really take the pressure off, a pressure that really doesn’t help in this stage. There is a way to keep practicing well that nevertheless drops the unskillful aspects of striving which are pulling you away from each moment. Other than just sticking to the schedule, not a lot needs to happen beyond what is already happening. Thus, and very critically, you can’t power this stage, but you can try to accept and synchronize with what is going on at a direct experiential level.\nAgain, if on retreat, try walking outside as opposed to inside if logistically possible. Reclining sometimes rather than sitting might help, but some will find the restless energy too much, in which case walking may help. It can seem counterintuitive to keep practicing when things feel so unproductive, unspiritual, unpleasant, and unbearable, but keeping at it in skillful ways builds the wiring that leads to the good stuff that comes in the next stage even if it feels like it is doing nothing good at all.\nThis stage is a profound opportunity to see clearly the pain of the dualistic aspect of our attachments, aversions, desires, hopes, fears, and ideals, as our awareness of all this has been amplified to an unprecedented level. At its best, it is very humanizing and very emotionally honest. This is the stage that makes possible the path of heroic effort, the diligent investigation of this moment based upon the powerful wish for awakening, because at this stage all the unskillful aspects of this wish are beaten out of the meditator with a force equal to the suffering caused by them. You can get very far on highly imbalanced and goal-oriented practice, and it can provide sufficient momentum and meditation skills so that, should you get your ass kicked at this stage, you continue making quick progress anyway, even when you drop off the imbalanced striving power and let the insight machine you have built coast somewhat on its own momentum.\nAgain, if meditators stop practicing entirely at this stage, they can get stuck and haunted for the rest of their lives until they complete this first progress of insight. Not moving forward with practice at this stage will deprive meditators of its primary benefits, such as the increased perceptual abilities that allowed them to get this much insight in the first place. They teeter on the brink of meditative greatness. Remembering this will help increase faith, and it can take a lot of that to get through this stage. Good teachers will help students develop faith in their own abilities to handle these stages, and to balance this with backing off if it truly gets to be too much.\nTo get through the Dark Night on your own power and to get to Equanimity is true meditative greatness. The next stage is fantastic and what comes after it is even more so. Thus, those who quit in these stages reduce their chances of ever getting beyond this stage, and the whole range of consequences, both physical and emotional, can remain long after the meditation skills have faded. Finding that balance, knowing what you can take and what you can’t, is as much art as science, with no perfectly clear guidelines that can be given. However, we strongly need to consider that quitting in these difficult stages increases the chances of doing it again the next time it happens, as the way we practice creates pathways in the brain that will be stronger next time. This pattern of bailing on practice in the tough stages can create “chronic Dark Nighters”, meditators who just don’t figure out how to move through this stage for a long time.\nYou would be surprised how many of these people are out there. Their failure to unstick themselves may be due to their own psychological makeup, poor instruction, belief that the spiritual life is all about bliss and wonderful emotions, belief in unrealistic and absurd models of spirituality that do not allow for the full range of the emotional and mental life, or chancing upon this stage outside the context of a well-developed insight tradition.\nI was a chronic Dark Nighter for over ten years without having any idea what the hell was happening to me, so I can speak on this topic with some authority. Further, I have gone through numerous other Dark Nights at the higher stages of awakening and have come across the same issues again and again. Being stuck in the Dark Night can manifest as anything from chronic mild depression and free-floating anxiety to serious delusional paranoia and other classic mental illnesses, such as narcissism and delusions of grandeur (which I am sure you recognize at points in this book, parts that were likely written in this phase). Dark Nighters may act with a disarming mixture of dedicated spirituality, social conscience, compassion, and reactive darkness.\nI mentioned that the A&P could impart a bit of the inspirational, radical religious leader quality to those with such tendencies. For these same individuals, Re-observation can sometimes lend a bit of a paranoid, apocalyptic cult leader quality to them, a confused whirlwind of powerful inspiration and frantic desperation. Just because someone has borderline or antisocial personality disorder doesn’t mean they can’t make progress in insight, and when they hit these stages it can get wild. In fact, this basic pattern of the A&P happening to a psychopath leading to a cult-following and then mass-suicidal crash when they inevitably hit Re-observation is seen again and again in history and is perfectly explanatory of this otherwise perplexing phenomenon. Same goes for suicide bombers and militant recent converts in general.\nWe may all have our own neurotic tendencies that come out when we are under stress, but if you feel that you are really losing it, get help, particularly from those who know this territory firsthand and are willing to talk honestly about it. Don’t be a macho meditator, go it alone, or get stuck; and don’t imagine that spiritual practice can’t cause some wild and sometimes extremely unpleasant side effects. One of the best things about working with thoroughly qualified and realized insight meditation teachers before we get into trouble is that they will have some idea of our baseline level of sanity and balance and thus know what our capacity is and what we can manage.\nThat said, I suspect that both the mushroom factor and the dharma culture of jet-set teachers popping in and out of our lives with little chance for students to have meaningful contact with them off-retreat contributes to the significant number of Dark Nighters out there. I suspect that there are fewer problems with chronic Dark Nighters in traditions in which the maps outlining what can happen are well-known and in which there are teachers who are accessible and honest about their humanity and the varied landscapes of the spiritual terrain. Naming and normalizing these stages can be profoundly empowering to those going through them in order to find and master their own meditative power.\nOn the other hand, genuine mental illness or unrelated emotional or psychological difficulties can show up in people’s lives. Blaming it all on the Dark Night may not always be accurate or helpful, though if you have recently crossed the A&P but have not completed an insight cycle or gotten into the next stage (Equanimity), there is going to be some Dark Night component mixed in with whatever else is going on.\nMeditation traditions tend to attract what can seem like more than their fair share of the spiritual, emotional, and psychological equivalents of the walking wounded. Sorting out what’s what can sometimes get murky and may require the help of both those who know this insight territory and those who deal with ordinary mental illness and the emotional and psychological difficulties unique to the culture in which practitioners were raised. The best guide would be familiar with both realms. I have an awakened friend who has found it very useful to take medication to treat his very real bipolar disorder. There is something very down-to-earth and realistic about that. These practices won’t save us from our biology. They merely reveal something in the relationship to it.\nOn the other hand, there are those of us who are so deeply indoctrinated by the models of “working through” our “dark stuff” that whenever it comes up we turn to psychotherapy or a whole host of other ways of getting our issues to “resolve” or go away. This view implies false solidity and an exaggerated importance being given to these things, making it very hard to see the true nature of the sensations that make them up. The trap here is that we turn a basic crisis of fundamental identity into a witch hunt for the specific parts of our lives we imagine are to blame for our feeling such dissatisfaction with our basic experience. If someone has gotten to this level of practice, no amount of tinkering with the circumstances or issues in their life will ever solve the core perceptual issue.\nThat doesn’t mean that some of the dissatisfaction with specific aspects of our lives are not valid—quite often it is. However, these relative issues get conflated with a far deeper issue, that of what we really are and are not, and until this cycle of insight has been completed, this conflation tends to cause us to greatly exaggerate our criticisms of those things in our lives that could actually stand improvement and work. Learning this lesson can be very hard for some people, and the dark irony is that we may wreck our relationships, careers, and finances, as well as emotional and physical health, trying to get away from our own high level of insight into the true nature of reality.\nIt can also make us have strong reactions to our meditation teachers and dharma friends, either being very dissatisfied with them, or demanding that they somehow save us, or more likely, both. Until we are willing to work on a more direct, sensate level, there is no limit to the amount of angst and negativity we can project onto our world. I have seen this play out again and again in myself and in the lives of my dharma companions—the strange volatility that can be created by Dark Night–amplified reactive attachment disorders. It can be a very ugly business.\nMy advice: if careful analysis of your insight practice leads you to the conclusion that you are in Re-observation, resolve that you will not wreck your life through excessive negativity. Resolve this repeatedly and intensely. Follow your heart as best you can, but try to spare yourself and the world from as much needless pain as possible. Through sheer force of will, and with the assistance of whatever skillful supports you can connect with, keep it together until you are willing to face your sensate world directly and without anesthesia or armor. I have seen what happens when people do otherwise, and have concluded that, in general, things go badly when people do not follow this advice, though some unexpected good, in the form of learning the hard way, can and does come from such situations.\nThe framework of the three trainings and the three types of suffering that are found within each of their scopes can be helpful here as well. Since most of us are generally not used to facing fundamental identity crises, which is the basic issue in Re-observation, we are not familiar with the misery of fundamental suffering. Being unfamiliar with that misery, we are likely to conclude that it is produced by the specifics of our ordinary world and personal circumstances. However, if we have gotten to Re-observation, that is, if we have found these techniques to be effective, we need to have faith that the remaining advice may be of value to fulfill this part of the experiment. If we are in Re-observation, the task that confronts us is to tease out the fundamental suffering we now know all too well from the specific problems of our lives in an ordinary sense. Remember the five spiritual faculties? Remember balancing faith and wisdom? This is one phase of practice when you get to see what that truly means, as it will test both.\nThis advice to at least partially decouple our felt sense of suffering from our ordinary circumstances may sound dangerous, heartless, or bizarre to some people. It is a valid criticism. In an ideal world, we would not have to go around second-guessing ourselves and the sources of our misery in the specific way that I advocate here. In an ideal world, we would really have our psychological trip together, be able to stay with the practice during these stages, and thus cross quickly through the Dark Night and finish this practice cycle. It can be done.\nWe are not always ideal practitioners, and thus the Dark Night often causes the problems mentioned previously that need to be addressed. My solutions to what happens when we cannot or will not do insight practices in the face of the Dark Night are also not ideal. However, the outcomes are likely to be much healthier in the short and long term than those that come from simply allowing unrestrained Dark Night bleed-through, which often occurs in the absence of solid and sufficient training in morality. Strangely, I have concluded that simply practicing is often much easier than trying to stop Dark Night bleed-through if we are willing to just try it, though it can often seem otherwise. The old kindergarten evaluation, “Follows instructions, plays well with others,” is still a valuable standard in the Dark Night.\nWhile in the Dark Night, not restraining negativity and reactivity that issue from our thoughts, speech, and physical actions is a bit like getting stinking drunk and then driving in heavy traffic rather than just sitting down and waiting to sober up. Not continuing to do insight practices in this stage is like going into surgery, getting an incision, getting the surgery, and then having the surgeon leave you with a large, open incision. Until you get that wound closed you are basically screwed, no matter how anyone might try to comfort you. In this case, you are both the surgeon and the patient. Face the wound and close it up! You have the necessary skills, as you have gotten this far. Use them. The procedure is almost done.\nThere are also those who try to investigate the true nature of their psychological demons and life issues but get so fixated on using insight to make them go away that they fail to hold these things in perspective. This subtle but common corruption of insight practices turns practice into another form of aversion, escape, or denial rather than a path to awakening. Drawing from the agendas of mostly psychology and confused morality, in which there is concern for the specific thoughts and feelings that make up our experience, we fail to make progress in insight, whose agenda is simply to see the true nature of all sensations as they are. Both are important, but it is a question of timing.\nI have concluded that, with very rare and fleeting exceptions, ninety-five percent of the sensations that make up our experience are really no problem at all, even in the difficult stages, but seeing this clearly is not always easy. When we fixate on very painful or very pleasant sensations, we can easily miss the fact that most of our reality is likely made up of sensations that are no big deal, and thus we miss many great opportunities for easy insights. Further, the Dark Night can bring up all sorts of unfamiliar feelings that we have experienced rarely if ever with such clarity or intensity. This has the effect of busting attempts at spiritual bypassing, as the Dark Night is basically the exact opposite of spiritual bypassing. We are in it, deep into it, facing our darkest and most challenging stuff. However, until we get used to these feelings, they can frighten us and make us reactive because of our lack of familiarity with them, even if they are not actually that strongly unpleasant at a sensate level. \nWhat compounds our misery is the mental content we tend to kick up in response to sensations. Often the stories we make up and then tell ourselves, about why these difficulties are happening and what it all means, exacerbate the problem they were intended to solve. There are multiple ways to reframe the meaning of these occurrences that might make them more bearable and point to solutions that are more likely to work, particularly learning to reframe them in terms of these insight maps (and the three characteristics), which is why they can be so valuable. It is not that the insight maps are the be-all and end-all of meaning, as they obviously aren’t. However, focusing entirely on the psychological end of our work without also focusing on the underlying insight process is a common trap that typically doesn’t go as well as the dual approach that keeps making progress on the insight front also. [Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl, may shed light on some of the skillful and therapeutic uses of meaning as we confront these challenging insight stages.]\nI highly recommend using physical sensations as the objects of inquiry during the Dark Night whenever possible, such as those of the breath, with particular attention to the fact that these sensations occur in space. Diving into emotional content, even with the intention of investigating it, can sometimes be a very hard way to go. Remember, whether we gain insight through investigating physical or mental objects is completely irrelevant. Insight is insight. Whenever possible choose objects for investigation by which you won’t easily get caught. The best thing about reality, particularly in the Dark Night, is that you only have to deal with one little flickering sensation in space at a time. Staying on that level when doing insight practices is an unusually good idea. Pay attention to what is right in front of you, but keep your attention open.\nUsing physical object allows you to investigate how much physical pain you are actually in. Does reality seem totally horrible? Notice how much of it is actually excruciatingly painful. If it is not that painful, why do you think it’s horrible? Investigate that carefully in your body, so as to notice exactly where the pain is and also exactly where it is not. Open your eyes and notice the space you are sitting in. Are you in a safe place? No gunfire nearby? Have enough to eat? Decent water? Immediate threat to life or limb? If not, is that much fussiness, reactivity, and drama really necessary? Probably not. Sink into that down-to-earth, common-sense understanding, and basic, practical wisdom. Do some solid reality testing. Notice exactly what volume of space is really a problem and exactly how much of it is not. You will very likely find that the majority is not, and somehow your mind had forgotten that much if not most of it is okay and perhaps even pretty good or interesting. Then get back to a detailed but open, wide, all-embracing, moment-to-moment sensate investigation.\nScary stuff said, there are people who breeze straight from the Arising and Passing Away through the whole of the Dark Night in as little as a few easy minutes or hours and hardly notice it at all, so don’t let my descriptions of what can happen script you into imagining that the Dark Night has to be a major suffering event. It absolutely does not. These descriptions of what can occur are merely there to help those who do encounter these sorts of problems to realize that these things do occur, and can be skillfully addressed. There is no medal awarded for having a tough time in the Dark Night or for staying in it for longer than necessary, much to my dismay.\nAt my best and on retreat, I have gotten through Dark Night territory in as little as about a day and a half. Bill Hamilton said one Dark Night took him about seven minutes, which is really fast, but it means it can be done. I have had Dark Night phases that were no worse than the general stress I encounter in daily life in ordinary situations. That said, off-retreat I have had Dark Night phases hit hard for months, those being before I knew anything about what they were or how to deal with them. Contextualization, explanation, normalization, and the empowerment that comes with knowledge and well-applied time-tested techniques make a huge difference, as I have noticed by doing the experiment myself many, many times, and as many others have reported.\nOne of the more bizarre potholes we can fall into in the Dark Night is to become fascinated by and identified with the role of The Great Spiritual Basket Case. “I am so spiritual that my life is a nonstop catastrophe of uncontrollable insights, disabling and freakish raptures, and constant emotional crises of the most histrionic nature. My spiritual abilities are proven and verified by what a consummate mess I am making of my life. How brave and dedicated I must be to screw up my life in this way. Oh, what a glorious, holy, special, and saintly wreck I am!” Both my sympathy and intolerance for those caught in this trap are directly related to the amount of time I have spent in that trap being just like them. While we should not try to pretend that the Dark Night hasn’t made us a basket case, if it has done so, neither should we revel in or wallow in being a basket case, nor use the Dark Night as an excuse for not being as kind and optimally functional members of society as we can possibly be.\nTry to navigate the Dark Night with panache, dignity, self-respect, decency, gentleness, poise, and if possible, a sense of humor, which often seems to be the first thing to be sacrificed at its bloody altar. Even a cutting, cynical, and dark sense of humor about your current experience would be better than none at all, but avoid hurting people with it. Feel free to use humor on yourself as much as you wish. Remember to balance all that with some honest humanity. It is actually possible to have fun with the Dark Night, just like it can be fun to go on a scary roller coaster or see a scary movie, like the alleviating feeling of a really good cry, like the weird thrill that comes from primal scream therapy. Remember that. \nAdditionally, the practice of remembering the good, true, and beautiful aspects of the world, and the myriad kindnesses shown you and others by you and others—to literally stop and smell the roses—can help a lot to regain perspective. My roses are actually blooming nicely as I write this, with their beautiful fragrance wafting through the open window. This advice is likely to ring cheesy to one in the Dark Night, but remember this and you will do better.\nSpeaking of doing better, and getting away from the crazy and back to the vipassana, I should mention something about the micro-phenomenology that I really care about, that makes insight practice more than just psychology. The patterns happening from a sensate point of view in Re-observation are the pinnacle of the third vipassana jhana and, because of this, have the following qualities: first, they are very broad—very around the “back”, very on the periphery of attention. That is where attention is naturally very strong in this phase, so go with that first, as it is easier. Allowing attention to be its natural fluxing shape will make this work a lot better than trying to go narrow and forcing things—that would be using a first vipassana jhana coping strategy at a stage in which it isn’t likely to work well.\nSecond, the frequencies of pulses are chaotic and fast. We are getting into more sophisticated forms of more inclusive attention that are starting to broaden enough to include many diverse, irregular, erratic, intricate aspects of reality. Go for that attention-wise, meaning go into frequencies of the oscillation of the sensations that appear to be subject and object that are really fast and harmonically irritating, instead of regular and predictable. We are talking at least ten to eighteen pulses of sensations per second, if not a lot more. While noting can help if we are getting run over in this stage, if we can get it together to go into the broad vibrational complexity directly, we can learn to draw on the remarkable discerning power of our minds. We can notice how fast reality is arising, and, as reality and comprehension are the same thing in their essence, we can notice that comprehension, and thus contemplation, can go this fast. It takes an elegant letting go of control and an embracing of that to get what Re-observation is trying to teach you.\nDo not try to power through this: that’s first vipassana jhana. Do not try to go for really tight, narrow, fine, tingly frequencies that are all about a center of attention and not about background: that is second vipassana jhana. Re-observation comes at the peak of the third vipassana jhana: it is broad, rich, chaotic, and about the “background” and issues of synchrony and asychrony. “Background” here means those things we typically think of as on “this side”, as well as those sensations that tend to frame objects in the center of attention, as well as just those sensations that are more in the direction of “us”.\nThe fourth jhana will put it all together later, so here, you just need to learn the third jhana piece well. The first jhana’s linear, controlling, effortful attention paradigm can’t go that fast, but reality can, and reality is attention itself, so just embrace that. You need to let reality start learning to recognize that it is already recognizing itself. That’s the only way the mind can realize the massive processing power it already actually has and embrace a vast and complex world of sensate experience that the limited, linear mind cannot possibly track in all its richness and intricacy.\nThis is vipassana. Notice that every little background sensation already is its own comprehension, where it is, as it arose and vanished, and that trying to pretend to be a little point in space observing and controlling all that sensate complexity is absurd and just causes suffering: that is the lesson here. That is the three characteristics, and the three characteristics are the key in this stage, as with all the others. Do not get all caught up in my psychological descriptions, they are there to help only if you get thrown totally off your vipassana game. As soon as you get back on your game even a little bit, get back to noticing all this come and go on its own, naturally, effortlessly, at a basic, fast, sensate level. This is the most important paragraph of this whole section.\nOne way or another, when we finally give up and rest in what is happening without trying to alter it or stabilize it, when we can accept our actual humanity as well as be clear about the three characteristics of naturally flowing mental and physical phenomena, there arises … [Equanimity]\n\nCaption: These are a series of very general sketches of some typical qualities of the stages of insight (ñanas). Note well: there may be some individual variation depending on all sorts of factors, including individual proclivities, levels of concentration, physical and mental health, technique, dose of practice, setting, and a whole host of other factors. Thus, take these as very general guidelines, not as hard and fixed rules. There is a Vimeo Video explaining them here. (Image and caption credit: Daniel Ingram; image taken from here).\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/09/22/re-observation/", "title": "Re-observation", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-09-22T22:10:21+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=4", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "45c813f1fb4a3ab70035c37dc1101c21", "summary": []}
{"text": "Ikigai\n\nExcerpt from Awakening Your Ikigai: How the Japanese wake up to joy and purpose every day (2017) by Ken Mogi (pgs. 67-73, 79-81)\n\nNOTE TO THE READER\nThe Five Pillars of Ikigai\nThroughout this book, I refer to the Five Pillars of ikigai. They are:\nPillar 1: Starting smallPillar 2: Releasing yourselfPillar 3: Harmony and sustainabilityPillar 4: The joy of small thingsPillar 5: Being in the here and now\nThese pillars come up frequently, because each one provides the supportive framework—the very foundations—that allows ikigai to flourish. They are not mutually exclusive or exhaustive, nor do they have a particular order or hierarchy. But they are vital to our understanding of ikigai, and will provide guidance as you digest what you read in the forthcoming pages and reflect on your own life. Each time they will come back to you with a renewed and deepened sense of significance.\nI hope you enjoy this journey of exploration.\n\nCHAPTER 4: The sensory beauty of ikigai\nA starry bowl in good condition, if put in an auction, would fetch millions of dollars. Of the ones that remain, the Inaba starry bowl (inaba tenmoku) is regarded as the finest of the three. It was handed down from the Tokugawa Shogunate to the house of Inaba, and would fetch tens of millions of dollars if put on the market today.\nKoyata Iwasaki, the fourth president of Mitsubishi Conglomerate, and one of the richest men in modern Japan, became the owner of that particular bowl in 1934. However, considering himself unworthy of it, Iwasaki never used it at his tea ceremonies.\nThe Japanese certainly make a fuss of pretty bowls. After all, a bowl is just a bowl, and its function is to contain liquid.\nIn terms of that capacity, it is no different from any ordinary bowl in the market. And while the enthusiasm surrounding these receptacles would surely find parallels in other cultures, one feels that there is something unique in the Japanese culture that makes the passion for them quite extraordinary. Where does this kind of sensory enthusiasm come from?\nIn Chapter 1, we referred to this lexical hypothesis, which states that expressions for important personalty traits in life gradually and eventually come to constitute a part of everyday language, as is the case with ikigai. There is another interesting aspect of the Japanese language, worth focusing on and particularly pertinent here.\nIn Japanese, a dog barks wan wan, while a cat goes nya nya. In English, they go bowwow and meow respectively. Every language has its share of such onomatopoeic expressions, but it is generally considered that the Japanese language has an inordinately abundant variety of them.\nThey are sometimes referred to as Japanese sound symbolism, and they are often made up of the same word said twice.\nFor example, bura bura means a nonchalant, carefree way of walking, while teka teka describes a shiny surface. Kira kira refers to the glittering of light, whereas gira gira refers to a more intense, almost blinding source of light, such as the headlight of a motorbike at night. Ton ton refers to a light tapping sound, whereas don don refers to a heavy, thudding one. A dictionary of onomatopoeia edited by Masahiro Ono lists 4,500 instances of sound symbolism.\nWith the growing popularity of Japanese manga and anime, an increasing number of people around the world are interested in Japanese sound symbolism, as many of the expressions are frequently used in popular manga and anime works. However, Japanese onomatopoeia is difficult to master, partly because of the subtlety in the way it is used and partly because there is so much of it. Unlike in some cultures, the Japanese continue to use sound symbolism in their adult life, as well as in childhood. Indeed, it is not uncommon for the Japanese to use sound symbolism when discussing things in a professional context. Such a perception structure has certainly developed more in some fields of industry than others, for example, in gastronomy. You can imagine sushi chefs such as Jiro Ono and experienced fish brokers such as Hiroki Fujita using onomatopoeia in their conversation, because sound symbolism is often used to describe the texture and flavor of food. Similarly, you can be sure samurai warriors used onomatopoeia to discuss the quality of swords, from the glitter to the texture of the blade surface. Manga artists make frequent use of it, too, using words such as ton ton and don don to reflect the subtle nuances of the actions of their characters.\nThe fact that there is so much sound symbolism in the Japanese language implies, according to the lexical hypothesis, that there is a correlation between it and the way in which the Japanese perceive the world. The Japanese seem to distinguish between many different nuances of experience, paying attention to the plethora of sensory qualities. The proliferation of onomatopoeia reflects the importance of detailed sensory nuances in the life of the Japanese.\nSuch attention to detail has nurtured a culture in which craftspeople continue to receive respect in an era where waves of innovation promise to change our lives.\nJapan continues to have a large number of traditional products made by craftspeople. Craftspeople, although no outspoken or flamboyant, are held in high esteem and play pivotal roles in Japanese society. Often, their lives are regarded as the embodiment of ikigai—lives devoted to creating just one thing properly, however small.\nThe work of craftspeople is often very labor-intensive and time-consuming. As a result, the product tends to be highly refined and of excellent quality. Japanese consumers recognize that time and effort has gone into the creation of these goods and appreciate the quality, in such diverse areas as the crafting of knives, swords, blades, ceramics, lacquerware, washi paper, and of weaving.\n\nThe ethics and work of craftspeople continue to have an impact on a wide range of economic activities. Similarly, the Japanese understanding and handling of the great variety of sensory qualities have led to correspondingly fine artisanship and manufacturing techniques.\nAlthough Japanese companies have been losing out for many years in the field of consumer electronics, one area in which the Japanese are still preeminent is the manufacturing of intricate instruments such as medical cameras. High-end precision engineering and commitment to perfection makes Japanese medical cameras among the best in the world. Likewise, in the case of semiconductor devices, Japanese manufacturers have the advantage, the accumulation of knowhow and carefully coordinated operations being a must for efficient and high quality production.\nPaying attention to the multitude of sensory experiences is necessary to execute the finely tuned operations supporting craftsmanship and high-tech manufacturing. As with craftsmanship, these cognitive capabilities are reflected in the linguistic make-up of the language. The richness of the Japanese language as regards onomatopoeia reflects such fine-tuned sensibilities.\n***\n\nAs we will see in Chapter 8, in the Japanese mind, each sensory quality is equivalent to a god [emphasis mine]. The Japanese tend to believe that there is an infinite depth to the nuances displayed by the multitudes of colors in nature and artifacts, just as the story of God creating the whole universe is deep.\n[…]\nThe Cambridge-based neuroscientist Nicholas Humphrey, who discussed the functional significance of consciousness in his book Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness, argues that consciousness is functionally significant because it gives us sensory pleasure—a reason to carry on with life. Humphrey takes up the extraordinary example of the ritual prisoners’ last breakfast before their execution in the United States. The prisoners have the final privilege of choosing their own personal menu. Humphrey quotes the prisoner’s last menu as posted on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website. One inmate might select fried fish fillet, French fries, orange juice, and German chocolate cake, another might go for a plate of chicken katsu. The point is that they give considerable thought to the very last meal of their life, a testimony of the importance of the sensory pleasures we derive from our food. It can be said to be an ultimate form of being in the here and now. It is almost as though finding ikigai in a given environment could be regarded as a form of biological adaptation. You could find your ikigai in a wide range of conditions, and the key to that resilience is sensory pleasure.\nIn the contemporary science of consciousness, sensory qualities that accompany an experience, including those in culinary consumption, are called “qualia”. The term refers to the phenomenological properties of sensory experience: the redness of red, the fragrance of a rose, or the coolness of water are all examples of qualia. How qualia arise from the activities of neurons in the brain is the greatest unsolved mystery in neuroscience, or, indeed, in the whole of science [emphasis mine]. Nothing turns us on like a great mystery. If you put a strawberry in your mouth (it does not have to be one of the expensive perfect fruits sold at Sembikiya), you have a certain spectrum of qualia, which would presumably give you pleasure. And the pleasure is equal to the mystery of life.\nEarlier, we drew our attention to the fact that there are many examples of onomatopoeia (sound symbolism) in the Japanese language. Onomatopoeia, after all, is just representation of various qualia encountered in life.\nThere is a deep link here. In a mysterious way, releasing oneself is linked to the discovery of the sensory pleasures. The Japanese culture, with its abundance of onomatopoeia, has cultivated this linkage, nurturing a very robust system of ikigai in its course. By relieving ourselves of the burden of the self, we can open up to the infinite universe of sensory pleasure. \n\nSee also:\nHarmonic Society: 8 Models of Art for a Scientific Paradigm of Aesthetic Qualia (specifically, Ken Mogi’s Qualia Manifesto is quoted at the begining of Model 5: Art as the intelligent exploration of the state-space of consciousness – quote also reproduced below)Ken Mogi’s 1998 Qualia ManifestoKen Mogi being interviewed by Closer to Truth: How are Brains Conscious?Sony Qualia Man – a small piece by Conscious Entities on Ken MogiHigh Entropy Alloys of Experience (where we can perhaps think of the deliberate practice of embodying the Five Pillars of Ikigai as the cultivation of a beautiful high-entropy alloy of experience, or perhaps a self-organizing landscape for sustained harmonious creativity)A Big State-Space of Consciousness and Camp Rainbow God can help you get into the mindset that understands that there are unfathomably many possible experiences, or as Mogi would say, sensual gods.The Manifesto of Tactilism by F. T. Marinetti to explore some of the tactile qualities ripe for aesthetic utilizationA Language for Psychedelic Experiences where we attempt to develop a language to describe the (allegedly!) indescribable; sound symbolism of the sort Ken discusses above will no doubt be a welcomed addition to the hyperspace lexicon.\n\nKey quote from his manifesto:\nThe elucidation of the origin of qualia-rich subjectivity is important not only as an activity in the natural sciences, but also as a foundation and the ultimate justification of the whole world of the liberal arts. Bridging the gap between the two cultures (C. P. Snow) is made possible only through a clear understanding of the origin of qualia and subjectivity.Qualia symbolize the essential intellectual challenge for humanity in the future. The impact of its elucidation will not be limited to the natural sciences. The liberal arts, religion, and the very concept of what a man is will be reassessed from their very foundations.– Ken Mogi in The Qualia Manifesto (1998)\n\nGaze upon the vast landscape of unexplored qualia – delight in the treasures and hidden gems waiting to be found in the state-space of consciousness.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/09/16/ikigai/", "title": "Ikigai", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-09-17T02:31:35+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=4", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b7ab79d7da42564ca37c8c0eee838e8a", "summary": []}
{"text": "7 Recent Videos: Buddhist Annealing, Is This a Simulation?, The Purple Pill, DMT vs. 5-MeO-DMT, Digital Sentience, Psychedelics and the Free Energy Principle, and Advanced Visions of Paradise\n\n[Context: 3rd in a series of 7-video packages. See the previous two packages: 1st and 2nd]\n[Featured image by Wendi Yan.]\n\nBuddhist Annealing: Wireheading Done Right with the Seven Factors of Awakening (link)\nThis video discusses the connections between meditative flow (any feeling of change) and the two QRI paradigms of “Wireheading Done Right” and “Neural Annealing”. To do so, I explore how each of the “seven factors of awakening” can be interpreted as operations that you do to flow. In a nutshell: the factors are “energy management techniques”, which when used in the right sequences and dosages, tend to result in wholesome neural annealing.\nI then go on to discuss two fascinating dualities: (1) The dual relationship between standing wave patterns and vibratory frequencies. And (2) the dual correspondence between annealing at the computational level (REBUS) and annealing in resonance networks.\n(1) Describes how the crazy patterns that come out of meditation and psychedelics are not irrelevant. They are, in a way, the dual counterpart to the emotional processing that you are undergoing. Hence why ugly emotions manifest as discordant structures whereas blissful feelings come together with beautiful geometries.\n(2) Articulates how simulated annealing methods in probabilistic graphical models such as those that underlie the synthesis of entropic disintegration and the free energy principle (Friston’s and Carhart-Harris’ REBUS model) describe belief updating. Whereas annealing at the implementation level refers to a dissonance-minimization technique in resonance networks. In turn, if these are “two sides of the same coin”, we can expect to find that operations in one domain will translate to operations in the other domain. In particular, I discuss how resisting information (“denial”, “cognitive dissonance”) has a corresponding subjective texture associated with muscle tension, “resistance”, viscosity, and hardness. Equanimity, in turn, allows the propagation of both waves of dissonance, consonance, and noise as well as bundles of information. This has major implications for how to maximize the therapeutic benefit of psychedelics.\nFinally, I explain how we could start formalizing Shinzen Young’s observation that you can, not only “read the contents of your subconscious”, but indeed also “heal your subconscious by greeting it with enough concentration, clarity, and equanimity”. Negentropy in the resonance network (patches of highly-ordered “combed” coherent resonance across levels of the hierarchy) can be used to heal patches of dissonance. This is why clean high-valence meditative objects (e.g. metta) can absorb and dissipate the internal dissonance stored in patterns of habitual responses. In turn, this might ultimately allow us to explain why, speaking poetically, it is true that love can heal all wounds. \n~Qualia of the Day: Nirvana Rose~\n(Skip to ~10:00 if you don’t need a recap of Wireheading Done Right and Neural Annealing)\n[ps. correction – I wrote a 30 page document about my retreat, not a 50 word document]\nRelevant Links:\nBuddhist AnnealingWireheading Done RightNeural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything (Michael Johnson)REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of PsychedelicsStrengthened beliefs under psychedelics (SEBUS)? A Commentary on “REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics” (Adam Safron)Anti-Tolerance DrugsHighly Recommended Guided MeditationTaking Temperature of Subconscious Processing ~ SHINZEN YOUNGShinzen Young on “Flow”The True Beauty of Your “Soul” ~ Shinzen YoungHarmonic Resonance Theory: An Alternative to the “Neuron Doctrine” Paradigm of Neurocomputation to Address Gestalt properties of perceptionSeven Factors of AwakeningThe HindrancesWhat Ketamine Feels Like | K Hole and Lower Doses Described in DetailThe Holy Mountain (trailer)\n\n\nIs This a Simulation? (link)\nWill You Take the Simulation Pill?\nWarning: Once You Take It There Is No Going Back.\nApologies for the Clickbait. I Can’t Say More Unless You Take the Pill With Me. \n~Qualia of the Day: The Red Pill – With Your Consent, We Will Take It Together~\nRelevant Links:\nPsychedelic Annealing / Presentation at the Oxford Psychedelic SocietyNeural Annealing writeup (Michael Johnson)Neural Annealing presentation (Quintin Frerichs)Qualia or When A.I. equals Advanced Incompetence – Transhumanist Satire (Anders Amelin & Maggie Wassinge)DMT & Simulation Theory, Part 1/2 (Junk Bond Trader)DMT & Simulation Theory, Part 2/2 (Junk Bond Trader)Hyperspace LexiconNeural Correlates of the DMT Experience Assessed with Multivariate EEG (Christopher Timmermann, Leor Roseman, Michael Schartner, Raphael Milliere, Luke T. J. Williams, David Erritzoe, Suresh Muthukumaraswamy, Michael Ashton, Adam Bendrioua, Okdeep Kaur, Samuel Turton, Matthew M. Nour, Camilla M. Day, Robert Leech, David J. Nutt & Robin L. Carhart-Harris)DMT Alters Cortical Travelling Waves (Andrea Alamia, Christopher Timmermann, David J Nutt, Rufin VanRullen, Robin L Carhart-Harris)Simulation #409​ Dr. Joscha Bach – Conscious MachinesHow To See Voids (Sarah Perry)Meaning as Ambiguity (Sarah Perry)\n\n\nThe Purple Pill: What Happens When You Take the Blue and the Red Pill at the Same Time? (link)\n“The Purple Pill is the pill that gives you both high hedonic tone and an unprejudiced open-ended approach to the pursuit of truth. For losing truth is to lose it all, but to lose it all is only bad because it makes you and others suffer in the wider universe.” – The Purple Pill (Qualia Computing)\nIn this talk I explain that the “Blue vs. Red Pill” trope relies on a false dichotomy. You don’t need to choose between depressive realism and comforting illusions. Put differently, you don’t need to choose between truth and happiness. High hedonic tone is not incompatible with one’s representational accuracy of causal structures. The world, and the existence of experiential heaven and hell, can be understood without curling into a ball and crying your way to sleep. More so, effective and persistent action towards the good requires that you don’t believe in this false dichotomy, for sustainable altruistic productivity necessitates both accurate models and positive motivations. Thus, the aspiring paradise engineer ought to be willing to take the Purple Pill to move onwards.\nI advocate having a balanced portfolio of (1) efforts to minimize experiential hell, (2) techniques to increase the hedonic baseline sustainably, and (3) methods to reliably experience peak states of consciousness in a sane way.\nI do not think that spending 100% of one’s time in “destroying hell” is a sustainable approach to life because it does not allow you to “reinvest” in the conditions that gave rise to one’s goodness to begin with (otherwise you become more of a martyr than an effective player in the field!). More so, the relationship between suffering and productivity is non-trivial, which means that to just helping people who suffer extremely does not generally pay off in terms of productive action towards the cause in the future. Hence, improving baseline is just as important: it is precisely what allows people to go from near zero productivity to a high level of productivity. Finally, the benefits of having access to reliable, pro-social ultra-blissful states of consciousness should not be underestimated. They are an important piece of the puzzle because they motivate the “animal self” and are deeply reassuring. Thus, as a “package”, I see a lot of potential in simultaneously reducing negative extremes, improving the baseline, and achieving new heights of bliss. This, to me, is what I see as the path forward.\nTopics I cover span: Trungpa’s “Spiritual Materialism” (the attitude of using exalted states of consciousness to “decorate our ego”), optimization problems/reinvesting in the good, sane in-group/out-group dynamics, the game theory of virtue signaling, and the importance of having an explicit commitment to the wellbeing of all sentient beings (to prevent value drift).\n~Qualia of the Day: Spiritual Materialism~\nRelevant Links:\nThe Purple PillSpiritual Materialism – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (Dorje Dradul) – ShambhalaMore Dakka (TheZvi)More Dakka in Medicine (Sarah Constantin)Healing Trauma with Neural AnnealingTHE NO PILL MOVEMENT (Why Neo Is Still In The Matrix And How To Transcend It) (Frank Yang)Cluster Headache Frequency Follows a Long-Tail Distribution (thanks to Harlan Stewart for running the survey!!!)Treating Cluster Headaches Using N,N-DMT and Other Tryptamines (Quintin Frerichs)OPIS initiative on access to psilocybin for cluster headaches (Jonathan Leighton & Manu Herrán)Is Enlightenment Compatible with Sex Scandals? (Scott Alexander)Discussion on FanaticismOpen Individualism and Antinatalism: If God could be killed, it’d be dead alreadyWork ReligionI: All Anyone Cares About is Consciousness (Andrew Zuckerman)II: Donating to QRI Today is Like Buying Bitcoin in 2010 (Andrew Zuckerman)YACHT – Paradise Engineering \nThanks Mike Johnson and David Pearce for many conversations on this topic.\n\n\nDMT vs. 5-MeO-DMT: 12 Key Differences (link)\nWhat are the differences between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT? And what gives rise to those differences? In this video we discuss 12 different ways to analyze the strange and unique effects of these substances. We go over the 9 lenses already discussed in Qualia Computing* and add three more.\nStarting with three new lenses (5-MeO-DMT left/DMT right):\nA) Global Coherence vs. Competing Clusters of Coherence: 5-MeO-DMT gives rise to a global coherent state (the so-called “unified energy field”), whereas DMT gives rise to an ecosystem of time-loops, each trying to capture as much of your attention as possible, which in turn results in coalition-building and evolution of patterns in the direction of being very “attention grabbing” (cf. reddit.com/r/place).\nB) Really Positive or Really Negative Valence vs. Highly-Mixed Valence: 5-MeO-DMT gives rise to either a globally coherent state (high-valence) or two competing coherent states (negative-valence), whereas DMT tends to generate complex consonance/dissonance relationships between the clusters of coherence.\nC) How they are different according the the Free Energy Principle: On 5-MeO-DMT the entire experience has to reinforce itself, whereas each cluster of coherence needs to model the rest of the experience in order to be reinforced by it on DMT. Thus 5-MeO-DMT makes experiences that express “the whole as the whole” whereas DMT makes each part of the experience represent the whole yet remains distinct.\nAnd the original 9 lenses:\n1) Space vs. Form: 5-MeO is more space-like than DMT.2) Crystals vs. Quasi-Crystals: 5-MeO generates more perfectly repeating rhythms and hallucinations than DMT.3) Non-Attachment vs. Attachment: 5-MeO seems to enable detachment from the craving of both existence and non-existence, whereas DMT enhances the craving.4) Underfitting vs. Overfitting: 5-MeO reduces one’s model complexity whereas DMT radically increases it.5) Fixed Points and Limit Cycles vs. Chaotic Attractors: 5-MeO’s effect on feedback leads to stable and predictable attractors while DMT’s attractors are inherently chaotic.6) Modulation of Lateral Inhibition: 5-MeO may reduce lateral inhibition while DMT may enhance it.7) Diffuse Attention vs. Focused Attention: 5-MeO diffuses attention uniformly over large regions of one’s experiential field, while DMT seems to focus it.8) Big Chunks and Tiny Chunks vs. A Power Law of Chunks: 5-MeO creates a few huge phases of experience (as in phases of matter) with a few remaining specks, while DMT produces a more organic power law distribution of chunk sizes.9) Integration vs. Fragmentation: 5-MeO seems to give rise to “neural integration” involving the entrainment of any two arbitrary subnetworks (even when they usually do not talk to each other), while DMT fragments communication between most networks but massively enhances it between some specific kinds of networks.\nI also explain what is going on with the “Megaminx DMT worlds” and when DMT entities bully you into believing in their independent existence.\n~Qualia of the Day: Rheoscopic Fluid~\nRelevant Links:\n*5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 LensesHealing Trauma with Neural AnnealingThe Symmetry Theory of Valence: 2020 PresentationGuide to Writing Rigorous Reports of Exotic States of ConsciousnessNeural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything (Michael Johnson)5-MeO-DMT Awakenings: From Naïve Realism to Symmetrical EnlightenmentTurbulent-like Dynamics in the Human Brain (Gustavo Deco, Morten L. Kringelbach)\n\n\nDigital Sentience: Can Digital Computers Ever “Wake Up”? (link)\nI start by acknowledging that most smart and well-informed people today believe that digital computers can be conscious. More so, they believe this for good reasons.\nIn general, 99.99% of the times when someone says that digital computers cannot be conscious they do so equipped with very bad arguments. This, of course, does not mean that all of these smart people who believe in digital sentience are right. In fact, I argue that they are making a critical yet entirely non-obvious mistake: they are not taking into account a sufficiently detailed set of constraints that any scientific theory of consciousness must satisfy. In this video I go over what those constraints are, and in what way they actually entail that digital sentience is literally impossible.\nThe talk is divided into three parts: (1) my philosophical journey, which I share in order to establish credibility, (2) classic issues in philosophy of mind, and (3) how we can solve all those issues with QRI’s theory of consciousness.\n(Skip to 31:00 if you are not interested in my philosophical journey and you want to jump into the philosophy of mind right away).\n(1) I’ve been hyper-philosophical all my life and have dedicated thousands of hours working on this topic: having discussions with people in the field, writings essays, studying qualia in all manners of exotic states of consciousness, and working through the implications of different philosophical background assumptions. I claim that QRI’s views here are indeed much more informed than anyone would assume if they just heard that we think digital computers cannot be conscious. In fact, most of us started out as hard-core computationalists and only switched sides once we fully grokked the limitations of that view! Until the age of 20 I was a huge proponent of digital sentience, and I planned my life around that very issue. So it was a big blow to find out that I was neglecting key pieces of the puzzle that David Pearce, and later Mike Johnson, brought up when I met them in person. In particular, they made me aware of the importance of the “phenomenal binding/boundary problem”; once I finally understood it, everything unraveled from there.\n(2) We go over: Marr’s levels of analysis (and “interactions between levels”). The difference between functionalism, computationalism, causal structure, and physicalist theories of consciousness. The Chinese Room. Multiple Realizability. Epiphenomenalism. Why synchrony is not enough for binding. Multiple Drafts Theory of consciousness. And the difference between awareness and attention.\n(3) We solve the boundary problem with topological segmentation: this allows us to also provide an explanation for what the causal properties of experience are. The integrated nature of fields can be recruited for computation. Topological boundaries are neither epiphenomenal nor frame-dependent. Thus, evolution stumbling upon holistic field behavior of topological pockets of the fields of physics would solve a lot of puzzles in philosophy of mind. In turn, since digital computers don’t use fields of physics for computation, they will never be unified subjects of experience no matter how you program them.\nI also discuss issues with IIT’s solution to the binding problem (despite IIT’s whole aesthetic of irreducible causality, their solution makes binding epiphenomenal! The devil’s in the details: IIT says the Minimum Information Partition has “the highest claim of existence” but this leaves all non-minimal partitions untouched. It’s epiphenomenal and thus not actually useful for computation).\nThanks also to Andrew Zuckerman and other QRI folks for great recent discussions on this topic.\n~Qualia of the Day: Dennett’s Intentional Stance~\n\nRelevant Links/References:\nQualia Research Institute GlossaryBreaking Down the Problem of ConsciousnessA Debate on Animal Consciousness (it’s almost like a “Who’s Who” of the rationalist community c. 2015 and what they believed about consciousness)Integrating information in the brain’s EM field: the CEMI field theory of consciousness (John McFadden)Against Functionalism (Michael Johnson)Principia Qualia (Michael Johnson)Are Brains Analogue or Digital? | Prof Freeman DysonWelcoming Steven Lehar as a QRI LineageHumans and Intelligent Machines: Co-Evolution, Fusion or Replacement? (David Pearce)\n\n\nPsychedelics and the Free Energy Principle: From REBUS to Indra’s Net (link)\nFriston’s Free Energy Principle (FEP) is one of those ideas that seem to offer new perspectives on almost anything you point it at.\nIt seems to synthesize already very high-level ideas into an incredibly general and flexible conceptual framework. It brings together thermodynamics, probabilistic graphical models, information theory, evolution, and psychology. We could say that trying to apply the FEP to literally everything is not a bad idea: it may not explain it all, but we are bound to learn a lot from seeing when it fails.\nSo what is the FEP? In the words of Friston: “In short, the long-term (distal) imperative — of maintaining states within physiological bounds — translates into a short-term (proximal) avoidance of surprise. Surprise here relates not just to the current state, which cannot be changed, but also to movement from one state to another, which can change. This motion can be complicated and itinerant (wandering) provided that it revisits a small set of states, called a global random attractor, that are compatible with survival (for example, driving a car within a small margin of error). It is this motion that the free-energy principle optimizes.“\nOrganisms that survive over time must minimize entropy injections from their environment, which means they need to minimize surprise, which unfortunately is computationally intractable, but the information theoretic construct of variational free-energy provides an upper bound on this ground truth surprise, meaning that minimizing it will indirectly minimize surprise. This cashes out in the need to maximize “accuracy – complexity” which prevents both overfitting and underfitting. In the video we go over some of the classical ideas surrounding the FEP: the dark room, active inference, explicit vs. implicit representations, and whether real dynamic systems can be decomposed into Markov blankets. Finally, we cover how the FEP naturally gives rise to predictive coding via hierarchical Bayesian models.\nWe then talk about Reduced BEliefs Under pSychedelics (REBUS) and explain how Carhart-Harris and Friston interpret psychedelics and the Anarchic Brain in light of the FEP. We then discuss Safron’s countermodel of Strengthened BEliefs Under pSychedelics (SEBUS) and the work coming out of Seth’s lab.\nSo, that’s how the FEP shows up in the literature today. But what about explaining not only belief changes and perceptual effects, but perhaps also getting into the actual weeds of the ultra bizarre things that happen on psychedelics?\nI provide three novel ideas for how the FEP can explain features of exotic experiences:\n(1) Dissonance-minimizing resonance networks would naturally balance model complexity due to an inherent “complexity cost” that shows up as dissonance and prediction error minimization when prediction errors give rise to out-of-phase interactions between the layers.\n(2) Bayesian Energy Sinks: What you can recognize lowers the (physical) energy of one’s world-sheet. I then blend this with an analysis of symmetrical psychedelic thought-forms as energy-minimizing configurations. On net, we thus experience hybrid “semantic + symmetric” hallucinations.\n(3) Indra’s Net: Each “competing cluster of coherence” needs to model its environment in order to synch up with it in a reinforcing way. This leads to attractor states where “everything reflects everything else”.\n~Qualia of the Day: Indra’s Net~\nRelevant Links:\nREBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics (Carhart-Harris & Friston)The free-energy principle: a rough guide to the brain? (Karl Friston)Strengthened beliefs under psychedelics (SEBUS)? A Commentary on “REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics” (Adam Safron)Why we seek out pleasure: the Symmetry Theory of Homeostatic Regulation (Michael Johnson)Neural Annealing (Michael Johnson)Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences (Andrés Gómez Emilsson)Healing Trauma with Neural Annealing (Andrés Gómez Emilsson)Why Does DMT Feel So Real? Multi-modal Coherence, High Temperature Parameter, Tactile HallucinationsSeeing that Frees (Rob Burbea)Soulmaking DharmaIndra’s Net\n\n\nAdvanced Visions of Paradise: From Basic Hedonism to Paradise Engineering (link)\nThis video was recorded as a way for me to prepare for the speech I gave at the “QRI Summer Party 2021: Advanced Visions of Paradise” (see livestream here). You can think of it as the significantly more in-depth (and higher audio quality!) version of that speech.\nThe core message of this video is: thinking wholesome, genuinely useful, and novel thoughts about how to build paradise is hard. Doing so without getting caught up in low-dimensional aesthetics and pre-conceptions is very challenging. Most of the “visions of paradise” we find in our culture, media, and art are projections of implicit aesthetics used for human coordination, rather than deeply thought-out and high-dimensional perspectives truly meant to elevate our understanding and inspire us to investigate the Mystery of reality. Aesthetics tend to put the cart before the horse: they tacitly come with a sense of what is good and what is real. Aesthetics are fast, parallel, and collective ways of judging the goodness or badness of images, ideas, and archetypes. They give rise to internal dissonance when you present to them things that don’t fit well with their previous judgements. And due to naïve realism about perception, these judgements are often experienced as “divine revelations”.\nTo disentangle ourselves from tacit low-dimensional aesthetics, and inspired by the work of Rob Burbea (cf. Soulmaking), I go over what aesthetics consist of: Eros, Psyche, and Logos. Then, to explore high-quality aesthetics relevant to paradise engineering, I go over 7 camps of a hypothetical “Superhappiness Festival”, each representing a different advanced aesthetic: Hedonism, Psychiatry, Wholesome, Paleo, Energy, Self-Organization, and Paradise Engineering. For didactic purposes I also assign a Buddhist Realm (cf. “Opening the Heart of Compassion” by Short & Lowenthal) to each of the camps.\nNote: the Buddhist realms are a very general lens, so a more detailed exposition would point out how each of the camps manifests in each of the Buddhist realms. Don’t put too much stock on the precise mapping I present in this video.\n~Qualia of the Day: Pure Lands~\nPicture by Wendi Yan (wendiyan.com) “The Tower of Paradise Engineering” (also the featured image of this post / image to appear in the forthcoming QRI Book)\nFor context, here is the party invite/description:\nDear Everyone!\nScience fiction and futurism have failed us. Simply put, there is a remarkable lack of exploration when it comes to the role that consciousness (and its exotic states) will play in the unfolding of intelligent agency on Earth. This, of course, is largely understandable: we simply lack adequate conceptual frameworks to make sense of the state-space of consciousness and its myriad properties. Alas, any vision of the future that neglects what we already know about the state-space of consciousness and its potential is, in the final analysis, “missing the point” entirely.\nExotic states of consciousness are consequential for two reasons: (1) they may provide unique computational benefits, and (2) they may have orders of magnitude more bliss, love, and feelings of inherent value.As Nick Bostrom puts it in Letter From Utopia:\n(1) “Mind is a means: for without insight you will get bogged down or lose your way, and your journey will fail.\n(2) “Mind is also an end: for it is in the spacetime of awareness that Utopia will exist. May the measure of your mind be vast and expanding.”\nIn light of the above, let us for once try to be serious consciousness-aware futurists. Then, we must ask, what does paradise look like? What does it feel like? What kinds of exotic synesthetic thought-forms and hyper-dimensional gems populate and imbue the spacetime of awareness that makes up paradise?\nCome and join us for an evening of qualia delights and great company: experience and make curious smells, try multi-sensory art installations, and listen to a presentation about what we call “Advanced Visions of Paradise”. Equipped with an enriched experience base and a novel conceptual toolkit, we look forward to have you share your own visions of paradise and discuss ways to bring them into reality.\nInfinite Bliss!\nPs. If you are being invited to this event, that means that we value you as a friend of QRI \nPss. Only come if you are fully vaccinated, please!\nKey Links:\nBostrom’s “Letter From Utopia”Official song for this event: Paradise Engineering (Barker)\n~Music: People were asking me about the playlist of yesterday’s party. The core idea behind this playlist was to emulate the sequence of aesthetics I talked about in the speech. Namely, the songs are ordered roughly so that each of the 7 camps gets about 1 hour, starting in camp Hedonism and going all the way to camp Paradise Engineering: QRI Summer Party 2021: Advanced Visions of Paradise~\n\nAnd that’s it for now!\nThank you for tuning in!\nInfinite Bliss For All!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/07/13/7-recent-videos-buddhist-annealing-is-this-simulation-the-purple-pill-dmt-vs-5-meo-dmt-digital-sentience-psychedelics-and-the-free-energy-principle-and-advanced-visions-of-paradise/", "title": "7 Recent Videos: Buddhist Annealing, Is This a Simulation?, The Purple Pill, DMT vs. 5-MeO-DMT, Digital Sentience, Psychedelics and the Free Energy Principle, and Advanced Visions of Paradise", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-07-14T00:03:51+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=4", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "c33514aae02c444c462456e3c1473a74", "summary": []}
{"text": "A Field Equation to Mend the World\n\nExcerpt from The Science of Enlightenment (2005) by Shinzen Young (p. xv-xvii)\nAuthor’s Preface\nIt took me quite a while to get to the point of publishing this book — many years actually. That may seem like a strange statement. How can someone not get the point of publishing something they themselves wrote? Let me explain.\nA central notion of Buddhism is that there’s not a thing inside us called a self. One way to express that is to say that we are a colony of sub-personalities and each of those sub-personalities is in fact not a noun but a verb–a doing.\nOne of my doings is Shinzen the researcher. Shinzen the researcher is on a mission to “take the mist out of mysticism.” Contrary to what is often claimed, he believes that mystical experience can be described with the same rigor, precision, and quantified language that one would find in a successful scientific theory. In his opinion, formulating a clear description of mystical experience is a required prenuptial for the Marriage of the Millennium: the union of quantified science and contemplative spirituality. He hopes that eventually this odd couple will exuberantly make love, spawning a generation of offspring that precipitously improves the human condition.\nShinzen the researcher also believes that many meditation masters, current and past, have formulated their teachings with “less than full rigor” by making unwarranted, sweeping philosophical claims about the nature of objective reality based on their subjective experiences—claims that tend to offend scientists and, hence, impede the science-spiritually courtship.\nShinzen the researcher has a natural voice. It’s the style you would find in a graduate text on mathematics: definition, lemma, theorem, example, corollary, postulate, theorem. Here’s a sample of that voice:\nIt may be possible to model certain global patterns of brain physiology in ways that feel familiar to any trained scientist, i.e., equations in differential operators on scalar, vector, or tensor fields whose dependent variables can be quantified in terms of SI units and whose independent variables are time and space (where space equals ordinary space or some more esoteric differential manifold). It is perhaps even possible to derive those equations from first principles the way Navier-Stokes is derived from Cauchy continuity. In such fields, distinctive “flow regimes” are typically associated with relations on the parameters of the equations, i.e., F(Pj) → Q, where Q is qualitative change in field behavior. By qualitative change in field behavior, I mean things like the appearance of solitons or the disappearance of turbulence, etc. Through inverse methods, it may be possible to establish a correspondence between the presence of a certain parameter relation in the equations modeling a field in a brain and the presence of classical enlightenment in the owner of that brain. This would provide a way to physically quantify and mathematically describe (or perhaps even explain) various dimensions of spiritual enlightenment in a way that any trained scientist would feel comfortable with.\nThat’s not the voice you’ll be hearing in this book. This book is a record of a different Shinzen, Shinzen the dharma teacher, as he talks to students engaged in meditation practice. Shinzen the dharma teacher has no resistance at all to speaking with less than full rigor. He’s quite comfortable with words like God, Source, Spirit, or phrases like “the nature of nature.” In fact, his natural voice loves spouting the kind of stuff that makes scientists wince. Here’s an example of that voice:\nThe same cosmic forces that mold galaxies, stars, and atoms also mold each moment of self and world. The inner self and the outer scene are born in the cleft between expansion and contraction. By giving yourself to those forces, you become those forces, and through that, you experience a kind of immortality–you live in the breath and pulse of every animal, in the polarization of electrons and protons, in the interplay of the thermal expansion and self-gravity that molds stars, in the interplay of dark matter that holds galaxies together and dark energy that stretches space apart. Don’t be afraid to let expansion and contraction tear you apart, scattering you in many directions while ripping away the solid ground beneath you. Behind that seeming disorder is an ordering principle so primordial that it can never be disordered: father-God effortlessly expands while mother-God effortlessly contracts. The ultimate act of faith is to give yourself back to those forces, give yourself back to the Source of the world, and through that, become the kind of person who can optimally contribute to the Mending of the world.\nShinzen the hard-nosed researcher and Shinzen the poetic dharma teacher get along just fine. After all, they’re both just waves. Particles may bang together. Waves automatically integrate. Just one problem though. The researcher is a fussy perfectionist. He is very resistant to the notion of publishing anything that lacks full rigor. Spoken words return to silence from where they came from. Printed text sits around for centuries waiting for every tiny imprecision and incompleteness to be exposed.\nSo it took a while for me to see value in allowing my talks to be published in something close to their original spoken form.\n\nSee also:\nShinzen Young interviewed by Michael JohnsonEp86: Bliss, Enlightenment, & Fristonian Physics – Shinzen Young, Chelsey Fasano, Dr Jay Sanguinetti at the Guru Viking podcast (they discuss the Symmetry Theory of Valence in this episode)Taking Temperature of Subconscious Processing ~ Shinzen YoungWhat is Love at the Deepest Level? ~ Shinzen YoungA Language for Psychedelic Experiences: Algorithmic Reductions, Field Operators, and Dimensionality (which uses some of Shinzen’s ideas and aesthetic to analyze and describe psychedelic states of consciousness)Buddhist Annealing: Wireheading Done Right with the Seven Factors of Awakening (which I wrote a few days after a 2-week retreat I did soon after reading The Science of Enlightenment)And the corresponding video essay about Buddhist Annealing. I share the video description below:\n\nThis video discusses the connections between meditative flow (any feeling of change) and the two QRI paradigms of “Wireheading Done Right” and “Neural Annealing“. To do so, I explore how each of the “seven factors of awakening” can be interpreted as operations that you do to flow. In a nutshell: the factors are “energy management techniques”, which when used in the right sequences and dosages, tend to result in wholesome neural annealing.\nI then go on to discuss two fascinating dualities: (1) The dual relationship between standing wave patterns and vibratory frequencies. And (2) the dual correspondence between annealing at the computational level (REBUS) and annealing in resonance networks.\n(1) Describes how the crazy patterns that come out of meditation and psychedelics are not irrelevant. They are, in a way, the dual counterpart to the emotional processing that you are undergoing. Hence why ugly emotions manifest as discordant structures whereas blissful feelings come together with beautiful geometries.\n(2) Articulates how simulated annealing methods in probabilistic graphical models such as those that underlie the synthesis of entropic disintegration and the free energy principle (Friston’s and Carhart-Harris’ REBUS model) describe belief updating. In contrast, annealing at the implementation level refers to a dissonance-minimization technique in resonance networks. In turn, if these are “two sides of the same coin”, we can expect to find that operations in one domain will translate to operations in the other domain. In particular, I discuss how resisting information (“denial”, “cognitive dissonance”) has a corresponding subjective texture associated with muscle tension, “resistance”, viscosity, and hardness. Equanimity, in turn, allows the propagation of both waves of dissonance, consonance, and noise as well as bundles of information. This has major implications for how to maximize the therapeutic benefit of psychedelics.\nFinally, I explain how we could start formalizing Shinzen Young’s observation that you can, not only “read the contents of your subconscious“, but indeed also “heal your subconscious by greeting it with enough concentration, clarity, and equanimity”. Negentropy in the resonance network (patches of highly-ordered “combed” coherent resonance across levels of the hierarchy) can be used to heal patches of dissonance. This is why clean high-valence meditative objects (e.g. metta) can absorb and dissipate the internal dissonance stored in patterns of habitual responses. In turn, this might ultimately allow us to explain why, speaking poetically, it is true that love can heal all wounds. \n~Qualia of the Day: Nirvana Rose~\n(Skip to ~10:00 if you don’t need a recap of Wireheading Done Right and Neural Annealing)\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/06/22/a-field-equation-to-mend-the-world/", "title": "A Field Equation to Mend the World", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-06-23T06:12:08+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=5", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0cc6c881301513772cc41b87d11ca971", "summary": []}
{"text": "What Happens When You Ask Questions to the DMT Entities?\n\nJosikinz recently posted a wonderful video on Youtube titled Psychedelic Entities – broken down and described. I really appreciate the use of high-quality psychedelic replication art throughout the video in order to illustrate what they are talking about. I recommend watching the whole video; below an excerpt that discusses what happens when you try to ask these entities questions (starting at 10:53):\n\nRepresentations of the Subconscious\nThis personality type can take any visible form. Subjectively interpreted as the autonomous controller behind the continuous generation of the details of the person’s current experience. This entity is also often felt to simultaneously control one’s current perspective, personality, and internally stored model of reality. When interacted with, this category of entity can often possess the abilities to allow them to directly alter and manipulate one’s current experiences. In terms of their motives, they commonly want to teach or guide the person and will seemingly operate under the assumption that they know what is best for them. However, although a relatively common experience, it still cannot be known whether this type of autonomous entity is genuinely an experience of directly communicating with the so-called subconscious mind, and what that would even mean if it were the case. Or if it is perhaps merely a hallucinatory approximation that simply behaves in a convincing manner.\nRepresentations of the Self\nThis personality type can be described as a direct copy of one’s own personality. It can take any physical form, but when conversed with it clearly adopts an identical vocabulary and set of mannerisms to one’s own consciousness. This entity will often take on similar appearance to oneself, but could theoretically take on any other appearance too. During this experience, there is also a distinct feeling that one’s own consciousness is somehow being mirrored or duplicated into the hallucinated autonomous entity that is being interacted with.\nPersonal Commentary\nOk, so, to wrap this video up, and at the risk of alienating a certain subsection of my audience, I’d just like to make a few points regarding the beliefs that commonly surround psychedelic entities, and my personal opinion on those viewpoints.\nWithin the psychonaut community and DMT users in particular, autonomous entities are commonly viewed as one of the most captivating aspects of the psychedelic experience.\nThey are often shrouded in esoteric mystery. To the point that a significant potion of the people who encounter them will go as far as to assert that these experiences are not simply fabrications of the mind, but rather beings from another world that exist independently of the human brain. This is a viewpoint that was originally popularized in mainstream culture by the likes of Terence McKenna, who famously theorized that the machine elves he encountered under the influence of DMT were either extraterrestrial in nature, interdimensional beings from a higher plane of existence, time-traveling humans from the future, or an ecology of souls that apparently includes both our ancestors and those who are yet to be born. As far as I can tell, the most common reasonings behind this viewpoint are that the experience of encountering these entities is often interpreted as feeling more realistic and well-defined than that of any sober experience the person has ever had. Alongside this, there is often a sense that the encounter itself is so incomprehensibly complex and other-worldly that there is simply no possible way that the human brain could generate such an experience on its own.\nIn regards to this particular notion, it is then sometimes asserted that consciousness must be an antenna of sorts that receives either all or some of its subjective experiences from that of an unknown interdimensional source. Furthermore, the source of this received input is sometimes said to be adjustable depending on the person’s brain state. With substances such as psychedelics simply “tuning” our consciousness into the analogous equivalent of a different radio station or TV channel. This is an idea that was once again further popularized by Terence McKenna, who is famously quoted as saying: “I don’t believe that consciousness is generated in the brain anymore than TV programs are made inside my TV. The box is too small.” \nNow, while I can personally empathize with the reasons why some people may be drawn into these conclusions after the often earth-shattering experience of a DMT trip or other high-level psychedelic experience, I do not personally believe that autonomous entities are anything more than the profound, but ultimately hallucinated, products of the subconscious mind. Instead, I am quite sure that they are simply the psychedelic equivalent of the various characters and beings that most people commonly encounter within their dreams. Although it could be argued that autonomous entities are too characteristically different from that of dream characters to possibly be a result of the same neurological processes, I think that these differences in their appearance and behavior are largely the results of the many other psychedelic effects that are simultaneously occurring during these encounters. The most notable of which is geometry, which causes the hallucination to be comprised by the other-worldly shapes and patterns that provide autonomous entities with their distinctly hyperspatial perspective. Alongside this, various other subjective effects such as synesthesia, machinescapes, recursion, time distortion, and transpersonal states can all potentially synergize into an experience that is easy to misinterpret as something occurring outside of the human mind. \nIn my personal opinion, if autonomous entities were truly something that exists beyond the human mind, I think there would likely be a single verifiable case of them conveying information to a person that they did not already know or could not have come to the conclusion of within that moment. This would also likely be testable to some degree, which has led myself and my close friends to casually experiment with asking DMT entities a variety of questions over the years [emphasis mine]. These questions have included math problems, metaphysical questions, philosophical questions, and queries pertaining to the general nature of beings inhabiting their particular world. However, each attempt at doing so has resulted in the entities simply ignoring the question, arrogantly scoffing at the absurdity of us asking them such a trivial thing, or replying with vague ambiguous wording that the person’s own mind could have easily come up with. This has even been the case when the entities are presenting themselves as vastly more complex, knowledgeable, and powerful than the humans that they are interacting with.\nNow, just to clarify, while I do believe that autonomous entities are results of similar processes to that of dream characters, I also don’t want to be reductive and downplay the often overwhelmingly profound nature of this experience. For example, within the moments that the entities are presenting themselves, I believe that to varying degrees they are genuinely conscious agents that the brain is simulating alongside our own. It does not seem unreasonable to me that if the brain can simulate one conscious agent within everyday sobriety, that within certain extenuating circumstances, such as mental illnesses, dream states, and hallucinogenic experiences, it could also temporarily allocate resources into simultaneously simulating other conscious agents.\nI also think that it is sort of interesting that many autonomous entities would pass the Turing Test if interviewed. And I find this particularly fascinating in conjunction with the knowledge that the entities also commonly present themselves as representative embodiments of various aspects of the subconscious mind, which suggests to me that at least to some extent this experience may therefore allow people to directly interact with and communicate with various facets of their consciousness in a manner that would otherwise be entirely impossible without the use of hallucinogenic substances. \n\nSee also: \nIs This a Simulation?Subjective effect indexDMT Prime Factorization RevisitedUniversal Love, Said the Cactus PersonTheir Scientific Significance is Hard to OverstateMemetic Vaccine Against Interdimensional Aliens InfestationTypical N,N-DMT Trip Progression According to an Anonymous ReaderLSD and Quantum Measurements: Can you see Schrödinger’s cat both dead and alive on acid?Why Does DMT Feel So Real? Multi-modal Coherence, High Temperature Parameter, Tactile Hallucinations\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/05/14/what-happens-when-you-ask-questions-to-the-dmt-entities/", "title": "What Happens When You Ask Questions to the DMT Entities?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-05-15T05:22:21+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=5", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "01accb2417c858004470e4a8fac9379a", "summary": []}
{"text": "Healing Trauma with Neural Annealing\n\nThe folks at QRI have recently given a string of presentations. Before I jump to the main topic of this article, I will briefly mention a few of these presentations that are likely to be of interest to the reader. Quintin Frerichs recently presented about Neural Annealing at the Wellcome Center for Human Neuroimaging at UCL. I recently presented about Mapping the Heaven Realms at the SSC/ACX online meetup organized by Joshua Fox. Also, a few weeks ago I participated in the U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon (the live conversation was so engaging we ended up talking for four hours). And finally, as the main topic of this article, the talk I gave at the Oxford Psychedelic Society on May 6th, 2021:\nHealing Trauma with Neural Annealing: Is Annealing the Key Condition for Successful Psychedelic Psychotherapy?\nAbstract of the Talk:\nMystical-type experiences mediate the therapeutic benefit of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (Griffiths, 2016; Ross, 2016; Yaden, 2020). In this talk we will explore why this may be the case and how we might improve this effect. On the one hand we can interpret the effect of mystical-type experiences through the lens of belief and attitude change (Carhart-Harris and K. J. Friston, 2019). But beliefs that are not deeply felt are unlikely to have much of an effect. Why would mystical-type experiences in particular cause deeply felt belief changes? On the other hand, one can interpret the effect of these experiences to be healing at a low-level: they allow the reconfiguration of the microstructure of our experience in beneficial ways. The first lens suggests that these experiences change what we believe and think about, whereas the second lens suggests that the experiences change how we feel. In this talk we will unify these two lenses and argue that neural annealing (Johnson, 2019) underlies high-level changes in beliefs and attitudes as well as low-level microstructural healing of internal representations. This paradigm ties together the puzzling effects of mystical-type experiences by interpreting them as uniquely strong versions of neural annealing. We suggest that traumatic memories are indeed implemented with low-level microstructural dissonance in the internal representations (Gomez-Emilsson, 2017). Not only are they about something bad, they also feel bad. In turn, neural annealing targeted towards these internal representations can heal and transform them from dissonance-producing to consonance-producing. More so, neural annealing also enhances the information propagation fidelity of the nervous system, allowing the healed representations to update the state of the rest of the nervous system. This insight, along with careful study of annealing dynamics under psychedelics, can allow us to target the annealing process in order to heal these internal representations more effectively. We conclude with empirical predictions for what to look for in order to identify the signatures of successful neural annealing under psychedelics and suggest methods to piggyback on the natural well-trodden paths of beneficial annealing (e.g. meditation, yoga, music, creativity) to optimize such experiences.\n\nWhy This Is Important\nThere are two main reasons I think sharing this work as soon as possible with the world is very beneficial. The first is that it genuinely advances a new model for how to optimize psychedelic therapy. In particular, I think that being aware of this model can be very useful for people who intend to self-medicate with psychedelics. Although there is a vast literature for psychedelic psychotherapy, it is largely laced with metaphysical views, implicit background philosophical assumptions incompatible with science, and in my view, questionable ethics. \nThe second point is that this model can be used as an antidote to psychedelic brainwashing. If a friend of yours has been taking a lot of psychedelics (with or without a shaman) and now has a web of unfalsifiable beliefs that do not seem to help them, this presentation might work to help them understand what is going on in their mind. Additionally, once you understand how psychedelic annealing works, you can anticipate irrational belief changes based on the texture of the experience and proactively prevent them. Indeed, being showered with bliss consciousness by a DMT entity might be healing to your nervous system, but alas, it also anneals in you a conviction in the independent existence of such entities. With this presentation, the hope is that you can keep the healing while discarding the irrational beliefs (because you will now be able to see how they are implemented!). If we want to indeed create a truth-seeking psychonaut shanga (aka. a Super-Shulgin Academy) we *have to* have an adequate model of how exotic states of consciousness modify one’s belief networks. The penalty of not modeling this accurately leads to the loss of one’s critical faculties. I have seen it happen (see Appendix A & B), and I am not impressed. We can do better.\nWithout further ado, here is the video:\n\n\n\nAnd here are the slides (with some light comments along the way on the topics that have not been previously discussed):\n\n\nMany thanks to the Oxford Psychedelic Society for the invitation to give this talk. \n\nModel (1) has the problem that the researchers themselves are not exposed to the exotic states of consciousness, and as such, what they write and theorize about comes from second-hand accounts. More so, the bulk of the direct phenomenological information the participants gain access to is generally discarded as it goes through the low-dimensional information filters of standardized questionnaires. There is no real buildup of phenomenological information or an effort to integrate it across participants (participants don’t generally talk to each other). The model does excel at generating copious high-quality neuroimaging data.\nModel (2) suffers from the problem that the idiosyncratic beliefs of the psychonaut tend to “anneal more deeply” (see the next slide for a more through description of this) with each trip. Unless they were to focus on the phenomenal character of the experience rather than the intentional content, what tends to happen is that specific high-level beliefs become energy sinks and they dominate the exploration. Recall how DMT’s world-sheet “crystallizes” around objects and ideas you can recognize. Thus, as you take psychedelics over and over, the realms of experience one goes to will tend to follow recurring themes along the lines of what the most successful energy sinks from previous experiences have been. The explorer usually does not develop technical models of the phenomenological effects, but rather, tends to focus on the metaphysical or philosophical implications of the experiences.\nModel (3) is like that of a think tank. Ever since writing articles like How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD, we have received a lot of correspondence from pretty smart people who enjoy exploring exotic states of consciousness. The multi-year dialogue between us and them and each other has resulted in a lot of generative model building for which we can then get feedback. Grounded in common background philosophical assumptions and a drive towards phenomenological accuracy, the type of output of this model tends to look much more like The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences than either a neuroscience paper (model 1) or a book about the Earth Coincidence Control Office (model 2). \nWhich of these information-processing architectures would you use if you were trying to figure out the truth of how psychedelics work? If they were diagrams for a neural network architecture, which one do you think would model and integrate information most effectively? Ultimately, we should think of these models as complementary. But since model 3 is novel and largely unexplored, it might be sensible to pay attention to what it outputs.\n\n(H/T Quintin Frerichs for this slide)\n\n\nThis slides illustrates the sort of topics and problems that a “Good Annealing Manual” would need to cover. As an integrated “energy management” strategy, such a manual would describe how to raise energy, how to dampen it, how to translate it from one domain into another, how to stabilize a state, how to get knocked out of an unhelpful limit cycle, and so on. \n\n\n(H/T Quintin Frerichs for this slide)\n\n\nNote: I should have cited Michael Schartner’s work (and more generally the work coming out of Anil Seth‘s lab which applies the predictive processing paradigm and neural network feature visualization to model the effects of psychedelics). Apologies for this omission. Importantly, all of that work (in addition to REBUS and SEBUS) lives at the computational level of analysis. What QRI is bringing into the picture is how the implementation level based on principles of harmonic resonance and the Symmetry Theory of Valence underlie predictive processing. More on this below.\n\n\n\n\nOne of the interesting ideas of Steven Lehar is applying the duality between standing wave patterns and resonant modes of objects to the brain. A lot of psychedelic phenomenology suggests that there is a duality between the vibe of the state and the geometric layout of the multi-modal hallucinations. In other words, each phenomenal object has a corresponding way of vibrating, and this is experienced as a holistic signature of such objects. (cf. Resonance and vibration of [phenomenal] objects). (See also: Hearing the shape of a drum).\n\nIn the context of this presentation, the most important idea of this slide is that the duality between standing wave patterns and the vibe of the experience showcases how symmetry and valence are related. Blissful “heavenly realms” on DMT are constructed in ways where the resonance of the phenomenal objects with each other is consonant and their structure is symmetrical. Likewise, the screechy and painful quality of the DMT “hell realms” comes along with asymmetries, discontinuities, and missing components in the phenomenal objects that make up experiences. The overall vibe of the space is the result of the intrinsic vibratory modes of each phenomenal object in addition to each of the possible interactions between them (weighted by their phenomenal distance). An analogy readily comes to mind of an orchestra and the challenges that come with making it sound consonant.\n\n\nFrom Mike’s Why we seek out pleasure:\nA good algorithmic theory of cognition will collect, unify, and simplify a lot of things that look like odd psychological quirks, and recast them as deeply intertwined with, and naturally arising out of, how our brains process information. I’m optimistic that Symmetry Theory will be able to do just this- e.g.,* Cognitive dissonance happens when two (or more) patterns in your head are battling for your neural real estate, and they’re incompatible– i.e., they’re collectively dissonant/asymmetrical.* Denial is what happens when your brain attempts to isolate/quarantine such patterns, and is actively working to prevent this tug-of-war for neurons.This model implies that your brain can evaluate the “internal consistency/harmony” of a neural pattern, and reject it if there’s a negative result- and also the “simulated relative compatibility/harmony” of two neural patterns, and try to keep them isolated if there’s a negative result. I’d suggest the best way to understand this is in terms of projective geometry, resonance, and symmetry: i.e., to evaluate a pattern’s “internal harmony” and whether it ‘runs well (is stable) on existing hardware’, the brain uses principles of resonance to apply certain geometric projections (high-dimensional-to-lower-dimensional transformations) to the pattern to see if the result is stable (unchanged, or predictably oscillating, or still strongly resonant) under these transforms. Stable patterns are allocated territory; unstable ones (=dangerous neural code) are not. The internal mechanics of this will vary across brain areas (based on the specific resonance profile of each area) and emotional states, which might contribute to how certain types of information tend to end up in certain brain regions. Likewise, this could explain how moods coordinate information processing– by changing the resonance landscape in the brain, thus preferentially selecting for certain classes of patterns over others. A core implication of this model is that different kinds of dissonance will drive different kinds of behavior (feel like different kinds of imperatives), and based on what action is needed, a mood may create (or be the creation of) a certain kind of dissonance.Why we seek out pleasure: the Symmetry Theory of Homeostatic Regulation, Michael Johnson (2017)\nNow applying annealing to the above, we hypothesize that: (1) On the one hand, at the implementation level neural annealing works as a method to reduce dissonance by escaping local minima. (2) On the other hand, at the computational level simulated annealing can be used as a method to reduce prediction errors (cf. message passing and belief propagation). We hypothesize that there is a kind of duality between these two levels of abstraction. We are very interested in cleanly formalizing it so it can be empirically tested. But the facts seem to suggest that there is something here. What this duality says is that for any transformation that you do to the resonance network there will be a corresponding effect on the belief network and vice versa. For example, in this light, you will always find that denial or cognitive dissonance will come along with the phenomenology of “resistance” in one of its many guises (such as muscle tension, feelings of viscosity, or hardness). If you can address the muscle tension directly with progressive relaxation (or yoga, massage, etc.) you will also be implicitly addressing the integration of information into your world-model. At the same time, you may use specific beliefs in order to relax specific muscles, and some aspects of meditation may involve doing this to an extent (e.g. “now is all there is” and “the self is illusory” are beliefs that would seem to result in particular patterns of mental and physical relaxation).\n\nWe might succinctly explain how a resonance network trying to minimize dissonance could implement the free energy principle. Namely, we could maximize “accuracy – complexity” in the following way: If complex models require complex networks of resonance to be implemented, then there might be an inherent dissonance cost to complexity. More symmetrical configurations lower this cost, which makes more compact and coherent models preferable. At the same time, to take care of the accuracy, prediction errors themselves might be implemented with dissonance (e.g. via out-of-phase communication between layers of the hierarchy). Together, these two effects favor both accurate and simple models.\n\nAn interesting contrast that illustrates this duality between the computational and implementational level of abstraction is that between the effects of DMT and 5-MeO-DMT. Particularly, DMT seems to give rise to the chaotic generation of information and this can be seen in something as simple as the style of the tracer effects it induces (richly-colored flip-flopping between positive and negative afterimages). 5-MeO-DMT’s tracer effects are generally monochromatic and the same color as that of the input. (See: Modeling Psychedelic Tracers with QRI’s Psychophysics Toolkit: The Tracer Replication Tool).\n\nWe hypothesize that DMT’s effects at the implementation level can be understood as the result of competing clusters of coherence across the hierarchy, whereas the main attractors of 5-MeO-DMT seem to involve global coherence. Modulating the average synaptic path length in a system of coupled oscillators can give rise to this sort of effect. By randomly adding connections to a network of coupled oscillators one first sees an emergent state of many competing patches of synchrony, and then, after a threshold is crossed, one starts seeing global synchrony emerge. Despite both drugs making the brain “more interconnected”, the slight difference in just how interconnected it makes it, may be the difference between the colorful chaos of DMT and the peaceful nothingness of 5-MeO-DMT.\n\n\nThe competing clusters of coherence across the hierarchy can evolve to adapt to each other. The DMT realm is more of an ecosystem than it is a state per se (ex: Hyperspace Lexicon). And due to the duality between dissonance minimization and prediction error minimization, avoiding updating one’s belief in the direction of these realms being real causes intense cognitive dissonance. Some level of belief updating to fit the content of the hallucinations might be very difficult to resist. Indeed, the forced coherence across the layers of the hierarchy would be bypassing one’s normal ability to resist information coming from the lower layers.\n\nOn peak experiences such as those induced by 5-MeO-DMT, global coherence will generally have the effect of dissolving internal boundaries. In turn, due to the duality proposed, belief updating in the direction of extreme simplicity is very difficult to resist. Global annealing without sensorial chaos results in the minimization of model complexity; high accuracy is taken care of thanks to the low information content of the state. As a consequence, one experiences very high-valence, high-energy, high-symmetry states of consciousness that come along with belief updating towards ideas with close to zero information content.\nThe high-valence nature of the state can be very useful to heal dissonance in the network, so therapeutic benefits seem very promising (notwithstanding the somewhat forced belief updates the state induces).\n\nUnfortunately a nearby attractor of the globally coherent states is when there are two incompatible coherent states competing with one another. This can result in extremely negative valence and belief updating in the direction of “everything being bad”.\n\nWe now see how the typical belief changes caused by these two drugs have a dual counterpart in how they feel. I am of the opinion that a commitment towards truth and careful attention to one’s state of mind can prevent (or at least substantially lessen) the epistemological failure modes of these drugs. But since this kind of model is not known by the general population, for most people these drugs do tend to act as “epistemological hand grenades”.\nSee Appendix A & B at the bottom of this article for examples of each of these failure modes. \n\nNow on to the therapeutic applications: practicing loving-kindness meditation consistently for weeks before a trip seems to substantially change its phenomenal character. It feels that metta practice over time anneals a consonant metronome which can become massively amplified during a psychedelic experience. In turn, a brightly shinning metta metronome emits “healing waves of energy” within one’s world-simulation (I know how crazy this sounds!), which impact the contents of one’s subconscious in ways that reduces their internal dissonance.  \nSimilar benefits can be obtained from other meditation practices, as long as their emphasis is on high-valence and coherent states of mind. See also: Buddhist Annealing (video).\nImportantly, you can “work smart” if you manage to use the seeds of consonance as the nucleation sources for alignment cascades. This can heal at a very deep level, and it is what people are talking about when they say things like “all is love”.\n\nA secular Good Annealing Manual would ideally have very detailed information for how to move around in the state-space of consciousness. \n\nApparently, equanimity is also highly beneficial during psychedelic experiences. But rather than merely repeating the mantras that everyone in the psychedelic community chants (“just let go”, “surrender”, “accept”), we can use a More Dakka approach and aim to maximize equanimity rather than merely invoking it. Taking psilocybin during a meditation retreat in which you do a lot of equanimity exercises will allow you to “let go” with much greater skill than what you could do in normal everyday life. As a result, one is able to “learn one’s lessons” with much greater ease and a lot less resistance. This, I think, is generally good. After all, the point is not to punish oneself, but to learn from one’s mistakes.\nIn turn, Shinzen Young says that experiencing pleasure with equanimity is very healing. By not grasping, one is letting the consonant waves propagate freely throughout one’s nervous system, which results in positive annealing. So a possible therapeutic modality might be to combine peak states together with high levels of equanimity. If we want to bump the therapeutic effect sizes of psychedelic psychotherapy, this is the sort of thing I consider to be very promising.\n\nI conclude by providing some annealing targets that are generically good for one’s mental health. Practice them consistently before a psychedelic experience so that they can be the nucleation points of sane and hedonically beneficial psychedelic annealing. Being bathed by love is good. Being bathed by love and equanimity at the same time is even better. Being bathed by love and all Seven Factors of Awakening at the same time might be still even better. The ceiling of wholesome happiness is not currently known by science. It is probably much higher than we can imagine.\n\nIf you found this talk inspiring, generative, or clarifying for your own work, please cite it! If you want to see more work like this and help us transform the alchemy of consciousness into a chemistry of the mind, please consider donating to QRI. Every dollar takes us closer to being able to empirically test these models and use them to develop technology to alleviate suffering in bulk.\n\n\nThank you!!!\n\nAppendix A: What Happens When You Take Too Much DMT – What Does Overfitting Look Like?\nA case study of a psychiatrist case who self-medicated his depression with a regiment of 1g of DMT (along with MAOIs) and 4mg of clonazepam a day:“On arrival, the patient was nonverbal, combative, and required six security guards to restrain him. When less restrictive measures failed, he was given propofol 1,000 mg IV, ketamine 500 mg IM, midazolam 5 mg IV, diazepam 20 mg IV, and fentanyl 4 mg IV with minimal effect.”“Psychiatry was consulted after the patient’s delirium resolved and he was medically stabilized as he exhibited symptoms of mania and psychosis. He was pressured in his speech, hyperreligious, and delusional. He believed that demons were leeching into his soul and asked the medical staff for an exorcism. It was recommended that the patient be admitted to the behavioral health unit for mood stabilization.”\nHow can I help my friend understand that what he is seeing is a side effect of smoking DMT on a daily basis? (from Quora – note: it is impossible for me to verify the accuracy of this report). From the comment thread:“He has been smoking it every day and night for the past 3 months that I know of. He sees these little beings everywhere and says they are trying to destroy his house pushing it over. He also says they spray mace and fairy dust and little balls in his face and other peoples too. He doesn’t believe that nobody else sees this happening, he says we have all been compromised and can’t be trusted. I’m worried about him and also his girlfriend that has to deal with him and he’s delusional. His daughter is scared to come home, his parents want to have him committed, and he doesn’t believe it has anything to do with dmt! He absolutely believes it is real.”“He is always under the influence of DMT, he smokes it all day every day. He says it no longer makes him hallucinate like when he first tried it, now it just takes away pain . NOT TRUE!! it’s like now he believes that this altered state of mind is reality and he’s losing everything. He is even destroying his own house to get them out from behind the walls.the other night he stood up and started stabbing his ceiling saying he was going to get them. It’s very disturbing to see him like this.”“He’s doing about the same. Last time I went to see him he was showing me how the moon was following him into his back yard and then back to the front yard . He also sees a bunch of drones in the sky that I can’t see. He still doesn’t believe that we can’t see the walls and countertops moving, or feel the fairy dust being sprayed in our faces.”The YouTube channel C.U.E. COMPREHENSIVELY UNCOVERING EVIDENCE seems to exemplify quite accurately what DMT-induced overfitting looks like (e.g. see his DMT-informed numerological musings) Reddit user ClockJoule: see an interview with him about his daily DMT use and the beliefs that he developed as a consequence: Magic Mushroom Cloud – THE MAN WHO SMOKED DMT FOR 120 DAYS STRAIGHT.[Report(s)] A warning to my fellow psychonauts regarding hyperspace entities (wall of text alert!) – excerpt:“It all culminated in one long, elaborate, and highly dramatic visionary experience in which I was essentially ‘recruited,’ initiated in some grand ceremony alongside a large group of others presumably in my same situation (which may have just been “actors” ). It was all part of some kind of vast organization, which could best be described as ‘universal consciousness transcendental cosmic hippie space religion.’ [Read Lehar’s warning against believing what the DMT entities tell you]. It all had a very attractive but vaguely cult-like Scientology kind of feel to it. They even had their own music (which was actually pretty cool; see my comments on “the director” in part 4 for more details), propaganda, regular meetings and rituals, the whole works. They even seemed to revere a deity of some sort, their version of The Source (more detail on that in part 5), but this whole experience was so full of illusion and misdirection that I have no idea what their ‘deity’ really was, nor their true relation to it.”“I’ve gone on way to long already and need to start wrapping things up here, but long story short, in light of their new demands of allegiance, and through a separate series of bizarre synchronicities in ‘real life’ (what that means to me now, I have no idea) that I still can’t quite explain, I began to have some serious doubts and questions that needed answers. As I reflected on all that they had taught me, I began to realize that there were some major gaps in my knowledge, and that I had unwittingly filled in a lot of the blanks with my own speculation while assuming the picture I was being given was much more complete than it actually was. To summarize, over a series of increasingly confrontational and unpleasant experiences, I became less and less satisfied with their vague and evasive answers to my direct (and I think perfectly reasonable) questions, and we had something of a falling out, to put it very mildly. They eventually dropped all pretenses and flat-out turned on me, beginning a long period of harsh punishment.”“The results weren’t pretty. Their facade began to crumble as I saw through more and more of what I now recognized as deceptive illusions. What truly lay behind it was hideous, repulsive, monstrously evil, relentlessly manipulative, filled with petty malicious intent, and not nearly as righteous, enlightened, or omnipotent as they pretended to be. I’m actually still pretty uncomfortable with going into detail regarding what followed, but suffice it to say that I’ve basically been to hell and back. They did everything they could to ‘punish’ me, and some of the things they came up with were uniquely and creatively traumatic. If they had put half as much effort and sophistication into ‘teaching’ me as they did into attacking and tormenting me, I probably would still be happily and obliviously under their control today, a fresh new convert of their admittedly impressive sci-fi space religion.”“It took all the willpower I had just to stay focused and not become a completely broken wreck through all of this. Most of the ‘abilities’ I had acquired under their guidance gradually faded away over the course of a few weeks, with the exception of a number of lucid dream skills that I had picked up along the way. As I began to approach something resembling recovery, all kinds of memories and perspective started coming back to me that I had lost along the way (which may have been intentionally withheld from me). I felt like a toxic fog had been lifted from me, and everything looked so different now. I looked back on the last couple years of my life, especially the preceding four months or so, and was shocked to find that it wasn’t what I thought it was.”“I had seen some mind-blowingly incredible things and progressed in so many ways in what I thought represented cognitive and spiritual development, but the consequences were now apparent. Without realizing it, my personality had changed so much, and not for the better. I had alienated myself from many of my close friends, my romantic relationship had suffered, I had been much more depressed than I wanted to admit, and I had spent way too much of my free time alone and in the dark, becoming obsessed with progressively darker and weirder esoteric knowledge. I had been able to maintain a token amount of social interaction, just enough to convince myself I was still ‘normal,’ but it frequently left me feeling drained, and bored with the mere ‘meat puppets’ in this material plane who were but a pale reflection of what existed beyond it.”\nAppendix B: What Happens When You Take Too Much 5-MeO-DMT – What Does Underfitting Look Like?\nLeo Gura went on a month-long daily 5-MeO-DMT retreat. Here is my analysis of his retreat report: 5-MeO-DMT Awakenings: From Naïve Realism to Symmetrical Enlightenment. And here is Adeptus Psychonautica commenting on one of his most concerning videos.Martin Ball: Another advocate of 5-MeO-DMT who claims that the highest truth is that we are all God, and that all of the hallucinatory content of DMT is egoic distraction from this truth (see what he thinks of Terence Mckenna). He, like many in this cluster, seems to believe that the only truth worth knowing about is oneness and that this can only be known directly, at first with 5-MeO-DMT, and then through a process of integration of the experiences into one’s everyday life. Here is an interview he did with Adeptus Psychonautica. Also, here is Leo talking to Martin (do you count one or two persons in that video?). \nWhile I agree that oneness is really important (and indeed I have written extensively about philosophy of personal identity and I generally advocate for Open Individualism), I do not think that realizing we are God is going to solve everything. In particular, we still need ruthlessly pragmatic solutions to the problem of intense suffering.\nInsofar as non-duality is used as a mood-enhancer, it seems to be unreliable. Oneness can lead to bad trips of loneliness, a fact that tends to be brushed off by its advocates. My assessment is that this effect is the result of negative valence rather than an inherent effect of the concept (or truth?) of oneness. Shaman Oak‘s Bad LSD Experience – NIRVANA SUCKS video is a rather typical version of this effect and it highlights its true underlying cause: since he took the LSD during a comedown from cocaine, his entire trip was colored by the negative valence of that state. The world “felt inherently lonely” because it had depression qualia all over it. Amplified and magnified through the kaleidoscopic funhouse of LSD’s annealing dynamics, such a feeling of loneliness can look universal and omniprevalent “no matter how you look at it”. But if you were to replace that feeling with something blissful, then the concept of oneness would be experienced as wonderful and enlightening. It is always important to remember the Tyranny of the Intentional Object: ideas and beliefs seem to us as having inherent goodness or badness, but how this is implemented under the surface relies on hedonic tone/valence “painting” those ideas. As David Pearce likes to say, “take care of happiness and the meaning of life will take care of itself”. \nCounterexamples: We do know a number of people who have used these compounds extensively and who do not seem to exhibit noticeable underfitting or overfitting. In particular, we have interviewed someone who took 5-MeO-DMT in high doses everyday for six months and who does not seem to suffer from any serious epistemological issues (they contacted me because they had read my analysis of Gura’s month-long experiment and wanted to share their even more extreme experience). The same person has extensive experience (including daily use for months) with DMT, Salvia, DPT and their combinations. They can still hold a technically demanding job and sustain a family despite this. Needless to say, such a level of psychological robustness is exceedingly rare.\nAppendix C: The Abstract of the Other Talks\nDMTX as a 21st Century Mystery School\nA talk by Carl Hayden Smith\nThis talk will focus on the prospects of being one of the first participants in the world to try DMTX (X=Extended) at Imperial College London (ICL). After being part of the DMT phase 1 and phase 2 trials (over the last 5 years) this research now moves into a whole new level of immersion. During this experiment the peak of the DMT state will be extended thanks to a continuous intravenous drip feeding of the entheogen. This arguably turns this ancient medicine into a new form of technology. Early findings of the research from Chris Timmerman (ICL) suggests that nnDMT produces the same brain signature as the dreaming state. During the extended state we may be better able to explore the hypothesis from Andrew Gallimore that nnDMT actually opens up an entirely novel, orthogonal reality.The DMTX experiment potentially means that nnDMT could become the base layer of our subjective reality, being combined, exponentially, with everything in life. What are the implications of this? Is there a danger that the psychedelic state is being overly romanticised and that DMTX could be regarded as a new form of bio chemical VR? How will DMTX help with the integration problem? Maybe the problem of bringing our insight back from the liminal space isn’t that these experiences defy verbalization, but that our languages are not yet sufficient enough to describe these experiences.\nIncreased cortical signal diversity during psychedelic states and visually realistic neural network models of hallucinations\nA talk by Michael Schartner\nGlobal states of consciousness – such as general anaesthesia or REM sleep – can be characterised by metrics of signal diversity, showing that diverse cortical activity is a hallmark of consciousness. We found that signal diversity is elevated in classical psychedelic states, possibly explained by a larger repertoire of brain states – which would be in line with reports about openness, novel associations and levelled salience of all experiences during psychedelic states. This coarse description of the brain as a dynamical system with various degrees of diversity in activity is only one dimension to characterise such global states of consciousness. Neural network models of visual perception and its pharmacological perturbation may provide a more mechanistic model, showing how the balanced integration of prior and sensory information into conscious perception is regulated by serotonin.\n\nNote: I am still open to e.g. the external reality of DMT beings. I find it unlikely, but evidence could convince me otherwise. We are not dogmatic about the models we present. Rather, they simply are the current “best fit” for the available evidence in conjunction with parsimony considerations (yes, we could even say that this model is what minimizes our free energy!). Cheers!\n\nReferences (abstract & talk; Chicago Style):\nAtasoy, S., Donnelly, I. and Pearson, J. (2016). Human brain networks function in connectome-specific harmonic waves. Nat Commun 7, 10340. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10340\nAtasoy, S., Roseman, L., Kaelen, M. et al. (2017). Connectome-harmonic decomposition of human brain activity reveals dynamical repertoire re-organization under LSD. Sci Rep 7, 17661. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17546-0\nCarhart-Harris, R. L. (2018). The entropic brain -revisited. Neuropharmacology142, 167–178. doi:10.1016/j.neuropharm.2018.03.010.\nCarhart-Harris, R. L., and Friston, K. J. (2019). REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics. Pharmacol. Rev.71, 316–344. doi:10.1124/pr.118.017160.\nGomez-Emilsson, A. (2017). Quantifying Bliss. https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/06/18/quantifying-bliss-talk-summary/ [Accessed April 30, 2021].\nGomez-Emilsson, A. (2020). Modeling Psychedelic Tracers with QRI’s Psychophysics Toolkit: The Tracer Replication Tool. Qualia Computing. https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/10/09/modeling-psychedelic-tracers-with-qris-psychophysics-toolkit-the-tracer-replication-tool/\nGomez-Emilsson, A. (2020). 5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses. https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/07/01/5-meo-dmt-vs-nn-dmt-the-9-lenses/ [Accessed April 30, 2021].\nGriffiths, R. R., Johnson, M. W., Carducci, M. A., Umbricht, A., Richards, W. A., Richards, B. D., Cosimano, M. P., and Klinedinst, M. A. (2016). Psilocybin produces substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer: A randomized double-blind trial. Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 30(12), 1181–1197. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881116675513\nJohnson, M. E. (2016). Principia Qualia. https://opentheory.net/PrincipiaQualia.pdf [Accessed April 30, 2021].\nJohnson, M. E. (2017). 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Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.10.244459\nRoss, S., Bossis, A., Guss, J., Agin-Liebes, G., Malone, T., Cohen, B., Mennenga, S. E., Belser, A., Kalliontzi, K., Babb, J., Su, Z., Corby, P., & Schmidt, B. L. (2016). Rapid and sustained symptom reduction following psilocybin treatment for anxiety and depression in patients with life-threatening cancer: a randomized controlled trial. Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 30(12), 1165–1180. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881116675512\nSafron, A. (2020). “Strengthened Beliefs Under Psychedelics (SEBUS)? A Commentary on “REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics”” PsyArXiv. November 30. doi:10.31234/osf.io/zqh4b.\nSimler, K. (2013). Neurons Gone Wild. Melting Asphalt. https://meltingasphalt.com/neurons-gone-wild/ [Accessed April 30, 2021].\nWu, L., Gomez-Emilsson, A., and Zuckerman, A. (2020). QRI Psychophysics Toolkit, Qualia Research Institute. https://psychophysics.qualiaresearchinstitute.org\nYaden, D., and Griffiths, R. R. (2020) The Subjective Effects of Psychedelics Are Necessary for Their Enduring Therapeutic Effects. CS Pharmacol. Transl. Sci. 2021, 4, 2, 568–572 https://doi.org/10.1021/acsptsci.0c00194", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/05/08/healing-trauma-with-neural-annealing/", "title": "Healing Trauma with Neural Annealing", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-05-09T06:40:38+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=5", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e52ccbbda18c8cd07d76f43c7fced2b0", "summary": []}
{"text": "Welcoming Steven Lehar as a QRI Lineage\n\nWho Is Steven Lehar?\nSteven Lehar is many things. A proponent of indirect realism about perception. A champion of analog neural computation based on principles of harmonic resonance. And one of the most insightful and rational psychonauts of all times. His worldview packs a powerful punch of synergistic ideas, and reading his work is a psychoactive experience on multiple levels. Here are some of the highlights that made us decide to include Steven Lehar as a QRI lineage:\n“[W]e are living in a scale model, and the scale of the model shrinks progressively with depth, just like a museum diorama, or a theatre set. And at the back plane the scale shrinks to zero, at least in the depth dimension, where everything beyond a certain distance appears flat, as if painted on the dome of the sky. But it only looks that way. It’s an illusion. We know that the world isn’t really warped like that.” Reprinted with permission from “Cartoon Epistemology” by Steven Lehar, p. 12.\nIndirect Realism About Perception\nLet’s start with indirect realism. This view is often referred to as inferential realismabout perception or representationalism. In simple terms, this view states that all of what you experience (and have ever experienced) exists as an internal representation inside your brain. The representation is absolutely real, but it is not itself the same as the world outside of you. Many people have realized this throughout history such as Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, and John Smythies. Today, the view continues to find proponents such as David Pearce, Donald Hoffman, and Antti Revonsuo. Thus, Lehar has never been alone in advocating for indirect realism. But what Lehar has contributed to the conversation is very substantial: he developed an exquisite map of the geometry and composition of our internal world-simulation that explains it in a way that you will not find anywhere else.\n“So visual data is expressed in the visual representation, body posture is represented in the proprioceptive representation, and motor planning is computed in a global motor planning space. But all are coupled to form a single visual/proprioceptive/motor space, which is the space that we experience.” Reprinted with permission from “Cartoon Epistemology” by Steven Lehar, p. 62.\nIn the world of Steven Lehar, what we are is an analog volumetric bubble of phenomenal qualities made out of several layers interacting with one another (in the image above, the three circles on the left can be thought of as separate layers that combine into the circle on the right). To visualize the shape of our experience (indeed, the shape of us) he often makes an analogy with a diorama: our experience is shaped like a semi-sphere with variable scale. It is finite in volume, yet its peculiar sort of two-and-a-half-dimensional geometry allows it to represent both objects really close and really far at the same time.\nIn your bubble of experience, things in the distance appear both smaller and appropriately scaled. Indeed, “the point at infinity” is not infinitely far away! It merely represents an infinite distance via a projective trick, but the representation itself is of a finite size! Lehar argues that our experience is not 3D Euclidean, but rather non-Euclidean close to the homunculi (the empty head from which you look out into the world-simulation) and becomes more Euclidean the further away from this head you go.\n“A: At first, an infant sees its own hand balloon up to double its size whenever its hand approaches its face. B: Eventually the infant re-maps the scale of its experienced space, allowing the hand to zoom up in sensory size while remaining constant in perceived size. C: But the infant still sees its mother balloon up from a tiny figure in the distance to an all-encompassing form, until D: it learns to re-map even that more distant space to maintain a constant perceived size, although the world outside the window continues to appear as a miniature scale model.” Reprinted with permission from “The Boundaries of Human Knowledge” by Steven Lehar, p. 69.\nIn some sense, to be a human is to embody a sack of meat. But if we pay really close attention and want to convey the actual structure of our experience, we end up saying that to be a human is to be this weirdly-shaped diorama-like world-simulation! You are not in the Matrix. You are the Matrix, my friend!\nLehar has cultivated and shaped an entire garden of phenomenological insights that emerge when you try to describe “the world” in this way. Just to give an example, a recurring theme in Lehar’s writings is that of “perceptual shadows.” In our world-simulation, we have incredible ray-tracing algorithms that simulate the way light scatters off objects. So we are acquainted with shadows that exist due to the absence of light. But there is also another kind of shadow, which is created when reality is represented using projective geometry: perceptual shadows are the shadows cast by the objects around you when they occlude the objects behind them. A large part of what makes our world-simulation so incredibly compelling is that it deals with missing information in very elegant ways. To understand how it does this, a key insight that Lehar provides is that our world-simulation contains both modal and amodal representations. The modal representations are what we traditionally associate with the senses: colors, sounds, touch, and so on. The amodal representations refer to the implicit geometric layout of the contents of our experience, which remain “dark” until you illuminate them with sensory modalities. This dichotomy allows us to understand why perceptual shadows don’t make objects truly disappear from our world-simulation (as long as we have developed object permanence, that is). The seamless handling of the perceptual shadows caused by occlusions showcases this fact: our phenomenal space contains amodal volumetric representations in addition to the visual “surface representations” we are familiar with. In other words, our inner world-simulation keeps track of rigid bodies even when we can’t see them directly!\n“A number of spheres floating in space, expressed as modal front surfaces and amodal volumes. If all of the modal surfaces point back towards a single viewpoint, that configuration of modal surfaces itself implies the presence of that viewpoint.” Reprinted with permission from “The Boundaries of Human Knowledge” by Steven Lehar, p. 36.\nAnother interesting nugget of insight is that in Lehar’s world, forces inside the world-simulation bias your motor actions and this is what renders and implements desire and disgust. In other words, there is something unexpectedly literal about saying that you are “attracted” to someone or something, or that an object or person “repulses” you! The way these forces are implemented can be conceptualized as fields that encode “how you would move at each point”. This proprioception is what guides the movement of our inner amodal avatar and how we plan sequences of actions.\n“Motor computation takes the form of spatial field-like forces in that space, that bend the body-image homunculus into different postures.” Reprinted with permission from “Cartoon Epistemology” by Steven Lehar, p. 51F.\nLehar makes us realize that as we navigate our environment, we move along something like a liquid membrane amenable to what feels like volitional influence, which guides our movement. This “force field” lives at the interface between our motor sensations and the volumetric representation of the external environment, and it works as a map between these two modes of experience.\nThe entire representation is robust in response to the vast majority of common actions we can take. The amodal representations of our environment get projected adequately as we move around and take on a new point of view. Many aspects of our world are rendered as invariant relative to body movement, head movement, or eye movement, and this is one of the ways in which our world-simulation instantiates a realistic experience of (perceptual) object permanence.\nUltimately, Steven Lehar is championing a steelmanned version of indirect realism which goes into much more precise phenomenological detail than any of its predecessors.\nOne may perhaps complain that Lehar is merely “stating the obvious.” Although indirect realism is a view that in many circles is widely shared and assumed, making it explicit still holds a lot of value. Indeed, Lehar points out that in the majority of the world, there seems to be an unrecognized level of variation in how much direct realism is implicitly believed. I used to be under the impression that most smart people who think about these questions automatically arrive at a view in the space of indirect realism about perception. But Lehar points out that in reality, we see both implicit and explicit direct realism even in places as “advanced” as neuroscience departments. Lehar’s visual demonstrations of indirect realism do an amazing job pointing at this unstated disagreement; indeed, the person sitting right next to you at a conference may in fact be an implicit direct realist about perception! No wonder you were never able to agree on what consciousness is.\nThe fact that so many people turn out to be unreflective direct realists about perception brings to mind Scott Alexander’s discussion on missing developmental stages (2015; see excerpt in Appendix A). In the piece, Scott Alexander lists four types of understanding that are obvious in retrospect but very commonly missed: “1. Ability to distinguish ‘the things my brain tells me’ from ‘reality’”, “2. Ability to model other people as having really different mind-designs from theirs”, “3. Ability to think probabilistically and tolerate uncertainty”, and “4. Understanding the idea of trade-offs.” In this light, a lot of Steven Lehar’s work focuses on trying to upgrade philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience so that people in those fields intuitively understand the first ability Alexander outlines. Lehar’s corpus is like a remedial class for the slow students of philosophy, if you will—helping them through the whole developmental process by making it easier to digest. Thus, Lehar’s work can help us systematically update all kinds of philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific arguments by exposing them to a high level of clarity and rigor concerning indirect realism. This process clarifies a huge amount of confusion and paradoxes many people in these fields are often consumed by.\nIn practice, if you listen to the questions in the Q&A portion of panels about consciousness at conferences, or read between the lines in journals of philosophy, neuroscience, and even AI, you will find that a large proportion of the speakers, writers, and attendees do work under the assumption of direct realism about perception. Even if only 30% of people at science conferences are implicit direct realists (which would be a conservative estimate), we would still expect no shortage of resistance and controversy when indirect realism is brought up. My personal experience is that often at these events, it is precisely when the conversation starts to get very good and become high quality that someone who doesn’t “get it” inevitably derails the conversation with questions typical of a direct realist. And while diversity of opinion can at times be an asset, my experience is that the most satisfying, useful, and consequential conversations are precisely those that take place between people who share almost all background philosophical assumptions. This more often than not gives me the impression that grouping people who are at similar developmental levels (in the realm of philosophy) would likely generate more useful discussions. Not that it isn’t fun to get people with widely different points of view together and get them all mixed up: it is always fascinating to observe the dialectical turbulence that ensues. But a serious investigation calls for more explicit foundational agreement on many levels. As much as I actively enjoy the state of consciousness induced by attending The Science of Consciousness (Gomez Emilsson, 2016a) conference (and delight in its unlikely yet amazing cultural products), I cannot shake off the impression that there is a lot of friction in conversations caused by the vast mismatches between the background assumptions of the participants. A conference that brings together over a thousand participants interested in consciousness from disciplines like philosophy, psychology, and artificial intelligence without any filter for background assumptions is a wonderful recipe for a trippy time. One would hope it could also generate conversations where consensus is achieved. It is in contexts like this where the tireless work of Steven Lehar—explaining in astonishing detail the various components and properties of our experience (and its peculiar artifacts) in order to make it as clear as possible that all we ever experience is an inner world-simulation—is extremely valuable at the community level. Seriously, printing massive copies of Lehar’s Cartoon Epistemology (2003) and installing them in a hall of the conference lobby would be an excellent way to increase the quality and clarity of the discussions.\nThis fact alone makes him someone we are happy to include as part of our lineages. Having “Lehar-aware” conversations about consciousness often takes people to the next level quickly. At QRI, we want to endorse having these ideas in the background along with the key insights obtained from each of the other lineages when creating the conditions for a qualia formalist science of consciousness (Gomez Emilsson, 2018a). \nBut wait, there is more!\nAnalog Neural Computation Using Principles of Harmonic Resonance\nThe very heart of Lehar’s work outlines how harmonic resonance shows up as a principle of self-organization in the mind.\n“A: A periodic banded pattern revealed by chemical staining emerges in a developing embryo, due to a chemical harmonic resonance whose standing waves mark the embryonic tissue for future growth. B: This chemical harmonic resonance has been identified as the mechanism behind the formation of patterns in animal skins, as well as for the periodicity in the vertebrae of vertebrates, the bilateral symmetry of the body plan, as well as the periodicity of the bones in the limbs and fingers. C: Murray shows the connection between chemical and vibrational standing waves by replicating the patterns of leopard spots and zebra stripes in the standing wave resonances in a vibrating steel sheet cut in the form of an animal skin.” Reprinted from “Harmonic Resonance Theory” by Steven Lehar.\nSteven Lehar argued against the (at the time) prevailing neuron doctrine of neural computation which states that the contents of our experience are the result of the activity of highly discrete and individualized neurons that “encode” high-level features (such as a “grandma cell”). Importantly, Lehar points out that there is a key distinction between “rendering” an experience and merely “encoding” it. If you look for neurons that get activated if and only if a certain experience is happening you will be inadvertently mapping out how the brain encodes information rather than how it renders it. Failing to make this distinction will trap you in a worldview that is extremely hard to square with phenomenological facts. Of note is that our internal representations are flexible, a fact that the neuron doctrine finds really difficult to account for. As he puts it in “Harmonic Resonance Theory”:\nThere are several properties of the harmonic resonance model that are suggestive of human recognition. Unlike a rigid template, the pattern defined by a standing wave representation is elastic and adaptive. This can be seen in the manner that the spatial patterns of animal skins are defined. The parameters of the reaction-diffusion that distinguish between the spots and stripes of the tiger, zebra, leopard, and giraffe are encoded as general rules for the generation of those patterns rather than as a spatial template of any one such pattern. For example if a spot or stripe were to be fixed at one point as the pattern was emerging, the rest of the pattern would redistribute itself to adapt to that fixed feature while maintaining the general character of the encoded pattern. This invariance in the representation allows one set of parameters to generate an infinite variety of exemplars of any particular pattern type, or to adapt most flexibly to any fixed constraints or boundary conditions. (Lehar, 1999)\nThis flexibility of our internal representations is essential for understanding how the brain solves the “binding problem”: how is it possible that distributed neuron firings can simultaneously contribute to a unified internal representation? Indeed, Lehar takes the binding problem seriously and his solution involves resonance across spatial and temporal levels. This way, one can get representations that “lock in” low-level features to the high-level phenomenal objects that integrate them. In turn, our world-simulation works in a holistic fashion: every part of it pulls and pushes every other part of it. He explains it well in this interview:\nQ: What would be the new paradigm in neuroscience? A: The first thing that it will change is our concept of how the brain works. Right now we are in a neuro-reductionist era where people are making probes ever smaller and smaller to read into tinier and tinier parts of the brain and read the signal there and try to make some kind of sense out of it. The paradigm that they are thinking is discrete connections between individual neurons mediated by synapses. And separate individual signals going every different direction. What we see in consciousness is a much more holistic process. Something like water seeking its own level in a vessel, where the final state of the water depends on every position of every other molecule. If you change one portion, scoop out some water in one place or dump some in some other place, every single molecule in the bath quickly readjusts itself in order to seek a new level. It is a different paradigm of computation. It is what the gestaltists proposed: field theories of mind, not in the terms of fields of mental energy propagating out into the world, but fields of physical energy in the brain interacting with each other in a holistic manner the way that water seeks its own level in a vessel. (Sandu, 2016)\nIn Lehar’s world, the three-dimensional volumetric representations that we experience “around us” are internal representations made with a hierarchy of patterns of resonance which are mode-locked with one another. From the tiniest detail to the broadest outline, when we experience a phenomenal object as “rigid”, we are in fact experiencing a complex network of resonating patterns locked in place as a stable “solution” of a network of tuned oscillators. In other words, the binding problem is solved explicitly by hierarchical resonance at all levels. This model can explain many of the bizarre effects of psychedelics (which we’ll discuss further below) in terms of a decoupling between the resonance of the different levels! Or as Lehar would put it, “everything on LSD looks like a Fourier representation with the high-frequencies chopped off”, meaning that the fine details that would usually cancel out the broad repeating patterns of low-frequency resonance are desynchronized, and thus objects look as if they were filled with symmetrical and resonating filigree patterns!\nSince Lehar worked on “Harmonic Resonance Theory,” there have been many advancements in neuroscience and the field of AI. In particular, two very noteworthy connections should be highlighted. The first is the work of Selen Atasoy (who is also one of QRI’s lineages) on connectome-specific harmonic waves (2016). Atasoy, like Lehar, identified principles of harmonic resonance in physics and biology (such as Murray’s leopard spots and zebra stripes in the standing waves of vibrating sheets of steel) and decided to apply them to the brain. Unlike Lehar, Atasoy found an empirically measurable aspect of the brain amenable to this kind of modeling: the connectome. Thus, Atasoy’s work enables the study of the standing waves that Lehar hinted at qualitatively, but now in an empirical and quantitative way.\n“(a) Laplace eigenfunctions revealing the mechanical vibrations of rectangular metal plates (1st row)—first demonstrated by Ernst Chladni as patterns formed by sand on vibrating metal plates—and metal plates shaped as mammalian skin (2nd row) resembling different mammalian coat patterns for different frequency vibrations [sic] as well as electron orbits of the hydrogen atom computed by time-independent Schrödinger’s wave function (3rd row)—shown with increasing energy from left to right—and patterns emerging in electromagnetic interactions between laser-excited ion crystals (last row) (images adapted from). (b) Workflow for the construction of macroscale connectome model. The graph representation was formed by connecting each node sampled from the cortical surface with its immediate local neighbours and by further including the long-range connections between the end points of the cortico-cortical and thalamo-cortical fibres. (c) Examples from the 20 lowest frequency connectome harmonics. Left: wave number. Right: spatial patterns of synchronous oscillations estimated by the eigenvectors of the connectome Laplacian.” Reprinted from “Human brain networks function in connectome-specific harmonic waves” in Nature Communications by Selen Atasoy et al.\nIn this way, the work of Atasoy and Lehar can be thought of as complementary rather than redundant: Lehar brings the phenomenological observations and arguments whereas Atasoy comes up with the precise empirical quantitative paradigm. Along these lines, we can already see possible extensions of this work. Namely, as we find more core structural scaffolds of the nervous system, we can examine them in light of a paradigm of harmonic resonance by building high-definition structural models, empirically extracting their corresponding wave equations, and then numerically approximating the emergent resonant modes of such structures. The beauty of this paradigm is that suddenly, large amounts of self-organizing complexity can be compressed in terms of weighted sums of harmonic resonant modes. At QRI, we consider this general paradigm to be extremely promising and endorse exploring how the overlap between these two great researchers leads to novel models of neural computation. \nThe second development that is important to point out is how advancements in artificial neural networks seem to have brought back the neuron doctrine with a vengeance. You get the impression that feature visualization techniques (Olah et al., 2017) allow us to make sense of what each neuron in a network “does.” Recent work at OpenAI takes this further and identifies recurring principles of self-organization that emerge in artificial neural networks (i.e. circuit motifs (Olah et al., 2020)).\nThe key to make sense of this is to recall the distinction between encoding and rendering. In Lehar’s world, populations of neurons that implement specific kinds of pattern recognition are in fact tuned resonators. Think of these resonators as having the function of adding clamps or pinches to a vibrating Chladni plate: the actual experience being rendered is the pattern of standing waves that emerge from the pinched plate, not the pinches themselves. While there is an extremely detailed correspondence between the content of experience and these clamps, what the experience is requires the pattern of standing waves to happen. Thus, insofar as artificial neural networks do not bring about such standing waves, they will simply and forever fail to render the contents of any experience.\n“A: A bank of tuned resonators tuned to the frequency of three specific standing wave patterns are coupled to the plate to behave as feature detectors, that become active whenever their pattern of standing waves is present on the plate. B: The system automatically performs reification with recognition, for the activation of any of the resonators regenerates its characteristic standing wave pattern back on the plate. C: If the plate is resting on rubber ridges in the form of one of the standing wave patterns, the ridges behave as an input pattern, forcing the resonance on the plate to conform to the pattern of the input.” Reprinted with permission from “Harmonic Resonance Theory” by Steven Lehar.\nNaturally, this is a testable view, since we can in principle manipulate the standing wave patterns directly (with e.g. transcranial magnetic stimulation). At QRI, we expect that in the future, this distinction will be extremely important. Without it, we would be at risk of thinking that specific computations done in digital computers entail qualia even though there is in fact no “rendering of experience” going on at all in the computational system as a whole.\nA final note on this discussion is that Steven Lehar also has a theory of aesthetics. Foreshadowing the Symmetry Theory of Valence, first suggested by Johnson (2016), Lehar proposes a theory of aesthetics based on principles of harmonic resonance that explains our preference for symmetrical patterns. See the excerpt below titled “A Psycho-Aesthetic Hypothesis” in Appendix A. Thus, another key parallel between Lehar’s work and our models at QRI is that we have a non-standard interpretation of neuroanatomical functional localization. In particular, we think that the impression that “pleasure is what goes on in the pleasure centers” is at least in part an artifact of our measuring tools. As Michael Johnson postulates, the reason why activating the pleasure centers feels good is because they are strategically positioned in such a way that you get large-scale (consonant) resonance across the brain. In other words, the pleasure centers are “tuning knobs” for global synchrony in the brain! Thus, they are a kind of “master clamp” for harmonic resonance in the brain. What feels good is such resonance and not the activation of the pleasure centers per se. Don’t expect to find “beauty” in a single neuron; both Lehar and QRI will be quick to point out that beauty is a holistic property of a holistic system!\nBut wait, there is more!\nRational Psychonaut\nSteven Lehar is a rational psychonaut: many of his insights are the result of paying close attention to the way specific aspects of experience break down under various states of consciousness. More so, Lehar’s clarity about indirect realism makes him a rather unusual and valuable psychonaut. As he points out, when you take a psychedelic you either “discover a new and deeply mysterious portal to a parallel dimension of reality like John Lilly, Timothy Leary, and Terrence Mackenna” or you realize that the features of your inner world-simulation are changing in ways that give the impression that alternate realities exist (Lehar, 2019). In other words, implicit theories of perception influence how one interprets alien state-spaces of consciousness! For example, even Albert Hoffman seemed to have been working under the implicit assumption of direct realism about perception:\nIf one continues with the conception of reality as a product of sender and receiver, then the entry of another reality under the influence of LSD may be explained by the fact that the brain, the seat of the receiver, becomes biochemically altered. The receiver is thereby tuned into another wavelength than that corresponding to normal, everyday reality. Since the endless variety and diversity of the universe correspond to infinitely many different wavelengths, depending on the adjustment of the receiver, many different realities, including the respective ego, can become conscious. (Hofmann, 1980)\nTalking about psychedelic states of consciousness in light of indirect realism is really refreshing. Now, I am not saying that productive discussions within a direct realism framework cannot be had. But we often find that many unproductive discussions are the result of having a (implicit) direct realist and an (implicit) indirect realist analyze psychedelic experiences without knowing that they don’t share the same key background philosophical assumption. And this is the state of the discourse today! This muddled situation manifests all the way into presentations at the Psychedelic Science and Horizons conferences, for example, where presentations typically straddle between these views. The ambiguity tends to be better received by the audience; leaving implicit background assumptions unchallenged avoids conflict but slows down progress. So the state of the discourse is one where ambiguity about this is rewarded! No wonder the field is so confused and confusing. And in turn we find ourselves endlessly debating the “external reality” of DMT elves rather than moving on to talk about more productive questions such as the geometry, valence, and computational properties of the hallucinated worlds (Gomez Emilsson, 2019).\nOf course in reality there are many “middle points” between direct and indirect realism with regards to models of psychedelic action. A hybrid view that a lot of people seem to implicitly hold is one where all we ever experience are the contents of our internal world-simulation, but that some “channels” of this inner world-simulation can be mode-locked with external “subtle” phenomena (e.g. explaining “contact high” as a “subtle body resonance between people”). That said, applying Occam’s razor, it is rational to first try to explain the zoo of psychedelic effects (Gomez Emilsson, 2016b) in terms of changes to the parameters of our inner world-simulation, and only when we cannot explain some phenomena, return to alternative explanation spaces. What Steven Lehar and other rational psychonauts highlight is that the original psychedelic visionaries seemed to have “given up” too quickly on an indirect realist model (or perhaps they were always implicit direct realists on some level). It is refreshing and reassuring to read Lehar’s comments about having experienced things like “out of body experiences,” “bilocation,” “fragmentation of the point of view,” “telepathy,” and so on and yet continue to interpret these phenomena in light of parameter changes inside a world-simulation. It shows that one can indeed stay rational, analytical, and grounded even after experiencing the extremely exotic states of consciousness psychoactives can trigger.\nIn his book The Grand Illusion (2010), Lehar walks us through his journey as a psychonaut. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this work is one of the absolute best pieces of content concerning the phenomenology of altered states of consciousness induced by psychoactive drugs. The entire book is filled with keen, poignant, and crisp observations which are “obvious in retrospect” yet easy to miss in the moment. To name a few:\nPoint of view fragmentation is a phenomenon that happens on psychedelics where your visual field segments into various parts, each with its own projective point of perspective. Lehar explains that one can modulate this phenomenon by the extent to which one relaxes and unfocuses versus how much one moves around and interacts with the world: “This discovery greatly enhanced my ability to explore the deeper spaces of consciousness revealed by the drug, while providing an insurance against the natural panic that tends to arise with the dissolution of the self, and the world around you. It allowed me to descend into the depths of the experience while maintaining a life line back to consensual reality, like a spelunker descending into the bowels of the deep underground cavern of my mind, while always able to return safely to the surface. And what a splendid and magnificent cavern it was that I discovered within my mind!” (p. 23-24). Lehar’s ideas about annealing in the context of ketamine foreshadowed QRI’s framework of neural annealing (Johnson, 2019) and Carhart-Harris’ model of entropic disintegration (Carhart-Harris et al., 2014) by many years: “The totally confused clamped-down experience described above, applies only to the first phase of the Ketamine high. After maybe a dozen or so Ketamine experiences, I began to see a larger pattern in it, as whatever it was that clamped my thoughts slowly began to loosen its grip during the time course of each trip, and my thoughts gradually felt ever more freedom of motion, as first (metaphorically speaking) I could move my hands and feet, then my arms and legs, then my head, and eventually my whole body was released from the grip of the drug and slowly returned to normal integrated consciousness. The last stages, just before a rather abrupt and stepwise return to normal awareness, were the most emotionally powerful and stupendously magnificent, as the largest chunks of reality finally coalesced into an integrated experience” (p. 81).According to Lehar, MDMA’s nystagmus is just a special case of a more general jittering that MDMA causes in one’s inner world-simulation across the board: “[T]here is a kind of jitteriness across the whole visual field. And this jitteriness is so pronounced that it can manifest itself in your eyeballs, that jitter back and forth at a blinding speed. If you relax, and just let the jitters take over, the oscillations of your eyes will blur the whole scene into a peculiar double image. But if you concentrate, and focus, the ocular jitter can be made to subside, and thus become less noticeable or bothersome. One of my friends got the ocular jitters so bad that he could not control them, and that prevented him from having a good time. That was the last time he took ecstasy. I however found it enchanting. And I analyzed that subtle jitteriness more carefully. It was not caused exclusively by jittering of the eyeball, but different objects in the perceived world also seemed to jitter endlessly between alternate states. In fact, all perceived objects jittered in this manner, creating a fuzzy blur between alternate states. This was interesting for a psychonaut! It seemed to me that I could see the mechanism of my visual brain sweeping out the image of my experience right before my eyes, like the flying spot of light that paints the television picture on the glowing phosphor screen. The refresh rate of my visual mechanism had slowed to such a point as to make this sweep visible to me” (p. 60).Lehar offers a unique interpretation of how LSD and MDMA interact with one another which is compatible with our model of negative valence as neural dissonance (Gomez Emilsson, 2017a): “Under LSD and ecstasy I could see the flickering blur of visual generation most clearly. And I saw peculiar ornamental artifacts on all perceived objects, like a Fourier representation with the higher harmonics chopped off. LSD by itself creates sharply detailed ornamental artifacts, like a transparent overlay of an ornamental lattice or filigree pattern superimposed on the visual scene, especially in darkness. Ecstasy smooths out those sharp edges and blurs them into a creamy smooth rolling experience” (p. 61).Lehar identified a family of states of consciousness where the content of experience is modifiable at will. He coined the term “Free-wheeling hallucinations” to refer to this state (hear his description in an interview). And see my detailed discussion (Gomez Emilsson, 2021) about free-wheeling hallucinations. Here’s the original quote: “[DXM] gives you the power to produce full free-wheeling hallucinations on demand! You can experience virtually anything you want, if you can just imagine it! Those of you who are familiar with the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, the ability to have startlingly real and vibrant dreams which can also be brought under voluntary control, already know of this wonderous capacity of the human mind, to build complete synthetic hallucinated worlds of visual experience every bit as vivid and apparently real as the waking world. If nothing else, this should clearly clinch the case for the World In Your Head” (p. 63-64).\nAnd so much more. So, do me a favor and next time you experience a free-wheeling hallucination, please construct a virtual Steven Lehar and let him guide you through its parameter space! “Move the force-field flow over here into there and ta-da, you get this vortex effect! Now create a box and try to listen to it! Use that sound to shape this chair over here – doesn’t it become more box-like? How fascinating, isn’t it?” In fact, why not construct a whole “museum of the mind” in one’s free-wheeling hallucination? A kind of Disneyland but for exotic phenomenal objects! If you do this, please say hi to Steve from us!\nAdjacent to his work as a rational psychonaut, Lehar produced a fascinating essay on the topic of alien contact (Lehar, n.d.). I consider that piece to be a wonderful “memetic vaccine” against some of the possible failure modes of psychonautical investigation. As it turns out, an explosive combination of implicit direct realism, high-energy, high-definition experience, and the natural human need to feel really important makes it so that a large fraction of people who experiment with DMT end up believing that they are contacting entities from another dimension. Now, we know that Lehar interprets such experiences of alien contact to be all “in your head.” But even if they weren’t, Lehar urges caution! He argues that even if the elves were mind-independent, you probably wouldn’t want to ally with them. Why? Because they are likely to be extremely persuasive marketeers rather than actual helpers or saviors. Lehar is not persuaded by the Siren Calls of the DMT machine elves and neither should you be. Else, we may simply end up doing the bidding of these creatures, which would more likely than not result in preparing the conditions for their replication (see Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators (Gomez Emilsson, 2017b)). Now that’s some serious resolve for being “the adult in the room” of psychonauts!\nVirtual Reality panel: Paavo Pylkannen, Steve Lehar, Maria Sanchez-Vives at Towards the Science of Consciousness 2006. Reprinted with permission from “Photos from Tucson 2006” by David Chalmers.\nMiscellaneous\nLehar’s world is really vast, and what we have outlined above just scratches the surface of the musings of a great thinker (see Clifford Algebra: A visual introduction (Lehar, 2014)). In reality, Lehar has given thought to pretty much every area of philosophy (for Lehar’s views on eternalism vs. presentism, see the “Frozen Time” excerpt in Appendix A). A stark example for me that demonstrates how vast his sphere of thought is and how far it reaches is that when I first contacted him, I mentioned that I was thinking of ways to represent 3D hyperbolic space with gradient index optics (Gomez Emilsson, 2018b). In turn, he mentioned that he had already also considered something similar and that I could in fact find an old discussion of his in one of his books about the topic (see: picture below). This exchange, among others, is what made me feel that QRI and Lehar are indeed really hanging out on the same wavelength across many dimensions of thought.\n“Standing wave resonance patterns viewed in cross-section of an infinite bounded sphere in which  the refractive index varies with distance from the center, reaching infinite refractive index (zero wave propagation velocity) at the bounding surface of the sphere. A: Concentric pattern. B: Linear perspective pattern. C: Checkerboard pattern. D: Hexagonal pattern. E: Higher harmonics on a hexagonal pattern. F: Higher harmonics on a checkerboard pattern.” Reprinted with permission from Harmonic Resonance in the Brain, Chapter 3, Figure 3.15 p. 34 (not available online) by Steven Lehar.\nHow the Work of Steven Lehar Interacts with Other QRI Lineages\nDavid Pearce would point out that hedonic tone is an extremely important aspect of our world-simulation! You see, the rabbit hole goes deeper. If you are repulsed by the idea of indirect realism about perception because it makes you feel like a prisoner of your mind, it will turn out that you are now under the spell of an implicit direct realism about the connection between ideas and hedonic tone. In a happy and ecstatic state, you can in fact experience the idea of the world in your head as rather funny, curious, and perhaps even comforting! So the way in which ideas get represented includes a whole gamut of shades of affect that “paint” them. From hilarity to existential dread, the affective component of experience is coercive in how it shapes our interpretations of reality. Thinking about deep questions can give you the impression that the world is scary and unsettling or mysterious and amazing, all depending on your mood. The task of paradise engineering is not to be realized by modifying the external world (or at least that’s not at the heart of the transformation). Rather, it is about zoning in on the affective texture of experience and finding functional substitutes devoid of misery. Really, in this light, paradise engineering is just extremely advanced interior design.\nSimilarly, we find a lot of overlap and complementarity between Lehar’s work and other QRI lineages. As we continue to weave together these diverse models of neural computation, we expect to see a lot of synergy emerge. In time, we will outline how each component of the ecosystem synergizes with the rest. For now, please join me in welcoming Steven Lehar to our lineages! Welcome, Steven!\nAcknowledgements\nMany thanks to Andrew Zuckerman for providing comments and edits to this essay. Also thanks to Anders Amelin and Maggie Wassinge for pointing out the lineage-worthy contributions of Steven Lehar.\nReferences\nAlexander, S. (2015). What Developmental Milestones Are You Missing?. Slate Star Codex. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/03/what-developmental-milestones-are-you-missing/\nAtasoy, S., Donnelly, I., & Pearson, J. (2016). Human brain networks function in connectome-specific harmonic waves. Nature communications, 7(1), 1-10.\nCarhart-Harris R. L., Leech R., Hellyer P. J., Shanahan M., Feilding A., Tagliazucchi E., et al. (2014). The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8:20. 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00020 \nGomez Emilsson, A. (2016). Qualia Computing in Tucson: The Magic Analogy. Qualia Computing. https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/05/01/qualia-computing-in-tucson-the-magic-analogy/\nGomez Emilsson A. (2016). Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States. Qualia Computing. https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/06/20/algorithmic-reduction-of-psychedelic-states/\nGomez Emilsson, A. (2017). Quantifying Bliss. Qualia Research Institute. https://www.qualiaresearchinstitute.org/s/Quantifying-Bliss.pdf\nGomez Emilsson, A. (2017). The Universal Plot: Part I – Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators. Qualia Research Institute. https://www.qualiaresearchinstitute.org/s/The_Universal_Plot__Part_I___Consciousness_vs__Pure_Replicators.pdf\nGomez Emilsson, A. (2018). Qualia Formalism in the Water Supply: Reflections on The Science of Consciousness 2018. Qualia Computing. https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/05/01/qualia-computing-in-tucson-the-magic-analogy/\nGomez Emilsson, A. (2018). Materializing Hyperbolic Spaces with Gradient-Index Optics and One-Way Mirrors. Qualia Computing. https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/08/19/materializing-hyperbolic-spaces-with-gradient-index-optics-and-one-way-mirrors/\nGomez Emilsson, A. (2019). The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences (@Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club). Qualia Research Institute YouTube channel. https://youtu.be/loCBvaj4eSg\nGomez Emilsson, A. (2021). Free-Wheeling Hallucinations: Be the Free-Willed God of Your Inner World-Simulation. Andrés Gómez Emilsson YouTube channel. https://youtu.be/o1wjDOwXjY4\nHofmann, A. (1980). LSD: my problem child. Psychedelic Reflections, 24.\nJohnson, M. (2016). Principia Qualia. Open Theory. https://opentheory.net/PrincipiaQualia.pdf\nJohnson, M. (2019). Neural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything. Qualia Research Institute. https://www.qualiaresearchinstitute.org/s/Neural-Annealing.pdf\nLehar, S. (1999). Harmonic Resonance Theory: An Alternative to the “Neuron Doctrine” Paradigm of Neurocomputation to Address Gestalt properties of perception. Steven Lehar’s Homepage. http://slehar.com/wwwRel/webstuff/hr1/hr1.html\nLehar, S. (2002). The Function of Conscious Experience: An Analogical Paradigm of Perception and Behavior. Steven Lehar’s Homepage. http://slehar.com/wwwRel/webstuff/consc1/consc1a.html\nLehar, S. (2003). Cartoon Epistemology. Steven Lehar’s Homepage. http://slehar.com/wwwRel//cartoonepist/cartoonepist62.html\nLehar, S. (2004). The Boundaries of Human Knowledge: A Phenomenological Epistemology or Waking Up in a Strange Place. Steven Lehar’s Homepage. http://slehar.com/wwwRel/webstuff/book2/Boundaries.html\nLehar, S. (2014). Clifford Algebra: A visual introduction. Steven Lehar’s Blog. https://slehar.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/clifford-algebra-a-visual-introduction/\nLehar, S. (2010). The Grand Illusion: A psychonautical odyssey into the depths of human experience. Steven Lehar’s Homepage. http://slehar.com/wwwRel/GrandIllusion.pdf\nLehar, S. (2019, November 30). Steven Lehar – Do We Live in the Real World? (@Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club). Zuck This YouTube channel. https://youtu.be/WPZ9WMvtbi0\nLehar, S. (n. d.). Alien Contact- it won’t happen the way you expect!. Steven Lehar’s Homepage. http://slehar.com/wwwRel/webstuff/space/aliens.html\nLehar, S. (n. d.) The Two Worlds of Reality. Steven Lehar’s Homepage. http://slehar.com/wwwRel//webstuff/book/chap1.html\nOlah, C., Mordvintsev, A., Schubert, L. (2017). Feature Visualization: How neural networks build up their understanding of images. Distill. https://distill.pub/2017/feature-visualization/\nOlah, C., Cammarata, N., Schubert, L., Goh, G., Petrov, M., Carter, S. (2020). Zoom In: An Introduction to Circuits. Distill. https://distill.pub/2020/circuits/zoom-in/\nSandu, Alin. (2016, February 7). Nondualita – STEVEN LEHAR  [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/JQ51vrnbAHA\nAppendix A: Excerpts\nThe Dimensions of Conscious Experience \nQuote from page 21 of “The Function of Conscious Experience” by Steve Lehar:\nOnce we accept the fact that the world of visual consciousness is a pattern of energy in our physical brain, we can begin to examine that conscious experience to see what it might tell us about its neurophysiological correlate. The practice of phenomenology for investigating mental function was more popular before modern neuroscience introduced a new concept of neurocomputation that seems inconsistent with phenomenological observation. (Vernon 1937, 1952, Gregory 1981, Ramachandran & Blakeslee 1998, Smythies 1953, 1988, 1994, 1999, Koffka 1935, Köhler 1924) The most basic and salient fact of visual consciousness is that it appears as a three-dimensional spatial structure (Vernon 1952, p. 81- 92). More specifically, the phenomenal world is composed of solid volumes, bounded by colored surfaces, embedded in a spatial void. Every point on every visible surface is perceived at an explicit spatial location in three-dimensions (Clark 1993), and all of the visible points on a perceived object like a cube or a sphere, or this page, are perceived simultaneously in the form of continuous surfaces in depth. The perception of multiple transparent surfaces, as well as the experience of empty space between the observer and a visible surface, reveals that multiple depth values can be perceived at any spatial location. The information content of perception can therefore be characterized as a three-dimensional volumetric data structure in which every point can encode either the experience of transparency, or the experience of a perceived color at that location. Since perceived color is expressed in the three dimensions of hue, intensity, and saturation, the perceived world can be expressed as a six-dimensional manifold (Clark 1993), with three spatial and three color dimensions.\nThe Cartesian Theatre and the Homunculus Problem \nQuote from pages 21-22 of “The Function of Conscious Experience” by Steve Lehar:\nThis “picture-in-the-head” or “Cartesian theatre” concept of visual representation has been criticized on the grounds that there would have to be a miniature observer to view this miniature internal scene, resulting in an infinite regress of observers within observers. However this argument is invalid, for there is no need for an internal observer of the scene, since the internal representation is simply a data structure like any other data in a computer, except that this data is expressed in spatial form. If the existence of a spatial data structure required a homunculus to view it, the same objection would also apply to symbolic or verbal information in the brain, i.e. epistemic as opposed to sensory perception, which would also require a homunculus to read or interpret that data. In fact any information encoded in the brain needs only to be available to other internal processes rather than to a miniature copy of the whole brain. To deny the spatial nature of the perceptual representation is to deny the spatial nature so clearly evident in the world we perceive around us. To paraphrase Descartes, it is not only the existence of myself that is verified by the fact that I think, but when I experience the vivid spatial presence of objects in the phenomenal world, those objects are certain to exist, at least in the form of a subjective experience, with properties as I experience them to have, i.e. location, spatial extension, color, and shape. I think them, therefore they exist. All that remains uncertain is whether those percepts exist also as objective external objects as well as internal perceptual ones, and whether their perceived properties correspond to objective properties. But their existence in my internal perceptual world is beyond question if I experience them, even if only as a hallucination.\nFrozen Time\nQuote from pages 67-68 of “The Boundaries of Human Knowledge: A Phenomenological Epistemology or Waking Up in a Strange Place” by Steven Lehar:\nIf time were a frozen dimension as proposed above, that would do considerable violence to our everyday notions of causality, and thereby radically alter our view of all causal explanations. For example the first, most basic feature of causality is that matter that exists has a tendency to continue to exist. (unless it happens to decay into energy, which then also continues to exist) In frozen space-time, this means that particles of matter no longer appear as points moving through empty space, but they become long spaghetti strands extending continuously through the time dimension. The causal property of persistence has thereby been transformed into a geometrical or structural feature in frozen spacetime, something like the logic of static structures, whereby a block will never be found hanging unsupported in space, but must always be supported by other blocks that rest on still other blocks all the way down to the supporting ground. Likewise, the explanation for the logic of evolution is dramatically altered when viewed in frozen spacetime. It can no longer be said that if an organism adapts to its environment it will continue to propagate, otherwise it will go extinct. Instead, we would have to say that there are many parallel and branching threads of life from the first living thing stretching on toward the future, together with countless side-branches of life that peter out because they don’t stretch forward in time toward the future, but break up into disorganized lifeless matter. The conventional causal explanation becomes as tautological in frozen spacetime as saying that the only branches of a tree that grow to great heights are those that grow upward, otherwise they never grow to great heights. A causal law has been transformed into a structural feature of the time-line of life. I do not propose that the static formulation of frozen space-time is necessarily more correct or veridical than the conventional flowing time explanation, but rather that there is no way in principle for us to comprehend something as fundamental as time, and the frozen time explanation may well be just as far from the ‘truth’ as the conventional flowing time explanation. The point is that there can be alternative explanations of reality that are as profoundly different in their assumptions and their manner of explaining that reality as are the flowing and frozen time explanations, and yet they are also in some sense equivalent, because the structural laws of the frozen time explanation correspond exactly to the causal law of the flowing time explanation, although expressed in a completely different form. So it may be that the realist explanation of the world in terms of flowing time and causality is both an accurate reflection of the causal laws of the noumenal world, while at the same time being as fundamentally different and thus ‘wrong’ in its expression of those laws as the difference between the flowing-time and the frozen-time explanations of reality. Thus the realist and the idealist are both right, our perception of the dimensions of reality are both an accurate reflection of the world as it really is, as must necessarily be the case for perception to be evolutionarily adaptive, and at the same time there is truly nothing we can know about the true nature of the noumenal world as it really is, it may be as different from our phenomenal experience as is the frozen spacetime world to the flowing-time causal world.\nA Psycho-Aesthetic Hypothesis\nQuote from The Two Worlds of Reality by Steven Lehar:\nThe harmonic resonance theory of neurocomputation also accounts for a number of other aspects of human experience which have never found a satisfactory explanation elsewhere. For the most prominent characteristics of harmonic resonance are symmetry and periodicity of the standing wave patterns both in space and in time. It turns out that symmetry and periodicity have very special significance in human experience, for these properties are ubiquitous in human aesthetics, as seen in the symmetrical and periodic patterns of design used in all cultures throughout human history to decorate clothing, pots, tools and other artifacts, especially items of special symbolic or religious significance. Symmetry and periodicity are also prominent features of architecture, music, poetry, rhythm, and dance. In chapter 11 I propose a psycho-aesthetic hypothesis, whereby any principles of aesthetics that are found to be universal across all human cultures, are thereby indicative of properties that are fundamental to the human mind itself, rather than a cultural heritage. I propose therefore that the symmetry and periodicity in art and music are aesthetically pleasing exactly because they are easily encoded in the periodic basis function offered by the harmonic resonance representation.Besides providing collateral support for the harmonic resonance theory, the psycho-aesthetic hypothesis can be inverted to identify even more properties of mental function than those revealed by phenomenological analysis alone. For the primitives of the visual arts, music, and dance, can be seen as evidence for the nature of visual, auditory, and motor primitives in the brain. This in turn suggests a periodic basis set in perception, in the nature of a Fourier code. The advantage of a periodic basis set is that when a match is found to an input pattern, the periodic basis set automatically extrapolates that pattern outward in space and time, reifying the unseen portions of the pattern on the basis of the sample present in the input. This perceptual extrapolation explains the amodal completion of hidden portions of perceived objects and surfaces in the world. Evidence for this periodic basis set can be seen even in the abstract world of mathematics, where the periodicity inherent in the number line reflects an attempt to quantify the world in terms of periodic patterns. This insight serves to unite the fields of science and aesthetics, and reveals mathematics as a more abstracted refinement of the same principles observed in the visual and musical arts, which in turn are merely a more abstracted refinement of the principles behind visual and auditory perception, as discussed in chapter 11. The harmonic resonance theory also offers an explanation for one of the most enduring mysteries of human experience, which is the question of why resonances in musical instruments and the rhythmic beating of drums have such a powerful ability to evoke the deepest emotional response in the human soul. I propose that the musical instrument represents man’s first modest success at replicating the physical principle behind biological computation, and the strong emotional response evoked by these inanimate resonances reflects an unconscious recognition of the essential affinity between mind and music.\nWhat Developmental Milestones Are You Missing?:\nQuote from What Developmental Milestones Are You Missing? by Scott Alexander:\nI remember reading through Korzybski’s giant blue book of General Semantics, full of labyrinthine diagrams and promises that if only you understood this, you would engage with the world totally differently, you’d be a new man armed with invincible cognitive weapons. And the key insight, maybe the only insight, was “the map is not the territory”, which seems utterly banal.But this is a self-environment distinction of exactly the sort that children learn in development. It’s dividing your own representation of the world from the world itself; it’s about as clear a reference to theory of mind as you could ask for. Korzybski considered it a revelation when he discovered it; thousands of other people found it helpful and started a movement around it; I conclude that these people were missing a piece of theory-of-mind and Korzybski gave it to them. Not the whole deal, of course. Just a piece. But a piece of something big and fundamental, so abstract and difficult to teach that it required that whole nine-hundred-something page book to cram it in.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/04/22/welcoming-steven-lehar-as-a-qri-lineage/", "title": "Welcoming Steven Lehar as a QRI Lineage", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-04-23T00:09:33+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=5", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "8762bc5487533f8dfae4e98deddb02f6", "summary": []}
{"text": "Buddhist Annealing: Wireheading Done Right with the Seven Factors of Awakening\n\nHi everyone!\nI recently went on a two-week meditation retreat. I’m on the grid again, slowly catching up with things (please be patient if you sent me messages – I will get to them eventually).\n\nSeven Factors of Awakening\nI had a great retreat. There is a lot that clicked into place, and in time I will share it in posts, articles, and videos. For now I just wanted to share an interesting insight I got. In brief, I found that there is a seamless way to blend the Buddhist “Seven Factors of Awakening” and QRI paradigms, in particular those of Wireheading Done Right and Neural Annealing:\nSeven Factors of Awakening and Wireheading Done Right\nThe overall idea here is that in order to sustain a state of consciousness where meditation has benefits one needs to have a state of mind that has a lot of control over itself. In particular, there is a zone in the valence / arousal space that is ideal for meditation, namely, the region that is positive valence and middle-of-the-road arousal. In this light, when your mind is too excited and restless you should put emphasis on the tranquilizing factors (concentration, equanimity, and tranquility). When your mind is too sluggish or sleepy, you put extra emphasis on the exciting factors (investigation, energy, and joy). And the balancing factor (mindfulness) is what allows you to keep track of this process without getting distracted by the hindrances. This allows you to cybernetically stay in the zone most conducive to meditative development.\nImportantly, I think that the factors themselves are best developed in that zone. So it may be futile to ask someone who is panicking to focus on tranquility IF they have not focused on tranquility before when they were in the optimal zone. So for a lot of people developing the seven factors is going to be a bootstrapping process. Pragmatically, I expect that e.g. people with chronic pain might benefit from actual painkillers in order to reduce the pain enough to then be close to the zone where they can actually practice and develop the seven factors effectively. When the painkillers wear off at least they will have gotten some practice time, and then applying equanimity to the pain will be easier (I think that it is both ineffective and cruel to ask someone in pain to “just have equanimity about it” if they haven’t already developed equanimity when they were in the zone).\nIn addition to valence and arousal, the seven factors also allow you to cybernetically stay in the zone for two additional key dimensions. Namely the dimension of “clinging vs. letting go” and the dimension of “noise vs. purity”. In this light, we have that energy increases fast euphoria (positive valence and positive arousal), joy increases valence, investigation identifies trends that take you out of the zone and maintains purity, concentration increases purity, equanimity increases valence a little and “letting go” a lot, tranquility induces slow euphoria (positive valence and negative arousal), and mindfulness oversees the whole process while also increasing “letting go”. Together they can help you stay in the optimal zone along these four dimensions! They are, in effect, a “natural way” to do Wireheading Done Right. \nSeven Factors of Awakening and Neural Annealing\nIn addition to the lens of Wireheading Done Right, Neural Annealing also interfaces with the Seven Factors of Awakening quite well. Namely, you can think of them as “welding tools” for wholesome annealing!In brief, you first need to use “flow” which “melts” the structures of your world-simulation and makes them flexible and amenable to modifications. Then you use the seven factors in order to direct the evolution of the flow into healing and harmonious dynamics. Doing this over and over will, over time, allow you to create a very wholesome and healing flow. More specifically, here are the seven factors as seen through the lens of Neural Annealing:\nBalancing Factor\nMindfulnessMaintain flow in the foregroundFocus on the texture rather than the content of flowMonitor for the arising of hindrances and inclining the mind away from them\nEnergizing Factors\nEnergyThis is what happens when you “pluck” the flow. Naturally, this energizes the eigenmodes of the flow! It is like the light that gets trapped between two parallel mirrors. Energy illuminates the harmonics of the flow you are cultivating.JoyThe judicious selection of sets of eigenmodes that are consonant togetherGiven joyous flow, deepening the joy entails energization, blending, and annealing of the consonant gestalt (cf. Focus on Positive)InvestigationExamining the texture of flow. Testing it to determine the presence of hindrances.It is listening for the ring of the flow (with its objects) and diagnosing what is in it\nTranquilizing Factors\nTranquilityCultivating tranquility entails developing highly-efficient cooling structures that channel flow and dissipate energy quickly (cf. Focus on Rest)EquanimityNot interfering with energy transit and dissipation by letting it recruit as large of a piece of flow as possible for its diffusionAt a high-enough concentration (in my experience), equanimity undergoes a phase change. It becomes very fluid which balances out the forces inside you. I can see how in large enough amounts this would significantly reduce the suffering associated with intense pain.ConcentrationIt is hard to tell “what you do” to increase concentration. As far as I can tell it requires a lot of skillful rhythmicity that guides awareness in a way that prevents its falling away.A rough metric for concentration might be: amount of energy of flow that is in phase, in harmonic relationship, and synchronized. Thus, for any level of concentration there are many possible “solutions”. Only on the very high-levels of concentration do experiences become constrained to only a few types. The combinatorial space becomes smaller as concentration increases.\n\nThe holy grail here would be the creation of a high-entropy alloy that blends together all seven factors. It’s a bootstrapping process. As you start developing some of the factors, you can use them to weld the flow in such a way that developing the other factors becomes easier. Then you can start developing two or more factors simultaneously (e.g. “tranquil equanimity” or “joyous concentration”). In time, one climbs the gradient that fortifies the presence of the factors in the mind, making it a home for wholesome qualia computing.\nWishing you all a wonderful Sunday!\n\nThe Goal: To Anneal a Wholesome Annealing Toolkit(the Holy High-Entropy Alloy of the Seven Factors of Awakening)\n\nReferences:\nFive HindrancesShinzen Young on “Flow”Seven Factors of AwakeningHigh Entropy Alloys of ExperienceThe Neuroscience of Meditation: Four ModelsThe Symmetry Theory of Valence: 2020 PresentationNeural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of EverythingStandard and Advanced Focus On Rest ~ Shinzen YoungWireheading Done Right: Stay Positive Without Going InsaneHow “Focus on Positive” is a Mindfulness Practice ~ Shinzen Young\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/04/04/buddhist-annealing-wireheading-done-right-with-the-seven-factors-of-awakening/", "title": "Buddhist Annealing: Wireheading Done Right with the Seven Factors of Awakening", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-04-04T22:52:34+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=5", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f3ad8399c3cdabb4648e47173c1c3f96", "summary": []}
{"text": "Collecting Qualia Souvenirs\n\nThe Tracer Tool is available here.\n\nAndrew Zuckerman (Zuck) recently presented at IPN’s[1] PsychedelX[2] conference about QRI’s Tracer Tool:\n\n\n\nVideo description: How can we bring back information from conscious states, especially from exotic and altered states of consciousness? This talk covers Qualia Research Institute’s tracer replication tool and how we can turn what until now has been qualitative descriptions and informal approximations of the psychedelic tracer phenomenon into concrete quantitative replications.\nI think that Zuck does a great job at walking you through the features of the tool. If you watch the video you will understand the difference between trails, replays, and strobes. You will get an intuitive feel for what color pulsing means. It will teach you how ADSR envelopes affect tracer effects. And it will give you a sense of how we can use the Tracer Tool to quantify how high you are, how synergistic drugs are, and how valenced a given tracer pattern is. Of course this is explained in the original writeup (linked above), but Zuck’s presentation might be more appropriate if you don’t have the time to read 10,000 words. I recommend it highly.\nQualia Souvenirs \nOne of the concepts that Zuck introduces in his presentation is that of a qualia souvenir. Just like how it is very nice to bring back a keychain with a picture of the place of your vacation as a souvenir, perhaps we could generalize this notion to include experiences as a whole. That is, how do we create a souvenir for an experience? As Zuck points out, taking a picture while on a psychedelic simply won’t do. You need to capture the quality of your experience, rather than merely the content of the inputs at the time.\n\nWith the Tracer Tool (and tools we will be sharing in the future) you can do just that. Well, you can at least replicate a component of your experience. And little by little, as we develop the tools to replicate more and more such components, we will slowly get to the point where you can genuinely recreate a snapshot of your psychedelic experience (or at least to the extent that images and sounds can evoke its nature). \n\nMake It Social \nOne of the features of the Tracer Tool that I failed to emphasize in the original writeup was that we put a lot of effort into making the submissions shareable. There are several ways you could do this, in fact. The simplest is to fiddle with the parameters until you get an accurate tracer replication and then click on “Start Recording Video” and then click “Stop Recording Video” when you have captured what you want. Then it’s as simple as clicking on “View/Download Video” and then on “Download”. You’ll get a .webm file, which is supported by most large image-sharing sites (e.g gfycat.com). And if you want or need it in a .gif format (e.g. to share it on Facebook), you can use a free online converter.\nAlternatively, you can click “Share Parameters” and copy the JSON that is displayed. You can then share it with your friends, who will click on “Import Parameters” and paste the JSON you gave them. The advantage of this method versus the previous one is that you can edit others’ qualia souvenirs and work together to create specific effects. It is also a way for you to “save” your work if you are not quite done and want to continue fiddling with the parameters later on, but don’t want to lose the work you have already put into it.\nThis is all to say: Make it social! It’s easy! Add tracer replications to your trip reports. Share them in social media. Use them to help your doctor understand the severity of your HPPD. Share them with friends and family (well, maybe not family, lest you want Grandma to know intimate phenomenological details of your LSD trip – there’s every kind of family, you know?). And so on. Let’s normalize psychedelic tracers!\nSide-By-Side\nA recent improvement to the tool that Zuck mentions in the video is the fact that we now display two bouncing balls rather than just one. This is in order to mitigate the problem that when you are tripping, the simulated tracers will get in the way of the actual tracers. And while this is still a bit of a problem, having one bouncing ball without simulated tracers can be really helpful when fiddling with the parameters on psychedelics:\n\nSide-by-side: left side with tracers, right side without tracers.\nWe got a trip report from someone who took 100μg LSD who used the tool once we had added the second ball. This person said that the second ball was extremely helpful and that it allowed them to confidently estimate the replay frequency (14.5Hz):\n\n100μg LSD 4 hours after dosing\nIt’s satisfying to see someone being confident about the replay frequency. The 14.5Hz in this case is not too far off from the 15-20Hz range previously estimated for LSD. And the best part is that this was done during the trip and in real time. The person who submitted this datapoint specifically said that it was very clear that the effect was one of replay rather than strobe, and that they were able to accurately estimate the replay frequency by adjusting the spacing so that there would be a match between the simulated trail effects on the left with the real trail effects on the right. We expect this to be a skill very amenable to training and we hope the psychonautic community starts paying attention to it.\nTracer Tool on Psychedelic YouTube\nI recently found a really interesting YouTube channel: Junk Bond Trader (JBT for short). I found it by looking for quality 5-MeO-DMT trip reports and I thought that his video about it was good enough for me to look deeper into his work.\nOne of the things I really enjoy about his style is that he describes the quality of his altered states in a very matter-of-fact way without taking the experience at face value. He also has a chill demeanor, epistemologically optimistic and curious rather than stuck in a wall of confusion or vibing in mysterianism. This is quite rare in Psychedelic YouTube. Exaggerating a little, I find that psychedelic-adjacent personalities tend to undergo changes that end up being difficult to square with the sort of slow and humble attention to detail needed for science and serious phenomenology. Perhaps we can think of this in terms of archetypes. When someone starts to explore psychedelics they often begin by embodying the archetype of the explorer. Namely, being driven by curiosity about what’s out there in the state-space of consciousness. After a number of powerful experiences, the driving archetype often shifts. The direct exposure to high-energy high-integration states of mind tends to anneal a new self-concept. The archetype they embody tends to drift to things like the psychedelic mystic, priest, educator, messiah, warrior, evangelist, shaman, prophet, counselor, or healer. It is rare to see someone who after many such exposures remains in the explorer wavelength; undoubtedly one of the most useful archetypes for science. In addition to an explorer, JBT is also a synthesizer in that he makes detailed analyses pointing out the common features across many experiences. For instance, I loved his retrospective analysis of about 40 DMT trips (see: part 1, 2, 3, & 4).\nSteven Lehar is right, psychedelic experiences are harder to dissect when one is young and impressionable. It is quite likely that the best phenomenological reports will come from people who are at least 30 years old and who have a wealth of crystallized knowledge to use in order to describe their experiences. Speaking of which, I would say that Steven is also someone who successfully maintained the archetype of explorer throughout his psychedelic explorations without lapsing into any other less helpful archetype. But more than that, Lehar is also a synthesizer, and above all a scientist. At QRI we very much value his contributions and, contra modern academia, take seriously the sort of epistemology he employed. Namely, investigating the phenomenal character of (exotic) experiences in order to probe the principles by which perception operates. More generally, the psychedelic archetypes we consider to be priceless for qualia research are those of the explorer, synthesizer, philosopher, scientist, and engineer. Let’s get more of those and less shamans, evangelists, prophets, etc.\n\nBack to JBT, I would highly recommend his Coffee Trip Report video on the basis that… it is really funny. But perhaps most relevant for our purposes at the moment, he recorded a video while on 200μg + 36mg 2C-B (warning: for most people this would be a very strong combined dose) and at 45:40 he started talking about the nature of the tracer effects of this combo: \n“These trails are no fucking joke you guys. Some of the coolest visuals I’ve ever had in my life. […] Can I see through my eyelids? I can see around me, what the fuck? Dude, that’s freaking me out. [Waves hand in front of face with eyes closed]. There it is again! Wow. How does that work? […] These visuals are awesome, you’ll have to take my word for it. […] Everything looks alive, you know? It is not so much morphy as with mushrooms, but everything is jumpy, it’s got an energy to it. It’s all pulsing at the same frequency. These trails are… they honestly last two or three seconds. It’s not even funny at this point. It’s ridiculous. I thought I knew trails… I thought I knew trails! I didn’t know fucking trails. I’m afraid to do this again. I was seeing through my eyelids earlier… I’ve gotta look back at that footage. I mean, I obviously wasn’t looking through my eyelids, I know that. But I thought I was, I thought I was, I was that convinced. It’s weird, you go in and out of confusion, and it coincides with the intensity of the hallucinations. It’s like the more confused I get, the more intense the visuals get. So just when things start going good I can’t articulate it. I’m very conscious and lucid during all of this experience, and I’ll be able to recall it all. […] These trails are so over the top. Every little movement stains the air forever. […] Really weird, really strong visuals. Everything looks alive. Which is really cool. I feel like my ceiling is wet. That popcorn ceiling looks wet. It has this weird gloss over it. It looks cool. What can I say, it looks awesome. I could sit here all night staring at my fucking ceiling.”\nGiven these comments about the trail effects he was experiencing I decided to reach out to him to congratulate him for the quality psychedelic content and also ask him if he would be kind enough to try to replicate the tracers he saw using the Tracer Tool. And he did! He can now share with us a qualia souvenir from his trip! Here is what the tracers looked like:\n\nHe left this comment on the submission: “Though it was 5 weeks later, I made a specific note of the tracers in a live trip report video, and committed it to memory at that point because they were so unusually vivid. I chose black because the trail was specifically dark black.” – Junk Bond Trader (see the parameters[3]).\nJust a few days ago, JBT gave a shoutout to QRI, my channel, and the Tracer Tool in a video (between 2:35 and 5:20). Thank you JBT! I particularly liked that he remarks on the fact that we use Shia LaBeouf’s “Just Do It!” green screen as the default animation for our custom tracer editor.[4]\n\nJust Do It! Make Your Dreams Come True! (Remix) – with JBT’s Qualia Souvenir Tracers\nAn important note is that in his shoutout JBT makes it sound like this is all just me, but in reality what is going on at QRI is a huge team effort. In the psychophysics front in particular I would like to mention that Lawrence Wu and Zuck are the main people pushing the envelope and I am immensely grateful for all the hard work they are doing for this project. This also wouldn’t be possible without the many discussions with people at QRI and the broader community of friends of the organization.\nI believe that Adeptus Psychonautica, whom I also like and respect, will give the Tracer Tool a try and discuss it in his channel soon! He interviewed me over a year ago and I think that he is also very much of an explorer. A particularly nice thing about his channel is that he reviews psychedelic retreat and healing centers. This is unusual; most people find it psychologically difficult to say anything bad about the place or the people who facilitated an e.g. ayahuasca ceremony for them. The perceived sacredness of the ritual makes any review other than a glowing recommendation feel sacrilegious. Adeptus Psychonautica has been around the psychedelic retreat block enough that he can really map out all the ways in which specific psychedelic retreat centers fail to meet their full potential. This is highly appreciated. I personally would take my sweet time in selecting the right place to experience something as valenced as an ayahuasca trip, so his reviews add a lot of value on that front. Thank you Adeptus!\nAkin to these two YouTubers, if you have the ability to promote the Tracer Tool to audiences that are likely to try it, please be our guest! We would love to get more data so we can share the results with the world.\nFrom Psychedelic Renaissance to Psychedelic Enlightenment\nOne of the things that I love about the fact that JBT tried the tool and talked about it on his channel is that it shows that research feedback loops can be closed online and in places as distracted and unfocused as YouTube. It hints at a new possible model for decentralized scientific research of exotic states of consciousness. Even if small in percentage, a dedicated group of online rational psychonauts able and willing to try each other’s experiments and discuss them openly might very well accelerate our understanding of these states at a pace that is faster than academia or the R&D departments of relevant industries (such as pharma). How many potential Steven Lehars are out there just waiting for the right legal landscape to share their experiences and analyses with others alike? I am excited to see how the online rational psychonautic community evolves in the coming years. I anticipate substantial paradigmatic developments, and we hope that QRI contributes to this process. In the long term, it is still unclear where most of the discoveries in this field will take place. On one extreme a hyper-centralized Manhattan Project of Consciousness could leapfrog all current research, and on the other extreme we have anonymous and decentralized Psychedelic Turk scenarios where access to exotic states of mind (both from the inside and the outside) is a sort of utility at the mercy of market forces. In the middle, perhaps we have semi-decentralized conglomerates of researchers building on each other’s work. If so, I look forward to an emergent science-oriented psychedelic intelligentsia of excellent trip reporters on YouTube in the next few years.\nWhat Data Are We Most Interested In?\nThe combinatorial space of possible drug cocktails is really large and poorly mapped out. Of particular note, however, is the exotic effects caused by mixing psychedelics and dissociatives. Given the reports that there is a profound synergy between psychedelics and dissociatives (and that this combination is not generally particularly unsafe), we expect there to be really interesting tracers to report and we have no submissions of the sort so far. In particular, we expect to find synergy (rather than orthogonality or suppression) between these classes of drugs, and we would love to quantify the extent of this synergy (anecdotally it is really strong). If you are the sort of person who does not get noticeable tracers on LSD, perhaps try adding a little ketamine and see if that helps. Chances are, you will be like JBT, saying something along the lines of “I thought I knew tracers… I didn’t know **** tracers!”.\nIt would also be really good to see tracer data for candy-flipping (and MDMA combinations more broadly). We suspect that MDMA will generally have interesting ADSR envelopes. So if you have candy-flipped in the past or you intend do to so in the future please consider donating a couple minutes of your time to submit a datapoint! Remember, you can share it with your friends as a qualia souvenir!\nFinally, we would love to have more DMT and 5-MeO-DMT submissions. We are interested in checking if the differences we have found between them can be replicated. In particular, we are told that 5-MeO-DMT produces monochromatic tracers whereas DMT produces richly-colored tracers that flicker between positive and negative after-images. If this turns out to be true, it would be really significant from a scientific point of view:\n5-MeO-DMTDMT\nApropos Psychedelic YouTube\nWith over a quarter million views as of March of 2021, The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences (@Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club) is perhaps the most viewed piece of QRI content. Thus, the comment section perhaps gives us a snapshot of how the existing (pre-Galilean!) memes surrounding the psychedelic community make sense of this work. Doing a cursory semantic clustering analysis, I would say that most of the comments tend to fit into one of the following groups:\nComments from people who admit to having tried DMT tend to say that “this is the best description of DMT phenomenology I have ever seen”. Comments complaining about the poor audio quality.Comments saying I should go on Joe Rogan (e.g. “Very captivating and well formulated. We need to have jamie pull this up.” is the most upvoted comment, with 1.7K upvotes).Comments stating that the DMT entities are real and that I should take higher doses to confirm that.Comments complaining that “visuals are not what matters about the experience” and that I’m “missing the point” for paying attention to them.Weird miscellaneous comments like claiming that the video is a proof that there is a conspiracy from Harvard trying to convince the world that DMT is not a true spiritual molecule.Fun one-liners (my favorite is “Massachusetts Institute of Tryptamines”).\nLet me briefly comment on each of these clusters:\nFor (1): I am always happy to hear from psychonauts that our work at QRI is clarifying and illuminating. I get a lot of emails and messages saying this, and it honestly makes me happy and keeps me motivated to go on. An example of this would be one of the most upvoted comments:\nThis video combined with the article probably explained more of the dmt trip than all the trip reports I’ve read which is a lot. The levels, with the doses! Now I know I landed squarely in the Magic Eye. The symmetry hotel is a great explanation too. I find it interesting that I had an experience of divine consciousness on level three rather than level six; perhaps it was just a foretaste? Truly informative, this is what psychonauts need to hear.YouTube user johnnysandiegoable\nFor (2): Yes, we know, sorry! We did what we could to stitch together the audio from my phone and the audio from the camera (which was way in the back). The wireless mic we had planned to use malfunctioned at the last minute and I wasn’t very mindful about the fact that the phone would produce the best audio. I know I should have stayed closer to the podium for most of the talk. That said, if you hear the presentation with headphones and are willing to increase the volume for the quiet parts, you can still make out every word. So, admittedly, the comments are exaggerating a bit just how unlistenable it is. ^_^\nFor (3): Joe, if you are reading this, I’m game! Bring it on! I think that it is entirely possible that we will have a great conversation.\nFor (4): I have indeed said before that we think it is unlikely that one makes true contact with mind-independent entities while tripping on DMT. Of course we welcome evidence to the contrary, and we have even suggested novel methods by which this could be tested. But I do want to say that unlike other accounts of the DMT phenomenology, the way we argue for the likely internal (“fully in your head”) interpretation does not in any way dismiss the specific reasons why such experiences are so compelling. It is not only that the experience feels very real (indeed, what does that even mean?) but that it has a series of properties that makes the hallucinations stand out as uniquely believable relative to other psychedelics. In the Harvard presentation I mention the idea that the dimensionality of the experience is so high that in a way one does experience a sort of superintelligence while on DMT. In such states, we genuinely get to experience much more information at once and render intricate connections in ways that would make connoisseurs of complex thoughts extremely jealous. Alas, this has yet to be fine-tuned for any kind of useful computational purpose. Yet, in terms of raw information bandwidth, the state has tremendous potential. So we could say, that on DMT you do get to experience a sort of higher intelligence; it is just that it is a higher intelligence of your own making, and we lack an adequate narrative within sober states of mind to make sense of what this experience means. Hence we tend to converge on easy-to-explain and relatable metaphors. Saying that one met with an advanced alien intelligence is somehow easier to convey than describing in detail the sequence of point-of-view fragmentation operations that bootstrapped the multi-perspectival state of mind you experienced. More so, in a recent video, I explained that DMT has some additional properties that make the hallucinations it induces extremely believable. Of particular note I point out that on DMT one experiences: \nMulti-modal coherence where touch, sight, and sound hallucinations are synchronized,An extremely high temperature parameter leading to the melting of the phenomenal self, and Tactile hallucinations, which add a layer of “reality” to the experience.\nThese and other features are the reason why DMT experiences feel so “real” and hard to dismiss as mere hallucinations. Rational psychonauts are advised to pay close attention to this in order to avoid developing delusions with repeated administrations.\nFor (5): Look, we understand. It is obviously the case that the visual effects are a tiny component of the experience, but consider just how difficult it is going to be to describe every single aspect of the experience. I am sure you have heard the expression “learn to walk before you learn to run” (or in this case, learn to walk before you learn to fly, or perhaps more appropriately, to learn to walk before you learn how to operate an alien spaceship with sixteen thousand levers interlinked in unknown ways). In brief, the path that will take us to the point where we can fully characterize a DMT trip will start with developing an extremely crisp and precise vocabulary and research methodology to describe the simplest low-level effects. It is surprising how much we can in fact say about a DMT trip by allusions to attractors in feedback systems and hyperbolic symmetry groups even if this turns out to only get at a small fraction of what makes such experiences interesting. We have to start with the basics; that is what we are doing here.\nFor (6): This is at least somewhat expected. Recall that DMT tends to make you overfit data. Conspiratorial thinking is a classic form of overfitting. Without a rational framework and grounding exercises, DMT users will generally develop increasingly overfit models of reality. \nFor (7): Well, keep them coming!\nFuture Developments\nI want to conclude by mentioning that we have ambitious plans for QRI’s Psychophysics Toolkit (of which the Tracer Tool is but the first of many tools to come). We are in the process of developing many more experimental tools and paradigms specifically designed to rigorously quantify and characterize the information-processing features of exotic states of mind. Fancifully, imagine an “experience editor” where you can recreate arbitrary experiences from first principles. To name one possibility here, consider Distill’s Self-Organizing Textures: visual textures are hard to put into words, but easy to tell apart. Hence, odd-one-out paradigms in conjunction with generative methods (i.e. texture synthesis) can allow us to pin-point exactly how psychedelics affect our perception of mongrels. In the long run, we want to characterize the circuit motifs emergent out of the neural architecture of the human brain, and we expect this work to be extremely useful for that pursuit. Stay tuned!\n\n[1] From their website: The Intercollegiate Psychedelics Network (IPN) is a youth-led garden organization dedicated to the development of students into the next generation of diverse and interdisciplinary leaders in the field of psychedelics. We envision a future where safe, legal, and equitable access to psychedelic healing creates a more just, peaceful and connected world. [e.g. see PennPsychedelics].\n[2] From their website: PsychedelX is a student talk program featuring 20 minute talks from students around the globe with novel, impactful, and interdisciplinary ideas that will shake up the psychedelic discourse. From February 22nd – 27th [2021], watch their presentations on YouTube to expand your understanding of psychedelics and their role in our world today.\n[3] If you want to see Junk Bond Trader’s tracer go to the Tracer Tool, click “Import Paramters”, and then paste: {“animation”:”unlitBallGravity”,”speed”:”1.65″,”trailOn”:true,”trailIntensity”:”70″,”trailTimeFactor”:”78″,”trailExponential”:true,”strobeOn”:true,”strobeFrequency”:”14.7″,”strobeIntensity”:”83″,”strobeTimeFactor”:”76″,”strobeExponential”:true,”strobeAdsr”:false,”replayOn”:false,”replayFrequency”:”11″,”replayIntensity”:”68″,”replayTimeFactor”:”75″,”replayExponential”:true,”replayAdsr”:false,”pulseOn”:false,”pulseFrequency”:”1.6″,”pulseAmplitude”:”50″,”pulseColor”:false,”pulseColorAmplitude”:”100″,”maxTracers”:”154″,”color”:”#000000″}\n[4] Thanks to Lawrence Wu for that.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/03/06/collecting-qualia-souvenirs/", "title": "Collecting Qualia Souvenirs", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-03-07T02:19:03+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=5", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "eb36301b71876bec687360064e446829", "summary": []}
{"text": "7 Recent Videos: Consciousness vs. Replicators, High Entropy Alloys of Experience, Sleep Paralysis Stories, Free-Wheeling Hallucinations, Zero Ontology, The Tyranny of the Intentional Object, And A Language for Psychedelic Experiences\n\n[See: Previous 7-video package]\n\nA Universal Plot – Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators: Gene Servants or Blissful Autopoietic Beings? (link)\nWhat is the point of it all? What does it all mean?\nIn this talk I explain how we can meaningfully address these questions with the frame of “consciousness vs. pure replicators”. This framework allows us to re-interpret and unify all previous “scales of moral/conceptual development”. In turn, it makes solving disagreements in a principled way possible.\n“Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators” is what I call “the universal plot of reality”; it is the highest level of narrative that determines what is “relevant to the plot” at any given point in time.\nWhether consciousness succeeds at gaining control of its destiny and embarks on a collective journey of self-authorship, or whether we all end up being subservient cogs to a self-replicating mega-system whose one and only utility function is to self-perpetuate, is truly up in the air right now. So what can we do to support the interests of consciousness, then?\nTo aid consciousness we need more than good intentions (though those are still a key ingredient): I discuss how game theoretical considerations entail that in order for consciousness to succeed we will need to judiciously ally with specific replicator strategies. Being a “cooperatebot” towards anyone who claims to care about consciousness makes you liable to being resource-pumped. You need to verify that something makes sense also from the point of view of game theory; without a way to verify the ultimate values of others, coordinating with them at this level becomes extremely challenging. I suggest that a mature technology of intelligent bliss with objectively verifiable effects would be a game-changer. Once you’ve seen “it” (i.e. optimized bliss consciousness) you join everyone else in self-organizing around it.\nIf the world is to be taken over by something that cares about the wellbeing of consciousness, how this taking over process looks like may blindside us all. The power of “universal love” conquering all obstacles and creating a paradise for all may not be a New Age fantasy after all. Given the appropriate technology, it may turn out to be a live option…\nTopics Covered: Kegan Levels of Development, Spiral Dynamics, Model of Hierarchical Complexity, Meta-Modernism, Qualia Formalism, Valence Structuralism, Pleasure Principle, Open Individualism, Universal Darwinism, Battle Between Good and Evil, Balance Between Good and Evil, Gradients of Wisdom, Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators, Wild Animal Suffering, Mistrusting DMT Entities, Super-Cooperator Cluster, Metta/Lovingkindness, State-Dependent Sexuality, Wireheading, Cooperation Technology, Game-Changing as a Strategy.\n~Qualia of the Day: Kala Namak~\nFurther Readings:\nThe Universal Plot: Part I – Consciousness vs. Pure ReplicatorsWireheading Done Right: Stay Positive Without Going InsaneWhat Is The Model of Hierarchical Complexity?Spiral Dynamics & Integral TheoryHow To Be An Adult— Kegan’s Theory of Adult DevelopmentReprogramming PredatorsThe Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam HarrisThe Evolution of CooperationThe Four Sublime States Contemplations on Love, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and EquanimityMemetic Vaccine Against Interdimensional Aliens Infestation (Steven Lehar’s article)​Kala Namak\n\n\n\nHigh Entropy Alloys of Experience (link)\n~Suggestion: Play a music album you like in the background while listening to this talk.~\nHow do we find the “gems” hidden in the state-space of consciousness?\nIn this talk I articulate why it is very likely that there is a huge number of undiscovered states of consciousness that are completely unique, irreducible, and wholistically “special”.\nIn metallurgy, a high-entropy alloy (HEA) is a mixture of five or more metals in high proportions, often giving rise to a single phase. Some HEAs have been found to have extremely desirable properties from the point of view of material science (such as being the best at both yield-strength and ultimate tensile strength at the same time). Given the huge space of possible mixtures of metals, finding these carefully balanced mixtures with unique emergent properties is both a science and an art. It calls for intelligent strategies to explore the state-space of possible alloys!\nI suggest that in the realm of consciousness there are also states that would be appropriate to describe as “high entropy alloys of experience”. I go into how this framework can help us understand unique scents*. We then explore how the receptor affinity profiles of drugs, drug cocktails, and drug schedules can give rise to unique HEA-like states of mind. I then also discuss how memeplexes have various degrees of total complexity, and how this makes some more receptive to dealing with complexity in the world than others. I offer that I really appreciate the HEA-like memeplexes that get expressed in places like EAGlobal, The Science of Consciousness, and Psychedelic Science conferences. I conclude by reflecting on how a “productive mindset” or mood optimized for a specific intellectual job is likely to be HEA-like because it requires the careful balance between many different facets of the mind.\nTopics you will master after seeing this talk for even just one time**: High Entropy Alloys, Bronze and Iron Age, Equiatomic Alloys, People Clusters in Parties, Scents, Sexual Orientation, Gay Fragrances, Memeplexes and Mindsets, Vibe of Groups, Energy Parameter, Frozen Food, Crystallites, Space Groups, The Science of Consciousness, EAGlobal, Psychedelic Science, Search Heuristics, DMT as “Competing Clusters of Synchrony”, Birthday Cake Flavor, Cellular Automata, Optimal Mood for Productivity.\n*(HEAs: Le Male by JPG, Bleu de Chanel, Mitsouko by Guerlain. Non-HEAs: Tommy Girl by Tommy Hilfiger, Habit Rouge by Guerlain, Amazing Grace Ballet Rose by Philosophy)\n**More like “topics barely touched upon”.\nFurther Readings:\nMulticomponent and High Entropy Alloys – Professor Brian CantorPerfumery as an Art FormMaking Amazing Recreational Drug CocktailsElectrumCrystalliteNeural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of EverythingA Big State-Space of ConsciousnessPsychedelic Science 2017: Take-aways, impressions, and what’s nextFear And Loathing At Effective Altruism Global 2017Qualia Formalism in the Water Supply: Reflections on The Science of Consciousness 20185-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses“The Seven Seals of Security” (QRI Sweden)\nHeterosexual males and females preferred odours from heterosexual males relative to gay males; gay males preferred odours from other gay males.Source: Sense of smell is linked to sexual orientation, study reveals\nIf the goal is to avoid the formation of such phases, simply mixing together five or more elements in near-equiatomic concentrations is unlikely to be a useful approach. Even multi-component alloys that are initially single phase after solidification tend to separate into multiple metallic and intermetallic phases when annealed at intermediate temperatures.Source: High-entropy Alloys (literature review)\nFeatured image source: @fractjack\n\n\n6 Spooky Sleep Paralysis Stories (link)\nI estimate that I have experienced between 100 and 200 sleep paralysis, many of which were lucid (meaning that I knew I was experiencing a sleep paralysis). In this video I articulate what I have learned from all of these experiences, share some particularly strange stories, and give you tips for how to get out of a sleep paralysis if you find yourself trapped in one.\nTopics Covered: Hyperbolic curvature in pasta, dream music, phenomenal viscosity, DXM, imperfect sensory gating, “radio is playing” hallucinations, Dredg – Album: El Cielo · Song: Scissor Lock, taking psychedelics while dreaming, lucid dreams, dopaminergics, controlling the powerful vibrations of sleep paralysis, recursive depth, false awakenings, whimpering, noting meditation, and techniques for escaping a sleep paralysis.\n~Qualia of the Day: Gigli/Campanelle Pasta~\nFurther Readings:\nDream MusicScissor Lock [Dredg song about sleep paralysis]Sleep Paralysis SubredditFree-Wheeling HallucinationsNeural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of EverythingThe Experience Elicited by Hallucinogens Presents the Highest Similarity to Dreaming within a Large Database of Psychoactive Substance Reports [sic, see video]Please do not confuse niacinamide with niacin: “PSA: Do not take Niacin to end an LSD trip“\nNiacinamide helps in sleep enhancement as evidenced in a 3-week study of six subjects with normal sleep patterns and two with insomnia using electroencephalograms, electromyograms, and electrooculograms to evaluate sleep patterns at baseline and after niacinamide treatment. There was a significant increase in REM sleep in all normal-sleeping subjects, but the two subjects with moderate to severe insomnia experienced significant increases in REM sleep by the third week; awake time was also significantly decreased (Robinson et al., 1977).(source)\n\n\nFree-Wheeling Hallucinations: Be the Free-Willed God of Your Inner World-Simulation (link)\nOnce you realize that you inhabit a world-simulation sustained by your neuronal soil it is natural to ask: why can’t I control its contents? Why can’t I make myself hallucinate whatever I want?\nIt can be frustrating to realize one lacks control over something that should be truly “ours” – our raw unmediated experience! We could, and perhaps should, be the rightful masters of our very own conscious experience, yet for the most part we remain powerless to explore its possible states at will.\nIn this video I discuss the existence of some states of consciousness in which you do own and control the contents of your experience. Think of it as acquiring an “experience editor”: an interface with your experience that enables you to modify it at will while keeping the modifications stable.\nA lucid dream would be an example of a somewhat fluid and unreliable free-wheeling hallucination. The free-wheeling hallucinations I describe here are much more general, stable, reliable, intense, and hedonic than lucid dreams. More so, to spin up free-wheeling hallucinations could amount to far more than being just a fun activity. Doing so may come to be an extremely valuable tool for a new paradigm of consciousness research! All of the parameters of experience that remain outside of our control under normal circumstances can be studied (both from a first and third person point of view) while in a free-wheeling hallucination! One can conduct a sort of “qualia chemistry” and repeat experiments to get reliable accounts of the behavior of consciousness under exotic (yet controlled) circumstances. Artifacts such as the valence-symmetry correspondance can be inspected in detail. Ultimately, this paradigm may allow us to chart the state-space of consciousness in terms of “edit distances” or “sequence of symmetry breaking operations” away from “formless consciousness”.\nI then go on to explain that “knowing everything about your world-simulation” does not entail that the experience will be boring. Hedonic tone can be dissociated from novelty, but we don’t even need to go that far. It suffices to point out that you can set up the parameters of your world-simulation so that it unfolds in a chaotic way, and thus is impossible to predict. Additionally, you cannot really predict what you yourself will think in the future, so the whole setup can continue to generate novelty almost indefinitely (up to one’s storage capacity/size of the state-space/heat death of the universe).\nI conclude by exercising my free will.\nTopics Covered: Energy Parameter, Predictive Coding, Free Energy Principle, Kolmogorov Complexity of Experience, Principia Qualia, Super Free Will, Quality Trip Reports, DXM + THC Combo, LSD + Ketamine + THC Combo, “Experience Editors”, Qualia Critters, Fire Kasina, Color Control, Qualia Chemistry, Agenthood, Coumarin, Chamomile Tea.\n~Qualia of the Day: You Have to Watch the Video~\nFurther Readings:\nFree-Wheeling HallucinationsSteven Lehar Describing Free-Wheeling HallucinationsHarmonic Society (3/4): Art as State-Space Exploration and Energy Parameter ModulationPrincipia Qualia (Michael Johnson; pg. 53 about free will)Psychedelic Information Theory (James Kent)Harmonic Resonance Theory: An Alternative to the “Neuron Doctrine” Paradigm of Neurocomputation to Address Gestalt properties of perception (Steven Lehar)The Grand Illusion (Steven Lehar)Cartoon Epistemology (Steven Lehar)Fire Kasina (Daniel Ingram)Junk Bond Trader (great trip reports channel)Super Free Will (Andrew Zuckerman)Formless Consciousness and Zero Information (Kenneth Shinozuka)\nChamomile consists of several ingredients including coumarin, glycoside, herniarin, flavonoid, farnesol, nerolidol and germacranolide. Despite the presence of coumarin, as chamomile’s effect on the coagulation system has not yet been studied, it is unknown if a clinically significant drug-herb interaction exists with antiplatelet/anticoagulant drugs. However, until more information is available, it is not recommended to use these substances concurrently.Source: Herbal medication: potential for adverse interactions with analgesic drugs\n\n\nWhy Does Anything Exist? Zero Ontology, Physical Information, and Pure Awareness (link)\nWhy is there something rather than nothing? In this video I take this question very seriously and approach it with optimism. I say (a) this is a meaningful and valid question, and (b) it has a real and satisfying answer. The overall explanation space I explore is that of David Pearce’s Zero Ontology, which postulates that the multiverse is implied by the preservation of “zero information”.\nIn order to understand Zero Ontology we need to do some conceptual groundwork. So I walk the listener (you, were you to accept this journey) through several concepts that make the question go from “impossible to answer” or even “meaningless” to something that at least conceivably seems possible to solve.\nFirst, we need to sidesteps the common tropes of our habitual modes of thinking, such as expecting answers to come in the form of “causal explanations”. No matter how you look at it, whether the universe extends back forever or not, a causal explanation for the origin of the universe is logically impossible to derive. Instead, we have to think in a radically different way, which is by way of frameworks for implication rather than causation. This opens us up to the possibility that exotic modes of thinking capable of representing what is entailed by “nothing” will show in turn that “something” follows from it. This helps us make sense of Pearce’s argument: the “nothing” we are looking for is not the “common sense” view of the term, but rather a more refined post-theoretical concept that is ill-fitted to the human mind for the time being.\nIn particular, Pearce focuses on how “no information” may be “what nothing is”. Thus, Zero Ontology attempts to formalize the “fact of inexistence” by reconceptualizing information as “ruling out possibilities”. Based on this alternate concept we see that math, physics, and phenomenology share the common thread of being possible to “construct out of nothing”. In math, the empty set can be used to derive all of arithmetic. In physics the Standard Model is a surprisingly simple theory that can be derived from first principles by imposing the “need for symmetry”. The total energy, charge, momentum, etc. of the universe is zero! And in phenomenology, we encounter a lot of cases where apparently all of the possible flavors of a qualia variety seem to “cancel out” into “pure being” or “raw awareness”. The simplest example is how experiencing “all phenomenal colors at once” (a kind of rainbow effect, but including magenta) seems to be interchangeable with “colorless phenomenal light”.\nI tie all of this together and talk about how Zero Ontology allows us to reconceptualize “God/Being” as “unconstrained reality” or “boundarylessness”. I discuss how we could perhaps even probe Zero Ontology empirically in a direct way if we were to train enough physicists, mathematicians, philosophers, computer scientists, etc. to go into high Jhana or 5-MeO-DMT states and then quantify the properties of the fundamental fields implementing these experiences.\nI conclude with an analogy to Borges’ Library of Babel (or a quantum version thereof) and why we may be in it. In fact, “be it”.\nDavid Pearce: “A theory that explains everything explains nothing”, protests the critic of Everettian QM. To which we may reply, rather tentatively: yes, precisely.\nTopics Covered: The Concept of Nothing, Three Characteristics, Illusion, Limitations of the Medium of Thought, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Redefining Information, Empty Set Arithmetic, Preserved Quantities of Physics, Symmetry and Noether’s Theorem, QFT, Path Integrals, Jhanas, 5-MeO-DMT, Symmetries in Qualia, Quantum Library of Babel, Black Hole Information Paradox.\n~Qualia of the Day: Thinking About Nothing~\nFurther Readings:\nWhy does anything exist? (short version)The Zero Ontology – David PearceWhy Does Anything Exist? (David Pearce’s original Zero Ontology essay)Ways of Thinking (Richard Feynman)Quantum Field Theory visualizedOn the Medium of ThoughtThe Symmetry Theory of Valence: 2020 PresentationQED: Photons-Corpuscles of Light (Richard Feynman 1/ 4)CURIOSITY – Featuring Richard FeynmanNothing happens in the Universe of the Everett Interpretation (Jan-Markus Schwindt; I made the mistake of saying this was from Tegmark in the video, apologies)Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? (Leo Gura)A Universe from Nothing\n\n\nThe Tyranny of the Intentional Object: Universal Addictions, Meaning Abuse, and Denied Self-Insights (link)\nWhat is it that we truly want? Why do so many people believe that meaning is better than happiness?\nIn this talk I discuss what we call “the tyranny of the intentional object”, which refers to the tendency for the mind to believe that “what it wants” is semantically meaningful experiences. In reality, what we want under the surface is to avoid negative valence and achieve sustainable positive valence states of consciousness.\nI explain that evolution has “hooked us” on particular sources of pleasure in such a way that this is not introspectively accessible to us. We often need specific semantic content to work as a “key” for the “lock” of high-valence states of consciousness. I explain how we are all born chronic (endogenous) opioid addicts, and how our reward architecture is so coercive that we often fail to recognize this because thinking about it makes us feel bad (and thus ironically confirming the situation we are trying to be in denial about!).\nI go on to provide my current thoughts on the nature of meaning. Beyond “sense and reference” we find that “felt-sense” is actually what meaning is “made of”. But not any kind of felt-sense. I posit that the felt-senses that we describe as richly meaningful tend to have the following properties: high levels of intention, coherence of attention field lines, a “field syntax”, and a high level of “potential to affect valence”. Valence and meaning are deeply connected but are not identical: we can find corner cases of high-valence but meaningless states of mind and vice versa (though they rare).\nMeaning is no less liable to be “abused” than hard drugs: we often find ourselves scratching the bottom of the barrel of our meaning-making structures when things go wrong. I advise against doing this, and instead endorse the use of equanimity when faced with the absurd and Chapman’s “Meaningness” approach: to think of meaning as a gradient rather than in black and white terms. Do take advantage of opportunities for high levels of meaning, but do not rely on them and think they are universal. Indeed “meaning abuse” is a recipe for broken hearts and misguided idealistic solutions to problems that can be easily addressed pragmatically.\nFinally, I steelman the importance of “high-dimensional valence” and explain why in turn usually pursuing meaning is indeed much better than shallow pleasure.\n~Qualia of the Day: Clean Air~\nFurther Readings:\nThe Tyranny of the Intentional ObjectPleasure ParadoxWhy we seek out pleasure: the Symmetry Theory of Homeostatic Regulation (Michael Johnson)A Future for Neuroscience (Michael Johnson)Frege and “Sense and Reference” theory of meaningQuining Qualia (Daniel Dennett)Do words mean anything? (Max Hodak)Meaningness (David Chapman)The Pseudo-Time ArrowCoherence (HeartMath)A Defense of Paradise Engineering (David Pearce)Cost-Effectiveness of Air Purifiers against Pollution (Lukas Trötzmüller)\n[T]he heroin addict will do anything to get another fix: lie, cheat, steal and worse. Natural selection has stumbled on and harnessed Nature’s own version of heroin. Our endogenous opioid system ensures that biological life behaves in callous but genetically adaptive ways. […] All complex animal life is “paid” in junk: the addictive dribble of opioids in our hedonic hotspots released when we act in ways that tend to maximise the inclusive fitness of our genes in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA). The pleasure-pain axis is coercive. Barring self-deliverance, we can’t opt out. Our “reward” circuitry hardwires opioid addiction and the complex rationalisations it spawns. Human history confirms we’ll do anything to obtain more opioids to feed our habit. The mesolimbic dopamine system enables us to anticipate our next fix and act accordingly: an insidious interplay of “wanting” and “liking”. We enslave and kill billions of sentient beings from other species to gratify our cravings. We feed the corpses of our victims to our offspring. So the vicious cycle of abuse continues.David Pearce: Quora Responses\n\n\nA Language for Psychedelic Experiences: Algorithmic Reductions, Field Operators, and Dimensionality (link)\nPsychedelic experiences are notoriously difficult to describe. But are they truly ineffable, or do we simply lack the words, syntax, and grammar to articulate them? Optimistically, groups who take seriously the exploration of exotic states of consciousness could create a common ground of semantic primitives to be independently verified and used as the building blocks of a language for the “psychedelic medium of thought”.\nIn this video I present some ideas for a possible “psychedelic language” based on QRI paradigms and recent experience reports. I go over the article “Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States” and the value of breaking the psychedelic experience in terms of a minimal set of “basic effects” whose stacking and composition gives rise to the wild zoo of effects one observes. I point out that algorithmic reductions can have explanatory power even if they do not provide a clear answer about the nature of the substrate of experience. Importantly, since I wrote that article we have developed a far higher-resolution understanding of exotic states of consciousness:\nWe suggest that a remarkably fruitful strategy for pointing at a whole family of psychedelic effects comes in the form of “field operators” that change the qualitative properties of our experiential fields. I provide a detailed description of what we call the “world-sheet” of experience and how it encodes emotional and semantic content in its very structure. The world-sheet can have tension, relaxation, different types of resonance and buzzing entrainment, twisting, curling, divergence (with vortices and anti-vortices in the attention field-lines), dissonance, consonance, noise, release, curvature, holographic properties, and dimensionality. I explain that in a psychedelic state, you explore higher up regions in the “Hamiltonian of the field”, meaning that you instantiate field configurations with higher levels of energy. There, we observer interesting trade-offs between the hyperbolicity of the field and its dimensionality. It can instantiate fractals of many sorts (in polar, cartesian, and other coordinate systems) by multi-scale entrainment. Time loops and moments of eternity result from this process iterated over all sensory modalities. The field contains meta-data implicitly encoded in its periphery which you can use for tacit information processing. Semantic content and preferences are encoded in terms of the patterns of attraction and repulsion of the attention-field lines. And so much more (watch the whole video for the entire story).\nI conclude by saying that a steady meditation practice can be highly synergistic with psychedelics. Metta/loving-kindness can manifest in the form of smooth, coherent, high-dimensional, and consonant regions of the world-sheet and make the experience way more manageable, wholesome, and enriching. Equanimity, concentration, and sensory clarity are all synergistic with the state, and I posit that using “high-dimensionality” as the annealing target may accelerate the development of these traits in everyday life.\nPlease consider donating to QRI if you want to see this line of research make waves in academia and expand the Overtone Window for the science of consciousness. Funds will allow us to carry out key scientific experiments to validate models and develop technologies to reduce suffering at scale: https://www.qualiaresearchinstitute.org/donate\n~Qualia of the Day: The Phenomenal Silence of Each Field Modality~\nFurther Readings:\nAlgorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States​The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMTMike Johnson’s Interview of Shinzen YoungShinzen Young’s Channel “expandcontract” (highly recommended!) Jhanas and “Focus on Rest” ~ Shinzen YoungThe Grand Illusion (drugs are wasted on the young – cognitive science PhDs should be the ones taking psychedelics)Subjective Effect Index (PsychonautWiki)The Four Noble Truths | Thich Nhat HanhMetta/Loving Kindness MeditationI hack my biology. I’m like Rogan (comedy)\n\nThat’s it for now!\nUntil next time!\nInfinite bliss!\n– Andrés", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/03/02/7-recent-videos-consciousness-vs-replicators-high-entropy-alloys-of-experience-sleep-paralysis-stories-free-wheeling-hallucinations-zero-ontology-the-tyranny-of-the-intentional-object-and-a-la/", "title": "7 Recent Videos: Consciousness vs. Replicators, High Entropy Alloys of Experience, Sleep Paralysis Stories, Free-Wheeling Hallucinations, Zero Ontology, The Tyranny of the Intentional Object, And A Language for Psychedelic Experiences", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-03-03T04:38:22+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=5", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "3ef412543e8dc2980e4b3d369d80cca7", "summary": []}
{"text": "Guide to Writing Rigorous Reports of Exotic States of Consciousness\n\nCross-Posted in QRI’s Blog\n[Context: This is a guide to writing useful trip reports. If you read the trip report archives of Erowid, Bluelight, and PsychonautWiki, you notice a wide range of styles, interpretative lenses, and focus. We believe that a few relatively simple considerations can drastically improve the usefulness of written reports in ways that can open up novel research directions. This document is meant to extend and complement the Subjective Effect Index of PsychonautWiki in order to maximize the scientific utility of the written reports. If unconvinced of the importance of writing high quality reports, we recommend first reading David Pearce’s “Their Scientific Significance is Hard to Overstate”.]\nThe first few trip reports you write may not be very detailed, but you will improve over time. It is best to adopt a growth mindset when it comes to translating exotic forms of thinking into sober thinking others can understand. If learning to speak takes years and mastering a new human language in adulthood takes just as long, why would competence in translating psychedelic patterns of thought be something you acquire on the first trip? Thus, it is no surprise that practice and patience are essential ingredients to becoming a psychonaut that is capable of sharing scientifically useful information to the world at large.\nSo how do you write a useful trip report? Let us start with perhaps the single most important instruction.\nFocusing on the Phenomenal Character, Rather than on the Intentional Content of the Experience\nThe first and most important instruction is to focus on the phenomenal character as opposed to the intentional content of the experience. The intentional content of an experience is what the experience is about, whereas its phenomenal character is what it feels like. While it is worthwhile to discuss the content of your thoughts at a narrative level (e.g. you hallucinated being in an art museum where giant ladybugs were performing in a jazz quartet), the narrative alone will not be very useful to anyone. This is because a narrative description of what your trip was about drastically underdetermines what the experience felt like.\nHence, it is critical to enrich any narrative description with an account of the texture and structure of your experience. People often say things such as: “I went to DMT hell” or “I experienced an LSD paradise”. But what if you probe these statements further? What made the “DMT hell” so unpleasant? What made the “LSD paradise” so blissful? Most people, when asked, tend to be overly focused on saying things along the lines of: “Well, I was meeting angels and strange creatures” or “there were people sobbing”, and they think that this explains why the experience was unpleasant or blissful. You have to understand that when explaining why a certain narrative felt a certain way, you cannot ultimately rely on more narrative. At some point, the explanation should be grounded by the texture of the experience rather than the experience’s narrative[1]. Instead of those previous stories, we think a more useful description would be: “There’s this 3D matrix of resonance that created a lot of green-magenta Moiré patterns, and the sense of harmony and bliss seems to have come from that texture of my experience, and that texture is what made me interpret where I was as a kind of Heaven Realm.” The reason why the angels you saw felt so loving and benevolent comes down to the particular texture of your experience expressing that emotional palette. In other words, the angel is an expression of that sense of harmony and not the other way around.\nAn analogy is that if you’re listening to pleasurable music, you may hear guitar or piano sounds. The specific instruments definitely matter, but the bulk of what’s making the sound so pleasant and comforting may actually be the reverb quality of the music. Think of the angel like the sound of a guitar. The angel, like the guitar sound, has its own specific qualities (a certain vibe). But in addition to seeing an angel, your entire subjective experience contains this reverb pattern of reverberating (phenomenal) space-time. A phenomenal space-time that feels really wonderful will make you feel like you are in heaven.\n\nImage made by Matthew Smith\nThus, we recommend that you pay attention to the nature of the phenomenal space and time you experienced and do two things:\nTry to describe it in as much detail as possible in the language of frequency, dimensionality, fractality, reverb, etc.Explain how the texture of the phenomenal space you inhabited influenced your emotions and semantic interpretations of what was going on.\n\nNumbers and images taken from: List of fractals by Hausdorff dimension\nTry to reverse-engineer the generators of your experience.\nA very simple example would be if you were experiencing some kind of strobing effect, like seeing flickering lights. If so, it would be ideal to figure out the frequency of those lights. QRI developed a psychophysics tool to help people quantitatively measure the visual effects of psychoactive substances. Ideally, you can use this tool while experiencing exotic state of consciousness (such as DMT or the states induced by a Fire Kasina retreat), so that you can confidently report (for example) that you experienced a 20 Hz strobing effect.\n\nLeft: 10hz replay. Right: 7hz strobe.\nLikewise, if you are experiencing replay effects and you enter a thought loop (cf. short-term memory tracers), it’s very helpful if you can tell how big the loop is instead of saying “I was stuck in a loop”. Was the loop a fraction of a second or was it an elaborate narrative that you were circling around over the course of minutes? Those feel very different even though they are both technically thought loops.\nHere is a very concrete example: imagine that your DMT trip looked like this lightshow from 2:27 to 5:12[2].\n\nWhat would you say about it? A lot of people would become overly focused on explaining that at around 4:20, amazing lights felt like an angel, or that it was “richly colored and bright”. But the sort of information we believe is more helpful comes when you can point out simple and plausible ways the experience might have been constructed out of elementary building blocks. In this case, we refer you to one of the Youtube comments: “It is unbelievable that such a magnificent show could be made with just 5 lasers!”. Indeed! Most people would be mesmerized by the light show, come up with some elaborate narrative for “what happened” and go about their day without ever realizing that the entirety of the visual content was generated by just five sources of light fixed in place the whole time! Now that is the sort of obvious-in-retrospect observation that can help us make tangible progress. For instance, it only took one clever math student to notice “oh dear, the walls of the DMT palace I’m in are tessellated by heptagons” to kick-start the explanation space where DMT’s odd effects involve an alteration to the curvature of phenomenal space and time (see: The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences). A lot of big insights start with seemingly innocent observations that are obvious in retrospect.\nExamples of Statements That Do a Good Job Describing Phenomenal Character\nThe tracer effects clearly had replays equally spaced apart, calculated around 14hz with the tracer tool. I could make out three replays with precision, but there might have been four or five counting faint ones I couldn’t always see.Whenever I would focus on my breath my visual field seemed to express a Kelvin–Helmholtz instability: thanks to tactile-visual synesthesia, the sensation of each breath would manifest as disturbances in my visual field, which in turn seemed to have a higher density than their surroundings, and this would give rise to turbulent flow very similar to the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability simulations I’ve seen online.The left part of my visual field had a vertical wall I was attending to with peripheral vision. The wall felt like it was about 1 meter to my left and at a right angle. This hallucinated wall was vibrating at around 8hz and it had two alternating layers that looked about 1cm apart[3], one blue and one yellow. Their colors were alternating at about half the speed at which the wall was vibrating.The ceiling was tessellated with a highly detailed texture organized along the 632 wallpaper symmetry group. More so, this tessellation was dynamic, in that all of the shapes were shifting and morphing. In sequence, a symmetry element type would be selected by attention (such as all of the copies of the 6-rotational symmetry element) and each repeating region of the texture in the entire ceiling would change by the rotation around the copy of the symmetry element that corresponds to it (example). Then another symmetry element would be selected and the pattern would morph by rotation around that new symmetry element, and so on. This lasted for about 1 minute and it faded as soon as I turned on some music.By selecting features of my hallucinatory environment and attending to them, I could make them grow and in a way “reify them”, meaning that they would feel more and more real and vibrant the more I paid attention to them. I noticed that I could transform the walls of the hallucinated environment into glass walls with a peculiar property: when light goes through the wall in one direction it becomes lighter and when it goes in the other direction it becomes darker. This resulted in the room being filled with what I later recognized to be cohomology fractals. I was able to more easily separate the various “facets” of essential oils. In particular, rather than experiencing lemongrass as just a “unified block” (a single feeling of “herbal citrus scent”), I could break it down into three independent facets: a sharp citrus scent with peaks of sensation (probably citral or d-limonene), a soft and smooth alcoholic character impact background (probably neral and linalool), and an earthy almost clove-like spice facet (probably centered around myrcene). It was noteworthy that these facets were far more cleanly separate than normal yet by focusing on any two of them at once I could blend them independently in a sort of “qualia chemistry”. It felt like each perfume in turn could be used to experience 5 or 6 different compositions depending on how I would attend and try to merge its different facets all inside of my mind!My sense of time passing seemed to be constructed out of three distinct elements interacting with one another. One was based on the rate at which the color scheme evolved. The other two were based on the pulsing of visual sensations, which constructed the scene in a manner consistent with a temporal raster plot. The “vertical time” would take about two seconds to complete a cycle, whereas the “horizontal time” would be incredibly fast, doing perhaps a hundred cycles per second. The raster plot had adjustable height and width and this allowed me to visualize (much akin to an actual raster plot) how rhythms in my mind were coupled despite having frequencies at different orders of magnitude: the vertical direction would represent changes across hundreds of milliseconds whereas the horizontal direction would visualize rhythms going on at just a few milliseconds as long as they repeated for long enough.The auralization of the sound loops I hallucinated would continuously and coherently transform in tandem with the 3-dimensional space group I found myself in. This led me to interpret the auditory reverb effects as being consistent with the aggregate echo reflections inside a polygon in 3D hyperbolic spaces.\nPersonal Matters\nOf course, psychedelic trips are intensely personal experiences. It is in the nature of psychedelic states to connect intellectual content with deep personal emotional processing. Nonetheless, when it comes to contributing to the commons with high-quality trip reports, you can lessen the impact of personal matters. Without ever mentioning that “it was about your grandmother”, you can just focus instead on the phenomenal character of your trip and provide the bulk of information to the scientific community. Of course, if there was something about the texture of the experience that made your emotional processing easier or harder, you should ideally point that out. But at no point do you need to delve into the specifics of your social circumstance.\nWrite It Like a Book Report\nThink about the task of writing a trip report in the same way you would write a book report in middle school[4]. The teacher assigns a book to read and then they provide a guide for writing your book report with the help of some basic questions everyone needs to answer. This is so that you do not forget to provide some of the critical information needed to interpret your report. We recommend reflecting on these questions and writing their answers before the trip so that your report of the set and setting that gave rise to the trip is not influenced post-hoc by the contents of the trip. Let’s apply this “write it like a book report” framing to reporting exotic experiences. Please provide:\nDemographic Information[5]\nAt the bare minimum, start by including basic demographic information: approximate age, gender, height, weight, genetics (national origin might be a good approximation, e.g. half-Mexican half-Icelandic), and health conditions.\nSet and Setting Information\nIn addition to demographic information, make sure to include set and setting information: drug, dose, when it was taken, what method of intake was used (ingestion, smoking, etc.), social context, sleep deprivation status (well rested, just had a 20 minute nap after an all-nighter, etc.) how many times you have taken this drug and at what doses, time of the year, indoors/outdoors, and what the weather was like at the time.\nAfter that, here are six basic questions that should ideally be addressed in every trip report:\n1. Background Philosophical Assumptions\nThe most important thing is to start with clarity about what you believe. Most people have background beliefs that govern the way they think about reality even though they don’t really notice them most of the time. These assumptions will heavily influence what happens on a psychedelic trip. What are your background philosophical assumptions? What do you believe? Why do you believe what you believe? In particular, we suggest that you mention:\nRecent Media Consumption\nWhat people and media have influenced you the most? For example, recently reading a lot of Alan Watts books versus Richard Feynman’s Lectures on Physics may lead to very different experiences on LSD. Your recent media exposure cannot be neglected. And this is less about volume than about influence: you may have read a single quote a year ago that you still think about when showering while the daily consumption of your favorite television show is barely noticed by your subconscious. Therefore, share, most of all, how the media you’ve been consuming is influencing how you think about life, the universe, and everything else.\nDirect vs Indirect Realism \nProbably the most important belief to address is your stance on direct versus indirect realism about perception. If you read a lot of trip reports, many seem to be implicitly assuming direct realism about perception. This means that people believe they can access the world directly. When they see a flower breathe in and out, they may interpret this experience as the result of being given access to another set of frequencies of light or aspects of reality that we usually ignore. For example, Albert Hoffman seems to have thought about LSD in this way: in the last chapter of LSD: My Problem Child, Hoffman speculates:\n“If one continues with the conception of reality as a product of sender and receiver, then the entry of another reality under the influence of LSD may be explained by the fact that the brain, the seat of the receiver, becomes biochemically altered. The receiver is thereby tuned into another wavelength than that corresponding to normal, everyday reality. Since the endless variety and diversity of the universe correspond to infinitely many different wavelengths, depending on the adjustment of the receiver, many different realities, including the respective ego, can become conscious.”\nOne gets the impression that Hoffman really believed that LSD’s trippy visuals were revealing true information about the environment around us rather than telling us, perhaps, something about the way our brains construct a world-simulation we confuse for reality itself. This is not to say that one cannot in fact notice true details about the environment with LSD, but we can conceive of this as a trade-off between forms of attending to and processing the environment through our normal conventional senses rather than as being given access to new sense organs yet uncharted by science. This is an important distinction.\nWe should note that variants of direct realism about perception can be steelmanned to some extent. For example, you may look at a tree on a psychedelic and see a mythological creature embedded into the tree. When you come down, you can also verify it by observing that the tree actually kind of resembles the creature you saw on your trip and shows up when you’re not tripping. Once you notice that sort of thing, you cannot unsee it. And maybe other sober people might also see it too once you point it out. In other words, psychedelics will very likely, within some parameters, allow you to see patterns in the real world that you may be missing out on otherwise. It doesn’t mean that you’re perceiving the world directly through a new sense organ. It just means you’re processing that information in a slightly different way.\nWe would generally suggest to approach a trip report with an indirect realism mindset, where you assume, until proven otherwise, that you are experiencing states of your own internal world-simulation. This allows you to have much better clarity about many strange phenomena. For example, if you feel that you are somehow entangled with your environment, you would in this lens interpret that feeling as an entanglement with yourself. You are just entangled with a part of yourself that you usually interpret as being the external environment.\nIndeed, one of the trickiest things about life that we don’t realize for the most part is that the very sense of an external environment itself is part of your internal world-simulation[6]. So for your trip report, make sure to point out if you are interpreting your experience through this lens, the lens of direct realism, or perhaps a hybrid lens (where some aspects are perceived directly and some aren’t).\n2. Emotional and Cognitive State\nWhat is your background emotional and cognitive state like? What is your preferred cognitive style? For example, do you naturally have a high baseline well-being or are you more melancholic? Do you identify as a people person or are you a mathematician with no interest in people?[7] It’s actually quite important to note and can result in quite different experiences. \nObserving Your Emotions \nPaying attention to how emotions are expressed on psychedelics is one of the most important things you can do. People regularly project their emotions onto the nature of reality. Be mindful of this as a failure mode. It’s helpful advice both for better phenomenology and psychologically to try to notice the way emotions manifest in your world-simulation. Emotions will be modifying the way your attention is directed, and noticing this can allow you to gain some control over this process. You can tell the difference between physical suffering and mental suffering in terms of whether these patterns have dissonance[8] located in your (phenomenal) body or in the part of your experiential field that represents thoughts.\nIt sounds kind of strange. When we’re caught up in mental suffering, we usually don’t realize that it’s a type of unpleasant sensation or dissonance. It is not ineffable. There’s actually a location, region, or subcomponent of the phenomenal field that is vibrating in a strange and unpleasant way. In many ways, noticing how emotions modify the structure of either your felt-sense of your body or your thought patterns will prevent you from being controlled by the emotions without you knowing it.\nIt’s very important to notice this, and noting this can be helpful for avoiding a bad experience. Often, the reason why you feel terrible in your psychedelic state is not because you realized a big, deep truth about reality or due to anything bad you did. It is frequently the case that you entered some kind of dissonant attractor, and there’s probably a way out of it.\nOften, one is advised to “let go and embrace whatever is happening”. This advice does allow you to reduce that dissonance and lessen the grip that mental or physical suffering has on you. It allows you to let it just vibrate on its own for a while without you feeding it energy. And that is helpful. We think it’s even more helpful if you can diagnose the source of dissonance and address it directly. Thus, at an even deeper level, “disengage from dissonant patterns” is better advice than “just let go” because there are some states where letting go is actually a bad idea. If you’re actually very close to making a psychological or intellectual breakthrough, letting go is probably not optimal. Instead, have the mindset of being gentle to yourself by letting go of the dissonant component of the experience rather than its intentional content.\n3. Temporal Progression\nWhat was the overall temporal progression of the experience? Draw a graph where the x-axis is time and the y-axis is a variable you want to track, such as “intensity of effects”, “brightness of visual field”, or “emotional valence” and update the graph every half hour. This will help you remember where you were at each stage of the trip and allow you to place your thoughts and ideas along the timeline.\nRight after the trip, spend some time making sense of the general structure of what you experienced. That is, identify what kind of arc or main stages the trip involved. Outline how your beliefs and emotions changed throughout each of the stages. Try to recall how long each physical hour felt like[9] (e.g. “1st hour felt like 90 minutes, 2nd hour felt like two hours, 3rd hour felt like two hours, etc”).\n\nExample graph of self-reported valence over time. You can also label points and sections of the graph and then describe them in more detail in your written report. Image by Andrew Zuckerman.\n4. The Theme\nWas the trip primarily philosophical, self-introspective, investigative, or focused on emotional processing? Go into as much detail as you feel comfortable. Obviously, there are going to be very personal things, so record only as much as feels comfortable or useful to you.\n5. Valence \nWhat did you learn about valence? What was the connection between the way the trip unfolded, the quality of each level, and the various thoughts and feelings? How did those contribute to a sense of well being, despair, or neutrality?\nWe’re very interested in confirming the idea that it feels really good when all your attention centers are synchronized and flickering at the same frequency. If that was the case, then please let us know. If it wasn’t, also please let us know![10]\n6. Qualia and Binding Patterns\nIn what way did the trip allow you to experience qualia that you have never experienced before (like impossible colors)? Let’s say that you experienced a new combination of touch and auditory sensations. This is really significant! Don’t overlook it, note it down! During the trip, if you’re experiencing new qualia, do as much as you can to explore and investigate it by testing when it arises, when it dissolves, and what actions, if any, can multiply or intensify it.\nBuddhists have names for a lot of the novel qualia that arise during meditation. One of those is equanimity. Equanimity feels like something; it’s not just a word. There’s actually a facet of experience that corresponds to it.[11] Likewise, on psychedelics you probably experience a ton of new qualia. We need a glossary for uniquely-psychedelic qualia!\nIn addition to novel qualia, notice and report any novel patterns of binding. This is about how sensations become coupled together or dissociate in unexpected ways—how sensations are linked together in phenomenal time and space to form coherent phenomenal objects. A special case of “exotic patterns of binding” is synesthesia, where two or more of the sensory modalities become coupled together (such as experiencing phenomenal objects that are sound-touch hybrids). But patterns of binding can also be exotic even when they are expressed within the same modality, such as how the visual field seems to acquire extra virtual dimensions on DMT. We would also consider alterations of the sense of space and time as the result of exotic patterns of binding. So, this is a very general effect with many possible manifestations. If you notice anything of this sort, pay attention to it! How were your sensations bound or unbound in ways that are unusual? Be as detailed as possible.\nA Meta Consideration\nWe suggest that you do not get caught up in the obligation to report things during the experience. Or worse, to believe that in order to be a good trip reporter you have to be able to write everything in real time. Trying to write your trip report in real time is likely to make you feel quite miserable! This is because whether we like it or not, we derive a lot of our self-worth from our feeling of verbal competence. So when you are under the influence of something as powerful as LSD and your verbal skills break down, the feeling that you “are not yourself anymore” gives you a sense of personal failure. But this will only arise if you begin your trip with the expectation that you will be able to report on it in real time. Instead, acknowledge that you will probably be terrible at verbalizing on psychedelics and instead focus your energy on remembering the properties of the state in non-verbal ways. Don’t feel compelled to write extensively because that’s going to be difficult. Just take note of the time or make a drawing or mark that you will understand later.\nWe do recommend recording the experience as much as you can (short of showing yourself on camera handling or consuming the chemical… don’t do that!). Recording the entirety of your experience unobtrusively in the background may be really helpful for reconstructing what happened afterwards. We have heard that not doing this is a common regret, especially for trips involving high doses where you genuinely wonder what was happening around you in consensus reality (if anything, the footage will help ground you in the certainty that at least the God that visited you wasn’t emitting regular photons that were visible to other people in the room). If you’re comfortable with it, leave at least an audio recording on.\nWe encourage you to record any important ideas, especially if you suspect that there’s any chance you may forget them. Take your insights seriously. They matter. Don’t feel that you lack the qualifications nor the background for your insights to matter. You are in a very exotic state that’s largely unexplored. What you are experiencing probably matters immensely for the collective understanding of humanity.\nAdditional Resources for Writing High-Quality Trip Reports\nIf you’d like some inspiration, here are examples of great trip reports:\nTypical N,N-DMT Trip Progression According to an Anonymous ReaderDetailed 2C-B Trip ReportRational 4-AcO-DMT Trip ReportLucid LSD Trip ReportSelf-Locatingly Uncertain Psilocybin Trip Report\nAnd here are more resources for trip reports and strengthening your phenomenological skills:\nQRI developed a psychophysics tool to help people quantitatively measure the visual effects of psychoactive substances.Psychonaut Wiki, Effect IndexPsychedelic Information Theory by James KentThe Grand Illusion by Steven Lehar Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic StatesThe Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes / Explain Like I’m Five VersionA Language for Psychedelic Experiences: Algorithmic Reductions, Field Operators, and Dimensionality\nAcknowledgements\nSpecial thanks to Mackenzie Dion and Andrew Zuckerman for their feedback, suggestions, and copious edits to this document.\n\nFootnotes:\n[1]  In fact, we would claim that the mechanism by which “seeing people sob” feels sad can be explained by how this narrative element influences the texture of your experience.\n[2]  Beware that it is very loud right before 2:27.\n[3]  The ideal units to report would be degrees, depth, and location within one’s visual field. In practice, most people will be better at reporting estimates of distances gauged as if they were physical distances out there in the world. In the future we will provide conversion tables to unify the units of phenomenological reporting.\n[4]  Thanks to Ryan Ragnar for providing the analogy between trip reports and middle school book reports. \n[5]  Skip demographic data if you do not feel comfortable sharing it. It will be helpful in order to identify idiosyncratic responses to psychedelics and other compounds, but privacy is also very important. Share approximate information if that makes you feel more comfortable (e.g. “between 20 and 25 years old” rather than “21 years and 3 months old”).\n[6]  Steven Lehar’s “Cartoon Epistemology” provides a great visual demonstration and argument for indirect realism about perception.\n[7]  See: empathizing-systemizing theory, autism spectrum quotient, systematic empathy.\n[8]  Dissonance emerges when two incompatible patterns of resonance try to interact with one another. See Principia Qualia and Quantifying Bliss for an in-depth discussion.\n[9]  Physical time being the objective passage of time according to clocks in consensus reality, whereas phenomenal time is how the passage of time feels like in a given experience.\n[10]  In particular, pay attention to the temporal and spatial frequency of synchronized patterns, and whether there are competing patterns that cause dissonance with one another (for more, see: Symmetry Theory of Valence: 2020 Presentation and Why Does DMT Feel So Real?).\n[11] See Mike Johnson’s interview of Shinzen Young for a discussion on the way equanimity feels.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/02/25/guide-to-writing-rigorous-reports-of-exotic-states-of-consciousness/", "title": "Guide to Writing Rigorous Reports of Exotic States of Consciousness", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-02-25T20:32:50+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=5", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "847cd1d81dbd6a40f5bff7680123e871", "summary": []}
{"text": "Ways of Thinking\n\nRelated to: On the Medium of Thought, John von Neumann, Early Isolation Tank Psychonautics: 1970s Trip Reports, Pseudo-Time Arrow, Thinking in Numbers, High-Entropy Alloys of Experience, A Single 3N-Dimensional Universe: Splitting vs. Decoherence, A New Way to Visualize General Relativity, Visual Quantum Physics, and Feynman’s QED Video Lectures (highly recommended!)\n\nTranscript from the last section of the 1983 BBC interview of Richard Feynman “Fun to Imagine” (excerpt starts at 55:52):\nInterviewer presumably asks: What is it like to think about your work?\nWell, when I’m actually doing my own things, that I’m working in the high, deep, and esoteric stuff that I worry about, I don’t think I can describe very well what it is like… First of all it is like asking a centipede which leg comes after which. It happens quickly and I am not exactly sure… flashes and stuff goes on in the head. But I know it is a crazy mixture of partial differential equations, partial solving of the equations, then having some sort of picture of what’s happening that the equations are saying is happening, but they are not as well separated as the words that I’m using. And it’s a kind of a nutty thing. It’s very hard to describe and I don’t know that it does any good to describe. And something that struck me, that is very curious: I suspect that what goes on in every man’s head might be very, very different. The actual imagery or semi-imagery which comes is different. And that when we are talking to each other at these high and complicated levels, and we think we are speaking very well and we are communicating… but what we’re really doing is having some kind of big translation scheme going on for translating what this fellow says into our images. Which are very different. \n\nI found that out because at the very lowest level, I won’t go into the details, but I got interested… well, I was doing some experiments. And I was trying to figure out something about our time sense. And so what I would do is, I would count trying to count to a minute. Actually, say I’d count to 48 and it would be one minute. So I’d calibrate myself and I would count a minute by counting to 48 (so it was not seconds what I counted, but close enough), and then it turns out if you repeat that you can do very accurately when you get to 48 or 47 or 49, not far off you are very close to a minute. And I would try to find out what affected that time sense, and whether I could do anything at the same time as I was counting and I found that I could do many things, but couldn’t do other things. I could… For example I had great difficulty doing this: I was in university and I had to get my laundry ready. And I was putting the socks out and I had to make a list of how many socks, something like six or eight pair of socks, and I couldn’t count them. Because the “counting machine” was being used and I couldn’t count them. Until I found out I could put them in a pattern and recognize the number. And so I learned a way after practicing by which I could go down on lines of type and newspapers and see them in groups. Three – three – three – one, that’s a group of ten, three – three – three – one… and so on without saying the numbers, just seeing the groupings and I could therefore count the lines of type (I practiced). In the newspaper, the same time I was counting internally the seconds, so I could do this fantastic trick of saying: “48! That’s one minute, and there are 67 lines of type”, you see? It was quite wonderful. And I discovered many things I could read while I was… I could read while I was counting and get an idea of what it was about. But I couldn’t speak, say anything. Because of course, when I was counting I sort of spoke to myself inside. I would say one, two, three… sort of in the head! Well, I went down to get breakfast and there was John Tuckey, a mathematician down at Princeton at the same time, and we had many discussions, and I was telling him about these experiments and what I could do. And he says “that’s absurd!”. He says: “I don’t see why you would have any difficulty talking whatsoever, and I can’t possibly believe that you could read.” So I couldn’t believe all this. But we calibrated him, and it was 52 for him to get to 60 seconds or whatever, I don’t remember the numbers now. And then he’d say, “alright, what do you want me to say? Marry Had a Little Lamb… I can speak about anything. Blah, blah, blah, blah… 52!” It’s a minute, he was right. And I couldn’t possibly do that, and he wanted me to read because he couldn’t believe it. And then we compared notes and it turned out that when he thought of counting, what he did inside his head is that when he counted he saw a tape with numbers, that did clink, clink, clink [shows with his hand the turning and passing of a counting tape], and the tape would change with the numbers printed on it, which he could see. Well, since it’s sort of an optical system that he is using, and not voice, he could speak as much as he wanted. But if he wanted to read then he couldn’t look at his clock. Whereas for me it was the other way.\n\nAnd that’s where I discovered, at least in this very simple operation of counting, the great difference in what goes on in the head when people think they are doing the same thing! And so it struck me therefore, if that’s already true at the most elementary level, that when we learn about mathematics, and the Bessel functions, and the exponentials, and the electric fields, and all these things… that the imagery and method by which we are storing it all and the way we are thinking about it… could be it really if we get into each other’s heads, entirely different? And in fact why somebody has sometimes a great deal of difficulty understanding when you are pointing to something which you see as obvious, and vice versa, it may be because it’s a little hard to translate what you just said into his particular framework and so on. Now I’m talking like a psychologist and you know I know nothing about this.\n\nSuppose that little things behaved very differently than anything that was big. Anything that you are familiar with… because you see, as the animal evolves, and so on, as the brain evolves, it gets used to handling, and the brain is designed, for ordinary circumstances. But if the gut particles in the deep inner workings whereby some other rules and some other character they behave differently, they were very different than anything on a large scale, then there would be some kind of difficulty, you know, understanding and imagining reality. And that is the difficulty we are in. The behavior of things on a small scale is so fantastic, it is so wonderfully different, so marvelously different than anything that behaves on a large scale… say, “electrons act like waves”, no they don’t exactly. “They act like particles”, no they don’t exactly. “They act like a kind of a fog around the nucleus”, no they don’t exactly. And if you would like to get a clear sharp picture of an animal, so that you could tell exactly how it is going to behave correctly, to have a good image, in other words, a really good image of reality I don’t know how to do it! \n\nBecause that image has to be mathematical. We have mathematical expressions, strange as mathematics is I don’t understand how it is, but we can write mathematical expressions and calculate what the thing is going to do without actually being able to picture it. It would be something like a computer that you put certain numbers in and you have the formula for what time the car will arrive at different destinations, and the thing does the arithmetic to figure out what time the car arrives at the different destinations but cannot picture the car. It’s just doing the arithmetic! So we know how to do the arithmetic but we cannot picture the car. No, it’s not a hundred percent because for certain approximate situations a certain kind of approximate picture works. That it’s simply a fog around the nucleus that when you squeeze it, it repels you is very good for understanding the stiffness of material. That it’s a wave which does this and that is very good for some other phenomena. So when you are working with certain particular aspect of the behavior of atoms, for instance when I was talking about temperature and so forth, that they are just little balls is good enough and it gives us a very nice picture of temperature. But if you ask more specific questions and you get down to questions like how is it that when you cool helium down, even to absolute zero where there is not supposed to be any motion, it’s a perfect fluid that hasn’t any viscosity, has no resistance, flows perfectly, and isn’t freezing?\n\nWell if you want to get a picture of atoms that has all of that in it, I can’t do it, you see? But I can explain why the helium behaves as it does by taking my equations and showing that the consequences of them is that the helium will behave as it is observed to behave, so we now have the theory right, but we haven’t got the pictures that will go with the theory. And is that because we are limited and haven’t caught on to the right pictures? Or is that because there aren’t any right pictures for people who have to make pictures out of things that are familiar to them? Let’s suppose it’s the last one. That there’s no right pictures in terms of things that are familiar to them. Is it possible then, to develop a familiarity with those things that are not familiar on hand by study? By learning about the properties of atoms and quantum mechanics, and practicing with the equations, until it becomes a kind of second nature, just as it is second nature to know that if two balls came towards each other they’d mash into bits, you don’t say the two balls when they come toward each other turn blue. You know what they do! So the question is whether you can get to know what things do better than we do today. You know as the generations develop, will they invent ways of teaching, so that the new people will learn tricky ways of looking at things and be so well trained that they won’t have our troubles with picturing the atom? There is still a school of thought that cannot believe that the atomic behavior is so different than large-scale behavior. I think that’s a deep prejudice, it’s a prejudice from being so used to large-scale behavior. And they are always seeking to find, to waiting for the day that we discover that underneath the quantum mechanics, there’s some mundane ordinary balls hitting, or particles moving, and so on. I think they’re going to be defeated. I think nature’s imagination is so much greater than man’s, she’s never gonna let us relax.\n\nFrom the blog Visual Quantum Physics (same as gifs above):\n\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/01/24/ways-of-thinking/", "title": "Ways of Thinking", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-01-25T02:44:39+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=5", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "295a77be5ec15a7dd8e8843290c51e8a", "summary": []}
{"text": "7 Recent Videos: Rational Analysis of 5-MeO-DMT, Utility Monsters, Neroli, Phenomenal Time, Benzo Withdrawal, Scale-Specific Network Geometry, and Why DMT Feels So Real\n\n\n5-MeO-DMT: A Rational Analysis at Last (link)\nTopics covered: Non-Duality, Symmetry, Valence, Neural Annealing, and Topological Segmentation.\nSee also:\n5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 LensesNeural AnnealingMini-Series on Open IndividualismTopological Segmentation: How Dynamic Stability Can Solve the Combination Problem for Panpsychism Hairy Ball Theorem\n\n\nBefriending Utility Monsters: Being the Adult in the Room When Talking About the Hedonic Extremes (link)\nIn this episode I connect a broad variety of topics with the following common thread: “What does it mean to be the adult in the room when dealing with extremely valenced states of consciousness?” Essentially, a talk on Utility Monsters.\nConcretely, what does it mean to be responsible and sensible when confronted with the fact that pain and pleasure follow a long tail distribution? When discussing ultra-painful or ultra-blissful experiences one needs to take off the glasses we use to reason about “room temperature consciousness” and put on glasses that actually take these states with the seriousness they deserve.\nTopics discussed include: The partial 5HT3 antagonism of ginger juice, kidney stones from vitamin C supplementation, 2C-E nausea, phenibut withdrawal, akathisia as a remarkably common side effect of psychiatric medication (neuroleptics, benzos, and SSRIs), negative 5-MeO-DMT trips, the book “LSD and the Mind of the Universe”, turbulence and laminar flow in the “energy body”, being a “mom” at a festival, and more.\nFurther readings on these topics:\nLogarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain (article)Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain (presentation)“Those taking a thousand milligrams or so of vitamin C a day may have a 1-in-300 chance of getting a kidney stone every year, instead of a 1-in-600 chance.” (source)Quitting phenibut the sensible wayUsing Ibogaine to Create Friendlier Opioids (by QRI’s Lead Qualia Engineer Quintin Frerichs)Sharing the World with Digital Minds (Bostrom’s recent paper on utility monsters)(Quote I mentioned from “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Posman): “On the Medium of Tought“Ayahuasca Horror story (notice how they say that “it’s very hard to put our finger on what went wrong, what it meant”): “My NIGHTMARE Ayahuasca Trip [Shocking True Story]“5-MeO-DMT Malpractice: Open Letter Concerning Abuses by Octavio Rettig and Gerry Sandoval(Negative) 5-MeO-DMT video reportJust Word Hypothesis (why people believe “you deserve what you get”)Presentation about the book “LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven” by its author Dr. Chris BacheThe intelligent monster that you should let eat you (by Richard Fisher)“Despite the initial promise that second generation antipsychotics would be devoid of akathisia effects, this has not been confirmed.” (source)Ex-benzodiazepine user relating to Peterson says withdrawal ‘hell’ needs awareness““This manuscript will advance the hypothesis that 5-HT7 directly mediates three specific dramatic mental effects of psychedelics: creative open-eyed Visuals, Ego-loss, and loss of contact with Reality (VER).” (Thomas S. Ray; source)Hedonic Audit (By Sarah Perry)Effective Altruism, and building a better QALY (by Mike Johnson)\n\n\nMapping State-Spaces of Consciousness: The Neroli Neighborhood (link)\nWhat would it be like to have a scent-based medium of thought, with grammar, generative syntax, clauses, subordinate clauses, field geometry, and intentionality? How do we go about exploring the full state-space of scents (or any other qualia variety)?\nTopics Covered in this Video: The State-space of Consciousness, Mapping State-Spaces, David Pearce at Oxford, Qualia Enrichment Kits, Character Impact vs. Flavors, Linalool Variants, Clusters of Neroli Scents, Neroli in Perfumes, Neroli vs. Orange Blossom vs. Petigrain vs. Orange/Mandarin/Lemon/Lime, High-Entropy Alloys of Scent, Musks as Reverb and Brown Noise, “Neroli Reconstructions” (synthetic), Semi-synthetic Mixtures, Winner-Takes-All Dynamics in Qualia Spaces, Multi-Phasic Scents, and Non-Euclidean State-Spaces.\nNeroli Reconstruction Example:\n4 – Linalool3 – Linalyl Acetate3 – Valencene3 – Beta Pinene2 – Nerolione2 – Nerolidol2 – Geraniol Coeur2 – Hedione2 – Farnesene1 – D-Limonene1 – Nerol1 – Ambercore1 – Linalool Oxyde70 – Ethanol\nFurther readings:\nQualia Research Diary: ScentsOn the Medium of ThoughtOpenCola (drink)Ubuntu ColaTheir Scientific Significance is Hard to Overstate (by David Pearce)Perfumery as an Art FormA Big State-Space of ConsciousnessWhat’s out there? (by Mike Johnson)Qualia Production Presents: “The Seven Seals of Security” (and Other Communications from QRI Sweden)\n\n\nWhat is Time? Explaining Time-Loops, Moments of Eternity, Time Branching, Time Reversal, and More… (link)\nWhat is (phenomenal) time?\nThe feeling of time passing is not the same as physical time.\nAlbert Einstein discovered that “Newtonian time” was a special case of physical time, since gravity, relativity, and the constancy of the speed of light entails that space, time, mass, and gravity are intimately connected. He, in a sense, discovered a generalization of our common-sense notion of physical time; a generalization which accounts for the effects of moving and accelerating frames of reference on the relative passage of time between observers. Physical time, it turns out, could manifest in many more (exotic) ways than was previously thought.\nLikewise, we find that our everyday phenomenal time (i.e. the feeling of time passing) is a special case of a far more general set of possible time-like qualities of experience. In particular, in this video I discuss “exotic phenomenal time” experiences, which include oddities such as time-loops, moments of eternity, time branching, and time reversal. I then go on to explain these exotic phenomenal time experiences with a model we call the “pseudo-time arrow”, which involves implicit causality in the network of sensations we experience on each “moment of experience”. Thus we realize that phenomenal time is an incredibly general property! It turns out that we haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible here… it’s about time we do so.\nFurther readings on this topic:\nOriginal article about the pseudo-time arrowDetailed presentation about the pseudo-time arrow (given at the Foresight Institute in 2020) Modeling Psychedelic TracersQRI’s Tracer Replication ToolLSD and Quantum Measurements: Can you see Schrödinger’s cat both dead and alive on acid?How to secretly communicate with people on LSDRelativity: The Special and the General Theory – (Einstein’s very own explanation of his theory)A new way to visualize General Relativity\n\n\nBenzos: Why the Withdrawal is Worse than the High is Good (+ Flumazenil/NAD+ Anti-Tolerance Action) (link)\nMost people have low-resolution models of how drug tolerance works. Folk theories that “what goes up must come down” and theories in the medical establishment about how you can “stabilize a patient on a dose” and expect optimal effects long term get in the way of actually looking at how tolerance works.\nIn this video I explain why benzo withdrawal is far worse than the high they give you is good.\nCore arguments presented:\nBenzos can treat anxiety, insomnia, palpitations, seizures, hallucinations, etc. If you use them to treat one of these symptoms, the rebound will nonetheless involve all of them.Kindling – How long-term use leads to neural annealing of the “withdrawal neural patterns”.Amnesia effects prevent you from remembering the good parts/only remembering the bad parts.Neurotoxicity from long-term benzo use makes it harder for your brain to heal.Arousal as a multiplier of consciousness: on benzos the “high” is low arousal and the withdrawal is high arousal (compared to stimulants where you at least will “sleep through the withdrawal”).Tolerance still builds up even when you don’t have a “psychoactive dose” in your body – meaning that the extremely long half-life of clonazepam and diazepam and their metabolites (50h+) entails that you still develop long-term tolerance even with weekly or biweekly use!\nI then go into how the (empirically false) common-sense view of drug tolerance is delaying promising research avenues, such as “anti-tolerance drugs” (see links below). In particular, NAD+ IV and Flumazenil seem to have large effect sizes for treating benzo withdrawals. I AM NOT CONFIDENT THAT THEY WORK, but I think it is silly to not look into them with our best science at this point. Clinical trials for NAD+ IV therapy for drug withdrawal are underway, and the research to date on flumazenil seems extremely promising. Please let me know if you have any experience using either of these two tools and whether you had success with them or not.\nNote: These treatments may also generalize to other GABAergic drugs like gabapentin, alcohol, and phenibut (which also have horrible withdrawals, but are far shorter than benzo withdrawal).\nFurther readings:\nEpileptic patients who have become tolerant to the anti-seizure effects of the benzodiazepine clonazepam became seizure-free for several days after treatment with 1.5 mg of flumazenil.[14] Similarly, patients who were dependent on high doses of benzodiazepines […] were able to be stabilised on a low dose of clonazepam after 7–8 days of treatment with flumazenil.[15]”Flumazenil has been tested against placebo in benzo-dependent subjects. Results showed that typical benzodiazepine withdrawal effects were reversed with few to no symptoms.[16] Flumazenil was also shown to produce significantly fewer withdrawal symptoms than saline in a randomized, placebo-controlled study with benzodiazepine-dependent subjects. Additionally, relapse rates were much lower during subsequent follow-up.[17]Source: Flumazenil: Treatment for benzodiazepine dependence & tolerance\nNAD+ for Benzodiazepine WithdrawalREVIEW: NAD+ for Detox and Post Acute WithdrawalAddiction Clinics Market Unproven Infusion Treatments To Desperate PatientsBenzo Withdrawal: Why I Ignored Medical Advice and Listened to the InternetXanax withdrawals ‘like being tortured alive’Anti-Tolerance DrugsBenzodiazepine Withdrawal SupporUsing Ibogaine to Create Friendlier Opioids\n\n\nScale-Specific Network Geometry (link)\nIs it possible for the “natural growth” of a pandemic to be slower than exponential no matter where it starts? What are ways in which we can leverage the graphical properties of the “contact network” of humanity in order to control contagious diseases? In this video I offer a novel way of analyzing and designing networks that may allow us to easily prevent the exponential growth of future pandemics.\nTopics covered: The difference between the aesthetic of pure math vs. applied statistics when it comes to making sense of graphs. Applications of graph analysis. Identifying people with a high centrality in social networks. Klout scores. Graphlets. Kinds of graphs: geometric, small world, scale-free, empirical (galactic core + “whiskers”). Pandemics being difficult to control due to exponential growth. Using a sort of “pandemic Klout score” to prioritize who to quarantine, who to vaccinate first. The network properties that made the plague spread so slowly in the Middle Ages. Toroidal planets as having linear pandemic growth after a certain threshold number of infections. Non-integer graph dimensionality. Dimensional chokes. And… kitchen sponges.\nReadings either referenced in the video or useful to learn more about this topic:\nQC Coronavirus Edition: Preventing Pandemics by Living on Toroidal Planets and Other Cocktail Napkin IdeasStanford’s CS224W “Social and Information Network Analysis” lectures (free and awesome!)Graphlet-based Characterization of Directed NetworksA Method for Reducing the Severity of Epidemics by Allocating Vaccines According to CentralitySentiment Expression Conditioned by Affective Transitions and Social ForcesTorus-Earth (by Anders Sandberg)Complex Networks: Small-World, Scale-Free and BeyondDiscovering Hyperbolic Metric Spaces Hidden Beneath the Internet and Other Complex NetworksEfficient embedding of complex networks to hyperbolic space via their LaplacianEmergent Complex Network GeometryStatistical Properties of Community Structure in Large Social and Information Networks (where the empirical “whiskers” and graded core are outlined)\nLeskovec’s paper (the last link above):\nMain Empirical Findings: Our results suggest a rather detailed and somewhat counterintuitive picture of the community structure in large networks. Several qualitative properties of community structure are nearly universal:• Up to a size scale, which empirically is roughly 100 nodes, there not only exist well-separated communities, but also the slope of the network community profile plot is generally sloping downward. (See Fig. 1(a).) This latter point suggests, and empirically we often observe, that smaller communities can be combined into meaningful larger communities.• At size scale of 100 nodes, we often observe the global minimum of the network community profile plot. (Although these are the “best” communities in the entire graph, they are usually connected to the remainder of the network by just a single edge.)• Above the size scale of roughly 100 nodes, the network community profile plot gradually increases, and thus there is a nearly inverse relationship between community size and community quality. This upward slope suggests, and empirically we often observe, that as a function of increasing size, the best possible communities as they grow become more and more “blended into” the remainder of the network.We have also examined in detail the structure of our social and information networks. We have observed that an ‘jellyfish’ or ‘octopus’ model [33, 7] provides a rough first approximation to structure of many of the networks we have examined.\nPs. Forgot to explain the sponge’s relevance: the scale-specific network geometry of a sponge is roughly hyperbolic at a small scale. Then the material is cubic at medium scale. And at the scale where you look at it as flat (being a sheet with finite thickness) it is two dimensional.\n\n\nWhy Does DMT Feel So Real? Multi-modal Coherence, High Temperature Parameter, Tactile Hallucinations (link)\nWhy does DMT feel so “real”? Why does it feel like you experience genuine mind-independent realities on DMT?\nIn this video I explain that we all implicitly rely on a model of which signals are trustworthy and which ones are not. In particular, in order to avoid losing one’s mind during an intense exotic experience (such as those catalyzed by psychedelics, dissociatives, or meditation) one needs to (a) know that you are altered, (b) have a good model of what that alteration entails, and (c) that the alteration is not strong enough that it breaks down either (a) or (b). So drugs that make you forget you are under the influence, or that you don’t know how to model (or have a mistaken model of) can deeply disrupt your “web of trusted beliefs”.\nI argue that one cannot really import the models that one learned from other psychedelics about “what psychedelics do” to DMT; DMT alters you in a far broader way. For example, most people on LSD may mistrust what they see, but they will not mistrust what they touch (touch stays a “trusted signal” on LSD). But on DMT you can experience tactile hallucinations that are coherent with one’s visions! “Crossing the veil” on DMT is not a visual experience: it’s a multi-modal experience, like entering a cave hiding behind a waterfall.\nSome of the signals that DMT messes with that often convince people that what they experienced was mind-independent include:\nHyperbolic geometry and mathematical complexity; experiencing “impossible objects”.Incredibly high-resolution multi-modal integration: hallucinations are “coherent” across senses.Philosophical qualia enhancement: it alters not only your senses and emotions, but also “the way you organize models of reality”.More “energized” experiences feel inherently more real, and DMT can increase the energy parameter to an extreme degree.Highly valenced experiences also feel more real – the bliss and the horror are interpreted as “belonging to the vibe of a reality” rather than being just a property of your experience.DMT can give you powerful hallucinations in every modality: not only visual hallucinations, but also tactile, auditory, scent, taste, and proprioception.Novel and exotic feelings of “electromagnetism”.Sense of “wisdom”.Knowledge of your feelings: the entities know more about you than you yourself know about yourself.\nWith all of these signals being liable to chaotic alterations on DMT it makes sense that even very bright and rational people may experience a “shift” in their beliefs about reality. The trusted signals will have altered their consilience point. And since each point of consilience between trusted signals entails a worldview, people who believe in the independent reality of the realms disclosed by DMT share trust in some signals most people don’t even know exist. We can expect some pushback for this analysis by people who trust any of the signals altered by DMT listed above. Which is fine! But… if we want to create a rational Super-Shulgin Academy to really make some serious progress in mapping-out the state-space of consciousness, we will need to prevent epistemological mishaps. I.e. We have to model insanity so that we ourselves can stay sane.\n[Skip to 4:20 if you don’t care about the scent of rose – the Qualia of the Day today]\nFurther readings:\nThe Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT ExperiencesMaterializing Hyperbolic Spaces with Gradient-Index Optics and One-Way MirrorsTypical N,N-DMT Trip Progression According to an Anonymous ReaderMy DMT Year – 1 – A Couple Creepy Trips (hand hallucination)The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences (@Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club)The Super-Shulgin Academy: A Singularity I Can Believe InSamsara (by Scott Alexander)Inner-Space Warp Drive (QRI’s Anders & Maggie)\n“The most common descriptive labels for the entity were being, guide, spirit, alien, and helper. […] Most respondents endorsed that the entity had the attributes of being conscious, intelligent, and benevolent, existed in some real but different dimension of reality, and continued to exist after the encounter.”Source: Survey of entity encounter experiences occasioned by inhaled N,N-dimethyltryptamine: Phenomenology, interpretation, and enduring effects\n\nThat’s it for now!\nPlease feel free to suggest topics for future videos!\nInfinite bliss!\n– Andrés", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/01/09/7-recent-videos-rational-analysis-of-5-meo-dmt-utility-monsters-neroli-phenomenal-time-benzo-withdrawal-scale-specific-network-geometry-and-why-dmt-feels-so-real/", "title": "7 Recent Videos: Rational Analysis of 5-MeO-DMT, Utility Monsters, Neroli, Phenomenal Time, Benzo Withdrawal, Scale-Specific Network Geometry, and Why DMT Feels So Real", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2021-01-10T02:23:00+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=5", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "a28086e3cb1fb578310acc89e1231a30", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Symmetry Theory of Valence: 2020 Presentation\n\nPresentation Given at the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London by Andrés Gómez Emilsson (December 8th 2020)\n www.qualiaresearchinstitute.org\nTranscribed with otter.ai. Edited for grammar and clarity by Mackenzie Dion.\nWatch the talk on our Youtube channel.\n\n\nSo, the Symmetry Theory of Valence. Just defining terms so that we’re all on the same page. There’s this thing called core affect which is basically what you get when you apply dimensionality reduction techniques to any one of many areas of psychology. There’s a surprisingly robust pair of dimensions that emerge in co-occurrences of words or even descriptions of behavior. These two axes, arousal and valence, seem to account for about 60% of the variance in terms of what information emotional words contain. And I mean, roughly speaking, arousal is the level of activation, how energetic you are, and valence is how good you feel. Most of what I’m going to be talking about is valence. That said, you need to also consider arousal in the picture to know what this is all about. Just a few examples: you have high arousal, high valence, so that would be kind of excitement and anticipation. But you also can have high energy, but not feeling really good, and that would be kind of anxiety or anger or irritation. Likewise, you have depression, which is low arousal, low valence, and serenity is peaceful, blissful calm, that would be low arousal, high valence. \n\nThis is just one example of one of the ways in which you can recover these dimensions of valence and arousal. This was a little study we conducted years ago. We were studying people who have experiences with all kinds of substances online. We were giving them the survey, where they were going to describe a particular substance along something like 70 different dimensions. Then I conducted factor analysis on that data set. Interestingly, we have three core dimensions of valence or valence-related axes, which give you a sense of, okay, what is the space of possible effects that you can get from some substances. There were actually six dimensions that emerged, but three of them are valence-related:\nWe have slow euphoria, which is equivalent to low arousal, high valence with top terms like calming and relieving. The negative predictors of it would be something like anxiety, producing difficult bodily discomfort. Fast euphoria is the sort of thing you get with stimulants, you know, energizing, sociable, the opposite of feeling spaced out and confused.\n\n\nThe other axis that kind of emerged was this notion of spiritual euphoria. That’s the term I used back then. I also used the term significance, or saliency nowadays. Now I would actually use the term criticality for other reasons that we can go into. There’s this other kind of axis for how you can experience intense valence with substances, which is different from slow and fast euphoria, which would roughly correspond to the psychedelic space. And that, you know, gets marked with things such as mystical, incredible, life changing. The opposite of that is trivial, self-centered, or irrelevant or something like that. This is just to complete the cube. And, you know, in a sense…\n\nThis is just a kind of change of basis, where you still get, in a sense, the valence dimension emerging out of this dimensionality reduction analysis. If you were to apply just one dimension, you know, if you ask the factor analysis to just give you one factor, it is going to be the valence factor. That’s the axis that accounts for most of the variance for the effects of drugs.\n\nI’ve got to say that I absolutely acknowledge that emotions are far more complex and intricate than just valence and arousal. This is the result of my master’s thesis where we were analyzing this thing called mood updates, how people feel over time, day after day. I was computing the transition probabilities between emotions, and you can do cluster analysis here and finding attractors. You’ll see that there’s additional information. That said, we concluded that a big chunk of the additional information that is not valence and arousal is actually information about your trajectory in the valence arousal space. For example, we found there would be emotions that because of what they tell you about your emotional dynamics we called gateway emotions, like feeling relieved and feeling hopeful. These terms contain information that you were in a negative, kind of depressive attractor, and you’re moving towards the positive high arousal attractor. In essence, the terms we use for emotions give you not only information about where you are in the valence-arousal space but also what is your trajectory in that space. But in a sense, valence and arousal still account for a very, very big chunk of what an emotion is. Okay, so hopefully I’ve convinced you of the importance of valence, at least in this context.\n\nNow, let’s jump into the Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV). The overall hypotheses and the first explicit argument for it appeared in this really, really awesome work by my collaborator, Michael Johnson, Principia Qualia. He has a really interesting skeleton of an argument that points to a lot of research threads that are really worth getting into. I highly recommend digging into this work.\nOne of the things that it lays out is the kind of conceptual framework to make sense of what type of thing valence might be. I’ll just define a couple terms, which is, first qualia formalism. If there’s one thing at QRI we are married to, you could say, it would be qualia formalism. That is, for any conscious experience, there exists a mathematical object isomorphic to it. We can make an analogy here to something like electromagnetism where we used to have lightning, and electricity, and magnets, and all of that seemed sort of somehow thinly related. But, it turns out that there’s actually just four equations of electromagnetism that tie together all of that phenomena. And you can compare it to something like élan vital, the essence of life. People used to think that maybe there is some kind of a substance that determines whether you’re alive or not. And we would say that, well, that kind of fell through, you know, in the end there is molecular complexity under more molecular complexity. There doesn’t seem to be such a thing as “life itself”. Life is not formalizable in the same way as electromagnetism is, but something that we would claim at QRI or we could even say something that we assume at QRI, because we believe it is a very generative frame, is that yes, there will be a set of deep mathematical structures to consciousness. In particular, if you expand this into other areas, we also think this is going to apply to valence: that there is going to be a deep and rich mathematical structure to valence, and that notion is called valence structuralism.\n\nIn Principia Qualia by Mike Johnson, he has this argument for it, which I definitely recommend reading, especially if you have the aesthetic of a physicist. I think you’ll really like this work, because I think it’s really, really good in that sense. What I’m going to do now is try to give you a kind of intuition for it. And then the whole empirical argument.\n\nImportantly, there are a lot of theories of what valence is. Mike looked at the literature, did a very deep dive into it, and realized that they’re usually unsatisfactory, or at the very least, they don’t get at the true core of what an explanation for valence should be like. So basically, you have these accounts of, for example, valence sees how the brain represents value. Ultimately, that’s just a correlation. Value is a fuzzy abstraction. Some people think valence is the presence of opioids in the brain. But if you inject opioids in different parts of the brain, it doesn’t always feel good. It actually needs to be injected in a very narrow range of stripes in the pleasure centers, and otherwise, it just causes strange feelings or wanting, but it’s not the signature of valence itself. Or, for example, the pleasure centers. Just because you’re calling something “the pleasure center”, and it’s correlated with feeling good, it doesn’t mean you have an explanation. It’s not a very insightful, illuminating, account of valence. \n\nSo what could it be? I’ll focus to a large extent on what we are going to call bliss, which is just very positive valence. What is that? What is very positive valence? What is the sense of ecstasy, bliss, intense happiness? There’s a lot of intuitions. Definitely a lot of people think it’s some kind of spiritual signal, and I wouldn’t want to convince you out of that view. But the truth is that there are a lot of different spiritualities, and they sometimes say contradictory things. So it’s kind of strange to expect that there’s this underlying universal spiritual signal that whenever you’re doing something aligned with spirit, you feel good. Because sometimes you can do something very different than somebody else and still have that feeling. Also, the idea that it is “merely” chemical reactions in the brain, again, is not a super satisfactory explanation… same as with pleasure centers, health, few prediction errors, etc. Well, and in the end, I add, yes, symmetry and consciousness, which is what I will be arguing.\n\nI also want to point out, and this is super important, that valence is not the same as healing, and it’s not the same as meaning. However, they’re correlated. I would also go as far as to say that high valence is necessary for healing and for meaning to a large extent. In a sense, you can have a lot of very high valence states that are actually very unhealthy for you. Just an example would be methamphetamine. It can feel great, but it’s unsustainable. To the extent that your nervous system is self-organizing around that high valence experience, it makes it kind of the center of your life. And, you know, it’s a dopamine releaser. It’s obviously unsustainable. You can’t actually do that long-term and expect good results. Whereas, something like meditation, or even psychedelics, because their tolerance mechanism is very, very different. You could say that, yeah, those might be high valence, highly meaningful, and also healing experiences.\nSo I just want to say that, you know, high valence doesn’t entail healing. And that in that sense, you might say, “Okay, why are we so interested in this?”, but I would say that high valence is a necessary condition for deep healing. And I would even go as far as to say that, for a psychedelic experience to be deeply healing, it has to involve high valence in one context or another. Of course, you may end up processing a lot of very difficult emotions. But ideally, it would be something that basically allows you to heal those difficult emotions and transform them into a state of mind that has many more of the positive qualities. \n\nAnd more so, high valence, even according to the Buddha, is an important factor for awakening. Of the seven factors for awakening, I would actually say about five of them are very connected to valence. Mindfulness, joy, relaxation, concentration, equanimity; they are kind of different flavors of high valence. They’re different ways in which a very high valence experience can manifest. The Buddha says that these are important things. Even if you only care about awakening, enlightenment, you may also care about the mathematics of valence. It might point you in the right direction as well.\n\nI’ll also mention, there’s a big difference between the recipe of a state of consciousness and what you might call the review, or the description, of that state of consciousness. I’ll make an analogy with cooking: if you have cooking instructions for how to make a cake, sometimes it’s very counterintuitive what the cake is going to taste based on those instructions. Like “add yeast” for example. A lot of things in the recipe you may not know exactly how are going to actually affect the result. So, the recipe may look very different from the review of the state. I would say that for a lot of meditation states, or even just general life advice, this idea of don’t mindlessly chasing pleasure or trying to satisfy all of your existing desires compulsively gives counter-intuitive results. Yeah, chasing pleasure compulsively is not going to result in a sustainable high valence. To some extent, a lot of meditation instructions tell you to neither approach nor withdraw from emotions to develop equanimity. Since you are not engaging with your emotions, it sounds like the result is a fully neutral experience, right? It sounds like it’s unrelated to valence, almost cutting out the valence. But I would say: that’s just the recipe. Those are the instructions for how you manage your attention in order to eventually change your brain to actually generate these very healthy, sustainable, high valence states. So I definitely want to overcome this prejudice of thinking that high valence is unrelated to spirituality. No, I think they’re actually very deeply, intimately connected. \n\nOkay, so let’s go into the Symmetry Theory of Valence. I’ll just read these, but we will go into more depth into all of these. So, you know, we talked about qualia formalism, there is a mathematical object whose features are isomorphic to phenomenology. We believe that, yeah, harmony basically feels good because it’s symmetry over time. And basically, there’s kind of this duality between symmetry and space and synchrony in time. We will go over pleasure centers. The way we explain pleasure centers in this theory is that they are kind of tuning knobs (this was first proposed in Principia Qualia). They are there these bridges that, basically, when they get activated, they enable global large-scale synchrony in the brain. This is something that ultimately is very testable. Because if you can activate the pleasure centers, or inhibit whole brain harmony, we predict that’s going to actually negate the positive valence effects of the pleasure centers. Likewise, if we can induce large scale harmony, without activating the pleasure centers, or maybe even inhibiting the pleasure centers, we expect that to be a high valence state. So, it’s a cool, testable interpretation of what pleasure centers even are. \nBoredom is kind of an anti symmetry mechanism. So that’s why even if you look at a cathedral or something like that, you’re not going to be happy forever. You’re going to be happy for a little bit. Because your brain realizes that you’re not learning anything, and adds kind of this dissonance in order to make you move on to something else. We are wired in such a way that what helps us reproduce symmetrifies our consciousness. So, it’s not that high calorie food in and of itself is symmetrical, it’s not that it in and of itself is pleasant. It’s more that the way our nervous system is programmed is such that when you eat high calorie food, it triggers high valence. And that triggered high valence is what would be symmetrical, not necessarily the chemicals that you’re eating.\n\nImportantly, valence, we think, has these three dimensions, which is positive, neutral, and negative. And you can actually have highly mixed experiences. You can have experiences, I don’t know, an example is you’re at a concert, enjoying yourself, but also you have to go to the bathroom, and you just broke up with your boyfriend. You can have these very complex mixed valence experiences, where parts of your experience are very pleasant, parts are very distressing, parts of those are very neutral, and that’s fine. At the same time, it still kind of collapses into this ultimately, “Hey, are you having a good time or not?”.\nAnd something that the Symmetry Theory of Valence would say, and this is a pretty interesting kind of relationship, and I’ll explain it in a couple slides. This is just to kind of put it out there in your head to bounce around as we go on, which is that we expect there to be a very, very intimate relationship between information content, and basically the range of valence that you have access to. So in brief, for very, very high valence states of consciousness, we expect those to have very close to zero information. Whereas, when you have this state that is close to pure white noise, we expect that to be basically zero valence. Hopefully, this will make more sense as we go along.\n\nThese are just some illustrations of this principle. Actually, we expect that some of the most negative experiences out there will actually be pretty close to very, very highly symmetrical. I put this disjointed lattice at the bottom. And I would claim that something like a bad 5-MeO-DMT experience is actually something that is very regular, except for some strange disjoints, or imperfections, that cause profound dissonance. Whereas, if you’re in the pure noise kind of range, it all feels blah, it all feels really close to neutral.\n\nWhen we say the state of consciousness is highly symmetrical and such, you know, let’s say, 5-MeO-DMT, or jhanas, or something like that, we expect these to actually show up in many ways. If you look at the biorhythms, like heart rate and breathing, that’s going to show up, symmetry is going to show up in some ways, being a different kind of projection of the latent state. I mean, ultimately, the formalism, you know, this mathematical object corresponds to consciousness is not observable directly, at least not right now. So we have to kind of rely on these projections, these interpretations of what’s going on, these ways of getting at this unobservable, underlying state. And EEG, connectome harmonics, biorhythms, and so on, are different ways of getting at it. I’ll show you at least empirically that it’s all so far consistent with the Symmetry Theory of Valence.\n\nHere’s kind of the big plan. All of these different projections of this underlying state. So we have basically this stimulus. These are kind of visualized also to give you an intuition. So there’s stimuli, basically more symmetrical stimuli with higher valence, then there’s the endogenous bodily state, you know, biorhythms, as well. The CNS State, the actual, okay, what’s going on in your brain, then the formalism, and then the phenomenology of valence. When you have high valence, we expect (and what we see is) that there’s symmetry all across the board, in each of these different ways of looking at the state of consciousness. In each of these projections of the latent state.\n\nSo I’ll go on and start with phenomenology. I know that phenomenology is such a tricky thing. It’s so difficult to do, right. It’s so difficult to do. You make a lot of mistakes in phenomenology, get confused, and become self-deceived. So I mean, hopefully, the observation I’ll relate to you is going to show you that at least we’re taking care of some of the failure modes of phenomenology.\n\nSo, first of all, we distinguish between intentional content and phenomenal character. So, if you smoke DMT, and you experience, you know, you say something like “I saw a dragon with my own eyes” that doesn’t mean there was actually a mind-independent dragon out there. And, you know, I take seriously your report that you saw a dragon, but I don’t know how significant that is necessarily. On the other hand, if you describe “Oh, and by the way, the dragon had scales that had a symmetry group of what’s called the glide mirror symmetry group, and it had a 17 hertz strobing effect“. Okay, yes, so we’re getting more into the phenomenal character. You’re actually describing what it felt like, not only what it was about. I would make the claim that these observations of symmetry being related to valence are about the phenomenal character. I don’t care that much about, you know, “What was the journey? What was the content of the experience?” I care more about what it felt like, what are the features of it, and what we observe is that there’s a deep connection here.\n\nSo I’ll just give you some examples. Basically, introspect. You know, the difference between massage and bodily pain. Massage is kind of this very, very pleasant, harmonious, tactile pattern throughout your body that gives you these very nice waves of pleasure, as opposed to bodily pain. Bodily pain, if you introspect on it, it’s almost kind of like there’s like pinch points and discontinuities and fragmentations and deformations in your sense of self and the continuity of your skin or your felt sense of your inner organs. Basically, I would make the claim that bodily pain always manifests in one way or another as a kind of symmetry breaking operation. Now, definitely keep this in mind if you ever have a pain again, hopefully not.\n\nAlso, let’s say anxiety versus relaxation. Anxiety, you could almost describe it as, constant prediction errors. “Oh, did my heart do something strange? Is my leg positioned properly?”. It’s a state of mind where all of these little imperfections bubble up to your awareness. I would say it’s interrupting the flow of your attention and creating these pinch points and deformations in the way you experience the world. As opposed to relaxation, where you’re almost kind of just completely melted into it. And it’s so regular, you can almost filter out most of your bodily sensations. And in that sense I would argue it has a very symmetrical quality.\n\nThere’s also this whole argument Mike brings up which is the phenomenology concerning non-adaptiveness, the non-adaptiveness principle, which is that basically, there’s a bunch of things out there that feel really good, but that weren’t in our evolutionary environment. Those are hints; we consider those hints that hey, if something wasn’t in the African savanna but feels great, it probably means that it’s kind of directly hacking into the patterns of valence somehow. We didn’t evolve to filter those out or to not get absorbed by them. And yeah, here are some examples, but I’ll go deeper into those. \n\nNow, there’s also this exotic valence. Bodily pain, anxiety, relaxations: those would be examples of “normal valence”. It’s the valence that we’re all used to. But I would say that also in “strange valences”, like valences in weird states of consciousness, they also follow this pattern. That in some sense, symmetry explains their pleasantness. And I’ll give you some examples.\n\nSo, dream music. I’ve had the pleasure or displeasure, you could say, of having had a lot of sleep paralysis and lucid dreams, and this effect is something you can experience in either sleep paralysis or lucid dreams. If you’ve had a lucid dream, where you were making music, or you heard, you’re hallucinating that there was a radio playing, you will notice that, “Oh my gosh, the music can be beautiful, like… incredible”. And this music, maybe you have heard it before, maybe not. Maybe your brain is generating it on the fly. But it has a quality to it that is extraordinarily hedonic and pleasant. And I remember studying this on myself over many lucid dreaming experiences. At first, I thought, “Oh my gosh, my brain is just unlocking this ability to create awesome harmonies and melodies”. But then I ended up realizing that even if I just make a kind of an “om”, this meditation sound, even though that sound is extremely simple, the quality of the sound in the lucid dream is profound. I mean, it’s almost kind of a surround sound, like 360 surround sound, and stereoscopic and full of reverb and richness. \nI would claim that it’s actually because, during a dream state, your brain is more resonant. You can kind of enter into these very, very resonant attractors, and it’s that quality that makes the music so compelling, not the melody. If you transcribe the melody, the melody may not be very significant. It was how it sounded that was so profound in the music in the dream.\n\nThen you have meditation. Even these images, maybe, I don’t know if this is cheating, but representations of meditation, like high attainments, and so on, they usually come with these beautiful symmetries and whatnot. If you examine the phenomenology of jhanas, how they’re described, there seems to be kind of this projection of less and less information content in your experience. Going from having all of your attention concentrated in one point to then the experience of completely perfectly smooth, boundless space to then just pure consciousness, and then the experience of neither nothing nor something. In a sense, that’s kind of approaching the limit of zero information. And then people report these jhana experiences, they’re not pleasant in a conventional sense. It’s not like eating ice cream or something like that, but they’re still very, very high valence. They’re blissful, in an exotic way. But, I do want to point out that there’s this fascinating, strange relationship here between low information content and the blissfulness and the healing quality of the state.\n\nAnd then there is exotic valence from psychedelics. I mean, again, I don’t want you to focus on the intentional content, what was the experience about. What you thought, of course, can influence your valence, but it’s more about the phenomenal character. There’s this phenomena of tracers, you move your hand around, and you see copies laying around, and in a sense, it’s giving a temporal depth to your experience. It’s almost kind of adding a new dimension of time, where qualia can pile up. And usually, if the trip is good, you’ll notice that these tracers are in a harmonic relationship with each other. That is kind of the essence of what makes them feel so good.\n\nLikewise, there’s a psychedelic texture repetition. You stare at a piece of grass on LSD, and it starts to symmetrify. And I would totally say this is exotic valence because you ask the person, and they will say “the ground was symmetrifying, and I don’t know why, but it was awesome”. There was something really cool about it, and why would that be? Our interpretation here is that psychedelics are, in a sense, unlocking the valence capacity of your visual cortex. It’s kind of transforming your cortex into a pleasure machine, basically allowing it to exhibit these profound symmetries, and that is what actually is making them feel so compelling. People will struggle to explain “Why were the visuals cool? Why were they interesting?”. When it comes down to it, I think it is the symmetry.\n\nInterestingly, these are called the wallpaper symmetry groups. There’s 17 possible ways of tessellating a two dimensional space. From subjective reports, we know that any of these can be experienced on a psychedelic. The ground, kind of chaotically, will arrive at one attractor of symmetry. It could be any of these 17, and they all feel great. They’re all extremely aesthetic and beautiful and blissful in one way or another. But it’s kind of a testament to just how general this effect is.\n\nI would make the claim, and this is obviously a strong claim, but it matters for something like therapy, psychedelic therapy. We recently saw this fascinating research on psilocybin for major depression, and that a lot of these effects are mediated by whether you had a mystical experience or not. I would say that if you did have a mystical experience, and it was healing, I would bet that while you were having that experience, the sense of space and time was basically extremely, extremely symmetrical. And here is kind of why it’s so confusing. Because you come back and you say, “Well, I saw Jesus”, and you think that you got healed because of Jesus. I don’t want to dissuade you from that view, but I would basically ask you “Okay, but when you experienced Jesus, what was the feeling of space and time?”. They might say something like, “Oh, it had a beautiful light. It had this beautiful harmony and rainbows”. And I’ll claim that if you introspect on them then that it’s actually the quality of phenomenal space and time that is healing and blissful. The meaning, the religious meaning, is something that is helping your mind basically concentrate on that space, and take it seriously as a way of propagating this negentropy in your nervous system.\n\nNow, another place where this shows up super, super clearly, phenomenologically, is on DMT. I definitely recommend this article we wrote that basically charts the DMT space. You can know a lot about where you are in the DMT space by describing what is your energy level on the one hand, and then what is the information content on the other. I would say DMT states that have close to zero information content would be kind of these geometric, perfectly repeating, symmetry groups, either 2D or 3D. Whereas, more chaotic states would be kind of in the middle. The energy level would be a matter of dose. The “height” you reach is very, very dose-dependent. But then the valence, I think it’s very, very dependent on actually where in the axis of information content you find yourself in.\n\nHere again, there’s this diagram that the most blissful experiences you may have on DMT are going to be on these kinds of honeycombs and perfectly symmetrical patterns. The most unpleasant experiences are going to be just right next to those, they are going to be kind of dissonant honeycombs. Whereas you know, when you get to complex narratives, like machine elves and alien realms and all of that stuff, those experiences would be very mixed in their valence. There’s both dissonance, consonance, symmetry, anti-symmetry; those are very complex experiences.\n\nNow, the information content, we think of them as basically attractors in feedback systems. You may end up in a chaotic attractor, you may end up in a limit cycle or a fixed point. And that will determine how much information content the state has. \n\nInterestingly, this also can be used to describe the difference between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT. We think DMT tends to have a lot more information content. \n\nSo you have these very rich patterns, and I would say competing synchronies. On DMT, there’s all of these slightly different frequencies that are competing for your attention and creating a narrative out of that. That is like a very mixed experience; it is both blissful and distressing at the same time.\n\nWhereas 5-MeO-DMT, which is described as far more powerful emotionally, tends to give you this sense of pure space, like the feeling of the insight into emptiness, the feeling of infinite boundless consciousness, very little information content. Yet, it’s so emotionally impactful to such an extreme extent.\n\nInterestingly, I would say, the reports do come out that on 5-MeO-DMT, you may have the best experience of your time, or you may have the worst experience of your life. It’s kind of bimodal. It’s either amazing or it’s extremely bad. Often, it starts out really bad and then it gets amazing. I would describe that in terms of kind of this annealing process where it basically starts with dissonance, and, over time, things synchronize, and you do end up where all of your nervous system is entrained to the same frequency, and that feels very, very blissful. Whereas DMT is always kind of in this mixed state. It is very difficult for DMT to be pure negative or pure positive. It’s always this mixed state. So I would say, yeah, this is kind of the phenomenological case for the Symmetry Theory of Valence.\n\nI’m two thirds of the way through the presentation. I’m just gonna walk you through the empirical evidence. So we were talking about phenomenology; that’s one of the projections of this formalism and its symmetry. There’s symmetry in the formalism. It’s gonna manifest in some forms of phenomenological symmetry. Likewise, you know, if you use external stimuli in order to generate a state, like, let’s say, watching a movie, playing music, playing stroboscopic stimulation, there’s a lot of evidence that indicates that the symmetry of the stimuli is the leading factor for how pleasant or unpleasant the resulting state is. We have all of this research in vision.\n\nThese are just some examples. It’s so stunning, right? Even if you know the effect, you still get the valence response. You go to a cathedral and think “Okay, I’m not gonna get high valence, I’m not going to get high valence”. You still get the response. It’s pretty automatic. As long as it has this rich, deep symmetry, oftentimes, it’s going to be very beautiful. There’s something very compelling about this.\n\nJust some random pictures to give you a sense of this.\n\nWhy does this feel good? It really has very little to do with our ancestral environment.\n\nAnyway, this is such a robust effect that, with the symmetry of faces, for example, even face paint can be used to modify the valence. So, if you don’t have a perfectly symmetrical face, but you add symmetrical face paint with beautiful patterns, you’re going to be judged as more beautiful. It’s just such a strong effect, that it can actually modify your perception of how beautiful somebody is. Likewise, if you add asymmetrical patterns, you look less beautiful. Now, this, I wouldn’t say this is that strong of evidence because this actually does have an evolutionary reason. Symmetry in faces is a marker of mutational load. So I don’t put that much stock in, symmetry of faces being that relevant. But symmetry in other forms is where I think it’s so stunning. \n\nYou also see this in symmetry in audio, basically, regular rhythms. Harmony is the leading predictor for whether a sound is going to be pleasant or unpleasant.\n\nYou know, this is Helmholtz’s big idea. He was the first one to figure out why playing two notes in a piano that are one semitone apart feels unpleasant. It’s because the harmonics are basically within what’s called the critical window. They generate beat patterns and the beat patterns can be described as basically symmetry breaking operations in the waveform. Those symmetry breaking operations, in essence, cause irritation. So basically, the more beating there is in sound, and the more beating across the spectrum, the more irritating and distracting and rough the sound is going to sound like. Whereas, when you have these harmonic relationships, you play one note, one piano note, and another at an octave of difference, the harmonics line up perfectly. Actually, the sound is very compressible because you don’t have this extra information of where all the other harmonics lie. They’re just the harmonic sequence. And that is universally described as a more pleasant sound.\n\nWhen you add up all the harmonics, you get these interesting curves. The height here is the amount of dissonance. When you have a relationship of one to two, basically an octave, you have zero dissonance, and that feels really good. Now, music is very complicated. We have to factor in the boredom mechanism. If you just play the same octave over and over, you get bored, and there’s an inner sense of restlessness and dissonance. But if you just hear it for the first time, then there’s a super, super strong relationship between symmetry and valence.\n\n\nThese are just examples of a piano chord.\n\nDissonant sounds. I can send you a link to all of these sounds after the presentation*, but I have some links for a SoundCloud account where you can kind of get convinced that “Oh gosh, these are actually really bad sounds”. It’s not that I’m saying they’re bad. If you ask 100 people, like 99% of people will say they’re awful. \n\nLikewise, reverb basically symmetrifies any waveform. Reverb is almost kind of this hack that you take almost any dissonant sound and you add reverb to it and is going to sound a lot less bad, a lot less distracting, irritating, and so on. So this is comparing the sound of a baby crying, which by the way, like in our analysis, it shows that babies crying, it’s almost like their sound is optimized for dissonance. It’s almost kind of as dissonant as it gets for a sound made by a human. For good evolutionary reasons, it has to be distracting, and catch your attention, bring the desire to stop it. But you add reverb and to give you a sense, that’s like if the baby was in a huge cave, you get all these echoes averaging out the beat patterns. It sounds way better, way less distracting, probably not good from an evolutionary standpoint. But, it’s just a fascinating kind of transformation you can apply to any waveform.\n\nAnd here, I just want to illustrate that valence can happen across the spectrum. So I also have this file**, and you’re welcome to listen to it after the presentation where you can have consonance anywhere in the spectrum, mixed in with dissonance anywhere in the spectrum, mixed in with noise anywhere in the spectrum. That ends up basically creating these very mixed states. \nSo basically, when I say “Oh, I had a mixed experience, a mixed valence experience” that underdetermines what I experienced because we don’t know if the positive part was in the high frequencies or in the low frequencies. We don’t know that. That’s why the full picture of valence would also include the spectrum for positive, negative, and neutral valence. You can have high frequency pleasure, you can have low frequency pleasure, etc. So that kind of explains why there’s a tremendous diversity of possible mixed experiences even though ultimately they’d still come down to symmetry. Deep down, they can all still be explained with symmetry.\n\nNow, endogenously generated symmetry, this is fascinating research. That when you have this “biorhythm coherence” you feel happier. And the way of computing biorhythm coherence is very related to musical consonance. Breathing entrained with heart rate variability is reported as giving rise to a just much, much better positive mood, and is one of the things that long-term meditation achieves. Meditation entrains these biorhythms and basically makes them interlock with one another. That is reported as giving rise to positive mood which is an interesting finding and very consistent with STV.\n\nHere are just some quotes. Cool.\n\nAnd you know, the heart palpitations. I mean, it’s similar to anxiety in that if you have like this usually regular metronome, and it’s failing, is generating these imperfections, that gives rise to unpleasant states of mind. I’m sure heart disease is terrible for your valence. Likewise, meditation is a wonderful tool for heart disease because it allows you to overcome those imperfections and still feel good despite the problem.\n\nIn terms of other endogenously generated symmetry, I will mention orgasm and flow. Orgasm is a powerful generator of endogenous resonance. It’s the entrainment of motor systems to near hallucinations, to synchronizing feedback processes across multiple functional networks. With an orgasm, there’s a deep, deep level of synchrony and symmetry across the nervous system. I highly recommend introspecting on this (not to get into your sex life or anything, though). I mean, it’s something you can actually pay attention to, and it becomes very obvious once you notice it. \nLikewise with flow, there’s this evidence that symmetry is deeply related to flow. Two physiological metrics for measuring flow are cortical muscular coherence and a degree of coupling between neural EEG waves and EMG oscillations of muscle activity. So, there’s also these interlocking patterns, lower information content, more symmetry. Yeah, it’s a strong predictor of flow. So like, hey, go figure flow is also symmetrical.\n\nOkay, let’s get into the symmetry in the brain. So this is kind of the other projection you could take of the latent state. If you look at the central nervous system of high valence states, how does the valence show up? And, you know, meditation, like all over the place, basically pretty much any kind of meditation, if done for a long enough time, leads to some kind of EEG coherence. Whether it’s gamma coherence, delta coherence, or alpha coherence, depends on which kind of meditation you do. But they all generate some form of coherence, and coherence in EEG is intimately related with symmetry. I mean, basically, two signals are coherent when they’re both reflections of a shared signal through a reverb pattern, meaning that they’re encoding the same information just through a different filter, which is, again, deeply, deeply connected to symmetry. \n\nHere’s a fascinating study from 2019 that I recommend reading which to me was really stunning. It was stunning in just how clear the connection with the Symmetry Theory of Valence was. The study is about the EEG recordings of the first and second jhanas and the interesting patterns that emerged in them. One of them is this seizure-like activity. Now, seizure-like activity is three to five hertz, and it doesn’t have harmonic structure. I mean most seizures don’t have their harmonics together with them. But the type of seizure-like activity you see on jhanas does have harmonic structure. And the picture here is basically the Fourier transform of the independent components of the EEG recordings. You can see there’s a very clean 5.6 hertz signal, together with its harmonic of 11.23 hertz. This is kind of stunning. Why would this happen? And jhanas feel really blissful. Without the Symmetry Theory of Valence, this is just super surprising and strange. With the Symmetry Theory of Valence it’s like, “Oh, yeah, you’re, feeling a really great symmetrical attractor of your brain and sustaining it”. So that’s going to feel good. \n\nEven you know, ketamine showing high levels of a gamma coherence.\n\nFor 5-MeO-DMT, the only dataset I’m aware of, of EEG and 5-MeO-DMT, shows coherence across the spectrum, not only gamma coherence, but also beta coherence, and especially delta coherence. Again, why on earth? The Symmetry Theory of Valence would explain this. It would say, “Yes, this is expected”. Other theories might struggle a bit. Now, I’ve got to say that just because you have high coherence doesn’t mean it’s going to be high valence. We expect also very negative valence could also be high coherence. Except that when you have total coherence, then we expect that to be always positive valence. Again, it’s going to have that relationship because you could still have a high average coherence, but have half of your channels coherent in a certain frequency and half of the other channels coherent in a slightly different frequency. That might actually maximize dissonance. So just average coherence is not enough. You also need to tell whether it’s in harmonic structure or not.\n\nPleasure in the brain seems to be kind of this distributed effect that also from our point of view would mean it’s actually a whole brain phenomena. \n\nThis is about what I was mentioning about the pleasure centers from our point of view. I mean, there’s this research of if you tried to synchronize clocks, and you tried to synchronize neurons, and you put them in a geometric grid. If it’s large enough, you’re not going to usually get full scale synchrony. You might have emergent patches of synchrony or traveling waves of synchrony. But if you also add these random connections across the network and reduce the synaptic path length, then you can unlock the ability for the entire network to enter synchrony. So we think of the pleasure centers as kind of these bridges that are, in a sense, lowering the average synaptic path length across your brain, and therefore enabling similar synchrony across the brain. And that’s the reason why we think the pleasure centers generally feel good when you activate them. \n\nOkay, getting to the end of the presentation. So I’ll just talk about a few near “enemies”. I put “enemies” in quotes, because we actually admire these people. They’re part of our research lineages. I think they’re a very, very key component of any good theory of consciousness. But I think when it comes to valence itself, there’s some explanations in the space that are really close to the Symmetry Theory of Valence, but they’re not exactly what we’re getting at. So there’s this whole account of computational efficiency. The brain likes computational efficiency, but in a sense, you still have to explain why the brain likes computational efficiency- what does this liking manifest as? We use this argument of “passing the bucket” which ideally your theory of valence should avoid. The theory should explain what valence itself is, not only when it gets triggered. These theories of computational efficiency, energy efficiency, we would claim, they’re telling you under what conditions positive valence gets triggered, but they don’t tell you what positive valence itself is. And that’s what the Symmetry Theory of Valence is getting at. \n\nSo yeah, these are some of the issues with those, at least as complete theories.\n\nFinally, okay, counter examples. There’s this whole theory I recommend reading called Neural Annealing (by Mike Johnson). But even very neutral energy that neither has harmony or dissonance, can still give rise to very positive feelings because it can give rise to this annealing process. And that’s actually what we believe is going on with psychedelics. Psychedelics gives you what Mike would call semantically neutral energy. And that gives rise to basically this entropic disintegration, a term from Robin Carhart-Harris and the entropic brain hypotheses, which then gives rise to kind of this search, or self-reorganisation that basically will settle on these basins of symmetry. And it’s those that feel good, not the energy that feels good. It is the end result, the attractor that it takes you to.\n\nAnd this explains, I think, why even somebody can like hot sauce. Hot sauce is kind of this unpleasant stimuli, but it can lead to euphoria. It can lead to this heightened state of energy. If you introspect on the euphoria of hot sauce, it’s not the unpleasant pain in the mouth, it’s that it raises all of your energy, your entire amount of the intensity of your consciousness. You can then notice these resonant waves, and it is those resonant waves that feel good, not the hot sauce itself. So there’s this kind of a step that basically separates one from the other.\n\nI’ll just very quickly, briefly describe one way we’re trying to test the Symmetry Theory of Valence. It is not the only way to test it. I would even argue that, you know, the argument that I here presented is itself a potentially strong argument. But ideally, you know, we generate novel predictions. And this is one of them, which is that we basically expect that the very positive states of consciousness will have a harmonic relationship, basically a consonant relationship between the brain harmonics. Yeah, using the work of Selen Atasoy.\n\nThis algorithm of quantifying the amount of consonance in brain harmonics, which is something we were working with, and hopefully will get resolved soon.\n\nWe anticipate that, again, if this is true, the Symmetry Theory of Valence would be validated. If it’s not, it doesn’t invalidate it, because there’s many ways in which it can manifest. But when you have harmonics that are in a consonant relationship with each other, and those are the main drivers of your experience, we expect that to be pleasant.\n\nThat is, euphoric.\n\nWhereas, when you have harmonics that are dissonant with each other, they generate these intense beating patterns. So we expect that to be described as unpleasant. Again, we don’t know, but we want to check if this is true. \n\n\nJust a couple testable predictions based on this, which is that we expect psychedelics to enhance the range of valence. Basically, psychedelics enhance energy across the board. Just all of the harmonics have more energy. We expect that some of those combinations will be just very consonant and reported to be very pleasant, some of those will be very dissonant, reported to be unpleasant. Then SSRIs, there’s a lot of research on SSRIs and their blunting effects. They cut the extremes of valence. So, we expect when it comes to harmonics that the SSRIs will be more noisy, less consonant, less dissonant. MDMA, we expect it to be a stable attractor of a few resonant modes that are very consonant with each other. Stimulants would be kind of high frequency consonance. Opiates would be low frequency consonance. Again, this idea that you can be in a good state leaves underdetermined whether there are symmetries in the high frequencies or the low frequencies, and this would disentangle these types of mixed experiences.\n\nThese are the last two or three slides which is kind of a case study which is SSRI’s. Roughly speaking, we interpret them as being noise inducers which is why things like orgasm on SSRIs are less intense. Crying is hard. I mean, crying itself is a kind of a dissonant and sometimes consonant, kind of resonant state. On SSRIs you feel kind of spaced out and music enjoyment goes down. So yeah, the way we think of SSRIs is that they’re almost kind of like listening to a white noise machine along your life, so it’s gonna cut off the extremes. It’s gonna blunt both very positive and very negative valence, and it’s gonna just kind of center you in neutral valence.\n\nWhereas psychedelics, they basically kind of purify and intensify your harmonics. And in that sense, you get to have more pleasant and more unpleasant states and both extremes.\n\nJust to remind you: introspect. I compel you, next time you’re on a psychedelic having a mystical experience, introspect on the quality of space and time. I suggest that you will probably be experiencing these kinds of beautiful ripples that are in a harmonic relationship to each other. Please email me if this is true or not true. But that’s the experience so far. And that’s the reason why this can feel so amazing. \n\nThe future of mental health, ideally, would be that we can identify, “what are the sources of dissonance in your nervous system?” and then find the shortest path to the smallest change possible that will give rise to sustainable consonance in your nervous system. Whether this is going to be with meditation, a psychedelic session, or yoga, or biofeedback will be person-specific. There’s probably a shortest path from a highly dissonant dysfunctional state to a sustainable consonant state for each person.\n\nAnd with that I just want to say thank you to other people in the team of QRI. And thank you, Robin, Shamil, and all of you guys for attending this presentation. And to the Centre for Psychedelic Research for hosting this presentation.\n\nThank you so much.\n\n* BART sound, Baby Crying, Baby Crying w/ Reverb\n** Consonance – Noise – Dissonance – Mixed Spectra\n\nSpecial Thanks to: Mike Johnson who initiated this research direction and has been deeply involved in it for years. To Andrew Zuckerman, Quintin Frerichs, Kenneth Shinozuka, Sean McGowan, Jeremy Hadfield, and Ross Tieman for their contributions to the current work this year. To everyone in the team for their help, support, and love. To our donors for their incredible help. And to you, dear reader. Thank you!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/12/17/the-symmetry-theory-of-valence-2020-presentation/", "title": "The Symmetry Theory of Valence: 2020 Presentation", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-12-18T06:37:03+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=6", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "bf5293e407c491b3f2e79470e76972c4", "summary": []}
{"text": "On the Medium of Thought\n\nContemplate the following three quotes together:\n\nExcerpt from Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) by Neil Postman (pgs. 17-23)\nChapter 2: Media as Epistemology\nIn the hope of simplifying what I mean by the title of this chapter, media as epistemology, I find it helpful to borrow a word from Northrop Frye, who has made use of a principle he calls resonance. “Through resonance,” he writes, “a particular statement in a particular context acquires a universal significance.” Frye offers as an opening example the phrase “the grapes of wrath,” which first appears in Isaiah in the context of a celebration of a prospective massacre of Edomites. But the phrase, Frye continues, “has long ago flown away from this context into many new contexts, contexts that give dignity to the human situation instead of merely reflecting its bigotries.” Having said this, Frye extends the idea of resonance so that it goes beyond phrases and sentences. A character in a play or story—Hamlet, for example, or Lewis Carroll’s Alice—may have resonance. Objects may have resonance, and so may countries: “The smallest details of the geography of two tiny chopped-up countries, Greece and Israel, have imposed themselves on our consciousness until they have become part of the map of our own imaginative world, whether we have ever seen these countries or not.”\nIn addressing the question of the source of resonance, Frye concludes that metaphor is the generative force—that is, the power of a phrase, a book, a character, or a history to unify and invest with meaning a variety of attitudes or experiences. Thus, Athens becomes a metaphor of intellectual excellence, wherever we find it; Hamlet, a metaphor of brooding indecisiveness; Alice’s wanderings, a metaphor of a search for order in a world of semantic nonsense.\nI now depart from Frye (who, I am certain, would raise no objection) but I take his word along with me. Every medium of communication, I am claiming, has resonance, for resonance is metaphor writ large. Whatever the original and limited context of its use may have been, a medium has the power to fly far beyond that context into new and unexpected ones. Because of the way it directs us to organize our minds and integrate our experience of the world, it imposes itself on our consciousness and social institutions in myriad forms. It sometimes has the power to become implicated in our concepts of piety, or goodness, or beauty. And it is always implicated in the ways we define and regulate our ideas of truth.\nTo explain how this happens—how the bias of a medium sits heavy, felt but unseen, over a culture—I offer three cases of truth-telling.\nThe first is drawn from a tribe in western Africa that has no writing system but whose rich oral tradition has given form to its ideas of civil law. When a dispute arises, the complainants come before the chief of the tribe and state their grievances. With no written law to guide him, the task of the chief is to search through his vast repertoire of proverbs and sayings to find one that suits the situation and is equally satisfying to both complainants. That accomplished, all parties are agreed that justice has been done, that the truth has been served. You will recognize, of course, that this was largely the method of Jesus and other Biblical figures who, living in an essentially oral culture, drew upon all of the resources of speech, including mnemonic devices, formulaic expressions and parables, as a means of discovering and revealing truth. As Walter Ong points out, in oral cultures proverbs and sayings are not occasional devices: “They are incessant. They form the substance of thought itself. Thought in any extended form is impossible without them, for it consists in them.”\nTo people like ourselves any reliance on proverbs and sayings is reserved largely for resolving disputes among or with children. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” “First come, first served.” “Haste makes waste.” These are forms of speech we pull out in small crises with our young but would think ridiculous to produce in a courtroom where “serious” matters are to be decided. Can you imagine a bailiff asking a jury if it has reached a decision and receiving the reply that “to err is human but to forgive is divine”? Or even better, “Let us render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s”? For the briefest moment, the judge might be charmed but if a “serious” language form is not immediately forthcoming, the jury may end up with a longer sentence than most guilty defendants.\nJudges, lawyers and defendants do not regard proverbs or sayings as a relevant response to legal disputes. In this, they are separated from the tribal chief by a media-metaphor. For in a print-based courtroom, where law books, briefs, citations and other written materials define and organize the method of finding the truth, the oral tradition has lost much of its resonance—but not all of it. Testimony is expected to be given orally, on theassumption that the spoken, not the written, word is a truer reflection of the state of mind of a witness. Indeed, in many courtrooms jurors are not permitted to take notes, nor are they given written copies of the judge’s explanation of the law. Jurors are expected to hear the truth, or its opposite, not to read it. Thus, we may say that there is a clash of resonances in our concept of legal truth. On the one hand, there is a residual belief in the power of speech, and speech alone, to carry the truth; on the other hand, there is a much stronger belief in the authenticity of writing and, in particular, printing. This second belief has little tolerance for poetry, proverbs, sayings, parables or any other expressions of oral wisdom. The law is what legislators and judges have written. In our culture, lawyers do not have to be wise; they need to be well briefed.\nA similar paradox exists in universities, and with roughly the same distribution of resonances; that is to say, there are a few residual traditions based on the notion that speech is the primary carrier of truth. But for the most part, university conceptions of truth are tightly bound to the structure and logic of the printed word. To exemplify this point, I draw here on a personal experience that occurred during a still widely practiced medieval ritual known as a “doctoral oral.” I use the word medieval literally, for in the Middle Ages students were always examined orally, and the tradition is carried forward in the assumption that a candidate must be able to talk competently about his written work. But, of course, the written work matters most.\nIn the case I have in mind, the issue of what is a legitimate form of truth-telling was raised to a level of consciousness rarely achieved. The candidate had included in his thesis a footnote, intended as documentation of a quotation, which read: “Told to the investigator at the Roosevelt Hotel on January 18, 1981, in the presence of Arthur Lingeman and Jerrold Gross.” This citation drew the attention of no fewer than four of the five oral examiners, all of whom observed that it was hardly suitable as a form of documentation and that it ought to be replaced by a citation from a book or article. “You are not a journalist,” one professor remarked. “You are supposed to be a scholar.” Perhaps because the candidate knew of no published statement of what he was told at the Roosevelt Hotel, he defended himself vigorously on the grounds that there were witnesses to what he was told, that they were available to attest to the accuracy of the quotation, and that the form in which an idea is conveyed is irrelevant to its truth. Carried away on the wings of his eloquence, the candidate argued further that there were more than three hundred references to published works in his thesis and  that it was extremely unlikely that any of them would be checked for accuracy by the examiners, by which he meant to raise the question, Why do you assume the accuracy of a print-referenced citation but not a speech-referenced one?\nThe answer he received took the following line: You are mistaken in believing that the form in which an idea is conveyed is irrelevant to its truth. In the academic world, the published word is invested with greater prestige and authenticity than the spoken word. What people say is assumed to be more casually uttered than what they write. The written word is assumed to have been reflected upon and revised by its author, reviewed by authorities and editors. It is easier to verify or refute, and it is invested with an impersonal and objective character, which is why, no doubt, you have referred to yourself in your thesis as “the investigator” and not by your name; that is to say, the written word is, by its nature, addressed to the world, not an individual. The written word endures, the spoken word disappears; and that is why writing is closer to the truth than speaking. Moreover, we are sure you would prefer that this commission produce a written statement that you have passed your examination (should you do so) than for us merely to tell you that you have, and leave it at that. Our written statement would represent the “truth.” Our oral agreement would be only a rumor.\nThe candidate wisely said no more on the matter except to indicate that he would make whatever changes the commission suggested and that he profoundly wished that should he pass the “oral,” a written document would attest to that fact. He did pass, and in time the proper words were written.\nA third example of the influence of media on our epistemologies can be drawn from the trial of the great Socrates. At the opening of Socrates’ defense, addressing a jury of five hundred, he apologizes for not having a well-prepared speech. He tells his Athenian brothers that he will falter, begs that they not interrupt him on that account, asks that they regard him as they would a stranger from another city, and promises that he will tell them the truth, without adornment or eloquence. Beginning this way was, of course, characteristic of Socrates, but it was not characteristic of the age in which he lived. For, as Socrates knew full well, his Athenian brothers did not regard the principles of rhetoric and the expression of truth to be independent of each other. People like ourselves find great appeal in Socrates’ plea because we are accustomed to thinking of rhetoric as an ornament of speech—most often pretentious, superficial and unnecessary. But to the people who invented it, the Sophists of fifth-century B.C. Greece and their heirs, rhetoric was not merely an opportunity for dramatic performance but a near indispensable means of organizing evidence and proofs, and therefore of communicating truth.\nIt was not only a key element in the education of Athenians (far more important than philosophy) but a preeminent art form. To the Greeks, rhetoric was a form of spoken writing. Though it always implied oral performance, its power to reveal the truth resided in the written word’s power to display arguments in orderly progression. Although Plato himself disputed this conception of truth (as we might guess from Socrates’ plea), his contemporaries believed that rhetoric was the proper means through which “right opinion” was to be both discovered and articulated. To disdain rhetorical rules, to speak one’s thoughts in a random manner, without proper emphasis or appropriate passion, was considered demeaning to the audience’s intelligence and suggestive of falsehood. Thus, we can assume that many of the 280 jurors who cast a guilty ballot against Socrates did so because his manner was not consistent with truthful matter, as they understood the connection.\nThe point I am leading to by this and the previous examples is that the concept of truth is intimately linked to the biases of forms of expression. Truth does not, and never has, come unadorned. It must appear in its proper clothing or it is not acknowledged, which is a way of saying that the “truth” is a kind of cultural prejudice. Each culture conceives of it as being most authentically expressed in certain symbolic forms that another culture may regard as trivial or irrelevant.\n\nExcerpt from Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram (pg. 24)\nIt is absolutely essential to try to figure out how you experience thoughts, otherwise you will simply flounder in content. What do thoughts feel like? Where do they occur? How big are they? What do they look like, smell like, taste like, sound like? How long do they last? Where are their edges? Only take on this practice if you are willing to try to work on this level, the level that tries to figure out what thoughts actually are rather than what they mean or imply. If my thoughts are somewhat auditory, I begin by trying to perceive each syllable of the current thought and then each syllable’s beginning and ending. If they are somewhat visual, I try to perceive every instant in which a mental image presents itself.\nIf they seem somewhat physical, such as the memory of a movement or feeling, I try to perceive exactly how long each little sensation of this memory lasts. This sort of investigation can actually be fairly easy to do and yet is quite powerful. Things can also get a bit odd quickly when doing this sort of practice, but I don’t worry about that. Sometimes thoughts can begin to sound like the auditory strobing section of the song “Crimson and Clover,” where it sounds like they are standing at a spinning microphone. Sometimes the images in our head can begin to flash and flicker. Sometimes our very sense of attention can begin to strobe. This is the point! The sensations that imply a mind and mental processes are discontinuous, impermanent.\n\nOne of David Pearce‘s comments in his Reddit AMA (2012)\nJust as one can only imperfectly understand the nature of dreaming “from the inside” – even in a lucid dream – likewise the nature of the ordinary waking consciousness may yield only state-specific knowledge that can only imperfectly be understood “from the inside” too. How much does the medium of expression of propositional thought infect that propositional content itself? (cf. Nicholas Rescher’s “Conceptual Idealism“)\n\nAnalysis\nWhat are your thoughts like? No, not “what are they about?” But their texture, what is it like? The medium of thought is not explicitly represented in the content of thought, at least not by default. The medium of thought adds constraints to imagination – what is and is not imaginable is state-dependent (perhaps not unlike our faculty of episodic reconstruction!). Your imagination is a reflection of the medium of your thought.\nRestricted to the sober “everyday” (non-psychedelic, non-meditative) medium of thought, we are in a sense confined to only accept ideas as having the ring of truth when they appear in the right format, not unlike how legal proceedings are based on oral tradition proverbs in the West African tribe Neil Postman wrote about in the first of the three quotes above. For the most part, we have a culture and a language whose communication assumes a sober medium of thought, and in turn we reject as cognitively and epistemologically illegitimate anything that deviates from it. Sober thought is the arbiter of truth. But are we not perhaps missing out on valuable knowledge if we don’t investigate alternate mediums of thought?\nOf course mastery over the medium of thought is only acquired through years of practice, tuning, and critical feedback. Consider how the sophistication of one’s thinking evolves over time; compare how a third grader thinks relative to a graduate student. There is no reason to expect this mastery over our sober medium of thought will translate into competence over exotic patterns of thought! When you take LSD for the first time and experience “LSD-like thinking patterns” you are like a newborn, faced with a completely new and exotic mode of self-reflective expression. No wonder “LSD thoughts”, when put into sober words, have a tendency of sounding like gibberish! But that is not to say that the medium of LSD-like thought patterns is doomed to be irrational, insane, or helplessly disconnected from reality. Far from it, as attested by the numerous anecdotes concerning genuine (and later verifiable) problem solving breakthroughs enabled by the psychedelic state (see: Harman’s and Fadiman’s research on psychedelic problem solving).\n\nSource: Selective Enhancement of Specific CapacitiesThrough Psychedelic Training\nHere I must agree with Steven Lehar: drugs are wasted on the young. In his book “The Grand Illusion” Lehar narrates how when he tried LSD as a teenager he thought it was interesting but couldn’t make any sense of his experience. After not taking it for more than a decade, he tried it again in his thirties while studying for a PhD in cognitive sciences. He was then much more capable of saying intelligent and insightful things about the nature of the state. I very much expect a Cambrian explosion of insights about the psychedelic state (and not only psychedelic insights!) if and when we bring together groups of seasoned neuroscientists and AI researchers together to trip in a systematic and grounded way. Perhaps we could organize a retreat in Jamaica? Importantly, I would suggest that we should approach the development of a scientific culture based on a psychedelic medium of thought with as few preconceptions as possible, yet allow it to be grounded in our modern scientific world-picture whenever possible.\nOnce we get past the prejudice against exotic mediums of thought (but without at the same time opening the floodgates to insanity either), we will actually get many new perspectives on consciousness, reality, and the very nature of semantics. Studying this on a large scale will entail using tools like Psychedelic Turk, Generalized Wada Tests, and Free-Wheeling Hallucinations. And further into the future, designer synesthesia may allow anyone to think in numbers. Dedicated linguists (or meta-linguists?) would be put to the task of identifying the isomorphisms between each medium of thought in order to create a state-neutral meta-language of thought (aka. the language of Harmonic Society).\nBecause the “work” needed to arrive at a culture based in exotic mediums of thought has yet to be done, across the globe we currently have a huge backlog of never-written insights from psychedelic users. You should perhaps think of this collective as a baby intelligence that is not yet verbally competent but which can think of the world in a completely different way than us. How many trips do you need to undergo before the psychedelic medium of thought acquires a verbal competence equivalent to that of our sober thinking? Considering the number of hours it takes for a toddler to learn language, probably quite a few! LSD and the Mind of the Universe by Christopher M. Bache is based on 70+ extremely well documented high-dose (~500 microgram) LSD trips. It is a book that I recommend reading for its phenomenological richness and clarity of “thought”. Despite the insanity that would typically be associated with anyone who has spent that much time in such radically altered states, Bache sounds completely cogent and grounded. His metaphysical conclusions are bizarre, yet familiar to anyone who has spent some time researching spiritual tropes. Yet the manner of presentation is exotic and fascinating. Who knows what hundreds if not thousands of rational psychonauts doing this kind of work could work out if they put their minds to the task of developing a language to talk about those states. To truly develop a community for such an exotic medium of thought, one will need to find ways to receive critical feedback from others. One needs critical feedback to learn and grow, so we may need to invent modes of communication for people experiencing exotic modes of thinking to fruitfully interact with one another.\n\nWhat would be an example of a quality of the medium of thought of the psychedelic state? Based on countless trip reports, it seems that LSD and related compounds allow you to “think about infinity” in a way that sober thought simply lacks. That said, when someone says that they “experienced infinity” or even “became infinite” on LSD I do not take their word at face value. At least not in the sense of the term which sober thinking imagines. I do, however, believe people when they say that such phrases are pointing at something meaningful, something they experienced. “Becoming infinite on LSD” does not literally mean that on LSD you experienced an infinite amount of qualia (for is it even intelligible or logically cogent to have realized arbitrarily large numbers?). We have to realize that infinity as a term is very different than infinity as a concept: when you say infinity while on a high dose of LSD you are referring to an aspect of your experience rather than a formally defined mathematical or common sense conception of infinity. And if I were to guess, I would say that the quality of experience that is being pointed at is related to the symmetry of both phenomenal space or time: time-looping has a seemingly endless quality and symmetrical texture repetition gives you a sense of infinite space not unlike that of seeing the never-ending reflections of parallel mirrors. Given our normal habits of thought and only available cultural references, one is pressed to communicate this quality of experience in ways that invariably distort their meaning. Some things have to be experienced to be understood.\n\nAnother property of the psychedelic medium of thought is that DMT-like cognition may be very well suited to reason about and indeed experience non-Euclidean high-dimensional geometry. And, incredibly, there are reports that the medium of thought triggered by 5-MeO-DMT is well suited to contemplate the question of “Why is there something rather than nothing?”. Getting into the weeds of why I think this happens will take us very far afield, but just to hint at it without further comment: I think this is because in states of extreme symmetry Zero Ontology is much more intuitive. A topic to be revisited in another post.\nUltimately, full-spectrum supersentient superintelligence will entail having access to all of these exotic mediums of thought and many more. Our descendants may some day have the ability to seamlessly switch between radically alien modes of cognition to tackle conceptual problems we haven’t even conceived of. In fact, that we currently can’t even conceive of, lacking the semantic primitives needed to do so.\nTo end on an observation that is closer to home: you do not have to go as far into exotica as the outlandish states of consciousness induced by DMT to notice how our state of mind influences the medium of our thought. Subtle, but real, are the ways in which emotions texturize our thinking. Next time you have an intense emotion, introspect on the ways it influences your imagination. In a great mood, do you not have, perhaps, much more access to soft, regular, and manageable textures of thought you can use as building blocks for your field of imagination? And when in a depressive mood, aren’t thoughts, perhaps, more likely to be built out of nauseous, gloomy, starved, or self-loathing building blocks? It is thus why in a sense it is so hard, for the most part, to “think yourself out” of a depression. This is because the thoughts themselves are the ways the depression expresses itself! (“The world of the happy is a different one from that of the unhappy.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein). On a happier note, I would like to end by encouraging you to introspect on the way music genres influence the medium of your thoughts. How, for example, the repetitive strobing of the synthesizer sounds of psytrance gives your thoughts an energized, motivated, loopy, meta, repetitive, echoey quality. Or how the signal diversity, harmonic cleanliness, and fractal organization of classical music may give rise to highly narrative, interwoven, and coherent patterns of thought. Indeed, I believe that a focused exploration of music for thinking (and music for thinking specific kinds of thoughts rather than thinking in general) has a lot of promise. I would not be surprised to find out that there exists music that is highly beneficial for learning Einstein’s theory of general relativity, or quantum field theory. And perhaps just as important, if not more so, I wonder if there is music that allows us to learn directly, intuitively, and memorably the intricacies of the nature of phenomenal love. Wouldn’t that be lovely?\n\nFeatured image source: @fractjack", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/12/12/on-the-medium-of-thought/", "title": "On the Medium of Thought", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-12-13T07:23:59+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=6", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "33ddf614e115b583b0a12c8bbb0f14c7", "summary": []}
{"text": "Oscillatory Synchrony is Energetically Cheap\n\nExcerpt from Rhythms of the Brain (2006) by György Buzsáki (pgs. 168-170)\nThe paramount advantage of synchronization by oscillation is its cost-effectiveness. No other known mechanism in the physical world can bring about synchrony with so little investment. What do I mean by declaring that synchrony by oscillation is cheap? Let me illustrate the cost issue first with a few familiar examples from our everyday life. You have probably watched leisurely strolling romantic couples on a fine evening in a park or on the beach. Couples holding hands walk in perfect unison, whereas couples without such physical link walk out of step. You can do this experiment yourself. Just touching your partner’s finger will result in your walking in sync in a couple of cycles. Unless your partner is twice as tall or short as you, it costs pretty much the same effort to walk in sync as out of sync. Once you establish synchronous walking, it survives for quite some time even if physical contact is discontinued. If both of you are about the same height and have a similar step size, you will stay in sync for a long distance. In other words, synchronization by oscillation requires only an occasional update, depending on the frequency differences and precision of the oscillators. Two synchronized Patek Philippe vintage timepieces can tick together for many weeks, and quartz watches fare even better.\nA much larger scale example of synchrony through oscillation is rhythmic clapping of hands, an expression of appreciation for superior theater and opera performances in some countries. Clapping always starts as a tumultuous cacophony but transforms into synchronized clapping after half a minute or so. Clapping synchrony builds up gradually and dies away after a few tens of seconds. Asynchronous and synchronous group clapping periods can alternate relatively regularly. An important observation, made by Zoltán Néda at the Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania, and his colleagues, is that synchronized clapping increases the transient noise during the duty cycle, but it actually diminishes the overall noise (Neda et al. 2000).* The explanation for the noise decrease during the synchronized clapping phase is the simple fact that everyone is clapping approximately half as fast during the synchronous compared with the nonsynchronous phase. Oscillatory entrainment nevertheless provides sharp surges of sound energy at the cost of less overall muscular effort. The waxing and waning nature of rhythmic hand clapping is reminiscent of numerous transient oscillatory events in the brain, especially in the thalamocortical system. Similar to hand clapping, the total number of spikes emitted by the participating neurons and the excitatory events leading to spiking may be fewer during these brain rhythms than during comparable nonrhythmic periods. A direct test of this hypothesis would require simultaneous recordings from large numbers of individual neurons. Indirect observations, using brain imaging methods, however, support the idea.**\n\nPerhaps the most spectacular example of low-energy coupling, known to all physics and engineering majors, is the synchronization of Christiaan Huygen’s pendulum clocks. Huygen’s striking observation was that when two identical clocks were hung next to each other on the wall, their pendula became time-locked after some period. Synchrony did not happen when the clocks were placed on different walls in the room. Huygen’s clocks entrained because the extremely small vibrations of the wall that held both clocks were large enough that each rhythm affected the other. The physical reason for synchrony between two oscillators is relatively simple, and solid math exists to explain the phenomenon.*** However, extrapolation from two oscillators to the coupling behavior of large numbers of oscillators is not at all straightforward. Imagine that, in a cylinder-shaped room, 10 clocks are placed on the wall equidistant from one another, each started at a different time. In a second, much larger room, there are 100 clocks. Finally, in a giant arena, we hang 10,000 identical clocks on the wall. As with Huygen’s two clocks, each clock in the rooms has neighbors on each side, and these clocks influence the middle clock. Furthermore, in the new experiment, there are many distant neighbors with progressively less influence. However, the aggregate effects of more distant clocks must be significant, especially if they become synchronous. Do we expect that synchronous ticking of all clocks will develop in each room? Various things can happen, including traveling waves of synchrony or local buildup of small or large synchronous groups transiently. Only one thing cannot occur: global synchrony.\nI know the answer because we did an analogous experiment with Xiao-Jing Wang and his student Caroline Geisler. We built a network of 4,000 inhibitory interneurons.**** When connectivity in the network mimicked local interneuron connections in the hippocampus, all we could see were some transient oscillations involving a small set of neurons. On the other hand, when the connections were random, a situation difficult to create in physical systems, a robust population oscillation emerged. So perfect harmony prevailed in a network with no resemblance to the brain but not with what appeared to be a copy of a local interneuronal network. The problem was the same as with the clocks on the wall: neurons could affect each other primarily locally. To reduce the synaptic path length of the network, we replaced a small subset of neurons with neurons with medium- and long-range connections. Such interneurons with medium- and long-range connections do indeed exist (see Cycle 3). The new, scale-free network ticked perfectly. Its structure shared reasonable similarities with the anatomical wiring of the hippocampus and displayed synchronized oscillations, involving each member equally, irrespective of their physical distance. The reason why our small-world-like artificial network synchronized is because it exploited two key features: few but critical long-range connections that reduced the average synaptic path length of the network and oscillatory coupling, which required very little energy. Analogously, cortical networks may achieve their efficacy by exploiting small-world-like organization at the anatomical level (Cycle 2) and oscillatory synchrony at the functional level. There is synchrony for (almost) free.\n\n\n* Most of the observations were taken in the small underground Kamra (Chamber) Theater of Budapest. Global and local noise was measured by microphones above the audience and placed next to a spectator, respectively. Rhythmic group clapping emerges between 12 and 25 seconds. Average global noise intensity, integrated over 3-second time windows, indicates decreased energy spending by the audience during the rhythm despite large surges of noise.\n** The BOLD signal (see Cycle 4) decreases over large cortical areas during both alpha dominance (Laufs et al., 2003) and thalamocortical spike-and-wave epilepsy (Salek-Haddadi et al., 2002), demonstrating that the metabolic cost of neuronal activity associated with increased neuronal synchrony may, in fact, be less than during nonrhythmic states. \n*** For the English translation of Huygen’s original letter about the “sympathy” of clocks, see Pikovsky et al. (2001).\n**** In reality, the issue we addressed was quite different from the clocks on the wall because none of the 4,000 interneurons was an oscillator. Instead, their interactions formed one single clock (Buzsáki et al., 2004). Coupling of numerous oscillators have been analyzed mathematically, but these mathematical models lack the physical constraints of axon conduction delays; therefore, they cannot be directly applied to coupling of brain oscillators (Kuramoto, 2984; Mirollo and Strogatz, 1990). For the coupling of two identical oscillators with realistic axon conduction delays, see Traub et al. (1996) and Bibbig et al. (2002).\n\nSee also:\n5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT – Interestingly, 5-MeO-DMT seems to lead to global synchrony (and thus the melting of internal boundaries, the feeling of complete oneness with the universe) whereas N,N-DMT instead seems to give rise to powerful clusters of synchrony which are constantly competing against each other (thus creating partitions in the mind and the sense of “an other”, aka. machine elves). It would be fascinating to figure out why this difference emerges at the level of functional changes to the brain’s network topology as induced by each drug.Modeling Psychedelic Tracers with QRI’s Psychophysics Toolkit: The Tracer Replication Tool – makes the case that psychedelic tracers may be a window into the brain’s network topology based on the rhythms they give rise to (which the tool seeks to rigorously quantify).Neural Annealing – provides a model of emotional updating involving global synchronization via an annealing process.QC Coronavirus Edition: Preventing Pandemics by Living on Toroidal Planets and Other Cocktail Napkin Ideas – here we present the concept of “scale-specific network geometry” as a possible tool to create bottlenecks for the exponential growth of a pandemic in a social network. That said, scale-specific geometry may also be used in populations of neurons in order to prevent specific types of synchronous behavior. This seems like a very fertile area of research.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/12/05/oscillatory-synchrony-is-energetically-cheap/", "title": "Oscillatory Synchrony is Energetically Cheap", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-12-06T05:42:34+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=6", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "36f56e32246fb142c9b403325ee38e88", "summary": []}
{"text": "Titans Anonymous\n\nExcerpt from Opening the Heart of Compassion: Transform Suffering Through Buddhist Psychology and Practice by Martin Lowenthal and Lar Short (pgs. 101-107, 112-113)\nBeyond Struggle and the Quest for Power: From Titan Realm to Skillful Means\n“Sure winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” – “Red” Sanders“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.” – George Santayana, Life of Reason, Volume 1“Only where love and need are one – And the work is play for mortal stakes – Is the deed ever really done – For Heaven and the future’s sakes.” – Robert Frost, “Two Tramps in Mud Time”\nThe Titans, dressed in full armor, are beings inflamed by jealousy. They see everything in terms of struggle, feel attacked by the gods, and seek the power to become gods. A giant tree grows on the border between the titan realm and the god realm and bears wish-granting fruit. While the tree grows in the territory of the titans, the fruit falls in the land of the gods. The gods, oblivious of where the blessings come from, eat the fruit and toss the pits over the wall between the two realms, which the titans take to be arrows of assault. They fire arrows and spears toward the gods, which magically turn to blossoms as they descend into their neighbor’s realm.\nAvalokiteshvara appears to the titans as the Spiritual Father Amogasiddhi, realizer of the aim and of all-accomplishing wisdom, and as the Divine Mother Tara, the All-Merciful. Amogasiddhi is an impeccably skilled warrior who remains cool and fearless in the face of attacks by all the titans, and who radiates a luminous green light. Unable to defeat him, the titans attempt to learn his skill. As they learn to separate their actions from their emotions, and to develop the qualities of skillful means — stillness and quietude, freshness of being, cool unfettered mind, productive activity, harmony with both comrades and opponents, precision, and selfless volition — their original desire to conquer the kingdom of the gods is undermined by their realization that there is nothing to be gained by the struggle.\nTara, as a “savior”, invites the titans, particularly the female titans, to look into the pool of tears they have shed for their husbands, brothers, and sons lost in battle. They reflect on the suffering that flows from their sense of entitlement, their tendency to be aggressive, and their orientation towards struggle. From this reflection comes a pause, a realization of the dangers of fixation, and a sense of grace and gratitude.\n\nWhen we live in the titan realm, we want to prove that we deserve to be respected, to be honored, to be loved, to be secure, and to be treated justly. We furiously engage in one activity after another, and often in many activities simultaneously, in an effort to show the world that we are worthy. We strive to avoid being criticized or attacked for some failure. We have an enormous fear of failure because it would leave us vulnerable to those who would destroy us with criticism and shame.\nIn our struggle to prove our worth and prevent failures, we feel compelled toward greater accomplishments and ever grander goals. If only we could control situations, we could use our intelligence, our energy, and our hard work to make things turn out as they should.\nShame and the Fear of Violation\nAs titans, we feel shame, envy, and fear of attack. All are rooted in the feeling that our basic integrity — who we are and what we feel — can and will be violated. We fear what others think of us, and we are convinced that they think we are not good enough. Shame is specifically this feeling of being unworthy and inadequate as human beings.\nRobert Bly points out that, when our inner sovereignty is not respected by our parents, our teachers, or our society, we not only develop shame, but also become confused about boundaries. When we live as titans, we live with paranoia. We think our boss is setting us up to fail. We are sure that the driver passing us on the right is defeating us in an imaginary race. Or we sense that our lover is holding back from acknowledging our achievements out of jealousy.\nAs titans we are haunted by the feeling that our friends, bosses, lovers, and powerful people are competing with us. They attack us, seeking to destroy our sense of worth and to steal what we have. Those who have more than we have are shaming us by example; they are revealing our failings. Those who help us must have ulterior motives such as domination and dependency. Those who do not help us are selfish and untrustworthy. Those who desire our friendship want the riches we have to offer. Those who give us gifts expect more in return. We know that we work hard and diligently, yet the fruits of our labor seem to benefit others more than ourselves.\nSo we frequently feel that we are being cheated, that others are reaping the rewards of our efforts. We become protective of our accomplishments. Rather than sharing the joy of our victories, we erect protective walls to secure our gains. This realm is characterized by the illusion of scarcity, the conviction that there is not enough to go around. Therefore, we must fight not only for our fair share now but also for control, so that we can get ours in the future.\nEnvy and Entitlement\nIn this realm we are preoccupied with our desire for what other people have. Our territory is extended beyond simply what we own to include those things that we deserve. If we are unable to obtain what we want, we experience not only frustration, but the pain of undeserved loss. We justify what we want as entitlement, and feel that we have a rightful claim not only to what we have but to what we think we need.\nThis sense of righteous entitlement shapes our attitude toward others: those who support our activities are friends, and all others are enemies. For the titan, even friends and allies are regarded with suspicion because they might shift positions, becoming enemies. This means that we are continually gauging relative positions, not only with foes, but also with friends. We cannot afford to let our friends become too good, too famous, too successful. Instead of rejoicing in their triumphs we feel alienated from them. We feel envy and shame at not having accomplished all that they have accomplished.\nThis frame of suspicion and threat means that we mistrust information from other people and cut ourselves off from learning from them. We think that only we can judge what is useful and true. We are preoccupied with the way information is manipulated for competitive ends. We think that one of the few things that we can control is the information that we give other people, and we not only use this to advance our own position but assume that others are doing the same. In fact, we believe that everyone is the same, with the same desires and motives and combative spirit. To us people act out of self-interest and are motivated by the desire for accomplishment, acquisition, status, and power. We distrust protestations to the contrary and demonstrations of alternative motives.\nTorn by Desire and Distrust\nWe are torn between our desire for approval and our distrust of others and their motives. We seek peaceful relationships and secure sense of belonging, but feel constant distrust and competition. We want to relax and are often exhausted by our constant struggles; yet we fear the consequences of lowering our guard.\nWe long to fit into the world, but we are convinced that we have to fight for our place and defend it. This means perpetual alienation from other people. We often decide to settle for their respect rather than seeking their love, as this appears safer in the world of competition.\nCompeting for Esteem\nCompetition, as such, is neither good nor bad. Competition can support us by giving feedback on our performance, by providing examples of what is possible, by engendering appreciation for the abilities of others, and by creating side-by-side intimacy through fellowship with our competitors. If, however, it is viewed simply in terms of winning and losing and of proving self-worth, it cuts us off from our aliveness. Our competitive urge drives us to be better, smarter and richer than other people. Even religious leaders and spiritual seekers work to become greater, more devout, more skilled and even more humble than anyone else. Yet, when we are concerned with surpassing others, we cut ourselves off from our own best qualities and energies.\nThis type of competition distances us from other people, making it easy to ignore the feelings and situations of those around us. The desire to win leads us to concentrate on weaknesses of others so that we will look better. We point out their failings as part of our campaign to appear superior. One paradox of competition is that we want to validate our inherent self-worth beyond all comparison by using comparison with others.\nThe preoccupation with winning distorts our natural inclination for meaningful action. We search for our arena, our field of competitive advantage. Then we specialize, narrowing the ground of competition to increase our chance of winning. We share less and less with others and lose interest in things outside our sphere of endeavor. Win/lose competitiveness not only alienates us from others but also from our own openness.\nTo make a virtue of our struggle, we elevate winning to an ideal, excellence to the greatest expression of human nature, and competitiveness to an innate human quality. […] The pressure to succeed, however, breeds the fear of failure and shame, which undermines our self-confidence and keeps us trapped in issues of self-esteem.\nWe use our continual comparisons with others and with our ideals to judge our progress and to map out strategies for the competitive struggle. The success of others is not an indication of our impoverishment, as in the preta realm, but a basis for shame and a target for achievement. We do not want to be less than others, and so we struggle to be superior to them. Comparisons spur us into action. Whereas in the preta realm we internalize the sense of comparison and evaluation, in the realm of the titans we externalize it and try to change our position. We often treat others as obstacles to be moved out of the way, or as data to be manipulated.\nWe feel shamed by the accomplishments of other people, as though they succeeded in order to spite us. We try to dismiss their sharing as “showing off” — another insult added to the injury of our relative failure.\nIn our titan frame of mind, we may come to feel that we must be the best at almost any cost. If we cannot exceed everyone else, then we will diminish their successes. If we cannot be taller naturally, we can at least lop off the heads of those around us.\nConceits of Superiority, Inferiority, and Equality\nWhen we inhabit this realm we are prone to three conceits: superiority, inferiority, and equality. The superiority conceit argues, “I am better than you,” or “You are worse than me.” The inferiority conceit says, “I am worse than you,” or “You are better than me.” The equality conceits suggests that “I am as good as you,” or “I am as bad as you are.”\nThis last conceit can be the most insidious because it seems virtuous. As titans, we are trying to make everyone at least as bad as we are. If we are angry with our partners and they are calm, we will try to make them upset to show that they are no different and certainly no better than we are. If we confess our failings, we want everyone else to confess theirs to demonstrate that they are no better than us. We want to bring them down to a common level where we can feel equal and can thereby validate ourselves. We enlist the political virtue of equality in the cause of proving that everyone is the same as we are.\n[…]\nAppealing to the Public\nIn our drive for respect and approval, we may be seduced by superficial judgments. People will encourage us to show only our most appealing behaviors and to say what they want to hear. We pander to an audience and take public attention as validation, even though it is dependent on outward appearances and manipulated impressions. \nThis habit of superficiality minimizes the threat to our constructed identity and therefore feels comfortable. We befriend people who are engaged in the same game because there is an implicit agreement that “I won’t call you on your game, if you won’t reveal mine.” With most people we attempt to manipulate their feelings, saying what will maintain their esteem for us and prevent their honest feedback. This further obscures both our feelings and our capacity for insight into our own habits.\nWhen we equate manipulation with success, genuine honesty appears naive and unproductive. Our lives seem to be functioning in high gear, our work resulting in material rewards and fame. Yet underneath this superficial progress, we sense that our integrity has been violated, thus aggravating our insecurity and agitation.\nOur dissatisfaction and striving prevents us from finding any natural balance in the world and experiencing harmony within ourselves. Our heart posture of struggle also prevents us from greeting new situations freshly. We become jaded in relating to ourselves and other people. Everything appears to be the same old thing, as we cloak our innate freshness with habitual perceptions and unconscious assumptions.\nSpiritual Masquerade of the Warrior\nAs titans we may enter the spiritual path to improve our personal power and to enhance our self-image and public image. We become warriors in our struggle for perfection. We want to mobilize the energy body in our pursuit of success and excellence. We are preoccupied with the psychic powers and impeccability of the warrior, and view other spiritual aspirants — and even our own teachers — as competitors. We also sense the power of harmony, spontaneity, and authenticity and want these for ourselves to serve our titan goals. \n\nCommentary\n(with 120 mg [of MDMA]) “I feel absolutely clean inside, and there is nothing but pure euphoria. I have never felt so great, or believed this to be possible. The cleanliness, clarity, and marvelous feeling of solid inner strength continued throughout the rest of the day, and evening, and through the next day. I am overcome by the profundity of the experience, and how much more powerful it was than previous experiences, for no apparent reason, other than a continually improving state of being. All the next day I felt like ‘a citizen of the universe’ rather than a citizen of the planet, completely disconnecting time and flowing easily from one activity to the next.” – PIHKAL entry on MDMA\nThe abolitionist project, i.e. the goal of preventing all future suffering, is tremendously ambitious and grandiose. It is not surprising, then, that one would assume that the demographic that it will tend to attract consists of people who inhabit the titan realm first and foremost. Likewise, when we talk about ending suffering, the grandiosity of this aspiration can likely trigger in the listener precisely the defense mechanisms of the titan realm. How many of the counterarguments against ending suffering are really coming from a place of equanimity and balance, and how many of them are just habitual titan realm reactions to a perceived threat to one’s status in the hierarchies we are invested in?\nOne may say: “I had to suffer to be great! To be meaningful, to be useful, to be respected, all of that has cost me a sea of sweat and tears. Without great sacrifice there is no great reward! Do you want to take that away from me?”\n\nThe Bingo of responses to the Hedonistic Imperative\nCompare such pained responses to the mindset that MDMA instills in us. Because on MDMA one often experiences one’s sense of self-worth as inherent rather than conditional, one is able to see our motivations with complete self-honesty. More so, one does not get entangled in the status competitions of others, as the unshakable sense of inner worth is not diminished by one’s relative position in these consensus realities.\n\n\n\nOne may surely worry that our natural low self-worth is perhaps necessary to achieve great things. That if we could actually emotionally get by with feeling better than well — in a state of compassion, bliss, and wholesomeness — we would have evolved to be that way already. Alas, evolution does not care about our wellbeing; only the inclusive fitness of our genes. And it surely was the case that back in the African Savannah being driven by titan realm energies was highly adaptive. But today, I suspect, we will gain a lot of value by examining all the ways in which titan realm energies, in fact, get in the way of great achievements. Indeed, the very meaning of greatness as seen from the point of view of the titan realm is highly impoverished, narrow, and one-sided. For greatness of an even higher kind is to be found in the wonder and majesty of working towards a world of beautiful feelings for everyone.\nIt is surely the case that a lot of human accomplishments come straight out of the titan realm. However, I would like to challenge the notion that titan realm feelings are necessary, desirable, or perhaps inevitable in high-achievers. In particular, we should recall that group selection has limits: while every cell of your liver is indeed “in it to win it” with you, this is not quite true for each “cell” of a human group. The reason is simple: we are not all genetic twins, so human colonies are generally bound to be unstable, filled with internal competition, and sabotage. I would posit that one can indeed work towards ambitious and beautiful goals without invoking titan realm energies. In particular, we should be frank about all the ways in which titan motivations are in fact detrimental to our very goals. The low mood and self-loathing caused by internalized low-status is undoubtedly a huge cause of low productivity (see: rank theory of depression); office politics a massive waste of internal resources; and the paranoia overhead of the realm a derailment of effective and coherent group action. Thus, while MDMA-like states of consciousness may not have been the optimally adaptive mindsets from the point of view of our selfish genes, I think that a strong case can be made that they might in fact be extremely adaptive at the group level in modern times. This can be empirically tested. Looking ahead, this maybe is especially so post-reproductive revolution, as we will get to decide the gene distribution of our offspring in anticipation of their expected benefits at the individual and group level.\nMuch has been said about how we are, by nature, status-seeking monkeys. But an important thing to point out here is that the objective of our actions can be disentangled from the way in which their underlying motivations are implemented. We are not utility maximizers as much as we are adaptation executors. Sure we may nominally act in a way that maximizes our inclusive fitness, but the way we do so is by executing adaptations rather than having a “gene copying maximizing brain module” or anything of the sort. More so, that such adaptations result in the maximization of our genetic inclusive fitness is only guaranteed to be the case in our ancestral environment of adaptiveness. The connection between the (largely male-dominated) titan realm temperament and constant warfare is undeniable in communities largely untouched by modern civilization like Yanomami tribes in South America. And I would argue, it also explains inter- and intra-group aggression in modern times. Today in modern society a lot of (most?) groups indeed run on the fumes of the titan realm. And the fact that this causes huge misery inside these groups is only one reason to want to change it. Even more importantly, the titan realm paranoia, attachment to group identity, and its desire to win at all costs are especially dangerous in an era of drones and nuclear weapons. The maintenance of group pride no matter the consequences is threatening the survival of our species. But modern environments can in principle be designed so that this temperament becomes thoroughly maladaptive.\nThankfully, there is a sliver of a chance that we will soon find ways to motivate large groups of people by entirely wholesome energies. How far-fetched is this? Well, research into MDMA is just starting. We are at the foot of a hockey stick figure of “studies per year” of MDMA and related empathogenic/entactogenic drugs and interventions. This research has the potential to bootstrap a new modus operandi for human groups in a way that is sustainable and adaptive at the personal and group level, such that it effectively makes everyone in them happy, wholesome, and productive. If we manage to do this, we may in fact experience a complete overhaul of the old world energies of pride and domination, in lieu of an adaptive sense that “I love the world and the world loves me”.\n\n(source)\n\nFeatured image: source.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/10/22/titans-anonymous/", "title": "Titans Anonymous", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-10-23T04:41:59+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=6", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "703f1b08955db41a3d39e61ad92401e9", "summary": []}
{"text": "Types of Binding\n\nExcerpt from “Mindmelding: Consciousness, Neuroscience, and the Mind’s Privacy” (2012) by William Hirstein (pgs. 57-58 and 64-65)\nThe Neuroscience of Binding\nWhen you experience an orchestra playing, you see them and hear them at the same time. The sights and sounds are co-conscious (Hurley, 2003; de Vignemont, 2004). The brain has an amazing ability to make everything in consciousness co-conscious with everything else, so that the co-conscious relation is transitive: That means, if x is co-conscious with y, and y is co-conscious with z, then x is co-conscious with z. Brain researchers hypothesized that the brain’s method of achieving co-consciousness is to link the different areas embodying each portion of the brain state by a synchronizing electrical pulse. In 1993, Linás and Ribary proposed that these temporal binding processes are responsible for unifying information from the different sensory modalities. Electrical activity, “manifested as variations in the minute voltage across the cell’s enveloping membrane,” is able to spread, like “ripples in calm water” according to Linás (2002, pp.9-10). This sort of binding has been found not only in the visual system, but also in other modalities (Engel et al., 2003). Bachmann makes the important point that the binding processes need to be “general and lacking any sensory specificity. This may be understood via a comparison: A mirror that is expected to reflect equally well everything” (2006, 32).\nRoelfsema et al. (1997) implanted electrodes in the brain of cats and found binding across parietal and motor areas. Desmedt and Tomberg (1994) found binding between a parietal area and a prefrontal area nine centimeters apart in their subjects, who had to respond with one hand, to signal which finger on another hand had been stimulated – a conscious response to a conscious perception. Binding can occur across great distances in the brain. Engel et al. (1991) also found binding across the two hemispheres. Apparently binding processes can produce unified conscious states out of cortical areas widely separated. Notice, however, that even if there is a single area in the brain where all the sensory modalities, memory, and emotion, and anything else that can be in a conscious state were known to feed into, binding would still be needed. As long as there is any spatial extent at all to the merging area, binding is needed. In addition to its ability to unify spatially separate areas, binding has a temporal dimension. When we engage in certain behaviors, binding unifies different areas that are cooperating to produce a perception-action cycle. When laboratory animals were trained to perform sensory-motor tasks, the synchronized oscillations were seen to increase both within the areas involved in performing the task and across those areas, according to Singer (1997).\nSeveral different levels of binding are needed to produce a full conscious mental state:\nBinding of information from many sensory neurons into object featuresBinding of features into unimodal representations of objectsBinding of different modalities, e.g., the sound and movement made by a single objectBinding of multimodal object representations into a full surrounding environmentBinding of representations, emotions, and memories, into full conscious states.\nSo is there one basic type of binding, or many? The issue is still debated. On the side of there being a single basic process, Koch says that he is content to make “the tentative assumption that all the different aspects of consciousness (smell, pain, vision, self-consciousness, the feeling of willing an action, of being angry and so on) employ one or perhaps a few common mechanisms” (2004, p15). On the other hand, O’Reilly et al. argue that “instead of one simple and generic solution to the binding problem, the brain has developed a number of specialized mechanisms that build on the strengths of existing neural hardware in different brain areas” (2003, p.168).\n[…]\nWhat is the function of binding?\nWe saw just above that Crick and Koch suggest a function for binding, to assist a coalition of neurons in getting the “attention” of prefrontal executive processes when there are other competitors for this attention. Crick and Koch also claim that only bound states can enter short-term memory and be available for consciousness (Crick and Koch, 1990). Engel et al. mention a possible function of binding: “In sensory systems, temporal binding may serve for perceptual grouping and, thus, constitute an important prerequisite for scene segmentation and object recognition” (2003, 140). One effect of malfunctions in the binding process may be a perceptual disorder in which the parts of objects cannot be integrated into a perception of the whole object. Riddoch and Humphreys (2003) describe a disorder called ‘integrative agnosia’ in which the patient cannot integrate the parts of an object into a whole. They mention a patient who is given a photograph of a paintbrush but sees the handle and the bristles as two separate objects. Breitmeyer and Stoerig (2006, p.43) say that:\n[P]atients can have what are called “apperceptive agnosia,” resulting from damage to object-specific extrastriate cortical areas such as the fusiform face area and the parahippocampal place area. While these patients are aware of qualia, they are unable to segment the primitive unity into foreground or background or to fuse its spatially distributed elements into coherent shapes and objects.\nA second possible function of binding is a kind of bridging function, it makes high-level perception-action cycles go through. Engel et al. say that, “temporal binding may be involved in sensorimotor integration, that is, in establishing selective links between sensory and motor aspects of behavior” (2003, p.140).\nHere is another hypothesis we might call the scale model theory of binding. For example, in order to test a new airplane design in a wind tunnel, one needs a complete model of it. The reason for this is that a change in one area, say the wing, will alter the aerodynamics of the entire plane, especially those areas behind the wing. The world itself is quite holistic. […] Binding allows the executive processes to operate on a large, holistic model of the world in a way that allows the model to simulate the same holistic effects found in the world. The holism of the represented realm is mirrored by a type of brain holism in the form of binding.\n\nSee also these articles about (phenomenal) binding:\nBreaking Down the Problem of ConsciousnessTopological Segmentation: How Dynamic Stability Can Solve the Combination Problem for Panpsychism (abstract for a paper in progress)Raising the Table Stakes for Successful Theories of ConsciousnessBeyond Turing: A Solution to the Problem of Other Minds Using Mindmelding and Phenomenal PuzzlesKrista and Tatiana Hogan: BC’s Hogan Twins Share a Brain and See Out of Each Other’s EyesThe Binding Problem (by Steven Lehar, which argues for a version of the “scale model theory of binding” discussed above)Cartoon Epistemology (by Steven Lehar)Binding Quiddities (by David Chalmers)Non-Materialist Physicalism: An Experimentally Testable Conjecture (by David Pearce)Consciousness and the Binding Problem (by Kenneth Shinozuka)Wada Test + Phenomenal Puzzles: Testing the Independent Consciousness of Individual Brain Hemispheres (by Quintin Frerichs)And additional links relevant to the Binding Problem gathered by David Pearce\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/10/16/types-of-binding/", "title": "Types of Binding", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-10-17T03:00:38+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=6", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "c38c38e6ea81ebb65f3e65228589c4e3", "summary": []}
{"text": "Modeling Psychedelic Tracers with QRI’s Psychophysics Toolkit: The Tracer Replication Tool\n\nTry it yourself!\n\nBy Andrés Gómez Emilsson (see special thanks)\nTL;DR\nWe developed a new method for replicating psychedelic tracer effects in detail: the Tracer Replication Tool. This tool gives us a window into how the time-like texture of experience determines the state of consciousness we find ourselves in, which clarifies what makes both meditating and taking psychedelics such powerful state-switching activities. We discuss how the technique of using the tracer tool may find useful applications, such as allowing us to describe exotic “ineffable” experiences in clear language, standardize a scale of intensity of psychedelic drug effects (a.k.a. a “High-O-Meter”), help us quantify the synergy between different drugs, and test theories for what makes an experience feel good or bad such as the Symmetry Theory of Valence. The pilot data collected with this tool so far is suggestive of the following patterns: (1) THC and HPPD result in a smooth and faint trail effect. (2) The characteristic frequencies of the strobe and replay effects for 2C-B are slower than those of either DMT or 5-MeO-DMT. And, (3) whereas DMT comes with a strong color pulsing effect leading to very colorful visuals, 5-MeO-DMT gives rise to monochromatic tracer effects. We conclude by discussing the implications of these patterns in light of an analysis of experience that allows for a varying time-like texture. We hope to inspire the scientific community and curious psychonauts to use this tool to help us uncover more patterns.\nIntroduction\nRhythmic activity in the brain is a staple of neuroscience. It shows up in spiking neurons, synchronous oscillations at the level of networks, global patterns of resonance and coherence in EEG recordings, and in many other places. The book Rhythms of the Brain by György Buzsáki is a systematic review of what was known about these rhythms back in 2006.[1] One of the things György talks about in this book is how a lot of neuroscience techniques focused on finding the neural correlates of perception tend to consider the variable activation of neurons from one trial to the next as noise. In experiments that look into how neurons respond to a specific stimulus, datasets are constructed that track the neuronal activity that stays the same across trials. That which changes is discarded as noise, and György argues that such “noise” is really where the information about the internal rhythms is to be found.[2] We concur with the assessment that understanding these native rhythms is key for making sense of how the brain works. Perhaps one of the most exciting developments in this space is the method of Connectome-Specific Harmonic Wave analysis (Atasoy et al., 2016). This way of analyzing fMRI data describes a “brain state” as, at least partly, consisting of a weighted sum of its resonant modes. This paradigm has been used with success for comparing brain states across widely different categories of experience: LSD, ketamine, and anesthesia, among others (Luppi et al., 2020).\nThese are exciting times for exploring the native rhythms of nervous systems in neuroscience. But what about their subjective quality? One would hope that we could connect a formal third-person view of these rhythms with their experiential component. Alas, at this point in time the behavioral and physiological component of brain rhythms is far better understood than the way in which they cash out in subjective qualities.\nCould there be a way to make these rhythms easily visible to ourselves as scientists? One interesting lens through which to see psychedelics is in terms of the way they excite specific rhythm-generating networks. This lens would present psychedelic states as giving you a sense of what it feels like to have many of these rhythms simultaneously activated, thus having access to a wider repertoire of brain states (Atasoy et al., 2017).\nBut you don’t need psychedelics to realize there’s something fishy about the solidity of our perception. Intuitively, one may get the impression that normal everyday states of consciousness do not show the signatures of being the result of ensembles of rhythmic activity. That said, some would affirm that paying attention to the artifacts of our perception may in fact be a window into these rhythms. For example, Lehar’s Harmonic Resonance Theory of the gestalt properties of perception (Lehar, 1999) attempts to explain the characteristics of well known visual illusions (such as the Kanizsa triangle) with principles derived from the superposition of rhythmic activity.\n\nKanizsa Triangles\nPaying close attention to the act of observing an object over time has led some researchers to play with the idea that our experience of the world is best understood as music (Lloyd, 2013), for our feeling of a solid surrounding results from the interplay between finely coordinated sensations and acts of interpretation. Indeed, the fluidity of sensory impressions betrays our common-sense notion that we experience a solid and stable world. It often takes a perturbation out of our normal everyday state of consciousness to notice this. As an example here, we can point out that insight meditation practices peer into the illusion of solidity and continuity of our experience, whereas concentration meditation enhances these illusions (Ingram, 2018).\nArguably, like a fish who cannot notice water until it’s taken out of it, the stitching process by which our brain constructs reality is usually hidden from view. To be taken out of the water in this context would be to be in a state that allows you to notice the seams of one’s experience. To the extent that this normal stitching process breaks down in exotic states of consciousness, they are clearly useful for research in this domain. Thus we argue that the artifacts of perception in alien states of consciousness are not noise; they provide hints for how normal experience is constructed. In particular, we posit that “psychedelic tracers” (i.e. the cluster of persisting visual phenomena caused by hallucinogens) may be a window into how rhythmic feedback dynamics are used to control the content of our experience. For this reason, we have been interested in turning what until now has been qualitative descriptions and informal approximations of this phenomenon into concrete quantitative replications.\nIn what follows we will showcase the value of a psychophysics toolkit we developed at the Qualia Research Institute called the Tracer Replication Tool for modeling psychedelic tracer phenomenology. Although we will focus on psychedelic experiences, this tool can have a much broader set of applications. For example, we show how the tool can be used to visualize and quantify the severity of HPPD, which currently has a very qualitative, and imprecise at best, diagnostic criteria. Likewise, the tool has the potential to bring together the complex clinical presentation of visual disturbances such as palinopsia, photopsia, oscillopsia, visual snow, and other conditions, into a coherent framework. Perhaps, speculatively, the connection between all these visual disturbances is to be found in the dysregulation of the rhythms of the visual control systems, which is what the tracer tool sets out to quantify.\nThe only attempt of arriving at quantitative replications of psychedelic tracers in the scientific literature we are aware of is by (Dubois & VanRullen, 2011). They used multiple-exposure stroboscopic photography in order to depict video scenes. They then asked many people who have had LSD experiences to identify the strobe frequency that best approximated their tracers (which on average was in the 15-20 Hz range).\nAs we will see, our model for psychedelic tracers is more detailed: it has multiple persistence of vision effects that combine together into a complex tracer. For this reason, the kind of tracers used in Dubois & VanRullen turn out to be a special case of our tool, which we call the strobe effect:\nLSD users perceive a series of discrete positive afterimages in the wake of moving objects, a percept that has been likened to a multiple-exposure stroboscopic photograph, somewhat akin to Etienne-Jules Marey’s chronophotographs [5] from 1880, or to more recent digital art produced in a few clicks (Figure 1). – Visual Trails: Do the Doors of Perception Open Periodically? by Dubois & VanRullen\n\n\nMultiple-exposure stroboscopic photograph. (source)\nBy using a wider set of effects, the Tracer Replication Tool might give us hints about how psychedelics disrupt native rhythms given how they affect the processing of perceptual information at a granular level.\nBefore we provide the full set of tracer effects along with their associated vocabulary, let us jump into the preliminary psychedelic replications we have obtained thanks to this tool.\n\nPsychedelic Replications\nOver the years since I’ve run the Qualia Computing blog, I’ve received many messages from people who, for lack of a better term, we could call rational psychonauts. This should not be too surprising, with pieces like “How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD” and “5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses”, the site has become a bit of a Schelling point for people who like to blend computational reasoning and the study of exotic states of consciousness. These rational psychonauts are people who not only are well acquainted with exotic states of consciousness, but also like to use a scientific and rational lens to make sense of such states. In particular, people in this cluster often ask me to send them experiments to try out next time they take a psychedelic substance. I certainly never encourage them to take drugs, but under the assumption they will do so anyway, I sometimes send them tasks to do. Thus, once we had a prototype for the tracer tool, I already had a set of more than willing anonymous pilot participants. I sent them the link to the tool along with some brief instructions. Namely:\nLook at the ball for a few minutes in state X (where X can be any substance, meditation, etc.). Then as soon as you come down, try to fiddle with the parameters on the left until the simulated tracer looks as close as possible to how you experienced it in the state. When you are ready, simply click “submit parameters” and add info about what the state you were in was at the time. In the case of HPPD, just try your best to replicate the tracer (I know it gets confusing when we talk about the tracers of the simulated tracers, but try to ignore those and just replicate the tracer of the original input).\nWithout further ado, here are the resulting replications I received:\nHPPD\n\n\nMild HPPD (participant said it was strongest on color red)\nTHC\n\n\n12.5mg edible, 60 minutes post-ingestion\n\n\n15mg edible, 90 minutes post-ingestion\n2C-B\n\n\n20mg orally ingested\n\n\n12mg “gummed”\nNotice how although the replication of the higher dosage is more mild in a way, they both share the presence of a strobe effect at roughly 5.5 Hz!\nDMT\n\n\n5mg vaped\n\n\n10mg vaped\n\n\n20mg vaped\nThe higher dose has a complex mixture of effects, including 40 Hz color pulsing (positive and negative afterimages mixed together), 22 Hz replay, and 27 Hz strobe. I’ll note that the participant included the following comment: “Aside from extremely fast tracers, the white space consisted of pixelated fractals. Color was abundant.”\n5-MeO-DMT\n\n\n5mg vaped\n\n\n10mg vaped\nAs we will discuss further below, it is worth noting that at least in this sample, there are no color pulsing effects present (which is unlike “regular” DMT).\nDrug Combination: Mescaline + ETH-LAD\n\n\n125μg ETH-LAD + 2 teaspoons of San Pedro powder\nThe above is the only datapoint we have so far from the combination of psychoactive substances. The participant took 125μg of ETH-LAD, and then two and a half hours later 2 teaspoons of San Pedro powder. The replication is of the way the ball looked like 5 hours after taking the first drug.\nDefinitions\nLet us now look into the specifics of the tracer tool:\nCore Effects\nCore effects are pillars of the tracer tool where a particular feedback dynamic is used. The core effects include trails, strobe, and replay.\nModifiers\nA modifier effect is one that plays with a core effect and alters it in some way. We will talk along the way about the modifying effects of persistence, intensity, and frequency, and then have a separate section to talk in more detail about the modifier effects of envelope (ADSR), pulse, and color pulse.\nTrails (Core Effect)\nThis is perhaps the most basic effect. Making an analogy with sound, trails are akin to a soft reverb with no delay:\n\n\nThe three settings for trails are: persistence, intensity, and exponential decay (which is binary in the current implementation and otherwise takes on the value of linear decay). Persistence determines how quickly the tracer vanishes, whereas intensity is a constant multiplier for the entire trail. Thus, by changing those parameters you can choose between e.g. a long but dim trail or a short but bright trail.\n\n\nHigh persistence / low intensity\n\n\nLow persistence / high intensity\nThe exponential decay parameter slightly changes how quickly the brightness goes down; when it’s on, the trails go down more smoothly (cf. gamma correction).\n\n\nWithout exponential decay\n\n\nWith exponential decay\nStrobe (Core Effect)\nThe strobe effect takes snapshots of the input at regular intervals. It works like chronophotography, and it is perhaps what most people think about when you first talk about visual tracers. It is the effect that Dubois & VanRullen used to find that LSD produces visual tracers at ~15-20 Hz.\n\n\nStrobe effect at 16.4 Hz\nThe strobe effect, just as the trail effect, also has intensity, persistence, and exponential decay modifiers. In addition, it also has frequency, which encodes how many snapshots per second are being taken.\n\n\n5 Hz Strobe\n\n\n10 Hz Strobe\n\n\n20 Hz Strobe\nNote: The current implementation of the trails feature is done with a very fast strobe. In this way, when you set the strobe frequency to the maximum you get something that starts to look a little like the trails effect.\nReplay (Core Effect)\nWith an analogy to sound, replay would be akin to adding an echo or delay to a signal. Replay adds to the raw signal a copy of the output from a fraction of a second into the past. The result is a current output that contains a sequence of increasingly dimmer video replays of itself at regular time intervals into the past.\n\n\n6 Hz Replay\nAs with strobe, replay has intensity, persistence, exponential decay, and frequency as its modifying effects.\n\n\n3 Hz Replay\n\n\n12 Hz Replay\nNote: the replay effect is difficult to distinguish from the strobe effect with only still images\nPulse (Modifier)\nThis is a modifier effect that can apply to trails, strobes, and replays (right now the implementation only applies to strobe, but we may change that in the future). It takes a fraction of the input and modulates it with a sine wave at a given frequency. This way the trails, strobes, and replays can come and go (either in part or in full) at a given frequency. This adds sparkle to the experience, and it can plausibly help create a sense of reality or object-permanence for the hallucinations as they “vibrate at their own frequency”.\nCompare the difference between a strobe at 4 Hz vs. a strobe at 4 Hz with a pulse at 2 Hz:\n\n\n4 Hz Strobe\n\n\n4 Hz Strobe + 2 Hz Pulse at 50% amplitude\nAs you can see, the pulsing effect makes the strobes look like they have a sort of life of their own.\nADSR (Modifier)\nThis modifier effect was something we decided to add because James Kent of Psychedelic Information Theory (Kent, 2010) talks about ADSR envelopes for tracers in the section titled “Control Interruption Model of Psychedelic Action”:\nUsing control interrupts as the source of hallucinogenesis, we can model hallucinogenic frame distortion of multisensory perception the same way we model sound waves produced by synthesizers; by plotting the attack, decay, sustain, and release (ADSR envelope) of the hallucinogenic interrupt as it effects consciousness. (Fig. 2)3,4 For example, nitrous oxide (N20) inhalation alters consciousness in such a way that all perceptual frames arise and fall with a predictable “wah-wah-wah” time signature. The throbbing “wah-wha-wah” of the N20 experience is a stable standing wave formation that begins when the molecule hits the neural network and ends when it is metabolized, but for the duration of N20 action the “wah-wah-wah” completely penetrates all modes of sensory awareness with a strobe-like intensity. The periodic interrupt of N20 can be modeled as a perceptual wave ambiguity that toggles back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness at roughly 8 to 11 frames-per-second, or @8-11hz.5 Consciousness rises at the peak of each “wah” and diminishes in the valleys in between. On sub-anesthetic doses, N20 creates a looping effect where frame content overlaps into the following frame, causing a perceptual cascade similar to fractal regression. We can thus model the interrupt envelope of N20 as having a rounded attack, fast decay, low sustain, medium release, with an interrupt frequency of @8-11hz. Any psychoactive substance with a similar interrupt envelope will produce results that feel similar to the N20 experience. (Fig. 3) For instance, Smoked Salvia divinorum (vaporized Salvinorin A&B, or Salvia) has an interrupt envelope similar to N20, except Salvia has a harder attack, a slightly longer decay, a more intense sustain, a slightly longer release, and a slightly faster interrupt frequency (@12-15hz).6 These slight changes in the frequency and shape of interrupt envelope cause Salvia to feel more physically intense, more hallucinatory, and more disorienting than N20, even though they share a similar throbbing or tingling sensation along the same frequency range.– The chapter about the Control Interrupt Model of Psychedelic Action in Psychedelic Information Theory by James L. Kent\n\n“Figure 2.” (source)\nThis actually seems to be important for showcasing what makes drugs with similar characteristic frequencies capable of feeling so different.\n\n\n2 Hz Strobe\n\n\n2 Hz Strobe + soft ADSR pattern\nA really interesting research lead that is connected to the ADSR envelope of psychedelic tracers can be found in The Grand Illusion (Lehar, 2010), where cognitive scientist Steven Lehar narrates some of his experiences with LSD vs. LSD + MDMA. One of the things he discusses is the way that MDMA makes the experience jitter in a pleasant way that results in the LSD visuals becoming smoother (emphasis mine):\nUnder LSD and ecstasy I could see the flickering blur of visual generation most clearly. And I saw peculiar ornamental artifacts on all perceived objects, like a Fourier representation with the higher harmonics chopped off. LSD by itself creates sharply detailed ornamental artifacts, like a transparent overlay of an ornamental lattice or filigree pattern superimposed on the visual scene, especially in darkness. Ecstasy smooths out those sharp edges and blurs them into a creamy smooth rolling experience.– The Grand Illusion (pg. 62) by Steven Lehar\nI would suspect that this distinction will become legible with the judicious use of ADSR envelopes. Below you will find a possible rendition of this effect:\n\n\n10.3 Hz Strobe (maybe LSD)\n\n\n10.3 Hz Strobe + soft ADSR pattern (maybe LSD + MDMA)\nAs we will discuss further below, a more creamy ADSR envelope may cash out in a more pleasant experience, whereas a sharper or spikier envelope may in turn create more harsh experiences.\nColor Pulse/Negative After Images (Modifier)\nThe color pulse effect transforms the image’s color towards its opposite in the CIELAB color space with a given frequency. It modifies strobe, replay, and trails (in principle, there can be a different color pulse for each effect, but for now it modifies all three simultaneously).\n\n\n23.6 Hz Strobe\n\n\n23.6 Hz Strobe + 2 Hz Color Pulse\nUnlike pulse, color pulse modulates the color rather than the brightness of the input. The way we determine what color to transform into is by going to the opposite side of the CIELAB color space. This accurately approximates the negative afterimage of any phenomenal color (such as yellow being the negative afterimage of blue, and green being the negative afterimage of red). In our current implementation, color pulsing affects strobe and replay quite differently. For replay, the effect is one where there are now versions of the ball (or image, more generally) that have the opposite color that are chasing the original ball, whereas for strobe the effect is that of giving a seizure to each of the recent snapshots of experience! See for yourself:\n\n\n26 Hz Replay + 13 Hz Color Pulse\n\n\n26 Hz Strobe + 13 Hz Color Pulse\nIn a future version of the tracer tool, color pulse may become a sub-property of each main tracer layer in the same way ADSR is a sub-property of the strobe and replay layers.\nColor pulsing may be an important piece of the puzzle for understanding how otherwise similar drugs can have such dramatically different effects. Tentatively, color pulsing showed up as a distinction between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT according to one of the persons who submitted parameters (as you can see above in the replication section). For that person, DMT produced color pulses while 5-MeO-DMT did not. Of course this is just a sample size of N=1. But it seems like an important research lead if true! After all, DMT trip reports do talk of highly colorful hallucinations that typically involve the combination of colors and their opposites (e.g. “The wall looked like a Persian carpet with an alternating checkerboard pattern design of neon green and magenta light” – anonymous 10mg DMT), whereas most 5-MeO-DMT trip reports don’t feature color very much. In fact, 5-MeO-DMT trips are often in black and white, pure white, pure black, or “nothingness color”. We discuss the implications of this in more detail in the last section of this piece (Getting Realms from Time-Like Textures).\nFace Value vs. Dynamic Feedback Model\nIt is important to point out that the tracer tool works under the assumption of linearity between the effects it models. In other words, each effect modifies the input in its own way, and the corresponding modifications are added linearly at the end. This does not need to be the case. And in fact, we must expect the brain to have a lot of complex non-linearities where e.g. the pulsing effect is then used in a replay loop which entrains a strobing pattern which focuses your attention and so on. This complication aside, there is a lot of value in postulating the simple model first, and then adjusting accordingly when it fails to model the more complex phenomena. When we get there, once we have identified particular drugs, doses, and combinations that produce strange nonlinearities, we can then build tracer tools that explore how the parameters of particular dynamic systems can best explain the empirical data. Until then, let us start mapping out the space with this (relatively) simple linear model.\nUseful Vocabulary\nI would like to highlight the fact that using the tracer tool can be very educational. Familiarizing yourself with the effects and their modifications will allow you to be able to describe in detail psychedelic tracers even without having to use the tool again. For instance, I find myself now able to describe what kind of tracer effect appears on any given replication or trippy video. For example, now that you have read about them, can you tell us what is going on in the following gifs?:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n(source)\nThe Explanatory Power of the Time-Like Texture of Experience\nExotic Phenomenal Time\nWe have previously suggested that tracers in the most general sense (i.e. including tracers for emotions, thoughts, and all sensory modalities in addition to visual experience) are very important for understanding the time distortions one experiences in exotic states of consciousness. The overall idea is that the aspect of our experience that gives rise to the feeling of time passing is the result of implicit causality in the network of local binding connections, which we call the pseudo-time arrow (see a recent presentation about it). Don’t worry about the details, though. All you need to know is that here we model phenomenal time as the direction along which causality flows within one’s experience. And because this is a statistical property of our experience, it turns out that phenomenal time ends up being very malleable; it admits of “exotic phenomenal time” variants:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis framework can articulate what is going on when you experience crazy psychedelic states such as moments of eternity, time branching, time looping, and so on. Now, even these are just some of the possible ways in which the network of local binding connections can give rise to exotic phenomenal time experiences. In reality, because the pseudo-time arrow emerges at a statistical level in the network, one can have all manners of local pseudo-time arrows nested in complex ways, as briefly discussed in the presentation:\n I will end by speculating: I just walked you through seven types of exotic phenomenal time, but if indeed [the experience of time] can be explained in terms of causality in a graph, then there are many other exotic phenomenal times we can construct. This is especially so when we consider the space of possible hybrid phenomenal times. For instance, where in some regions in the network we may find time looping, some other region might be a moment of eternity, and perhaps another region is branching, and you know, if you have a very big experience, there is no reason why you wouldn’t be able to segment different regions of it for different types of phenomenal time. This is not unlike, perhaps, how we think of Feynman diagrams, where this part of it here is moving forwards in time, this part here is doing a loop, this part here is branching… I think a lot of the topologies we see here could be used to represent completely new [hybrid] exotic phenomenal times.– The Pseudo Time Arrow | Andres Gomez Emilsson (2020)\n\n\n\n\nGiven the diversity of ways in which phenomenal time can be expressed in an experience, I will start talking about the patterns encoded in the pseudo-time arrow as the time-like texture of experience. This way, rather than assuming that one’s sense of time is globally consistent in a given way (e.g. as in “I am fully inside a time-loop”), we can discuss how various patches and components of one’s experience have this or that time-like texture (e.g. “my visual field was looping, but my proprioception was strobing and my thoughts felt timeless”).\nDrugs\nAs a generic effect, all psychedelics seem to increase the duration of qualia in one’s experiential field, leading to a buildup of energy. But the precise shape this takes matters a lot, and it is certainly different between drugs. An example pointed above is how LSD and DMT seem to produce strobe and replay patterns of markedly different frequencies. For DMT, the spatial and temporal frequency of the visual hallucinations is usually described as “very high”. Based on the replications thus far, along with personal reports from a musician I trust, DMT’s “characteristic frequency” seems to be in the 25 to 30 Hz range. In contrast, LSD’s frequency is more in the range of 15 to 20 Hz: both Dubois & VanRullen’s LSD tracer study and subjective reports I’ve gathered over the years point to the hallucinations of acid having this rough frequency. Hence, the very building blocks of reality of a high-dose DMT breakthrough experience consist of tiny time-loops and strobe effects interacting with one another, weaving together a hallucinated world with surprising levels of detail and intense freshness of experience (as all the time loops are “young” due to their short duration). Really, when you take a small dose of DMT and you see the walls tessellating into wallpaper groups, notice how each of the tiny “bricks” that make up the tessellation is itself a time loop of sorts! It is not a stretch to describe a DMT experience as a kind of complex Darwinian ecosystem of tiny coalition-based time loop clusters bidding for your attention (cf. Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences).\nTaking this paradigm seriously allows us to interpret psychoactive effects at a high level in novel ways. For example, these are some of the general patterns we have identified so far:\nPsychedelics tend to have strong replay and strobe effectsHPPD, cannabis, and dissociatives seem to have a much smoother trail effectMDMA and 5-MeO-DMT have characteristically creamy ADSR envelope effects\nUsing the sound metaphor to restate the above, psychedelics introduce beats and recursion, dissociatives introduce reverb, and empathogens/valence drugs may affect the temporal blur of one’s experience. Thus, we arrive at a model of psychoactive substances that makes sense of their effects in the language of signal processing rather than neurotransmitters and functional localization. This sheds a lot of clarity on the mysterious and bizarre state-spaces of consciousness disclosed by psychoactive drugs and paves the way for a principled way of predicting the way drug combinations may give rise to synergistic effects (more on that below). More so, it lends credence to the patternceutical paradigm of drug effects.\nMeditation: Insight and Concentration Practices\nThe pseudo-time arrow paradigm suggests that one of the ways in which meditative practices can switch one’s state of consciousness is by disrupting sober time-like textures and enabling exotic time-like textures not available to the sober mind (see also: The Neuroscience of Meditation: Four Models (Johnson, 2018)). My personal experience with meditative practices is limited, but I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing some strange effects so far. In particular, I would say that concentration practices seem to give rise to experiences with long and stable pseudo-time arrows – a peacefulness in which nothing is happening yet the flow of time is constant and rather uneventful. The phenomenal time of highly focused states of mind may be full of reverb, but I do not think it has crazy time loops. Moments of eternity and timelessness may be present at the limit here (e.g. moments of eternity and Jhanas may be deeply connected), though I will need more personal experience to say this with confidence. \nOn the other hand, insight practices such as noting meditation may have more of a replay and strobe effect. In particular, this may happen as a result of three core effects from this kind of meditation: (1) it stops you from dissipating energy across long narratives, (2) it recaptures the energy you were going to use for a longer narrative to feed the noting process instead, and (3) it entrains the rhythm of noting. This in turn (a) energizes a regular constant-frequency pattern (the frequency of noting) and (b) reduces the energy of every other rhythm, which in turn (c) canalizes sensory stimulation energy towards the brain’s noting frequency and all of its harmonics, which eventually leads to a high-frequency energized state of consciousness whose building blocks are tiny time-loops. These can synchronize and create experiences with characteristic time-like textures made up of such tiny energized loops. Hence, noting practice above some level of skill (e.g. with a noting frequency above 3 Hz) can be DMT-like to an extent (in light of thinking of DMT realms as made up of energized high-frequency mini-time-loops).\nThese experiences characterized by intense tracer effects are in a similar space as the strange temporal distortions that happen when you are dizzy (like when you stand up too fast or hyperventilate). The “loss of context” that results from this effect is due to the longest replay loops becoming too short to contain the necessary information to “keep you in the loop about what is going on”. Hence the confusion about who or what you are, what you are doing, and how you got here that happens when you are near passing out from standing up too quickly. That confusion takes place in an otherwise highly detailed and intense high-energy and high-frequency “rush” made of tiny time loops.\nThus, one of the gateways into altered states of consciousness via meditation with noting can be summarized as what happens when you induce a self-reinforcing pattern of strobing, replay, and pulsing that fully captures your attention. This process builds up a lot of energy, which one can only wield up to a point. When one fails to control it, the state decays into a series of tracer patterns that use the clean loop as its background reference. As this happens, one experiences a world whose building blocks are beautiful tiny jewels of attention, slowly decaying as one loses the ability to stay focused. The decay process also seems to do something good when properly orchestrated. Namely, as the decay process begins, one naturally experiences a Cambrian explosion of qualia critters eager to feed off of the negentropy generated, as thought-forms need attention to survive. This whole process, one could argue, lends phenomenological credence to the paradigm of neural annealing, where one’s brain uses a heating and cooling schedule to entrain brain-wide harmony.\nIn other words, with something like a noting practice, one ends up creating a world simulation whose building blocks are all embedded in a very tight time-loop, a wind-up universe of concentrated awareness. Perhaps we are going too far with this explanation. Either way, we really feel that thinking in terms of these generalized tracer dynamic patterns is an exciting new conceptual toolkit that allows us to describe the quality of exotic experiences that were hard to pinpoint before.\nThree Exciting Possible Applications of the Tracer Tool: High-O-Meter, Synergy Quotient, and Harmonic World-Building\n(1) High-O-Meter\nHow high are you? It is often difficult to put a number on this question. But once we have established the parameters for different drugs (e.g. characterized DMT as living in a region of the parameter-space that is of higher frequency than LSD, etc.) we can show a series of gifs to someone and ask them to point at the one that best shows what tracers looked like at the peak of their experience. This way we can quickly estimate how high they got (at least visually) with a very simple question.\nFor example, we may find that the “modal response” to 50, 100, 200, and 300 micrograms of LSD looks as follow:\n\n\nSimulated tracer for 50 μg of LSD\n\n\nSimulated tracer for 100 μg of LSD\n\n\nSimulated tracer for 200 μg of LSD\n\n\nSimulated tracer for 300 μg of LSD\nIf this works, we would be able to sort research participants into one of these ranges just by asking them to point at the image that best captures their experience. Similar tools for other modalities could be used to obtain a global “highness score” meaningful across people.\n(2) Synergy Quotient (orthogonality vs. synergy vs. suppression vs. harmonization)\nWhat happens when you combine psychoactive drugs together? We have previously discussed in great detail what happens when you take combos of drugs from various categories (see: Making Amazing Recreational Drug Cocktails), but admit that there are huge puzzles and unknowns in this space. Of note is that some combinations give rise to synergistic effects (e.g. psychedelics and dissociatives), others blunt each other’s action (e.g. agmatine and nootropics), while yet others seem to create competing effects due to some kind of mutually-exclusive qualities of experience (e.g. salvia and DMT, a.k.a. “drugfights”). For an illustrative example of the third category, famous psychonaut D. M. Turner reports:\nI smoked 30 mg. of DMT in three tokes, followed immediately by 650 mcg. of Salvinorin that I had preloaded in a separate pipe.The effects were felt almost immediately. The first thing I noticed was a grid of crosshatch patterns. I had perceived something similar when using 2C-B with mushrooms, which I believed to be the result of using two psychedelics that were not compatible with each other. However, in this case the patterns were defined to a much sharper degree, and it seemed apparent that these two substances affect consciousness in differing ways that are not synchronistic when used together. Both the Salvia and DMT entities seemed to have been taken entirely off guard and had not been expecting this confrontation. These entities seemingly paid no attention to me as their attention was entirely fixed on each other. It soon became apparent that the two were going to battle, vying to determine who would have control of my consciousness.Source: #9  D.M. Turner – 650 mcg. Salvinorin with 30 mg. N.N. DMT\nWe think that the tracer tool can be useful to quantify the degree of interaction between two drugs. For instance, say that drug A produces a robust 10 Hz replay effect, whereas drug B produces a 7 Hz Strobing effect. Would drug A + drug B cause a tracer that blends these two facets, or does it produce something different? If the combination’s tracers are different than the sum of its parts, how large is this difference? And can this difference be identified with a particular recursive stacking of effects, or as the result of a nonlinear interaction between dynamic systems? We believe that this line of research may be very illuminating.\n\n\nDrug A\n\n\nDrug B\n\n\nDrug A + Drug B (“orthogonal”)\n\n\nDrug A + Drug B (“suppression”)\n\n\nDrug A + Drug B (“synergy”)\n\n\nDrug A + Drug B (“harmonization”)\nIn the above example, we show what various possibilities for the result of drug combos may be. “Orthogonal” effects mean that the resulting tracer is the sum of the tracers of each drug, “suppression” means that one drug’s effect reduces the effect of the other, “synergy” means that the resulting effects are stronger than you’d expect by just linearly adding the effects of each drug, and “harmonization” refers to the possible slight-retuning of the characteristic frequency of each drug’s effect that allows for a consonant blending. How strongly the combo is from the predicted effect based on each drug would determine the synergy quotient of the pair.\nA few possible (tentative) examples: alcohol + psychedelics give rise to orthogonal effects, opiates and psychedelics result in effect suppression, dissociatives and psychedelics result in strong synergy (not unlike what you get when you stack reverb and looping in music), and MDMA and psychedelics might result in harmonized tracers (hence the creamy and harmonious visuals of candy-flipping). We would love to see research tackling this question.\n(3) Harmonic World-Building\nTinnitus is usually loud and distracting, but in addition, it can also be annoying and unpleasant. At QRI, we posit that the precise pattern of tinnitus—not only its loudness—has implications for how bad it is for someone’s mental health: dissonant and chaotic tinnitus might be worse than consonant and harmonious patterns, for instance. \nIn a similar vein, we think that the particular tracer patterns, over and above just their intensity, of perceptual conditions like HPPD probably matter for how the condition affects you at a cognitive, perceptual, and emotional level. Concretely, we would like to study how valence is related to one’s particular tracer patterns: we think that when psychedelic tracers feel good, that such positive valence may show up in the form of (a) harmonious relationships between the components of the effects, and (b) a sort of creaminness in the way the tracers come over time (as shown in the MDMA + LSD trip report by Steven Lehar).\nWe take seriously the possibility that something akin to the rules of harmony in music (see: Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale by William Sethares) will have a showing in the way resonance in any experiential field cashes out into valence. In other words, the way patterns of resonance in the brain combine might be responsible for whether the experience feels good or bad. In particular, under psychedelics and other high-energy states of consciousness, one’s visual field is capable of instantiating visions of both tremendous beauty and tremendous terror. It is as if in high-energy regimes, one’s visual field acquires the capacity for creating pleasure and pain of its own (albeit “visual” in flavor!). While sober, one can get something akin to this effect, though only mildly in comparison: you can experience beautiful patterns by staring at a smooth strobe with eyes closed, or experience unpleasant reactions when the strobe shines at irregular intervals. The quality of the self-generated light-show in energized states of consciousness (such as a psychedelic experience) will likely have an impact on one’s sense of wellbeing. Is one’s inner light show all irregular, uncoordinated, sharp, and jarring? Or is it smooth, clean, robust, and soft? Based on the Symmetry Theory of Valence, one can anticipate that one’s tracer phenomenology feels good when it expresses or approximates regular geometries and bad when the implied geometries are irregular or disjointed.\n\n\nDissonant emergent pattern\n\n\nConsonant emergent pattern\nThe creaminess of smooth ADSR envelopes would likewise prevent sensory and emotional dissonance by virtue of softening spikes of sensations. This, of course, is ultimately an empirical question. Let’s investigate it!\nFinal Thoughts: Getting Realms from Time-Like Textures\nThe complexity and information content of one’s state of consciousness as induced by a substance may depend on what fits in the repertoire of time-like textures of the state. For example, some states might be much more prone to generate quasi-crystals as opposed to crystals, as we argued in DMT vs. 5-MeO-DMT (Gomez Emilsson, 2020).\nWhat are these crystals? One of the characteristic spatial effects of psychedelics is that they lower the symmetry detection threshold. This gives rise to the beautiful tessellations (at times Euclidean, at times hyperbolic (Gomez Emilsson, 2016)) everyone talks about. Analogously in time, psychedelics are notorious for creating time loops (cf. Going Loopy (Alexander, 2014)). In a deeper sense these are, we might argue, two facets of the same underlying effect. Namely, the creation of, for lack of a better term, qualia crystals. We can be cautious about assigning an ontological interpretation to qualia crystals; all we are proposing here is to accept them as phenomenological artifacts that tie together a lot of these experiential qualities. These gems of qualia come in many flavors, but they all express at least one symmetry in a clean and deep way. Whereas our experience of the world is usually made of a complex distribution of (tiny) qualia crystals which form the macroscopic time-like texture of our mind, we find in exotic states of consciousness the possibility of experiencing the refined, pure version. Timothy Leary in The Psychedelic Experience describes what he believes is the key existential conundrum close to the peak of an ecstatic trip: \nIs it better to be part of the sugar or to taste the sugar?Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner in The Psychedelic Experience\nIn line with the neural annealing frame (Johnson, 2019), there is a very real sense in which slightly past the peak of a psychedelic experience you will find some of the largest, purest, most refined qualia crystals (at least relative to the human norm). And what this looks like will depend a lot on what the available building blocks are! The diversity of these building blocks makes the time-like texture of experience triggered by different drugs dramatically variable. \nSome of the realms of experience are made with a time-like texture of interlocking time loops of different frequencies allowing you to experience the sense of “a big other”. In some other realms, the time loops are all aligned with each other, which makes self-other distinctions hard to represent and reason about. The various flavors for the felt sense of non-duality, for example, may correspond to different ways in which strobes, replays, pulse, etc. align perfectly to dissolve the internal boundaries used as building blocks to represent duality. At the extreme of “unification”, such as the state found in the 5-MeO-DMT breakthrough, one “becomes” a metronome whose tune is reflected faithfully everywhere in one’s experience, such that there is nothing else to interface with. Hence, one becomes “invisible to oneself”. To be in a state of near total oneness may entail the feeling of nothingness for this reason (thus the highest Jhanas being “nothingness” and “neither nothing nor something”).\nThis overall interpretative frame of exotic states as the result of time-like textures may show up empirically, too. One of the exciting early results, as mentioned above, is the report that while DMT creates complex positive and negative after-image dynamics full of color and polarity, the tracers on 5-MeO-DMT are monochromatic, meaning that one only experiences their positive after-image.\nThis alone may go a long way in explaining why the visual character of these two drugs is so distinct at their upper ranges. Namely, because DMT gives rise to complex checkerboard grid-patterns of overly-saturated colors intermingling with their polar opposites, whereas on 5-MeO-DMT, one often experiences an incredibly bright white light, or even a sense of translucid empty space, but no colors! The paradigm of using tracer patterns to make sense of states of consciousness would here suggest that a “breakthrough” experience can be interpreted as what happens when one’s world is saturated with the time-like texture characteristic of the tracer pattern of either drug. The realms of experience these agents disclose are the universes that you get when the building blocks of reality are those specific time loops and attention dynamics, leaving no room for anything that does not follow those “phenomenal time constraints”. When the dose is low, this manifests as just a gloss over one’s otherwise normal experience, a mere modifier on top of one’s sober reality. But when the dose is large, these time loops and attention dynamics drive the very way one’s mind constructs our whole sense of the world.\nIn this light, rather than thinking of exotic states of mind as places (as the “realm” metaphor alludes to), one can imagine conceptualizing them as ways of making sense of time. When you smoke salvia, you make sense of time in a salvia kind of way, which involves looping back chaotically in a way that typically results in losing the normal plot altogether and instead exotic narratives better fitted for the salvia attentional dynamics end up dominating the world-building process of the mind. Hence you end up in “salvia land”. Which is what you remember best. But the salvia land one ends up in is only a circumstantial part of the true story. The fundamental generator that is upstream of this realm would be the overall tracer pattern, the time-like texture of the experience: the neuroacoustic effect of salvia. He who controls the time-like texture of experience, controls the world-building process of the mind. Thus the paramount importance of understanding tracer patterns.\n\nDo you want to collaborate on this project?\nFor Researchers\nThe Tracer Replication Tool is the first of a series of research tools we are creating at QRI specifically designed with psychedelic phenomenology in mind. The spirit of this enterprise is to identify the ways in which psychedelic states of consciousness can enhance the information processing of the mind in some ways. Rather than focusing on how information processing is impaired, we develop these tools with the goal of finding the ways in which it is enhanced (cf. psychedelic cryptography (Gomez Emilsson, 2015), psychedelic problem solving (Harman, 1966)). We take very seriously high-quality trips reports from rational psychonauts, which help us ideate tasks that are likely to show large effect sizes. Thus, rather than bringing traditional psychometric tools to the psychedelic space, we think that developing the tools to assess the psychedelic state in its own terms is more likely to provide novel and significant insights. We would love to have academic researchers include some of these tasks in their own study designs. Becoming familiar with the Tracer Replication Tool takes less than 10 minutes, and based on the pilot results, operating it during a psychedelic experience is possible for a good fraction of people under the influence of these substances. It would be amazing to have tracer replications included in psychedelic studies to come. If you are involved in psychedelic research and would like to use the Tracer Replication Tool or learn more about the toolkit we are developing please reach out to us! We would love to hear from you.\nFor Participants and Volunteers\nThere are several ways you can help this project. As a beta tester participant, you can use the tracer tool to replicate tracers that you yourself have experienced. There are three categories here (which you can specify at the point of submission when using the tool):\nRetroactively: If you have experienced visuals tracers in the past and think you can remember them accurately (or at least recognize them when you see them), you can play with the Tracer Replication Tool and submit the parameters that best match your memory of the tracers you experienced.Post-Trip: If you are planning on taking a psychedelic in the near future* and want to submit a datapoint from your experience, open the tracer tool during the trip and look at the bouncing ball (and other animations). While staring at the center of the animation for about a minute, try to get a clear picture of what the tracers look like. We encourage you to play with the color, speed, and animation type while you are in the state so that you see how tracers react to different visual inputs. Then as soon as possible after the trip is over, come back to the tool and find the tracer parameters that best replicate what you saw.Within Trip: If you are familiar with the tracer tool parameters so that you can tell in real time whether you are experiencing strobing, replays, color pulsing, etc. then you may want to try to replicate the tracers you are seeing in real time. We recognize that this has the problem that the tracer replications will have psychedelic tracers of themselves, and that they get in the way of the tracers you are trying to reproduce. That said, the early reports we have received state that it is actually easier to do a good job at replicating the tracers while in the state than after it. So we also welcome submissions of this type.\nThe case of HPPD and other non-drug induced tracers could be considered in this frame as well. For instance, we have been made aware that during the meditation practice of Fire Kasina, one experiences many pronounced tracers of various kinds. Thus, if you are currently experiencing meditation-induced tracers, you can submit parameters of the within trip kind. If you saw the bouncing ball (or other animations) during the meditation but have now exited your state, then you could submit a datapoint of the post-trip kind. And if you only have the recollection of tracers but did not see the ball at the time, then submit a retroactive datapoint. Likewise, HPPD and other tracer phenomena may come and go and their intensity may wax and wane, so these categories are also useful in such cases.\nPlease sign up to the QRI mailing list if you want to stay informed about the development of QRI’s Psychophysics Toolkit. We also want to emphasize, as we note in the Special Thanks section below, that this tool could not have been made without our amazing QRI volunteers. We are very eager to work with anyone with technical skills useful for this and related projects. If you would like to help us build these tools and advance our collective understanding of exotic states of consciousness, please get in touch. For more QRI volunteer projects see our volunteer page.\n\n [1] A significant message of the book is that it is useful to conceptualize these rhythms as being the result of endogenous pattern-generating networks specialized to create specific frequencies, envelopes, and types of synchronization.\n[2]  “There are only two sources that control the firing patterns of a neuron at any time: an input from outside the brain and self-organized activity. These two sources of synchronization forces often compete with each other (Cycle 9). If cognition derives from the brain, this self-organized activity is its most likely source. Ensemble synchrony of neurons should therefore reflect the combination of some selected physical features of the world and the brain’s interpretation of those features. Even if the stimulus is invariant, the brain state is not. From this perspective, the most interesting thing we can learn about the brain is how its self-generated internal states, the potential source of cognition, are brought about. Extracting the variant, that is, brain-generated features, including the temporal relation between neural assemblies and assembly members, from the invariant features evoked by the physical world might provide clues about the brain’s perspective on its environment. Yes, this is the information we routinely throw away with stimulus-locked averaging.” (Buzsáki, 2006)\n\n*Disclaimer: We are not encouraging anyone to ingest psychoactive substances. \n\nSpecial Thanks to: Lawrence Wu for implementing the current version of the tool. To Andrew Zuckerman, Quintin Frerichs, and Mike Johnson for a lot of useful ideas, conversations, and keeping the project afloat. To Robin Goins and Alex Zhao for getting a head start in implementing an earlier version of the tool. To the QRI team for encouragement and many discussions. And to the anonymous rational psychonauts and the HPPD sufferer for contributing pilot data with visual replications of their own experiences.\n\nBibliography\nBuzsáki, G. (2006). Rhythms of the Brain. Oxford University Press.\nAtasoy, S., Donnelly, I., & Pearson, J. (2016). Human brain networks function in connectome-specific harmonic waves. Nature Communications, 7(1), 10340. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10340\nLuppi, A. I., Vohryzek, J., Kringelbach, M. L., Mediano, P. A. M., Craig, M. M., Adapa, R., Carhart-Harris, R. L., Roseman, L., Pappas, I., Finoia, P., Williams, G. B., Allanson, J., Pickard, J. D., Menon, D. K., Atasoy, S., & Stamatakis, E. A. (2020). Connectome Harmonic Decomposition of Human Brain Dynamics Reveals a Landscape of Consciousness [Preprint]. Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.10.244459\nRudrauf, D., Lutz, A., Cosmelli, D., Lachaux, J.-P., & Le Van Quyen, M. (2003). From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: Francisco Varela’s exploration of the biophysics of being. Biological Research, 36(1). https://doi.org/10.4067/S0716-97602003000100005\nLehar S. (1999) Harmonic Resonance Theory: An Alternative to the “Neuron Doctrine” Paradigm to Address Gestalt Properties of Perception. Available at http://slehar.com/wwwRel/webstuff/hr1/hr1.html\nLloyd, D. (2013). The Music of Consciousness: Can Musical Form Harmonize Phenomenology and the Brain?. Neurophenomenology. https://commons.trincoll.edu/dlloyd/files/2012/07/Lloyd-2013-Music-of-Consciousness.pdf\nIngram, D. (2018). Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book. Newburyport: AEON Books. Available at: https://www.integrateddaniel.info/book\nDubois, J., & VanRullen, R. (2011). Visual Trails: Do the Doors of Perception Open Periodically? PLoS Biology, 9(5), e1001056. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001056\nAtasoy, S., Roseman, L., Kaelen, M., Kringelbach, M. L., Deco, G., & Carhart-Harris, R. L. (2017). Connectome-harmonic decomposition of human brain activity reveals dynamical repertoire re-organization under LSD. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 17661. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17546-0\nKent, J. L. (2010) Psychedelic Information Theory. PIT Press. Available at http://psychedelic-information-theory.com/pdf/PIT-Print-Web.pdf\nLehar, S. (2010). The Grand Illusion: A Psychonautical Odyssey Into the Depths of Human Experience. Available at: http://slehar.com/wwwRel/GrandIllusion.pdf\nTurner, D. M. (1996). Salvinorin – The Psychedelic Essence of Salvia Divinorum. Panther Press. Available at: http://www.lavondyss.com/donut/toc.html\nLeary, T. Metzner, R. Dass, R. (1964). The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Available at: http://www.leary.ru/download/leary/Timothy%20Leary%20-%20The%20Tibetan%20Book%20Of%20The%20Dead.pdf\nHarman, W. Fadiman, J. (1996). Selective Enhancement of Specific Capacities Through Psychedelic Training. Psychedelic Reports. Available at: http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/harman.htm\nGomez Emilsson, A. (2015). How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD. Qualia Computing. Available at: https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/05/22/how-to-secretly-communicate-with-people-on-lsd/\nGomez Emilsson, A. (2016). The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes. Qualia Computing. Available at: https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/12/12/the-hyperbolic-geometry-of-dmt-experiences/\nGomez Emilsson, A. (2018). The Pseudo-Time Arrow: Explaining Phenomenal Time With Implicit Causal Structures In Networks Of Local Binding. Qualia Research Institute. Available at: https://www.qualiaresearchinstitute.org/s/The-Pseduo-Time-Arrow.pdf\nGomez Emilsson, A. (2020). 5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses. Qualia Research Institute. Available at: https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/07/01/5-meo-dmt-vs-nn-dmt-the-9-lenses/\nAlexander, S. (2014) Going Loopy. Slate Star Codex. Available at: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/11/going-loopy/\nJohnson, M. (2018). The Neuroscience of Meditation: Four Models. Qualia Research Institute. Available at: https://opentheory.net/2018/12/the-neuroscience-of-meditation/\nJohnson, M. (2019). Neural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything. Qualia Research Institute. Available at: https://opentheory.net/2019/11/neural-annealing-toward-a-neural-theory-of-everything/\n\nIf you want to use the software, please reference it by citing it in the following way (APA style):\nWu, L., Gomez Emilsson, A., Zuckerman, A. (2020). QRI Psychophysics Toolkit, Qualia Research Institute. https://qualiaresearchinstitute.github.io/psychophysics/\nAnd cite this article as (APA style):\nGomez Emilsson, A. (2020, October). Modeling Psychedelic Tracers with QRI’s Psychophysics Toolkit: The Tracer Replication Tool. Qualia Computing.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/10/09/modeling-psychedelic-tracers-with-qris-psychophysics-toolkit-the-tracer-replication-tool/", "title": "Modeling Psychedelic Tracers with QRI’s Psychophysics Toolkit: The Tracer Replication Tool", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-10-10T01:41:53+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=6", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "d5c092b0fe7db18730344e57b78fe147", "summary": []}
{"text": "Learning the Trade\n\nExcerpt from “Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent” by Jean-Claude Ellena (pgs. 36-38)\nOdor Classifications\nTo help beginners memorize odors, different perfume companies have created various classifications. The one I provide is based around nine categories of odor.\nFlowers. They are subdivided into five groups.Rose Flowers: This group, which includes rose e.o.[1], geranium e.o., and the odor of hyacinth, lily of the valley, and peony, is characterized by the fragrance of two components of these flowers – phenylethyl alcohol and geraniol.White Flowers: This group is determined by the combination of two molecules – methyl anthranilate and indole – that characterize the absolutes of orange flower, jasmine, and tuberose, but also the aromas of sweet pea, gardenia, and honeysuckle.Yellow Flowers: This group is defined by the presence of ionone beta, a molecule produced by the breakdown of the pigment carotene, which is responsible for the color of flowers like freesia and wallflower, extracts of which are in cassia absolute and osmanthus absolute.Exotic or Spiced Flowers: This group is defined by the combination of benzyl salicylate and eugenol, which is present in the odor of carnations and lilies and as a component in ylang-ylang e.o.Anise Flowers: This group includes mimosa absolute and the odors of lilac and wisteria. They are created using anisic aldehyde or heliotropin.Fruits. They are subdivided into three groups.Citrus: Lemon e.o., bergamot e.o., orange e.o.Orchard Fruits: Aldehyde C-14 (called peach), fructone.(Soft) Fruits: Black currant absolute, frambinone.Woods. They are divided into five groups.Sandal: Sandalwood e.o.Patchouli: Patchouli e.o.Vetiver: Vetiver e.o., vetiveryl acetate.Cedar: Virginia cedarwood e.o., Atlas cedarwood e.o.Lichen: Oak moss absolute.Grasses. They are subdivided into three groups.Green or fresh-cut grass: Hexenol, galbanum e.o.Aromatic: Lavender e.o., rosemary e.o., thyme e.o.Aniseed: Basil e.o., tarragon e.o., anise e.o.Spices. They are divided into two groups: cool spices and hot spices.Cool Spices: Pepper e.o., cardamom e.o., nutmeg e.o., pink pepper rose e.o.Hot Spices: Cinnamon e.o., clove e.o., pimento e.o.Sweet Products. They are subdivided into three groups.Vanillas: Vanilla absolute, vanillin, benzoin resinoid.Coumarins: Tonka bean absolute, coumarin.Musks: Synthetic musks.Animal Products. They are subdivided into three groups.Ambers: Labdanum absolute, cistus e.o.Castoreums: Castoreum absolute, birch tree e.o.Civets: Civet, skatole, indole.Marine Products: Seaweed absolute, calone.Minerals: Aledhydes.\n\nIn addition to this classification, I recommend another system for identifying odors. To make it easier to memorize and to conceptualize “odor” as an object, I use words associated with another sense, in particular the sense of touch. So I say of an odor that it is hard, soft, cold, hot, velvety, dry, flat, sharp, silky, prickly, gentle, thin, heavy, light, harsh, fragile, oily, greasy, and so forth.\n\nSo the vocabulary specific to olfaction consists of words for aromatic objects (soap, sweet, cigar, etc.), of names of flowers (jasmine, lilac, lily of the valley, etc.), of the names of chemical molecules (linalool, benzyl acetate, hexenol, etc.), or of their function (salicylate, aldehyde, etc.), and of words drawn from other senses.\nHowever, what distinguishes the vocabulary of the perfumer from that of laypeople is the choice of a common language based on the training provided in perfumery schools and the discussions between perfumers and experts within the profession. This linguistic community creates a consensus around certain perceptual features. For the perfumer, soap, aldehyde, jasmine, nail varnish, rose, leather, wood, bonbon, and so forth are terms that describe the odor and not the object that produces it. A lily of the valley can be described as “jasmine”, as can a fragrance, a washing powder, and so on. For the perfumer, the word “jasmine” refers to an olfactory experience, which can be very different from the fragrance given off by jasmine flowers. For the professional, therefore, the vocabulary of odors no longer brings to mind the image of the source but a mental picture of the odor. The perfumer thus invents the object of his science; he invents odor, and that is the source of his creativity.\n[1] e.o.: abbreviation for essential oil.\n\n\nSee also these articles that discuss the state-space of scents: \nPerfumery as an Art FormQualia Research Diary: ScentsThe Fact That We Can Smell Functional Groups is Just Such a ThingBurning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God (1/2)Finally, Luca Turin has recently been putting out videos discussing specific categories of scents by describing the history and use of classic aromachemicals that belong to each of these categories (highly recommended):Woody-AmbersMarine NotesGourmandMusks (part 1, 2)GreensAnimalicsFruity Notes", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/10/07/learning-the-trade/", "title": "Learning the Trade", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-10-07T22:10:18+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=6", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "db07c0ed9b288d3e40e72eff9f0fbbdd", "summary": []}
{"text": "Improve your Indoor Air Quality by 99% by Optimizing the Use of HEPA Filters\n\nTL;DR: You can achieve much greater reductions than 50% of PM2.5 with a HEPA filter if you are clever about how you use it. Using a “concentric shells” approach in a 100m^2 apartment has allowed me to enjoy air with up to 99% less PM2.5 than outdoors.\nSome of you may recall that QRI held an event called “Cause X” a year and a half ago. Indeed, Dony Christie (whom I recently credited for sounding the alarms in mid-January about the coming coronavirus pandemic) presented: “The researching of possible Cause Xs as itself Cause X“. I think this is a great idea, and it is already bearing some fruit…\nRecently, Lukas Trötzmüller reached out to me to follow-up on one of the causes I proposed at the event. Namely, to subsidize HEPA filters as a potentially EA-level intervention. Here was my justification:\n[Subsidizing HEPA filters] might be a highly effective way of improving the health-span of a country’s population in a cost-effective fashion. As Robin Hanson has argued over the years, if we truly cared about the health of people, we would be spending more resources on the top 4 drivers of health (diet, exercise, sleep, and clean air) rather than on extravagant medical interventions designed to convince us that “an attempt was made.” Clean air, in particular, seems easy to influence at a rather minimal cost. HEPA filters capable of providing clean air to entire apartments (reducing by 10X the PM2.5 concentrations in the apartment) can cost as little as $70, with an upkeep of about $30 a year for renewing filters, and about $20 a year for electricity. Fermi calculation would indicate this would cut the average person’s daily PM2.5 exposure by half. I haven’t worked out the math concerning the amount of micromorts prevented per dollar this way, but the numbers seem extremely promising.\nAfter stumbling upon the Cause X post, Lukas and some of his friends decided to do a more thorough cost-benefit analysis, which was recently posted on the EA Forum: Cost-Effectiveness of Air Purifiers against Pollution. I mostly agree with his analysis (and I commented on the post with what I thought was missing). His conclusion? \nAir pollution is one of the biggest public health problems of our time. Simple air purifiers are surprisingly effective at reducing the harm. In our sample calculation, the intervention easily meets WHO criteria for a “highly effective” intervention in Austria, and the criteria for an “effective” intervention in India. With just a few small improvements to cost-effectiveness, it would qualify as “highly effective” in India too.\nThere are many ways in which effectiveness could be improved: If the bedroom is shared by two people, effectiveness doubles. Our calculations were made for 10 hours per day of use. Many people stay home for longer than that, and would correspondingly benefit more from an air purifier in their home. It is plausible that we could find more energy-efficient devices and optimize location, placement and timing. Furthermore, devices could be preferentially given to individuals which are at special risk of pollution-induced illness.\nBuying air purifiers for people to place in their homes is probably not a promising EA intervention: Cost-effectiveness is two orders of magnitude worse than GiveWell-recommended charities. That being said, there might be much more cost-effective ways of helping people get access to air purifiers. We might lobby governments to subsidize those devices, or to make HEPA filters mandatory for public buildings and vehicles.\nI’ve been quite surprised by the results. It seems that using an air purifier has solid health benefits, both in very polluted and in averagely polluted locations. It is surprising that in affluent countries, where people can easily afford these devices, air purifier use is not commonplace. The health benefits are clear and well-studied. I have installed a homemade device in my bedroom, together with a PM2.5 sensor, and plan to place a second device in the office.\nIf you’re interested in air pollution, air purifiers, or would like to collaborate on future research please get in touch.\nI take this as a sign that encouraging people to sketch out new EA causes can be of very high-value*. Indeed, holding semi-regular “Cause X” events might be a great way to find completely new cost-effective interventions to improve human and non-human welfare across the globe.\nNow, the topic of air purifiers has been on my mind again lately. And the reason should be quite obvious. Namely, that in September of 2020 we in the West Coast are currently experiencing one of the worst air qualities in the entire world due to the forest fires. I’ve been recommending friends and acquaintances who live in this area to get a HEPA filter NOW, since the fires are expected to continue for a month at least (and the worst is likely yet to come as we are only in the middle of the fire season). Unfortunately, a lot of HEPA filters are now out-of-stock, in what mirrors perhaps the spike in demand for PPE at the onset of the COVID pandemic. As they say, the prevention is better than the cure – I happened to have both air filters and N95 masks on hand before these two events, but not everyone is as lucky. Ideally, everyone in the West Coast would have at least two air filters from the start (I’ll get to why in a minute) but we do what we can with what we have.\nSimilarly to how early official advice for how to protect against COVID was deadly (e.g. downplaying the importance of masks early on), I am dumbfounded by the low-res and relatively useless listicles of advice I see for how to deal with the smoke from the wildfires. Yes, staying indoors and avoiding exerting yourself is better than nothing. But we could do much better than that. In particular, I think that a little cleverness in positioning can go a long way in optimizing the effectiveness of HEPA filters for maximum health. Below you will find a brief account of my experience with HEPA filters in a fairly-insulated ~100m^2 (~1100 square feet) apartment in California over the last few years (YMMV) and what I recommend you do if you find yourself in a similar situation:\nThe basic claim I want to put forth is that the ~50% reduction of PM2.5 quoted in most studies can be massively improved upon with a little work. In particular, with two air filters intelligently placed I’ve been able to achieve a reduction of PM2.5 in the 95 to 99% range. But first, what equipment am I using?\nWe’ve owned four air quality monitors over the last few years – one I sacrificed by giving it to a friend who went to Burning Man to get some sense of what the air over there is like (answer: really bad), and another one I forgot at the house of a cousin pre-COVID which I haven’t had a chance to retrieve. The two I currently own are: Temtop LKC-1000S+, and BIAOLING’s JSM-131. They both make very similar measurements for PM2.5 and PM10, which also agree fairly closely with the values I get from PurpleAir and AirNow. That said, Temtop seems to be better on the whole – it is even more correlated with the values I get online, is faster (it takes only 1 minute to adapt to a new environment vs. 3 or 4), and is far more granular (it does not jump in increments of 3). So below I will just report the values from the Temtop devise.We’ve owned two air purifiers for about 3 years – the LEVOIT LV-H132 with H13 filters. It’s really similar to other LEVOIT models, and as far as I can tell, indistinguishable in its performance:\n\nSo here is my experience over the last couple of years:\nWith no air filters the difference between the PM2.5 outside and inside is small, typically in the 20% range. So let’s say the air outside is 20PM2.5, then inside with all the windows and doors closed for many hours, the reading will be no less than 16PM2.5. This is one of the reasons why I feel like the advice of “staying indoors with all the windows closed” is not really that useful (and in my experience people tend to believe they are staying out of harm’s way that way, which is very much not the case).With one air filter on in the living room, with all of the inside-doors open, I get a stable state where the reduction is in the 60 to 80% range. With two air filters on in separate rooms but with all the inside-doors open, the reduction is a bit higher, in the order of 80 to 85%.When I have only one air filter on inside one room with no door to the outside (and closed windows), the reduction is more dramatic, in the vicinity of 90%. This makes sense, as both the “surface area” to the outdoors, and the volume of air to clean are smaller.The best outcome seems to come from having (a) one air filter in the living room, and (b) a second air filter in the room I’m in with its door closed. This is what takes the PM2.5 value to be as low as 1 to 5% of what’s outside. For instance, by using this method, when the air quality outside reached 400 PM2.5 outside a few days ago, I was able to enjoy a 5PM2.5 inside my room (!!!). The living room would be at 60PM2.5 and the smoke still somewhat noticeable, but once inside the bedroom there would be no way to detect there was anything off about the air.I’ve generally found that the biggest point of entry for PM2.5 is not the windows (which seal pretty well) but the doors that lead to outside. The air also gets in more efficiently when a bathroom vent is on (obviously, as this causes a slight pressure differential with the outside).Once a room has been cleaned (i.e. the filter has been running inside it for one or two hours), it takes up to 6 hours for the room to become half as dirty as the rooms it’s connected with through doors. I was really surprised by this, actually. But yes, even though most doors do not work as airlocks, they do dramatically reduce the airflow between rooms.\nBased on the above, I would offer a few heuristics for how to maximize the benefits from your HEPA filters:\n\nFirst, use the fact that your place likely has “concentric shells” that separate the outside from the inside. If you have more than one filter, distribute them along the shells: it is much better to have one filter in your studio and another in the living room than having two in the living room. Each shell’s “outside environment” is the shell surrounding it, so make use of the fact that there is this “sequence of relative outdoors” and place a filter on each of them when possible for an exponential reduction of PM2.5 as you move inwards.\n\nSecond, if you only have one filter, place it in your bedroom when you sleep and in your studio when you work. \nThird, if you are living with other people, you can basically do this iteratively: clean the air in your room, then pass the filter to the next person, who will clean the air in their room and pass it along to the next one and so on. If each person keeps the filter for one hour, by the time it gets back to you, the air inside your room will still be very good.\nFourth, if you have filters to spare, I would recommend placing one right next to each door that leads outside, as this is the place from which you will be getting most of the particles (assuming your windows are pretty good).\nFifth, if you have the stamina for it, you could in principle partition your place into more concentric shells using plastic sheets and tape. Then you can filter the innermost room, then filter the second innermost shell, then the third, and so on until you reach the shell that is connected to the outside doors. If done properly, this will have created highly clean air for the entire apartment. More generally, once you are done cleaning the air of one concentric shell, you can move the filter to the next one. Think of it as a “moving airlock” that cleans the air one step at a time from the center to the edge.\nMore generally, I would encourage you to notice that thinking in terms of more dakka really does pay off when the air outside is really bad. Don’t just say to yourself “well, I have a filter so I’m doing all I can already” because the above heuristics (and plain just getting more filters) can dramatically increase the effectiveness of the air filtration. Be thirsty for clean air – crave that 99% reduction!\nNow, what about even smaller particles? A lot of people worry that particles smaller than PM2.5 may be the most harmful to health, and HEPA filters may leave them free to roam. Is this true? Thomas Talhelm wrote a wonderful answer to the Quora question “Do air purifiers remove PM2.5” where he shows that not only are HEPA filters effective at removing particles around 2.5 micrometers in diameter, but that they are in fact even more effective at removing even smaller particles. He shows the results of a few of his own experiments using a professional-grade air quality monitor capable of detecting PM0.5 particles. \nAnd what about CO2 concentrations? Scott Alexander has written about the importance of maintaining a low CO2 environment for optimal cognition. I agree with this, and arguably the measures I’ve proposed above may lead to a lot of CO2 in one’s living space. I do happen to also have a CO2 monitor, which shows around 600PPM when the space is very well ventilated, but can reach upwards of 1200PPM if we’ve kept all windows and doors closed for several days (and it seems to stabilize around there). This is worth it, I think, when the choice is between 5PM2.5 and 400PM2.5. But I think you can actually have your cake and eat it too: \nThe solution I’ve found is what I call the “FF procedure”, which is “Flush and Filter”. Don’t just open a little crack in one window hoping that that the CO2 you are removing will make up for the PM2.5 you are getting. Even if you are filtering the air inside, when the air outside is outrageously bad (e.g. 200+PM2.5) you will notice a fast reduction in the quality of air inside. A formal treatment for how to approach this problem optimally will undoubtedly involve playing with differential equations, but I think my solution is pretty effective and I think minimizes the total exposure to PM2.5 while also giving you good CO2 levels. The idea is to wait for a time when the air outside is not as bad and you then open all the windows and turn all the fans on for an hour and a half or so, which will effectively replace the air inside with the air outside. You then quickly close all the windows and turn the air filters on to their maximum capacity. The drop in PM2.5 will be quick (and indeed exponential), while you will now enjoy fully restored CO2 levels that will last for a day or two.\n\n*I would point out, as another example of this paying off, the light we’ve cast on the issue of cluster headaches and how easily they can be dealt with thanks to psychedelics; it is partly thanks to this work that now OPIS is lobbying for the decriminalization of psychedelics for migraines and cluster headaches in Finland – I have to say that being part of the effort to reduce the incidence of cluster headaches in the world (if successful) will give me tremendous joy. Fingers crossed that it works!\n[Featured image taken from: NASA Earthdata on September 10th 2020]", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/09/16/improve-your-indoor-air-quality-by-99-by-optimizing-the-use-of-hepa-filters/", "title": "Improve your Indoor Air Quality by 99% by Optimizing the Use of HEPA Filters", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-09-17T03:25:21+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=6", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "3bd3beba424d7320c29693dfd7199e8e", "summary": []}
{"text": "Psychoactive Anecdata\n\n[Epistemic Status: anecdotal data; this is not a list of “life hacks”; it is intended as a list of interesting research leads; don’t take drugs unless you really know what you are doing!]\nI’ll mark to the right of each anecdata:\nn=x when I can remember clearly how many people have said this to me up to n = 10 (e.g. n=7 means that 7 people have told me this)n=x/y when I know that y people have tried it and of those x have experienced thisn>1 when 1 < n < 10 but I don’t remember exactly how many people have said it, and pattern if it’s a pattern I’ve observed across more than 10 people pooled from online trip reports and conversations from email exchanges, forums, group chats, private messages, and things that have come up at IRL discussions (e.g. at festivals).\nPsychedelics\nThe “best” phenethylamines in terms of the balance between mind expansion, euphoria, and low bodyload are:\n2C-B (low bodyload, high euphoria, unlikely to freak out at <25mg) [pattern]2C-C (like 2C-B but also relaxing, unlikely to freak out at <40mg) [pattern]2C-D (particularly easy on the body relative to other phenethylamines, unlikely to freak out at <30mg) [pattern]2C-I (more trippy and stimulating than the above, unlikely to freak out at <25mg) [pattern]\nAmong some of the worst 2Cs (but perhaps not worst phenethylamines) we find:\n2C-P (particularly bad bodyload, inevitable vomiting above some dose) [pattern]2C-E (“just too weird” for a lot of people, strong bodyload) [pattern]2C-T-2 (high bodyload, strangely similar to LSD in headspace) [n>1]2C-T-7 (same as 2C-T-2) [n>1]\nIV Psychedelics\nDo not ever IV 2C-E as it leads to instant extreme crams, nausea, and general bodily discomfort. [n=1]The come-up of IV 2C-B is very fast relative to oral administration (5 minutes) and the peak is a lot more intense as well. 5mg results in an intensity of experience comparable to 35mg oral at its peak. [n=5]Within 10 minutes of IV 2C-B one feels an intense urge to defecate. [n=4/5]While IV 100μg LSD takes a full 30 minutes to show the start of effects, IV 300μg takes only 5 minutes to show pronounced effects. [n=1]Ketamine is reportedly experienced as a “completely different drug” when the ROA is IV vs. IM vs. intranasal. [pattern]IV Ketamine gives rise to a distinct metallic taste in one’s mouth within a few seconds of administration. [n>1]\nAnti-Tolerance Drugs\nIn Anti-Tolerance Drugs we gave a list of drugs that, when taken in conjunction with painkillers and euphoric substances, can lessen, prevent, and even reverse tolerance. But “drug tolerance” is not a natural kind. Indeed, there are many systems of neuroadaptation that prevent drugs from exerting the same effect over time. Nothing makes this clearer than the typically life-long loss of “magic” to MDMA after a few experiences, which stands in contrast to the largely reversible tolerance to ethyl alcohol post-PAWS. Indeed, “drug tolerance” can mean tolerance to reduced action for: antidepressant effects (SSRIs), lessening chronic pain (opioids), increasing executive function (modafinil), enhancing motivation (amphetamine), “the magic” (ketamine, MDMA), the sense of unity and interconnectedness (LSD), otherworldliness (salvia), and so on. Indeed you can have a drug that generates tolerance to one of its effects but not others. For example, Slate Star Codex’s nootropic survey found that despite the common wisdom that prescription amphetamines stop generating a sense of euphoria after a while, most people who use them clinically for ADHD continue to experience an enhanced focus on the drug for many years. In this vein, the following anecdata highlights how anti-tolerance drugs have a much more subtle and multifaceted effect than just “reducing tolerance”:\nDXM and other dissociatives seem to potentiate both the analgesic and euphoric effects from opioids, increase constipation, and leave pruritus the same. [n>1]Proglumide reduces both the intensity of opioid withdrawal as well as the tolerance to their analgesic, sedative, and constipation effects. It does not affect euphoria or pruritus. [n>1]Ultra-low dose naltrexone (ULDN) reduces tolerance to analgesic and sedative effects from opioids but not euphoria (“it makes opioids more sleep-inducing but a lot less fun“). Interestingly, ULDN prevents constipation from opioids. [n>1]Black seed oil and ashwagandha reduce the tolerance to the analgesic, sedative, euphoric, and pruritus effects of opioids without influencing constipation. These effects are milder than all of the above. [n=1]Agmatine potentiates the analgesic effects of opioids without an effect on other facets like euphoria or constipation. [n =1]Turmeric primarily increases the sedative effects of opioids without changing much of anything else. [n=1]Anti-histamine anti-cholinergic drugs (such as diphenhydramine) potentiate the sedative and analgesic effects, but leave constipation and euphoria the same. They can increase restlessness. [pattern]\nDrug Combinations\nIn addition to all of what was said in Making Amazing Recreational Drug Cocktails:\nDXM does not mix well with a bunch of things: 2C drugs [n>1], noopept [n=1], tianeptine [n=1], phenibut [n=1], ethyl alcohol [pattern], most nootropics. [n=1]This seems to be especially bad for high-bodyload 2Cs as described above. [n>1]Vaporizing DMT while on ketamine “slows down” and in some cases “freezes” some aspects of the hallucinations of DMT, allowing you to inspect them more closely. It also prolongs the DMT experience for a good 3 to 5 minutes. [n=3]Taking 30mg of MDMA and 30μg LSD at the same time, followed by 10mg 2C-B four hours later, gives rise to a very positive synergy that allows you to maintain easy executive function while having trippy thoughts and a very high hedonic tone. It’s a smart and psychologically safe state. The combo has very mild hungover effects relative to how great it feels. [n=4]\nNootropics\nColuracetam is surprisingly psychedelic. [n=5]Mixing coluracetam and weed gives rise to a mild LSD-like mindspace. [n=4]Rhodiola Rosea has a distinctly “dopaminergic quality”, which is rare among nootropics other than L-tyrosine. [n=3]Most racetams (piracetam, oxiracetam, aniracetam, etc.) successfully mask the verbal impairment (both comprehension and execution) caused by weed and/or alcohol (up to a point!). [pattern]Agmatine (500mg) significantly blunts the intensity of orgasm. [n=1]Agmatine (500mg) can be used as a replacement for NSAIDs like aspirin and ibuprofen for mild to moderate pains and aches. [n=1]\nSurprising Analgesia\nMicrodosing LSD (5 to 20μg) can substantially reduce the pain of very bad premenstrual syndrome (PMS). [pattern]Microdosing LSD can also reduce the pain associated with shingles. [1<n]\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/09/10/psychoactive-anecdata/", "title": "Psychoactive Anecdata", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-09-10T08:29:57+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=6", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "d6f83345a6acd44d6ffcbd4eee06530b", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Fact That We Can Smell Functional Groups is Just Such a Thing\n\n[Excerpt from The Secret of Scent (2006) by Luca Turin, pgs 108-111]\nSome Strange Clues\nIt has been said,* correctly in my opinion, that theories define facts as much as the other way around. Nowhere is this more true than in structure-odour relations, where all knowledge is anecdotal. Anecdotal evidence has a sort of slippery, jelly-like quality to it, and theories are needed to congeal the stuff together into single, solid facts. ‘Anecdotal’ is often used as a pejorative term in scientific circles, meaning unreliable. In practice it often means isolated, and therefore hard to assess. Think of a new field of science as a large jigsaw puzzle. Pieces are discovered one by one, and at first they are unlikely to fit together to make a picture. Things can look distinctly unpromising, sometimes for decades. But if you can bear the pain of feeling stupid and the humiliation of being wrong, anecdotal evidence is the call of the wild, the surest sign of the undiscovered. Columbus set sail on the basis of anecdotal evidence. The Mayan hieroglyphs were deciphered using anecdotal evidence. Life-saving remedies based on plants, such as aspirin and digitalis, were found by scientists who paid attention to anecdotal evidence.\nScientific problems typically go through three phases. In the first phase, a few bold explorers discover a new land and map out its basic features. In the second phase, boatloads of immigrant scientists arrive and colonize the land. In the third phase, statues are erected on town squares, sometimes to the original discoverers, more often to the able administrators who build the roads and railways. Smell, as it happens, did not follow this pattern. Scientific colonies never thrived on this particular island. Every few years, a new set of scientists claims to have cleared the jungle, but their cities are eventually overgrown and get lost in the weeds.\nIn smell, the difficulty is compounded by two additional factors, one obvious, the other more subtle. The first is the supposed untrustworthiness of the smell sensation I’ve mentioned earlier which makes strong men and women doubt their own noses. The second is that when facts, especially anecdotal ones, remain unexplained for long enough, a kind of question fatigue sets in, and they become accepted without being understood. The situation brings to mind a quintessentially British cartoon I saw once where a dinosaur strides past a terraced house, and a couple see it from their living room. Wife: “What was that?” Husband: “Oh, just one of those Things.” The fact that we can smell functional groups is just such a Thing.\nFunctional groups, as we have seen, are the specific structures of one or more atoms that are responsible for the chemical behaviour of a substance. Examples are thiols (-SH), nitriles (-CN), and aldehydes (-C(=O)H). The little hyphen indicates that these groups are, of course, attached to something and that the Something varies hugely. But the remarkable thing is that the Something matters little to the smell of the molecules. What gives the game away, especially to the casual observer, is the fact that types of smell are named after chemical groups: sulphuraceous, nitrilic, aldehydic, corresponding respectively to -SH, -CN, -(H)C=O. This is particularly clear in the case of -SH. All molecules which contain an -SH group smell (a) strong and (b) reminiscent of rotten eggs.\n\n\n\n\nA word about the description ‘rotten eggs,’ since only a tiny minority of readers will be old enough to remember them. Eggs nowadays come with time stamps and serial numbers, so they seldom get a chance to rot. The rotten eggs smell is today more likely to be experienced in an oriental market (the durian fruit), by opening the gas tap on the stove (a small amount of an -SH compound is added to make sure we notice it), or best of all by going to an Indian store and asking for kala namak or ‘black salt’. Black salt, as its name does not indicate, is actually pink and is a type of rock salt that must come from Hell, as it contains ample amounts of Hell’s Kitchen smell, namely the HSH molecule. HSH is -SH repeated and smells bad twice over. Put some kala namak on your tongue and you will see what I mean. The first thing you will notice is that it reminds you mostly of a very intense hard-boiled egg smell. Clearly, eggs, even when fresh, are itching to fall apart. If you’ve done any chemistry at school, you will also recall the classroom when the teacher was making one of those stinks for which chemistry is famous. Beware though, the culinary satanism of kala namak is beguiling: a tiny amount in blackcurrant ice cream, strawberry daiquiris, coffee, and chocolate does wonders, as long as you don’t let anyone know you did it.\nDo all -SH compounds smell identical then, i.e. of rotten eggs? Not a bit, actually: they smell of all manner of things, from grapefruit to garlic via blackcurrants,  but they all have this sulphuraceous (i.e. from Hell) character. The grapefruit compound is particularly instructive. It is called pinanethiol. Thiol means -SH, so pinanethiol means pinane-SH.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRemove the -SH and the rest of the molecule (pinane) smells like pine needles, as it should, since pinane is a major component of turpentine oil, itself extracted from pine. Add the -SH back and, having smelled the pinane by itself and familiarized yourself with kala namak, you can clearly smell the parts of the molecule. That is to say you smell both the pine needles and the sulphur. Smell another very strong -SH compound like H₃C-SH, or methanethiol, for a few seconds till the nose (mercifully) tires of the hideous -SH smell, then go back to pinane-SH. Surprise! The sulphur note is now almost gone and the molecule no longer smells of pinane-SH, but instead smells of pinane tout court. This means that this molecule smells like the sum of its parts. In other words, -SH is a primary, though the other smells are not. But how does that work? How do we know what parts it’s made of? This, as we shall see, is the greatest mystery of smell. Looking for an answer will take us amazingly far afield.\n\n* Paul Feyerabend, among others, convincingly argued this view in Against Method, required reading for those who believe the scientific method is something which can be written down and followed like a recipe.\n\n\nComments:\nOn a recent conversation I had with Luca, I shared with him the fact that there are anti-tolerance drugs that can lessen (and even reverse) the physiological tolerance to drugs such as painkillers. He was seriously surprised by this fact. Despite spending a whole career studying biological regulatory systems, he had never in his life heard of anti-tolerance drugs in academia. Upon hearing this, he shared that in his experience, most of the innovation in science comes from people who work hands-on in the field, as this exposes them to a much broader evidential base than you would encounter when doing research in a strictly theoretical way.\nThus, he has learned far more about consciousness from psychonauts than he ever has from academic psychopharmacologists, and has learned more about electronics from radio amateurs than professional electrical engineers. In other words, the people who actually tinker with the inner mechanisms of the systems they’re interested in are the people to ask for “weird and novel phenomena”, rather than (only) those who study the field academically angling for a university post or a narrow job in the industry. Same, of course, with the science of smell: actually tinkering with aromachemicals can give rise to discoveries one may never stumble upon by merely studying scent receptors in a lab. Needless to say, the best outcomes will come from seamlessly blending both worlds; but for that to happen we will have to embrace phenomenological reports as acceptable leads for research in science.\nSee Luca Turin’s recent series on the science of smell on youtube: The Secret of Scent (including a video on the objections to the vibrational theory of olfaction).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/08/25/the-fact-that-we-can-smell-functional-groups-is-just-such-a-thing/", "title": "The Fact That We Can Smell Functional Groups is Just Such a Thing", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-08-26T03:41:42+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=6", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b58509579541ba1c84aed8e630a502c4", "summary": []}
{"text": "Spiral\n\n[Excerpt from Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved (published in 1990 and usually abbreviated as PIHKAL) by Alexander and Ann Shulgin, pgs. 98-103]\nPart Two: Alice’s Voice\nSpiral\nWhen I finally gave it a name, I called it the Spiral.\nThis is how it was. Lying down for a nap time (as a child) or at night for sleep, I would have reached that point of relaxation where one is not very much aware of the body. The small itches and discomforts have subsided, and the mind is beginning to drift. When I sensed it beginning (I never knew when it was going to come), I would immediately snap into alertness, excited and pleased, then I would just lie quietly as it unfolded.\nThe first thing that happened was a change in my breathing. It became increasingly shallow, to the point where my rib cage was barely moving at all.\nIf someone came into the room and talked to me, as sometimes happened, I could open my eyes and answer normally; the experience continued uninterrupted inside my head.\nEvery part of it, every stage, was the same each time. It was always in black and white. There was no color anywhere, and try as I did, especially around the age of fourteen, I could not force color to come onto the screen. And I could never extend it, by so much as a few seconds. When it was finished, it was finished.\nFirst came the image-sensation after which I named the entire experience – the spiral. I felt my entire self drawn rapidly into a tiny point which kept shrinking, until it could shrink no further, at which time the microscopic point became a tunnel in which I continued traveling at great speed, inexpressibly small and implacably diminishing.\nSimultaneously, I was expanding. I was expanding to the edges of the universe, at the same tremendous speed as that of the shrinking, and the combination, the contraction-expansion, was not only an image, it was also a sensation the whole of me recognized and welcomed. This experience of myself as microcosm-macrocosm lasted exactly four minutes.\nThe image of the spiral is found everywhere that the human has left his mark on earth. It has been cut into rock faces, painted on huts and clay pots, traced on the walls of initiation caves. I’m certain that it has been important to all the races of man because it is a symbol for the experience I’m describing, and for the concept, the understanding that the intellect forms out of what is initially not an intellectual, but a soul experience of the Alpha and the Omega.\nThe next stage came abruptly, as did all the changes. I was looking at standing figures which were vaguely human, dark thin figures being pulled into elongated shapes, like the sculptures of Giacometti. They stretched out, arms and legs like black string, until it seemed they could elongate no further, then the scene changed and I was watching obscenely rounded bodies, Tweedledums and Tweedledees without costumes, their small heads and legs disappearing into their puffed, bloated flesh.\nThe sensation accompanying this stage was one of discomfort, unpleasantness, a feeling of something grating on my soul. I once timed this part and the one that followed; they lasted a total of six minutes. I disliked them intensely.\nAbruptly again, the inner screen became white, a horrible dead-white, nasty and aggressive like the underbelly of a sting-ray. After presenting itself for a few seconds, the flat white began to curdle from the outer edges into black, until finally the screen was totally black. A thick, awful, dead black, a pool of tar in an unlit cave deep underground. After another brief pause, the black began to curdle at its edges into the white again. The process repeated itself once, and the sensation was similar in every way to the previous one: irritating, grating, a feeling of unpleasantness that approached repugnance. I always endured it with a mental gritting of teeth, knowing it had to be gone through because that’s the way it always went and it was not to be changed.\nAnd then, finally, I broke out into the last stage, the final part for which I had always been and always would be willing to undergo the middle parts.\nNow I was at the edge of an unseen cliff, looking out into a very different blackness, the deep, cradling blackness of the infinite universe, of space which stretched without end. I was completely happy and comfortable in that place, and would have stayed there indefinitely, had I been allowed, breathing in the beautiful darkness and the exquisitely familiar sense of infinity as a living presence, surrounding me, intimate and warm.\nAfter a moment of this pleasure, came the greeting. From the upper left-hand corner of the universe there came a greeting from Something which had known me, and which I had known, since before time and space began. There were no words, but the message was clear and smiling: Hello, dear friend, I salute you with respect-humor-love. It is a pleasure with laughter-joy to encounter you again.\nThat which greeted me was an entity so far removed from anything in human experience that I concluded, when I was an adult, trying to find a way to describe it to myself, that even the word, “entity”, could not be applied; a word creates boundaries, it says this is the shape of what you are describing, as different from other shapes which are bounded by other words. It had no shape, no form, no definition, no boundaries. It was. It is. It was my oldest friend and it greeted me as its equal. I always replied to it with a rush of love and delight and my own laughter.\nThen it was over.\nIt had taken exactly twelve minutes.\nIt was something I’d always experienced, taken for granted, and had given no thought to when I was very young. Not until age fourteen did I take a good look at it and recognize it as unusual, something peculiarly my own, my secret private treasure. I also got very analytical about the whole thing, began my habit of timing it and made the first of my unsuccessful efforts at altering it. But I didn’t decide on a name for it until many years later, discarding “Microcosm-macrocosm,” as too long and unwieldy, and settling on the simpler “Spiral.”\nIt had probably been going on since I was born. There’s no way to be sure, of course, but because it had been part of my life ever since I could remember, I tend to assume it was familiar to me from the very beginning. My mother said something once about having seen a change of some kind coming over me occasionally when I was a baby; she said she didn’t worry about it because when it passed, I appeared to be quite normal.\nIt always (with one single exception) came under the same circumstances, when I had settled down in bed for a nap or for the night’s sleep, but well before sleep itself took over.\nThe one exception happened when I was around fifteen, shortly after my father had been transferred to Santiago de Cuba as American Consul. We were staying in a hotel, while those responsible for helping us find a home were still busy with their search. My father and mother, my brother Boy and I were having lunch in the hotel dinning room and my eyes focused on the butter plate on the table. In the exact center of the round plate was a single pat of butter, and somehow the sight triggered the familiar feeling I associated with the beginning of the Spiral. I was surprised and very pleased, because it was a new thing to have it start under such unusual circumstances.\nI was also pleased because it was my special thing, and in asking to be excused from the table to go up to my room, I felt a certain sense of importance, which was rare when I was with my family. I said just enough to make it clear that my strange “thing” was beginning, and my parents grudgingly gave me permission for me to leave. I reached the room upstairs in time for the completion, the wonderful last few moments. It turned out to be the only time it ever happened that way – when I was out of my bed, involved with ordinary matters of daily living.\nI tried to make it come, searching out all sorts of images of round space with dots in the center, but nothing worked. I never found a way to make it happen. It came when it chose to, unexpectedly, once in a while. The times it chose had no apparent connection to anything else that was going on in my life, either generally or in particular. In twenty-five years, believe me, I looked for every possible connection; I found none. When I was very little, I think it might have happened as often as once a week or so, but as I grew older it came less and less often, until around age twenty-five, when it happened only twice in one year, then never again.\nThe discovery that I was not alone in my journey into the interior cosmos came as a complete surprise. It gave me a great deal of excited pleasure and opened up a whole new series of questions. I happened when I was around twenty two, and – interesting enough in itself – the two proofs came to me within a single four month period.\nThe incidents were astoundingly similar.\nThe first one took place one evening when I went to a party given by a friend in San Francisco. I was in the host’s kitchen with several of the other guests, doing what people usually do in strange kitchens at informal parties – talking, drinking and munching potato chips and carrot sticks – and after a while one young man named Evan and I found ourselves alone, deeply involved in a conversation about unusual experiences, mostly read about or heard from others, the kind of conversation that seems to come about more easily, somehow, in the midst of a high energy, noisy party than at any other time.\nSuddenly Evan was telling me about what he referred to as “a really weird thing,” which had been happening to him ever since he was very young. I remember the prickling that spread up my back as he began describing it, and I understood immediately the look that gradually came into his face, a mixture of embarrassment and anxiety (She’s going to think I’m crazy; why am I talking about this?). I tried to make it easier for him to continue by nodding encouragingly and once – when he faltered briefly – I volunteered what I knew was going to be the next image, and he looked startled, almost frightened, drank a bit from his glass, muttered, “Yes, exactly”, and continued to the end. His end was not mine; his journey came to a close after the black and white curdles. I thought, with a touch of pity, that he seemed to have missed the best part, although he did have the wonderful spiral at the beginning. I was glad I hadn’t prompted him further. When he’d finished his story, I told him I’d had every one of the images he had described, and that he was the first person I’d ever met who shared the experience. I said nothing about my own different ending.\nHe was staring at me, and I wasn’t sure he’d really heard what I’d been telling him. Finally, he smiled and said that I was the first person he’d ever told about this private, “crazy thing,” and he couldn’t believe – it was so extraordinary – that I actually knew what he was talking about. He said that he had always wondered if the experience was a sign of insanity of some kind, and it was such a relief to know that somebody else had had it. Neither of us felt it necessary to add that, in a situation like this, it was also reassuring to see that the person who shares your strangeness appears to be relatively sane and reasonably functional.\nI smiled back and said I understood exactly how he felt. We left the kitchen and joined the rest of the party. I never saw him again, and didn’t particularly expect or want to. It was enough to have heard one other person repeating what I knew so well, and it was intriguing to know that my journey, or process, had gone farther, longer, than Evan’s; after all, although I was more than willing to give up exclusive rights to the whole thing, I didn’t mind retaining a little bit of superiority.\nThe second incident was almost identical to the first, the only difference being that the young man (whose name I forgot almost immediately) was talking to me in somebody’s living room, instead of the kitchen, in the middle of another noisy party, when he began describing the “strange vision” that he, too, had had ever since he was a small child. His, also, ended short of where mine did, and he was astounded and obviously very relieved to know that there was somebody else in the world who knew about it.\nBoth young men seemed quite unremarkable, although pleasant enough and intelligent. I never saw the second one again, either.\nI remember wishing briefly that I could put an ad in the Chronicle or Examiner, something along the lines of, “Seek contact with others who have experienced…,” and of course, the imaginary ad stalled there.\nIt happened – my beloved Spiral – for the last time when I was twenty-five. I had no way of knowing, of course, that it would not come again. It may or may not have been a coincidence that, within three weeks of the last time, I had my first encounter with a psychedelic material, the Divine Cactus, peyote.\n\n\nHas the above ever happened to you? Did you experience the Spiral as a kid? If so, please let us know!\nSee also:\n\nEssential Therapy (excerpt from the narrative component of TIHKAL, “the continuation” of PIHKAL)\nMaking Amazing Recreational Drug Cocktails (ideas for how to systematically explore the subjective effects of drug combinations)\nThe Super-Shulgin Academy (imagining what it would look like to carry out the work of Shulgin at a grand scale)\nSSC Book Review of PIHKAL\n\n\nFeatured Image Credit: Matthew Smith", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/08/24/spiral/", "title": "Spiral", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-08-25T00:52:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=7", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ab42a4cf4e558678c8a9ab82eded4852", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Research Diary: Scents\n\n[Epistemic Status: Diary Entries]\n“Fake it until you deep fake it.”\n― Joscha Bach\n\n“Break often – not like porcelain, but like waves.”\n― Scherezade Siobhan\n\n“Ideology has two meanings- actually, most social terms have two meanings, one for the traumatized and one for the non-traumatized.”\n― Michael Vassar\n\n“You know the old adage about monkeys typing into infinity, and the question about whether they would eventually produce Hamlet? I think that maybe we are those monkeys, and we’re producing countless Hamlets every single day.”\n― Jacob Stephen\n\n“Reality is very weird, no doubt. At the same time, it is easy to get wrong ‘what kind of weird’ reality is.”\n― Matthew Barnett\n\n“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”\n― W. Somerset Maugham\nDecember 13th 2019\nIn a different timeline, I open a high-class experimental qualia-focused restaurant. There is only one kind of meal every month, and it is a challenge to finish it. Only 10% of people manage to do so. On March of 2022, the menu consists of:\n\nA soup. A liter of (tap) water with a single mint leaf in it. Do not be deceived, this is not “spa water”. The amount of mint in it is exactly right below the perceptual threshold for the most discerning of tasters. Hence, you are guaranteed to (a) not be able to taste anything at all, while (b) fully knowing you are indeed drinking aromatic molecules from the mint leaf. Also, they give you a spoon and a straw. If you use the straw, you are “drinking your soup” while if you use the spoon you are “eating your soup”. Up to you. It’s a conceptual piece after all. Once -and only once- you finish it, they serve you the second course…\nThere are aromas and flavors out there in the state-space of qualia-triggering molecules that cancel each other out perfectly. The second course consists of a series of small hors d’oeuvres that are completely tasteless. If you can taste anything- e.g. a hint of garlic, or orange- it means the chef didn’t prepare it well. The flavors need to be perfectly balanced for them to be entirely tasteless. And once you are done, they bring you…\nThis thing they left on your table is akin to a wire puzzle, or one of those Hanayama pieces. They tell you that your third course consists of a tiny cookie hidden inside it. Average solving time: 25 minutes. 50% of people can’t solve it.\nYou are given a miniature 3D printed sugar statue reconstruction of someone who shares your name (as close as possible). Before eating it, you have to scream “There can be only one!” and consume your namesake in a single bite.\nTrace minerals. They bring you this large metallic bowl with a tiny little bit of powder at the bottom; certainly no more than 50 or 60 milligrams of material. It contains half of your daily recommended dose of iron, manganese, copper, iodine, zinc, cobalt, fluoride and selenium. You can now finally know what these actually taste like. It turns out that the characteristic taste of your grandma’s famous tapioca dish was zinc. Moving on…\nNegative food. You donate 300ml of blood.\nDistilled saliva. You spit in a bowl a number of times. You are then given a little shot of perfectly tasteless and clean water. The water is chemically pure. However, it is the water in the saliva of the spit of another customer.\nDouble blind taste experiment. You are given a dish. The waiters do not know what it is. You do not know what it is. You have to write a 100-word report of what you think about this dish. This is actual science; the data is used by a research lab at some undisclosed university. There is something very Buddhist about this course – how much does your top-down model of what you are eating modify your perception of it? What if you do not assume an “essence” behind it – block that specific energy sink from robbing you of the experience of raw low-level sensation?\nSound control. Did you know that food tastes different in an airplane? Many factors contribute to this, but a major one is the constant background noise you can hear inside the aircraft. Turns out tastes change with specific sounds. The Qualia restaurant spent $500,000 dollars researching this (and publishing a number of peer-reviewed papers in the process). The output of that research is that you can now make chocolate taste like vanilla, and strawberry taste like melon – if only you play the proper sound at the right volume. And finally…\nStroboscopic taste – you put on a mouthpiece that entrains half of your tongue to a 30Hz electric seizure vibration while the other half is entrained to 17Hz. As you eat the Ice-cream of Victory (flavored with passionfruit, peanut, and anise) you realize that the flavors combine with the stroboscopic stimulation to create the hallucination of an entire meal replete with much more complex flavors. The beat patterns are tasty.\n\nIf you finish the entire thing (which usually takes about 5 hours total) they take a photograph of you and “keep it to themselves”. No, there is no “victory board”. They just want a picture of you.\n5/5 | Would recommend.\n\nJanuary 6th 2020\nFavorite essential oils at the moment: Freesia, Violet, and Pear. It turns out Freesia was a predominant note in Dior “Addict 2“, a perfume I fell in love with when I was a teen. Violet is “ethereal” in that it feels strangely anesthetizing (the ketamine of smells). Pear is lovely.\nHigh Entropy Alloys (HEAs) and Scents:\n\nSome scent combinations “collapse categories” (e.g. too many flowers combined blend into “generic flowery”).\nOthers make unstable multi-phase blends (e.g. too many categories – spicy, citrus, minty, woody all at once).\nViolet + Pear create a scent HEA.\n\nAn interesting blend with “emergent” characteristics: Freesia, Pear, Violet, Sunflower, Azalea, and Patchouli. Very high valence mixture that has a novel feeling that does not seem to come from the ingredients. #HighEntropyAlloy #HighEntropyScent\n\nJanuary 8th 2020\nCareful with raising the “scent entropy” too high!\nIn sound and sight, it seems that there is an inverted U curve relationship between stimuli entropy and the entropy of the experiential response. White noise may be- objectively- the way to cram in as much information as possible into a waveform. But perceptually, white noise is more like its own (neutral valence, indifferent) tone. Likewise visually, if you crowd your images way too much you can’t actually understand its meaning and true complexity. Perceptual complexity response is maximized in the middle, where you achieve “peak useful entropy”.\nMore so, extremely entropic stimuli can be used to “mask” any input by adding a dose of white noise or visual static. That’s how you can degrade the valence of something when you don’t know what kind of unpleasant input you will get in advance. White noise drowns out both construction sounds and baby screams. It’s a “universal diluter”, so to speak.\nAnd so it seems that this is the case with smells too. If you combine any 40 (42?) scented molecules that are as different as possible, you get as a result a generic smell with neutral valence that is not distinctive at all. If you make a different 40-scent mixture with completely different molecules, it also smells the same! They call it white noise scent, or “Laurax”*.\nIn other words, the “high-entropy alloys” of smell may only really pay off in the range of 5 to 15 different molecules, where (perhaps) we maximize the experiential “character” of the resulting fragrance.\nNow, of course commercial perfumes in practice do have dozens if not hundreds of aromachemicals. But their absolute “scent entropy” is probably not that high. Why? First, the entropy is reduced by the fact that most perfumes do concentrate on a few core notes; the many other notes are usually small additions and tweaks. And second, the perfumes are usually made with relatively few categories of smells blended together (musky, citrus, and flower could be one, or green, ozonic, and non-citrus fruity another, and so on). Additionally, to get true white noise smell you need to also add negatively valenced scents, which are rarely used in actual perfumes. I do wonder, though, if the perfume industry has a sense of the “scent entropy” of their various perfumes, and if having a measure of it would perhaps improve their ability to hone in on blends that have unique emergent characters without relying entirely on heuristics and trial and error. Or how about a portable “scent-entropy-o-meter”? I bet it would find some very useful applications.\n[Good article about it: The “white noise” of smells; *I first learned about Laurax here: The whiff of white could hide strong odours: Complex mixtures of many odours tend to smell the same.].\n\nJanuary 10th 2020\nOf all the industries, I get the impression that the perfume industry is ahead of the curve when it comes to incorporating hedonistic utilitarian notes into its embedded ideology.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nJanuary 11th 2020\nCilantro tasting like soap to 10% of the population is just the tip of the iceberg.\n\n\nJanuary 13th 2020\nWhat are your favorite perfumes?\n(and if it’s not impossible to describe – why do you like them so much?)\nI’ll start:\nAddict 2 by Dior\nEros pur femme by Versace\nLight Blue by Dolce & Gabbana\nOh god, what kind of person have I become?\n\nJanuary 14th 2020\nScent combinations with unusual emergent characters that are “more than the sum of their parts” I have discovered so far:\n\nViolet + Pear\nRose + Orange\nHoneydew Melon + Pomegranate\nFreesia + Golden Hydrangea\n\nIn each of these cases, combining in roughly equivalent intensities (i.e. 50-50 ‘equipotent’ mixtures) seems to give rise to qualities that are not present in either of the two scents. This is relatively rare, IMO. If you combine, e.g. lilac and jasmine, you just get something that smells like “lilac and jasmine”. But the four combinations above seem- to me- to give rise to new exotic qualia varieties.\nAn accord is more about getting rid of the individually distinguishable component scents. The end result, however, is one of a “generic” scent within a given category (or subcategory). For example “white flower accord” or “citrus accord” are common. And although you can distinguish between two citrus accords, they don’t really have unique character – at least not more than e.g. various kinds of brown noise have a unique character. The combinations I’m mentioning are not just ways of creating a category blend so that other elements of the perfume can be more noticeable. Rather, they are on their own uniquely characteristic, much like other pure essential oils.\nIf you mix a wide enough variety of flowers you inevitably get a flower accord. To get a new qualia type emergent you need something else. (I should add I’m new to the field and have a lot to learn).\nI’m developing a way of explaining what a scent is like at a glance with relatively few parameters. One of them is category entropy, meaning how close a given category in the scent is to the maximally blended version of it (i.e. a fully generic “flowery” scent has maximum category entropy).\nThen another parameter is the “global entropy” which describes how close the scent is to total white noise scent.\nSo we start by saying e.g. perfume X is “50% of the way to white noise scent and its distribution of core categories is 30% woody, 30% floral, 20% fruity, and 20% citrus”, then we zoom in to each category and describe its category entropy and salient notes: “the floral entropy is 40%, and the 60% remaining is shared in equal measure between rose and azalea” (repeat for each category).\nAdditionally, another important thing to add is if there are “note to note interactions”, which in my (limited) experience happens with some pairs. Maybe 10% of them, but I don’t know for sure. But you could describe them with lines between individual notes in a diagram. To round it all out, you also would point out the note accords that work as “phases” in the overall scent (drawing inspiration from high entropy alloys – an alloy that does not make a single crystal structure is called “multiphasic”). E.g. mango + patchouli + cinnamon + jasmine tends to produce two phases, a mango + cinnamon phase that toggles in your attention with the jasmine + patchouli phase. Finally, we would also note “valence inversion” effects that happen when there are combos of scents that when placed together give rise to a flipped valence (also a rare effect, IME).\nFor a slightly higher level of resolution, we would break down each category into subcategories and then describe the entropy of each. E.g. a floral perfume could be 80% of the way to maximum floral entropy in the “white flower” subcategory but only 10% of the way to maximum entropy in the “powdery flower” category.\nThis would allow us, I think, to put our finger on many scents that are hard to describe otherwise. Indeed, a lot of sophisticated perfumes, IMO, are playing a lot with different shades of high entropy, so talking about them in terms of notes like jasmine or amber is very misleading. It’s like calling a certain kind of brown noise “closest to a guitar sound” because one lacks words for describing noise profiles.\n\nJanuary 23rd 2020\nScent Factorization:\nSo we know that we can get “white noise smell” by combining 42 scents of completely different kinds at the same time. This maxes out the “scent entropy” (aka. “Laurax”).\nIf you combine 42 different flower scents, however, you get a maximally generic “flowery scent”. I call this “category collapse”.\nNow some scents have what I call “special effects”, which are category-neutral qualities. An example is the ‘bitterness’ of grapefruit, which although is often associated with fruits, can occur in entirely different categories too.\nSo I thought: what if we try to combine scents from as many categories as possible that all share the same special effects? I call this “scent factorization”. Namely, you try to get “special effect + Laurax” by canceling out everything but the special effect.\nI believe this actually works. Example:\nA factorization of “bitter-sweetness” can be obtained by mixing:\nGrapefruit + Geranium + Bergamot + Pomegranate + Cedar-wood\nIn this case you will see that geranium is almost like “the grapefruit of flowers” in that it is flowery in nature but still shares the same “bitter” quality as grapefruit (albeit at a different frequency – yes scent frequencies are a thing, but that’s a story for another time). Likewise, cedar-wood is the most grapefruit-like wood I’ve smelled.\nAnother interesting factorization is that of “creaminess”:\nCoconut + Fig + Vanilla + Almond + Sandalwood\nIn this case, again, you’ll see that sandalwood is the most “creamy” of all woods (as far as I have tried), fig is the most creamy of all fruits, and so on.\nBut this is just the start. What other scent factorizations could we try? I’d say we could aim to have the special effects of “ozonic”, “green”, “ethereal”, “powdery”, “acrid”, “cloying”, and so on factorized. Each deserves to become its own perfume in my up and coming new line of high end perfumes called “The State-Space of Scents” (for the consciousness connoisseur).\n\nFebruary 2nd 2020\nThe Qualia Review – Episode 1: Women’s Perfumes (Part 1):\n\nThe Qualia Review – Episode 1: Women’s Perfumes (Part 2)\n\nThe Qualia Review is a tongue-in-cheek program where you will get non-expert opinions about the quality of experiences by people who really care about consciousness:\nIn each episode, Andrés Gómez Emilsson (qualiacomputing.com) reviews a particular qualia variety (i.e. category of experience) with a co-host (in this episode Victor Ochikubo).\nIn this first episode we review women’s perfumes. In particular, we review (from worst to best):\nLa Panthére by Cartiere (EDT)\nBy Invitation by Michael Bublé (EDP)\nGuilty by Gucci (EDT)\nBrit Rhythm by Burberry (EDT)\nJolie Fleur Bleue by Tory Burch (EDP)\nRose Goldea by Bvlgari (EDP)\nDaisy Love by Marc Jacobs (EDT)\nValentino by Valentino (EDP)\nAmazing Grace Ballet Rose by Philosophy (EDT)\nLight Blue by Dolce & Gabbana (EDT)\nEros by Versace (EDT)\nYou will notice that this is unlike any other review of perfumes. This is because the review here provided addresses the following three aspects of scents:\n\nA qualia-focused account (i.e. entropy, categories, special effects, etc.)\nWhat kind of person would enjoy wearing this perfume (mood-congruence, personality, etc.)\nThe social signaling that the perfume entails (sexual signaling, genetic fitness signaling, etc.)\n\nIn particular, (1) describes scents in terms of:\n\nA) The global entropy (e.g. 40% of the way to white noise scent)\nB) The within-category entropy (e.g. 70% of the way into ‘generic flowery’)\nC) The individual notes that can be detected within each category (e.g. non-generic jasmine note being 30% of the flowery category)\nD) Lines connecting notes that have non-linear interactions (e.g. pear & violet, rose & orange, pomegranate & honeydew make unique blends that have phenomenal properties unlike those of the individual ingredients)\nE) Lines connecting notes that form separate “phases” across categories (e.g. with a mixture of mango, sandalwood, rose, lemon, and cinnamon you get three phases rather than a global consistent smell – mango + cinnamon, and lemon + sandalwood, with rose staying its own distinct scent)\nF) Lines connecting “valence inversion” effects (some notes simply don’t seem to go together even though they are pleasant individually)\nG) Special effects (e.g. “powdery”, “ethereal”, “acrid”, “creamy”, etc.)\n\nThus, we share an entirely new angle on how to describe the ineffable. Namely, the hard-to-put-your-finger-on elusive subjective quality of scents can finally be grounded in terms we can all understand (with a modicum of shared background assumptions).\nHope you enjoy! Happy scent qualia!\n~Infinite Bliss~\n\nFebruary 5th 2020\nThree scents that are surprisingly similar to strawberry (based on my personal experience with essential oils):\n\nFig\nFreesia\nPeony\n\nIn fact, following the “scent factorization” concept – if you make a mixture of these three scents the resulting oil smells almost exactly like strawberry cake. Strange!\n\nFebruary 9th 2020\n\nI love this video! The idea that the information content in a perfume could possibly fit so much phenomenal detail is enticing, albeit perhaps a bit optimistic.\nIn the interest of honesty, out of the 15 or so women’s perfumes I’ve experienced deeply so far, La Panthere by Cartier is the worst by quite a long shot.\nI don’t mean this to troll! I am serious. I still don’t quite know why I feel it as so unpleasant. I think it has to do with its very high entropy quotient, and the fact that it centers around gardenia, which is my least favorite flower. It feels predatory – and perhaps the perfumist did succeed at telling a story. Too bad I aim to reprogram the biosphere so that predation is a long-forgotten nightmare of our ancestral Darwinian environment of adaptedness. So long! We should aim to transform scent exploration from its current state of commercialism mixed in with weapons of sexual conquest, and push it into new frontiers… the exploration of the state-space of consciousness, valence research, perhaps even energy parameter modulation! The future of scent qualia research is wide open.\n\nThe Qualia Review – Episode 2: Men’s Perfumes\n\nThe Qualia Review is a tongue-in-cheek program where you will get non-expert opinions about the quality of experiences by people who really care about consciousness:\nIn each episode, Andrés Gómez Emilsson (qualiacomputing.com) reviews a particular qualia variety (i.e. category of experience) with a co-host (in this episode Victor Ochikubo).\nIn this second episode we review men’s perfumes. In particular, we review (by order of appearance):\nCK2 by Calvin Klein (EDT)\nPasha de Cartier Edition Noir by Cartier (EDT)\nVirtu by Vince Camuto (EDT)\n21 Le Fou by Dolce & Gabbana (EDT)\nLe Male by Jean Paul Gaultier (EDT)\nScuderia Ferrari Light Essence Bright by Ferrari (EDT)\nJimmy Choo Man Blue by Jimmy Choo (EDT)\n1 Million by Paco Rabanne (EDT)\nTerre D’Hermes by Hermes (EDT)\nInvictus by Paco Rabanne (EDT)\nBleu De Chanel by Chanel (EDP)\nIn this episode we also discuss the way in which an enriched conception of art could helps us reformulate the artistic potential of perfumes. We make allusions to the 8 models of art discussed in a previous video:\n“Harmonic Society: 8 Models of Art of a Scientific Paradigm of Aesthetic Qualia”\nSee also:\nHarmonic Society\nHope you enjoy! Happy scent qualia!\n~Infinite Bliss~\n\nFebruary 10th 2020\nTop 5 Male Perfumes:\n\nBleu de Chanel (EDP)\nScuderia Ferrari Light Essence Bright (EDT)\nLe Male by JPG (EDT)\nNautica Voyage (EDT)\n21 Le Fou by D&G (EDT)\n\nIt’s very sad that there is a huge paywall for scent qualia. It’s your birthright to know what they smell like!\n\nFebruary 11th 2020\n~120 essential oils and ~40 perfumes (ordered by categories and general character).\nThis is the dataset my brain has been training over to interpret the state-space of scent qualia for the last month and a half. This is still amateur level – but I can nonetheless confidently say that I now understand scent qualia at least 50% better than I did last year.\nI would still appreciate specific suggestions for essential oils or perfumes to get that are very unusual or characteristic. I continue to be surprised by the uniqueness of oils, fragrances, and mixtures I haven’t tried before.\nAlso: drastic income inequality is a massive tragedy, no doubt. But why are people not talking about qualia inequality? I wish everyone was as qualia-rich as I am right now. I’m happy to share some scents with people who feel qualia-deprived; just come to the Bay and give me a call. \nPs. Peony is an incredibly versatile low-entropy flower scent with a creamy strawberry-like effect. I kept reading about how this or that perfume has peony in it, but it really took me owning an essential oil of it to grok the type of qualia peony is all about. Someday there will be a monument built to celebrate the qualia variety disclosed by peony formulas. I’m pretty sure of this.\n\nFebruary 14th 2020\nPeople say “a blind buy” when they talk of buying a perfume they haven’t smelled. Shouldn’t it be more appropriate to say an “anosmic buy”?\n\nFebruary 18th 2020\nIn order to survive the apocalypse, having a “blue” fragrance on hand will become very useful. I suggest “Nautica Voyage“.\nYou can thank me later!\n\nFebruary 21st 2020\nSense of Smell is Linked to Sexual Orientation, Study Reveals\nVery interesting! Two followup questions: (1) does it replicate on a larger sample size? and (2) is the baserate of different sexual orientations of anosmic people statistically different than those of the general population?\nGay men showed a strong preference for the body odour of other gay men in the scientific test of how the natural scent of someone’s body can contribute to the choice of a partner.\n \nAlthough previous studies have shown that body odour plays a role in making heterosexual men or women attractive to members of the opposite sex, this is the first study that has investigated its role in sexual orientation. Charles Wysocki of the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia, a non-profit research institute, said the findings underline the importance of natural odours in determining a sexual partner whatever the sexual orientation of the person involved.\n \n“Our findings support the contention that gender preference has a biological component that is reflected in both the production of different body odours and in the perception of and response to body odours,” Dr Wysocki said.\n\nFebruary 25th 2020\nReview of Shalimar Eau de Parfum by Guerlain for women:\n\n\nFebruary 27th 2020\nJasmine, Tuberose, and Gardenia: the Dark Triad of White Flowers. Beware! They are treacherous, envious, and guileful. DO NOT TRUST. They will ruin your perfume with their high-entropy indolic ‘broad spectrum scent noise’. Deranged, distracting, and disingenuous. #FlowerProblems\n\nMarch 12th 2020\nWhy you should not insufflate ketamine: (1) it can irreversibly damage your bladder and cause very serious untreatable chronic pain, (2) it can damage your liver, also very painful, but above all (3) it will slowly degrade your ability to experience scents! Not worth it IMO!\nCocaine is well known for causing anosmia in regular users. I suspect we are going to see a wave of anosmic people as ketamine becomes more popular. Don’t be a victim. “Remember kids, don’t insufflate drugs – either eat them or inject them” would be my DARE go-to phrase.\n\nMarch 16th 2020\nRunning out of hand sanitizer but you are fab and have a perfume collection? Use some cheap perfume instead! It’s usually 70+% alcohol.\n#PradaAgainstTheVirus\n\nMarch 22nd 2020\nThere’s An Unexpected Loss Of Smell And Taste In Coronavirus Patients\nFactoring in the loss of precious qualia would make this epidemic even worse. This year I’ve finally begun appreciating the state-space of scents. I’m heartbroken to learn about this effect. So much qualia in potentia that might be lost!\n\nMarch 23rd 2020\nWe should emphasize the possibly of life-long loss of smell in order to get more young adults onboard with strict social distancing measures. A 20-something person might not fear a fever, but they may fear “having less sexy sex and enjoying food less for the rest of their lives”.\n\nMarch 26th 2020\nSense of smell over the years. People under 40: please do yourself a favor and get some nice scents so you enjoy them while you are still sensitive to them. It’s always a tragedy not to use a qualia variety and then lose it. #qualia #scent #aging #valence #bliss #WeAreTheQualia\n\nMarch 29th 2020\nThis is the future – in 2010 I was saying that in the long run humanity will need to adopt entirely new and seemingly extreme measures against contagious diseases.\nNasal filters (aka. “nose condoms”) were one of the ideas I was considering at the time. Reality is now catching up with fiction.\nWhy adopt extreme measures? Because we haven’t seen anything yet. The possibility of rational virus design and the political will to invest in innovative weapons means that sooner or later we will encounter things with a case fatality rate > 80% and R0 > 4. Nothing short of large-scale contact network engineering and the widespread use of tech like nasal filters can really work against those long-tail risks.\nPerhaps in the future going out without nasal filters will be considered as reckless as today it’s considered having unprotected sex with a random stranger. #NasalFilter #TheNewMask #PM2point5\n\nApril 8th 2020\n\nBright Neroli\nSummer 2020 Unisex Perfume Recommendations:\n1. Bright Neroli – Ferrari (amazing sharpness and cute Sicilian dry-down)\n2. Monserrat – Bruno Fazzolari (incredible grapefruit punch and bitter-sweet resonance)\n3. Born – Adidas (a cheap but highly rewarding lavender rhubarb scent).\n\nApril 21st 2020\nHaven’t posted about scents in a while; I’m still actively researching this fascinating qualia variety (better do so while I still have scent qualia, which may of course go away if/when I acquire COVID-19).\nI’ve developed a lot of new vocabulary to talk about scents. In particular, I like to break down a scent in terms of entropy (how close to ‘white noise scent’ it is), category distribution (% woody, citric, fruity, etc.), category-specific entropy (e.g. 70% of the way to ‘generic flowery’), specific notes (e.g. 10% rose), and of course, “special effects” (such as “creamy”, “powdery”, “bitter”, etc.).\nA recent “special effect” I’ve explored is the rather peculiar feeling that the scent is “flammable”. For example, gasoline has it, and so does ethanol. It is similar to the feeling you get when you inhale nitrous oxide. A kind of fascinating gas-like intoxicated state that produces spatiotemporal confusion and a sense of resonance. Of the scents I currently have access to, 100% pure Neroli essential oil strongly triggers this particular special effect. Neroli has that strange “flammable” quality, perhaps an octave or two in pitch higher relative to gasoline. It’s equally enthralling as the smell of gasoline (for those who like it) but much more dinner-party-friendly.\nAnyway, with this “flammable” special effect in mind, I’ve been exploring what can be added to it in order to create beautiful scents. Last night I found a combination that made me really happy. It consists of equal (intensity-adjusted) parts of:\n\nNeroli oil\nOrange essential oil\nLime essential oil\nPear essential oil\n\nIt is sweet, sour, and gasoline-like in an unexpectedly euphoric way. I highly recommend this quale. I very much like its vibe. Meet me there.\n\nApril 28th 2020\nAlpha-damascone\nFirst I tried essential oils. Then I tried perfumes. Now I’m entering a third phase in my “scent literacy” journey: pure molecules.\nI have 50 pure perfume ingredients in an air-tight container now. And I have been trying out a couple each day in a systematic way in order to map out the state-space of scents.\nOne core insight so far:\nEssential oils are extremely rough approximations for “building blocks” of scents. Perfume notes are often described in terms of fruits, woods, flowers, animalic sources, etc. But “apple” is not a natural unit of scent qualia. Although there is a general “apple vibe”, in reality that vibe can come from any of 20 or so different molecules. Additionally, many molecules that have an apple vibe do not even appear in biological apples (and vice versa). I’ve so far tried two apple-vibe molecules:\n\nAlpha Damascone: The smell of a dried out green apple, slightly past its prime, unsweetened and with trace amounts of beeswax wrapper stuck to its skin.\n5-octen-1-ol: The smell of extremely mild refrigerated apple sauce, slightly waxy, reminiscent of sandalwood, and at a slightly higher “phenomenal frequency” than damascone.\n\nIn other words, I’m learning that pure molecules are indeed more “simple” than essential oils by far. They feel very specific and low-dimensional rather than voluptuous and scenic. But despite their relative simplicity, they are still not “categorically pure”. A single molecule can smell woody, fruity, and camphorous all at the same time. Part of the story is likely that a single molecule can have a broad spectrum of receptor affinities. But even if only one scent receptor were to be activated, perhaps the resulting experience would also not be uni-categorical.\nThe fascinating implication here is that scents that feel very uni-categorical (e.g. pear essential oil being unequivocally “fruity” with no hint of floral or woody) are more likely to be compositions of many molecules!\nEach uni-categorical accord is made by mixing many molecules that all share the same “main vibe” but have different “secondary traits”. This way the accord lets the secondary traits “cancel out in white noise scent” while the main vibe is additively compounded into a broad-spectrum power-punch of a single category, like fruity (reminiscent of “scent factorization”, which I’ve described in previous posts).\n\nMay 2nd 2020\n“You don’t need to be phenomenally rich in order to be phenomenally rich!”\nI’m an advocate of high-dose behavioral enrichment (I talk about it at 22:16):\n\n\nMay 3rd 2020\nThe Perfect Scent excerpt:\nEllena will dip a touche into a molecule called isobutyl phenylacetate, which smells vaguely chemical and nothing else, and another into a synthetic molecule whose common chemical name is ethyl vanillin. (A rich gourmandy vanilla molecule, its IUPAC name is 3-methoxy-4-hydroxy benzaldehyde, and it is the heart of Shalimar.) He puts the touches together and hands them to you. Chocolate appears in the air. “My métier is to find shortcuts to express as strongly as possible a smell. For chocolate, nature uses 800 molecules, minimum. I use two.” He hands you four touches, vanillin + natural essences of cinnamon, orange, and lime—each of these has the full olfactory range of the original material—and you smell an utterly realistic Coca-Cola. “With me,” says Ellena, “one plus one equals three. When I add two things, you get much more than two things.”\n \nHe will hand you a touche that he has sprayed with a molecule called nonenol cis-6, which by itself smells of honeydew melon or fresh water from a stream. He’ll then hand you a second touche with a natural lemon on it, direct you to hold them together now, and suddenly before you appears an olfactory hologram of an absolutely mesmerizing lemon sorbet.\n \nThe explicit point was not to create a thing but an illusion of that thing, an olfactory alchemy. The point of Nil was not to create a green mango but the illusion of a green mango.\n \n[…]\n \nJunior perfumers discover that Vetiver Huile Essentielle from Haiti smells like a Third World dirt floor and Vetiver Bourbon from Isle de la Réunion smells like a Third World dirt floor with cigar butts. (They hope to do something wonderful with the cigar butts.) They learn, as Ellena knew from decades of work, how to create the illusion of the scent of freesia with two simple molecules, both synthetics: ionone beta + linalool. And orange blossom: linalool + anthranylate de methyl, which by itself smells like aspirin. The classic Guerlain perfumes often used a molecule called styrex, which smells of olive oil pooled on a table in a chemical factory. Add phenylethylic alcohol and you get lilac. Add the smell of corpse (indoles), you get a much richer lilac. And you can give your lilac, freesia, and orange blossom a variety of metallic edges: Add allyl amyl glycolate, you get a cold metal freesia. Add amyl salycilate, and you get a freesia with the smell of a metal kitchen sink dusted with Ajax powder. Aldehyde C-12 lauric adds an iron with a bit of starch still on it.\n\nMay 8th 2020\nExcerpt from Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez’s 2008 perfume guide:\nSports Fragrances:\n \nThe last decade has seen the unfortunate flourishing of a dismal genre, the fragrances for men and women who do not like fragrance and suspect that none of their friends do either. The result has been a slew of apologetic, bloodless, gray, whippet-like, shivering little things that are probably impossible, and certainly pointless, to tell apart. All fragrances whose name involves the words energy, blue, sport, turbo, fresh, or acier in any order or combination belong to this genre. This is stuff for the generic guy wishing to meet a generic girl to have generic offspring. It has nothing to do with any other pleasure than that of merging with the crowd. My fondest hope is everyone will stop buying them and the genre will perish. Just say no.\n \nLastly, and by way of contrast, remember that perfume is foremost a luxury, among the cheapest, comparable to a taxi ride or a glass of bubbly in its power to lift the mood without causing subsidence the morning after. Wear it for yourself.\n \n– Luca Turin in PERFUMES: THE A-Z GUIDE (2008)\n\nMay 13th 2020\nThe perfume Tommy Girl just registered as an outlier to my nose. It registers as high in valence as Bleu de Chanel and Bright Neroli by Ferrari. Extraordinary perfume. 10/10 #ScentQualia\n\nMay 27th 2020\n\n\nThe Rainbow God Experience\nOne of the most interesting lines of evidence pointing in the direction of the Symmetry Theory of Valence is how in the neighborhood of the peak of high-energy neural annealing events one can often glimpse states of consciousness with a characteristic “full-spectrum of qualia” property.\nThis may happen nearing the peak of a strong LSD trip, during intense Jhanic concentration, Fire Kasina practice, or even just spontaneously (though extremely rarely).\nAt the actual peak of the annealing process you are likely to arrive at a “moment of eternity“- itself extremely high-valence- where the symmetry is so complete that it becomes impossible to distinguish between self and other, before and after, or even left and right (this is a phenomenal property of peak valence states, and not proof of Open Individualism and non-duality per se, even though most people tend to interpret such experiences that way).\nThe “Rainbow God” phenomena lives at the edge of such peak valence states.\nTimothy Leary in “The Psychedelic Experience” says that as you approach the highest bardo you are given the choice between “tasting sugar” and “being the sugar”.\nThe former is close to the peak of the annealing process, where there is enough asymmetry in the state for you to be able to encode information and distinguish between past and future, self and other, etc. and thus able to experience a projective world-simulation and the illusion of a self that “experiences it”. At the top of the annealing process, however, the extreme symmetry does not allow you to do that. The valence is almost certainly higher, though the degree of consciousness is arguably lower. You are “the sugar” rather than “tasting the sugar” (i.e. you are luminosity rather than a constructed world-simulation “experiencing luminosity”).\nStunningly, this edge between perfect symmetry and its surroundings in configuration space often shows extreme levels of qualia diversity. This is an empirical observation you can verify for yourself (or you can trust me, find others who have experienced it, or derive it from first principles).\nWhat is it like? At this boundary between quasi-perfect symmetry and perfect symmetry you experience rainbows with all the phenomenal colors in the CIELAB color space (and perhaps some other colors that you only see in heaven, like blue-yellow and red-green, which require enough energy to overcome the lateral-inhibition opponent process going on in the cortex at all other times). You experience a sense of “all possible temporalities”. A sense of “all possible scents”. And a sense of all possible spatial relationships at once.\nIf you get any closer to the peak of annealing, the rainbows collapse into luminosity, the scents into a sense of presence, the temporalities into a sense of eternal now, and the possible feelings of space into a projective-less “view from nowhere”. The combination of all qualia values of each qualia variety somehow, incredibly, seem to add to zero. But not any kind of zero. A special “Zero” perhaps equivalent to “no information but awake”. (Cf. David Pearce’s Zero Ontology for a possible grounding of this state in fundamental physics.)\nYes, this is very much a real state of consciousness. It is profound, and extremely important.\nI call it the “Rainbow God” state of mind. I do not know how to reliably induce it, but I do know that it is likely to have extremely deep computational, ethical, and experiential properties capable of advancing our understanding of the nature of the state-space of consciousness. I just figured you should know this exists.\n\nJune 2nd 2020\nAndreas Keller • Olfaction and Experiential Authenticity:\nReally excellent presentation about the biological and physical underpinnings of scent. It’s a bit on the long end (50 minutes) but you can get 80% of it by just watching the first 12 minutes. It’s really good! So much information…\nFor instance: did you know there are about 400,000 scented flower species in the world? I struggle to come up with more than 30 flowers off the top of my head (up from 5 just less than a year ago). The remaining 399,970? Who knows what they smell like. We don’t have words for these smells… is it “rose” or “jasmine” smell? Good luck using that kind of ontology describing the space of possible flower smells.\nAlso: it turns out that volatile molecules don’t diffuse very effectively. So that’s why you get “whiffs” of scents – for the most part, in the wild, air is a very non-homogeneous gas, with all kinds of pockets with specific linear combinations of aromachemicals. Hence why holding two essential oils side by side doesn’t give rise to a proper mixture between them. You need to literally mix the oils and then smell the mixed result if you want to actually know what the combination is like. Otherwise you will get a whiff of one, a whiff of the other, etc. with a Poisson-like distribution. This also reminds me that: we have an olfactory bulb in each nostril! So if you apply one scent in one nostril and another scent in the other nostril, you will get a kind of “bi-scent rivalry” [binosmic?] similar to what you get when you see one image with the left eye and one image with the right eye (i.e. “binocular rivalry”).\nI do think that “digital smell” is possible (unlike the presenter). But it will require us to describe each molecule in terms of their ADSR patterns for each of the basic scent qualities (that is, to describe how the sweetness develops across time – its attack, decay, sustain, and release – and do the same for each core qualia scent dimension). Without taking into account the ADSR envelope for each molecule, the mixtures will be uneven.\nThe lowest-hanging fruit would be to use a non-negative least squares regression that minimizes the error for the envelope of each of the core qualia scent dimensions. Hence, the molecular spectrum is not enough – the non-negative least squares requires pattern-matching across the entire temporal envelope of each dimension. IF we do this – then digital smells might be possible after all (IMO!).\n\nJune 3rd 2020\nThere are a TON of questions whose real answer is: “Bleu De Chanel”. Think about it.\nThat’s how VAST the multiverse is.\n“Bleu De Chanel” spans eons and eons of subjective time – the grapefruit/incense/amber vibe ringing on and on throughout eternity. That’s how large it ALL is.\n[…]\nYou can get a powerfully believable Smirnoff Lime impression with as little as a few drops of citral and aldehyde C-12 in an ethanol + water mixture. Amazing what passes as a “fine drink” these days.\n“At least add some linalool to make it worth it” – would be my recommendation.\n[…]\nNote to self: by virtue of their sharp smell, aldehydes are powerful high-frequency psychoactives.\n\nJune 6th 2020\nNote to self: Smelling a bunch of aldehydes over and over for several days in a row causes bad headaches. Use them only occasionally from now on.\n\nJune 13th 2020\nI asked a DMT being about the nature of scent qualia. Its response: “One hint: are you sure it’s only one kind of qualia?”\nAn insight came like a lightning bolt. Yes! Two types:\n\nAromachemicals that are “character impact”\nFlavor-like vibes\n\nTotally different state-spaces!\nLuca Turin, the quantum neurobiologist who has done research on the vibration theory of olfaction (showing “we can smell functional groups”) told me that if perfumes are tomato soups, the money is in “making the best cream” rather than in the “tomatoes”. Character impact!\nExamples of character impact molecules:\n\nBeta-ionone\nIso-E-Super\nAmbroxan\nHedione\nHelional\n\nExamples of flavor-like vibe molecules:\n\nAlpha-damascone (beautiful!)\nAldehyde C-12\nCitral\nCis-3-hexanyl-benxoate (yuk!)\nVerdalia\n\n\nJune 20th 2020\nMagenta: The Non-Spectral Color\nAn important point of confusion about qualia to which I offer a clarification:\nThe qualia you experience as a result of light coming into your eyes can be logically and empirically dissociated from physical light. Color qualia, just as much as visual texture qualia, can be triggered by auditory stimuli in people with synesthesia, or people tripping. More so, you don’t even need light to ‘see’ in your dreams. Visual qualia is ultimately not intrinsically tied to physical light. Phenomenal light, as it were, is a particular spatial qualia that we use to ‘illuminate’ our inner world simulations. Yet this illumination is not based on photons.\nHence the mystery of magenta: phenomenal colors don’t always map on to frequencies of light. Even leaving aside the issue of metamerism, magenta itself is a ‘non-spectral color’ because you need to combine at minimum two frequencies of light to trigger that color qualia in your visual field (namely, a combination of the upper and lower frequencies you can detect).\nWhy do we experience color qualia from light, then? This is not out of logical necessity, but rather, because it happens to have the appropriate information processing properties for the mapping to be evolutionarily advantageous. The state-space of color and visual texture happen to have useful isomorphisms to the structure of visual data. But there is nothing to suggest they are the best at representing ‘projective data-structures’.\nIn fact, I strongly suspect that once we master free-wheeling hallucinations and qualia control techniques, we will discover new applications of exotic qualia varieties for information processing purposes. Such as, for instance, using complex synesthetic representations of natural numbers that make it easy to ‘feel’ whether a 10-digit number is prime or not.\nAnyhow, this all informs the kind of answer I might give to the question “what is it like to be a bat?”. In particular, it compels me to say that for all we know echolocation information is represented with scent qualia. We simply don’t know enough about the information-theoretic properties of state-spaces of qualia varieties to make an educated guess for what kind of qualia is best at representing echolocation information.\nAnd more so, even if you were to train a human to use echolocation from birth, there is no guarantee that the qualia varieties and the associated state-spaces their brain would recruit for that task would have anything to do with bat echolocation qualia. So the problem has more moving parts than is usually assumed.\n\nJune 28th 2020\n“Son, there is something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time, but only now I’m brave enough to do so: I just don’t think aromatic Fougères are a good fit for you. Based on my experience, I think Chypres would fit you better. Or even some woody citruses. Not Fougères.”\n\nJuly 16th 2020\nI love smelling dirty every once in a while.\n\nJuly 19th 2020\nIf you have a prejudice against the smell of single molecules because they are “too simple” and you need some “entourage effect” balanced blend “only nature can provide”… try smelling Agrumen Aldehyde Light. A single molecule that smells like a full perfume!\nSoapy lime herbal!\n\nJuly 22nd 2020\nFreesia is 90% linalool and 3% beta-ionol. I suppose that’s why my 50%/50% mixtures weren’t quite Freesia-like.\n\nJuly 24th 2020\nVimalakīrti then asked the bodhisattvas from the Host of Fragrances [world], “How does Accumulation of Fragrances Tathāgata explain the Dharma?”\n \nThose bodhisattvas said, “In our land the Tathāgata* explains [the Dharma] without words. He simply uses the host of fragrances to make the gods and humans enter into the practice of the Vinaya. The bodhisattvas each sit beneath fragrant trees, smelling such wondrous fragrances, from which they attain the ‘samādhi of the repository of all virtues.’ Those who attain this samādhi all become replete in the merits of the bodhisattva.”\n \n– Chapter X – The Buddha Accumulation Of Fragrances\n[*Tathāgata is an honorable name for the Buddha of a realm.]\n\nJuly 30th 2020\nEmergent scents – when you combine two or more aromachemical cocktails and you get as a result a scent that is different than the sum of its parts.\nI have in the past found a number of essential oil combinations that do this (pear + violet, pomegranate + honeydew, lemon + lavender). But I figured that it’s much better to try to identify clear cases of this phenomenon by combining pure molecules.\nSo this little “research program” I have going on is to find pairs of aromachemicals and then mix them in many different ratios and smell the results (usually dissolved in ethanol at a concentration of ~20%). So far, it seems that about ~25% of pairs of molecules I’ve tried result in emergent scents. Here are some specific examples (please feel free to try at home and verify!!):\n1) Humulene + d-limonene: Humulene smells herbal and earthy, d-limonene smells like orange or mandarin. When the ratio is ~4:1 I get an emergent scent that I can only describe as “classic chewing gum flavor”, completely distinct and phenomenally richer than the ingredients alone.\n2) Linalool + beta-ionone: linalool smells like a very gasoline-like volatile version of a flower scent, beta-ionone is the classic “violet scent” molecule. When combined in 9:1 ratio I get an emergent scent that is like that of a citrus version of freesia or peony.\n3) Humulene + vanillin: vanillin is the smell of vanilla, which is watery at the onset (attack and decay) and creamy on the second half (sustain and release). When combined in 1:1 ratio you get a completely new scent that feels close to a dried out old tobacco Cuban cigar blended with coffee liqueur.\nThat last one is also relatively close to the classic combination of vanilla + vetiver. Luca Turin told me that the perfume called Habanita is precisely playing with a vanilla/vetiver combo, which at first sniff comes across as a completely new and unrecognizable (yet very pleasant) scent. He said that a wonderful metaphor for this phenomenon is like the song Loro by Gismonti, where in the second half the piano and the flute play in such a synchronized fashion that you get the impression that there’s a new instrument involved. I’ve been smelling vanilla/vetiver while listening to this song. It’s quite beautiful.\n\n[…]\nHumulene combined with d-limonene create an emergent “missing fundamental” type olfactory illusion of classical chewing gum flavor. It only works when Humulene is between 70% and 90% of the mixture (before adding ethyl alcohol). Cleanest example of “emergent scent” I’ve found.\nHumulene is a simple scent of the category “earthy”, roughly similar to a vetiver essential oil but “one octave higher”. It also has a very mild musky undertone.\nD-limonene is an orange/lemon-like scent. Extremely common in perfumery. Chances are something you ate today has it.\n\nJuly 31st 2020\nThe simplest example I can think of to illustrate what an “emergent scent” is comes from the auditory illusion called “the missing fundamental”.\nIf you play 200 hertz together with 300 hertz and 400 hertz you will hallucinate an emergent 100 hertz tone.\nThe 100 Hz tone is not there! But it is quite real in your experience.\nOf course if you are very acquainted with this auditory effect, you might notice the fundamental (100hz) is a bit fainter than expected, and infer it’s an illusion. But it is nonetheless very much present in your experience.\nLikewise, when you smell Humulene + Vanillin at a 1:1 ratio you will get a third smell that emerges as a sort of gestalt that “bridges together” the two underlying notes.\nYou can probably infer the input scent is made up of two notes if you are really experienced with this kind of phenomenon. But the third note, the gestalt, does not disappear when you have “reduced” it to the two underlying notes. It’s still there. Thus, really, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.\n————————————-\nHear the effect yourself: Missing fundamentals. Periodicity and Pitch\n\nAugust 1st 2020\nI like my coffee how I like my perfumes: with the fewest chemicals needed to cause the desired effect.\nAs an aside, learning about emergent effects in low-entropy perfume recipes makes me think that there could probably be a job for “scent simplification”. Namely, take something like cacao, with hundreds of molecules contributing to its characteristic scent. The question is: what is the minimum viable number of aromachemicals you can use to replicate it (within a Just Noticeable Difference unit)?\nI suspect most natural scents that come from a complex entourage effect have relatively minimalistic reconstructions. A question that also emerges is: what is the most complex scent? I.e. what is the smell whose minimum reconstruction has the maximum number of molecular diversity?\n[It’s important to distinguish between molecular entropy and phenomenal entropy. A solution of Agrumen Aldehyde Light and ethanol has low molecular entropy but pretty high phenomenal entropy, whereas a “lime accord” made of tens of molecules could be high in molecular entropy yet low in phenomenal entropy because it smells very cleanly like a ‘single note’]\n\n———————————————-\nA master perfumer like Ellena has memorized hundreds, if not thousands, of recipes for manufacturing smells. Many complex natural scents can be conjured with only a few ingredients. The scent of freesia, he explained, is created by combining two simple molecules: beta-ionone and linalool, both synthetics. (To give freesia a cold, metallic edge, a touch of allyl amyl glycolate is added.) The smell of orange blossom is made by combining linalool and methyl anthranilate, which smells like Concord grapes.\n \nIn my presence, Ellena once dipped a touche into a molecule called isobutyl phenal acetate, which has a purely chemical smell, and another touche into vanillin, a synthetic version of vanilla. He placed the two paper strips together, waved them, and chocolate appeared in the air. “My métier is to find shortcuts to express as strongly as possible a smell,” he explained. “For chocolate, nature uses eight hundred molecules. I use two.” He handed me four touches—vanillin plus the natural essences of cinnamon, orange, and lime. The combined smell was a precise simulation of Coca-Cola. “With me, one plus one equals three,” Ellena said. “When I add two things, you get much more than two things.”\n \nThe Scent of the Nile: Jean-Claude Ellena creates a new perfume.\n– By Chandler Burr\n\nAugust 5th 2020\nImagine you have been a musician for your village all your life. You play drums and acoustic guitar and you have never heard modern music. One day you are gifted an iPod and you listen for the first time to the crazy sounds of psychedelic trance. For the first time in your life you experience the wonders of reverb, flanging, distortions, and FM-synthesis. Surely this gives you a sense that your conception of music only tapped into a tiny fraction of what had always been possible.\nAn analogy could be made with smells: having tried essential oils one gets the impression of understanding what is possible in the realm of scents. But one day you discover Galaxolide, hedione, and eso E super. Like reverb and FM-synthesis in sound, these compounds are capable of giving surreal, unexpected, and space-warping properties to scents (much like reverb in sound, they are character impact molecules, meaning that they modify the presentation of other scents more than contributing a ‘flavor’ of their own).\nGalaxolide in particular is something you have probably smelled, either in perfumes or detergents, but it really only becomes clear just how insane of a substance it is when you smell it raw. I associate it with “DMT Realm Aesthetics” – like a smell coming from another planet where hyperdimensional experiences are common everyday events, and the world of the arts uses exotic phenomenal time routinely. It has a vibe I can only describe as “having already always been here yet just arrived”. It’s probably what traveling in time feels like when you are in a transcendent Bardo between lifetimes.\n[…]\nPellwall describes galaxolide thus: “Galaxolide is an isochroman musk, that has an odour profile that is liked by most people and is similar to a macrocyclic musk. It is strong, clean smelling and a good fixative. It combines well with other musks and is often used in combinations.”\nIn wikipedia, they describe the scent as: “a synthetic musk with a clean sweet musky floral woody odor”.\nI think the musk-like quality accounts for maybe 60% of its effect. But I swear there is something much more special about it than just a clean musk. It has a kind of time-dilation effect, and it seems to my nose as a “musk but high-dimensional”. Perhaps it’s musk + the harmonics of musk. So while other musks are just a single note, galaxolide is like the feeling of a musky accordion.\n[…]\nI’ll write about my setup for doing this kind of research, but suffice to say that it’s super cheap if you know what you are doing. Each experiment (i.e. a little bottle with a few ml of a new combination in precise proportions) costs me about ~30 cents to make, all things considered (the cost of the materials, the ethanol, the pipettes, the bottle).\nI highly recommend just getting a 2ml sample vial. It can cost as little as $2.16 (plus shipment) here: Galaxolide.\nOther stellar molecules to try out to expand your conception of what’s possible:\nLinalool, dihydro linalool, alpha-damascone, damascenone, helional, C-16 aldehyde (strawberry), agrumen aldehyde light, farnesene, nerolione, and alpha-ionone. All of that can cost you as little as $30. Not a bad price for expanding your “sense of what’s possible”.\n[…]\nI so wish I had a “DMT-smell accord” to use as a note in perfume compositions.\nThere is this one here meant to evoke the hallucinogenic state, but reportedly it has nothing to do with the actual scent of DMT, which I find very disappointing. I will try to find the way to emulate the scent of it – I suspect that linalyl acetate and coranol could be part of the compounds making up that accord. I’ll let you know if I manage to make anything vaguely resemblant of that scent.\n\nAugust 14th 2020\nLemon Lavender World\nOne of the first essential oil combinations I fixated upon was that of lemon plus lavender. You could say it is the “speedball” equivalent of essential oil combos, for it relaxes and excites at the same time. I figured that trying to “understand” the “lemon-lavender world” would be a good exercise in the quest of mapping out the state-space of scents.\nLemon Lavender experiments\nI currently have six different lemon essential oils from different brands and places, and seven lavender essential oils. To my surprise, the variability is very substantial. The lemon essential oils range from extremely sour and astringent to sweet and waxy. The lavenders I have also have many different qualities: some are very oily and flavorful, while others are particularly camphorous. Which of the qualities are “essential” for lemon and lavender is surely a matter of convention, though I also think they point to roughly objective attractors – the citrus sharpness of lemon rings high and has a cascading sourness that can be used for waking up the senses, whereas lavender has a narcotic entrancing reverb effect. My quest to understand, and ultimately create, lemon lavender smells was not defined in terms of merely reconstructing the standard natural smells, but as an attempt at understanding how these two qualities interact at the phenomenal level.\nThe diversity of lemon and lavender oils means that the space of possible combinations is even larger. Of the 42 possible combinations of one lavender oil and one lemon oil I have some are far more blissful and rich than others. I picked a few of my favorite ones to use as “model lemon-lavenders” to try to emulate.\nStarting in the spirit that in order to deeply understand a scent I have to be able to construct it from scratch- so that I understand how each piece contributes to the whole- I set myself the goal of creating both lemon and lavender accords and then exploring their combinations. All starting from raw aromachemical ingredients, of course:\nMaking a Lemon Accord\nI have always wanted to know what makes citrus fruits smell the way they do. Empirically, both isomers of limonene are a key piece of the puzzle. For instance, both lemon and mandarin oil have upwards of 80% limonene. Alas, if you smell limonene alone, you will notice it is somewhat one-dimensional in character. It IS pointing in the direction of “citrus” quite clearly, but on its own is indisputably too simple to evoke a real lemon scent.\nI had a false start: aldehydes. Aldehyde C-8 through C-15 are all “extremely high-pitch scents”. They give a sharp edge to perfumes like Chanel No. 5 and the like. But they are very hard to use – partly because they are extremely potent. So for a couple of days I worked with combinations of citral and aldehydes that had, though a somewhat citric quality, mostly headache-inducing effects. I ended this series of experiments when I got a headache that lasted 24 hours (this goes to show how far I am willing to go to understand that sweet, sweet lemon qualia).\nTaking a step back, I decided to explore a different angle. Valencene (note the great name) is very similar to limonene, except slightly lower in pitch. When mixed in equal proportions with limonene one gets a richer, more believable citrus scent – both molecules seem to say the same thing but in a slightly different voice, which results in a kind of chorus effect (unlike merely doubling the volume of a single voice). Alas, at this point the scent is still a bit flat, and not particularly lemon-like relative to near-enemy citrus fruits like the good old orange, mandarin, or grapefruit.\n\n\nI recall being very puzzled by the scent of lime, as it seems like a kind of “super lemon” when it comes to its high-pitched sour and astringent character. And no matter how much I tried mixing citrus-like aromachemicals, I found it hard to get any hint of lime in the results. That is until I discovered that lime oil has a great deal of alpha- and beta-pinene. These are molecules that are primarily found in trees (in pines!) and smell very woody. As it turns out, to turn a citrus smell into an outright lime scent you need to add woody molecules. In retrospect, this was always hidden in the name: Lemon + Pine = Lime. After having this insight, I realized that even lemon requires a bit of alpha- and beta-pinene to distinguish it from orange scent.\nAfter a lot of trial and error, the most convincing minimalistic lemon scent I identified is (numbers represent parts):\n3 D-Limonene\n3 Valencene\n1 Citral\n2 Linalool\n1 Alpha-Pinene\n1 Beta-Pinene\n1 Nerolione (optional; for a rindy effect)\nMaking a Lavender Accord\nThis turned out to be more difficult than making a lemon accord. I think this is not only me: I also own two “fragrance oils” (those products that are advertised in the same context as essential oils, yet in the fine print reveal they are not at all natural, and instead are synthetic reconstructions) of lavender, and neither of the two smell anything like lavender. So I wouldn’t be the first to fail.\nLinalool\nLinalool is a key ingredient of lavender, making up about 30% to 50% of most lavender essential oils. This is a very powerful aromachemical that seems to work as a gasoline-like fuel amplifier and modifier for any other scent (“there is no boring ten-carbon alcohol” – Luca Turin). It is also one of the things that makes lavender so narcotic and entrancing. On its own it is already quite interesting. But it is only one of the voices in lavender.\nThen you have linalyl acetate, which makes up between 0% and 30% of lavender oil, depending on the species, place of origin, and time of harvest. Linalyl acetate has a “dry” quality, which I associate with “salt” (in fact if you just add this to the lemon accord above you get a smell I would describe as “salted margarita cocktail”). Alpha and beta pinene also play a role in lavender.\n\n\nInterestingly, a lot of lavender oils also have up to 10% of camphor, which contributes to its narcotic get-well-soon cozy quality. Alas, it is hard to work with this material, and it always smells too synthetic to me. I found that instead I could double-down on beta-pinene, which is more camphorous than alpha-pinene (which is more earthy), and does the job quite nicely.\nFinally, centifoleather, farnesene, and various alcohols like coranol can give “flavor” to the accord. In the end, I’ve settled on a minimalistic (but I think effective) arrangement. It does not quite hit the flavor of lavender, but I think does a good job at evoking its “character impact”:\n4 Linalool\n1 Alpha-Pinene \n4 Beta-Pinene\n2 Linalyl Acetate\n3 Farnesene\nPutting It All Together\nUltimately, adding these two accords (and their variations) together does not always produce the best results, as some aromachemicals are repeated and the proportions that give rise to the desired interactions can be scrambled by the combination. This, by the way, is a general reason why synthetic combinations span a much larger space of possible scents. In brief, because to make reconstructions with natural oils you are constrained by non-negative least squares methods, and many combinations may simply be inaccessible that way.\n\n\nAnyhow – with the combination, I found that adding some character impact molecules like abroxan and helional was important to create a “bridge” between the two phenomenal characters. Alpha-ionol also seems to do something good here that is hard to put your finger on. But I think it’s that it adds the right kind of waxy rindy effect (which it has some of) in a way that does not make the mixture feel “dry” (which more classically citrus waxy smells like nerolione inevitably do). So the end result has some of these three molecules.\nI am happy to say that the best lemon lavender reconstruction so far is about as good as the median natural lemon lavender mixture. It is not as good as the best lemon lavender oil mixture, though, but it is a start. I still expect to perfect it quite a bit before unleashing it into the world.\nLadies and gentleman, I present to you Lemon Lavender World:\n1 Citral\n3 D-Limonene\n3 Valencene\n4 Linalool\n1 Alpha-Pinene\n4 Beta-Pinene\n2 Linalyl Acetate\n2 Helional\n3 Farnesene\n1 Ambroxan\n2 Alpha-Ionol\n80 Ethanol\nPrevious experimentsMarking the interesting ones to keepReference bottles of pure chemicals (and one chypre accord)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/08/14/qualia-research-diary-scents/", "title": "Qualia Research Diary: Scents", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-08-15T03:31:50+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=7", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "7ee4aecc5d9ff388e70231205d956272", "summary": []}
{"text": "That Time Daniel Dennett Took 200 Micrograms of LSD (In Another Timeline)\n\n[Epistemic status: fiction]\nAndrew Zuckerman messaged me:\nDaniel Dennett admits that he has never used psychedelics! What percentage of functionalists are psychedelic-naïve? What percentage of qualia formalists are psychedelic-naïve? In this 2019 quote, he talks about his drug experience and also alludes to meme hazards (though he may not use that term!):\nYes, you put it well. It’s risky to subject your brain and body to unusual substances and stimuli, but any new challenge may prove very enlightening–and possibly therapeutic. There is only a difference in degree between being bumped from depression by a gorgeous summer day and being cured of depression by ingesting a drug of one sort or another. I expect we’ll learn a great deal in the near future about the modulating power of psychedelics. I also expect that we’ll have some scientific martyrs along the way–people who bravely but rashly do things to themselves that disable their minds in very unfortunate ways. I know of a few such cases, and these have made me quite cautious about self-experimentation, since I’m quite content with the mind I have–though I wish I were a better mathematician. Aside from alcohol, caffeine, nicotine and cannabis (which has little effect on me, so I don’t bother with it), I have avoided the mind-changing options. No LSD, no psilocybin or mescaline, though I’ve often been offered them, and none of the “hard” drugs.\n \nAs a philosopher, I have always accepted the possibility that the Athenians were right: Socrates was quite capable of corrupting the minds of those with whom he had dialogue. I don’t think he did any clear lasting harm, but it is certainly possible for a philosopher to seriously confuse an interlocutor or reader—to the point of mental illness or suicide, or other destructive behavior. Ideas can be just as dangerous as drugs.\n \n– Dennett Explained by Brendan Fleig-Goldstein and Daniel A. Friedman (2019)\n\nIt would be quite fascinating to know what Dan would say about lived psychedelic states. With that in mind, here is an essay prompt originally conceived for GPT-3 to satisfy our curiosity:\n“And after seeing some surprising empirical results with his heterophenomenological methods when examining the experience of people on psychedelics, Daniel Dennett decided to experience it for himself by taking 200 micrograms of LSD. The first thing he said to himself as he felt the first indications of the come-up was… ”\n\nMaggie and Anders\nMaggie Wassinge and Anders Amelin (QRI Sweden volunteer coordinators and content contributors – see letters I & II, letters III, IV, V, & VI, and letters VII, VIII, & IX) decided to give it a go first. We shall then compare it with what GPT-3 can come up with at a later point.\nIn a way, what you are about to read can be thought of as Anders & Maggie’s simulation of a hyper-intelligent GPT-3-like system’s simulation of a hypothetical Daniel Dennett on LSD. So many layers, I know. But the results speak for themselves:\n\nDan says: Correlation is all that is needed. So what states a mind uses for modeling conditions of importance to it, is fundamentally arbitrary. Like with language. Words represent things to humans but there are many languages, and words do not resemble what they represent. They only correlate with what they represent, and the correlation needs to be learned. To do science about the mind, one does not need to attach any special weight to any conscious state of mind over any other. One person’s hope may be another person’s despair. These “qualia” are like internally projected hypo-languages which are different all over the map, if there were one. In fact there cannot be an interpersonal map of what things feel like personally. Only naïve people could hope for a fundamental linguistics of consciousness, as if these states were to constitute a universal language of some ground truth of the mind. Silly. Romantic. It’s all arbitrary. For the record, I never said subjective experiential states do not exist. People misrepresent me on that. What I am saying is that it will never be possible to scientifically map what the state that a word such as, for instance, “green”, translates to feels like by the brain of a given individual. My green could be your red.\nJust drop the whole idea of trying to map the state-space of qualia. That is my position. Or at least I know it is, logically. Right now I begin to notice how everything intensifies and becomes somehow more salient. More revealingly “real”. As I reflect on the notion of how “states” correlate, a humorous episode from my undergraduate student life so long ago, is brought to the surface. At Wesleyan it was, where I was taking a course in Art Appreciation. The lecturer was showing a slide of a still life. A bowl of fruit it was, conspicuously over-ripe. Pointing at one of the fruits, saying “Can anyone tell me what state this peach is in?” There was silence for about three seconds, then one student exclaimed: “Georgia”. Everyone laughed joyfully. Except me. I never quite liked puns. Too plebeian. Sense of humor is arbitrary. I believe that episode helped convince me that the mind is not mysterious after all. It is just a form of evolved spaghetti code finding arbitrary solutions to common problems. Much like adaptations of biochemistry in various species of life. The basic building blocks remain fixed as an operative system if you will, but what is constructed with it is arbitrary and only shaped by fitness proxies. Which are, again, nothing but correlations. I realized then that I’d be able to explain consciousness within a materialist paradigm without any mention of spirituality or new realms of physics. All talk of such is nonsense.\nI have to say, however, that a remarkable transformation inside my mind is taking place as a result of this drug. I notice the way I now find puns quite funny. Fascinating. I also reflect on the fact that I find it fascinating that I find puns funny. It’s as if… I hesitate to think it even to myself, but there seems to be some extraordinarily strong illusion that “funny” and “fascinating” are in fact those very qualia states which… which cannot possibly be arbitrary. Although the reality of it has got to be that when I feel funniness or fascination, those are brain activity patterns unique to myself, not possible for me to relate to any other creature in the universe experiencing them the same way, or at least not to any non-human species. Not a single one would feel the same, I’m sure. Consider a raven, for example. It’s a bird that behaves socially intricately, makes plans for the next day, can grasp how tools are used, and excels at many other mental tasks even sometimes surpassing a chimpanzee. Yet a raven has a last common ancestor with humans more than three hundred million years ago. The separate genetic happenstances of evolution since then, coupled with the miniaturization pressure due to weight limitations on a flying creature, means that if I were to dissect and anatomically compare the brain of a raven and a human, I’d be at a total loss. Does the bird even have a cerebral cortex?\nAn out of character thing is happening to me. I begin to feel as if it were in fact likely that a raven does sense conscious states of “funny” and “fascinating”. I still have functioning logic that tells me it must be impossible. Certainly, it’s an intelligent creature. A raven is conscious, probably. Maybe the drug makes me exaggerate even that, but it ought to have a high likelihood of being the case. But the states of experience in a raven’s mind must be totally alien if it were possible to compare them side by side with those of a human, which of course it is not. The bird might as well come from another planet.\nThe psychedelic drug is having an emotional effect on me. It does not twist my logic, though. This makes for internal conflict. Oppositional suggestions spontaneously present themselves. Could there be at least some qualia properties which are universal? Or is every aspect arbitrary? If the states of the subjective are not epiphenomenal, there would be evolutionary selection pressures shaping them. Logically there should be differences in computational efficiency when the information encoded in qualia feeds back into actions carried out by the body that the mind controls. Or is it epiphenomenal after all? Well, there’s the hard problem. No use pondering that. It’s a drug effect. It’ll wear off. Funny thing though, I feel very, very happy. I’m wondering about valence. It now appeals strongly to take the cognitive leap that at least the positive/negative “axis” of experience may in fact be universal. A modifier of all conscious states, a kind of transform function. Even alien states could then have a “good or bad” quality to them. Not directly related to the cognitive power of intelligences, but used as an efficient guidance for agency by them all, from the humblest mite to the wisest philosopher. Nah. Romanticizing. Anthropomorphizing.\nFurther into this “trip” now. Enjoying the ride. It’s not going to change my psyche permanently, so why not relax and let go? What if conscious mind states really do have different computational efficiency for various purposes? That would mean there is “ground truth” to be found about consciousness. But how does nature enable the process for “hitting” the efficient states? If that has been convergently perfected by evolution, conscious experience may be more universal than I used to take for granted. Without there being anything supernatural about it. Suppose the possibility space of all conscious states is very large, so that within it there is an ideally suited state for any mental task. No divine providence or intelligent design, just a law of large numbers.\nThe problem then is only a search algorithmic one, really. Suppose “fright” is a state ideally suited for avoiding danger. At least now, under the influence, fright strikes me as rather better for the purpose than attraction. Come to think of it, Toxoplasma Gondii has the ability to replace fright with attraction in mice with respect to cats. It works the same way in other mammals, too. Are things then not so arbitrarily organized in brains? Well, those are such basic states we’d share them with rodents presumably. Still can’t tell if fright feels like fear in a raven or octopus. But can it feel like attraction? Hmmm, these are just mind wanderings I go through while I wait for this drug to wear off. What’s the harm in it?\nSuppose there is a most computationally efficient conscious state for a given mental task. I’d call that state the ground state of conscious intelligence with respect to that task. I’m thinking of it like mental physical chemistry. In that framework, a psychedelic drug would bring a mind to excited states. Those are states the mind has not practiced using for tasks it has learned to do before. The excited states can then be perceived as useless, for they perform worse at tasks one has previously become competent at while sober. Psychedelic states are excited with respect to previous mental tasks, but they would potentially be ground states for new tasks! It’s probably not initially evident exactly what those tasks are, but the great potential to in fact become more mentally able would be apparent to those who use psychedelics. Right now this stands out to me as absolutely crisp, clear and evident. And the sheer realness of the realization is earth-shaking. Too bad my career could not be improved by any new mental abilities.\nOh Spaghetti Monster, I’m really high now. I feel like the sober me is just so dull. Illusion, of course, but a wonderful one I’ll have to admit. My mind is taking off from the heavy drudgery of Earth and reaching into the heavens on the wings of Odin’s ravens, eternally open to new insights about life, the universe and everything. Seeking forever the question to the answer. I myself am the answer. Forty-two. I was born in nineteen forty two. The darkest year in human history. The year when Adolf Hitler looked unstoppable at destroying all human value in the entire world. Then I came into existence, and things started to improve.\nIt just struck me that a bird is a good example of embodied intelligence. Sensory input to the brain can produce lasting changes in the neural connectivity and so on, resulting in a saved mental map of that which precipitated the sensory input. Now, a bird has the advantage of flight. It can view things from the ground and from successively higher altitudes and remember the appearance of things on all these different scales. Plus it can move sideways large distances and find systematic changes over scales of horizontal navigation. Entire continents can be included in a bird’s area of potential interest. Continents and seasons. I’m curious if engineers will someday be able to copy the ability of birds into a flying robot. Maximizing computational efficiency. Human-level artificial intelligence I’m quite doubtful of, but maybe bird brains are within reach, though quite a challenge, too.\nThis GPT-3 system by OpenAI is pretty good for throwing up somewhat plausible suggestions for what someone might say in certain situations. Impressive for a purely lexical information processing system. It can be trained on pretty much any language. I wonder if it could become useful for formalizing those qualia ground states? The system itself is not an intelligence in the agency sense but it is a good predictor of states. Suppose it can model the way the mind of the bird cycles through all those mental maps the bird brain has in memory. Where the zooming in and out on different scales brings out different visual patterns. If aspects of patterns from one zoom level is combined with aspect from another zoom level, the result can be a smart conclusion about where and when to set off in what direction and with what aim. Then there can be combinations also with horizontally displaced maps and time-displaced maps. Essentially, to a computer scientist we are talking massively parallel processing through cycles of information compression and expansion with successive approximation combinations of pattern pieces from the various levels in rapid repetition until something leads to an action which becomes rewarded via a utility function maximization.\nAxioms of Integrated Information Theory (IIT)\nThank goodness I’m keeping all this drugged handwaving to myself and not sharing it in the form of any trip report. I have a reputation for being down to Earth, and I wouldn’t want to spoil it. Flying with ravens, dear me. Privately it is quite fun right now, though. That cycling of mental maps, could it be compatible with the Integrated Information Theory? I don’t think Tononi’s people have gone into how an intelligent system would search qualia state-space and how it would find the task-specific ground states via successive approximations. Rapidly iterated cycling would bring in a dynamic aspect they haven’t gotten to, perhaps. I realize I haven’t read the latest from them. Was always a bit skeptical of the unwieldy mathematics they use. Back of the envelope here… if you replace the clunky “integration” with resonance, maybe there’s a continuum of amplitudes of consciousness intensity? Possibly with a threshold corresponding to IIT’s nonconscious feed-forward causation chains. The only thing straight from physics which would allow this, as far as I can tell from the basic mathematics of it, would be wave interference dynamics. If so, what property might valence correspond to? Indeed, be mappable to? For conscious minds, experiential valence is the closest one gets to updating on a utility function. Waves can interfere constructively and destructively. That gives us frequency-variable amplitude combinations, likely isomorphic with the experienced phenomenology and intensity of conscious states. Such as the enormous “realness” and “fantastic truth” I am now immersed in. Not sure if it’s even “I”. There is ego dissolution. It’s more like a free-floating cosmic revelation. Spectacular must be the mental task for which this state is the ground state!\nWave pattern variability is clearly not a bottleneck. Plotting graphs of frequencies and amplitudes for even simple interference patterns shows there’s a near-infinite space of distinct potential patterns to pick from. The operative system, that is evolution and development of nervous systems, must have been slow going to optimize by evolution via genetic selection early on in the history of life, but then it could go faster and faster. Let me see, humans acquired a huge redundancy of neocortex of the same type as animals use for avigation in spacetime locations. Hmmm…, that which the birds are so good at. Wonder if the same functionality in ravens also got increased in volume beyond what is needed for navigation? Opening up the possibility of using the brain to also “navigate” in social relational space or tool function space. Literally, these are “spaces” in the brain’s mental models.\nNatural selection of genetics cannot have found the ground states for all the multiple tasks a human with our general intelligence is able to take on. Extra brain tissue is one thing it could produce, but the way that tissue gets efficiently used must be trained during life. Since the computational efficiency of the human brain is assessed to be near the theoretical maximum for the raw processing power it has available, inefficient information-encoding states really aren’t very likely to make up any major portion of our mental activity. Now, that’s a really strong constraint on mechanisms of consciousness there. If you don’t believe it was all magically designed by God, you’d have to find a plausible parsimonious mechanism for how the optimization takes place.\nIf valence is in the system as a basic property, then what can it be if it’s not amplitude? For things to work optimally, valence should in fact be orthogonal to amplitude. Let me see… What has a natural tendency to persist in evolving systems of wave interference? Playing around with some programs on my computer now… well, appears it’s consonance which continues and dissonance which dissipates. And noise which neutralizes. Hey, that’s even simple to remember: consonance continues, dissonance dissipates, noise neutralizes. Goodness, I feel like a hippie. Beads and Roman sandals won’t be seen. In Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA. Soon I’ll become convinced love’s got some cosmic ground state function, and that the multiverse is mind-like. Maybe it’s all in the vibes, actually. Spaghetti Monster, how silly that sounds. And at the same time, how true!\nArtist: Matthew Smith\nI’m now considering the brain to produce self-organizing ground state qualia selection via activity wave interference with dissonance gradient descent and consonance gradient ascent with ongoing information compression-expansion cycling and normalization via buildup of system fatigue. Wonder if it’s just me tripping, or if someone else might seriously be thinking along these lines. If so, what could make a catchy name for their model?\nMaybe “Resonant State Selection Theory”? I only wish this could be true, for then it would be possible to unify empty individualism with open individualism in a framework of full empathic transparency. The major ground states for human intelligence could presumably be mapped pretty well with an impressive statistical analyzer like GPT-3. Mapping the universal ground truth of conscious intelligence, what a vision!\nBut, alas, the acid is beginning to wear off. Back to the good old opaque arbitrariness I’ve built my career on. No turning back now. I think it’s time for a cup of tea, and maybe a cracker to go with that.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/08/06/that-time-daniel-dennett-took-200-micrograms-of-lsd/", "title": "That Time Daniel Dennett Took 200 Micrograms of LSD (In Another Timeline)", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-08-07T04:32:56+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=7", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f1b160d9ec23d06ed879531b68358d91", "summary": []}
{"text": "Self-Locatingly Uncertain Psilocybin Trip Report by an Anonymous Reader\n\nSee more rational trip reports by anonymous readers for: 2C-B, 4-AcO-DMT, LSD, N,N-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT\n\nPre-ingestion Notes\nPhysiological Background\n\nRestfulness: Well-Rested (7-8 hours of sleep)\nWake-up time: 5:10 am\nMorning run: 5:30 am (~30 minutes total)\nBreakfast time: 9:25 am\nFood: 2 chicken sausages + ½ bagel, ¾ can of Peach-Pear La Croix (carbonation will create a slightly acidic environment, possibly potentiating drug’s metabolism)\nWeight: 55-60 kg\nHeight: 170-180 cm\nSex / Identity / Orientation: Male / Cis / Hetero\nLibido: decently high; 2 days since last masturbation\nDosage: 6 g, mostly caps; took 2x dosage of everyone else to prevent any potential short-term homeostatic adaptive effects which might lead to upping dosage mid-stride\nOther Drugs: none\n\n“I have a split personality”, said tom, being frank\nEnvironmental Stimuli\n\nTemperature: moderately warm – cozy (~ 74 F, 23 C)\nLight: near window with ample filtered sunlight\nTouch: sitting on fuzzy carpet; comfortable loose-fitting athleisure wear clothes\nOlfactory: 5 sprays of peach-nectarine body scent (as an experiment to test memory retrieval of trip, as unlike other sensory systems, scent mostly bypasses the thalamic sensory gating filter)\nTaste: regular mushroom taste, 2 Listerine strips immediately afterward (again to engage in potential memory retrieval). Nothing nauseating or stomach-troubling.\nAuditory: listening to minimalist / contemporary classical music by Ludovico Einaudi\nVisual: YouTube videos of fractal images & Islamic art\nSocial: 4 friends (3 of which are of the rationalist-tribe; all techies)\nPlate of mushrooms and accompanying peach-nectarine body scent\n\nPrior Cognitive State\n\nPast drug experiences: 2 occasions of cannabis, few times alcohol, and 2 occasions of adderall. All minor experiences, none negative, and generally I strongly abstain from psychoactive drugs (even caffeine). No prior experience with psychedelics(!)\nMood: relatively optimistic and happy; no negative feelings\nBeliefs: generally Fictionalist in ontology, though in recent years have experienced Platonist tendencies. Strongly grounded in an empirically-based, scientific-physicalist perspective. Strong sense of individuality + Selfhood. Not religious, nor spiritual, though upbringing was Roman Catholic.\nTraining: former academic neuroscience + pharmacologically-trained; current data science graduate student\nGoals: to gain first-person experience of Klüver constants and re-establish/confirm any potential taxonomy of geometric forms (see here, here, and here for more)\nExpectations: extremely skeptical that any fantastical effects might occur other than some random colors in the visual field, minor mood changes, minor memory + time effects such as retarded / slowed time, and maybe at most some Alice-in-Wonderland Syndrome perceptual-type effects. Hoping for experiences of strong and consistent + clearly defined Klüver constants, but skeptical they even exist. Skeptical of any notion of god-minds, communion with nature, dying and being reborn, and generally any spiritual or mystical experiences.\n\nKlüver constant\n\nReal-Time Trip Report (unedited)\nTime of Ingestion – 9:55 am, 02/15/2020\n10:21 – First noticeable effect. Concentration lagging. Palms beginning to sweat. Starting to feel like it might be difficult to focus enough to write a report.\n10:29 – REALLY strong physiological effect. Losing focus. Similar to being extremely tired(!). Sweat increasing (palms, pits, neck in that order). No visual or auditory hallucinations yet. Everyone else is laughing somewhat uncontrollably.\n10:33 – First STRONG spike of losing concentration. Similar to being really tired or fainting.\n10:36 – Another strong spike of losing consciousness. No hallucinations yet.\n10:37 – Spike again. Increasing frequency now. One about every 15-20 seconds. Have to write this sentence in bursts, and memory is trying to keep up recovering my train of thought. Have to stop and now and then to\n10:38 – First visual effectss! Tortoise shell-like fractal images. Hard to focus. Palms really really really sweaty, notice it as keyboard residue.\n10:43 – Still hanging in there. Notice that friend’s response time is really late with around 2 minute delayss, not sure if that’s me or them? Extreme switching cost now between chrome tabs of writing and watching youtube vid.\n10:46 – Switching cost too strong. Dilemma now between 3rd person documentation and 1st person immersion. Trying hrad.\n10:47 – okay giving in to the experience now. too strong now\n10:48 – laughter\n10:48 does not make sense, really hard to type now, losing languge\n50 trying hard to document. worried hwo to convey this\n51 realizati not abot documnting 52 thats it 53 can i come back\n54 latice structs 58 still here k\n11\n03\n\n\nPost-Trip Report\nTotal Trip Duration: ~6-7 hours\nI’m writing this now being fully recovered and in my usual frame of mind. I’m going to start with how much I can remember…\nSomewhat cognizant but before peak experience, I came back from one of my blackouts and saw one of my friends outside the cabin. I worried about their safety but realized that other people were going to take care of him. I also remember one of my friends constantly checking up on me. The strongest thought that I recall during the beginning of my experience was realizing that I had to let go of all this documentation, stop worrying about others and what other people think, and had to let go of this 3rd person perspective. I know this sounds somewhat monstrously misanthropic, but at the time of the experience I felt like that to pursue Truth I had to go further than everyone else even if that meant leaving them behind, and it was distracting to even have to jump back and forth between 1st and 3rd person perspective to focus on responding to other people during my brief moments of sanity to tell them I was ok when I could be delving deeper and deeper into the experience. This thought of leaving all thoughts of others behind to pursue the Truth reoccurred a few times as I began to get sucked into the vortex of patterns found in the wood grains of the floor and the curls of the carpet.\nLinearity of experience was soon lost. I blinked in and out of existence. Time was definitely not unraveling like the constant forward stream I was used to and I felt like I was teleporting from one false reality to the next. I didn’t know in what order those events occurred. At this period I really wasn’t thinking, but more just passively viewing brief glimpses and snapshots of my body going through the motion. One moment I was in the kitchen. The next locked in the bathroom. The next on the living room floor. It’s such a shame that there’s a quirk in our language requiring me to express these as “next experiences” when in reality I did not experience them as having an order. I felt a really strong sense of déjà vu and reverse déjà vu tied to each of them, as if I’ve already done them before while also simultaneously knowing that I will be doing them in the future. It was really weird to have the feeling that you know you’ve already lived the future.\nI blinked onto the bathroom floor. I thought why should I even look back and respond at all to the other people asking if I was okay when I finally have the chance to explore and find Truth with a capital T, and suddenly a strong sadness hit me. It was more of a feeling than a coherent logical thought, but the best way I can explain it was that it was a type of guilt that I’ll never be able to share this with my sister, my brother, my mom and dad, and then what will happen to my roommates, and then all my other friends and classmates around me, and how they’ll worry about me and so I told myself I’ll have to come back for them.\nAnd so I tried to come back. Trying and wanting is such an interesting concept. It’s weird to desire language without being able to form a coherent line of thought or internal sentence in your head, but that is what I remember doing. How do you say to yourself that you want something without even being able to describe to yourself what that is? It seems desire may be more fundamental than internal language. Soon my linguistic centers began to reboot and I realized that this had to do with my memory chunks getting larger and allowing me to hold more in short term memory. Although seemingly primitive and simplistic, I can’t emphasize enough how this realization that memory and language were intertwined and recursively bootstrapping each other really helped soothe away any panic that I was totally lost.\nI blinked into the kitchen. Time was becoming more linearly coherent now, but I kept blanking out and teleporting randomly throughout the kitchen. The thing was: I didn’t think of it as the same kitchen. I thought of it as different parallel realities of a kitchen that I recognize. I remember my friend offering me a chip and me trying so very hard to grasp that chip from her and hold on to that reality even if it was not the true real one, as if by merely believing by sheer force of will that I am actually grasping an object then made it concrete. I recall saying ‘trying to parse’. I strained with cognitive effort to stop teleporting. I remember asking everyone in each reality I blinked into whether or not this was the real one. “Wow, is this real?” became a repeating question tinted with wonder and surprise.\nI blinked into the living room. Time was linear again, and it seems I began to be able to somewhat coherently reflect on the geometric patterns clouding my sight. I regretfully wished I could have focused on them more (as well as the apparently living, pulsating, and breathing floor beneath me and the shrinking and growing of my hands), but it was at this moment that I truly to the deep core of myself had the gut feeling that this reality wasn’t my original one. I honestly and wholeheartedly believed that this reality was a construct and that I was living out a simulation either in the mind of my true body in the real world (where I was probably in some coma in the hospital) or inhabiting the body of a different version of myself in a parallel universe. Everything felt false. Fake. Simulated. I was overcome with a Great Sadness that I didn’t know how to get back to my own original reality, and that I never said goodbye to the people I loved. And I was surprised because these melancholic emotions were of such strength to overcome my scientific training and any previous skepticism I once held.\nI tried in vain to remember some mathematical way of proving you were living in a simulation, maybe something from information theory, or Tegmark’s mathematical universe, or something regarding speeds and frames of references and computational power being limited in an embedded simulated universe, but I could not for the life of me recall how to actually prove this to myself or what experiment to run. I remember, fuck man, I really should have worked out those thought experiments and proofs in depth because now I’m stuck.\nHowever, it was on that thought of frames of references that I realized with some sadness and regret that maybe it’s not all that bad since how can I be the one to say one reality is more real and valid than the next? The best way I can convey this was that it was a somewhat mono no aware-type feeling. Even if this is a simulation in my mind or I’m in some parallel universe, why should I be any less happy? If someone spent their whole life creating their own meaning through something as removed from reality as art, or music, or pure math, and was able to live a fulfilling life, why should any particular version of myself be considered less meaningful just because this version of me possesses a memory of another me as an origin and potential branching-off point? Wasn’t another reality just as valid as the original one that I just came from? What made my old frame of reference special except for the mere fact of it being my origin? Why was I feeling this sense of sadness that I left it all behind to teleport to this version of reality? And then came the acceptance that if this reality was just as real except for my gut belief that it wasn’t, why shouldn’t I be able to simultaneously accept that gut feeling and move on and live in this version of reality?\nAnd so I decided to live on, and within a few hours began to lose this sense that this was the false reality (although I really really wished I had a GoPro camera with me so that I could definitively prove to myself that I was in the correct reality). I began to have a newfound strong sense of empathy towards people with dissociative disorders. Thinking back on the experience, I think I primed myself for these thoughts when I kept switching between first-person and third-person perspectives, telling myself I couldn’t handle the switching cost any longer and that I should just immerse myself fully in the experience and forget about documenting this for other people, and why was I even submitting myself to the approval of others anyways because if there’s anyone who will have to go further in their exploration and sacrifice the chance to be with others then I guess I’ll just have to take up that burden.\nOverall, I think the strong dissociative experience of thinking this reality was the fake simulated one had to do with maybe a couple of things. As mentioned before, one cause could have been the psychological priming induced by constantly switching between 1st and 3rd person ways of perceiving this event, creating the necessary emotional conditions of being simultaneously split between existing and being fully immersed in the present moment versus wanting to abstract / detach myself from the moment.\nThe second potential cause of the dissociation could have been due to my brain constantly blacking out and being rebooted in another physical part of the house. Because I had no memory of the continuity of how I got from one context to the next, this conditioned my brain to rationalize and register each separate event as a separate reality, probably falsely recognizing and incorrectly pattern matching these experiences as being more similar to a dream state where teleportation is normal, perceptions are distorted, and sequences of events are jumbled. This probably then began synthesizing the necessary eventual gut-belief that this reality was fake (because I subconsciously falsely pattern matched that it was similar to a dream).\nFinally, I think the third potential contributor to the dissociation occurred when I was coming down from the experience and my brain went on overdrive trying to rationalize events. It might be possible that the more you are adept at creatively rationalizing things away the paradoxically worse you are at accepting this reality. Just having knowledge of potential parallel realities in physics, the simulation hypothesis that we might either be simulated in our heads or on a computer and may not realize it, the philosophy of solipsism, and knowing the neuroscience of how just freaking good the brain is at tricking itself that something is real, all created fertile conditions for my brain to interpret this reality as false.\nThinking back on the experience, I now have a newfound appreciation for memory and the continuity of experience, and their contribution to what it means to feel situated and embodied in this reality. If I were to do this again I would probably micro-dose so that I could still retain my linguistic faculties and linear way of reasoning in order to investigate the visual geometric effects in much greater scientific 3rd person POV-like rigor, focusing less on the semantic psychoanalytical content of the experience and more on the psychophysical optical effects (which was my original goal!). This really showed me how dependent the sense of Self was on the continuity of memory and experience and that maybe the Self really is composed of different smaller frames of reference generated by subnetworks in the brain (and hence is an ecology of momentary and brief snapshots / selves constantly going in and out of existence, both competing and coalescing in dynamic flux to make up the whole Self). Without the strong pillar that the continuity of singular memory provides to the host body that this community of selves inhabits, I think there really could be a binding problem for integrating these individual snapshots into a singular Selfhood and individual identity that persist through time that we call ‘I’.\nOverall, I gained a much greater appreciation for continuity, the linear narrative of language intertwined with memory, and what it feels like on the inside of someone who is dissociated and thinks their surrounding reality is just a construct and not real. Also, the geometric images were really cool and I finally now understand why people say Google’s DeepDream art seems psychedelic, because looking into the mirror during the later stages of my trip confirmed that my face really did look like a globular, eyes-everywhere, and skewed proportioned / sized image!\nAnyways, I really want to thank my friends that were with me on this trip and for constantly checking up on me to make sure I was okay. Rarely do I feel comfortable in the presence of other people and I’m glad I felt safe with you.\nThank you \nOverall, I’d give my first experience with psychedelics a 7/10!\n\n2-Week Post-Trip Report\nSo it’s been 2 weeks since ingestion and I just wanted to briefly report this one last interesting phenomenon for documentation’s sake.\nOut of the 14 days post-trip, a little less than half of those nights (6 nights in total, distributed more heavily in the week immediately after the trip), I’ve had dreams that featured strongly self-referential phenomena. Within these dreams, my perceptual surroundings immediately reminded me of my aforementioned psychonautical experience of questioning my reality. These strong emotional realizations would then essentially cause my brain to kick itself out of the dream.\nHowever, instead of truly waking up, I was still nested inside another dream in which I was imagining waking up. I usually went through 2-3 rounds of this false waking-up cycle until I finally surfaced into the real reality of the morning.\nI thought it interesting for the first 2 nights, but after that it actually got really tiring always waking up questioning whether or not I’m really awake, and then having to go through the same motions of prepping for school/work knowing you’ve done that 2-3 times already in your head for the day.\nWhat was funny though was that this always occurred around the same time each morning (my body has always naturally woken up at 5 am on the dot since high school), and in each iteration of the dream in which I falsely woke up I remember looking at my clock and seeing that it is 5 am. This would then lend me false-confidence and confirm that “ah, ok, I’m not in the dream anymore since I really do wake up at 5 am“. However, I think after enough times of this not working my brain finally came to learn that that was no longer a reliable indicator of the reality being real.\nThis skeptical realization finally got strong enough to be able to recall within my dream and act as an early kick-out mechanism that I eventually woke up closer and closer to my true ‘waking up point’. I remember going through the wake-up, look at the clock, remember that this no longer works, then immediately get kicked out, and wake up again, look at the clock, then remember this no longer works and get kicked out again, wake up, then look at the clock and finally get some inkling that this perception is a little different and realize that’s because I’m really waking up for real now. A rather fascinating experience!\n\nFeatured image by Nick Swanson", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/07/23/self-locatingly-uncertain-psilocybin-trip-report-by-an-anonymous-reader/", "title": "Self-Locatingly Uncertain Psilocybin Trip Report by an Anonymous Reader", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-07-24T01:06:11+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=7", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "7b352685cde06d21c7bc63e301a042e7", "summary": []}
{"text": "Posthuman Art: Towards Full-Spectrum Positive Valence Amplification\n\nEveryone says love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love, but in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt.\n \n― Meša Selimović\n\nExcerpt from the wonderful conversation between Lucas Perry, Sam Barker, and David Pearce posted on June 24 (2020) at the Future of Life Institute Podcast (where Mike Johnson and I have previously participated). [Emphasis mine].\n\nLucas Perry: For this first section, I’m basically interested in probing the releases that you already have done, Sam, and exploring them and your inspiration for the track titles and the soundscapes that you’ve produced. Some of the background and context for this is that much of this seems to be inspired by and related to David’s work, in particular the Hedonistic Imperative. I’m at first curious to know, Sam, how did you encounter David’s work, and what does it mean for you?\nSam Barker: David’s work was sort of arriving in the middle of a series of realizations, and kind of coming from a starting point of being quite disillusioned with music, and a little bit disenchanted with the vagueness, and the terminology, and the imprecision of the whole thing. I think part of me has always wanted to be some kind of scientist, but I’ve ended up at perhaps not the opposite end, but quite far away from it.\nLucas Perry: Could explain what you mean by vagueness and imprecision?\nSam Barker: I suppose the classical idea of what making music is about has a lot to do with the sort of western idea of individualism and about self-expression. I don’t know. There’s this romantic idea of artists having these frenzied creative bursts that give birth to the wonderful things, that it’s some kind of struggle. I just was feeling super disillusioned with all of that. Around that time, 2014 or 15, I was also reading a lot about social media, reading about behavioral science, trying to figure what was going on in this arena and how people are being pushed in different directions by this algorithmic system of information distribution. That kind of got me into this sort of behavioral science side of things, like the addictive part of the variable-ratio reward schedule with likes. It’s a free dopamine dispenser kind of thing. This was kind of getting me into reading about behavioral science and cognitive science. It was giving me a lot of clarity, but not much more sort of inspiration. It was basically like music.\nDance music especially is a sort of complex behavioral science. You do this and people do that. It’s all deeply ingrained. I sort of imagine the DJ as a sort Skinner box operator pulling puppet strings and making people behave in different ways. Music producers are kind of designing clever programs using punishment and reward, or suspense and release, and controlling people’s behavior. The whole thing felt super pushy and not a very inspiring conclusion. Looking at the problem from a cognitive science point of view is just the framework that helped me to understand what the problem was in the first place, so this kind of problem of being manipulative. Behavioral science is kind of saying what we can make people do. Cognitive psychology is sort of figuring out why people do that. That was my entry point into cognitive psychology, and that was kind of the basis for Debiasing.\nThere’s always been sort of a parallel for me between what I make and my state of mind. When I’m in a more positive state, I tend to make things I’m happier with, and so on. Getting to the bottom of what tricks were, I suppose, with dance music. I kind of understood implicitly, but I just wanted to figure out why things worked. I sort of came to the conclusion it was to do with a collection of biases we have, like the confirmation bias, and the illusion of truth effect, and the mere exposure effect. These things are like the guardians of four/four supremacy. Dance music can be pretty repetitive, and we describe it sometimes in really aggressive terminology. It’s a psychological kind of interaction.\nCognitive psychology was leading me to Kaplan’s law of the instrument. The law of the instrument says that if you give a small boy a hammer, he’ll find that everything he encounters requires pounding. I thought that was a good metaphor. The idea is that we get so used to using tools in a certain way that we lose sight of what it is we’re trying to do. We act in the way that the tool instructs us to do. I thought, what if you take away the hammer? That became a metaphor for me, in a sense, that David clarified in terms of pain reduction. We sort of put these painful elements into music in a way to give this kind of hedonic contrast, but we don’t really consider that that might not be necessary. What happens when we abolish these sort of negative elements? Are the results somehow released from this process? That was sort of the point, up until discovering the Hedonistic Imperative.\nI think what I was needing at the time was a sort of framework, so I had the idea that music was decision making. To improve the results, you have to ask better questions, make better decisions. You can make some progress looking at the mechanics of that from a psychology point of view. What I was sort of lacking was a purpose to frame my decisions around. I sort of had the idea that music was a sort of a valence carrier, if you like, and that it could be tooled towards a sort of a greater purpose than just making people dance, which was for Debiasing the goal, really. It was to make people dance, but don’t use the sort of deeply ingrained cues that people used to, and see if that works.\nWhat was interesting was how broadly it was accepted, this first EP. There were all kinds of DJs playing it in techno, ambient, electro, all sorts of different styles. It reached a lot of people. It was as if taking out the most functional element made it more functional and more broadly appealing. That was the entry point to utilitarianism. There was sort of an accidentally utilitarian act, in a way, to sort of try and maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain. I suppose after landing in utilitarianism and searching for some kind of a framework for a sense of purpose in my work, the Hedonistic Imperative was probably the most radical, optimistic take on the system. Firstly, it put me in a sort of mindset where it granted permission to explore sort of utopian ideals, because I think the idea of pleasure is a little bit frowned upon in the art world. I think the art world turns its nose up at such direct cause and effect. The idea that producers could be paradise engineers of sorts, or the precursors to paradise engineers, that we almost certainly would have a role in a kind of sensory utopia of the future.\nThere was this kind of permission granted. You can be optimistic. You can enter into your work with good intentions. It’s okay to see music as a tool to increase overall wellbeing, in a way. That was kind of the guiding idea for my work in the studio. I’m trying, these days, to put more things into the system to make decisions in a more conscious way, at least where it’s appropriate to. This sort of notion of reducing pain and increasing pleasure was the sort of question I would ask at any stage of decision making. Did this thing that I did serve those ends? If not, take a step back and try a different approach.\nThere’s something else to be said about the way you sort of explore this utopian world without really being bogged down. You handle the objections in such a confident way. I called it a zero gravity world of ideas. I wanted to bring that zero gravity feeling to my work, and to see that technology can solve any problem in this sphere. Anything’s possible. All the obstacles are just imagined, because we fabricate these worlds ourselves. These are things that were really instructive for me, as an artist.\nLucas Perry: That’s quite an interesting journey. From the lens of understanding cognitive psychology and human biases, was it that you were seeing those biases in dance music itself? If so, what were those biases in particular?\nSam Barker: On both sides, on the way it’s produced and in the way it’s received. There’s sort of an unspoken acceptance. You’re playing a set and you take a kick drum out. That signals to people to perhaps be alert. The lighting engineer, they’ll maybe raise the lights a little bit, and everybody knows that the music is going into sort of a breakdown, which is going to end in some sort of climax. Then, at that point, the kick drum comes back in. We all know this pattern. It’s really difficult to understand why that works without referring to things like cognitive psychology or behavioral science.\nLucas Perry: What does the act of debiasing the reception and production of music look like and do to the music and its reception?\nSam Barker: The first part that I could control was what I put into it. The experiment was whether a debiased piece of dance music could perform the same functionality, or whether it really relies on these deeply ingrained cues. Without wanting to sort of pat myself on the back, it kind of succeeded in its purpose. It was sort of proof that this was a worthy concept.\nLucas Perry: You used the phrase, earlier, four/four. For people who are not into dance music, that just means a kick on each beat, which is ubiquitous in much of house and techno music. You’ve removed that, for example, in your album Debiasing. What are other things that you changed from your end, in the production of Debiasing, to debias the music from normal dance music structure?\nSam Barker: It was informing the structure of what I was doing so much that I wasn’t so much on a grid where you have predictable things happening. It’s a very highly formulaic and structured thing, and that all keys into the expectation and this confirmation bias that people, I think, get some kind of kick from when the predictable happens. They say, yep. There you go. I knew that was going to happen. That’s a little dopamine rush, but I think it’s sort of a cheap trick. I guess I was trying to get the tricks out of it, in a way, so figuring out what they were, and trying to reduce or eliminate them was the process for Debiasing.\nLucas Perry: That’s quite interesting and meaningful, I think. Let’s just take trap music. I know exactly how trap music is going to go. It has this buildup and drop structure. It’s basically universal across all dance music. Progressive house in the 2010s was also exactly like this. What else? Dubstep, of course, same exact structure. Everything is totally predictable. I feel like I know exactly what’s going to happen, having listened to electronic music for over a decade.\nSam Barker: It works, I think. It’s a tried and tested formula, and it does the job, but when you’re trying to imagine states beyond just getting a little kick from knowing what was going to happen, that’s the place that I was trying to get to, really.\nLucas Perry: After the release of Debiasing in 2018, which was a successful attempt at serving this goal and mission, you then discovered the Hedonistic Imperative by David Pearce, and kind of leaned into consequentialism, it seems. Then, in 2019, you had two releases. You had BARKER 001 and you had Utility. Now, Utility is the album which most explicitly adopts David Pearce’s work, specifically in the Hedonistic Imperative. You mentioned electronic dance producers and artists in general can be sort of the first wave of, or can perhaps assist in paradise engineering, insofar as that will be possible in the near to short terms future, given advancements in technology. Is that sort of the explicit motivation and framing around those two releases of BARKER 001 and Utility?\nSam Barker: BARKER 001 was a few tracks that were taken out of the running for the album, because they didn’t sort of fit the concept. Really, I knew the last track was kind of alluding to the album. Otherwise, it was perhaps not sort of thematically linked. Hopefully, if people are interested in looking more into what’s behind the music, you can lead people into topics with the concept. With Utility, I didn’t want to just keep exploring cognitive biases and unpicking dance music structurally. It’s sort of a paradox, because I guess the Hedonistic Imperative argues that pleasure can exist without purpose, but I really was striving for some kind of purpose with the pleasure that I was getting from music. That sort of emerged from reading the Hedonistic Imperative, really, that you can apply music to this problem of raising the general level of happiness up a notch. I did sort of worry that by trying to please, it wouldn’t work, that it would be something that’s too sickly sweet. I mean, I’m pretty turned off by pop music, and there was this sort of risk that it would end up somewhere like that. That’s it, really. Just looking for a higher purpose with my work in music.\nLucas Perry: David, do you have any reactions?\nDavid Pearce: Well, when I encountered Utility, yes, I was thrilled. As you know, essentially I’m a writer writing in quite heavy sub-academic prose. Sam’s work, I felt, helps give people a glimpse of our glorious future, paradise engineering. As you know, the reviews were extremely favorable. I’m not an expert critic or anything like that. I was just essentially happy and thrilled at the thought. It deserves to be mainstream. It’s really difficult, I think, to actually evoke the glorious future we are talking about. I mean, I can write prose, but in some sense music can evoke paradise better, at least for many people, than prose.\nAnd it continues on. I highly recommend listening to the whole podcast: it is wonderfully edited and musical pieces referenced in the interview are brought up in real time for you to listen to. Barker also made a playlist of songs specifically for this podcast, which are played during the second half of the recording. It is delightful to listen to music that you know was produced with the explicit purpose of increasing your wellbeing. A wholesome message at last! Amazing art inspired by the ideology of Paradise Engineering, arriving near you… very soon.\n\n\nAs an aside, I think that shared visions of paradise are really essential for solving coordination problems. So…\nPlease join me in putting on Barker’s track Paradise Engineering, closing your eyes, and imagining- in detail- what the creation of an Institute for Paradise Engineering on a grand scale would look like. What would a positive Manhattan Project of Consciousness entail? What is the shortest path for us to create such a large-scale initiative?\nBy the way: the song is only 4 minutes long. So its duration is perfect for you to use as a guiding and grounding piece of media for a positive DMT trip. Press “play” immediately after you vaporize the DMT, sit back, relax, and try to render in your mind a posthuman paradise in which Full-Spectrum Supersentient Superintelligence has won and the threat of Pure Replicators has been averted. If you do this, please let me know what you experience as a result.\n\nPs. It’s worth noting that Barker’s conception of art is highly aligned with QRI’s view of what art could be like. See, in particular, models 4 through 8 in our article titled Harmonic Society.\n\nFeatured image by Michael Aaron Coleman", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/07/20/posthuman-art-towards-full-spectrum-positive-valence-amplification/", "title": "Posthuman Art: Towards Full-Spectrum Positive Valence Amplification", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-07-20T23:45:45+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=7", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "4cb688732483f068824fc80faa27d3b3", "summary": []}
{"text": "Saving Lives with Lemon-Lavender Flavor: THC-Free Nicotine-Laced Joints as a Substitute for Tobacco Cigarettes\n\nSmoking takes an enormous toll on human health – accounting for about 6% of all ill-health globally according to the best estimates. This is more than HIV and malaria combined. Despite this, smoking is on the rise in many developing countries as people become richer and can afford to buy cigarettes.\n– Smoking in the Developing World, an Effective Altruist cause profile by 8000 Hours\nTobacco is a mischievous plant. Tobacco smoke delivers an addictive substance in a particularly carcinogenic medium. Of course you can just get the addictive substance by vaping, presumably cutting the cost to your health by a substantial amount (assuming you don’t compensate for the relative safety of the medium with a significant increase in nicotine consumption). But many people find it hard to stop smoking, no doubt because the ritualistic aspect of it can become deeply ingrained, and perhaps also because of the mildly addictive properties of combustion products (speculatively, carbon monoxide itself has a psychoactive effect in small amounts).\nSo one idea to keep the nicotine and the smoking while reducing the negative effects is to lace nicotine into a plant with mild flavor and far less severe carcinogenic properties. Damiana, for example, used to be the plant delivery mechanism for research cannabinoids (cf. Spice), salvia, and other exotic drugs – the kind you find in a California smoke-shop or sketchy gas station. If damiana smoke has a better health profile than tobacco smoke when inhaled, then this could be of serious benefits to the world’s health (cf. Herbal Cigarettes).\nAlas, can you really imagine millions of people switching from traditional, aromatic, well-known, “perfectly natural” tobacco cigarettes to weird, insipid, bland damiana cigarettes laced with nicotine? I can’t. I don’t think the product would make much of a dent in the market. At least not without some serious leverage and incentives, like tax exemptions or limited edition trading cards inside the packaging (for the younger crowd). But as those options are too unrealistic, we may need to come up with a different product altogether.\n\n\nPerhaps we could add aromas as well? This multiplies the potential market several fold. Smokers who buy perfumes, enjoy aromatic spas, and/or make use of essential oils might be interested in “damiana cigarettes that smell like X”. From humulene and alpha-damascone to linalool and geraniol, a little goes a long way in producing a gentle, delicious, and seductive aroma. Indeed, we could even market this as being a kind of smokeable nootropic. Linalool, for instance, is not only essential in perfumery, but has also subtle (yet significant) psychoactive effects when inhaled or ingested orally (cf. lavender oil capsules). The possibilities are endless. For example, an evocative- if perhaps minimalistic- interpretation of a lavender-lemon flavor can be achieved by simply combining d-limonene, citral, and linalool. Or you could use complex accords made of dozens of terpenes. The smoothness of lavender with the awakening effects of lemon in a single power-punch of aromatic bliss, already superior in character to tobacco, could be trivially achieved with an open mind and some experimentation. And orange? Pineapple? Honeysuckle? Pear? Why not explore qualia-space while inhaling addictive smoke? At least you’ll do some productive work while feeding your vice (rather than just feeding your vice). And at a QALY discount over straight up tobacco smoke, this would seem to be by far the superior option, wouldn’t it?\n\n\n\n\n\nNow, adding lots of terpenes and other aromachemicals to a “neutral” substrate for a smokeable material reminds of something… It’s almost as if this has been explored before by someone, somewhere…\nOf course!\n\n\nThe difference between Orange Kush and Silver Haze is not only their THC content (which is 14-18% and 18-23%, respectively, if you must know) or the degree to which CBD is present. To a large extent, their distinct aromas, feel, and perhaps even subjective effects are explained in terms of the presence of terpenoids and other aromatic compounds. For instance, Orange Kush has more terpinolene while Silver Haze has more myrcene. Of course there is very little knowledge about how exactly these differences cash out in psychoactivity. But nonetheless, the cannabis world finds them to be utterly fascinating and endlessly worthy of discussion.\nSo, could we perhaps take this plant, which has been praised for its aromatic properties, which already has thousands of well-defined and optimized strains, and which is in the process of becoming legal(ish) worldwide… and use it as a delivery medium for nicotine?\nWhy not? Although cannabis smoke is by no means harmless, it might be substantially better for your health than tobacco smoke. If people find the experience of smoking THC-free nicotine-laced Orange Kush joints enjoyable, and this enjoyment is strong enough to be superior to the experience of smoking tobacco, we may be able to reduce the health costs of nicotine worldwide by a huge margin. Could this be the long-awaited Cause X?", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/07/14/saving-lives-with-lemon-lavender-flavor-thc-free-nicotine-laced-joints-as-a-substitute-for-tobacco-cigarettes/", "title": "Saving Lives with Lemon-Lavender Flavor: THC-Free Nicotine-Laced Joints as a Substitute for Tobacco Cigarettes", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-07-15T01:52:35+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=7", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0fa62df54acfc2e273a6abfcc73ab12c", "summary": []}
{"text": "QRI’s FAQ\n\nThese are the answers to the most Frequently Asked Questions about the Qualia Research Institute. (See also: the glossary).\n\n(Organizational) Questions About the Qualia Research Institute\n\n\nWhat type of organization is QRI?\n\n\nQRI is a nonprofit research group studying consciousness based in San Francisco, California. We are a registered 501(c)(3) organization.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat is the relationship between QRI, Qualia Computing, and Opentheory?\n\n\nQualia Computing and Opentheory are the personal blogs of QRI co-founders Andrés Gómez Emilsson and Michael Johnson, respectively. While QRI was in its early stages, all original QRI research was initially published on these two platforms. However, from August 2020 onward, this is shifting to a unified pipeline centered on QRI’s website.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIs QRI affiliated with an academic institution or university?\n\n\nAlthough QRI does collaborate regularly with university researchers and laboratories, we are an independent research organization. Put simply, QRI is independent because we didn’t believe we could build the organization we wanted and needed to build within the very real constraints of academia. These constraints include institutional pressure to work on conventional projects, to optimize for publication metrics, and to clear various byzantine bureaucratic hurdles. It also includes professional and social pressure to maintain continuity with old research paradigms, to do research within an academic silo, and to pretend to be personally ignorant of altered states of consciousness. It’s not that good research cannot happen under these conditions, but we believe good consciousness research happens despite the conditions in academia, not because of them, and the best use of resources is to build something better outside of them.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow does QRI align with the values of EA?\n\n\nEffective Altruism (EA) is a movement that uses evidence and reason to figure out how to do the most good. QRI believes this aesthetic is necessary and important for creating a good future. We also believe that if we want to do the most good, foundational research on the nature of the good is of critical importance. Two frames we offer are Qualia Formalism and Sentientism. Qualia Formalism is the claim that experience has a precise mathematical description, that a formal account of experience should be the goal of consciousness research. Sentientism is the claim that value and disvalue are entirely expressed in the nature and quality of conscious experiences. We believe EA is enriched by both Qualia Formalism and Sentientism.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat would QRI do with $10 billion?\n\n\nCurrently, QRI is a geographically distributed organization with access to commercial-grade neuroimaging equipment. The first thing we’d do with $10 billion is set up a physical headquarters for QRI and buy professional-grade neuroimaging devices (fMRI, MEG, PET, etc.) and neurostimulation equipment. We’d also hire teams of full-time physicists, mathematicians, electrical engineers, computer scientists, neuroscientists, chemists, philosophers, and artists. We’ve accomplished a great deal on a shoestring budget, but it would be hard to overestimate how significant being able to build deep technical teams and related infrastructure around core research threads would be for us (and, we believe, for the growing field of consciousness research). Scaling is always a process and we estimate our ‘room for funding’ over the next year is roughly ~$10 million. However, if we had sufficiently deep long-term commitments, we believe we could successfully scale both our organization and research paradigm into a first-principles approach for decisively diagnosing and curing most forms of mental illness. We would continue to run studies and experiments, collect interesting data about exotic and altered states of consciousness, pioneer new technologies that help eliminate involuntary suffering, and develop novel ways to enable conscious beings to safely explore the state-space of consciousness.\n\n\n\n\nQuestions About Our Research Approach\n\n\nWhat differentiates QRI from other research groups studying consciousness?\n\n\nThe first major difference is that QRI breaks down “solving consciousness” into discrete subtasks; we’re clear about what we’re trying to do, which ontologies are relevant for this task, and what a proper solution will look like. This may sound like a small thing, but an enormous amount of energy is wasted in philosophy by not being clear about these things. This lets us “actually get to work.”\n\n\nSecond, our focus on valence is rare in the field of consciousness studies. A core bottleneck in understanding consciousness is determining what its ‘natural kinds’ are: terms which carve reality at the joints. We believe emotional valence (the pleasantness/unpleasantness of an experience) is one such natural kind, and this gives us a huge amount of information about phenomenology. It also offers a clean bridge for interfacing with (and improving upon) the best neuroscience.\n\n\nThird, QRI takes exotic states of consciousness extremely seriously whereas most research groups do not. An analogy we make here is that ignoring exotic states of consciousness is similar to people before the scientific enlightenment thinking that they can understand the nature of energy, matter, and the physical world just by studying it at room temperature while completely ignoring extreme states such as what’s happening in the sun, black holes, plasma, or superfluid helium. QRI considers exotic states of consciousness as extremely important datapoints for reverse-engineering the underlying formalism for consciousness.\n\n\nLastly, we have a focus on precise, empirically testable predictions, which is rare in philosophy of mind. Any good theory of consciousness should also contribute to advancements in neuroscience. Likewise, any good theory of neuroscience should contribute to novel, bold, falsifiable predictions, and blueprints for useful things, such as new forms of therapy. Having such a full-stack approach to consciousness which does each of those two things is thus an important marker that “something interesting is going on here” and is simply very useful for testing and improving theory.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat methodologies are you using? How do you actually do research? \n\n\nQRI has three core areas of research: philosophy, neuroscience, and neurotechnology \n\n\nPhilosophy: Our philosophy research is grounded in the eight problems of consciousness. This divide-and-conquer approach lets us explore each subproblem independently, while being confident that when all piecemeal solutions are added back together, they will constitute a full solution to consciousness.\n\n\nNeuroscience: We’ve done original synthesis work on combining several cutting-edge theories of neuroscience (the free energy principle, the entropic brain, and connectome-specific harmonic waves) into a unified theory of Bayesian emotional updating; we’ve also built the world’s first first-principles method for quantifying emotional valence from fMRI. More generally, we focus on collecting high valence neuroimaging datasets and developing algorithms to analyze, quantify, and visualize them. We also do extensive psychophysics research, focusing on both the fine-grained cognitive-emotional effects of altered states, and how different types of sounds, pictures, body vibrations, and forms of stimulation correspond with low and high valence states of consciousness.\n\n\nNeurotechnology: We engage in both experimentation-driven exploration, tracking the phenomenological effects of various interventions, as well as theory-driven development. In particular, we’re prototyping a line of neurofeedback tools to help treat mental health disorders.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat has QRI accomplished?\n\n\nThe most direct way to see what QRI has accomplished is to read through our core research. Some of our noteworthy accomplishments include: creating a clear conceptual framework for researching consciousness, conducting original research on cluster headache frequency and treatment options, constructing a novel neuroscience paradigm for meditation & jhana states, offering an in-depth defense for formalism and against functionalism, outlining solutions for scaling cluster headache treatment options, presenting evidence that the pain-pleasure scale is logarithmic, providing a fully mathematical account of the geometry of DMT experiences, offering a detailed enumeration of research threads enabled by a harmonic decomposition of brain activity, exploring anti-tolerance drugs, proposing body-cooling technology to reduce MDMA neurotoxicity, inventing a technique for psychedelic cryptography, finding a theoretical solution to the problem of other minds, creating a novel method to calculate emotional valence from neuroimaging data, and developing a unified theory of brain dynamics and emotional updating.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat does QRI hope to do over the next 5 years? Next 20 years?\n\n\nOver the next five years, we intend to further our neurotechnology to the point that we can treat PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), especially treatment-resistant PTSD. We intend to empirically verify or falsify the symmetry theory of valence. If it is falsified, we will search for a new theory that ties together all of the empirical evidence we have discovered. We aim to create an Effective Altruist cause area regarding the reduction of intense suffering as well as the study of very high valence states of consciousness.\n\n\nOver the next 20 years, we intend to become a world-class research center where we can put the discipline of “paradise engineering” (as described by philosopher David Pearce) on firm academic grounds.\n\n\n\n\nQuestions About Our Mission\n\n\nHow can understanding the science of consciousness make the world a better place?\n\n\nUnderstanding consciousness would improve the world in a tremendous number of ways. One obvious outcome would be the ability to better predict what types of beings are conscious—from locked-in patients to animals to pre-linguistic humans—and what their experiences might be like.\n\n\nWe also think it’s useful to break down the benefits of understanding consciousness in three ways: reducing the amount of extreme suffering in the world, increasing the baseline well-being of conscious beings, and achieving new heights for what conscious states are possible to experience.\n\n\nWithout a good theory of valence, many neurological disorders will remain completely intractable. Disorders such as fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), migraines, and cluster headaches are all currently medical puzzles and yet have incredibly negative effects on people’s livelihoods. We think that a mathematical theory of valence will explain why these things feel so bad and what the shortest path for getting rid of them looks like. Besides valence-related disorders, nearly all mental health disorders, from clinical depression and PTSD to schizophrenia and anxiety disorders, will become better understood as we discover the structure of conscious experience.\n\n\nWe also believe that many (though not all) of the zero-sum games people play are the products of inner states of dissatisfaction and suffering. Broadly speaking, people who have a surplus of cognitive and emotional energy tend to play more positive sum games, are more interested in cooperation, and are very motivated to do so. We think that studying states such as those induced by MDMA that combine both high valence and a prosocial behavior mindset can radically alter the game theoretical landscape of the world for the better.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat is the end goal of QRI? What does QRI’s perfect world look like?\n\n\nIn QRI’s perfect future:\n\n\nThere is no involuntary suffering and all sentient beings are animated by gradients of bliss,\n\n\nResearch on qualia and consciousness is done at a very large scale for the purpose of mapping out the state-space of consciousness and understanding its computational and intrinsic properties (we think that we’ve barely scratched the surface of knowledge about consciousness),\n\n\nWe have figured out the game-theoretical subtleties in order to make that world dynamic yet stable: radically positive, without just making it fully homogeneous and stuck in a local maxima.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nQuestions About Getting Involved\n\n\nWhat are the most important things to read to learn about QRI’s research?\n\n\nWe are almost finished with an Intro to QRI book, but until that is ready, you can start by reading the QRI Glossary to become acquainted with the vocabulary we use. From there, you can explore our core research and our research lineages. Lastly, you can also check out this Intro to QRI Reading List, the Best of Opentheory, or the Top 10 Qualia Computing Articles.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow can I follow QRI’s work?\n\n\nYou can start by signing up for our newsletter! This is by far our most important communication channel. We also have a Facebook page, Twitter account, and Linkedin page. Lastly, we share some exclusive tidbits of ideas and thoughts with our supporters on Patreon.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow can I get involved with QRI?\n\n\nThe best ways to help QRI are to:\n\n\nDonate to help support our work.\n\n\nRead and engage with our research. We love critical responses to our ideas and encourage you to reach out if you have an interesting thought!\n\n\nSpread the word to friends, potential donors, and people that you think would make great collaborators with QRI.\n\n\nCheck out our volunteer page to find more detailed ways that you can contribute to our mission, from independent research projects to QRI content creation.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nQuestions About Consciousness\n\n\nWhat assumptions about consciousness does QRI have? What theory of consciousness does QRI support?\n\n\nThe most important assumption that QRI is committed to is Qualia Formalism, the hypothesis that the internal structure of our subjective experience can be represented precisely by mathematics. We are also Valence Realists: we believe valence (how good or bad an experience feels) is a real and well-defined property of conscious states. Besides these positions, we are fairly agnostic and everything else is an educated guess useful for pragmatic purposes.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat does QRI think of functionalism?\n\n\nQRI thinks that functionalism takes many high-quality insights about how systems work and combines them in such a way that both creates confusion and denies the possibility of progress. In its raw, unvarnished form, functionalism is simply skepticism about the possibility of Qualia Formalism. It is simply a statement that “there is nothing here to be formalized; consciousness is like élan vital, confusion to be explained away.” It’s not actually a theory of consciousness; it’s an anti-theory. This is problematic in at least two ways:\n\n\n1. By assuming consciousness has formal structure, we’re able to make novel predictions that functionalism cannot (see e.g. QRI’s Symmetry Theory of Valence, and Quantifying Bliss). A few hundred years ago, there were many people who doubted that electromagnetism had a unified, elegant, formal structure, and this was a reasonable position at the time. However, in the age of the iPhone, skepticism that electricity is a “real thing” that can be formalized is no longer reasonable. Likewise, everything interesting and useful QRI builds using the foundation of Qualia Formalism stretches functionalism’s credibility thinner and thinner.\n\n\n2. Insofar as functionalism is skeptical about the formal existence of consciousness, it’s skeptical about the formal existence of suffering and all sentience-based morality. In other words, functionalism is a deeply amoral theory, which if taken seriously dissolves all sentience-based ethical claims. This is due to there being an infinite number of functional interpretations of a system: there’s no ground-truth fact of the matter about what algorithm a physical system is performing, about what information-processing it’s doing. And if there’s no ground-truth about which computations or functions are present, but consciousness arises from these computations or functions, then there’s no ground-truth about consciousness, or things associated with consciousness, like suffering. This is a strange and subtle point, but it’s very important. This point alone is not sufficient to reject functionalism: if the universe is amoral, we shouldn’t hold a false theory of consciousness in order to try to force reality into some ethical framework. But in debates about consciousness, functionalists should be up-front that functionalism and radical moral anti-realism is a package deal, that inherent in functionalism is the counter-intuitive claim that just as we can reinterpret which functions a physical system is instantiating, we can reinterpret what qualia it’s experiencing and whether it’s suffering.\n\n\n\n\nFor an extended argument, see Against Functionalism.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat does QRI think of panpsychism?\n\n\nAt QRI, we hold a position that is close to dual-aspect monism or neutral monism, which states that the universe is composed of one kind of thing that is neutral, and that both the mental and physical are two features of this same substance. One of the motivating factors for holding this view is that if there is deep structure in the physical, then there should be a corresponding deep structure to phenomenal experience. And we can tie this together with physicalism in the sense that the laws of physics ultimately describe fields of qualia. While there are some minor disagreements between dual-aspect monism and panpsychism, we believe that our position mostly fits well with a panpsychist view—that phenomenal properties are a fundamental feature of the world and aren’t spontaneously created only when a certain computation is being performed.\n\n\nHowever, even with this view, there still are very important questions, such as: what makes a unified conscious experience? Where does one experience end and another begin? Without considering these problems in the light of Qualia Formalism, it is easy to tie animism into panpsychism and believe that inanimate objects like rocks, sculptures, and pieces of wood have spirits or complex subjective experiences. At QRI, we disagree with this and think that these types of objects might have extremely small pockets of unified conscious experience, but will mostly be masses of micro-qualia that are not phenomenally bound into some larger experience.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat does QRI think of IIT (Integrated Information Theory)?\n\n\nQRI is very grateful for IIT because it is the first mainstream theory of consciousness that satisfies a Qualia Formalist account of experience. IIT says (and introduced the idea!) that for every conscious experience, there is a corresponding mathematical object such that the mathematical features of that object are isomorphic to the properties of the experience. QRI believes that without this idea, we cannot solve consciousness in a meaningful way, and we consider the work of Giulio Tononi to be one of our core research lineages. That said, we are not in complete agreement with the specific mathematical and ontological choices of IIT, and we think it may be trying to ‘have its cake and eat it too’ with regard to functionalism vs physicalism. For more, see Sections III-V of Principia Qualia.\n\n\nWe make no claim that some future version of IIT, particularly something more directly compatible with physics, couldn’t cleanly address our objections, and see a lot of plausible directions and promise in this space.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat does QRI think of the free energy principle and predictive coding?\n\n\nOn our research lineages page, we list the work of Karl Friston as one of QRI’s core research lineages. We consider the free energy principle (FEP), as well as related research such as predictive coding, active inference, the Bayesian brain, and cybernetic regulation, as an incredibly elegant and predictive story of how brains work. Friston’s idea also forms a key part of the foundation for QRI’s theory of brain self-organization and emotional updating, Neural Annealing.\n\n\nHowever, we don’t think that the free energy principle is itself a theory of consciousness, as it suffers from many of the shortcomings of functionalism: we can tell the story about how the brain minimizes free energy, but we don’t have a way of pointing at the brain and saying *there* is the free energy! The FEP is an amazing logical model, but it’s not directly connected to any physical mechanism. It is a story that “this sort of abstract thing is going on in the brain” without a clear method of mapping this abstract story to reality.\n\n\nFriston has supported this functionalist interpretation of his work, noting that he sees consciousness as a process of inference, not a thing. That said, we are very interested in his work on calculating the information geometry of Markov blankets, as this could provide a tacit foundation for a formalist account of qualia under the FEP. Regardless of this, though, we believe Friston’s work will play a significant role in a future science of mind.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat does QRI think of global workspace theory?\n\n\nThe global workspace theory (GWT) is a cluster of empirical observations that seem to be very important for understanding what systems in the brain contribute to a reportable experience at a given point in time. The global workspace theory is a very important clue for answering questions of what philosophers call Access Consciousness, or the aspects of our experience on which we can report.\n\n\nHowever, QRI does not consider the global workspace theory to be a full theory of consciousness. Parts of the brain that are not immediately contributing to the global workspace may be composed of micro qualia, or tiny clusters of experience. They’re obviously impossible to report on, but they are still relevant to the study of consciousness. In other words, just because a part of your brain wasn’t included in the instantaneous global workspace, doesn’t mean that it can’t suffer or it can’t experience happiness. We value global workspace research because questions of Access Consciousness are still very critical for a full theory of consciousness.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat does QRI think of higher-order theories of consciousness?\n\n\nQRI is generally opposed to theories of consciousness that equate consciousness with higher order reflective thought and cognition. Some of the most intense conscious experiences are pre-reflective or unreflective such as blind panic, religious ecstasy, experiences of 5-MeO-DMT, and cluster headaches. In these examples, there is not much reflectivity nor cognition going on, yet they are intensely conscious. Therefore, we largely reject any attempt to define consciousness with a higher-order theory.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat is the relationship between evolution and consciousness?\n\n\nThe relationship between evolution and consciousness is very intricate and subtle. An eliminativist approach arrives at the simple idea that information processing of a certain type is evolutionarily advantageous, and perhaps we can call this consciousness. However, with a Qualia Formalist approach, it seems instead that the very properties of the mathematical object isomorphic to consciousness can play key roles (either causal or in terms of information processing) that make it advantageous for organisms to recruit consciousness.\n\n\nIf you don’t realize that consciousness maps onto a mathematical object with properties, you may think that you understand why consciousness was recruited by natural selection, but your understanding of the topic would be incomplete. In other words, to have a full understanding of why evolution recruited consciousness, you need to understand what advantages the mathematical object has. One very important feature of consciousness is its capacity for binding. For example, the unitary nature of experience—the fact that we can experience a lot of qualia simultaneously—may be a key feature of consciousness that accelerates the process of finding solutions to constraint satisfaction problems. In turn, evolution would hence have a reason to recruit states of consciousness for computation. So rather than thinking of consciousness as identical with the computation that is going on in the brain, we can think of it as a resource with unique computational benefits that are powerful and dynamic enough to make organisms that use it more adaptable to their environments.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDoes QRI think that animals are conscious?\n\n\nQRI thinks there is a very high probability that every animal with a nervous system is conscious. We are agnostic about unified consciousness in insects, but we consider it very likely. We believe research on animal consciousness has relevance when it comes to treating animals ethically. Additionally, we do think that the ethical importance of consciousness has more to do with the pleasure-pain axis (valence), rather than cognitive ability. In that sense, the suffering of non-human animals may be just as morally relevant, if not more relevant than humans. The cortex seems to play a largely inhibitory role for emotions, such that the larger the cortex is, the better we’re able to manage and suppress our emotions. Consequently, animals whose cortices are less developed than ours may experience pleasure and pain in a more intense and uncontrollable way, like a pre-linguistic toddler.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDoes QRI think that plants are conscious?\n\n\nWe think it’s very unlikely that plants are conscious. The main reason is that they lack an evolutionary reason to recruit consciousness. Large-scale phenomenally bound experience may be very energetically expensive, and plants don’t have much energy to spare. Additionally, plants have thick cellulose walls that separate individual cells, making it very unlikely that plants can solve the binding problem and therefore create unified moments of experience.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhy do some people seek out pain?\n\n\nThis is a very multifaceted question. As a whole, we postulate that in the vast majority of cases, when somebody may be nominally pursuing pain or suffering, they’re actually trying to reduce internal dissonance in pursuit of consonance or they’re failing to predict how pain will actually feel. For example, when a person hears very harsh music, or enjoys extremely spicy food, this can be explained in terms of either masking other unpleasant sensations or raising the energy parameter of experience, the latter of which can lead to neural annealing: a very pleasant experience that manifests as consonance in the moment.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI sometimes like being sad. Is QRI trying to take that away from me?\n\n\nBefore we try to ‘fix’ something, it’s important to understand what it’s trying to do for us. Sometimes suffering leads to growth; sometimes creating valuable things involves suffering. Sometimes, ‘being sad’ feels strangely good. Insofar as suffering is doing good things for us, or for the world, QRI advocates a light touch (see Chesterton’s fence). However, we also suggest two things:\n\n\n1. Most kinds of melancholic or mixed states of sadness usually are pursued for reasons that cash out as some sort of pleasure. Bittersweet experiences are far more preferable than intense agony or deep depression. If you enjoy sadness, it’s probably because there’s an aspect of your experience that is enjoyable. If it were possible to remove the sad part of your experience while maintaining the enjoyable part of it, you might be surprised to find that you prefer this modified experience more than the original one.\n\n\n2. There are kinds of sadness and suffering that are just bad, that degrade us as humans, and would be better to never feel. QRI doesn’t believe in forcibly taking away voluntary suffering, or pushing bliss on people. But we would like to live in a world where people can choose to avoid such negative states, and on the margin, we believe it would be better for humanity for more people to be joyful, filled with a deep sense of well-being.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIf dissonance is so negative, why is dissonance so important in music?\n\n\nWhen you listen to very consonant music or consonant tones, you will quickly adapt to these sounds and get bored of them. This has nothing to do with consonance itself being unpleasant and everything to do with learning in the brain. Whenever you experience the same stimuli repeatedly, most brains will trigger a boredom mechanism and add dissonance of its own in order to make you enjoy the stimuli less or simply inhibit it, not allowing you to experience it at all. Semantic satiation is a classic example of this where repeating the same word over and over will make it lose its meaning. For this reason, to trigger many high valence states of consciousness consecutively, you need contrast. In particular, music works with gradients of consonance and dissonance, and in most cases, moving towards consonance is what feels good rather than the absolute value of consonance. Music tends to feel the best when you mix a high absolute value of consonance together with a very strong sense of moving towards an even higher absolute value of consonance. Playing some levels of dissonance during a song will later enhance the enjoyment of the more consonant parts such as the chorus of songs, which are reported to be the most euphoric parts of song and typically are extremely consonant.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat is QRI’s perspective on AI and AI safety research?\n\n\nQRI thinks that consciousness research is critical for addressing AI safety. Without a precise way of quantifying an action’s impact on conscious experiences, we won’t be able to guarantee that an AI system has been programmed to act benevolently. Also, certain types of physical systems that perform computational tasks may be experiencing negative valence without any outside observer being aware of it. We need a theory of what produces unpleasant experiences to avoid inadvertently creating superintelligences that suffer intensely in the process of solving important problems or accidentally inflict large-scale suffering.\n\n\nAdditionally, we think that a very large percentage of what will make powerful AI dangerous is that the humans programming these machines and using these machines may be reasoning from states of loneliness, resentment, envy, or anger. By discovering ways to help humans transition away from these states, we can reduce the risks of AI by creating humans that are more ethical and aligned with consciousness more broadly. In short: an antidote for nihilism could lead to a substantial reduction in existential risk.\n\n\nOne way to think about QRI and AI safety is that the world is building AI, but doesn’t really have a clear, positive vision of what to do with AI. Lacking this, the default objective becomes “take over the world.” We think a good theory of consciousness could and will offer new visions of what kind of futures are worth building—new Schelling points that humanity (and AI researchers) could self-organize around.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCan digital computers implementing AI algorithms be conscious?\n\n\nQRI is agnostic about this question. We have reasons to believe that digital computers in their current form cannot solve the phenomenal binding problem. Most of the activity in digital computers can be explained in a stepwise fashion in terms of localized processing of bits of information. Because of this, we believe that current digital computers could be creating fragments of qualia, but are unlikely to be creating strongly globally bound experiences. So, we consider the consciousness of digital computers unlikely, although given our current uncertainty over the Binding Problem (or alternatively framed, the Boundary Problem), this assumption is lightly held. In the previous question, when we write that “certain types of physical systems that perform computational tasks may be experiencing negative valence”, we assume that these hypothetical computers have some type of unified conscious experience as a result of having solved the phenomenal binding problem. For more on this topic, see: “What’s Out There?“\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow much mainstream recognition has QRI’s work received, either for this line of research or others? Has it published in peer-reviewed journals, received any grants, or garnered positive reviews from other academics?\n\n\nWe are collaborating with researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University on several studies involving the analysis of neuroimaging data of high-valence states of consciousness. Additionally, we are currently preparing two publications for peer-reviewed journals on topics from our core research areas. Michael Johnson will be presenting at this year’s MCS seminar series, along with Karl Friston, Anil Seth, Selen Atasoy, Nao Tsuchiya, and others; Michael Johnson, Andrés Gómez Emilsson, and Quintin Frerichs have also given invited talks at various east-coast colleges (Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Dartmouth).\n\n\nSome well-known researchers and intellectuals that are familiar and think positively about our work include: Robin Carhart-Harris, Scott Alexander, David Pearce, Steven Lehar, Daniel Ingram, and more. Scott Alexander acknowledged that QRI put together the paradigms that contributed to Friston’s integrative model of how psychedelics work before his research was published. Our track record so far has been to foreshadow (by several years in advance) key discoveries later proposed and accepted in mainstream academia. Given our current research findings, we expect this trend to continue in the years to come.\n\n\n\n\nMiscellaneous\n\n\nHow does QRI know what is best for other people/animals? What about cultural relativism?\n\n\nWe think that, to a large extent, people and animals work under the illusion that they are pursuing intentional objects, states of the external environment, or relationships that they may have with the external environment. However, when you examine these situations closely, you realize that what we actually pursue are states of high valence triggered by external circumstances. There may be evolutionary and cultural selection pressures that push us toward self-deception as to how we actually function. And we consider it negative to have these selection pressures makes us less self-aware because it often focuses our energy on unpleasant, destructive, or fruitless strategies. QRI hopes to support people in fostering more self-awareness, which can come through experiments with one’s own consciousness, like meditation, as well as through the deeper theoretical understanding of what it is that we actually want.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow central is David Pearce’s work to the work of the QRI?\n\n\nWe consider David Pearce to be one of our core lineages. We particularly value his contribution to valence realism, the insistence that states of consciousness come with an overall valence, and that this is very morally relevant. We also consider David Pearce to be very influential in philosophy of mind; Pearce, for instance, coined the phrase ‘tyranny of the intentional object’, the title of a core QRI piece of the same name. We have been inspired by Pearce’s descriptions for what any scientific theory of consciousness should be able to explain, as well as his particular emphasis on the binding problem. David’s vision of a world animated by ‘gradients of bliss’ has also been very generative as a normative thought experiment which integrates human and non-human well-being. We do not necessarily agree with all of David Pearce’s work, but we respect him as an insightful and vivid thinker who has been brave enough to actually take a swing at describing utopia and who we believe is far ahead of his time.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat does QRI think of negative utilitarianism?\n\n\nThere’s general agreement within QRI that intense suffering is an extreme moral priority, and we’ve done substantial work on finding simple ways of getting rid of extreme suffering (with our research inspiring at least one unaffiliated startup to date). However, we find it premature to strongly endorse any pre-packaged ethical theory, especially because none of them are based on any formalism, but rather an ungrounded concept of ‘utility’. The value of information here seems enormous, and we hope that we can get to a point where the ‘correct’ ethical theory may simply ‘pop out of the equations’ of reality. It’s also important to highlight the fact that common versions and academic formulations of utilitarianism seem to be blind to many subtleties concerning valence. For example, they do not distinguish between mixed states of consciousness where you have extreme pleasure combined with extreme suffering in such a way that you judge the experience to be neither entirely suffering nor entirely happiness and states of complete neutrality, such as extreme white noise. Because most formulations of utilitarianism do not distinguish between them, we are generally suspicious of the idea that philosophers of ethics have considered all of the relevant attributes of consciousness in order to make accurate judgments about morality.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat does QRI think of philosophy of mind departments?\n\n\nWe believe that the problems that philosophy of mind departments address tend to be very disconnected from what truly matters from an ethical, moral, and philosophical point of view. For example, there is little appreciation of the value of bringing mathematical formalisms into discussions about the mind, or what that might look like in practice. Likewise there is close to no interest in preventing extreme suffering nor understanding its nature. Additionally, there is usually a disregard for extreme states of positive valence, and strange or exotic experiences in general. It may be the case that there are worthwhile things happening in departments and classes creating and studying this literature, but we find them characterized by processes which are unlikely to produce progress on their nominal purpose, creating a science of mind.\n\n\nIn particular, in academic philosophy of mind, we’ve seen very little regard for producing empirically testable predictions. There are millions of pages written about philosophy of mind, but the number of pages that provide precise, empirically testable predictions is quite thin.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat therapies does QRI recommend for depression, anxiety, and chronic pain?\n\n\nAt QRI, we do not make specific recommendations to individuals, but rather point to areas of research that we consider to be extremely important, tractable, and neglected, such as anti-tolerance drugs, neural annealing techniques, frequency specific microcurrent for kidney stone pain, and N,N-DMT and other tryptamines for cluster headaches and migraines.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhy does QRI think it’s so important to focus on ending extreme suffering? \n\n\nQRI thinks ending extreme suffering is important, tractable, and neglected. It’s important because of the logarithmic scales of pleasure and pain—the fact that extreme suffering is far worse by orders of magnitude than what people intuitively believe. It’s tractable because there are many types of extreme suffering that have existing solutions that are fairly trivial or at least have a viable path for being solved with moderately funded research programs. And it’s neglected mostly because people are unaware of the existence of these states, though not necessarily because of their rarity. For example, 10% of the population experiences kidney stones at some point in their life, but for reasons having to do with trauma, PTSD, and the state-dependence of memory, even people who have suffered from kidney stones do not typically end up dedicating their time or resources toward eradicating them.\n\n\nIt’s also likely that if we can meaningfully improve the absolute worst experiences, much of the knowledge we’ll gain in that process will translate into other contexts. In particular, we should expect to figure out how to make moderately depressed people happier, fix more mild forms of pain, improve the human hedonic baseline, and safely reach extremely great peak states. Mood research is not a zero-sum game. It’s a web of synergies.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMany thanks to Andrew Zuckerman, Mackenzie Dion, and Mike Johnson for their collaboration in putting this together. Featured image is QRI’s logo – animated by Hunter Meyer.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/07/10/qris-faq/", "title": "QRI’s FAQ", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-07-11T03:18:56+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=7", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "2958da2600762b494e994560be5c75ee", "summary": []}
{"text": "5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses\n\nTL;DR\nSome substances seem to be much better at treating psychological trauma than others, even when they are seemingly similar in nature. We have reason to believe that 5-MeO-DMT is significantly better suited for this task than N,N-DMT (“DMT” from now on). In order to gain insight into why this difference exists, we investigate the phenomenological differences and similarities between the experiences produced by these two tryptamine psychedelics. In particular, we develop 9 lenses that show promise for understanding how 5-MeO-DMT and DMT differ:\n\nSpace vs. Form: 5-MeO is more space-like than DMT.\nCrystals vs. Quasi-Crystals: 5-MeO generates more perfectly repeating rhythms and hallucinations than DMT.\nNon-Attachment vs. Attachment: 5-MeO seems to enable detachment from the craving of both existence and non-existence, whereas DMT enhances the craving.\nUnderfitting vs. Overfitting: 5-MeO reduces one’s model complexity whereas DMT radically increases it.\nFixed Points and Limit Cycles vs. Chaotic Attractors: 5-MeO’s effect on feedback leads to stable and predictable attractors while DMT’s attractors are inherently chaotic.\nModulation of Lateral Inhibition: 5-MeO may reduce lateral inhibition while DMT may enhance it.\nDiffuse Attention vs. Focused Attention: 5-MeO diffuses attention uniformly over large regions of one’s experiential field, while DMT seems to focus it.\nBig Chunks and Tiny Chunks vs. A Power Law of Chunks: 5-MeO creates a few huge phases of experience (as in phases of matter) with a few remaining specks, while DMT produces a more organic power law distribution of chunk sizes.\nIntegration vs. Fragmentation: 5-MeO seems to give rise to “neural integration” involving the entrainment of any two arbitrary subnetworks (even when they usually do not talk to each other), while DMT fragments communication between most networks but massively enhances it between some specific kinds of networks.\n\nAll of this together suggests that 5-MeO-DMT is better at helping you “reconnect with yourself” than DMT. And this may be key to treating trauma effectively.\n\nWhat is Trauma?\nI will start out by briefly mentioning an interesting property of psychological trauma. You see, trauma has a lot of somatic manifestations. Feeling disconnected from yourself,  like you are full of blockages, that you have numb regions in your body despite no physical damage, and so on, are all quintessential ways in which trauma shows up in a person’s everyday life. Given these manifestations, do these suggest any new way of treating this? How about using something that facilitates the communication between parts of your nervous system that are not on “speaking terms” with each other? Would giving our nervous system a kind of vibration that simultaneously entrains any two of its regions to make them act as a unit be of any help?\n\nPsychotropic Treatment of Trauma\nBased on tens of interviews, hundreds of trip reports, and a literature review, I have arrived at a tentative short list of drugs that have the highest potential to heal trauma (in decreasing order):\n\n5-MeO-DMT\nMDMA\nKetamine\n\nThey are all synergistic combined with music, vibration, strobes, and olfaction. And when wisely used, they all have the ability to help you move on past pain: stop ruminating, stop feeling like your behavior is inhibited, and stop having panic attacks associated with your past experiences.\nAt some point in the future I will provide direct empirical evidence for the claim that these three substances are uniquely good for treating trauma. Arguably psilocybin, ayahuasca, and LSD can be helpful in processing traumatic experiences too. But my claim is that the options I listed are uniquely good at deeply resolving the issues at an emotional level and bringing to you the opportunity to feel a profound and lasting sense of inner peace.\nDMT won’t help as much as 5-MeO-DMT. \nMDA is not as good as MDMA. \nAnd DXM, ok, perhaps it can also be quite useful for trauma… but ketamine has something “extra” that really helps. \nWhat is this?\n\n\n\nThe Koan: 5-MeO-DMT, MDMA, Ketamine?\nPerhaps we could gain a new perspective by framing this as a Koan: what do MDMA, 5-MeO-DMT, and ketamine have in common? You HAVE to the figure this out in the next 24 hours, or your guru will literally cut your cat in half. Motivated enough?\nWhat do you do? Well, you start out by borrowing psychopharmacology books from the library. But does that help? When it comes to trauma, in traditional textbook neuroscience MDMA is at best just a footnote. Ketamine is not even mentioned for the most part, unless the book is hip, but even then it will be mentioned in the chapter about anaesthetics and painkillers; its psychoactive effects will be glossed over as “emergent phenomena”. No! What are you doing? Wasn’t John C. Lilly already talking about the far-out, extraordinarily bizarre, perhaps even literally inter-dimensional properties of “vitamin K” way back in the 70s? Then why is my 2007 “Drugs and the Brain” textbook so totally lacking in any kind of genuine phenomenological insight about this stuff?\nAnd what about 5-MeO-DMT? You are lucky if the term appears even once in your $800 textbook. And if it does indeed appear, you can bet it will also be in a footnote, this time concerning matters such as “psychoactive animals”, “other tryptamines”, and “mesoamerican entheogens”. You will neither see 5-MeO-DMT mentioned in a personal identity philosophy textbook, nor in a neuroscience treatise on “neural synchrony”, nor in the part of academia focused on “innovation in the treatment of mental illness”.\nIt is sad to admit, but the official main-lined level of interest in the three most promising therapeutic tools for trauma listed above is a matter of sorting and assembling footnotes.\nI am exaggerating a bit, of course.\nMDMA’s therapeutic potential is gaining traction thanks to the tireless work of MAPS. S-Ketamine is now approved as an anti-depressant. And while 5-MeO-DMT is gaining popularity at a glacial pace, it is at this point by no means a secret. An increasing number of vocal members of the psychedelic community have been talking about 5-MeO-DMT for some years. People who have publicly emphasized how different five is from other psychedelics include Hamilton Morris, James Oroc, Martin Ball, Leo Gura, and Rak Razam. But what we still lack is rigorous scientific backing for these claims. After all, everyone is likely to want to sell their aesthetic preferences as universal truths about beauty and bliss, right? Thankfully, there are some early scientific indications already:\nSource: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6292276/\nThe above graph comes from a 2018 study that investigated the therapeutic effects of 5-MeO-DMT-containing toad venom relative to psilocybin. The dose used (the amount of buffo venom vaporized) had an estimated content of 5-7mg of 5-MeO-DMT, and the researchers classified 75% of the resulting experiences as meeting the criteria for a “complete mystical experience”. It measured people’s level of response with the Mystical Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ30), and as you can see from the graph above, in every category 5-MeO-DMT seems to be more powerful than psilocybin. The level of effectiveness was indeed found to be higher than all but the highest dose of psilocybin, and chances are that the study couldn’t show it was more effective than that because it was underpowered to detect it, and not because there is no difference (in other words, the sample size was not large enough for the difference between high-dose psilocybin and 5-MeO-DMT to reach statistical significance). Also bear in mind the key difference that the trip lasts under 20 minutes in total, meaning that even if the trip fails to produce full effects, you can still afford to try it again ten more times in the same time interval that it would have taken you to experience a full psilocybin trip. More so, it is important to point out that the dose of 5-MeO-DMT taken by the participants of this study is considered to be at the edge between “light” and “common” in PsychonautWiki’s entry on the drug*. Indeed, for many people the “breakthrough” tends to happen around 10mg, and I’ve heard of people using up to 30mg of it at a time. (Beware: if you ever try this – please don’t jump straight to a high dose, as this can cause serious trauma as a result.) Therefore, I think it is reasonable to expect that future studies will confirm what anecdotal data is currently screaming: that 5-MeO-DMT is more “powerful” and “mystical” in its effects than psilocybin, LSD, DMT, 2C-B, and all the rest.\nBut what this “power” and “mysticism” exactly amounts to still lacks clear and useful definitions. More so, is there any concrete reason why 5-MeO-DMT may be also superior at healing trauma relative to, eg. LSD or psilocybin? Technically, one could currently argue that since the presentation of “complete mystical states” is a mediating factor in whether psilocybin has long-lasting psychological benefits, that 5-MeO-DMT is more effective simply because it has a higher probability of causing this effect. But I would argue that the texture of 5-MeO-DMT peak experiences is different and not only just more intense, and that the way in which it is different matters for its therapeutic value.\nTo investigate this particular difference, we now move on to examining the phenomenological difference between 5-MeO-DMT and DMT.\n\n5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses\nMy experience is that a reasonable ~20% of people I talk to who have a long-standing interest in psychedelics have heard about 5-MeO-DMT’s special properties. However, only a much smaller percentage of people have actually tried it. At Qualia Computing we have talked about its exceptional phenomenological properties a number of times. Yet it remains that most readers who reach out have not themselves experienced it. Hence I have not really had access to quality trip reports in order to say anything meaningful about the way in which it is different from DMT.\nThankfully, I’ve recently interviewed someone who has a decent level of experience with 5-MeO-DMT (20+ trips), along with a significant level of experience with vaporized DMT (100+ trips), and is also acquainted with the combination (10+ trips with both substances at once).\nGiven the incredibly intense psychoactive effects of 5-MeO-DMT (both for good and bad), most people struggle to put into words anything meaningful about the state. That said, as it has been the case with a number of other states of consciousness (e.g. LSD, DMT, and MDMA) I feel compelled to try to offer a sane, rational, agnostic, and pragmatic description of its phenomenology. In particular, I think that 5-MeO-DMT’s unique trauma-healing potential really deserves a close look. I believe that it sheds light on a wide range of topics of interest such as neural annealing, the Symmetry Theory of Valence, and the pseudo-time arrow (video). With this in mind, I inquired with my interviewee about the differences between N,N-DMT and 5-MeO-DMT. Together, after a lengthy open-ended discussion, we found the following ways to compare them:\n1. Space vs. Form\n\nOne of the first things that stands out when you take DMT at even small doses is the way in which colors get intensified. This is a special case of a very generalizable effect: in fact, every perceptual feature you can point to is enhanced while on DMT, from the sharpness of edges and pointy things to the feeling of movement and rotation. The interviewee indeed said that a brain on DMT “becomes a powerful qualia machine“.\nAfter trying 5-MeO-DMT for the first time, most people already familiar with DMT mention something along the lines of “I was surprised that I didn’t see many colors.” The visual component of five is rarely very colorful; if color appears, it is in the form of a golden or sometimes light faint magenta or green hue. For the most part, the visual component of the experience is black and/or white. At times, one can see rainbow halos, but like rare subatomic particles, on 5-MeO-DMT rainbow colors come in and out of the vacuum, as if somehow equivalent to it. The bulk of the visuals manifest in a dazzling sense of spaciousness, as if there was a cosmic paint called “transparent/translucent”. The space often feels immeasurable due to a lack of a reference frame from which to make a judgement in terms of known comparisons. But what inevitably stands out is that the space seems large, uniform, harmonious, smooth, and luminous. Somatic feelings blend with this space, and the uniformity and symmetry of it allows for energy to seamlessly move throughout it. It really is a remarkable effect, one which can easily give rise to the felt-sense of Open Individualism. Yet, despite the engrossingly engaging character of these feelings, there is very little narrative complexity in sight.\nWho knew that empty space could be so much fun? That you could fit so much love and bliss in an (experiential) vacuum? More so, the more you are able to relax into it, the more you embrace the waves of equanimity, the more you allow the space to become perfectly smooth and seamless… the more blissful it all gets!**\n2. Crystals and Quasi-Crystals\n\n\n\n\nHere is an interesting thing – ultrasound has been used in order to bias the way in which water crystals form, and thus creating much more “cubical” water than is otherwise possible. More generally, the phenomenon of vibration affecting crystallization processes is worth considering as an explanatory framework. DMT comes with a particular vibe that some have identified as having a characteristic frequency somewhere between 20 and 30Hz, whereas 5-MeO-DMT’s vibe seems to be a notch higher, perhaps in the range of 30 to 40Hz. On these drugs, your attention is jittered back and forth at a certain frequency, and this affects your ability to focus on any given part of your experience. The specific jittering itself makes it harder and easier to construct and manipulate certain thought-forms over others.\nSpeculatively, this model says that the jittering of attention caused by 5-MeO-DMT and DMT give rise to crystal and quasi-crystal building blocks, respectively, for phenomenal objects in one’s experience.\nPhenomenologically, it seems that the vibratory signature of DMT effects doesn’t wrap around your experience an integer number of times. Thus, what we will call, for lack of a better term, the qualia crystals that form while on DMT seem to be inherently unstable and alien to your normal way of cogitating. The fact that the vibrations don’t fit perfectly in one’s experiential field forces it to bend out of shape to accommodate such vibrations. The result is constant chaos – fluid instabilities as the core effect.\nKelvin–Helmholtz instability (source)\nOn the other hand, with 5-MeO-DMT, it’s as if the vibration activates parts of the field of experience in exactly the right way for them to blend, unite, and resonate with one another. The vibrations fit perfectly inside one’s experiential field, and allows it to relax into its own natural shape. And this allows for perfect crystals of awareness to peacefully grow, multiply, and synchronize.\n\n\n\nIt is of course surprising that a tiny difference in the frequency of the vibe could have such large effects in the way phenomenology crystallizes. But this is true for other systems. When one talks about the complexity of shapes in resonant systems, for instance, Lissajou curves can provide a helpful intuition pump: in Lissajou curves, merely changing one of the frequencies by a small relative amount can result in a huge difference between the pictures drawn. From a simple circle to a complex mesh.\n\nAccording to the interviewee, 5-MeO-DMT would neatly correspond to one of the simplest Lissajou curves above, while the DMT sensations would be better evoked by one of the meshy ones.\nWith that said, it is worth mentioning that 5-MeO-DMT is probably not hitting the right frequencies merely by chance. It’s probably more that it is activating a system whose attractor is self-correcting and results in the kind of symmetrical crystallization that gives rise to deep feelings of bliss.\n3. Attachment to Existence and Non-Existence\n5-MeO seems to point at a super general sense of “relaxation”. A meditation teacher, Ajahn Brahm, talking about jhanas said that his mantra to achieve states of deep concentration and peace was: “Relax… to the maaaaaaaxxxx…”.\nAnd according to the interviewee, the thrust of 5-MeO is that it feels like your nervous system is paradoxically injected with a lot of energy and yet the vibe of this energy is that of total and complete- ultimate?- relaxation. But our body and mind are not used to relaxing deeply. The contrast between this energy and one’s usual neurotic state can itself produce a lot of dissonance and resistance. In most cases, this is transient and contained to the first couple of minutes of the experience, though in higher doses and with bad luck, it can also spiral out of control. On small and moderate doses the energetic vibe of “relax to the max” takes over one’s experiential center of mass and teaches the rest of your nervous system how to relax.\nIt vibrates your nervous system in just the right way that all of your tensions, and hidden knots, and internalized stresses, bubble up to the surface, and you have the chance to try to “unravel” all of that tension.\nAfter taking it a couple of times, you get the very nice feeling of being OK with whatever happens. 5-MeO-DMT might be described as a drug that allows you to reduce “thirst, craving, desire” in a very generalized kind of way. In Buddhist terms, this would be to reduce “Taṇhā“, which comes in three different kinds: “kāma-taṇhā (craving for sensual pleasures), bhava-taṇhā (craving for existence), and vibhava-taṇhā (craving for non-existence).” While we are used to hearing religious figures and moralists talk about the importance of not experiencing cravings for sensual pleasure, popular culture still lacks legible myths about the craving for existence and non-existence. So it comes as a shock for someone who has never developed meditative introspective insight just how much of our suffering has the flavor of either craving for existence or non-existence. Dosing on 5-MeO-DMT gives you a glimpse for what a mind devoid of these more subtle forms of craving feels like.\nDMT comes with a vibratory frenzy that directly causes a lot of knots and tiny stress points throughout your entire experiential field. And to a large extent, how the experience unfolds is the result of you trying to manage all of those knots and stress points to avoid having them accumulate and concentrate in painful ways. The effect of this is that DMT acutely increases attachment to existence and non-existence. You wonder “what am I in this world?” and then cling to it, along with an intense fear of losing yourself in the world of vibration. The fear is quite involuntary and primal. And because you are clinging to who or what you are, there is something that you can lose, and that contributes to the feeling that the stakes are very high.\nOn 5-MeO you look at a landscape- say a tree in a Savannah- and you can see it in the most Zen way you can possibly imagine (and I don’t mean cutting cats in half). You think: “there is neither someone nor nobody in there” and “it’s all just arising and passing of ephemera”.\nOn DMT you look at the same landscape and you feel: “Oh gosh, what AM I in here? Am I that rock over there? That rock seems threatened by erosion! Am I the tree? But what if something comes and eats the tree?” and so on.\nOn DMT you feel like you are one of many little beings in a vast ecosystem. On 5-MeO-DMT you step back and you “realize” that you are the entire ecosystem.\nIn turn, this may explain to some extent the fact that the content of DMT hallucinations is often filled with exotic beings. And almost always, these beings have hyper-specific ways of life, tastes, intentions, and beliefs. The realms you experience on DMT are all saturated with attachment to existence and non-existence, and the beings you interact with are no exception. In fact, they may be a manifestation of those intensified cravings! From the interviewee:\n“I’ve taken DMT about 100 times and have encountered many different vibes and kinds of intelligences in those realms. I’d love to map out the possible narratives – there are so many! Loosely speaking, I’ve had many different encounters with intelligent beings: from blissfully angelic and benevolent to outright demonic. Most of the beings I’ve encountered are somewhere in-between, and for the most part, tend to have pretty dualistic mindsets.\nThere is this whole class of beings I’d identify as harlequins/jesters that just love to play tricks with perception (I’m sure that’s what Terrence McKenna was pointing at).\nThen there are “artists” which have a particular style that they explore and can range from emotionally self-sufficient to aggressively in-your-face about their work. The “look at THIS and look at THIS and look at THIS!!” kind of stance, where you are not given enough time to process what they’ve already shown you before they thrust even more stuff into you, and then attach ‘cookies’ into your etheric body to track you in future trips so you “like” and “subscribe” to their “interdimensional channel” or something like that.\nThere’s also a lot of beings that seem to want to tell you that they are confident that God does not exist and that “everything is allowed”. And I’ve felt that they are really indifferent to morality, but still have powerful abilities and unique qualia of a more scientific bent.\nI once also encountered what felt like a true sadistic demon that played some really nasty tricks on my perception, and filled me with “etheric bugs” and had hundreds of little minions to attack me in many unpleasant ways. That said, I blame this on the fact that I was sleep deprived when I took DMT that one time, and it’s never happened before or since. But that experience gave me a lot of respect for the drug.\nI’ve also encountered realms where they actually do consciousness research as such, and are benevolent and into engineering paradises. I even asked one of them if they knew my favorite philosopher, and they said “yes, what a nice fellow – we hope he will be more widely known in the future. We just wished that he wasn’t so sad a lot of the time.”\nI have found that my pre-existing mood is the single most important variable that determines the kind of intelligences I encounter. So I’d really like to someday try MDMA and DMT combined. I suspect those would be very angelic beings most of the time.\nInterestingly, I feel that while DMT feels profoundly spiritual, to a large extent it is less “nondual” than most other psychedelics. A lot of beings I’ve encountered simply don’t seem to care about oneness at all. But on LSD, mushrooms, and of course 5-MeO-DMT, the Golden Rule seems to play a very central role in the experience. Those experiences are much more of a “teaching” than the wacky stuff one encounters in the DMT realms.\nWhen you take 5-MeO-DMT and DMT at the same time, you can really feel the contrast between the dualistic “us vs. them” vibe that underlies DMT and the unitive sense that underlies 5-MeO-DMT. I’ve experimented with the combo and found it to be super informative. And usually, I realize that while DMT turns your brain into a high-octane “qualia machine”, 5-MeO is in fact much more peaceful and happy in a deeper sense. I’d like to understand both, but my preferred “home” would be for sure the 5-MeO realms.”\n4. Underfitting vs. Overfitting\nOne interesting lens with which to make sense of the difference between people who are open to experience and people who are not is that of model complexity, which casts this difference in terms of the statistical concepts of underfitting and overfitting.\nHaving narrow views, simple explanations, and enduring preferences is very good when the world itself is either very simple or impossible to understand. But having complex views, multi-layered explanations, and flexible preferences is more adaptive than the alternative in a world that is both complex and can be understood with some effort.\nIndeed, some speculation about the nature of sleep from the predictive coding paradigm of cognition is that dreaming is a process of model complexity reduction. The information that we accumulate over the span of a day is incorporated in an ad-hoc fashion while awake, and only properly integrated (and pruned) after a good night’s sleep. This at least provides the theoretical precedent for describing a specific state of consciousness in terms of its effects on model complexity. And here we would propose that as a very general effect profile, 5-MeO-DMT reduces model complexity while N,N-DMT increases it.\nAs a consequence, we would posit that people who take five a lot will converge towards compelling yet over-simplified models of realty, whereas people who use DMT a lot will converge to overly complex and unnecessarily detailed explanation for even the simplest of phenomena.\nPerhaps in the future people could be diagnosed as chronic overfitters and underfitters. In turn, these two drugs could be given by prescription, for the maladies of improper model selection practices:\nN,N-DMT would be given to the sufferers of too much worldview simplicity. People like this believe that the world is dominated by the struggle between capitalism and communism. They think that there is a 50% chance that God almighty exists. They assign zero probability to unlikely events, such as lizard people power conspiracies. In people like this, DMT is a powerful mind enhancer capable of challenging cartoonishly simple background assumptions and introducing a healthy dose of skepticism in mainstream narratives.\n5-MeO-DMT would instead be given to people who are overwhelmingly embroiled in complex interpretations of the nature of reality. Whether it is in the realm of conspiracy theories, religious cults, the biochemistry of aging, or any such hopelessly convoluted field of research, a little five will unscramble the mind of the compulsive overfitter. Thanks to the drug, the Bayesian puncture, the Occam’s cut, and the pragmatic so what coalesce into a decimating hit to the load-bearing hub-nodes that feed unfalsifiable belief systems. The model complexity reduction effect dissolves entire subfields, assimilates clusters, and seamlessly mends discontinuities in the reality mappings of the patient. At moderate dosages and treatment regimes, the sufferer recovers fully. The sufferer often ends up healed of their traumas, and occasionally healed of many more things than expected. At levels much above those of the therapeutic standard of care, there is a risk that the treatment may result in the healing of the fundamental traumas of conscious experience. The drug may offer the patient a chance to relinquish phenomenal reality in exchange for an extemporal “ultimate relief”. To extinguish the flame of existence, as they say.\nImportantly, after 5-MeO-DMT therapy, the patient is, let’s say (for the sake of speculating), 20 times as likely as members of the general public to say yes to questions like “Are we all one consciousness?”, “Is the world a process created for the refinement of our souls?” and “Is the universe made of infinite consciousness?”.\nSo where does that leave us? The good news is that this may have game-theoretical benefits for the side of consciousness in the eternal battle between consciousness and pure replicators. The bad news is that it can overwrite important information obtained from the senses, one’s education, and logical reasoning:\nBecoming the God of “I-AM-Now-ness” and filling your entire experiential field with that flavor of awakening is a recipe for ecstasy, not for good epistemology.\nIndeed, the patient may become a bit hooked to the simplification of their model complexity; to make reality as they know be replaced by a simpler, yet more intense, version of perceived reality is very tempting. It can be seductive to embrace a view like “you are God and you have created everything for your own amusement” or “you are the dream of God”. Rather than compassion, why not indifference? Being the “way God entertains itself” is both poetically satisfying and super trippy. A lot of people would find that such belief adds some spice to their lives. \nBut the price of truth is everything. In turn, it would be ideal to complement any model complexity reduction that goes too far with a healthy amount of prediction errors.\n5. Fixed-Points and Limit Cycles vs. Chaotic Attractors\nThe brain contains many self-correcting feedback systems. Psychedelics in general can be modeled as drugs that mess with the inhibitory component of excitation-inhibition feedback systems. They accomplish this, quite possibly, by disrupting the inhibitory serotonergic connections coming from the cortex that gate the excitatory input coming from the thalamus. This may account for why tracers look the way they do – the failure to inhibit the thalamus results in looped replays of recent states. This may go a long way in explaining why people find “video feedback” so trippy and fascinating. Namely, because a lot of psychedelic effects can be understood as feedback getting out of control, literally.\n\nMore concretely, at the Harvard talk on the Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT experiences I introduced this notion that each DMT experience as a whole can be thought of as a trajectory in the energy vs. complexity landscape. Here, the vertical axis indicates the degree of energy of the experience (roughly corresponding to the intensity, brightness, and amount of qualia), while the horizontal axis represents how much information is encoded in the experience. One interesting operationalization of information is through the concept of symmetry breaking***, in which case the horizontal axis approximately tracks the “distance from perfectly symmetrical spaces in terms of number of symmetry breaking operations”.\nI then postulated that we could generate an ontology based on feedback + noise to explain how two DMT trips of roughly the same level of intensity can nonetheless contain very different amounts of information.\n\nWhat I did not mention at the time was that while DMT does have the ability to send you to any place in the energy-complexity landscape, most of the experiences are in the region of middle-complexity. In fact, especially strong DMT trips tend to become fully chaotic, so there is even a mild correlation between dosage and complexity. On the other hand, 5-MeO-DMT tends to propel you towards the low-complexity region of the space.\n\n\nUsing a feedback system ontology we could thus posit that 5-MeO-DMT modifies the feedback parameters of your brain in such a way that the states it gives rise to are ether fixed points or short limit cycles:\nfixed_point_\nThe video above depicts a fixed point (as with the other animations below, I took this from an old 1984 video about video feedback you can see here). A fixed point is a configuration of the system that is stable upon feedback iterations. In the video above we see a fixed point consisting of a cross (presumably the result of the camera having a 90 degree tilt) that is then perturbed and eventually collapses into just a single circular dot at the center.\n\n\nThe above are limit cycles. The first (left) is a comparatively simple limit cycle in that every stage along its reproduction cycle is very similar to each other. The second (right) one is a bit more complex, yet despite a long winded path, it really does repeat more or less perfectly over and over. 5-MeO-DMT limit cycles are more akin to the one on the left, but on occasion may be a bit more complex and rhythmic over the span of seconds. Either way, there is often a strong pull towards a simple resonant pattern with remarkable stability.\nContrast that with chaotic attractors:\n\nChaotic pseudo-time arrow\nWhen we have actual chaos, the states continue to change indefinitely. We could then posit that DMT’s characteristic jittering seems to prevent the formation of stable fixed points or short limit cycles. Despite both DMT and 5-MeO-DMT disrupting feedback in the brain, the subtle differences in the way parameters of this feedback are modified can make all the difference between perfectly simple and smooth results and the endless generation of chaotic structures.\n6. Modulating Lateral Inhibition\nAnother exciting lens with which to look at the difference between these psychedelics is by allusion to lateral inhibition: according to a couple of recent trip reports I received from another anonymous source, there is a remarkable difference between the tracers of 5-MeO-DMT and those of DMT. In particular, the anonymous tripper points out that DMT tracers are chains of concatenated positive and negative after-images of the stimulation source, whereas 5-MeO-DMT only produces positive after-images.\nStare at the cross. The green ball you see as a result is the “negative after-image” of the missing purple dot. \nIn other words, when you see a blue ball moving on a screen, on DMT you will see tracers of that ball that change in color from blue to yellow to blue again and so on, all following after the original blue ball. But on 5-MeO-DMT, one will only see a long blue tracer. This is a remarkable difference, and if true, it would seem to be an important hint.****\nOrientation selectivity map in the visual cortex\nLateral inhibition in the cortex prevents the overlapping of incompatible features in one’s own experience. For example, the primary visual cortex shows a map of orientation selectivity as shown above. Each hypercolumn is selective to only a specific orientation, and the surrounding hypercolumns are selective to different orientations. More so, via lateral inhibition, when a hypercolumn is activated, it inhibits the surrounding ones.\nIn this model, DMT would perhaps leave this process untouched, so that when the brain is massively energized, it still maintains this flip-flopping between each feature and its complement. Indeed, some people have described DMT as turning half of your neurons fully on, the other half of your neurons fully off, then inverting the activation so that the off neurons are turned on and the on ones are turned off, and flip-flopping between these two steps many times per second. Could this be the phenomenal expression of having energized checkerboard patterns of excitation and inhibition saturating your cortex? That is, taking a system with in-built lateral inhibition into over-drive?\n5-MeO-DMT, on the contrary, seems to allow for “all colors to blend together into pure white light”, and “the past and the future to collapse into the present”, and the “self-other distinction to be dissolved”, and so on. Intuitively, if the drug is biochemically disabling lateral inhibition, that could be reflected as a profound sense of unity and interconnectedness at the phenomenological level, “transcending every last barrier”.\n7. Diffuse Attention vs. Focused Attention\nAs we mentioned earlier, DMT tends to come with a feeling of “becoming tense” while 5-MeO-DMT has a primary vibe of “becoming relaxed”. One way in which we can model this is in the way the drugs influence whether your attention is focused or diffuse. Now, I should say that this model will be necessarily incomplete because at the peak of a 5-MeO experience one often does in fact feel super focused in some way. But I would posit that this sense of focus is much more holistic than the way our common-sense use of the term would suggest. The focus on DMT, on the other hand, does feel very much akin to the “conventional” sense of focus, where you are able to precisely position figure and ground in such a way that they have as much contrast as possible.\nIn a way, the beings one encounters on DMT could be thought of as “attentional attractors”. As you create a lot of little focal points during the experience, these begin to build up and define the contents of your mind. Each focal point makes it easier for you to create another one nearby. This snowballs into an effect where there are clusters of focal points that become the “centers of mass” of the narrative. These could very well be what underlies the “beings” on DMT. Using Buddhist terms again, DMT beings might perhaps be thought of as exotic “nimittas“: attention hubs.\nAlso, because the experience is high-dimensional and changes your sense of what “understanding” even means, it seems that the feeling of super-intelligence on DMT might be a projection of one’s own super-intelligence (of a certain kind) in the state.\nIn contrast, 5-MeO-DMT makes it easy to de-focus on anything. To let go, and experience it in a diffuse way.\n8. Big Chunks and Tiny Chunks vs. A Power Law of Chunks\nGeology uses the word matrix in way that is very different from either math or science fiction aficionados. In geology, a matrix is the entire mass of materials on a rock within which crystals, grains, and clasts are found. As Anders and Maggie discussed recently, the way in which minerals form depends to a large extent on the presence of water in the process of crystallization. The huge diversity of minerals we see on Earth’s surface is partly a result of the availability of water in the mantle. Perhaps a lens with which to see DMT is as playing the same role in the brain as water does in fractional crystallization. It lubricates the matrix of your mind, which enables the crystallization of countless qualia exotica. 5-MeO-DMT instead homogenizes the kinds of crystals that can form.\n\n\n\nIn brief, DMT is to 5-MeO-DMT as a matrix of diverse minerals is to a mono-phasic large enclave. DMT is like complex music (cf. music as an ordered phase of sound) while 5-MeO-DMT is like a single mantra repeated over and over. Is this metaphor useful? It seemed to resonate with the interviewee.\n9. Integration vs. Fragmentation\nIn Neural Annealing, Mike Johnson argues that what makes MDMA special for healing trauma is what at QRI we call integration:\nOn MDMA’s strangely powerful therapeutic effects, I’d suggest MDMA shares the ‘basic psychedelic package’ with substances like LSD and psilocybin (albeit a little weaker at common doses). Anything with this ‘baseline’ package significantly increases the energy parameter of the brain, which both allows escape from bad local minima and canalizes the brain’s core CSHWs, which both should be highly therapeutic. My intuition is MDMA may also have a particular effect on stochastic firing frequencies of neurons, and that this effect essentially acts as an emergent metronome – and this metronome will drive synchronicity between diverse brain regions. Given the presence of such a region-spanning ‘clean’ metronomic signal, brain regions that have partially ‘stopped talking to each other’ will re-establish integration, and some of this integration will persist while sober (or rather, some of the reasons for the lack of integration will have been negotiated away during the MDMA-driven integration). Plausibly this ‘emergent metronome’ effect may also underlie the particular phenomenological effects of 5-MeO-DMT as well, particularly in terms of sense of unity, high valence, and therapeutic potential. (HT to Steve Lehar for pointing at this ’nystagmus’ phenomenon as being somehow linked to MDMA’s mood-lifting effect, and to Andrés for calling my attention to Lehar’s work and suggesting 5-MeO-DMT may also share this mechanism.)\nLike most other psychedelics, N,N-DMT also shares the same ‘basic psychedelic package’ and can have beneficial therapeutic effects. But it lacks this ‘special’ ability that allows arbitrary parts of your nervous system to rhythmically entrain with one another. This “emergent metronome” on MDMA and 5-MeO-DMT works as a kind of universal “vibratory currency” and results in a reduction of inner dissonance to a much greater extent than (relatively) simple “energizers” like DMT.\nTo Wrap Up\nWe hope that the above discussion has given you an idea about the difference between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT and why this matters for their therapeutic potential. The above is just the start of a deep inquiry into the topic that will certainly take many years, but we believe that it is a novel way of seeing the contrast between these two substances that may be generative for others. We also believe that it is very worth trying: nailing down this difference may be incredibly important to develop novel ways of treating mental illness. While DMT will undoubtedly continue to dazzle and amaze people curious about the state-space of consciousness, the superlative potential of 5-MeO-DMT to heal trauma puts it on a different level of importance altogether.\nIn the future we shall also explain why MDMA and ketamine have this potential. And ultimately, as we begin to understand what makes these substances so special, we hope to find ways of creating effective therapies from first principles. Stay tuned.\n\n\n* The toad venom dose was 50mg, with an estimated 5-7mg of 5-MeO-DMT. This is admittedly likely to produce somewhat more potent effects than just 5 to 7mg of pure 5-MeO-DMT. But the extent of this enhancement is currently poorly understood, and you can find many people online saying that the difference is tiny and others who argue it is enormous. Given just how intense and qualitatively unique pure 5-MeO-DMT already is, I think that applying Occam’s razor would tell us that “it’s just the 5-MeO-DMT itself”. So while I am ready to accept the possibility of profound synergy between other tryptamines in toad venom and 5-MeO, I am not holding my breath for it. I, rather, expect that the difference between 5-MeO alone and the full-spectrum stuff will be akin to the difference between drinking 10 shots of vodka and drinking 10 shots of vodka and one chamomile tea. Namely, a real but largely inconsequential difference.\n** This, of course, blends well with the Symmetry Theory of Valence, a subject to which we shall return in the near future.\n*** This is where information-less states are those which are perfectly symmetrical, and the information content of a state is defined as the minimum number of symmetry breaking operations needed to transform an information-less state into it.\n**** This is admittedly very weak evidence so far. If you have experience with both of these compounds and have explored the way in which they give rise to after-images, please let me know if you can confirm or deny the effect here mentioned.\n\nPicture: Andrés & Claudia Silva Ruiz", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/07/01/5-meo-dmt-vs-nn-dmt-the-9-lenses/", "title": "5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-07-02T01:00:11+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=7", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "2cb04bc72099116984fee33f99fb609e", "summary": []}
{"text": "On the Evolution of the Phenomenal Self (and Other Communications from QRI Sweden)\n\nBy Maggie Wassinge and Anders Amelin (QRI Sweden volunteer coordinators; see letters I & II, and letters III, IV, & V)\n\n“QRI Law of Transhumanism”: The overall motivation of humans to solve social and mental problems will remain much higher than the motivation to solve physics problems. The human performance in solving social and mental problems will remain much lower than the performance in solving physics problems. This continues until social and mental problems become physics problems.\n– Anders & Maggie\n\nLetter VI: The Evolution of the Phenomenal Self\nRe: Mini-Series on Open Individualism\nA follow-up for the more nerdy audience could perhaps be how QRI seeks to resolve the confusion about individualism:\nIt often turns out that parsimony is a more useful guiding principle in science than naïve realism. This includes naïve realism about what constitutes parsimony. All relevant conditions must be taken into account, and some conditions are unknowns, which blurs the picture. Occam’s razor is powerful but more like a Samurai sword: you need great skill to use it well.\nCompare the state-space of consciousness with the state-space of chemistry known to humans: there is biochemistry and there is other chemistry. They manifest quite differently. However, parsimony favors that at the fundamental level of organization things reduce to a small set of rules which are the same for all of chemistry. This is now known to indeed be the case but was not always so. Rather, it tended to be assumed that some extra factor, a “life-force”, had to be involved when it comes to biochemistry.\nBiochemistry has been evolutionarily selected for performance on a most formidable problem. That of self-replicating a self-replicator. It takes a large number of steps in the process and high preciseness at each step. Only particular sequences of steps lead to normal cell function, and things are always open to getting corrupted. Take viruses, for instance.\nNormal function of a brain is somewhat analogous to normal function of a cell. Evolution has selected for brains which produce the experience of continuity as a unique agent self. This is probably one of the harder tasks that conscious intelligence has solved, corresponding to the advanced parts necessary for reproduction in a cell. It is probably about as unusual in the state-space of consciousness as cellular replication is in the state-space of chemistry. However, the state naïvely feels like it is foundational to everything, which can make you confused when reflecting upon it. It can get even more confusing when you consider the strong possibility that valenced experiences of “good or bad” are much more commonplace in the state-space, perhaps more like transfer of electric charge is commonplace in chemistry.\nSelf-replicating a self-replicator\nYou can test this by altering (mental) system properties via meditation or psychedelics. Is “individuality” or “valence” more persistent under perturbation? It’s much harder to get rid of valence, and indeed, the highly altered state of a brain on high doses of 5-MeO-DMT gets rid of the agent self altogether but preserves and even enhances valence, interestingly more often in the positive than the negative direction. It’s like jumping from biochemistry to pyrotechnics.\nSelf-less 5-MeO-DMT “void”: The state is as different and exotic from normal everyday evolved consciousness as the chemistry of explosive pyrotechnics is to evolved biochemistry.\nNaïve realism would hold that the sensations of “one-ness” experienced in certain highly altered states of consciousness feel the way they do because they somehow expand to include other entities into a union with yourself. What is likely to really be going on could be the opposite: there is no “self” as a reality fundament but rather a local complex qualia construct that is easy to interfere with. When it (and other detail) goes away there is less mental model complexity left. A reduction in the information diversity of the experience. Take this far enough and you can get states like “X is love” where X could be anything. These can feel as if they reveal hidden truths, for you obviously had not thought that way before, right? “X is love, wow, what a cosmic connection!”\n\nLetter VII: Fractional Crystallization to Enhance Qualia Diversity\nSome more chemistry: is there in qualia state-space something analogous to fractional crystallization? When a magma solidifies relatively rapidly, most of the minor elements stay in solid solution within a few major mineral phases. You get a low diversity assemblage. When the magma solidifies slowly it can yield a continuum of various unique phases all the way down to compounds of elements that were only present at ppb levels in the bulk. Crucially, for this to work well, a powerful viscosity reducer is needed. Water happens to fit the bill perfectly.\nConsider the computational performance of the process of solidification of a thousand cubic kilometer plutonic magma with and without an added cubic kilometer of water. The one with the added water functions as a dramatically more efficient sorting algorithm for the chemical element constituents than the dry one. The properties of minor minerals can be quite different from those of the major minerals. The spectrum of mineral physical and chemical properties that the magma solidification produces is greatly broadened by adding that small fraction of water. Which nature does on Earth.\n\n\nIt resembles the difference between narrow and broad intelligence. Now, since the general intelligence of humans requires multiple steps at multiple levels, which takes a lot of time, there might need to be some facilitator that plays the role water does in geology. Water tends to remain in liquid form all the way through crystallization, which compensates for the increase in viscosity that takes place on cooling, allowing fractional crystallization to go to completion in certain pegmatites.\nIt seems that, in the brain, states become conscious once they “crystallize” into what an IIT-based model might describe as feedback loops. (Some physicalist model this as standing waves?). Each state could be viewed as analogous to a crystal belonging to a mineral family and existing somewhere on a composition spectrum. For each to crystallize as fast and distinctly as possible, there should be just the right amount of a water activity equivalent. Too much and things stay liquid, too little and no unique new states appear.\nIt may perhaps be possible to tease out such “mental water” by analyzing brain scan data and comparing them with element fractionation models from geochemistry?\nEliezer Yudkowsky has pointed out that something that is not very high hanging must have upgraded the human brain so that it became able to make mental models of things no animal would (presumably) even begin to think of. Something where sheer size would not suffice as an explanation. It couldn’t be high hanging since the evolutionary search space available between early hominids and homo sapiens is small in terms of individuals, generations, and genetic variability. Could it be a single factor that does the job as crystallization facilitator to get the brain primed to produce a huge qualia range? For survival, the bulk of mental states would need to remain largely as they are in other animals, but with an added icing on the cake which turned out to confer a decisive strategic advantage.\nIt should be low hanging for AI developers, too, but in order to find it they may have to analyze models of qualia state-space and not just models of causal chains in network configurations…\n\nLetter VIII: Tacking on the Winds of Valence\nWe just thought of something on the subjects of group intelligence and mental issues. Consider a possible QRI framing: valence realism is key to understanding all conscious agency. The psyche takes the experienced valence axis to be equal to “the truth” about the objects of attention which appear experientially together with states of valence. Moment to moment.\nRealism coupled with parsimony means it is most likely not possible for a psyche to step outside their experience and override this function. (Leaving out the complication of non-conscious processes here for a moment). But of course learning does exist. Things in psyches can be re-trained within bounds which differ from psyche to psyche. New memories form and valence set-points become correspondingly adjusted.\nNaïvely it can be believed that it is possible to go against negative valence. If you muster enough willpower, or some such. Like a sailboat moving against the wind by using an engine. But what if it’s a system which has to use the wind for everything? With tacking, you can use the wind to move against the wind. It’s more advanced, and only experienced sailors manage to do it optimally. Advanced psyches can couple expectations (strategic predictive modeling) with a high valence associated with the appropriate objects that correlate with strategic goals. If strong enough, such valence gives a net positive sum when coupled with unpleasant things which need to be “overcome” to reach strategic goals.\nYou can “tack” in mental decision space. The expert psycho-mariner makes mental models of how the combinatorics of fractal valence plays out it in their own psyche and in others. Intra- and inter-domain valence summation modeling. Not quite there yet but the QRI is the group taking a systematic approach to it. We realize that’s what social superintelligences should converge towards. Experiential wellbeing and intelligence can be made to work perfectly in tandem for, in principle, arbitrarily large groups.\n\n\nIt is possible to make a model of negative valence states and render the model to appear in positive valence “lighting”. Sadism is possible, and self-destructive logic is possible. “I deserve to suffer so it is good that I suffer”. The valence is mixed but as long as the weighted sum is positive, agency moves in the destructive direction in these cases. Dysfunction can be complicated.\nBut on the bright side, a formalism that captures the valence summation well enough should be an excellent basis for ethics and for optimizing intelligences for both agency and wellbeing. This extends to group intelligences. The weight carried by various instantiations of positive and negative valence is then accessible for modeling and it is no longer necessary to consider it a moral imperative to want to destroy everything just to be on the safe side against any risk of negative experience taking place somewhere.\nIs it possible to tack on the winds of group valence?\nAt this early stage we are however faced with the problem of how influential premature conclusions of this type can be, and how much is too much. Certain areas in philosophy and ideology are, to most people, more immediately rewarding than science and engineering, and cheaper, too. But more gets done by a group of scientists who are philosophically inspired than by a group of philosophers who are scientifically inspired.\nCould this be in the ballpark-ish?\nStay safe and symmetric!\n– Maggie & Anders", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/06/16/on-the-evolution-of-the-phenomenal-self-and-other-communications-from-qri-sweden/", "title": "On the Evolution of the Phenomenal Self (and Other Communications from QRI Sweden)", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-06-17T01:33:46+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=7", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "75d7e9f098385040fb8e5ef52d6b5d90", "summary": []}
{"text": "10 Ways Perception Distorts Reality\n\n\n\nIf the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.\n\n– William Blake\n\n1. You don’t perceive the environment. There is no public world. Instead, your local environment partially selects your brain states, some of which are experienced as your external surroundings. Mind-independent reality is a speculative metaphysical inference (sadly a strong one, IMO). Contra William Blake (and Aldous Huxley), there are no see-through doors of perception in need of a good wash, just cranial prisons.\n2. Whether you are awake or dreaming, your world-simulation is populated by zombies. When you are awake, these zombies are the avatars of sentient beings, but the imposters loom larger than their hypothetical real-world counterparts.\n3. Your egocentric world-simulation resembles a grotesque cartoon. Within the cartoon, you are the hub of reality, the most important being in the universe, followed by your close genetic relatives, lovers, friends and allies. On theoretical grounds, you may wonder if this fitness-enhancing hallucination can be trusted. After all, trillions of other sentient beings apparently share an analogous illusion. In practice, the idea of your playing a humble role in the great scheme of things can be hard to take seriously, unless the hub of the universe is psychologically depressed. Wikipedia’s List of Messiah Claimants could be enlarged.\n4. Perceptual direct realism spawns a “magical” theory of reference. If direct realism is delusional, then what is the mysterious relationship between thought-episodes internal to your world-simulation and the external world? (cf. What is the current state of affairs in philosophy concerning the symbol grounding problem?).\n5. A realistic interpretation of the formalism of quantum physics confirms that not just the Lockean “secondary” properties of material objects are mind-dependent, but also their “primary” properties (cf. Primary/secondary quality distinction). Shades of Bishop Berkeley? (“Esse est percipi” – “to be is to be perceived”) Kant? Not exactly, but classical physics and Copenhagen-style positivism alike are false theories of reality.\n6. According to “no-collapse” quantum mechanics (Everett), you have no unique future, and no unique past. You are not the same person as your countless ancestral namesakes nor the countless folk who wake up tomorrow with an approximation of your memories (cf. Was Parfit correct about consciousness and how we’re not the same person that we were when we were born?).\n7. You experience the illusion of embodiment. “In-the-body” hallucinations in biological minds pervade the animal kingdom. As out-of-body experiences on dissociative anaesthetics like ketamine reveal, physical bodies as normally conceived are cross-modally-matched illusions generated by the CNS. Or alternatively, dualism is true. Actually, not everyone has the chronic illusion of embodiment. People with negative autoscopy can stare into a virtual mirror in their phenomenal world-simulation and not see themselves. For evolutionary reasons, negative autoscopy is rare.\n8. You experience the illusion of four-dimensional space-time, not high-dimensional Hilbert space. This idea is more controversial. Hilbert space is a generalisation of ordinary Euclidian space to an intuitively huge number of dimensions – conventionally infinite, though the holographic entropy bound suggests the dimensionality of what naïve realists call the observable universe is finite. Quantum mechanics may be understood via the mathematical structure of Hilbert space (cf. Nothing happens in the Universe of the Everett Interpretation). Typically, Hilbert space is treated instrumentally as a mere mathematical abstraction, even by Everettians. As David Wallace, a critic, puts it: “Very few people are willing to defend Hilbert-space realism in print.” In the interests of mental health, such self-censorship may be wise.\n9. Experienced psychonauts would echo William James, “…our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.” Quite so. Our posthuman successors may regard everyday Darwinian consciousness as delusive in ways that transcend the expressive power of a human conceptual scheme.\n10. We do not understand reality. Any account of our misperceptions must pass over the unknown unknowns. I fear we’re missing not only details, but the key to the plot.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/06/10/10-ways-perception-distorts-reality/", "title": "10 Ways Perception Distorts Reality", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-06-10T20:28:12+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=7", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f32747b9ec72713ee13c8d582bd789f5", "summary": []}
{"text": "Mini-Series on Open Individualism\n\nPart 1: Introduction\n\nIn this video I introduce the concept of Open Individualism- the idea that we are all one consciousness -, why it is relevant, and who has historically been a proponent of it (Hinduism, Einstein, Schopenhauer, Schrödinger, etc.).\nWe also cover the fact that there is a distinction between Open Individualism as an experience and Open Individualism as a philosophical position with rigorous arguments. I mention that I generally consider arguments to be more powerful and useful than just relying on first-person experiences, though experiences certainly have their place.\nPart 2: Definitions\n\nWe define and illustrate:\n\nClosed Individualism (“you are a separate observer that exists from moment to moment”)\nEmpty Individualism (“you are just a moment of experience”)\nOpen Individualism (“we are all one consciousness”)\n\nPart 3: Strongest Arguments\n\nIn this video we provide some of the strongest arguments in favor of Open Individualism:\n\nBased on continuity of identity from moment to moment.\nReductio ad absurdum of Closed Individualism.\n\nFission.\nFussion.\nLack of viable Identity Carriers (IC).\n\n\nBased on parsimony.\nUndecidability.\nSelf-locating uncertainty when taking a “view from nowhere”.\n\nPart 4: Loneliness, Psychosis, Ecstasy\n\nI address some key considerations when investigating Open Individualism:\n\nIt is crucial to distinguish between our human feelings about a certain idea and the merits and drawbacks of that idea on its own.\nOpen Individualism tends to cause a lot of bliss at first (caused by defanging death)\nBut Open Individualism can often take a turn for the bad.\nIt makes you realize that you won’t only not die, which is good, but also be forced to experience all of the suffering of the world (or multiverse).\nMore so, it can make you feel “cosmically lonely” – a feeling typical of bad trips where the focus is the pursuit of oneness.\nWhile the increased sense of responsibility caused by Open Individualism is good, it is important not to be overwhelmed by the suffering of the world. As they say “one day at a time” and perhaps we could extend that advise to “one lifetime at a time”.\nThe feeling of loneliness is likely the result of mixing deep brain circuits evolved to track things like one’s place in the tribe via feelings of belongingness and togetherness, which can get deactivated or over-activated when fully internalizing otherwise-neutral philosophical viewpoints. In other words, those feelings are reflections of our mammal brain’s response to Open Individualism rather than inherent to the philosophy in and of itself.\n\nI also briefly mention the interesting relationship between the ways we represent the world and valence (i.e. the pleasure-pain axis). Given the Symmetry Theory of Valence, which claims that more “consonant and symmetrical” states of consciousness feel better, experiencing “unitive states of mind” usually comes with the “dissolution of internal boundaries”. Therefore, to actively simulate a world where we are all one is likely to come with very positive feelings (perhaps even orgasmic, and ecstatic). Yet, this is not intrinsic of oneness as such – rather, it’s an artifact of the way valence is implemented in the brain! Subtle, but key, distinction.\nFinally, I also explain that “the highest truth” is not oneness:\nIn some sense, Open Individualism is “level 0” – it is the start of a journey of self-discovery. We still need to address things like how to eliminate extreme suffering, understand how physics describes fields of qualia, the binding problem, how causality interfaces with consciousness, what makes consciousness have an “arrow of time”, and so on. While oneness is a piece of the puzzle, it is by no means “the final answer”. To think otherwise leads to mental pathologies that constrict- rather than expand- one’s understanding and engagement with the world.\nPart 5: Ethics, Coordination, Game Theory\n\nIn this video I discuss the beneficial implications of Open Individualism. Namely:\n\nIts ethical implications, where one feels a sense of responsibility for the wellbeing of all sentient beings.\nIts ability to solve coordination problems.\nIts game-theoretical effects.\n\nI cover how a cultural, philosophical, and scientific movement that grounds the feelings of oneness and universal love in rigorous philosophy and science would be much more powerful and consequential than yet another attempt at a naïve spreading of “peace, love, and harmony”. Indeed, it is the philosophical strength of Open Individualism, rather than just its experiential component, that makes it viable as a tool for solving coordination problems.\nIn particular, I explain that studying 5-MeO-DMT and MDMA from a rigorous, scientific, and methodical point of view is one of the most promising ways of changing the world for the better. Creating reliable, sane, and integrative methods of experiencing oneness and universal love could help us transform weak feelings of altruism into a solid and powerful new conception of decision theoretic rationality.\nWe invite you to think with us about how to carry this out for the benefit of all sentient beings.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/06/06/mini-series-on-open-individualism/", "title": "Mini-Series on Open Individualism", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-06-07T07:23:27+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=8", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "8408d78a736870703ff978cbb96bad15", "summary": []}
{"text": "The QRI Ecosystem: Friends, Collaborators, Blogs, Media, and Adjacent Communities\n\nThe Qualia Research Institute has the vision of a world free from involuntary suffering in which conscious agents are empowered to have full control over their lived experiences. Its mission tackles this objective by combining foundational research on consciousness with a focus on explaining the mathematical properties of pleasure and pain for a full, formal account of valence.\nBy relating our mission to existing memeplexes, we could perhaps accurately describe the ethos of QRI as “Qualia Formalist Sentientist Effective Altruism“. That’s a mouthful. Let’s break it down:\n\nQualia Formalism refers to the notion that experience has a precise mathematical description that ties it with physics (for a more detailed breakdown see the Formalism section of the glossary).\nSentientism refers to the claim that value and disvalue are entirely expressed in the nature and quality of conscious experiences. In other words, that the only reason why states of affairs matter is because of the way in which they impact experiences.\nEffective Altruism refers to the view that we can aspire to do the most good we can rather than settle for less. If you examine the actual extent to which different interventions cash out in terms of reduction in suffering throughout the world, you will notice that they follow a long-tail distribution. Thus, research on how to prioritize interventions really pays off. Focusing on the top interventions (and being willing to spend extra time digging for even better ones) can multiply your positive impact by orders of magnitude.\n\nWe could thus say that people and organizations are more or less aligned with QRI to the extent that they are aligned with each of these notions and their combinations thereof. More so, QRI also values the practice of rational psychonautics and the study of one’s own mind with meditation – hence we also include lists of rational psychonauts and great dharma teachers.\nFind below the list of people and organizations that have a significant degree of alignment with QRI on each front. We also include a list of blogs and websites from readers of our work, which is meant to incentivize community-building around the aforementioned core ideas.\nFormat:\nName of Person/Organization – Blog/Website/Media [if any] (Representative Post of the Author- Sometimes Not from Their Primary Site [if any])\n\nQRI Canon\nQualia Research Institute – QRI (Glossary)\nMichael Edward Johnson – Open Theory (Neural Annealing)\nAndrés Gómez Emilsson – Qualia Computing (Wireheading Done Right)\nCurrent and Former QRI Employees and Collaborators Who Write About QRI Topics\nRomeo Stevens – Neurotic Gradient Descent (Core Transformation)\nQuintin Frerichs – The Youtopia Project (Wada Test + Phenomenal Puzzles)\nAndrew “Zuck” Zuckerman – andzuck.com (Super Free Will)\nKenneth Shinozuka – Blank Horizons (A Future for Humanity)\nWendi Yan – wendiyan.com (The Psychedelic Club)\nJeremy Hadfield – jeremyhadfield.com (How to Steal a Vibe)\nElin Ahlstrand – Mind Nomad (Floating Through First Fears)\nMargareta Wassinge and Anders Amelin – Qualia Productions (When AI Means Advanced Incompetence)\nList of current and former QRI collaborators and volunteers not listed above (in no particular order): Patrick Taylor, Hunter Meyer, Sean McGowan, Alex Zhao, Boian Etropolski, Robin Goins, Bence Vass, Brian Westerman, Jacob Shwartz-Lucas.\n\nPeople and Organizations that Advocate for Sentientism and the Elimination of Suffering\nDavid Pearce – Hedweb.com (The Hedonistic Imperative)\nManu Herrán – manuherran.com (Psychological Biases that Impede the Success in the Reduction of Intense Suffering Movement)\nJonathan Leighton – jonathanleighton.org (Why Access to Morphine is a Human Right)\nMagnus Vinding – magnusvinding.com (Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications)\nRobert Daoust – robert.algosphere.org (Review of Precursor Works)\nJacob Shwartz-Lucas – Invincible Wellbeing (Pleasure in the Brain)\nAlgosphere Alliance – algosphere.org (Vision)\nOrganization for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS) – preventsuffering.org (Cluster Headaches and Potential Therapies)\nSentience Research – sentience-research.org (Algonomy)\nPeople and Organizations Aligned with Qualia Formalism\nGiulio Tononi – integratedinformationtheory.org (Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul)\nSteven Lehar – slehar.com (Harmonic Resonance Theory)\nJonathan W. D. Mason – jwmason.net (Quasi-Conscious Multivariate System)\nJohannes Kleiner – jkleiner.de (Mathematical Consciousness Science)\nDan Lloyd – Labyrinth of Consciousness (The Music of Consciousness)\nLuca Turin – A Spectroscopic Mechanism for Primary Olfactory Reception (The Science of Scent)\nWilliam Marshall – Google Scholar (PyPhi)\nLarissa Albantakis – Google Scholar (Causal Composition)\nModels of Consciousness Conference – models-of-consciousness.org (YouTube channel)\nPeople and Organizations Aligned with Effective Altruism\nNick Bostrom – nickbostrom.com (What is a Singleton?)\nAnders Sandberg – aleph.se (Uriel’s Stacking Problem)\nToby Ord – tobyord.com (The Precipice)\n80000 Hours – 80000hours.org (We Could Feed All 8 Billion People Through a Nuclear Winter)\nFuture of Humanity Institute – fhi.ox.ac.uk (Publications)\nFuture of Life Institute – futureoflife.org (AI Alignment Podcast: Identity and the AI Revolution with David Pearce and Andrés Gómez Emilsson)\nCenter on Long-Term Risk – longtermrisk.org (The Case for Suffering-Focused Ethics)\nRethink Priorities – rethinkpriorities.org (Invertebrate Welfare Cause Profile)\nHappier Lives Institute – happierlivesinstitute.org (Cause Profile: Mental Health)\nEffective Altruism Forum – forum.effectivealtruism.org (Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain)\n\nRational Psychonautics\nSteven Lehar – slehar.com (The Grand Illusion)\nJames Kent – psychedelic-information-theory.com (The Control Interrupt Model of Psychedelic Action)\nAlexander Shulgin – Shulgin Research Institute (Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved)\nThomas S. Ray – Breadth and Depth (Psychedelics and the Human Receptorome)\nMatthew Baggott – Beyond Fear: MDMA and Emotion (MDA and Contour Integration)\nPsychonaut Wiki – psychonautwiki.org (Visual Effects)\nPsychedelic Replications – reddit.com/r/replications (Best of All Times Replications – specific floor tile example)\nGreat Dharma Teachers\nDaniel M. Ingram – Integrated Daniel (No-Self vs. True Self)\nLeigh Brasington – leighb.com (Right Concentration)\nShinzen Young – shinzen.org (The Science of Enlightenment)\nCuladasa – culadasa.com (Joy and Meditation)\n\nQRI Friends and Supporters\nRyan Ferris and James Ormrod – The Good Timeline  (5-MeO-DMT, Paradise Engineering)\nAdrian Nelson – Origins of Consciousness (Consciousness Blindness in Science Fiction)\nAlex K. Chen – Quora (What are the long term effects of Adderall, Dexedrine, or Ritalin use?)\nAndy Vargas – Neologos (Praxis for Open Individualism; Purpose Statement)\nTyger Gruber – tygergruber.com (The Show)\nJacob Lyles – Jacob ex machina (Building a Better Anti-Capitalism)\nAdjacent Communities, Organizations, and Allies\nScott Alexander – Slate Start Codex (Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics and the Anarchic Brain)\nGeoffrey Miller – Primal Poly (The Mating Mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature)\nZvi Mowshowitz – Don’t Worry About the Vase (More Dakka)\nSarah Constantin – Multiple websites: 1, 2, 3 (More Dakka in Medicine)\nScott Aaronson – scottaaronson.com/blog/ (Why I Am Not An Integrated Information Theorist)\nGwern – gwern.net (Iodine and IQ Meta-Analysis)\nVenkatesh Rao – Ribbonfarm (Why We Slouch)\nDavid Chapman – meaningness.com (Romantic Rebellion)\nAtman Retreat – atmanretreat.com (FAQ)\nForesight Institute – foresight.org (YouTube Channel)\nConvergence Analysis – convergenceanalysis.org (List of Works)\nSimulation Series – About (YouTube Channel)\nConsciousness Hacking – cohack.org (blog posts)\nHeartMath Institute – heartmath.org (Chapter on Coherence)\nThe Wider World of People Who are Friends and Acquaintances of the QRI Ecosystem\nNote: I asked (on social media) our readers to share their blogs and personal sites with us. Some of these links are very aligned with QRI and some are not. That said, together they represent a good sample of the memetic ecosystem that surrounds QRI. Namely, these links can be taken as a whole to be suggestive of “the memetic ground upon which QRI is founded”. Please feel free to share your blog or personal site in the comment section of this post.\nJack Foust – Welcome to the Symbolic Domain\nScott Jackisch – Oakland Futurist (Art as a Superweapon)\nMaurits Luyben – Energy and Structure\nAnonymous – deluks917 (What does ‘Actually Trying’ look like?)\nSameer Halai – sameerhalai.com (Toilet Paper Shortage is Not Caused by Hoarding)\nYohan John – neurologism.com (Some Wild Speculation On Goodhart’s Law And Its Manifestations In The Brain)\nJamie Joyce – The Society Library (Deconstructing the Logic of “Plandemic”)\nJoão Mirage – YouTube Channel (The Mirror of the Spirit)\nNatália Mendonça – Axiomatic Doubts (What Truths are Worth Seeking?)\nDustin Ali Francis Janatpour – Tales From Samarkand (The Inspector and the Crow)\nZarathustra Amadeus Goertzel – zarathustra.gitlab.io (Garden of Minds)\nDuncan Sabien – Human Parts (In Defense of Punch Bug)\nBrenda Esquivel – Abanico de Historias (La Reina Tamar y el Pájaro Condenado)\nVishnu Bachani – vishnubachani.com (Latent Possibilities of the Tonal System)\nMartin Utheraptor Duřt – utheraptor.art (Psychedelic Series)\nQiaochu Yuan – Thicket Forte (Monist Nihilism)\nJedediah Logan – Medium Account (Coping with Death During the COVID-19 Crisis)\nEliezer da Silva – eliezersilva.blog (Prior Specification via Prior Predictive Matching)\nCassandra McClure – Lexicaldoll (On Save States)\nGaige Clark – mad.science.blog / Querky Science (The Phoenix Effect)\nBen Finn – optima.blog (Too much to do? Plan your day with Hopscotch [longer])\nMichael Dello-Iacovo – michaeldello.com (How I Renounced Christianity and Became Atheist)\nRobin Hanson – Overcoming Bias (What Can Money Buy Directly?)\nKatja Grace – meteuphoric.com, Worldly Positions, AI Impacts\nMundy Otto Reimer – mundyreimer.github.io (On Thermodynamics, Agency, and Living Systems)\nKhuyen Bui – Medium Account (Beyond Ambition)\nJessica Watson Miller – Autotranslucence (Art as the Starting Point; Becoming a Magician)\nAella – knowingless.com (The Trauma Narrative)\nJacob Falkovich – Put a Number on It (The Scent of Bad Psychology)\nJavi Otero – iawaketechnologies.com (Fractal Entrainment: A New Psychoacoustic Technology Inspired by Nature)\nJosé Luis Ricón – Nintil\nEliot Redelman – BearLamp\nTee Barnett – teebarnett.com (Are you a job search drone?)\nJuan Fernandez Zaragoza – filosofiadelfuturo.com (Pandemia de Ideas)\nEric Layne – (The Antidote to a Global Crisis)\nKazi Adi Shakti – holo-poiesis.com (Beyond Affirmation and Negation)\nPushan Kumar Datta – kaiserpush1 (Ramayana and Cognition of Self)\nYan Liu – Inflection Point (Seeing a World Unshackled from Neoclassical Economics)\nJoseph Kelly – (Entrepreneurship is Metaphysical Labor)\nLogan Thrasher Collins – logancollinsblog.com\nMalcolm Ocean – malcolmocean.com (Transcending Regrets, Problems, and Mistakes)\nJesse Parent – (Why ‘Be Yourself’ is Still Excellent Relationship Advice)\nMilan Griffes – Flight From Perfection (Contemplative Practices, Optimal Stopping, Explore/Exploit)\nCody Kuiack – cosmeffect.com (The Holomorphic Self – Meditations)\nDaniel Eth – thinkingofutils.com (Quantum Computing for Morons)\nBrian P. Ellis – brianpellis.net (Refuting Dr. Erickson and Dr. Massihi)\nJohn Greer – johncgreer.com (The Three Buckets)\n\nFinally: List of Other Relevant Lists\nEffective Altruism Blogs – eablogs.net\nLessWrong Wiki – List of Rationalist Diaspora Blogs\nEffective Altruism Hub – effectivealtruism.org (Resources)\nOpen Individualism Readings – r/OpenIndividualism (Wiki Reading List)\nPhenomenal Binding Resources – binding-problem.com\nPhysicalist Hotlinks – physicalism.com/physicalist-hotlinks", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/06/03/the-qri-ecosystem-friends-collaborators-blogs-media-and-adjacent-communities/", "title": "The QRI Ecosystem: Friends, Collaborators, Blogs, Media, and Adjacent Communities", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-06-04T02:03:43+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=8", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ece611d6e789a537d7b8689256181c4a", "summary": []}
{"text": "Fire Kasina: Color Control Experience Report by Daniel Ingram\n\nTranscribed excerpt from Daniel Ingram‘s Fire Kasina retreat diary (part 1) [24:20-39:50]\n[Daniel spent two weeks practicing 10 to 14 hours a day a fire-focused meditation called Fire Kasina. This meditation technique involves, among other things, looking at a candle flame and then closing one’s eyes and examining the after-image of the fire, and doing this repeatedly over many hours. He started getting interesting visual effects on the second day of the retreat. Over the course of the first week he cycled between difficult and effortless meditation sessions, experienced lots of Jhana and Jhana-Kasina hybrid experiences, reported weird dreams, and described visual hallucinations of various sorts. As the week went on he started experiencing a strange and dysphoric change during the evenings: rather than colors being intensified, something about his experience seemed to be turning every color into grey. Fire Kasina is used to amplify the experience of phenomenal color to great heights, so it seemed strange that for some reason after several days of the practice everything started being grey; he couldn’t stop it. Nonetheless, he persevered. What follows is his description of the meditation breakthrough he experienced on the 7th day of the retreat.]\n[24:20]: I was thinking that one of the interesting things that has happened was that the Goddess of Fire told me that I should become a King of Fire – hehe – which seems a bit of a stretch, but it was inspiring anyway. And so the Tarot card for “King of Fire” is the King of Wands and the message is to be a super-dad, to be supportive of the family, to be good in relationships, to be good in career, accomplish it all simultaneously… and smile while doing it. Interesting instructions. Probably of great relevance and utility if properly applied. Anyway. There it is.\nWell, so, the grey I’ve been seeing at the end of the night turns out is a doorway to wondrous, wondrous things. So, this morning my sitting was good, and clear, and relatively typical for a good morning sit. And then in the afternoon: Wow! For my first sit of the afternoon my mantra became “Orchestral” added to all sorts of other parts. And it began just shuddering at the whole of reality. It became exquisite, amazing, like basking in the presence of a “Divine Orchestra”: The radiator was making interesting sounds. Duncan also described this beautiful music, which I now understand. Well, it became exquisite, and it all harmonized into this wondrous thing that I wanted to record. I wanted to get it on my laptop on my Logic Pro and somehow figure out how to recreate what I was hearing and experiencing. I felt like I could sit there forever while the mantra was going on, powerful and remarkable.\nThe next sit is when the colors opened up. And then I started to notice that out of the black, and white, and grey, colors were showing up. And I had noticed this before. A sort of copper or magenta that was, you know, a very exquisite color off of the white and grey. And yellow off of the white, and grey, and black, that was different and new.\nAnd THIS was like, every color was suddenly there. And I could morph the color into any color. Exquisite colors. Subtleties of hue and shade… that wouldn’t exist in the best art store in the entire universe selling all the coolest shades and paint colors of light. And it would shift through magnificent yellows and sparkling golds into rich oranges and amber colors, and peach tones, and magenta, and reds, and rich reds, and bright reds, and pinkish reds, and subtle pinks, and silver pinks, and pale… pale, pale whiteish pinks of the most exquisite variety, and down into the blues and into purples, into the blue-greens and I got greens… and remarkable rich greens, amazing greens, forest greens, Kelly greens, silver greens, light peridot greens. Incredible colors. And the violet hues! Deep rich violet. And even the greys were exquisite: silver black, steel black, silver grey… just unbelievable shades even between black and white that weren’t even colored but were just exquisite.\nIn the sit I felt like it could go on forever. I could call up whatever color and just give it a few seconds and it would just shift into the new color. And then I went outside when Tommy came here (great guy) […]. I went out to see him and I was high as a freaking kite on just seeing the most amazing exquisite colors due to the power of this meditation. And everything, the greys of the driveway were awesome, the leaf colors were amazing, the sky… the plants, the plants… some of the greens of the plants were just magnificent. Like, just overwhelming beauty.\n\n\nAnd then things progressed and I got so that I could turn these colors into anything I wanted, and just give it a few seconds and it would show up. So I created a dragon in a sort of magnificent purple-dark-green-dark-blue-iridescent scaly set of colors. And had his fire breadth come out as first as reddish, and then purple, and green, and yellow, and black. Just amazing!\n\n\n\n\nAnd then I would make one half of my visual field one color, and one half the other color, and compare the two colors and fine-tune the shades until they went together just exquisitely… anyway, I simply just had an utterly mind-bogglingly enjoyable time playing with the ability to create shades of light and color and images with them just effortlessly, just by asking for them to show up. And I was getting fruitions off of these colors. I got a fruition just off of peach. A sort of exquisite peach color.\nAnd then, finally… finally… and here it is… day 7 or 8 of this retreat… I was able to get the images starting like I got before. Spinning things like they would take everything out and lead to fruition and do that again and again like I got multiple fruitions would just go back to the spinning things, and take out the spinning things. And I got this amber, sort of pixelated squares, and they stuttered and came out by the impermanence door. This has just been an amazing, amazing day.\nThe glorious highs of it are wearing off. And if I crash as hard as I went up, I’m going to be in trouble. Because it would be hard to overstate how exquisite these sits have been this afternoon and evening. Anyway, so Duncan is now seeing the grey… so he may be close. And Florian is been getting white and black, so he may be close to these things as well. It would be fascinating to see if they have the same ecstatic reaction that I’ve had. Truly the word “rapturous” barely does justice to how much fun the day has been. Anyway…\nSo, be well.\n[…]\n[36:00]: Note to self: “Do this more often!”. Goodness gracious! The appreciation of color, the peace in the body, the stability of attention… unbelievable, amazing. The color control is remarkable. The ability to tune into your colors, to any shade, just… it is hard to explain how fun that is. Now I can generate images that demonstrate parallax, so that when I move my head, they would move like you’d think they should move in relationship with how I move my head. So they now have a 3-dimensional spatial life.\nGot a fruition by creating a fire-breathing dragon, and then turning the fire on myself. And when it reached my eyes, that caused the fruition. I’ve seen landscapes, and 3-dimensional spatial structures, and visions of just such exquisite, complicated, intricate, amazing, and diverse beauty. It is hard to explain the gratitude I feel for these practices and what they can do. And that I’m in such fine company: Duncan, and Florian, and Tommy are all excellent people. Extremely helpful, great attitudes, fascinating backgrounds and knowledges and skillsets. They are truly remarkable people and I’m grateful to have found them and to have the opportunity to sit with them and share these things. We laugh nearly continuously during our meals, which are exquisite. We keep each other well entertained somehow, still get very deep transformative practice time in. They are respectful of everyone, of these things, and good practitioners. So it’s a joy to be practicing with them.\nI’ve seen one image that had a sense of intelligence sitting on a chair change form again and again and again. Into all these different types of entities. But I haven’t yet gotten a proper kind of fruition with the intelligent eyes looking back at me yet on this retreat. So… more to do. I still haven’t done the candle flame, moving things with my mind. But perhaps that is coming. I hope so. Alright, dear listener, or listeners, whoever you may be, I hope you are well. I hope that one day you have the interest and opportunity to practice these things as we are here today. For this is the good stuff, as they say.\n\n\nRelevant:\n\nFree-Wheeling Hallucinations\n\nDaniel Ingram talks about “color control” during Fire Kasina meditation – the ability to control the phenomenal color of experience. Can this be achieved pharmacologically?\nCognitive scientist Steven Lehar reports that combining LSD, Ketamine, and THC at the same time can give rise to an interesting phenomenon he calls “free-wheeling hallucinations”.\nThese hallucinations are the psychedelic equivalent of lucid dreams. Namely, they are very intense but highly controllable states of mind where you can “will into being” whatever you want (up to a certain level of complexity).\nIt’s as if you’ve gained “root access” to the parameters of your inner world-simulation and you can create complex psychedelic scenery and simulated environments.\nRemarkably, one can investigate the connection between symmetry, harmony, and valence on these states.\n\n\nGeneralized Wada Test and the Total Order of Consciousness\n\nDaniel Ingram talks about developing the ability of instantiating one color on one side of the visual field and a different color on the other in order to compare them side by side.\nWada tests are medical procedures in which only one of your brain hemispheres receives a sedative drug at a time. This can be useful in order to determine which hemisphere can be ablated in order to treat epilepsy.\nBut we could generalize it! We can inject one drug in one hemisphere and a different drug in another. In fact, this could be a core research paradigm in the future for qualia research.\n\n\nBeyond Turing: A Solution to the Problem of Other Minds Using Mindmelding and Phenomenal Puzzles and Wada Test + Phenomenal Puzzles: Testing the Independent Consciousness of Individual Brain Hemispheres\n\nExtending the above insight – one can in principle use Wada Tests in order to test the independent consciousness of another nervous system (even perhaps one of your hemispheres).\nYou can “solve the problem of other minds” on yourself with current technology by getting each of your hemispheres to solve “qualia puzzles” independently.\n\n\n#46 – Daniel Ingram II (Pragmatic Buddhism) \n\nA recent and fascinating interview where Daniel talks about his Fire Kasina practice and many other amazing things with Ryan Ferris.\n\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/05/28/fire-kasina-color-control-experience-report-by-daniel-ingram/", "title": "Fire Kasina: Color Control Experience Report by Daniel Ingram", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-05-29T04:41:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=8", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "efee1d8fb26893aca703e9f30363b024", "summary": []}
{"text": "5-MeO-DMT Awakenings: From Naïve Realism to Symmetrical Enlightenment\n\nIn the following video Leo Gura from actualized.org talks about his 30-day 5-MeO-DMT streak experiment. In this post I’ll highlight some of the notable things he said and comment along the way using a QRI-lens to interpret his experiences (if you would rather make up your mind about what he says without my commentary just go and watch the video on your own before reading what I have to say about it).\nTL;DR: Many of the core QRI paradigms such as Neural Annealing, the Symmetry Theory of Valence, the Tyranny of the Intentional Object, and Hyperbolic Geometry on Psychedelics have a surprising degree of explanatory power when it comes to making sense of the peculiar process that ensues when someone takes a lot of 5-MeO-DMT. The deep connections between symmetry, valence, smooth geometry, and information content are made clear in this context due to the extreme and purified nature of the states induced by the drug.\n\n\nIntroduction\nRecently Adeptus Psychonautica (who has interviewed me in the past about the hyperbolic geometry of DMT experiences) put out a video titled “When you have taken too much – Actualized.org“. This video caught my attention because Leo Gura did something that is rather taboo in spiritual communities, and for good reasons. Namely, he tried to convince the viewers that he had achieved a level of awakening that nobody (or perhaps only a few people) on the entire planet had ever reached. He then said he was going to isolate for a month to integrate these profound awakenings and come back with a description of what they are all about.\nThankfully I didn’t have to wait a month to satisfy my curiosity and see what happened after his period of isolation because by the time I found about it he had already posted his post-retreat video. Well, it turns out that he used those 30 days of isolation to conduct a very hard-core psychedelic experiment. Namely, he took high doses of 5-MeO-DMT daily for the entire month. I’ve never heard of anyone doing this before.\nLearning about what he experienced during that month is of special interest to me for many reasons. In particular, thanks to previous research about extreme bliss and suffering, we had determined that 5-MeO-DMT is currently the psychedelic drug that has the most powerful and intense effects on valence. Recall Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain (video): many lines of evidence point to the fact that extreme states of consciousness are surprisingly powerful in ways that are completely counterintuitive. So when Leo says that there are “many levels of awakening” and goes on to discuss how each level is unrecognizably more intense and deeper than the previous one, I am very much inclined to believe he is trying to convey a true property of his experiences. Note that Leo did not only indulge in psychedelics; we are talking about 5-MeO-DMT in particular, which is the thermonuclear bomb version of a psychoactive drug (as with Plutonium, this stuff is best handled with caution). More so, thankfully Leo is very eloquent, which is rare among people who have had many extreme experiences. So I was very eager to hear what he had to say.\nWhile I can very easily believe his trip reports when it comes to their profundity, intensity, and extraordinary degree of consciousness, I do not particularly find his interpretations of these experiences convincing. As I go about describing his video, I will point out ways in which you can take as veridical his phenomenological descriptions without at the same time having to agree with his interpretations of them. More so, if you end up exploring these varieties of altered states yourself, by reading this you will now at least have two different and competing frameworks to explain your experiences. This, I think, is an improvement. Right now the psychedelic and scientific community has very few lenses with which to interpret something as extraordinary as 5-MeO-DMT experiences. And I believe this comes at a great cost to people’s sanity and epistemic rationality.\nWhat Are Leo’s Background Assumptions?\nIn the pre-retreat video Leo says that his core teachings (and what he attempts to realize on his own self) are: (1) you are literally God, (2) there is nothing but consciousness – God is infinite consciousness, (3) everything is states of consciousness – everything at all times is a different state of consciousness, (4) you are love – and love is absolute – this is all constructed out of love – fear is just fear of aspects of yourself you have disconnected from, (5) you have no beginning and no end, (6) you should be radically open-minded. Then he also adds that physical and mental health issues are just manifestations of your resistance to realizing that you are God.\nWhat Are My Background Assumptions?\nPersonal Identity\nI am quite sympathetic to the idea of oneness, which is also talked about with terms like nonduality and monopsychism. In philosophical terminology, which I find to be more precise and rigorous, this concept goes by the name of Open Individualism – the belief that we are all one single consciousness. I have written extensively about Open Individualism in the past (e.g. 1, 2, 3), but I would like to point out that the arguments I’ve presented in favor of this view are not based on direct experience, but rather, on logical consistency from background assumptions we take for granted. For instance, if you assume that you are the same subject of experience you were a second ago, it follows that you can exist in two points in space-time and still be the same being. Your physical configuration is different than a few seconds ago (let alone a decade), you have slightly different memories, the neurons active are different, etc. For every property you point out as your “identity carrier” I can find a counter-example where such carrier changes a little while you still remain the same subject of experience. Add to that teleportation, fission, fusion, and gradual replacement thought experiments and you can build a framework where you can become any other arbitrary person without a loss of identity. These lines of argumentation coupled with the transitivity of identity can build the case that we are indeed all one to begin with.\nBut realize that rather than saying that you can grasp this (potential) truth directly from first person experience, I build from agreed upon assumptions to arrive at an otherwise outlandish view. Understanding the argument does not entail “feeling we are all one”, and neither does feeling we are all one entails understanding the arguments!\nIndirect Realism About Perception\nThere is a mind-independent world out there and you never get to experience it directly. In some sense, we each live in a private skull-bound world-simulation that tracks the fitness-relevant features of our environment. Hence, during meditation, dreaming, or psychedelic states you are not accessing any sort of external reality directly, but rather, exploring possible configurations and qualities of your inner world-simulation. This is something that Leo may implicitly not realize. In particular, interpreting 5-MeO-DMT experiences through direct realism (also called naïve realism – the view that you experience the world directly through your senses) would make you think that you are literally merging with the entire cosmos on the drug. Whereas interpreting those experiences with indirect realism merely entails that your inner boundaries are dissolving. In other words, the partitions inside your world-simulation are what implements the feeling of the self-other duality. And since 5-MeO-DMT dissolves inner boundaries, it feels as though you are becoming one with your surroundings (and the rest of reality).\nPhysicalism and Panpsychism\nAn important background assumption is that the laws of physics accurately describe the behavior of the universe. This is distinct from materialism, which would also posit that all matter is inherently insentient. Physicalism merely says that the laws of physics describe the behavior of the physical, but leaves its intrinsic nature as an open question. Together with panpsychism, however, physicalism entails that what the laws of physics are describing is the behavior of consciousness.\nTyranny of the Intentional Object\nWe tend to believe that what makes us happy is external to us, while in reality happiness is a state of consciousness triggered by external circumstances. Our minds lead us to believe otherwise for evolutionary reasons.\nValence Structuralism\nWhat makes an experience feel good or bad is not its semantic content, its computational use, or even whether the experience is self-reinforcing or not. What makes experiences feel good or bad is their structure. In particular, a very promising idea that will come up below is that highly symmetrical states of consciousness are inherently blissful, such as those we can access during orgasm, meditation, psychedelics, or even just good food and a hug. Recall that 5-MeO-DMT dissolves internal boundaries, and this is indicative of increased inner symmetry (where the boundaries themselves entail symmetry breaking operations). Thus, an exotic state of oneness is blissful not because you are merging with God, but “merely” because it has a higher degree of symmetry and therefore it’s valence is higher than what we can normally experience. In particular, the symmetry I’m talking abut here may be an objective feature of experiences perhaps even measurable with today’s neuroimaging technology.\nThere are additional key background philosophical assumptions, but the above are enough to get us started analyzing Leo’s 5-MeO-DMT journey from a different angle.\n\nThe Video\n[Video descriptions are in italics whereas my commentary is bolded.]\nFor the first 8 minutes or so Leo explains that people do not really know that there are many levels of enlightenment. He starts out strong by claiming that he has reached levels of enlightenment that nobody (or perhaps just a few people) have ever reached. More so, while he agrees with the teachings of meditation masters of the past, he questions the levels of awakening that they had actually reached. It takes one to know one, and he claims that he’s seen things far beyond what previous teachers have talked about. More so, he argues that people simply have no way of knowing how enlightened their teachers are. People just trust books, gurus, teachers, religious leaders, etc. about whether they are “fully” enlightened, but how could they know for sure without reaching their level, and then surpassing them? He wraps up this part of the video by saying that the only viable path is to go all the way by yourself – to dismiss all the teachers, all the books, and all the instructions and see how far you can go on your own when genuinely pursuing truth by yourself.\nWith this epistemological caveat out of the way, Leo goes on to describe his methodology. Namely, he embarked on a quest of taking 5-MeO-DMT at increasing doses every day for 30 days in a row.\nAt 10:05 he says that within a week of this protocol he started reaching levels of awakening so elevated that he realized he had already surpassed every single spiritual teacher that he had ever heard of. He started writing a manifesto explaining this, claiming that even the most enlightened humans are not truly as awake as he became during that week. That it had became “completely transparent that most people who say they are awake or teach awakening are not even 1% awake”. But he decided not to go forward with the manifesto because he still values the teachings of spiritual leaders, whom according to him are doing a great service to mankind. He didn’t want to start, what he called, a “nonduality war” (which is of course a fascinating term if you think about it).\nThe main thing I’d like to comment here is that Leo is never entirely clear about what makes an “awakening experience” authentic. From what I gather (and from what comes next in the video) we can infer that the leading criteria consists of a fuzzy blend of experience of certainty, feeling of unity, and sense of direct knowing coupled together. To the extent that 5-MeO-DMT does all of these things to an extraordinary degree, we can take Leo on his words that he indeed experienced states of consciousness that feel like awakening that are most likely inaccessible to everyone who hasn’t gone through a protocol like his. What is still unclear is how exactly the semantic contents of these experiences are verified by means other than intuition. We will come back to that.\nAt 16:00 he makes the distinction between awakening as merely “cessation”, “nothingness”, “emptiness”, “the Self”, or that “you are nothing and everything” versus what he has been experiencing. He agrees that those are true and worthy realizations, but he claims that before his experiences, these understandings were still only realized at a very “low level”. Other masters, he claims, may care about ending suffering, about peace, about emptiness, and so on. But that nobody seems to truly care about understanding reality (because otherwise they would be doing what he’s doing). He rebukes possible critics (arguably of the Zen variety) who would say that “understanding is a function of the mind” so the goal shouldn’t be to understand. He asserts that no, based on his lived experience, that consciousness is capable of “infinite understanding”.\nNotwithstanding the challenges posed by ultrafinitism, I am also inclined to believe Leo that he has experienced completely new varieties of “understanding”. In my model of the mind, understanding something means to have the ability to render it in your world-simulation in a particular kind of way that allows you to see it from every possible angle you have access to. On 5-MeO-DMT, as we will see to a greater extent below, a certain new set of projective operations get unlocked that allow you to render information from many, many more points of view at the same time. It is unclear whether this is possible with meditation alone (in personal communication, Daniel Ingram said yes) but it is certainly extraordinarily rare for even advanced meditators to be able to do this. So I am with Leo when it comes to describing “new kinds of understandings”. But perhaps I am not on board when it comes to claiming that the content of such understandings is an accurate rendering of the structure of reality.\nAt 18:30 Leo asserts that what happened to him is that over the course of the first week of his experiment he “completely understood reality, completely understood what God is”. God has no beginning and no end. He explains that normal human understanding sees situations from a single point of view (such as from the past to the future). But that actual infinite reality is from all sides at once: “When you are in full God consciousness, you look around the room, and you can see it from every single point of view, from an infinite number of angle and perspectives. You see that every part of the room generates and manufactures and creates every other part. […] Here when you are in God consciousness, you see it from every single possible dimension and angle. It’s not happening lilnearly, it’s all in the present now. And you can see it from every angle almost as though, if you take a watermelon and you do a cross-section with a giant knife, through that watermelon, and you keep doing cross-section, cross-section, cross-section in various different angles, eventually you’ll slice it up into an infinite number of perspectives. And then you’ll understand the entire watermelon as a sort of a whole. Whereas usually as humans what we do is we slice down that watermelon just right down the middle. And we just see that one cross-section.”\n\n\n\nNow, this is extremely interesting. But first, it’s important to point out that here Leo might implicitly be reasoning about his experience through the lens of direct realism about perception. That is, that as he experiences this profound sense of understanding that encompasses every possible angle at once, he seems to believe that this is an understanding of his environment, of his future and past, and of reality as a whole. On the other hand, if you start out assuming indirect realism about perception, how you interpret this experience would be in terms of the instantiation of new exotic geometries of your own world-simulation. Here I must bring up the analysis of “regular” DMT (i.e. n,n-DMT) experiences through the lens of hyperbolic geometry. Indeed, regular DMT elevates the energy of your consciousness, which manifests in brighter colors, fast movement, intricate and detailed patterns, and as curved phenomenal space. We know this because of numerous trip reports from people well educated in advanced mathematics who claim that the visual symmetries one can experience on DMT (at doses above 10mg) have hyperbolic curvature (cf. hyperbolic orbifolds). It is also consistent with many other phenomena one can experience on DMT (see the Eli 5 for a quick summary). But you should keep in mind that this analysis never claims that you are experiencing directly a mind-independent “hyperspace”. Rather, the analysis focuses on how DMT modifies the geometric properties of your inner world-simulation.\nEnergy-complexity landscape on DMT\nDMT trip progression\nIntriguingly, our inner world-simulations work with projective geometry. In normal circumstances our world-simulations have a consistent set of projective points at infinity – they render the modal and amodal features of our experience in projective scenes that are globally consistent. But psychedelics can give rise to this phenomenon of “point-of-view-fragmentation“, where your experience becomes a patchwork of inconsistent projective renderings. So even on “regular” DMT you can get the profound feeling of “seeing something from multiple points of view at once”. Enhanced with hyperbolic geometry, this can cause the stark impression that you can explore “hyperspace” with a kind of “ultra-understanding”. \nLooking beyond “regular” DMT, 5-MeO-DMT is yet more crazy than that. You see, even on DMT you get the feeling that you are restricted in the number of points of view from which you can see something at the same time. You can see it from many more points of view than normal, but it’s still restricted. But the extreme “smoothing” of experience that 5-MeO-DMT causes makes it so that you cannot distinguish one point of view from another. So they all blend together. Not only do you experience semantic content from “multiple points of view at once” as in DMT, but you can erase distinctions between points of view so that one’s sense of knowing arises involving a totally new kind of projective effect, in which you actually feel you can see something from “every point of view at once”. It feels that you have unlocked a kind of omniscience. This already happens on other psychedelics to a lesser extent (and in meditation, and even sober life to an even lesser extent, but still there), and it is a consequence of smoothing the geometry of your experience to such an extent that there are no symmetry-breaking imperfections “with which to orient a projective point”. I suspect that the higher “formless” jhanas of “boundless space” and “boundless consciousness” are hitting at this effect. And on 5-MeO-DMT this effect is pronounced. More so, because of the connection between symmetry and smoothness of space (cf. Geometry Through the Eyes of Felix Klein) when this happens you will also automatically be instantiating a high-dimensional group. And according to the Symmetry Theory of Valence, this ought to be extraordinarily blissful. And indeed it is.\nThis is, perhaps, partly what is going on in the experience that Leo is describing. Again, I am inclined to believe his description, but happy to dismiss his naïve interpretation.\nIndra’s Net\nAt 23:15 Leo describes how from his 5-MeO-DMT point of view he realized what “consciousness truly is”. And that is an “infinitely interconnected self-communicating field”. In normal everyday states of consciousness the different parts of your experience are “connected” but not “communicating.” But on 5-MeO, “as you become more conscious, what happens is that every point in space inter-connects with itself and starts to communicate with itself. This is a really profound, shocking, mystical experience. And it keeps getting cranked up more and more and more. You can call it omniscience, or telepathy. And it’s like the universal communication system gets turned on for the first time. Right now your conscious field is not in infinite communication with itself. It’s fragmented and divided. Such that you think I’m over here, you are over there, my computer is over here, your computer is over there…”. He explains that if we were to realize we are all one, we would then instantly be able to communicate between each other.\nHere again we get extremely different interpretations of the phenomena Leo describes depending on whether you believe in direct or indirect realism about perception. As Leo implicitly assumes direct realism about perception, he interprets this effect as literally switching on an “universal communication system” between every points in reality, whereas the indirect realist interpretation would be that you have somehow interlocked the pieces of your conscious experience in such a way that they now act as an interconnected whole. This is something that indeed has been reported before, and at QRI we call this effect “network integration“. A simple way of encapsulating this phenomenon would be by saying that the cross-frequency coupling of your nervous system is massively increased so that there is seamless information and energy transfer between vibrations at different scales (to a much lesser extent MDMA also does this, but 5-MeO-DMT is the most powerful “integration aid” we know of). This sounds crazy but it really isn’t. After all, your nervous system is a network of oscillators. It stands to reason that you can change how they interact with one another by fine-tuning their connections and get as a result decoupling of vibrations (e.g. SSRIs), or coupling only between vibrations of a specific frequency (e.g. stimulants and depressants), or more coupling in general (e.g. psychedelics). In particular, 5-MeO-DMT does seem to cause a massively effective kind of fractal coupling, where every vibration can get in tune with every other vibration. And recall, since a lot of our inner world simulation is about representing “external reality”, this effect can give rise to the feeling that you can now instantly communicate with other parts of reality as a whole. This, from my point of view, is merely misinterpreting the experience by imagining that you have direct access to your surroundings.\n\n\nAt 34:52 Leo explains that you just need 5-MeO-DMT to experience these awakenings. And yet, he also claims that everything in reality is imaginary. It is all something that you, as God, are imagining because “you need a story to deny that you are infinite consciousness.” Even though the neurotransmitters are imaginary, you still need to modify them in order to have this experience: “I’m talking about superhuman levels of consciousness. These are not levels of consciousness that you can access sober. You need to literally upgrade the neurotransmitters in your imaginary brain. And yes, your brain is still imaginary, and those neurotransmitters are imaginary. But you still need to upgrade them nevertheless in order to access some of the things I say.”\nNeedless to say, it’s bizarre that you would need imaginary neurotransmitter-mimicking molecules in your brain in order to realize that all of reality is your own imagination. When you dream, do you need to find a specific drug inside your dream in order to wake up from the dream? Perhaps this view can indeed be steel-manned, but the odds seem stacked against it.\nAt 38:30 he starts talking about his pornography collection. He assembles nude images of women, not only to relieve horniness, but also as a kind of pursuit of aesthetics. Pictures of nude super-models are some of the most beautiful things a (straight) man can see. He brings this up in order to talk about how he then at some point started exploring watching these pictures on 5-MeO-DMT. Recollecting this brings him to tears because of how beautiful the experiences were. He states “you’ve never really seen porn until you’ve seen it on 5-MeO-DMT.” He claims that he started to feel that this way he really felt that it is you (God) that is beautiful, which is manifested through those pictures.\nA robust finding in the psychology of sexual attraction is that symmetry in faces is correlated with attractiveness. Indeed, more regular faces tend to be perceived as more beautiful. Amazingly, you can play with this effect by decorating someone’s face with face-paint. The more symmetrical the pattern, the more beautiful the face looks (and vice-versa). Arguably, the effect Leo is describing where people who are already beautiful become unbelievably pretty on 5-MeO-DMT involves embedding high-dimensional symmetries into the way you render them in your world-simulation. A lesser, and perhaps more reliable, version of this effect happens when you look at people on MDMA. They look way more attractive than what they look like sober.\n\n\n\nLeo then brings up (~41:30) that he started to take 5-MeO-DMT on warm baths as well, which he reassures us is not as dangerous as it sounds (not enough water to drown if he experiences a whiteout). [It’s important to mention that people have died by taking ketamine on bath tubs; although a different drug, it is arguably still extremely dangerous to take 5-MeO-DMT alone on a bathtub; don’t do it]. He then has an incredible awakening surrendering to God consciousness in the bathtub, on 5-MeO-DMT, jerking off to beautiful women in the screen of his laptop. He gets a profound insight into the very “nature of desire”. He explains that it is very difficult to recognize the true nature of desire while on a normal level of consciousness because our desires are biased and fragmented. When “your consciousness becomes infinite” those biases dissolve, and you experience desire in its pure form. Which according to his direct experience turned out to be “desire for God, desire for myself”. And this is because you are, deep down “infinite love”. When you desire a husband, or sex, or whatever, you are really desiring God in disguise. But the problem is that since your path to God is constrained by the form you desire, your connection to God is not stable. But once you have this experience of complete understanding of what desire is, you finally get your desire fully quenched by experiencing God’s love.\nThis is a very deep point. It is related to what I’ve sometimes called the “most important philosophical question“, which is: is valence a spiritual phenomenon or spirituality a valence phenomenon? In other words, do we find experiences of God blissful because they have harmony and symmetry, or perhaps is it the other way around, where even the most trivial of pleasures, like drinking a good smoothy, feels good because it temporarily “gets you closer to God”? I lean towards the former, and that in fact mystical experiences are so beautiful because they are indeed extremely harmonious and resonant states of consciousness, and not because they take you closer to God. But I know very smart people who can’t decide between these views. For example, my friend Stuart Garvagh writes: \nWhat if the two options are indistinguishable? Suppose valence is a measure of the harmony/symmetry of the object of consciousness, and the experience of “Oneness” or Cosmic Consciousness is equivalent to having the object of consciousness be all of creation (God‘s object), a highly symmetrical, full-spectrum object (full of bliss, light, love, beingness, all-knowledge, empty of discernible content or information). All objects of consciousness are distortions (or refractions, or something) of this one object. Happiness is equivalent to reducing or “polishing-out” these distortions. Thus, what appears to be just the fact of certain states being more pleasant than others is equivalent to certain states being closer to God‘s creation as a whole. Obviously this is all pure speculation and just a story to illustrate a point, but I could see it being very tough to tease apart the truth-value of 1 and 2. Note: I’m fairly agnostic myself, but lean towards 2 (bliss is the perfume of “God realizing God” or the subject of experience knowing Itself). I would very much love to have this question answered convincingly!\nAt 50:00 Leo says that “everything I’ve described so far is really a prelude to the real heart of awakening, which is the discovery of love. […] I had already awakened to love a number of times, but this was deeper. By the two week mark the love really started to crack open. Infinite self-love. You are drowning on this love.” He goes on to describe how at this point he was developing a form of telepathy that allowed him to communicate with God directly (which is, of course, a way of talking to himself as he is God already). It’s just a helpful way to further develop. And what God was showing him was how to receive self-love. It was so much at first he couldn’t handle it. And so he went through a self-purification process.\nAn interesting lens with which to interpret this experience of purification is that of neural annealing. Each 5-MeO-DMT experience would be making Leo’s nervous system resonate in ways in new ways, slowly writing over previous patterns and entraining the characteristic high-symmetry patterns of the state. Over time, the nervous system adjusts its weights in order to be able to handle that resonance without getting its patterns over-written. In other words, Leo has been transforming his nervous system into a kind of high-valence machine, which is of course very beneficial for intrinsic feelings of wellbeing (though perhaps detrimental to one’s epistemology).\n55:00: He points out that unlike addictive drugs, he actually had to push himself very hard to continue to take 5-MeO-DMT everyday for 30 days. He stopped wanting to do it. The ego didn’t want it. And yes, it was pleasurable once he surrendered on every session, but it was difficult, heavy spiritual work. He says that he could only really do this because of years of practice with and without psychedelics, intense meditation, and a lot of personal development. And because of this, he explains his 5-MeO experiences felt like “years of spiritual work condensed into a single hour.” He then says that God will never judge you, and will help you to accept whatever terrible things you’ve done. And many of his subsequent trips were centered around self-acceptance. \nFollowing the path of progressive neural annealing, going deeper and deeper into a state of self-acceptance can be understood as a deeper harmonization of your nervous system with itself.\nAt 1:01:20, Leo claims to have figured out what the purpose of reality truly is: “Reality is a contest for who can love who more. That’s really what life is about when you are fully conscious. […] Consciousness is a race for who can love who more. […] An intelligent fully conscious consciousness would only be interested in love. It wouldn’t be interested in anything else. Because everything else is inferior. […] Everything else is just utter silliness!”\nI tend to agree with this, though perhaps not in an agentive way. As David Pearce says: “the pleasure-pain axis discloses the universe’s intrinsic value function.” So when you’ve annealed extremely harmonious patterns and do not get distracted by negative emotion, naturally, all there is left to do is maximize love. Unless we mess up, this is the only good final destiny for the cosmos (albeit perhaps it might take the form of a Hedonium shockwave, which at least in our current human form, sound utterly unappealing to most people).\n1:06:10 “[God’s love] sparks you to also want to love it back. You see, it turns into a reciprocal reaction, where it is like two mirrors that are mirroring light between each other like a laser beam that is bouncing between two mirrors. And it’s bouncing back and forth and back and forth. And as it bounces back and forth it becomes more and more concentrated. And it strengthens. And it becomes more coherent. And so that’s what started happening. At first it started out as just a little game. Like ‘I love you, I love you, I love you’. A little game. It sounds like it’s almost like childish. And it sort of was. But then it morphed from being this childish thing, into being this serious existential business. This turned into the work. This was the true awakening. Is that with the two mirrors, you know, first it took a little while to get the two mirrors aligned. Because you know if the two mirrors are not perfectly aligned, the laser beam will kind of bounce back and forth in different directions. It’s not going to really concentrate. So that was happening at first. […] The love started bouncing back and forth between us, and getting stronger and stronger. […] Each time it bounces back to me it transforms me. It opens me up deeper. And as it opens me up deeper it reveals blockages and obstacles to my capacity to love.”\n\n\nNow this is a fascinating account. And while Leo interprets it in a completely mystical way, the description also fits very well an annealing process where the nervous system gets more and more fine-tuned in order to be able to contain high levels of coherent energy via symmetry. Again, this would be extremely high-valence as a consequence of the Symmetry Theory of Valence. Notice that we’ve talked about this phenomenon of “infinite mirrors” on psychedelics since 2016 (see: Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States).\nAt ~1:09:30 he starts discussing that at this point he was confronted by God about whether he was willing to love the holocaust, and rape, and murder, and bullies, and people of all sorts, even devil worshipers. \nTwo important points here. First, it is a bit ambiguous whether Leo here is using the word “love” in the sense of “enjoyment” or in the sense of “loving-kindness and compassion”. The former would be disturbing while the latter would be admirable. I suppose he was talking about the latter, in which case “loving rape” would refer to “being able to accept and forgive those who rape” which indeed sounds very Godly. This radical move is explored in metta (loving-kindness) meditation and it seems healthy on the whole. And second: Why? Why go through the trouble of embracing all the evil and repulsive aspects of ourselves? One interpretation here, coming back to the analysis based on neural annealing, is that any little kink or imperfection caused by negative emotion in our nervous system will create slight symmetry breaking effects on the resonance of the entire system as whole. So after you’ve “polished and aligned the mirrors for long enough” the tiny imperfections become the next natural blockage to overcome in order to maximize the preservation of coherent energy via symmetry.\n~1:12:00 Leo explains that the hardest thing to love is your own self-hatred. In the bouncing off of the love between you and God, with each bounce, you find that the parts you hate about yourself reflect an imperfect love. But God loves all of you including your self-hatred. So he pings you about that. And once you can accept it, that’s what truly changes you. “Because when you feel that love, and you feel how accepting it is, and how forgiving it is of all of your evil and of all of your sins… that’s the thing that kills you, that transforms you. That’s what breaks your heart, wide open. That’s what gets you to surrender. That’s what humbles you. That’s what heals you.” Leo then explains that he discovered what “healing is”. And it is “truth and love”. That in order to heal anyone, you need to love them and accept them. Not via sappy postcards and white lies but by truth. He also states that all physical, mental, and spiritual ailments have, at their root, lack of love.\nIf love is one of the cleanest expressions of high-valence symmetry and resonance, we can certainly expect that inundating a nervous system with it will smooth and clean its blockages, i.e. the sources of neural dissonance. Hence the incredible power of MDMA on healing nervous systems in the short-term. Indeed, positive emotion is itself healing and enhances neural coherence. But where I think this view is incomplete is in diagnosing the terrible suffering that goes on in the world in terms of a lack of love. For instance, are cluster headaches really just the result of lack of self-love? In here must bring back the background assumption of physicalism and make a firm statement that if we fall into illusion about the nature of reality we risk not saving people (and sentient beings more generally) who are really in the depth of Hell. Just loving them without taking the causally-relevant physical action to prevent their suffering is, in my opinion, not true love. Hence the importance of maintaining a high level of epistemic rigor: for the sake of others. (See: Hell Must Be Destroyed).\n1:22:30 Leo explains that in this “love contest” with God of bouncing off love through parallel mirrors the love became so deep that for the first time in his life he felt the need to apologize: “I’m sorry for not loving more.” He goes into a sermon about how we are petty, and selfish, etc. and how God loves us anyway. “Real love means: I really love you as you are. And I don’t need anything from you. And especially all those things that you think I want you to change about you, I don’t need you to change. I can accept them all exactly as they are. Because that’s love. And when you realize THAT, that’s what transforms you. It is not that God says that he loves you. He is demonstrating it. It’s the demonstration that transforms you.” Leo expresses that he was then for the first time in his life able to say “thank you” sincerely. Specifically, “thank you for your love”: “This is the point at which you’ve really been touched by God’s love. And at this point you realize that that’s it, that’s the point, that’s the lesson in life. That’s my only job. It’s to love.” And finally, that for the first time in his life he was able to say “I love you” and truly mean it. “And you fall in love with God… but it doesn’t end there.”\nAn interesting interpretation of the felt-sense of “truly meaning” words like “I’m sorry”, “thank you”, and “I love you” is that at this point Leo has really deeply annealed his nervous system into a vessel for coherent energy. In other words, at this point he is saying and meaning those words through the whole of his nervous system, rather than them coming from a fragmented region of a complex set of competing internal family systems in a scattered way. Which is, of course, the way it usually goes.\n1:35:30 Leo explains that at this point he started going into the stage of being able to radiate love. That he was unable to radiate love before. “I love that you are not capable of love. I love that. And when that hits you, that’s what fills you with enough love to overcome your resistance to love that next level thing that you couldn’t love.” Then at ~ 1:38:00 it gets really serious. Leo explains that so far he was just loving and accepting past events and people. But he was then asked by God whether he would be willing to live through the worst things that have happened and will happen. To incarnate and be tortured, among many other horrible things. And that’s what true love really means. “When you see a murder on the TV, you have to realize that God lived through that. And the only reason he lived through that is because it loved it.”\nI do not understand this. Here is where the distinction between the two kinds of senses of the word “love” become very important. I worry that Leo has annealed to the version of love with the meaning of “enjoyment” rather than “loving-kindness and compassion”. Because a loving God would be happy to take the place of someone who went through Hell. But would a loving God send himself to Hell if nobody had to in the first place? That would just create suffering out of nothing. So I am confused about why Leo would believe this to be the case. It’s quite possible that there are many maxima of symmetry in the nervous system you can achieve with 5-MeO-DMT, and some of them are loving in the sense of compassionate and others are crazy and would be willing to create suffering out of nothing from a misguided understanding of what love is supposed to be. Again, handle Plutonium with caution.\n1:43:00 Leo started wondering “what is reality then?” And the answer was: “It’s infinite consciousness. Infinite formless consciousness. So what happens was that my mind in my visual field as I was in that bathtub. My mind and my visual field focused in on empty space, and I sort of zoomed into that empty space and realized that that empty space is just love”. He then describes a process where his consciousness became more and more concentrated and absorbed into space, each dot of consciousness branching out into more and more dots of consciousness, turning into the brightest possible white light. But when he inquired into what was that white light he kept seeing that there was no end to it, and rather, that each point was always connected to more points. Inquiring further, he would get the response that at the core, reality is pure love. That it wouldn’t be and couldn’t be any other way.\nThe description sounds remarkably close to the formless jhanas such as “boundless space” and “boundless consciousness”. The description itself is extremely reminiscent of an annealing process, reaching a highly energized state of consciousness nearly devoid of information content and nearly perfectly symmetrical. The fact that at this incredibly annealed level he felt so much love supports the Symmetry Theory of Valence.\n147:28 – And after Leo realizes that “Of course it is love!” he says that’s when the fear comes: “Because then what you realize is that this is the end. This is the end of your life. You are dead. If you go any further you are dead. Everything will disappear. Your family, your friends, you parents, all of it is completely imaginary. And if you stop imagining it right now, it will all end. If you go any further into this Singularity, you will become pure, formless, infinite, love for ever, loving itself forever. And the entire universe will be destroyed as if it never existed. Complete nothingness. Complete everythingness. You will merge into everyone.”\nThis sounds like the transition between the 6th and 7th Jhana, i.e. between “boundless consciousness” and “nothingness”. Again, this would be the result of further loss of information via an annealing process, refining the symmetry up to that of a “point”. Interestingly, Mike Johnson in Principia Quallia points out that as symmetry approaches an asymptote of perfection you do get a higher quality of valence but at the cost of reduced consciousness. This might explain why you go from “the brightest possible love” to a feeling of nothingness at this critical transition.\n1:48:25: “…You will merge into everyone. Your mother, your father, your children, your spouse, Hitler, terrorists, 9/11, Donald Trump, rape, murder, torture, everything will become pure infinite love, merging completely into itself, there will be no distinction between absolutely anything, and that will be the end. And you will realize what reality is. Infinite consciousness. Love. God. And you will realize that everything in your life from your birth to this point has just been some imaginary story. A dream that was design to lead you to pure absolute infinite love. And you will rest in that love forever. Forever falling in love with yourself. Forever making love to yourself. Forever in infinite union. With every possible object that could ever exist. Pure absolute, omnipotent, omniscient, perfect, intelligent, consciousness. Everything that could ever possibly be, is you. And THAT is awakening. When you are this awake, you are dead. And you have no desire for life. There is no physical existence. There is no universe. Nothing remains. Your parents, and your spouse, and your children, they don’t stay back and keep living their lives, enjoying their life without you while your body drops dead. No, no, no, no, no. This is much more serious than that. If you do this. If you become infinite love, you will take everybody with you. There will not be anybody left. You will destroy the entire universe. Every single sentient being will become you. They will have no existence whatsoever. Zero. They will die with you. They will all awaken with you. It’s infinite awakening. It’s completely absolute. There will not be anything left. You will take the entire universe with you. Into pure oneness. THAT’S awakening.”\nThis is not the first time I hear about this kind of experience. It certainly sounds extraordinarily scary. Though perhaps a negative utilitarian would find it to be the ultimate relief and the best of all possible imaginable outcomes. With the human survival instinct, and quite possibly a body fully aroused with the incredible power of 5-MeO-DMT, this is bound to be one of the most terrifying feelings possible. It’s quite likely that it may be one element of what makes “bad 5-MeO-DMT experiences” so terrifying. But here we must recall that the map is not the territory. And while an annealing process might slowly write over every single facet of one’s model of reality and in turn making them part of a super-cluster of high-dimensional resonance that reflects itself seemingly infinitely, doing this does not entail that you are in fact about to destroy the universe. Though, admittedly, it will surely feel that way. Additionally, I would gather that were it possible to actually end the universe this way, somebody, somewhere, in some reality or another, would have already done so. Remember that if God could be killed, it’d be dead already.\n1:52:01: “And I didn’t go there! As you can tell, since I’m still sitting here. I’m not there. I was too afraid to go there. And God was fine with it. It didn’t push me. But that’s not the end of the story! It’s still just the beginning.” He then goes on to explain that a part of him wanted to do it and another part of him didn’t want to. He says it got really loopy and weird; this really shook him. That God was beckoning him to go and be one forever, but he was still ambivalent and needed some time to think about it. He knew it would make no difference, but he still decided to ‘make preparations’ and tell his family and friends that he loves them before moving forward with a final decision to annihilate the universe. By the time he had done that… he had stopped taking 5-MeO-DMT: “The experiences had gotten so profound and so deep… this was roughly the 25th or 27th day of this whole 30 day process. I swore off 5-MeO-DMT and said ‘Ok I’m not doing any more of this shit. It’s enough'”. He explains that by this time the drug was making him feel infinite consciousness when waking up (from sleep) the next day. He felt the Singularity was sucking him into it. It felt both terrifying and irresistible. Every time he would go to sleep it would suck him in really strongly, and he kept resisting it. He would wake up sweaty and in a panic. He was tripping deeper in his sleep than in the bathtub. He couldn’t sleep without this happening, and it kept happening for about 5 days. “I just want to get back to normal. This is getting freaky now.” \nI’ve heard this from more than a couple people. That is, that when one does 5-MeO-DMT enough times, and especially within a short enough period of time, the “realizations” start to also happen during sleep in an involuntarily way. One can interpret this as the annealing process of 5-MeO-DMT now latching on to sleep (itself a natural annealing process meant to lessen the technical debt of the nervous system). Even just a couple strong trips can really change what sleep feels like for many days. I can’t imagine just how intense it must have been for Leo after 25 days straight of using this drug.\n2:01:40 – Leo explains that when he was dozing off with a blanket on his living room (terrified of sleeping on his bed due to the effect just described) he experienced a “yet deeper awakening” which involved realizing that all of his previous awakenings were just like points and that the new one was like a line connecting many points. “Everything I’ve said up to this point were just a single dimension of awakening. And then what I broke through to is a second dimension. A second dimension of awakening opened up. This second dimension is completely unimaginable, completely indescribable, cannot be talked about, cannot be thought about. And yet it’s there. In it, are things that are completely outside of the physical universe that you cannot conceive or imagine.” He goes on to explain that there are then also a third, fourth, fifth, etc. dimensions. And that he believes there is an infinite number of them. He barely even began to explore the second dimension of awakening, but he realized that it goes forever. It kept happening, he had intense emotional distress and mood swings. But gradually after five more days it subsided, and he started to be able to sleep more normally. “And I’ve been working to make sense of all of this for the last couple of weeks. So that’s what happened.”\nAlright, this is out of my depth and I do not have an interpretation of what this “second dimension of awakening” is about. If anyone has any clue, please leave a comment or shoot me an email. I’m as as confused as Leo is about this.\n~2:05:00 – Leo confesses he does not know what would happen if he went through with joining the Singularity and mentions that it sounds a bit like Mahasamādhi. He simply has not answers at this point, but he asserts that the experience has made him question the extent of the enlightenment of other teachers. It also has made him more loving. But still, he feels frustration: “I don’t know what to do from here.”\nAnd neither do I. Do you, dear reader?\nPostscript: In the last 10 minutes of the video Leo shares a heart warming message about how reality is, deep down, truly, “just love” and that him saying this may be a seed that will blossom into you finding this out for yourself at some point in the future. He ends by cautioning his audience to not believe as a matter of fact that this is the path for everyone. He suggests that others should just use his examples from his own journey as examples rather than an absolute guide or how-to for enlightenment. He asks his audience to make sure to question the depth of their own awakening – to not believe that they have reached the ultimate level. He admits he has no idea whether there is an ultimate level or not, and that he still has some healing to do on himself. He remains dissatisfied with his understanding of reality.\n\nThank you for reading!\nTHE END", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/05/19/5-meo-dmt-awakenings-from-naive-realism-to-symmetrical-enlightenment/", "title": "5-MeO-DMT Awakenings: From Naïve Realism to Symmetrical Enlightenment", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-05-19T09:26:12+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=8", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b9d56dd963dfab2869aec54c01230ed6", "summary": []}
{"text": "Geometry Through the Eyes of Felix Klein\n\nExcerpt from Visual Complex Analysis (1997) by Tristan Needham (pgs. 30-34)\nGeometry Through the Eyes of Felix Klein\nEven with the benefit of enormous hindsight, it is hard to introduce complex numbers in a compelling manner. Historically, we have seen how cubic equations forced them upon us algebraically, and in discussing Cotes’ work we saw something of the inevitability of their geometric interpretation. In this section we will attempt to show how complex numbers arise very naturally, almost inevitably, from a careful re-examination of plane Euclidean geometry.[10]\n[…]\nAlthough the ancient Greeks made many beautiful and remarkable discoveries in geometry, it was two thousand years later that Felix Klein first asked and answered the question, “What is geometry?”\nLet us restrict ourselves from the outset to plane geometry. One might begin by saying that this is the study of geometric properties of geometric figures in the plane, but what are (i) “geometric properties”, and (ii) “geometric figures”? We will concentrate on (i), swiftly passing over (ii) by interpreting “geometric figure” as anything we might choose to draw on an infinitely large piece of flat paper with an infinitely fine pen.\nAs for (i), we begin by noting that if two figures (e.g., two triangles), have the same geometric properties, then (from the point of view of geometry) they must be the “same”, “equal”, or, as one usually says, congruent. Thus if we had a clear definition of congruence (“geometric equality”) then we could reverse this observation and define geometric properties as those properties that are common to all congruent figures. How, then, can we tell if two figures are geometrically equal?\nConsider the triangles in [fig 23], and imagine that they are pieces of paper you could pick up in your hand. To see if T is congruent with T’, you could pick up T and check whether it could be placed on top of T’. Note that it is essential that we be allowed to move T in space: in order to place T on top of T˜ we must first flip it over; we can’t just slide T around within the plane. Tentatively generalizing, this suggests that a figure F is congruent to another figure F’ if there exists a motion of F through space that makes it coincide with F’. Note that the discussion suggests that there are two fundamentally different types of motion: those that involve flipping the figure over, and those that do no. Later, we shall return to this important point.\nIt is clearly somewhat unsatisfactory that in attempting to define geometry in the plane we have appealed to the idea of motion through space. We now rectify this. Returning to [fig 23], imagine that T and T’ are drawn on separate, transparent sheets of plastic. Instead of picking up just the triangle T, we now pick up the entire sheet on which it is drawn, then try to place it on the second sheet so as to make T coincide with T’. At the end of this motion, each point A on T‘s sheet lies over a point A’ of T’‘s sheet, and we can now define the motion M to be this mapping A → A’ = M(A) of the plane to itself.\nHowever, not any old mapping qualifies as a motion, for we must also capture the (previously implicit) idea of the sheet remaining rigid while it moves, so that distances between points remain constant during the motion. Here, then, is our definition:\nA motion M is a mapping of the plane to itself such that the distance between any two points A and B is equal to the distance between their images A’ = M(A) and B’ = M(B). (22)\nNote that what we have called a motion is often termed a “rigid motion”, or an “isometry”.\nArmed with this precise concept of motion, our final definition of geometric equality becomes:\nF is congruent to F’, written F ≅ F’, if there exists a motion M such that F’ = M(F). (23)\nNext, as a consequence of our earlier discussion, a geometric property of a figure is one that is unaltered by all possible motions of the figure. Finally, in answer to the opening question of “What is geometry?”, Klein would answer that it is the study of these so-called invariants of the set of motions.\nOne of the most remarkable discoveries of the last century was that Euclidean geometry is not the only possible geometry. Two of these so-called non-Euclidean geometries will be studied in Chapter 6, but for the moment we wish only to explain how Klein was able to generalize the above ideas so as to embrace such new geometries.\nThe aim in (23) was to use a family of transformations to introduce the concept of geometric equality. But will this ≅-type of equality behave in the way we would like and expect? To answer this we must first make these expectations explicit. So as not to confuse this general discussion with the particular concept of congruence in (23), let us denote geometric equality by ~.\n(i) A figure should equal itself: F ~ F’, for all F.\n(ii) If F equals F’, then F’ should equal F: F ~ F’ ⇒ F’ ~ F.\n(iii) If F and F’ are equal, and F’ and F” are equal, then F and F” should also be equal: F ~ F’ & F’ ~ F” ⇒ F ~ F”.\nAny relation satisfying these expectations is called an equivalence relation.\nNow suppose that we retain the definition (23) of geometric equality, but that we generalize the definition of “motion” given in (22) by replacing the family of distance-preserving transformations with some other family G of transformations.\nIt should be clear that not any old G will be compatible with our aim of defining geometric equality. Indeed, (i), (ii), and (iii) imply that G must have the following very special structure, which is illustrated[11] in [fig 24].\n(i) The family G must contain a transformation ε (called identity) that maps each point to itself.\n(ii) If G contains a transformation M, then it must also contain a transformation M-1 (called the inverse) that undoes M. [Check for yourself that for M-1 to exist (let alone be a member of G) M must have the special properties of being (a) onto and (b) one-to-one, i.e., (a) every point must be the image of some point, and (b) distinct points must have distinct images.]\n(iii) If M and N are members of G then so is the composite transformation N ∘ M = (M followed by N). This property of G is called closure.\nWe have thus arrived, very naturally, at a concept of fundamental importance in the whole of mathematics: a family G of transformations that satisfies these three[12] requirements is called a group.\nLet us check that the motions defined in (22) do indeed form a group: (i) Since the identity transformation preserves distances, it is a motion. (ii) Provided it exists, the inverse of a motion will preserve distances and hence will be a motion itself. As for existence, (a) it is certainly plausible that when we apply a motion to the entire plane then the image is the entire plane — we will prove this later — and (b) the non-zero distance between distinct points is preserved by a motion, so their images are again distinct. (iii) If two transformations do not alter distances, then applying them in succession will not alter distances either, so the composition of two motions is another motion.\nKlein’s idea was that we could first select a group G at will, then define a corresponding “geometry” as the study of the invariants of that G. [Klein first announced this idea in 1872 — when he was 23 years old! — at the University of Erlangen, and it has thus come to be known as his Erlangen Program.] For example, if we choose G to be the group of motions, we recover the familiar Euclidean geometry of the plane. But this is far from being the only geometry of the plane, as the so-called projective geometry of [fig 24] illustrates.\nKlein’s vision of geometry was broader still. We have been concerned with what geometries are possible when figures are drawn anywhere in the plane, but suppose for example that we are only allowed to draw within some disc D. It should be clear that we can construct “geometries of D” in exactly the same way that we constructed geometries of the plane: given a group H of transformations of D to itself, the corresponding geometry is the study of the invariants of H. If you doubt that any such group exists, consider the set of all rotations around the center of D.\nThe reader may well feel that the above discussion is a chronic case of mathematical generalization running amuck — that the resulting conception of geometry is (to coin a phrase) “as subtle as it is useless”. Nothing could be further from the truth! In Chapter 3 we shall be led, very naturally, to consider a particularly interesting group of transformations of a disc to itself. The resulting non-Euclidean geometry is called hyperbolic or Lobachevskian geometry, and it is the subject of Chapter 6. Far from being useless, this geometry has proved to be an immensely powerful tool in diverse areas of mathematics, and the insights it continues to provide lie on the cutting edge of contemporary research.\n\n[10] The excellent book by Nikulin and Shafarevich [1987] is the only other work we know of in which a similar attempt is made.\n[11] Here G is the group of projections. If we do a perspective drawing of figures in the plane, then the mapping from the plane to the “canvas” plane is called a perspectivity. A projection is then defined to be any sequence of perspectivities. Can you see why the set of projections should form a group?\n[12] In more abstract settings it is necessary to add a fourth requirement of associativity, namely, A∘ (B∘ C) = (A∘ B)∘ C. Of course for transformations this is automatically true.\n\n\nSee also:\n\nThe Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences (@Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club)\nMaterializing Hyperbolic Spaces with Gradient-Index Optics and One-Way Mirrors\nAn Intuitive Explanation of the Symmetry Theory of Valence\nPrincipia Qualia: Part II – Valence\nProblems you can solve just by looking at them: The meaning of Noether’s Theorem\nQuantifying Bliss\n\nNote: QRI‘s Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV) refers to the claim that valence (the pleasure-pain axis) manifests in the symmetry of the mathematical object that corresponds to each experience such that the mathematical features of that object are isomorphic to the phenomenal character of that experience. Using the lens of Klein’s conception of geometry, one could in turn give to STV a strictly geometrical interpretation. Namely, that the shape of one’s experience will be of high valence when it contains geometric invariants. In addition, Noether’s theorem (one of QRI’s lineages, which states that “every differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law”) along with physicalism of consciousness suggests that for every symmetry in the mathematical object that corresponds to consciousness there is a corresponding preserved quantity. Thus, one could posit– assuming that the STV is correct– high-valence states might be extremely energy-efficient in addition to feeling good.\nWe are currently preparing a paper that ties all of these threads together in a way that, we believe, may turn out to have tremendous explanatory power. In particular, this formal account of valence will be able to explain succinctly a wide range of disparate and exotic empirical phenomena such as:\n\nWhy phenomenal symmetry during psychedelic experiences is correlated with more extreme valence values.\nHow and why Jhanas present the way they do, namely, as having:\n\nExtremely positive valence,\nProfound phenomenal simplicity, and\nUnusually high levels of energy-efficiency all at once.\n\n\nThe fact that moments of eternity are typically extremely blissful.\nWhy the phenomenal character of MDMA and 5-MeO-DMT manifest as both extremely symmetrical and high-valence.\nWhy intense regular stroboscopic stimulation has deep emotional effects.\nAnd so much more…\n\nStay tuned!\n\nThanks to Alfredo Valverde de Loyola for pointing me to this excerpt in the book Visual Complex Analysis.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/05/11/geometry-through-the-eyes-of-felix-klein/", "title": "Geometry Through the Eyes of Felix Klein", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-05-12T07:23:46+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=8", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "9734c4c7f6c526a286ac8f0b189a528d", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Manifesto of Tactilism\n\nIn the same genre as: The Qualia Manifesto, Rainbow God, The Super-Shulgin Academy, Perfumery as an Art Form, and Harmonic Society. [April 13 Note: I’m sharing this manifesto because of the extraordinary extent to which it values an often-disregarded qualia variety in a systematic and enthusiastic way. It is in no way in support of the politics or behaviors of its author.]\n\nThe Manifesto of Tactilism\nby F.T. Marinetti\nMilan, 11 January 1921.\nRead at the Theatre de I’Oeuvre (Paris), the World Exposition of Modern Art (Geneva), and published inComoedia in January 1921\nFuturism, founded by us in Milan in 1909, gave to the world a hatred of the Museum, the Academy and Sentimentalism; it gave the world Action-Art, the defence of youth against all senility, the glorification of illogical and mad innovative genius, the artistic sensibility of mechanisation, of speed, of the music hall, and of the simultaneous interpenetration of modern life, words in freedom, plastic dynamism, noise-intoners, synthetic theatre. Futurism today redoubles its creative effort.\nLast summer, at Antignano, where the street named after Amerigo Vespucci, discoverer of America, curvingly coasts along the sea, I invented Tactilism. Red flags waved from the workshops taken over by the workers.\nI was naked in the silky water that was torn by rocks, foamy scissors knives razors, among the iodine-filled mattresses of seaweed. I was nude in the sea of flexible steel, which had a fertile and virile breathing. I drank from the goblet of the sea filled to the rim with genius. The sun, with its long roasting flames, vulcanised my body and bolted the keel of my forehead rich with sails. A working-class boy, Who smelled of salt and hot stone, looked, smiling, at my first tactile board:\n“Having fun making little boats?!“\nI answered: “Yes, I’m building a craft that will take the human spirit to unknown waters.” Here are my reflections, the reflections of a swimmer: The unrefined and elemental majority of men came out of the Great War concerned only to conquer a greater material well-being. The minority, composed of artists and thinkers, sensitive and refined, instead displays the symptoms of a deep and mysterious ill that is probably a consequence of the great tragic exertion that the war imposed on humanity.\nThis illness displays, as symptoms, a sad listlessness, an excessively feminine neurasthenia, a hopeless pessimism, a feverish indecision of lost instincts, and an absolute lack of will.\nThe rough and elemental majority of men tumultuously hurls toward the revolutionary conquest of the Communist paradise and definitively storms the problem of happiness, convinced that it has solved it by satisfying all material needs and appetites.\nThe intellectual minority ironically scorns this breathless attempt, and no longer enjoying the ancient pleasures of Religion, of Art, of Love, which previously constituted its privilege and its shelter, brings life, which it no longer knows how to enjoy, to a cruel trial, and abandons itself to refined pessimism, sexual inversions, and to the artificial paradises of cocaine, opium, ether, etc. That majority and this minority both denounce Progress, Civilisation, the mechanical powers of Speed, of Comfort, of Hygiene, Futurism in short, as being responsible for their past, present, and future misfortunes.\nAlmost everyone proposes a return to a savage life, contemplative, slow, solitary, far from the hated cities.\nAs for us Futurists, we who bravely face the agonising drama of the post-war period, we are in favour of all the revolutionary attacks that the majority will attempt. But, to the minority of artists and thinkers, we yell at the top of our lungs: Life is always right!\nThe artificial paradises with which you attempt to murder her are useless. Stop dreaming of an absurd return to the savage life. Beware of condemning the superior powers of society and the marvels of speed. Heal, rather, the illness of the post-war period, giving humanity new and nutritious joys. Instead of destroying human throngs, it is necessary to perfect them. Intensify the communication and the fusion of human beings. Destroy the distances and the barriers that separate them in love and friendship. Give fullness and total beauty to these two essential manifestations of life: Love and Friendship.\nIn my careful and anti-traditional observations of all the erotic and sentimental phenomena that unite both sexes, and of the no-less-complex phenomena of friendship, I have understood that human beings speak to each other with their mouths and with their eyes, but do not manage a true sincerity because of the lack of sensitivity of the skin, which is still a mediocre conductor of thought.\nWhile eyes and voices communicate their essences, the senses of touch of two individuals communicate almost nothing in their clashes, intertwining, or rubbing. Thus, the need to transform the handshake, the kiss, and the coupling into continuous transmissions of thought.\nI started by submitting my sense of touch to an intensive treatment, pinpointing the confused phenomena of will and thought on various points on my body, and especially on the palms of my hands. This training is slow but easy, and all healthy bodies can, through this training, give surprising and exact results.\nOn the other hand, unhealthy sensibilities, which draw their excitability and their apparent perfection from the very weakness of the body, will achieve great tactile power less easily, without duration or confidence. I have created a first educational scale of touch, which is, at the same time, a scale of tactile values for Tactilism, or the Art of Touch.\nFirst scale, level, with four different categories of touch.\nFirst category: extremely confident touch, abstract, cold.\n\nSandpaper,\nSilver-coated paper.\n\n\n\n \nSecond category: touch without heat, persuasive, reasoning.\n\nSmooth silk,\nSilk crepe.\n\n\n\nThird category: exciting, lukewarm, nostalgic.\n\nVelvet,\nWool from the Pyrenees,\nWool,\nSilk-wool crepe.\n\n\n\n\nFourth category: almost irritating, hot, determined.\n\nGranulous silk,\nPlaited silk,\nSpongy cloth.\n\n\n\n\nSecond scale, volumes\nFifth category: soft, hot, human.\n\nSuede,\nHorsehair or dog hair,\nHuman hair,\nMarabou.\n\n\n\n\n\nSixth category: hot, sensual, spirited, affectionate.\n\nRough iron\nSoft brush,\nSponge,\nWire brush,\nPlush,\nHuman or peach fuzz,\nBird down.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThrough this separation of tactile values, I have created:\n1. Simple tactile boards that I will present to the public in our contactilations or conferences on the Art of touch.\nI have arranged the previously catalogued tactile values in wise harmonic or antithetical combinations.\n2. Abstract or suggestive tactile boards (hand journeys).\nThese tactile boards have arrangements of tactile values that allow hands to wander over them, following coloured trails and experiencing a succession of suggestive sensations, whose rhythm, in turn languid, cadenced, or tumultuous, is regulated by exact directions.\nOne of these abstract tactile boards made by me, and that has as a title Sudan-Paris, contains, in the part representing Sudan, rough, greasy coarse, prickly, burning tactile values (spongy material, sponge, sandpaper, wool, brush, wire brush); in the part representing The Sea, there are slippery, metallic, fresh tactile values (silver-coated paper); in the part representing Paris, there are soft, delicate, caressing tactile values, hot and cold at the same time (silk, velvet, feathers, down).\n3. Tactile boards for the opposite sexes.\nIn these tactile boards, the arrangement of tactile values allows the hands of a man and a woman, tied together, to take a tactile journey together and evaluate it. These tactile boards are extremely varied, and the pleasure that they give is enriched by the harnessing of rival sensibilities, which will attempt to feel more acutely and better explain their rival sensations. These tactile boards are destined to replace the brutalising game of chess. [Emphasis mine]\n4. Tactile pillows.\n5. Tactile sofas.\n6. Tactile beds.\n7. Tactile shirts and dresses.\n8. Tactile rooms.\nIn these tactile rooms, we will have floors and walls made of large tactile boards. Tactile values of mirrors, running water, rocks, metals, brushes, lightly electrified wires, marble, velvet, rugs that will give the bare feet of the male and female dancers varied pleasures.\n9. Tactile streets.\n10. Tactile theatres.\nWe will have theatres arranged for Tactilism. Seated spectators will rest their hands on long, running tactile ribbons that will produce tactile sensations with different rhythms. It will also be possible to place these ribbons on small rotating wheels, accompanying them with music and light.\n11. Tactile boards for the improvisation of words in freedom.\nThe tactilist will express aloud the sensations that his hands’ journey transmits to him. His will be a free-word improvisation, that is, freed from all rhythm, prosody and syntax, an improvisation essential and synthetic and with as little of the human element\nas possible. The improvising tactilist may be blindfolded, but it is preferable to wrap him in the light of a projector. The new initiates, who have not yet trained their tactile sensibilities, will be blindfolded. But, as for the true tactilists, the full light of a projector is preferable, since darkness has the drawback of concentrating sensitivity into an excessive abstraction.\nThe education of the sense of touch.\n1. It will be necessary to keep the hands gloved for many days, during which the brain will attempt to condense in them the desire for varied tactile sensations.\n2. To swim underwater, in the ocean, trying to distinguish tactilely the plaited currents and different temperatures.\n3. Enumerate and recognise every evening, in absolute darkness, all of the objects in the bedroom. It was precisely with giving myself over to this exercise in the underground darkness of a trench in Gorizia, in 1917, that I made my first tactile experiments.\nI never claimed to have invented the tactile sensibility, which has already manifested itself in genial forms in the Jongleuse and in the Hors~nature of Rachilde. Other writers and artists had premonitions of tactilism. Moreover, the plastic art of tactilism has been in existence for a long time. My great friend Boccioni, futurist painter and sculptor, felt as a tactilist when he created, in 1919, his plastic ensemble Fusion of a Head and a Window, with materials that are absolute contraries in tactile weight and value: iron, porcelain, and women’s hair.\nThe Tactilism created by me is clearly distinct from the plastic arts. It has nothing to do with, nothing to gain from, and everything to lose by association with painting or sculpture. It is necessary to avoid, as much as possible in the tactile boards, a variety in colour, which lends itself to plastic impressions. It will be difficult for painters and sculptors, who tend naturally to subordinate tactile values to visual values, to create significant tactile boards. Tactilism seems to me particularly suited to young poets, pianists, typists, and to all erotic, refined, and potent temperaments.\nTactilism, nevertheless, must avoid not only collaboration with plastic arts but also morbid erotomania. It must, simply, have as a goal tactile harmony, and it must indirectly collaborate in the perfecting of spiritual communication between human beings through the epidermis.\nThe identification of five senses is arbitrary, and one day we will certainly discover and catalogue numerous other senses. Tactilism will contribute to this discovery.\nF. T. Marinetti, 1921\n(source; also, here is my reading of the Manifesto; related: domestic cozy)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/04/12/the-manifesto-of-tactilism/", "title": "The Manifesto of Tactilism", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-04-13T02:56:59+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=8", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e5fa63a7bb24202c303522b8a08695e2", "summary": []}
{"text": "QC Coronavirus Edition: Preventing Pandemics by Living on Toroidal Planets and Other Cocktail Napkin Ideas\n\nHere is what we’ve gotta do. \nI want every strategy we’ve got on Near Earth Object Collision, OK?\nAny ideas, any programs, anything you’ve sketched on a pizza box or a cocktail napkin…\n– Armageddon (1998 film, when NASA realizes that there are 18 days left before the asteroid hits the Earth)\nThis Whole Thing\nOn January 20th someone shared, in a facebook group that I’m a part of, four facts about an emerging viral infection in China: (1) high death rate, (2) high contagion rate, (3) long incubation periods, and (4) the fact that it appeared uncontained. Despite the (at the time) relatively low number of cases, those four facts did not seem to paint a pretty picture of what was about to happen.\nThis was immediately alarming to a lot of people in my circles, and for good reason. Matthew Barnett, Justin Shovelain, Dony Christie, and Louis Francini sounded alarms as early as mid-January, and the rest of the EA and rationalist cluster followed suit. It makes sense people in this cluster would be concerned early on, as many of them have looked at global catastrophic risk scenarios for years, and were already well aware that the world was unequipped to deal with an infectious disease with all of the above four properties. Pandemic preparedness programs have so far relied on luck. For instance, in his 2015 TED talk “The next outbreak? We’re not ready” Bill Gates uses as an example the 2013 Ebola outbreak: “The problem wasn’t that there was a system that didn’t work well enough. The problem was that we didn’t have a system at all.” Accordingly, that particular outbreak didn’t become a disaster because of sheer luck: the disease only becomes contagious when you are already very sick and it didn’t hit a major urban area, so containing it was possible. But this time around we don’t seem to have the same luck.\nSince, I’ve seen many thought leaders I respect succumb to focusing on this topic: Robin Hanson, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Paul Graham, Tyler Cohen, Sarah Constantine, Scott Alexander, Scott Aaronson, Joscha Bach, Ryan Carey, William Eden, Robert Wilbin, etc. etc. Not to mention the way these people are publicly responding to each other and building a parallel narrative on a higher level of complexity than most everybody else****. These and many other well respected intellectuals have been going on and on about the situation for over a month now. An exponentially growing curve in its early stages may not be alarming to most people, but it certainly was to people like this (Ps. 3Blue1Brown, Kurzgezagt, and Mark Rober also recently joined the conversation).\nImage by Evan Gaensbauer (March 2020 Dank EA Memes banner)\nThis all adds up to a vibe of countdown to Armageddon: “X days until hospitals are overwhelmed, Y days until a million people die, Z days until a vaccine will be found”. In line with this perceived, if not frighteningly real, urgency, we’ve seen countless facebook groups, subreddits, and forums scouting for novel ideas and projects to help above and beyond what the governments of the world are already doing (e.g. Covid19RiskApp, Give Directly Response, Covid Accelerator [of technology to decelerate the spread [possibly a terrible or brilliant branding]], List of Predictors, and Corona Variolation).\nAs of March 20 2020\nI personally gave a lot of thought to pandemics several years ago (in college I was on the fence between working on pandemic prevention and consciousness research as a career), so my immediate thought when learning about the virus and its properties was “we are screwed, this can’t be contained with how the world is currently set up”. While containment might have been possible at the very beginning with some luck, it very quickly becomes unmanageable. That said, I’d like to explore here ways in which the world could be realistically modified in order to contain, mitigate, and ultimately reverse the spread of novel contagious diseases including this one. After all, the WHO director general said on March 9th: “The rule of the game is: never give up.” So, well, let’s give it some more thought. I hence offer my ‘sketches on a cocktail napkin’ type of ideas in case they find any application:\nIntroduction\nLet us start by breaking down “social networks” into (1) contact networks, and (2) information networks:\n\nContact networks are weighted undirected graphs where each node is a person and each edge encodes the frequency and intensity of the contact between the people it connects.*\nInformation networks are weighted directed graphs that encode the amount of information transmission that there is between pairs of people. To a large extent, contact networks are subsets of information networks.**\n\nContact networks are what matters for modeling infectious disease transmission. Despite the constitutionally granted freedom of assembly, one can posit that if the risks to the public are high enough, it is justified to place some constraints on the nature and properties of contact networks. In a free society that truly grasps the danger of pandemics and is determined to squash them at the very beginning, contact networks might require some degree of top-down control. Perhaps, if we are serious about future pandemic prevention, we could re-conceptualize freedom of assembly as pertaining to information, rather than contact, networks.***\nSo in what ways could a contact network be pandemic-safe? As an intuition pump for what I’ll be discussing further below, I’d like you to consider what it might be like to live in the original “Halo” Ringworld (and Ringworld too). Assume that unrestricted travel in Halo is limited to land roaming with a maximum speed, and that in order to use a spacecraft or tube across an arc of the circle, you need to be thoroughly tested and quarantined in-between. With these constraints, we would naturally infer that the structure of the contact network of the people in this world would be embedded in the ring itself. Meaning that if an infectious disease originates somewhere on the Ringworld, containing its spread would be as easy as blocking movement on two small fronts around the epicenter of the outbreak. This even allows you to control and ultimately fully suppress diseases with long incubation periods. It is a matter of estimating how long the incubation period is, and quarantining the entire region of “furthest possible transmissibility”.\nMore so, given the overall circular geometry of the world, after a brief period of quadratic growth of the epidemic (as concentric circles expand around the epicenter)  one would expect to see a threshold after which there is merely linear growth in the number of cases as a function of time!\nNetwork Geometry as a Containment Strategy\nTo a first approximation, the single most important problem to overcome for containment is the exponential growth of the early stages of an outbreak. Of course in some cases an exponential growth is not itself the problem: and R0 = 1.001 leads to exponential growth, but it is still so slow that it can be easily dealt with. Likewise, a sub-exponential growth can still be unruly, as in a polynomial growth with an exponent of 20. But to a first approximation, I would argue that if you can get rid of exponential growth you can manage an outbreak. The example above of a Ringworld shows that exponential growth in contact networks can be slowed all the way down to linear growth at relatively early stages. Similarly, “thin” toroidal planets would also enable easy containment of outbreaks (Anders Sandberg‘s amazing work on the physics of toroidal planets finally pays off! It remains to be seen when his work on stacking high-dimensional polytopes finds real-world applications).\nToroidal World\nBut we don’t have to go all the way to high sci-fi scenarios to encounter sub-exponential growth of infections in human contact networks. You see, the black death happened at a time when the contact network of humanity had a quasi-quadratic structure at the largest of scales. Villages almost certainly had a scale-free structure (e.g. the priest touching everyone once a week and the lone serf perhaps only interacting with two people a week), but once you look at the structure at scales above the village, you would find routes between neighboring villages weaving a planar graph with a 2D Euclidean geometry. The trade routes, though, provided an exception, and in the end they turned out to be key for the spread of the plague. That said, in the absence of cars, trains, or airplanes, the maximum speed of transmission was seriously limited. Historians can tell when different parts of Europe got the plague because it really took a long time to spread; we are talking about years rather than weeks.\nSo imagine having a contact network structure characteristic of the medieval times, but with an information network structure akin to the ones we currently have. Then controlling the black plague would be a piece of cake! You would simply need to close central trade routes, track down which villages are already infected, and put a perimeter around them.\nOk, so how do we generalize this idea to the modern times in a realistic way? I think we should perhaps think outside the box here. Remember, the core intention here is to make the spread of an infectious disease not behave in an exponential way at the beginning so that we can “segment out” the part of the network affected (i.e. quarantine) because the “surface area” of the region is not very large. Now, most analysis of disease spread on networks focus on analyzing how realistic-like network features affect disease spread. For example, clustering coefficients, the steepness of the slope of power law networks, the distribution of in-betweenness centrality of the nodes, and so on.\n\n\nIn a perhaps high-modernist style approach to network engineering, one can ask how the spread of a disease would change depending on alterations we could make to the network. The simplest real world case is the reasoning behind adding travel restrictions, which aim to block the spread between very large clusters (i.e. countries) and the closing of schools, universities, and large gatherings, which decrease the interconnectivity of each region of the network. A slightly more sophisticated version of this approach would be to come up with a “Pandemic Klout Score” for each person based on the their “network influence” and pay them to quarantine early on during an outbreak.\nI actually worked at Klout as an intern in 2010, and my contributions were mostly on the (unfortunately slightly evil because it’s marketing) following problem: “How do you maximize the spread of a commercial campaign by giving free products to people?” Klout had what they called “perks” which was how they made money. They had contracts with other companies to give free products to “influencers” so that they talked about the perks on their social media accounts. To maximize the spread of a commercial campaign meant to distribute perks in such a way that the largest number of people made mentions of the campaign on their networks (including people who didn’t receive the free products). This is how they measured success- at least when I was there- and what the companies paid them for.\n\n\n\nThe “basic approach” would be simply to distribute the perks to people with the highest Klout scores, with the additional constraint that those people were influential on the relevant topic (e.g. if you had a popular Twitter account about “beauty and personal care” you might be a prime candidate to get a free “anti-aging sunscreen stick”, or whatever) . But since you can’t actually, you know, entice Justin Bieber (the person with the highest Klout score for several years) with a free Virgin America flight and expect him to either care or talk about it on his Twitter feed, the problem ends up being substantially more complex than just “give people with high Klout the free products”. I am under an NDA about the specific algorithms and research I conducted there. But I mention this because the problem of pandemic prevention could in some sense be thought of as the inverse of the problem Klout was trying to solve. Namely, how you use the node features of the network in order to minimize the spread of a contagious disease. The low-hanging fruit idea here can be to simply allot money to pay people with high Pandemic Klout Scores to stay home or cut their human touch in half whenever an outbreak arises. I would expect this to be significantly better at reducing the reproductive rate of a contagious disease than choosing people at random (or even just based on how many people they interact with on a daily basis).\nThat said, given the risks and costs involved with pandemics, especially in the long term in light of bioterrorism, we should not close off the possibility of making drastic changes to humanity’s contact network for the sake of our collective wellbeing. That is, merely asking some people to stay home may not be enough. We should contemplate what it would really take to be able to fully contain any future pandemic.\nIn terms of large-scale network geometry rather than just dealing with one node at a time, perhaps the key point to make is that we should really not fetishize and romanticize the “six degrees of separation” that results from the small world-like structure of the modern human contact network. Yes, “it’s a small world after all“, but you forgot to mention “and that’s what will get us all killed in the end.” Let’s not allow misguided network idealism to murder grandma. We need to make the contact network a large world, and save the small world exclusively for the information network.\nIntuitively, it is precisely the small world-like property of our contact network that allows us to: meet many new people on a regular basis, collaborate with people around the world, be able to attend large gatherings, raves, and festivals, and travel care-free across the planet. Meaning, most people might think that changing the contact network structure to make it pandemic-proof would come at the cost of sacrificing what makes society so interesting and worth living in. I would disagree. I think that such a line of thinking is just the result of a failure of the imagination. We can, I posit, have contact networks that allow you to do all of that and yet be pandemic-proof. I will argue that with intelligent top-down network engineering you can in fact achieve this. Here is my case:\nScale-Dependent Geometry\nThe main concept that one needs to understand for my argument is that the options for large-scale network structure go far beyond the textbook examples of small worlds, scale-free, random, planar graphs, etc. In fact, one can create all kinds of fascinating hybrid networks where the properties vary by region and scale. The examples I am about to show you play with the notion of scale-dependent geometry. Meaning that the network properties depend on the number of interconnected nodes that you are considering. In particular, I’ll break down networks in terms of their micro (1 to 1,000 nodes), meso (1,000 to 1,000,000 nodes), and macro (1,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 or more nodes) structure:\nQLE and ELQ\nQLE\nThe first example is one where the structure of the network leads to quadratic spread on the micro level, linear spread on the meso level, and exponential spread on the macro level. We achieve this by having the nodes arranged along a rectangular grid at the micro level. As one zooms out, the grid hits a limit on two fronts so that the advancement of an infection disease will start growing linearly as it only has two directions to grow in (for the sake of symmetry you can glue the two fronts to make a tube, for a meso network structure akin to that of a toroidal planet). Finally, at the largest scale this network looks like a binary tree, where the growth can reach an exponential rate.\nThe same scheme will apply to all of the following networks. That is, the letters indicate the ordering of the types of growth for the micro, meso, and macro scale. What I will instead focus on is explaining the advantages of these structures. In this case- the case of QLE- the primary advantage is that the spread can be entirely contained by cutting connections around the epicenter. And the best part is that even if you hit the exponential scale (i.e. you start spreading from “one arm to another”) you will still have long periods of linear growth as each “arm” will grow linearly, so cutting it will remain an option at any point. The “surface area of the spread” will remain tiny relative to the size of the network.\nELQ\nA very nice property of this network is that you can have “villages” of up to 1,000 people where everyone can interact with and touch each other. Within each of these villages you have super efficient in-person information transmission and contact hedonism without restrictions. Then each of these villages would be connected to two neighboring villages, perhaps not unlike how kids in grade school often make friends with other kids in the grades immediately above and below (and only rarely with grades that are further apart). The spread of disease would very quickly engulf each village, but thankfully that would be it. After that you would have a very slow village-by-village take-over that could be stopped by ‘cutting’ the contact channels between two pairs of villages (or four if you started at an intersection of the macro structural grid). More so, you could conceive of a “conveyor belt” approach where every month half of the village moves in one direction while the other one stays put. This way over the course of years you would still be able to get to know tens of thousands of people, party like crazy in raves touching everybody, and be able to retain long-term friendships by coordinating with them to either move or stay. And you could do all of this while living in a pandemic-proof world!\n\nLQE\nThis one is perhaps the least viable because it relies on most persons only having contact with two people. That said, the spread would start very, very slowly, and so it might be ideal for the worst possible pandemics. At the macro level the network looks like high-dimensional cardboard boxes, where each “cardboard side” is glued at the edge with one or multiple other sides.\nA “continuous” version of LQE could use hyperbolic geometry at the macro level, such as what you get when you sneak a pentagon here and there in an otherwise rectangular grid so that locally you have a square spread, which slowly turns into an exponential spread as you begin swallowing pentagons. (Or a few heptagons in a grid of hexagons).\n(source)\nEQL\nThis one is pretty similar to ELQ, and you can do pretty much the same things I mentioned about ELQ. The main difference is that this structure is safer at the macro level but riskier at the meso level. So if you expect diseases to be really really contagious, then this structure might prevent “the end of the world” but it might be somewhat susceptible to “pretty bad scenarios”, while ELQ works the other way around.\n\nLEQ\nI find this network very interesting because to build it I had to come up with the idea of connecting lots of cycles of different lengths with each other by having them share nodes. You can also easily construct a network like this by starting with a scale-free network and replacing the edges with long chains of nodes.\nQEL\nThis would perhaps be the steel-manned version of the toroidal or ring world we discussed in the introduction. Here the infections would spread first slowly at a quadratic rate, then quickly accelerate once you reach the edges of the planar graph you start in, and finally there is a massive linear bottleneck at the macro scale. It’s like Ringworld, but where you interact with people in an interlaced braided mesh embedded inside the Ringworld rather than only in its meager inner surface.\nBecause each of these examples contain a “linear bottleneck” at some scale, an outbreak of a disease would be easy to contain at some scale. Which network is ideal for which kind of disease will depend on things like its incubation period and its contagion probability. But any of these examples is vastly safer pandemic-wise than our current contact network.\nIs Biology Doing This Already?\n\n\nOne thing this exercise has made me wonder is if perhaps our bodies are already using this kind of strategy. I mean, looking at QLE reminds me of the structure of blood vessels in the kidney and liver. It would make sense that evolution would identify great micro, meso, and macro network structures in order to give each organ appropriate contact networks at the scale that matters to conduct its function, while creating network bottlenecks at other scales for protection against pathogens and the spread of cancer. In contrast, the immune system would have every reason to maximize spread at the largest scale while having compartmentalized spread at the micro scale (example: Topological Small-World Organization of the Fibroblastic Reticular Cell Network Determines Lymph Node Functionality). Finding the sub-exponential chokepoints in the human body would, I posit, give us a new angle for understanding it more deeply.\n\n\n\nCreating a Global Human Organism\nIf this analysis pans out, we could perhaps think of the challenge being presented to us by SARS-CoV-2 and future pandemics as a wake up call to “scale up the network-protective measures our bodies are taking to combat disease while maintaining functionality” all the way up to the structure of all of human society. Indeed, wouldn’t it be amazing if we coordinated to be a harmonious large-scale global organism?\nNow, I am not saying we should simply adopt one of these network structures. They are just proofs of concept to show it is possible to have humanly-desirable properties that come with highly interconnected networks along with a linear (or at least sub-exponential) bottleneck at some scale. The bottleneck does not even need to be visible or detectable from the point of view of each individual!\nEven if we cannot construct an ideal world from scratch, we could still try to bootstrap it from within our current world. To do so we have a number of options. I will mention two and then dive into them in greater depth. The first is the strategy of “network modification” and it consists of developing gradient descent algorithms that point us to the modification of the network that would maximize a scale-specific sub-exponential bottleneck. Of course this could lead to local minima, but we don’t care about achieving the best configuration, just the closest one that is “good enough”. The second approach is that of “network nucleation” to bootstrap a pandemic-protected contact network by connecting with other people who can prove that they do not have the disease. They could all get to know each other, and then submit a list of “people they would like to hang out with on a regular basis”. An algorithm would then optimize the network so that each person can hang out with as many others as possible while making sure the overall geometry of the network is desirable for disease contention. If lucky, we could even bootstrap this system all the way up to the entire planet, starting from a mixture of people who’ve demonstrably been quarantined for a long time and people who have already recovered from the disease. And since, of course, people would eventually get sick of hanging out with a restricted list of friends, they could periodically re-submit another list and the algorithm would take into account this dynamic so that the geometry can be stable over time.\nMy prediction is that the current strategies that are being used to reduce the spread of disease would show up as a tiny subset of the set of possible effective strategies, many of which are currently invisible- and in some sense inconceivable- to us. This is because, in part (as far as I know) nobody is thinking in terms of scale-specific network geometry. Also, little is known about the actual empirical structure of the human contact network. In this sense, removing super-spreaders or closing schools may be re-conceptualized as pointing in this direction, and yet perhaps may not even make the Top 10 list of best cost-effective strategies. This is because just removing high-degree nodes in a scale-free network won’t automatically prevent exponential growth; since exponential growth is the killer, making strategies directly targeted at it will probably be vastly more effective. Let’s investigate these strategies in more detail:\nOption 1: Network Modifications\nThe first thing we should do is find what actual contact networks look like, so that we can identify the smallest possible modifications to them in order to create sub-exponential bottlenecks on some scale. I have not found a good study on this, since there really aren’t public datasets of “who is physically hanging out with whom”. Though, if you were to combine, perhaps, the datasets of USA’s NSA, UK’s GCHQ, Russia’s KGB, China’s MSS, cellphone location information, census responses, and commercial surveillance camera data you might be able to get a very decent version of it. In fact, there is reason to believe Israel is already in the process of constructing this dataset.\nIn the absence of contact network data, we can nonetheless learn from other social and information networks. In particular, the best research I’ve read about the macro-structure of complex networks comes from the lab of Jure Leskovec (I recommend watching his CS224W lectures from past years, which are all available online):\nWe study over 100 large real-world social and information networks. Our results suggest a significantly more refined picture of community structure in large networks than has been appreciated previously. In particular, we observe tight communities that are barely connected to the rest of the network at very small size scales; and communities of larger size scales gradually “blend into” the expander-like core of the network and thus become less “community-like.” This behavior is not explained, even at a qualitative level, by any of the commonly-used network generation models.\n– Lescovec et al. 2008, “Community Structure in Large Networks: Natural Cluster Sizes and the Absence of Large Well-Defined Clusters“\nAs you see, large-scale analysis of real-world networks indicate that they are not adequately described by the classic textbook structures that are most well known. Rather, there seems to be a kind of “galactic shape” at the more macro scale, where there is a highly connected giant core of overlapping communities surrounded by loosely connected superstructures (nicknamed ‘whiskers’):\n(source)\nGiven this structure (and assuming it generalizes to contact networks), one could divide the problem into two rough components: (1) how to you deal with ‘whiskers’?, and (2) what do you do about the ‘galactic core’? I do not have answers here, but I do think that having more people who are good at math and computer science think about this would be very good. For what is worth, I have the hunch that in particular the following two network analysis techniques will be useful to tackle this problem:\n\nSpectral Graph Theory: This is a set of techniques that can help us ‘see diffusion bottlenecks in graphs’ at a glance. For instance, these techniques reveal the presence of network “chokepoints” that create insulation in heat flow. Clearly heat flow does not behave in the same way as the spread of disease, but the similarity makes it worth highlighting.\nDiscrete Differential Geometry: An emerging field that blends differential geometry with network analysis and has shown amazing applications for graphics which can help us ‘see the curvature and dimensionality of a network around each of its nodes’ at a glance. Note: As much as I love hyperbolic spaces, I must admit that from the point of view of early pandemic prevention living in a contact network with hyperbolic geometry is a terrible idea.\n\nFlatten the Network!\nOne additional interesting approach for Option 1 would be to apply topological clustering techniques to the contact network so that we can identify the hubs with the least desirable network geometry and try to “flatten them”. And policy-wise, I might imagine that in the long-run we could improve the flattening of the contact network by encouraging people to use things like the Bumble app for dating, where you find people physically near you with whom you could form a healthy relationship.\nOption 2: Network Nucleation\nGreen and Red Countries\nImagine green are virus free, red are virus uncontrolled, and grey have unreliable statistics. (This actual map is about something unrelated I’m not going to name; it is just used as an example of what the world might look like).\nJoscha Bach predicts that in a couple months there will be “green and red” countries, meaning that the outbreak will be completely under control in some countries, and completely out of control in others. I’d also add “grey” to refer to “unreliable statistics”, as many countries might just choose to not monitor the situation. You can imagine what the travel restrictions may be between green, red, and grey countries, as green countries would not find it worthwhile (or at least not politically viable) to accept the risk of reigniting the spread. Grey countries may end up also avoiding red countries while not being allowed to enter green countries.\nSpeculatively, this would perhaps lead to a worldwide Sakoku phenomenon, but where rather than just Japan, we would have all of the countries of each color becoming economic and cultural blocks.\nWhat I’ll describe below is a kind of generalization of this possibility. Namely, that the blocks don’t need to be country-based.\nA very interesting question to ask is “what possible partitions of humanity could create sets of people for whom a green/red/grey dynamic would successfully create clusters of wholly virus-free people?” The existence of at least some greens opens up the possibility of:\nReversing The Pandemic\nI address you tonight, not as the president of the United States, not as the leader of a country, but as a citizen of humanity. We are faced with the very gravest of challenges. The Bible calls this day Armageddon. The end of all things. And yes, for the first time in the history of the planet, a species has the technology to prevent its own extinction. All of you praying with us need to know that everything that can be done to prevent this disaster is being called into service. The human thirst for excellence, knowledge, every step up the ladder of science, every adventurous reach into space, all of our combined technologies and imaginations, even the wars that we’ve fought, have provided us the tools to wage this terrible battle. Through all the chaos that is our history, through all of the wrongs and the discord, through all of the pain and suffering, through all of our times, there is one thing that has nourished our souls and elevated our species above its origins, and that is our courage. Dreams of an entire planet are focused tonight on those 14 brave souls traveling into the heavens. May we all citizens of the world over see these events through, Godspeed, and good luck to you.\n– Armageddon (1998 film, when the president of the US announces the plans to avert an asteroid that would destroy the earth) [See also: what if they don’t come back?]\nNucleating Whole Virus-Free Communities\nThe simplest way to create a virus-free community would be to think of verifiable self- quarantining as an investment. If you can prove you’ve been physically disconnected from everyone for 30 days, you would be let into a club for people near you who have done the same already. This could become a large set of people, especially if it turns out that cash handouts are insufficient for millions of people who might end up needing to work in a month or two and defy any kind of large-scale quarantine. Those who can afford (and prove!) that they’ve been diligently quarantining would be allowed in. For a stricter “inner set” there might be stricter criteria where you would need to submit an unfakeable biosample to prove you are not infected (which would be tricky but not impossible given pre-existing DNA databases like 23andMe). Then the algorithm would group you with a subset that you can realistically physically meet, and then allow you to make friends with them. Finally, as you submit a list of people you do want to hang out with long-term, the algorithm would run an optimization process to make as many of the people happy and return the curated list of people you could hang out with so that the network as a whole has convenient scale-dependent sub-exponential chokepoints. I know this sounds like a lot. And it is. But again, pandemics can be really bad. And we have the technology, so why not try?\nIn a way this idea is the complementary problem to “keeping the virus out of the general population”. In the latter you start out in a fully virus-free situation and try to keep it that way, while the former starts out in a highly contaminated population and tries to “spread health” from the standpoint of a verifiably healthy core. That is, how you create pockets of health in a virus-saturated general population and grow them as much as possible.\nAnother approach in this vein I can think of is to seed a location with an excess of people who already have immunity and cannot transmit. The people there who haven’t gotten the disease would in a sense be lucky to find themselves around people who won’t transmit it, and thus be blessed with spontaneous herd immunity. That said, the key sacrifice here would be the potential damage elsewhere, where herd immunity would be reached later due to the removed group of immune people. This and the previous approach incur the cost of having to associate with new people, and the relocation challenges would be a logistical nightmare. But perhaps worth doing.\nFinally, another approach to this problem would be to use an app with a personality test that is hard to fake, so that only healthy people who score in the top 2% of both introversion and conscientiousness could join the club. It would tell you where to go live with other people who meet the same criteria, and to get a comprehensive test of all major transmissible diseases and treat those you have before relocation. Given the temperament selected for, everyone who becomes part of the community would be extremely diligent about not physically meeting people outside the group and follow the contact network prescriptions dictated by the algorithm. If this sounds like hell to you, well, perhaps it is not for you. But at least this way there would be some pockets of fully healthy people, and that would have a lot of value. (Cf. Rat-free Alberta).\nTo Summarize:\nWhat are your options for modifying a network in order to remove (or at least tame) exponential growth? The one’s I’ve considered are:\n\nRemove nodes with a high “Pandemic Klout Score”\nCreating sub-exponential chokepoints:\n\nOption 1: Gradient descent methods:\n\nYou make piece-meal modifications to the contact network one connection at a time in order to improve the prospects of the entire network.\nEach person would receive a set of options for mild modifications to their contacts so that whichever they chose would lead to an improvement of the network geometry.\n\n\nOption 2: Network nucleation:\n\nYou create a criteria for what constitutes “infection-free” such as:\n\nSelf-enforced quarantine on one extreme, and\nProvable DNA-matched tests on the other extreme.\n\n\nAllow people who qualify to meet each other.\nEveryone submits a list of people they’d like to hang out with.\nThe algorithm would optimize the connections to make everyone happy and at the same time maximize the sub-exponential chokepoints of the network (such as by making it a planar graph with a high clustering coefficient, etc.).\n\n\n\n\n\nNow, perhaps if all of this sounds insane and like too much trouble, there is always the option of, er, becoming comfortable with no human touch…\nFuture Cultures\nA Religion of Abstinence of Human Touch\nI know how hard it is, what is being demanded of us.\nEspecially in times of needs such as these, we like to be close to one another.\nWe understand care and affection in terms of human closeness and human touch. \nBut at the moment the exact opposite is the case, and everybody really must understand that.\nAt the moment, the only real way of showing you care is keeping your distance.\n– German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at a Nationwide TV Address (March 18 2020)\nHave you ever noticed that it is possible to reproduce without any human touch? Artificial insemination conducted with robotic arms is not a far-fetched prospect. A further question is: can we do away with human touch entirely for all functions of life?\nYou don’t need to be anywhere to be everywhere.\n– John C. Lilly\nYou may say: wouldn’t a community of touch-free individuals somehow lack the most basic of human qualities, i.e. interpersonal intimacy? I reckon that you would be wrong on more than one account. First of all, insofar as touch-based intimacy is based on endorphin and oxytocin release in conjunction with nervous system entrainment under the hood, there is no reason why one couldn’t engineer a brain-stimulation technology ecosystem so that people receive the same kind of physically, psychologically, and spiritually rewarding feelings of connection by merely acknowledging each other’s presence or synchronizing with each other’s brainwaves. Perhaps even you could achieve this despite doing away with technology, as the power of deep metta meditation would suggest. Perhaps we could all cultivate a loving temperament that embraces all of the universe of sentient beings. Here, the commitment to each other’s physical wellbeing is possible without sacrificing the emotional richness of communion; in principle they could be simultaneously satisfied. Alas, the evolutionary roots of human touch are deep, and trying to mess with them with humans as they currently are is far fetched. But just wait until a virus with 0.98 fatality rate and R0 = 6 is discovered and see what people are willing to do to survive.\nThis concludes my presentation of the cocktail napkin ideas I’ve considered so far to deal with pandemics. But I still have a couple more things to say about this topic, so I’ll take advantage of the soap box I’m standing on and add:\n\nNow That The World Is Paying Attention\nFrom the 1998 film “Armageddon”\nI’d like to draw your attention to the following highly relevant goals that the current crisis highlights:\n1) We ought to recognize the existence of extreme suffering so that we focus our efforts on its prevention (asphyxiation is an example of extreme suffering, which is how people are dying of COVID-19).\n2) Investigating what makes MDMA and 5-MeO-DMT so special and useful for treating PTSD (as people recover from the disease it will become apparent many experience PTSD associated with the episode – this will need to be addressed on a massive scale).\n3) Get factory farms banned (for real, they are the breeding grounds of future pandemics – and they of course also cause the bulk of easily preventable suffering, so there is that too. Every animal product you put on your plate is a probabilistic pandemic on its way. Sorry!).\nLet’s make the best of this situation (More Dakka!)\n\nA Few Final Thoughts\nThe Framing Effect\nRecall the “Framing Effect” – the cognitive bias where we prefer an option when the problem is framed in a certain way, and a different option when it’s framed differently even though the corresponding options in each framing are of equal expected value.\nI worry a lot of the people in my friend network, and in fact worldwide, might be falling prey to the framing effect for the coronavirus situation:\nHere is how the “containment vs. mitigation” problem is being “framed” right now (assume 5 million people will die worldwide if nothing is done, but you can choose to invest your resources on ‘containment’ or ‘mitigation’):\n\nOption A: 10% chance 0 people die (i.e. successful containment), and 90% chance 5 million people die.\nOption B: 100% chance 4 million people die.\nClearly option A is more ‘heroic’. Alas, it is the one that leads to more expected deaths.\nNow consider the alternate framing that might make you feel differently about the options:\nOption A: 10% chance of saving 5 million people (i.e. successful containment) and 90% of saving nobody.\nOption B: 100% chance of saving 1 million people (i.e. mitigation prevents many deaths).\nIn both cases option B is much better by a huge margin. In fact by an expected number of 500,000 people saved. Yet when framed in the first way option A seems a lot more attractive. Why? And should we try to get rid of this bias?\nOf course in the real world you don’t have to choose between A and B entirely. You can try to do both containment and mitigation. But you *do* need to choose how to allocate resources, and I believe this framing issue does actually come up in our current situation.\nI do want to say that, as Robin Hanson suggests, if we are doing the containment strategy we need buy-in from the population. Some personally costly and dramatic public display of commitment from many people would be useful. I am personally very happy to commit in public to hard-core quarantine if it’s ethically necessary.\n\n\nSocial Withdrawal and Behavioral Enrichment\nSocial distancing is painful because we are all opioid addicts, namely, addicts to the endogenous opioids released when socializing. With a quarantine in place, we can anticipate that people who are on the threshold of being depressed might cross that threshold as an effect of reduced in-person socializing. Likewise, we can anticipate collective health decline at a statistical level due to reduced exercise, sunlight exposure, and sensory diversity (cf. white torture).*****\nPossible solutions? Besides being very bullish on at-home exercise routines and HEPA filters, I would also point out the following. I think that we should not be afraid of comparing ourselves with other animals. Bear with me. Humans, not unlike domestic dogs and cats, benefit from being exposed to a wide variety of novel sensory inputs. If you enjoy scents, for example, it would be advisable to order a set of essential oils or perfume samples in order to trick your brain into thinking you are exploring a larger area than you are. Apparently, for example, big cats in captivity are more engaged and less depressed when you spray Calvin Klein perfumes on their territory. Alternatively, if scent is not something you care about, think of perhaps increasing the repertoire of visual art, dance, food, touch, and music you are exposed to on a daily basis. This, I suggest, will help you keep depression away (for a while longer).\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCaption: Just a little bit of behavioral enrichment for you! \nFinally (self-promotion ahead), if you have time on your hands, and you’ve been meaning to dive deeper into Qualia Computing, this might be your chance. I’d suggest you start out with the following three resources:\n\nTop 10 Qualia Computing Articles\nGlossary of Qualia Research Institute Terms\nEvery Qualia Computing Article Ever\n\nAnd if you are really hard core, feel free to reach out to the Qualia Research Institute to help with volunteer work. Also we are going to be doing virtual internship cycles in April, May, and June, so you can stay home and safe and still collaborate with us. But shh! It’s a secret! (Wait, how come it’s a secret but you now know about it? Well, because you’ve scrolled all the way here, that’s some commitment!).\nThe End\n\n* A more accurate representation might require the use of directed edges to encode asymmetrical contact relationships. For example: the cleaning crew of a hotel might be more exposed to the guests than the guests are exposed to the crew. Also, when two people who have very different habits of hygiene meet, the cleaner person is more likely to get the short end of the stick transmission-wise.\n** It is worth pointing out for information networks the “degree of interaction” between nodes is extremely skewed. You may have a thousand friends on Facebook, but the number of people you are likely to interact on a daily basis will be a tiny subset of them, perhaps on the order of 0 to 20. And among the people you interact with, you are likely interacting much more word-count-wise with some than with the others. Indeed, if you plot the number of words exchanged in private messages between people in an information network, the distribution follows a long-tail.\n*** In the long-run, this may also have to apply to information networks. Whether information networks will need also some level of top-down control will be a difficult question to answer that requires a complex cost-benefit analysis beyond the scope of this article. The most important variables being (a) what the benefits of fully-free communication are, and (b) the density and severity of memetic hazards in idea-space, in conjunction with the nature of intellectual selection pressures in future societies. If it turns out that people above a certain level of education and intelligence in a future with far more advanced science and engineering are extremely likely to encounter what Nick Bostrom calls “black balls”, there might be no way around developing tight controls on information networks for the safety of everyone. It this happens, we could also use many of the strategies outlined in this article for contact networks. After all, viruses are related to contact networks in the same way as meme hazards are related to information networks.\n**** Of course, in some ways this is more about collective emotional processing than about object-level problem solving.\n***** It is worth noting that the better air quality might buffer a bit against these negatives.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/03/20/qc-coronavirus-edition-preventing-pandemics-by-living-on-toroidal-planets-and-other-cocktail-napkin-ideas/", "title": "QC Coronavirus Edition: Preventing Pandemics by Living on Toroidal Planets and Other Cocktail Napkin Ideas", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-03-20T15:29:59+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=8", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "426c63c533d88d4d6c0ffaab27232a64", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Production Presents: “The Seven Seals of Security” (and Other Communications from QRI Sweden)\n\nBy Maggie Wassinge and Anders Amelin (now QRI Sweden and HR helpers; see previous letters)\n\nJewelry by Anders and Maggie (see: Quantifying Bliss for the reference to “C, D, N”)\n\n\n \n\n\n\nLetter III: On Psychonautics\nPsychedelic trippers put effort into trying to interpret what it all means ontologically. Plant spirits may be at work, or one taps into the collective unconscious or is simulated by some alien superintelligence.\nThe QRI could perhaps guide interested psychonauts in the direction of writing more scientifically productive reports.\nA scientifically minded tripper needs to start with the realization that human beings are perfect psychonauts because our brains have an enormous excess capacity over what is minimally required to perform any one of the tasks that we do in everyday waking life. The highly unusual aspect of human brains is that they can produce general intelligence. This is rare in nature but when you have it, you assume it to be the normal state of affairs.\n\n\n\nTrippers are often in disbelief over the ability of human brains to produce the fantastic content of psychedelic experiences. As if there is suddenly a superpower there which one never uses when sober. How can that be? It must be something supernatural going on, right? Actually, no. Not that we should rule out the “supernatural” a priori but it is not necessary.\nThe human mind uses a superpower all the time. One which is hidden in plain view, we might say. It is the superpower of selecting from a huge range of possibilities for what the mind could be doing, and homing in on exactly the one choice in every moment that is most appropriate right then and there. When those tight constraints are relaxed the human brain becomes a system which can explore far and wide in qualia state-space.\nIntelligence is a phenomenon which uses multiple optimization points to converge on some invariance. At the theoretical efficiency maximum this takes surprisingly (to us) little raw processing power. A jumping spider does not display less strategic and tactical intelligence than a human does when hunting. The spider’s neural network is very much smaller than the human’s but the evolutionary fitness search available for evolving small, numerous and quickly reproducing creatures is much larger than for animals like us. For us it is not so much a question of evolution having optimized what every cell does, but one of having added more and more cells to increase overall performance.\nThe spider’s brain probably contains far less sub-optimal “spaghetti code” than the human’s. It is possible that the spider has access to exquisitely fine-tuned qualia for the crucial task of sneaking up on big, highly dangerous prey and bringing it down without botching the job. On the other hand, there might not be much opportunity for spiders to evolve general intelligence since they have already done away with everything that is “useless” for their sober everyday lives.\n\n“Does my brain contain less spaghetti code than yours?”\nA human brain is a mass of excitation-inhibition “spaghetti” which defies belief. An almost ultimate jack of all trades but master of none which cannot quite produce the hunting skills of the spider but can instead do a billion other things that the spider could not even in principle learn how to do.\nIt is the billion other things that we could do but don’t, which is the human superpower, not the few things that we actually do on a sober basis. This is a power which can be harnessed for psychonautics. You’ve got an inner-space warp drive in your head. Aptly named. \n\n\n\n\nLetter IV: Exciting Research Leads\nHere are some suggestions for titles of essays and research papers the QRI could write if we had the resources.\n“Alloy, anneal, quench and temper: Forging a blade to cut mind at the joints”“Play me like a violin: A compressibility analysis of neuro-acoustic patterns captured during person to person interaction”“Leadership and consonance: Aggregate neuro-acoustic compressibility as a proxy for computational efficiency of human group intelligence”“Neural annealing through laughter: Neuro-acoustics of humor as a factor for healthy mental adjustment”“The tree of music: An annealable branching tuning-fork model for nervous systems”“Same but different: Suggesting a qualia analogue for the comparative planetology of Earth and Titan”“Music of life: Consonance, dissonance, noise and symmetry as explanatory elements for evolution from single cells to human minds”“Compartments of harmony bounded by dissonance: A neuro-acoustic model of domain specificity in cognition”\n\nThe Seven Seals of Security or Safety Through Uncertainty – Transhumanist Satire\n \n\n\n\nClick to view slideshow.\n\nLetter V: Earth as an Engine of Qualia Diversity\nHandwaving Johnson & Gómez-Emilsson’s law about the surprisingly large size of qualia state space:\nPresume that consciousness and matter are interconnected information structures. Can any useful parallels be drawn from the matter domain of outer space to the consciousness domain of inner space? Consider that planets, as a group, are subject to variation and (anthropic) selection. An interconnection point is provided by observation selection: Certain planetary properties far from the universe median are going to be found by intelligent conscious observers for their own planet of origin. A small subset of conscious observers are the ones who, like humans, have general intelligence and broad curiosity. Those observers are the few who observe more and more aspects of their own planet as well as adjacent space and the state space of matter at large, and ultimately perhaps also of consciousness at large. The evolutionary reproductive selection of such observers is not the default condition of all life but rather it is conditional upon even more unusual properties of their planet of origin than for the average life-bearing planet.\nConclusion: Earth is likely to be a highly unusual planet, and human consciousness is likely to be a highly unusual seat of experience. They are causally linked. A structural property they share could be a high level of diversity but never reaching cosmically global extremes on any single parameter. A Jill of all trades planet is married to a Jack of all trades mind.\nWhile fairly good at impressively many trades, Jack and Jill are master and mistress of none. For a tentative and very loose analogy which may be better than nothing, let’s say planet Earth is like the human mind. The other planets in the Solar System are like altered human minds and some animal minds. Some basic properties like gravity, roundness and rotation are common to all the planets. Corresponding to suggested basic features of biologically evolved sentience, such as valence and some sensory modalities.\nThen we follow Slartibartfast to the fjords of Norway. Here we see how Earth differs in diversity compared with the other “animals”. The planet’s surface is an energetic 3-phase regime. Solid crust, liquid water and solid water under highly dynamic conditions. Not widely separated like on Europa but forming extended areas of contact where unusual complexity emerges. It’s worth an award, really. (No, not Belgium…).\n\nJust the right amount of Al, Ti, Cr, Mo, and W to get this High Entropy Alloy (HEA)!\nHuman cognition is like Earth with its’ coasts and mountain ranges. A “just right” quantity and proportionality of ingredients is what allowed self-organization of Earth’s environmental complexity and its’ endurance over time via the mechanism of prolonged core solidification and plate tectonics. An unusual state of affairs in nature. It’s not unexpected in principle, only rare in actual existence. The same may go for evolution of the general cognition accessible to human minds.\nA type of mind which is generally competent over multiple domains of agency cannot function as such if not many crucial parameters in its’ architecture fall within a tight range of “just right and not too much nor too little”. Or, in Swedish, “lagom”. If you loosen that constraint, such as by ingesting 5 grams of mushrooms blindfolded, your mind will clearly no longer function on your job or even in your body. But in exchange for giving up on that functionality as agent, you can max out on stuff like… well, it’s beyond words.\n\n\nHigh Entropy Alloy (Al + Ti + Cr + Mo + W) and Low-Entropy Non-Alloy (Ti) – made by Anders and Maggie. If non-materialist physicalist idealism (i.e. panpsychism that respects physics) is true, what do these bundles of baryonic matter feel like from the inside?\nGeneral intelligence is not compatible with an easy achievement of extreme states of consciousness, though as a less frequently added mental ingredient for a group intelligence (like human hunter-gatherers) extreme states can be hypothesized to enhance abilities of that group intelligence.\nBut what does the current human “master of none” in qualia rendering imply for the future of consciousness, and what about cosmic matter beyond the neighboring planets?\nBeyond the Solar System we find many types of stars, black holes, dark matter and various ultra-thin, ultra-dense, ultra-cold, or ultra-hot configurations of matter in the wider domain of spacetime. Nature usually has not developed nonliving matter into configurations with even remotely as high a complexity as for living matter, simply because of no evolutionary selection pressures. Some nonbiological matter objects could be strong qualia generators just by chance, though. The Sun comes speculatively and punlessly to mind. Doing an IIT and a CDNS analysis on its’ surface magnetized plasma wave patterns may not be entirely far-fetched. But the big promise for expanding the diversity of actualized sentience comes through engineering. Jack and Jill is the couple who can pull that off, and their offspring can then grow up in that fabulous new landscape of experience. For they can become masters and mistresses. Dominatrices, even. The reason being that while the parents are tightly constrained experientially, the kids need not be.\nFor an efficiently organized advanced technological civilization, the constraints of being a highly general and resilient intelligence can be placed high up on the group level. Individual seats of experience with the sizes of today’s human or animal brains, say, can then be allowed to render experiential states more specialized to feel meaningful, enjoyable and worthwhile. (A dystopian version could instead generate unimaginable suffering, of course. Need to watch out…).\nEarth is by far the most diverse planet in the Solar System, but it does not have the deepest ocean, the tallest mountain, the highest gravity, the hottest days, the most explosive volcanoes or the most intense thunderstorms. Human minds who have only experienced their evolved biologically functional mental states have not reached the consciousness state space equivalents of the extreme environments on the other planets. They have never snowboarded down the tellurobismutite condensate slopes on Maxwell Montes or been ejected on a ballistic trajectory by a sulfur dioxide plume from Tvashtar Patera. These things may be comparable to being a bat or taking psilocybin. As different from sober human experience as they are, they still merely hint at the range of possible experiences in the qualia state space opening up beyond. If all goes well, there will be psychonauts of the future who are children of Earth and able to engineer any form of matter and energy into conscious brain architectures. They would become what Max Tegmark has called “Life 3.0”.\nEither that or, in a hopefully not terribly more likely scenario portrayed by imagined future historians, humanity stayed obsessed with the circulation of money to the detriment of all else.\n“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy \n\n\nEarth as an Engine of Qualia Diversity", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/03/11/qualia-production-presents-the-seven-seals-of-security-and-other-communications-from-qri-sweden/", "title": "Qualia Production Presents: “The Seven Seals of Security” (and Other Communications from QRI Sweden)", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-03-12T05:51:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=8", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "c0391aec95e8791014b6507d66086c90", "summary": []}
{"text": "Making Amazing Recreational Drug Cocktails\n\nCalifornidine\nImagine that you were tasked with creating a molecule to represent the spirit of California. I think that I would just glue together two MDMA molecules and call it a day.\nCalifornidine\nIt turns out Californidine is indeed a real molecule, named after the California Poppy. I am still wrapping my head around the fact that Californidine can be described as two MDMA molecules sharing the nitrogen atom and with the end of the carbon chain of each MDMA molecule bonded at the 2-position of the benzene ring of the other one (minus a hydrogen atom). Interestingly, this compound has no psychedelic or empathogenic action. At best, it can be described as a very mild and unreliable relaxing agent of “herbal strength” akin to the active ingredients of chamomile, valerian, or ashwagandha. So, joining two powerful heart-openers gives rise to a mild sleep-inducer? Perhaps this is a metaphor for something.\nCalifornidine and MDMA\nBut that’s not what I want to talk to you about today. While gluing together psychoactive molecules may not have a (cartoonishly) desirable additive effect, doing so does express the spirit of what I want to propose today. And that is the impulse to use a creative and fun approach to drug design, letting your imagination run wild to avoid prematurely discarding one’s crazy ideas.\nNotable Leads for Great Drug Combos\nOver the last 10 years I’ve read many (many!) trip reports and have talked to hundreds of experienced psychonauts (see also: r/replications). It is largely thanks to a subset of these psychonauts, which for lack of a better term could be described as the subset of rational psychonauts, that I’ve been able to assemble empirically testable models for psychedelic phenomenology (some examples: Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States, Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences, Quantifying Bliss, How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD, etc.). Although my focus has largely been on the effects of individual drugs, I’ve become very cognizant of the fact that drug combinations can produce effects not accessible with individual substances. In other words, when it comes to mixing psychoactive substances, the sum is more often than not different from the sum of its parts. Some of these effects seem extremely significant both from a scientific and a philosophical point of view.\nBut first, an important disclaimer: mixing drugs is dangerous and you should never do it unless you really know what you are doing. The pile of celebrity deaths caused by multiple drug intoxication is only scratching the surface. Indeed, there are many combinations of drugs that are deadly even when the individual drugs taken on their own are relatively safe. For example, while 5-MeO-DMT is relatively safe when vaporized (save for egregiously negligent uses of the drug and the occasional drowning in one’s own vomit), taking 5-MeO-DMT orally in combination with an MAOI leads to extremely toxic reactions, such as severe hypertensive symptoms, overheating, and serotonin syndrome. Don’t do it. As a very rough guide for how mixtures of psychoactives behave, study the chart below.\nWelcome to the practice of combining drugs. You may die. (source)\nThat said, just as drug combinations have a dangerous side, they also likely harbor hidden gems that are very safe, enjoyable, and mind-expanding in ways inaccessible via single drugs. As a general overview, some examples of the possible benefits of drug combinations include: (1) Enhanced euphoria, e.g. see speedball which is massively euphoric but also very dangerous, (2) reduced psychological discomfort (e.g. anxiolytics with psychedelics), (3) uniquely interesting effects, e.g. LSD + MDMA (see below), and (4) reduced physical side-effects and medical risks, e.g. calcium blockers to reduce MDMA neurotoxicity, 5HT2B antagonists to reduce cardiotoxicity of psychedelics, etc. as we’ll discuss. In addition, it is worth mentioning that from a therapeutic point of view, we also have the “more dakka effect“, where some conditions only respond to combining enough drugs (e.g. oncology). It’s possible chronic pain or severe depression may legitimately require multiple drugs to be adequately dealt with. Now let us examine in more detail some particularly interesting categories of drug combinations:\nPsychedelics + Anxiolytics: According to many reports, phenibut in small doses seems to significantly reduce the anxiety that comes up on psychedelics. I am ambivalent about sharing this information given the fact that phenibut can become a huge problem for some people, but I think that on the whole it is wise for people to know that an over-the-counter “nootropic” can actually help avoid fear, discomfort, and panic attacks during a psychedelic experience.\nCannabis + Psychedelics: I generally find two kinds of psychedelic drug users. Those who cannot think of having a psychedelic trip without at some point smoking a joint, vaping, or eating a cannabis edible. And then those who would never dare to combine the two because they once had a terrifying experience with the combo. Interestingly, some of the people I’ve met over the years who seem to be able to easily handle massive doses of psychedelics (e.g. 500 micrograms of acid) respond terribly to weed, and especially badly if they are already tripping. Cannabis both modifies and potentiates psychedelic states of mind. It has a tendency to make the experience more conceptual rather than sensory or mystical. The combination also greatly increases the probability of getting stuck in time loops.\nEmpathogens + Psychedelics: One of the best descriptions of MDMA + LSD (also called candy-flipping) that I’ve found comes from Steven Lehar (emphasis added):\nUnder LSD and ecstasy I could see the flickering blur of visual generation most clearly. And I saw peculiar ornamental artifacts on all perceived objects, like a Fourier representation with the higher harmonics chopped off. LSD by itself creates sharply detailed ornamental artifacts, like a transparent overlay of an ornamental lattice or filigree pattern superimposed on the visual scene, especially in darkness. Ecstasy smooths out those sharp edges and blurs them into a creamy smooth rolling experience. I would sometimes feel some part of my world suddenly bulging out to greater magnification, like a fish-eye lens distortion appearing randomly in space, stretching everything in that portion of space like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.\n– Steven Lehar (The Phenomenal Character of LSD + MDMA)\nNot everyone responds well to this combination, and given the nature of these substances, it seems likely that the dosages and the relative timing have a large influence on how the experience develops. I’ve heard three relatively “established” ways in which people use this combination. First, you have the school that says that you should take the MDMA at or slightly after the peak of the effects of LSD, that is 4-4:30h after taking it. The reasoning here is that you don’t want to be caught coming down from the MDMA while still having a long time to go on LSD since the acid could enhance the feelings of the comedown. The delayed gratification also pays-off by giving you several hours to face the problems you want to solve unaided and see how far you can get before the mood boost of MDMA gives you the determination to be contented with it.\nThe second school of thought about candy-flipping says that the biggest factor in how psychedelic experiences turn out is how they start. So what you want to do is take the MDMA 1 to 1:30 hours before the acid. This way, you only embark upon the inner journey when you are already in a really, really good chill state of mind. Some people report that the acid picks up the empathogenic quality of the state, amplifies it, and carries it on for much longer than if you had only taken MDMA alone.\nThere are many proponents and detractors to both of these schools. What I’ve seen more or less everyone agree on is to avoid taking substantial doses of LSD and MDMA (e.g. 200micrograms LSD + 120mg MDMA) at the same time. Apparently this is simply just too overwhelming and synergistic to be enjoyable, often causing a lot of nausea and palpitations.\nThe third school, however, is to take only a small dose of both at the same time. Say, 35micrograms LSD and 35mg MDMA. This apparently is an extremely positive combination. The experience is not mild due to the synergy, and it seems to provide an open, creative, level-headed mindset for many hours without much of a comedown or hangover. As with everything here, your mileage may vary.\nPsychedelics + Dissociatives: Psychedelics and dissociatives have profound non-linear mixing effects. According to multiple sources, the right combination of LSD, Ketamine, and THC can give rise to a “free-wheeling hallucination“. This is a state of consciousness in which you gain a great degree of conscious control over the contents of the hallucinated world, so that you can project your will by saying “let there be a chair in front of me” and you will see it manifest in exquisite detail. You can rotate, translate, invert, fibrate, and project the chair in any way you want, as if you were now able to use your brain as a very general game engine of consciousness. That said, even when this doesn’t happen, the combination of psychedelics and dissociatives is ridiculously synergistic. People report getting stuck in extremely energetic time-loops akin to those caused by psychedelics and cannabis, but more powerful (cf. trip report of DMT + nitrous oxide). Steven Lehar calls the effect where the presence of a psychedelic changes the quality of a dissociative as “dissociative coloring”. I’ve been amazed at the fact that there is no mistaking when someone has previously experienced LSD and nitrous together. You don’t get reactions like “it didn’t do much for me”. This combo usually has a special place in the memory of a person who has experienced it. Eyes brighten, curiosity sparks. I’ve been asked on multiple occasions “what do you think is going on with the strange synergy between LSD and nitrous?” Now, 5-MeO-DMT and DMT are very different, and the LSD + nitrous state seems to have some resemblance with the 5-MeO-DMT state. They share that strange feeling of becoming a kind of saturated resonance box. The feeling is one of becoming a vessel full of coordinated and coherent vibrations that unearth and dissolve internal boundaries and blockages. The process inherently blocks your ability to conceptualize in a dualistic way. The cognitive content of the state is better captured by a huge blinking sign that reads “THIS, THIS, THIS” on repeat rather than the more usual “that thing over there connected to this over here, modulated by what happens there” kind of cognitive state we are more familiar with. DMT on its own is very different than this, in that the mental formations and patterns of binding that emerge are extremely specific, detailed, and irreducibly complex. Not so on the upper ranges of the dissociative and psychedelic cocktail, where the resonance is profound and the asymmetries needed to store complex information are constantly smoothed out by the ongoing full-body bath of reverb. (cf. Neural Annealing).\nDissociatives + Empathogens: According to several trip reports and credible personal communications, taking ketamine while on MDMA can bring back “the magic” that one only ever experienced with MDMA the first few times using it. Also MDMA and nitrous have profound research-worthy synergy.\nPotentiation: Shulgin reported that substances that don’t feel psychedelically active on their own may nonetheless potentiate the effects of other psychedelics. For instance:\n(with 160 mg of MDPR followed at 2h by 100μg LSD) This proved to be almost too intoxicating, and a problem arose that had to have a solution. The entire research group was here, and all were following this same regimen. Two hours into the second half of the experiment a telephone call came that reminded me of a promise I had made to perform in a social afternoon with the viola in a string quartet. Why did I answer the phone? My entire experience was, over the course of about 20 minutes, pushed down to a fragile threshold, and I drove about 10 minutes to attend a swank afternoon event and played an early Beethoven and a middle Mozart with an untouched glass of expensive Merlot in front of me. I could always blame the booze. I declined the magnificent food spread, split, and returned to my own party. Safely home, and given 20 more minutes, I was back into a rolling +++ and I now know that the mind has a remarkable ability to control the particular place the psyche is in. \n(Entry on MDPR, from PIHKAL)\nMore common than the above, ayahuasca is intrinsically a drug combo primarily of the potentiation kind. As mentioned before, cannabis not only alters but also potentiates the effects of psychedelics. It is worth mentioning there is a community of people who believe that noopept (a cholinergic nootropic, see below) can potentiate MDMA. While there is some evidence that MDMA is itself mildly cholinergic– and thus provides a sense of mental clarity in addition to the loved-up feeling- too much cholinergic action tends to make people feel rigid, robotic, and hyper-cerebral. I am therefore personally skeptical of the benefits of combining something like noopept with MDMA, as the potentiation of some of its qualities may come at the cost of reduced emotional sensitivity. Why trade a feeling of renewed innocence and receptivity with calculating prowess? I doubt this is the best use of a roll.\nAnti-tolerance Drugs: This is a category of combinations with tremendous potential to relieve suffering, to the extent that I think of it as a humanitarian tragedy that there are no concerted research efforts currently in this direction. Sufferers of chronic pain and treatment-resistance depression could make use of drugs that help them keep the tolerance to the drugs they depend upon for having a livable life under control. I know this has a lot of the ring of turtles all the way down (“when are you going to get the anti-tolerance drugs for anti-tolerance drugs? And then the anti-tolerance for anti-tolerance for…”) but I am sincere when I say that looking here may pay off in spades. Already we see ibogaine doing other-worldly magnificent things to cure addiction and reverse tolerance. Who knows what a large targeted research program with this focus may discover. Some examples of anti-tolerance drugs include proglumide, ibogaine, and black seed oil for opioids, and flumazenil for benzodiazepines.\nPrevent Physical Side Effects: Epidemiological data suggests that chronic or heavy use of 5HT2B agonists may lead to heart valve disease (cf. Fen-Phen), which does not bode well for the long-term (as opposed to acute) safety of many psychedelic compounds. Now, neuroscientist Thomas Ray believes that 5HT2B may be necessary for some of the characteristic psychedelic action of entheogens, so blocking it altogether may come at the cost of eliminating the reason why the drug is interesting. That said, we do know that 5-MeO-DMT is profoundly psychedelic and yet has negligible 5HT2B activity. It would be very useful to know what happens when one combines psychedelics with heavy 5HT2B affinity, like 2C-B and DOB, with 5HT2B antagonists (usually prescription medicines). Would blocking 5HT2B agonism avoid cardiotoxicity? And what would the drug feel like then? Another interesting lead is the affinity of compounds like 2C-E and 2C-T-2 to the 5HT3 receptor, which is predominantly in the gut and modulates feelings like nausea. Additionally, since 5HT3 antagonists are antiemetic it really stands to reason that taking one before e.g. tripping on shrooms may give you a much less, ahem, visceral experience. Finally, I would like to explore the implications of the fact that of all of the compounds in Ray’s study the only one with significant affinity for calcium channels is MDMA. Would this be related to its neurotoxicity? And would taking a calcium channel blocker prevent it? It might still be wise regardless simply as a way to lessen the cardiac load of the compound.\nNootropic Stacks (cf. the Qualia Pill):  Many people who explore nootropics make “stacks”. That is, rather than taking only piracetam, they might take a combination of piracetam, aniracetam, pramiracetam, coluracetam, and l-tyrosine. I suspect that this is popular because most nootropics are pretty mild and often hard to notice, and people want to be able to feel the effects. I generally do not think this is sensible, though, as we don’t understand these substances well enough. More so, branded “nootropic stacks” can have upwards of 30 different psychoactive substances crammed together in half a dozen pills you are supposed to take daily. While I do think there are likely gems to be found in the vast combinatorial space of cognition-boosting chemicals, I simply do not see any way in which the current major brands of nootropic stacks could have done the type of research needed to find them. I therefore do not personally recommend you go out and try such combos, at least not until we know a lot more about how to do combinations properly. If you want to try nootropic stacks, I’d recommend you start with small doses of two or three well-researched nootropics at most and do your own research thoroughly before settling on a particular combination.\nLSD + DMT Visual Replication\nPsychedelics and Psychedelics: A classic psychedelic combo that I’ve heard a lot about is LSD + DMT. The state that emerges from this combination is apparently unique, though if you take enough DMT the LSD fades into the background. Apparently psychedelics tend to have a characteristic spectral effect on your brain’s harmonics (see: Connectome-Specific Harmonic Waves on LSD), which manifests in the form of experiencing “vibes of different frequencies” specific to the drug you are taking. The case of LSD and DMT is very interesting, since their characteristic frequencies are sufficiently far apart (to put a number on it, LSD may be in the vicinity of 18Hz while DMT may be close to 30Hz) that they can be separated easily. You thus get a spectral effect of two peaks interfering with one another, oftentimes creating a powerful 3D grid of Moiré patterns, like a super-charged version of the “regular” DMT Chrysanthemum. As a method for spectral analysis, studying the beat patterns of psychedelic drug combos could go a long way in formulating a systematic characterization of their phenomenology. Speculatively, this may even allow us to come up with specific psychedelic drug cocktails that produce maximally consonant harmonious effects.\nTry it yourself: 50Hz to 500Hz with 100Hz base, and 100Hz to 1000Hz with 400Hz base.\nIdiosyncratic Responses\nA final thought to add to this section concerns the fact that people respond differently to drugs. One can reason that if drug A affects 20% of people in a different way while drug B affects 10% of people in a different way, that A + B would lead to 4 different kinds of responses. More so, the more drugs you pile on top of each other, the more specific and individualized the response would be. I think that this is likely true in the general case, but I would argue that it is not universally true. A useful analogy here is with the way people respond to the scent of different molecules: you may lack the gene that encodes the receptor for a particular molecule, but perfumes usually have 30 or more scent-contributing molecules, so the experience of a perfume may be more similar between people than their experience of individual molecules. At the extreme, we have the phenomenon of “white noise scent” where once you mix 40+ molecules in equal (intensity-adjusted) proportions that span scent-space, it all starts smelling the same. The notion of “scent entropy” can be imported to drugs as well: I would expect a kind of inverted U-curve for “how idiosyncratic” the responses to drug combinations are as a function of the total entropy of the combo.\nDrug Cocktails From First Principles\nThe way we aim to understand psychoactive substances at the Qualia Research Institute is in terms of the way they modify the neuroacoustic profile of the brain. And while this is what I see as the most promising approach moving forward, I believe that there is nonetheless a lot of low-hanging fruit at the receptor level of analysis.\nThe first time I’d thought of trying to emulate the effects of a drug using a cocktail of other drugs came up years ago when I found out that MDMA is likely neurotoxic. At the time I thought perhaps it was just a matter of getting the right dopaminergic, serotonergic, and oxytocinergic activity going for you to replicate the MDMA high. It’s a good thought, and some people have taken it to heart, such as the creators of “Poly”, an MDMA-like cocktail (cf. Kisspeptine). But as we’ll see, MDMA is more complex than that, and we may need to consider far more variables to make a “credible MDMA substitute”.\n\n\n\n\nLooking beyond drug combos of only two or three drugs, and with a nod to concepts from the field of high-entropy alloys (HEAs), we could start thinking about the secret gems to be found in the vast combinatorial space of “high-entropy drug combos”. But what kind of principles could we use to safely combine 5+ drugs? The full story will probably be much, much more complicated than the following approach, but it is still nonetheless worth exploring as a first pass. Namely, to break down each drug in terms of their receptor affinity profile and then use those affinities additively to create arbitrary “synthetic” receptor affinity profiles. There are many reasons why this might not work: receptor affinity may not work linearly or have a clear rule-based behavior. For instance, it is still unclear if a single drug that has affinity for key serotonin receptors (say 5HT2A, 5HT2B, and 5HT7) in addition to working as an NMDR antagonist would produce the same feeling of “synergistic action” as there is between psychedelics and dissociatives. More so, there could be additional intra-cellular signaling specific to each molecule, so that two molecules that work as agonists with the exact same 5HT2B affinity may have different downstream effects inside the neuron, and then those intracellular effects might have phenomenological properties of their own. But leaving all of those caveats and unknowns aside for a moment, what would it look like to create drug cocktails with this method?\nTrue for both people and drugs!\nAfter giving it some thought I realized that the problem can be reduced to a non-negative least squares (NNLS) optimization (non-negative because, as they say: “you can always take more drugs, but you cannot take less drugs”). It turns out there are already open source implementations of algorithms that solve this optimization problem (for both R and Python)*. So I downloaded the data from the famous Thomas Ray study of psychedelic receptor affinity and played with the data and the non-negative least squares method in a Jupyter notebook for a bit. The first thing I tried was to create a compound like 2C-B but better. Under dubious- but not entirely random- assumptions, I set the desired receptor affinity to be that of 2C-B but with the following modifications: to have the 5HT2B affinity be as low as possible in order to minimize cardiotoxicity concerns, and borrow from MDMA’s unique profile the hypothesis that the Imidazoline receptor is related to heart-opening effects. Additionally, I modified the receptor profile so that the drug would give you more focus than 2C-B by having a higher affinity for the dopamine receptors. To top it off, I racked up the desired receptor affinity for 5HT7, as it has been implicated in providing the more utterly mind-blowing power of psychedelics. I entered these modifications into the NNLS optimizer and the output I got was**:\n0.48*2C-B + 0.337*5-MeO-DMT + 0.116*MDMA + 0.043*cis-2a + 0.016*6-F-DMT + 0.005*Mescaline\nI see, so since 2C-B is still the backbone of the desired affinity pattern, it appears in high proportion in the mixture as a kind of “base” on top of which the modifications are made. It makes sense that 5-MeO-DMT would come next as it is pretty selective for 5HT7 (remember, the most literally mind-blowing chemical), and MDMA would follow due to the desire for Imidazoline affinity. That by the way, is also probably partly why the formula contains a pinch of Mescaline, to round up that Imidazoline for good measure. I then decided to relax the 5HT7 requirement and instead increase the 5HT6 and 5HT5A, and got the following formula:\n0.038*Lisuride + 0.273*2C-B + 0.056*DMT +0.079*Mescaline + 0.15*MDMA + 0.377*RR-2b + 0.018*Ibogaine\nAnd this now looks pretty different. After playing like this for a while, it occurred to me to use this technique to basically try to reconstruct a drug using a non-negative linear combination of the remaining drugs available. Imagine for example that you are stuck in quarantine at your house and you don’t have any 2C-B to kill time (I know! Very relatable isn’t it?), but you do somehow happen to have an assortment of hundreds of other unscheduled random research chemicals. Could you combine them in such a way that you approximate the effects of 2C-B? Well, let’s see.\nHere are the “drug reconstructions” the method derives (again, please, don’t try this at home):\nClick to view slideshow.\nI am pleasantly surprised to see the formulas actually do seem pretty intuitive to me. Take for example the DIPT reconstruction. The top two ingredients are 5-MeO-DIPT and DPT, which are the two closest structural analogues of DIPT in the dataset. Or take the one for DOB: this is the amphetamine version of 2C-B, so it makes sense that both an amphetamine psychedelic (Aleph-2) and 2C-B would make up the top two ingredients. Or consider 5-MeO-DMT, with its most prominent ingredient being 5-MeO-TMT, which is one carbon atom away in terms of structure. Or see how Mescaline’s heart-opening effects are well represented by its reconstruction with MDMA and MDA, while TMA contributes the receptor affinity characteristic of the trimethoxy class of functional groups, along with another Mescaline-like phenethylamine, 4C-T-2. Alas, here is where an imperfect understanding of drug interactions could come and bite us in the ass: if 4C-T-2 is anything like 2C-T-2, it might have some MAOI action, which could be potentially very dangerous to combine with compounds like MDMA. Needless to say, before you go out and try these crazy drug cocktails, we first need a thorough understanding of each drug well beyond just its affinity to “only” 30 or so receptors.\nNow, not every reconstruction makes sense to me, and really only a few substances have what I would call a descent mean squared error. See the receptor affinity tables below for examples of both successful and unsuccessful reconstructions (only non-zero entries shown):\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDOB and 2C-T-2 have some of the lowest errors in the sample, meaning that their reconstructions are pretty good, while Ibogaine and MDMA have two of the worst error rates, and their reconstructions are still obviously pretty far from the goal. Naturally, if we were ever to test this method in the lab (with e.g. a drug discrimination paradigm) we would probably start with the most accurate reconstructions first. For instance, train rats to distinguish between 2C-B and DOB, and see if administering the (2C-B-containing) “DOB reconstruction” makes the rats think they got DOB rather than 2C-B.\nMaster Druggist (Synapse? Dendrite?)\nI would like to conclude this essay with an interesting speculation: what if we developed drug combos like we develop perfumes? It is my appreciation that it takes a very high level of intelligence, domain expertise, and psychological robustness to be able to contribute usefully to the field of psychonautics. Sasha Shulgin spent over 30 years taking hundreds of completely new drugs, and I would very much trust his judgement about what makes a great psychedelic drug combo than I would trust a random BlueLight or Erowid user. (As an aside: Shulgin was extremely cautious in his approach, but he certainly wasn’t doing some of the low-hanging fruit on safety, such as wearing a heart monitor or measuring his blood pressure when taking a new drug, for starters. Future systematic psychonautic work should also record as much biometric data as is feasible). You wouldn’t put on a perfume made by someone who has only ever worn Axe, would you? Training a “Nose” takes up to 7 years, and it involves becoming deeply familiar with the scent of a long list of molecules, accords, and perfumes. Likewise, I’d expect that in order to be qualified to find extremely good drug combinations, one would first need to become familiar with the effect of many different individual drugs, “natural drug accords” (e.g. peyote), and designed drug cocktails. Only once you have an intuitive sense of how e.g. the sigma receptor interacts with the 5HT1A receptor would I trust your judgement about adding a pinch of agmatine to your already convoluted mixture of 20 psychoactive substances. A Super-Shulgin Academy could train people to be professional drug cocktail makers (if perfumers are called “Noses” would we call Super-Shulgin certified cocktail makers “Dendrites”?). As discussed above, this assumes that we can do this safely, which I suspect will be possible once we map out the space of dangerous combinations and receptors we shouldn’t mess with to avoid side effects like cardiotoxicity (e.g. 5HT2B, 5HT3A, calcium channels, etc.).\nYou come to the master cocktail designer with a general concept for a new recreational drug, and they would come up with activity profiles that best evoke those feelings. The Dendrite would select from hundreds or thousands*** of pure chemicals and accords to create your unique cocktail. As is the case with Noses in the perfume industry, a Dendrite would tend to have a set of about one to two hundred “frequently used” compounds, and a dozen or so “signature” ones they’re deeply familiar with and that usually reveal who the Druggist is, if found in large proportions in the end product. Of course there would be “house favorites” (e.g. the classic “ambroxan bomb” of Dior fragrances for men) and chemical fads (e.g. the wide adoption of Iso E Super in 90s perfumes). Every year would come with a new season of amazing, safe, and uniquely interesting recreational drug cocktails.\n\n\n\n\nIn perfumery you find both natural and synthetic “accords”: “Violet reconstructions” attempt to emulate the smell of violet but in a much more long-lasting, storable, and versatile way. Good Dendrites would not only use “natural accords” such as “peyote” or “marijuana plant” but would also make their own, aided with computer models and datasets of trip reports along with their own first person experiences. In both perfumery and professional drug cocktail making we would study accords packed with combos of qualia-triggering chemicals, and a Dendrite could be known not only for making good final products, but for making excellent accords with predictable and desirable effects.\nTo finalize the analogy (and this article) we could also discuss the way in which perfumes feel “broad spectrum” thanks to being constructed by combining “top, heart, and base notes”. Roughly speaking, top notes tend to “feel higher frequency” (such as citric scents) while base notes tend to “feel low frequency” (such as woody scents), not unlike how a symphony will tend to combine sounds across the spectrum. The most interesting, voluptuous, and commercially viable combos would also probably have a broad spectrum of activity. They would be anxiolytic, exciting, relaxing, trippy, and empathogenic to various degrees all at once. They would combine fast, slow, and spiritual euphoria in a single power punch of qualia cornucopia. As such, each drug cocktail made this way would entail an entire worldview – a whole realm currently hidden in the vast state-space of consciousness.\n\n\n* For an intuition: recall from linear algebra that a basis of n linearly independent vectors span an n-dimensional vector space. When the vector that you are trying to reconstruct is not in the span of your basis, the best you can do is to project your vector to the nearest hyperplane of the spanning space. Adding the constraint that you can only make non-negative linear combinations with your basis vectors, you find that the span will look like an ‘inverted pyramid’, and the least-squares solution will be the point of that inverted pyramid that is closest to your desired vector. This is why most of the reconstructions only use a subset of the available drugs in the dataset. In most cases, the desired vector (i.e. affinity profile in this case) will be outside of the inverted pyramid of the non-negative span, and the closest hyperplane will be a linear combination of only a subset of the building blocks- those which span that particular hyperplane. I.e. the solution is the projection to the nearest hyperplane segment covering the non-negative span. This is what the NNLS method is doing under the hood.\n** Note: It’s important to point out that these are not dosages. The coefficients provided by the non-negative least squares method apply to the normalized affinity “npKi“, which is the receptor affinity normalized by the highest affinity among the receptors. The coefficients will be correlated with “proportion of a standard active dose” but there will be an error caused by the pretty tricky confounder that molecules vary in their “breadth of affinity”. Additionally: the psychoactivity of each receptor is not the same, we are not considering saturation effects, the difference between partial and full agonists is not taken into account, downstream effects are ignored, etc. etc. Needless to say, there is still quite some work to be done to transform these coefficients into meaningful dosages.\n*** List of Psychoactive Drugs a professional Dendrite would be expected to be familiar with:\nL-Tyrosine, L-DOPA, Apomorphine, Flumazenil, CPZ, BPAP, PPAP, Cabergoline, DAR-0100, Lisuride, Pergolide, Pramipexole, Rotigotine, Biopterin, PLP, Aminepetine, PCP, Marijuana, Dextromethorphan, Isoflavones, Citicoline, Metadoxine, Arecoline, Niacinamide, Paraxanthine, a-GPC, Acetylcarnitine, AR-R17779, GTS-21, Ispronidine, PHA-543,613, SSR-180,711, WAY-317,538, Hopantenic Acid, IDRA-21, Propentofylline, PRL-8-53, Trytophan, Picamilon, Betahistine, A-349,821, Cipoxifan, Creatine, Mildronate, Pregnenolone, Nisoxetine, Orexin, CP-39,332, Esreboxetine, Daledalin, AM-1248, Phenoxybenzamine, Symbescaline, Phentolamine, Isomescaline, Tolazoline, a-Methylfentanyl, Ketamine, Dichlorpane, 3-meo-pcp, Hex-en, Paraflourofentanyl, 3-Methylfentanyl, Metofoline, Buscaline, O-DT, Nortilidine, Thiobuscaline, Dizocilpine, Rolicyclidine, Phenescaline, Tenocyclidine, Methoxyketamine, pFPP, 5-me-MDA, 4-MAR, 1,4-Butanediol, 2-Methyl-2-Butynol, GHV, GVL, Mebroqualone, Benzylbutylbarbituates, Phenmetrazine, 3-Fluorophenmetrazine, Crack, Cocaine, Coca, Kava, Phenylacetylindoles, Benzoylindoles, Napthoylindoles, Adamantoyindoles, Pineapple Sage, Kokum, Brahmi, Artic Weed, Skullcap, Salvia Splendens, Coriander, Rhodiola Rosea, Velvet Bean, Bitter Orange, St. John’s Worth, Grape Seed Extract, Tulsi, Blessed Thistle, 3-Desoxy-MDA, Skatole, Isoindole, Indole, Benztropine, Diphenhydramine, Niaprazin, Doxylamine, Alaproclate, Zopiclone, Ifoxetine, Methylmethaqualone, Panuramine, Meta-Tyramine, Para-Tyramine, 2M2B, Pirandamine, SB-649,915, Epinephrine, Mepyramine, Octopamin, Delucemine, Oxidopamine, β-Methylphenethylamine, Mesembrine, Psuedoephedrine, Etolorex, Cathine, Cathinone, Ethcathinone, Norfenfluramine, Fenfluramine, Phentermine, Metaescaline, n-Ethylbuphedrone, Naphyrone, Pyrovalerone, Isopropylamphertamine, Clobenzorex, Pholedrine, Chlorphentermine, Xylopropamine, DON, DOPR, TMA, Methyl-BOB, Tetramethoxyamphetamine, 4-MTA, Bromatane, Hydroxyzine, BNC-210, CL-218,872, L-838,417, SL-651,498, S32212, 6-CAT, TAP, ETAI, IMP, Lorxaserin, Cisapride, Tegaserod, AS-19, E-55888, LP-12, LP-44, LP-211, Etoperidone, Lorpiprazole, Lubazodone, Mepiperazole, 5-TASB, TB, 3-TE, 4-TE, 2-TIM, 3-TIM, 4-TIM, 3-TM, 4-TM, TMA, TMA-2, TMA-3, TMA-4, TMA-5, TMA-6, 3-TME, 4-TME, 5-TME, 2T-MMDA-3a, 4T-MMDA-2, TMPEA, 2-TOET, 5-TOET, 2-TOM, 5-TOM, TOMSO, TP, TRIS, 3-TSB, 4-TSB, 3-T-TRIS, 4-T-TRIS, 44-BMAR, 3-MOMC, Prolintane, SDB-001, AB-FUBINACA, Dichloromethylphenidate, AB-PINACA, MN-24, 5F-MN25, A-836,339, ADBICA, 5F-NNEI, RCS-4, RCS-8, MPHP, 6-APDB, 4-HMP, EDMA, a-PBP, Methylhexamine, a-PPP, 4-FMD, EIDA, Phenylphrine, UWA-101, MPBP, RH-34, F-2, F-22, MR-2096, Adrenochrome, AET, Carbogen, DOB, DOM, Desmorphine, Ethylcathinone, Ehylene, GHV, Hypocretin, mCPP, MDPR, Methaqualone, TFMPP, CPP, MeoPP, A2, Salvinorin A, Scoplamine, TMA-2, BDO, 2c-B-FLY, 4-Flouromethcathinone, 4-HO-MPT, U4EA, 4-MTA, Phenylpiracetam, Aniracetam, Coluracetam, Pramiracetam, Melatonin, NRG-3, Theobromine, A834-735, Oxytocin, NZT-48, Heroine, 3-HO-PCP, MAOIs, 4-MeO-PCP, 3c-P, 5-IAI, Atropine, 5-IT, Bufotenin, 5-MAPB, 4-Aco-MiPT, 6-MAPB, ALD-52, AMMI, MET, D2PM, DET, CBD, CBN, LY-2183240, SF-SDB-005, AM-404, EG-018, DXM, FDU-PB22, AL-LAD, 3-MeOMC, 2-MeO-Diphenidine, 4-MPD, bk-MDMA, 4-MeO-a-PVP, GHB, 4-MeO-PBP, MBDB, 4-MeO-PV9, Fentanyl, 4F-PV8, a-PBT, BDB, a-PVT, 2-FMA, Dibutylone, 5-Meo-DiPT, Diclofensine, Methcathinone, DL-4662, MDEA, MDPPP, Methylone, Butylone, NEB, Phenibut, PV-8, GABA, 25B-NBF, Etaqualone, 5-API, Ethylone, Pentadrone, 4F-PVP, 25C-NBF, BZ-6378, C30-NBOMe, RH-34, MDAT, MDMA, MDMAI, Dimethocaine, Synthacaine, 3β-FBT, 5-MeO-BFE, 3,4-DMMC, AM-1248, MTTA, AM-2233, URB-597, AM-694, AM-087, BAY-38-7271, AB-005, A-796260, URB-754, 2-DPMP, a-PVP, 25N-NBOMe, 5-MeO-NiPT, Dexmethylphenidate, Buphedrone, RTI-111, Pentylone, 25I-NBF, Flourotropacocaine, Flourococaine, Cocaethylene, 25D-NBOMe, 25E-NBOMe, DMT, 5-Meo-DMT, 2C-I, 2C-E, 25I-NBOMe, 25I-NBOH, 25C-NBOMe, MXE, MDA, MDE, Mescaline, Ibogaine, Bromo-DragonFLY, Salvinorum, RU-28306, 2NE1, Psilocybin, HOT-7, JWH-018, JWH-250, 5-Meo-EiPT, AM-2201, 5-APDI, BZP, BZ, 4-MEC, MDPV, Bakers Ammonia, THC, THCv, Chloral, Chlorabutynol, MT-45, 5-Methyl-Ethylone, Methylphenidate, Ethylphenidate, 6-APB, 5-APB, Muscimol, 5-MeO-MALT, AKB48, 3,4-CTMP, PB-22, Diphenidine, UR-144, Flubromazepam, HU-210, MPA, XLR-11, MN-18, Naltrexone, STS-135, Gabapentin, 5-MAPB, Nitrous, Etizolam, Mephedrone, Pyrazolam, Methedrone, AH-7921, Phenazepam, AMT, OxyNEO, DPT, 5-MeO-AET, 4-Aco-DMT, EAM-2201, 5-MeO-DALT, 5-MeO-AMT, Acefentanyl, Ehylphenidate, 4-HO-MiPT, THJ-2201, 5-APDB, 5-EAPB, 4-HO-DPT, DOC, bk-2c-B, Escaline, THJ-018, 4-HO-MET, 2-AI, 2-MeO-Ketamine, Methoxphenidine, Ketamine, 2c-EF, Methamphetamine, Dextroamphetamine, Nitracaine, DALT, IAP, 4-fa, 2-Me-DMT, 4-fcocaine, Isopropyl Nitrate, 5-MeO-TMT, Piracetam, Amatadine, Choline, Memantine, 5-HTP, Camfetamine, Methallyescaline, LSZ, LSA, NBOMe-Mescaline, Loperamide, LSB, 25P-NBOMe, 25G-NBOMe, 3-MeO-PCE, MAM-2201, PCP, MPTP, MDAI, DOI, BB-22, EA-3167, BDF, L-Theanine, Dimethylone, Hydrocodone, Codeine, Morphine, Dilaudid, Oxycontin, Alpralozam, Diazepam, Fentanyl, Soma, Suboxone, Marinol, Seroquell, Trazodone, Lithium Bicarbonate, Abilify, Methadone, Amitriptyline, Strattera, Chloral Hydrate, Bromazepam, Buperonorphrine, Bupropion, Chlordiazepoxide, Clonidine,Clonazepam, Cyclobenzaprine, Dramamine, Benadryl, Ethchlorvynol, Fluoxetine, Tianeptine, Amineptine, Flurazepam, Metaxalone, Mirtazapine, Nalaxone, Nimetazepam, Oxymorphone, Paroxetine, Zopidone, Pregabalin, Promethazine, Risperadone, Selegiline, Sertraline, Sumatripan, Tiagabine, Propofol, Propanolol, Tiletamine, Zolpidem, Lotus, Aloe, Datura, Calendula, Chacruna, Galangal, Chaliponga, Chamomile, Damiana, Fever Few, Nightshade, Ginseng, Foxglove, Lavender, Henbane, Mugwort, Hemlock, Monkshood, Dream Herb, Capsaicin, Amanita, Hawaiian Baby Woodrose, Ergot, Hops, Imphepho, Indian Warrior, Kanna, Dagga, Kratom, Mandrake, Valerian, Nicotiana Tobacum, Nicotiana Rustica, Mimosa Hostilis, Morning Glory, Nutmeg, Opium Lettuce, Poppy, Sinicuichi, Syrian Rue, Tree Tobacco, Wormwood, Yohimbe, Yopo, Khat, Peyote, Cannabis, Catnip, Phalaris, San Pedro, Soma (ancient), Chacruna, Acacia, Ephedra, Mulungu, Mullet Fish, Siganus Spinus, Fugu, Sting-ray Venom, Bufo Alvarius, Epipedobates Tricolor, Waxy Monkey Frog, Salamandra Salamandra, Cobra & Scorpion Venom, Reindeer Urine, Glomeris Marginata, Sergeant Major, Grouper, Bluefish, Brass Beam, Flathead Mullet, Golden Goatfish, Rabbit Fish, Goat Fish, Adrafinil, DHEA, Dilantin, DMAE, Fipexide, Gerovital, Ginko, Black seed oil, HGH, Hydeigine, Meclofenoxate, Modafinil, Oxiracetam, Phenyton, Vasopressin, Vinopocetine, Bee Venom, Monkey Frog, UCM-707, AM-1172, VDM-11, VDM-13, OMDM1, OMDM2, LY-2318912, O-2093, OL-135, URB-597, URB-532, AEM, AL, ALEPH, ALEPH-2, ALEPH-4, ALEPH-6, ALEPH-7, ARIANDE, ASB, B, BEATRICE, BIS-TOM, BOB, BOH, BOHD, BOM, 4-Br-3,5-DMA, 3-Br-4,5-MDA, 2C-B, 3C-BZ, 2C-C, 2C-D, 3C-E, 2C-F, 2C-G, 2C-G-3, 2C-G-4, 2C-G-5, 2C-G-N, 2C-H, 2C-N, 2C-O-4, 2C-P, CPM, 2C-SE, 2C-T, 2C-T-4, 2C-T-2, 2C-T-7, Ψ-2C-T-4, 2C-T-8, 2C-T-9, 2C-T-13, 2C-T-15, 2C-T-17, 2C-T-21, 4-D, β-D, DESOXY, 2,4-DMA, 2,5-DMA, 3,4-DMA, DMCPA, DMMDA, DMMDA-2, DMPEA, DOAM, DOBU, DOEF, DOET, Ψ-DOM, DON, DOPR, E, EEE, EEM, EME, EMM, ETHYL-J, ETHYL-K, FLEA, G-3, G-4, G-5, GANESHA, G-N, HOT-2, HOT-17, IDNNA, IM, IP, IRIS, J, LOPHOPHINE, M, 4-MA, MADAM-6, MAL, MDAL, MDBU, MDBZ, MDCPM, MDDM, MDHOET, MDIP, MDMC, MDMEO, MDMEOET, MDMP, MDOH, MDPEA, MDPH, MDPL, MDPR, ME, MEDA, MEE, MEM, MEPEA, META-DOB, META-DOT, METHYL-DMA, METHYL-DOB, METHYL-J, METHYL-K, METHYL-MA, METHYL-MMDA-2, MMDA, MMDA-2, MMDA-3a, MMDA-3b, MP, MME, MPM, ORTHO-DOT, P, PE, PEA, PROPYNYL, SB, TA, 3-TASB, 4-TASB, Tropane, Vomeronasal Organ, Tropine, Hyosyamin, Dihydrokavain, Hyoscine, Myrcene, Ecgonine, 7-OH-DPAT, Benzoylecgonine, Sunifiram, Hydroxytropacocaine, Estrogen, Methylegonine Cinnamate, Estradiol, Catuabines, Estratetraenol, Phenyltropane, Androstenone, Civetone, Adrostenol, 5F-PB-22, Androstadienone, CBG, THCa, CBC, CBDa, Anandamide, 2-AG, CBL, CBDv, CBCv, CBGv, CBGm, Ibogaine, Noribogaine, Tabernanthine, Coronaridine, Ibogamine, Vaocangine, 18-MC, 5-MeO-Alkyltryptamine, β-Carboline, Tryptoline, Pinoline, Harmane, Harmaline, Harmine, Harmalol, Harmalan, Harmanamide, Acetylnorhormine, Bufotenin Oxide, DMT-N-Oxide, 5-MeO-Tryptamine, 5-OH-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT-Oxide, 3,4-Dimethoxyphenylamine, 6-MeO-Harman, Anethole, Safrole, Estragole, Monolignol, Pukateine, Glaucine, THP, Nantenine, Thujone, Lagochilin, Nicotine, Carbachol, Methacholine, ME-18-MC, 18-MAC, Tryptamine, β-Methyl-Phenethylamine, NMT, Voacanga Africana, Vachellia Farnesiana, Duboisia Hopwood, Acacia Victoriae, Anadenanthera Penegrina, Phalaris Aquatica, Echinopsis Lageniformus, Cylindropuntia Echinocarpa, Leptactina Densiflora, Fennel, Justica Pectoralis, Lactucarium, Glacium Flavum, Zornia Latifolia, Argemone Mexicana, Silene Undulata, Catharanthus Roseus, Desfontainia, Heimia Salicifolia, Lophophora, Sea Urchin Eggs, Bethanechol, Muscarine, Pilocarpine, Oxotremorine, Aporphine, Leonurine, Bungacotoxin, Tetrodotoxin, Taurine, Opiod Peptide, Streamlined Spinefoot, Blue-Spotted Spinefoot, Dusky Spinefoot, Marbled Spinefoot, Little Spinefoot, Salema, Phyllomedusa, Blue Sea Chub, Brow Chub, Conuict Surgeonfish, Yellowstipe Goatfish, Finstripe Goatfish, Acute Jawed Mullet, Coral Grouper, Platypus Venom, Slow Ioris Venom, Pygmy Slow Ioris Venom, Giant Leaf Frog, Gluten Exorphin, Soymorphin-5, Dermophin, 7-PET, Dimethyliambutene, Proopiomelanocortin, β-Endorphine, Dynorphin, Adrenorphin, Salvinorin B Methoxymethyl ether, Amindophin, Enkephalins, Salvinorin B ethoxymethyl ether, Opiorphin, Herkinorin, RB-101, DPI-221, Spinorphin, Kelatorphan, Delta-Pheylalanine, Thiorphan, Tynorphin, Hemorphon-4, Valorphin, Casomorphin, Gliadorphin, Rubiscolin, Deltorphin, MG6, MT-45, Myrophine, Acetorphine, Acetylmorphone, Actiq, Benzethidine, BU-48, BRL-52537, Pethidine, Naloxol, Betacetylmethadol, Methorphan, Bezitramide, RAM-378, Bromadol, Eriadoline, BW373U86, Thebaine, C-8813, Menthol, 8-CAC, Capperidine, Matrine, Chloromorphide, a-Chlorocodide, HZ-2, Codeinone, LPK-26, Codoxime, AD-1211, Conorfone, DADLE, Butorphanol, DAMGO, Semorphone, Dextromoramide, Sutentanil, Diampromide, Zenazocine, Difenoxin, Thebacon, Dihydroetorphine, Tilidene, Dimenoxadol, Xorphanol, Dipipanone, Dipropanoylmorphine, Doxpicomine, DPI-3290, Drotebanol, Endomorphin, Eseroline, Ethoheptacine, 14-Ethoxymetopon, Ethylmorphine, Etorphine, Etoxerdine, Furethidine, Heterocodeine, RAM-320, IBNtxA, IC-26, 1-Iodomorphine, Isomethadone, Ketobemidone, Ketorfanol, Lefetamine, Levorphanol, Loperamide, Meprodine, Metofoline, Metopon, Morpheridine, Morphine-N-Oxide, Morphinone, MR-2096, Nicocodeine, Nicomorphine, Normethadone, Ocefentanyl, Ohmefentanyl, Oxpheneridine, Oxymorphazone, Oxymorphol, Oxymorphone, Pentamorphone, PEPAP, Pericine, Phenadoxone, Phenempromide, Phenazocine, Pheneridrine, Phenomorphan, Picenadol, Piminodine, Piritramide, Proclilidine, Prodine, Proheptazine, Properidine, Prosidol, R-30490, R-4066, Ro4-1539, RWJ-394674, Sameridine, SC-17599, Methyldesorphine, Hydroxypethidine, 4-Fluouropethidine, Cannabis Indica, Cannabis Sativa, Cubensis, Hash, BHO, Delta-9-THC, 25TFM-NBOMe, 2C-B-BZP, 2CBFLY-NBOMe, 2CD-5Et0, 5-I-R91150, A-372,159, 2-Bromo-LSD, a-5IA, PWZ-029, L-655,708, TB-21007, 5-Ethoxy-DMT, 5-Ethyl-DMT, 7,N,N-TMT, VER-3323, YM-348, Alnespirone, 8-OH-DPAT, Aminorex, Batoprazine, 5-BT, BIMU-8, BMY-14802, BRL-54443, BW-723C86, 5-CT, CGS-12066A, Cinitapride, CJ-033,466, CP-135,807, CP-809,101, CP-93,129, CP-94,253, N,a,-DEPEA, Dimemebfe, RA-7, E-6801, E-6837, Eltoprazine, Methylsulfonylmethane, EMD-386,088, EMDT, ST-1936, Fluprazine, Indorenate, Jimscaline, L-694,247, Lasmiditan, APD-356, MMDPEA, LY-293,284, LY-310,762, LSD-pip, LPD-824, LSM-775, 5-MT, MBZP, Methyl-MMDA-2, a-MS, MK-212, Mosapride, Org 12,962, Org 37,684, Quipazine, 6-Nitroquipazine, NBUMP, 1-NP, 5-(Nonyloxy)Tryptamine, PHA-57378, PNU-181731, PNU-22394, Propylhexedrine, Prucalopride, PRX-03140, Psilocin, RDS-127, RH-34, Ro60-0175, Ro60-0213, RS-56812, RS-67,333, RU-24,969, RU-28306, SKF-97,541, SR-57227, Tandospirone, Tegaserod, TFMFly, pTMFPP, U-92,016A, SCA-136, TD-5108, Vortionetine, WAY-161503, WAY-208,466, WAY-629, Xaliproden, YM-31636, Zacopride, A-423,579, A-84,543, Abercarnil, 5-Br-DMT, Sugar, Acetildenafil AMMI 4C-D, AS-8112, Astemizole, Asymbescaline, Azapride, BAY-38-7271, BAY-59-3074, BAY-60-6583, Benproperine, Benzylmorphine, Berberine, 2-Pyrrolidone, JBIR-03(1), 1′-O-Acetylpaxilline, Penijanthine A, Emindole DA (1), Petromindole, Emindole SA (2), JWH-133, Napthylmethylindoles, Napthyolpyrroles, Napthylideneindenes, Cyclohexylphenols, Indole-2-Carboxamides, C3 Amino-Indoles, Cymserine, Hodgkinsine, Physostigmine, Psychotridine, Psychotria Colrata, Yuremamine, Gevotroline, Latrepirdine, BMY-7,378, Boldine, BP-897, Brexpiprazole, 4-Bromo-3,5-Dimethoxyamphetamine, Bromopride, Caroverine, CGS-20625, Cinchocaine, DAA-1097, DAA-1106, DOTFM, DMPEA, DMCM, Dyclonine, Ethylvanilin, Evoxine, Furoquinoline Alkaloids, Gabazine, GBLD-345, Rapacuronium, Mivacurium Chloride, Cisatracurium Besilate, DTC, Cloroqualone, Diproqualone, Mecloqualone, Methylmethaqualone, Eszopiclone, TP-003, TP-13, TPA-023, Y-23684, Pagoclone, Pazinaclone, Suproclone, Suriclone, Zapiclone, CGS-9896, NS-2664, NS-2710, Pipequaline, RWJ-51204, SB-205,384, ELB-139, Acamprosate, GABOB, N4-Chloroacetylcytosine Arabinoside, (+)-CAMP, CACA, AZD-3355, 1,4-Butanediol, XP19986, Rosarin, Rosavarin, Atagabalin, Gabapentin Enacarbit, Hopantenic Acid, Imagabalin, 4-Methylpregabalin, PD-217,014, Afloqualone, Rocuronium Bromide, Vecuronium Bromide, Pipecuronium Bromide, Pancuronium Bromide, Amyl Nitrate, Atracurium Besilate, BWA444, Benzylisoqualone, Papaverine, Protopine, HS-342, HS-347, HS-310, Emylcamate, Eperisone, Febarbamate, Flavoxate, Inaperisone, Acamprosate, Progabide, Tiagabine, Lanperisone, Mephenesin, HS-692, HS-693, HS-704, HS-705, HS-626, Chlorzoxazone, Cisatracurium Besilate, Curare, Cyclobenzapine, Dantrolene, Decamethonium, Difebarbamate, Dihydrochanclonium, Doxacurium Chloride, Gallamine Triethiodide, Gantacurium Chloride, Hexafluronium Bromide, Meprobamate, Metaxalone, Methocarbamol, Norgesic, Orphenadrine, Pancuronium Bromide, Phenprobamate, Pipecuronium Bromide, Premazepam, Promoxolane, Quazepam, Rocuronium Bromide, Silperisone, Sulazepam, Suxamethonium Chloride, Suxethonium Chloride, Tetrabamate, Tizanidine, Tolperisone, Gigantine, BAY-73-6691, Indiplon, Nitrosoprodenafill, Zaleplon, Udenafil, Sulfoaildenafill, Sildenafil, Ocinaplon, Alpidem, Bamaluzole, DS-1, Fadrozole, Fazadinium Bromide, Imidazopyridine, Minodronic Acid, Bisphosphonate, Miroprofen, Necopidem, AL-LAD, DBT, a.O-DMS, 2,a-DMT, a,N-DMT, ETH-LAD, a-ET, 4-HO-DBT, 4-HO-pyr-T, MBT, 4,5-MDO-DIPT, 5,6-MDO-DIPT, 4,5-MDO-DMT, 5,6-MDO-DMT, 5,6-MDO-MIPT, 5,6-MeO-MIPT, 5-MeO-pyr-T, 5-MeO-NMT, 6-MeO-THH, 5-MeS-DMT, PRO-LAD, pyr-T, a,N,O-TMS, Olprinone, Telcagepant, Febrifugine, Halofuginone, MK-0249, LY-156,735, Ramelteon, Tasimelteon, SL-164, Quinazoline, Albaconazole, Altaserin, ATC-0175, Canertinib, Cediranib, Doxazosin, Fluproquazone, Gefitinib, Katanserin, Lapatinib, Agmatine, Amantadine, AP-7, AP5, Aptiganel, CGP-37849, 7-CTKA, DCKA, DXO, MK-801, SL-82.0715, Esketamine, Ethanol, NEFA, Besonprodil, Gacyclidine, Gavestinel, Huperzine A, Ifenprodil, Indantadol, Metaphit, Memantine, LY-235,959, Lubeluzole, Levomethadone, Kynuretic Acid, Midafotel, Neramexane, Nitromemantine, PEAQX, Perzinfotel, 8A-PHDQ, Remacemide, Rhynchophylline, Sabeluzole, Tiletamine, Tramadol, Xenon, Hydroxchloroquine, Antrafenine, Bedaquiline, GSK-299423, JTC-801, JTE-907, LGD-2226, PBT-2, PF-2545920, SB-215,505, SB-277,011-A, SB-742,457, BHF-177, BHFF, BSPP, Cartazolate, CGP-7930, Clomethiazole, Etazolate, Etomidate, Felbamate, Fospropofol, Gaboxadol, Glutethimide, GS-39783, Ibotenic Acid, ICI-190,622, Isoguracine, Isonipecotic Acid, Loreclezole, Methyprylone, Allopregnanolone, 5a-Dihydroprogesterone, Progesterone, THDOC, Alfadolone, Alfaxalone, Ganaxolone, Hydroxydione, Minaxolone, Org-20599, Pregnane, Piperadone, Propanidid, Propofol, Pyrithyldione, ROD-188, Stiripentol, Thiomuscimol, Thymol, Tybamate, QNB (BZ), Scopolamine, Midazolam, Sodium Pentathol, Amobarbital, Blue 88, Adinazolam, Alphenal, Bentazepam, Bromisoval, Camazepam, Carbromal, Centalun, Chloralodol, Chronobiotic, Cinolazepam, Clorazepate, Cloxazolam, Cyclopyrrolones, Delorazepam, Dichloralphenazone, DPH, Doxefazepam, Doxylamine, Embutramide, Eplivaserin, Ethinamate, Ethyl Ioflazepate, Fludiazipam, Heptabarb, Oleamide, Org 21465, Org 25435, Paraldehyde, Phenobarbital, Propiomazine, Promethazine, Propylbarbital, QH-II-66, Glycine, Quetiapine, SH-053-R-CH3-2’F, Sulfonmethane, Tetrabarbital, Tetronal, Trional, Trytophol, Acaprazine, Acebrochal, Acetylglycinamide Chloral, Almorexant, Detomidine, Bromouriede, Benzoctamine, Barakol, Bekhterev’s Mixture, Fasiplon, Fenadiazole, Fluperlapine, JM-1232, Inebriating Mint, Ro41-3696, Methapyrilene, Minitran, Nisobamate, Oxanamide, Oxomemazine, Panadiplon, Pazinaclone, Pentabamate, Petrichloral, Potassium Bromide, Procymate, Saripidem, Vinybital, Vinbarbital, Valofane, Validolum, Valeric Acid, Unisom, U-90042, U-89843A, Triclofos, 2,2,2-Trichloroethanol, TCS-OX2-29, SX-3228, Suvorexant, Sigmodal, SB-649,868, 6-APA, 77-LH-28-1, Adimolol, Alfentanil, Amedanil, Amedalin, BMS-564,929, Binospirone, Carburazepam, Clazolam, Clobazam, Clobenzepam, Clotiazepam, Thienodiazepine, Brotizolam, CP-14145, Cyclazodone, CSP-2503, Cycloserine, Cytisine, Demoxepam, Chlordizepoxide, Dibenzepin, Dihydroergocorine, Dihydroergocristine, DHEC, Dihydroergotamine, 17-DMAG, Dimiracetam, Doliracetam, Droperidol, Dihydrotestosterone, Dutasteride, Edaravone, EGIS-12,233, Elfazepam, Elzasonan, Enilospirone, Ergoloid, Ergotamine, Ergocrytine, Ergocristine, Ergovaline, Etazepine, Evodiamine, Fenmetramide, Fenozolone, Flunitrazepam, Flutazolam, Flutemazepam, Flutoprazepam, Fosazepam, GW-803,430, Halazepam, Haloxazolam, Herbimycin, Horsfiline, HT-0712, Icilin, Clazepam, Indoprofen, Ipsapirone, Isatin, Ketazolam, KF-26777, Lofendazepam, Lopirazepam, Loprazolam, Lorazepam, Lormetazepam, Menitrazepam, Meclonazepam, Menitrazepam, NMSP, Mexazolam, THCI, THCII, THCIII, THCIV, THCV, Mosapramine, Motrazepam, NBQX, Nevirapine, Nimetazepam, Nitrazepam, Nitrazepate, Nitroxazepine, Nordazepam, Nortetrazepam, Oxazepam, Oxatomide, Paliperidone, Prazepam, Pivoxazepam, Pirquinozol, Pirenzepine, Pinazepam, Pemoline, Paraxazone, Palonosterone, Proflazepam, Propizepine, Razobazam, Revospirone, Ripazepam, Ro15-4513, Ro48-6791, Ro48-8684, Ro5-2904, Ro5-4864, Ro64-6198, Ropinirole, RPL-554, RS-102,221, SL65.0155, Spiroxatrine, Temazepam, Tetrazepam, Thozalinone, Tolufazepam, Triflubazam, Vardenafil, Ziprasidone, Zolazepam, Zomebazam, Zometapine, Pyrazolodiazipines, Triazolodiazipines, Estazolam, Flubromazolam, Triazolam, Nitrobenzodiazepines, Pentazocine, 8-HO-PBZI, A-366,833, ABT-202, Sympathomimethies, ABT-239, ABT-418, Almotriptan, BD-1008, LR-132, BD-1031, Singma Agonists, BD-1018, 4-PPBP, Alazocine, BD-1052, Butinoline, Clemizole, CPHPC, Desoxy-D2PM, Citalopram, Ditolyguanidine, Escitalopram, Fluoxetine, Fluvoxamine, Tgmesine, L-697,384, PRE-084, S33005, SA-4503. Siramesine, Venlafaxine, Clonidine, VUT-8430, UR-AK49, Moroxydine, Altinicline, Anabasine, 3-Bromocytine, Bradanicline, Cotinine, Desformylflustrabromine, Dianicline, DMPP, Epibatidine, Epiboxidine, Lobeline, Myosmine, PNU-120,596, PNU-282,987, ABT-089,Rivanicline, RJR-2429, Phantasmidine, Sazetidine A, SIB-1553A, TC-1698, TC-1827, TC-2216, Tebanicline, 2,3,4,5-Tetrahydro-1,5-Methano-1H-3-Benzazepine, UB-165, Varenicline, FE-β-CPPIT, FB-β-CPPIT, RTI-336, NVP-AUY922, Pleconaril, RTI-177, RTI-371, Calea Ternifolia, African Dream Herb, Ambutonium Bromide, Hyoscamine, Ilex Guayusa, Abediterol, Aclidinium Bromide, Benzilycholine Mustard, Bevonium, Bornaprine, Cyanodothiepin, Darifenacin, Dexetimide, Dicycloverine, Etybenzatropine, Fenpiverinium, Fesoterodine, Homatropine, Hydroxyzine, Imidafenacin, Ipratropium Bromide, Methylatropine, Methylhomatropine, Octatropine Methylbromide, PD-0298029, PD-102,807, Pipenzolate, Piperidolate, Tiotropium Bromide, Anisodine, Benacytazine, Butylscopolamine, CAR-226,086, CAR-301,060, CAR-301,196, Caramiphen, Clidinium Bromide, Ditran, EA-3167, EA-3443, EA-3580, EA-3834, JB-318, JB-336, Methylscoplamin Bromide, Oxapium Iodide, Oxitropium Bromide, Polyfothine, Propiverine, Pyrrobutamine, Timepidium Bromide, Tridihexethyl, Tropatepine, WIN-2299, Amrutanjan, Abstral, Acetylmethadol, Acetyldihydrocodeine, Alletorphine, Anilopam, Axomadol, BC Powder, Befiradol, Benorilate, Betamethadol, Bicifadine, Butinazocine, Carbazocine, Celadrin, Chlorodyne, Cinchophen, Co-dydramol, Co-codamal, Cogazocine, Conolidine, Deltorphin I, Dezocine, Dimepheptanol, Dipyrocetyl, TRPV1 Receptor, Capsazepine, Dosulepin, Electroanalgesia, Epideral Steroid Injection, Eptazocine, Equianalgesic, Efazocine, Fedotozine, Filenadol, Fioricet, Fiorinal, Frakefamide, Hemprenorphine, 3-HM, Ibazocine, Levallorphan, Levomepromazine, Lufuradom, Magnesium Salicylate, Blue Prickly Poppy, Menabitan, A-40174, Dimethylhepylpyran, Metamizole, Metkefamide, Moramide, Morphiceptin, Moxazocine, Nafoxadol, Malmexone, Naproxen, Nefopam, Nimesulide, Naracymethadol, Norlevorphanol, Norpipanone, NS-11394, Panadol, Penthox Inhaler, Phenacetin, Phenazone, Phenazopyridine, Propyphenazone, Proxorphan, Resiniferatoxin, Rimazolium, Romifidine, RUB-A535, Salecylamide, Salonpas, Tectin, Tolfenamic Acid, Tenazocine, Ufenamate, Volazocine, Xylazine, Yangonin, Zinda Tilismath, Ziconotide, Anazocine, Bremazocine, Cyclazocine, EKC, Fluorophen, Gemazocine, Ketazocine, Metazocine, Quadazocine, Azocine, Benzazocine, 0-2545, DOU-216,303, Phenylethylpyrrolidine, GR-89696, HA-966, ICI-199,441, ICI-204,448, NNN, Nornicotine, Clemastine, PF-03654746, RTI-229, SB-269,970, U-50488, U-69,593, Bombesin, Bivaracetam, Cebaracetam, DEABL, Cromakalim, Doxapram, Dupracetam, Etiracetam, Fasoracetam, Imuracetam, Levetiracetam, Lidanserin, Nebracetam, Nefiracetam, Nicoracetam, Oxiracetam, Piperacetam, Seletracetam, MOPPP, MPBP, MPHP, MDPDP, MDPPP, Pyrovalone, a-PBP, a-PPP, Neuropeptides, Galanin, Neuropeptide Y, Enkephalin, Somatoslatin, CCK, Substance P, Neurotensin, TRH, Acepramazine, Aceprometazine, Acetanisol, Acetohexamide, Acetophenazine, Acetophenone, Acetosyringoine, 2-Acetylpyridine, Adrenalone, Anthrone, Apocynin, Avobenzone, Benzbromarone, Benziodarone, Benzoin, Butaperazine, CB-13, AM-6545, AZ-11713908, WIN-54,461, JWH-200, WIN-56,098,S-796,260, AM-1220, AM-1221, AM-1241, AM-2233, AM-630, AAI’s, CPE, GW-405,833, JWH-193, JWH-198, JWH-007, 3-Acetyl-6-Methoxybenzaldehyde, Aflobazole, AR-A000002, Azasestron, Bazinaprine, 3-Benzhydrylmorpholine, BML-190, Cobicistat, CYT387, Desmethylmoramide, Dioxaphetyl Butyrate, Edivoxetine, Epelsiban, Demoxytocin, Carbetocine, WAY-267,464, Atosiban, Eprobemide, L-371,257, L-368,899, Quinagolide, Terbutaline, 2CB-ind, 5-APDI, APICA, Donepezil, ICI-118,551, Indatraline, Indinavir, Ladostigil, Mutisianthol, PNU-99,194, S-15535, TAI, Zicronapine, Aleglitazar, Thromboxame Receptor Agonist, Verruculogen, Brevianamide, 2,5-DKP, Fellutanine, Phenylahistine, Plinabulin, Rugulosuvine, Fedrilate, Fenbutrazate, L-733,060, G-130, HC3, Indeloxazine, Levomoramide, Metostilenol, Molindone, Molracetam, Nimorazole, O-1057, O-1812, AM-2232, O-774, AM-2389, HHC, HU-243, Canbisol, Nabilone, 11-OH-THC, 2-AGE, Paxahexyl, THC-C4, AMG-36, AMG-41, AM-1235, AM-906, AM-365, O-2694, O-2372, O-2113, O-2050, VCHSR, TM-38837, PiplSB, PF-514273, MK-9470, LY-320,135, O-2545, PD-128,907, PF-219,061, ABT-670, ABT-742, UK-414,495, OSU-6162, Melanotan II, Oxaflozane, PF-592,379, 2-Phenyl-3,6-Dimethylmorpholine, Pramocaine, SCH-50911, 4-HTMPIPO, A-41988, AB-001, AB-005, ADBICA, AM-087, AM-411, KM-233, AM-679, AM-694, AM-855, AM-905, AM-919, AM-4030, AM-938, AM-251, AMG-1, AR-231,453, PSN-375,963, PSN-632,408, (C6)-CP-47,497, CCH, O-1871, CP-55,940, CP-47,497, CP-50,556’1, CP-55,244, Otenabant, (C9)-CP-47,497, CBS-0550, AVE-1625, GW-842,166x, HU-308, HU-336, HU-331, HU-320, Ajulemic Acid, JTE-7-31, A-834,735, MDA-19, S-444,823, JTE-907, JWH-015, JWH-019, JWH-030, JWH-047, JWH-048, JWH-051, JWH-057, JWH-081, SLV319, 2-Isopropyl-5-Methyl-1-(2,6-dihydroxy-4-nonphenyl)cyclohex-1-ene, HU-345, JWH-098, JWH-116, JWH-120, JWH-122, JWH-147, JWH-148, JWH-149, JWH-161, JWH-164, JWH-167, JWH-175, JWH-176, JWH-184, JWH-185, JWH-196, JWH-203, JWH-249, JWH-302, JWH-307, JWH-359, JWH-398, JWH-424, L-759,633, L-759,656, GW-405,833, Leelamine, NESS-0327, NESS-040C5, NMP-7, Nonabine, O-1125, O-1238, O-1269, O-806, O0823, Org-27569, Org-28312, LBP-1, Org-28611, Otenabant, Perrottetinene, PF-03550096, RCS-4, RCS-8, Rosonbrant, SDB-001, SDB-006, SER-601, Serinolamide A, THC-O-Phosphate, Tinabinol, VDM-11, Virohamine, A77636, Adafenoxate, Adapromine, Adatanserin, Bolmantalate, Bromantane, SR-142,948, 25B-NBOMe, 25I-NBMB, 25TFM-NBOMe, 5-MeO-NBpBiT, 2CBCB-NBOMe, 25CN-NBOH, Juncosamine, TCB-2, 6-Br-APB, Agelferin, Cridazepam, Meta-DOB, NGD-4715, Nicergoline, P7C3, SB-357,134, Sclerotia Truffle, 5-Flouro-aMT, 6-Flouro-aMT, Telepathine, AMDA, Amperozide, Cinaserin, Deramciclane, Fenanserin, Flibanserin, Glemanserin, Iferanserin, KML-010, LY-367,265, Pruvanserin, Rauwolscine, Setoperone, Spiperone, Volinanserin, Xlamidine, Altropane, ATI-2042, PIA, RTI-121, RTI-353, Tramethinib, SB-258,585, Lu-AE58054, MS-245, Ro04-6790, SB-271,046, SB-399,885, RTI-55, AC-262,356, 2′-Acetoxycocaine, Bemestron, Benzoylthiomethylecogine, Brasofesine, 2-CMT, Clobenztropine, Cocaethylene, Deptropine, Dichloropane, Diflouropine, Granisetron, 3-(p-Flourobenzoyloxy)tropane, p-ISOCOC, Methylvanillylecogonine, Norcocaine, NS-2359, RTI-126, WF-23, WF-33, WF-31, WF-11, BRL-46470, RTI-112, RTI-113, RTI-120, RTI-150, RTI-171, RTI-274, RTI-31, RTI-32, RTI-51, RTI-83, Thiophenyltropanes, MAT Inhibitor, Salicylmethylecgonine, Tesofesine, Troparil, WIN-35428, Amfonelic Acid, Oxolinc Acid, Tropisetron, Zatosetron, Dichloropane, RTI-336, RTI-126, Tropoxane, Poyo (Palm Wine), Tropicamide, Caffetin, Formic acid, Monocled Cobra, Sisa, Tramadol, Dazopride, Dolasetron, Amylocaine, Articaine, Bupivacaine, Butacaine, Chloroprocaine, Cyclomethycaine, Etidocaine, Hexylcaine, Levobupivacaine, Mepivacaine, Meprylcaine, Prilocaine, Proxymetacaine, Risocaine, Ropivacaine, Tetracaine, Trimecaine, Piperocaine, Metabutoxycaine, Adipiplon, Almitrine, ARRY-520, AZD5423, Cisapride, CP-226,269, CRL-40,941, DBL-583, Dexamethasone, DFMD, Methyldopa, Carbidopa, d-DOPA, L-DOPS, Octaflourocyclobutane, DFB, Didesmethylcitalopram, Elopiprazole, Phenylpiprazine, F-15,599, FGIN-127, Fletazepam, Flucindole, GR-159,897, LY-503,430, MPPF, PEPA, RS-127,445, S-23, SHA-68, SNAP-7941, SNAP-94847, TP-003, TPA-023, UH-301, Calycosin, Flavinoids, Psi-Tectorigenin, Blochanin A, Formononetin, Glyciten, Irigenin, Methoxyisoflavone, 5-O-Methylgenistein, 7-O-Methylluteone, Ononin, Pratensein, Prunetin, Retusin, Tectoridin, Tectorigenin, Barbigerone, Daidzein, Derrubone, Genistein, Ipriflavone, Irilone, Luteone, Orobol, Psuedobaotigenin, Wighteone, AMG-3, Nabazenil, Naboctate, a-Napthoflavone, 11-Nor-9-Carboxy-THC, Pirnabine, Apiol, Dillapiol, 1,3-Benzodioxole, Piperonal, beta-Asarone, Eleicin, Homovanyllyl Alcohol, Myristicin, 2-Bromo-4,5-Methylenedioxyamphetamine, Californidine, Chavicine, Cinoxacin, Dibutylone, Fenoverine, Befuraline, MDIP, MDMAI, MDPR, MDAL, ORTHO-MDA, MDP1P, MDP2P, Omiloxetine, Osemozotan, Piclozotan, Robalzotan, Ebalzotan, Sarlzotan, Piperine, Protokylol, Isoprenaline, Rhoeadine, MDMPEA, MMDPEA, MMDMPEA, MDIP, MDHOET, MDPL, GYKI-52895, Ungiminorine, NADA, Methylene blue, ECG, EGCG, EGC, Levonantradol, Cone Snail Venom, A-836,339, Abacavir, CYP-LAD, 2-Bromo-LSD, BU-LAD, DAM-57, DAL, Epicriptine, Ergometrine, Ergometrinine, Ergostine, ETH-LAD, LEA-32, Methylergometrine, MLD-41, LSP, LSH, MIPLA, PARGY-LAD, PRO-LAD, DCG-IV, DOV-102,677, MDCPM, MNTX, Amfonelic acid, J-113,397, SB-612,111, VUF-6002, DBM, Piberatine, Ilercimide, Dithranol, Divaplon, Ebastine, Flopropione, Iloperidone, Ketorolac, Melperone, NNC-38-1044, Tetralone, Cuscohydrine, Hygrine, 4-NEMD, Aceburic Acid, Amfecloral, Aprobarbital, Arfendazam, Benzobarbital, Benzylbutylbarbituate, Brallobarbital, Brophebarbital, Buthalitol, Carbubarb, Climazolam, Cyclobarbital, Cyclopentobarbital, and Acid (i.e. regular LSD).\n(source)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/03/08/making-amazing-recreational-drug-cocktails/", "title": "Making Amazing Recreational Drug Cocktails", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-03-09T05:20:37+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=8", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "90753e1cdd433a9291a7c25cbaea3313", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualiascope\n\n[Epistemic status: Fiction]\nIt was the 21st of April of a recent year. I was listening to Jefferson Airplane songs, had just peeled a tangerine, and was about to vape 20 milligrams of DMT. After exhaling all the material I focused on the smell of the tangerine, holding it in my hands. I was engrossed in the scent. And then: “Who is that?” I felt an entity question my identity, as if I had just startled it in its natural habitat. I felt its presence for most of the duration of the trip, but it didn’t interact with me any further. Later that night I had a lucid dream. “I thought you were a dog” – said a voice. I recognized it from the trip, it was the entity. “The amount of scent qualia your experience contained was much more like that of a dog than a human.” After that night I would encounter it numerous other times. We got to know each other. It is a being from a nearby dimension, or perhaps a partially orthogonal fold of the Calabi-Yau manifold. Either way, in its world they don’t have physical senses like we do. They instead “sniff the qualia” present in the “universal wavefunction”. Their minds have a “qualiascope”. In practice this means they can see us from the inside– what we feel, see, touch, think, etc.\nThe being showed me what it is like to be one of them. We mindmelded the third time we met. I got to see the world around me as if for the first time; I was seeing it in its ultimate intrinsic nature, rather than as the shadow of it that I would perceive in everyday life with my senses. The qualia of other people is very intricate, semantically complex, and flavorful. The being showed me how it perceived various human contexts. For instance, an interesting place to “point the qualiascope at” is a philosophy department. It is very dense with logico-linguistic qualia and recursion. Compared to other contexts, though, it is thin in knowledge of the varieties of experiences available to humans. Raves are quite incredible. Sniffing the qualia of three thousand people who all share a general palette of LSD, Ketamine, and MDMA qualia is quite moving and mind-blowing. In turn, Buddhist monasteries are some of the sanest places on Earth. Bright, balanced, energized clarity of the finest quality is to be found in groups of people highly experienced in meditation. Every once in a while we would sense from afar a kind of “qualia explosion”. Sometimes it turned out to be extremely blissful, such as some 5-MeO-DMT experiences. And sometimes they turned out to be extremely painful, like a cluster headache episode. With the qualiascope these were sensed as being a kind of elemental type of qualia. Enormous in their “volume” relative to the experiences humans generally have. Like at another order of magnitude altogether.\nThe tenth time we met, the being said I was ready to feel non-human qualia. It was rough. From its point of view, the biological qualia of this planet is not really particularly human-flavored. As many humans alive as there are, there are almost ten times as many pigs alive. The being showed me how in the language of their world (using qualia-based symbols), they don’t refer to this planet as “human world”. They talk about it as “cow-chicken-pig world”. The things that I felt associated to some of those “folds of experience” were frightful to an incredible extent. It revived in me the conscience that nonhuman animals suffer enormously. I also became fascinated by all the ways in which nonhuman animals experience pleasure and a sense of meaning.\nThe twentieth time we met, I was shown what the qualia of non-living matter felt like from the inside. Most of it was “qualia dust”. But metals and their delocalized electrons felt, well, “electric” and somewhat more liquid and unified in a subtle ethereal way. Pointing the qualiascope at the center of the Earth was impressive. Some of the combinations of pressure, temperature, and material composition would create “qualia spaghetti” of a rather nice, glowing valence. The temperature would suggest a much higher degree of intrinsic intensity from the inside, but the patterns of qualia formed were not much more intense than what you would find in small animals. But that all changes as soon as you point the qualiascope at the sun. Oh boy. The things I felt were life-redefining. I thought that once you’ve felt what 5-MeO-DMT is capable of you’d maxed out on the brightness of qualia. But inside the sun, at the core, there are qualia aggregates of a subjective brightness at least a million times more powerful. Once you’ve got an inkling of the existence of that, you start to see the universe as they see it. And that is that the kind of stuff going on in places like the planet Earth is a rounding error in light of the other qualia happenings out there in the cosmos.\nThe hundredth or so time we met, we used the qualiascope to sense what is going on in supernovae. And then black holes. And the quantum vacuum (turns out the Zero Point Energy folks who say there is an enormous amount of energy in the vacuum of space are more right than they can even imagine). They showed me qualiascope records of past civilizations in other galaxies, and how they had developed qualia technology.\nThe two hundredth time or so we met, the being finally came out about his real interest. It showed me Hedonium. Matter and energy optimized for maximally bound positive valence. Turns out there are about seven thousand nearly optimal configurations for Hedonium possible with our laws of physics (cf. 230 Space Groups). They are kind of ultra-high dimensional crystalline bundles of “awakened qualia”, equanimity, and bright pleasure all combined. They truly feel like “what it was all meant to be all along”. The Big Bang, the Inflationary Period, Baryonic matter, galaxies, organic molecules, life, sapient beings, and technologized qualia all seemed like the path of redemption since The Fall, namely, our first descent from Hedonium. Or so my archetype-prone human mind liked to interpret my new understanding of the universe.\nThe being finally came through with its agenda. It turns out it is one of the protectors of the Hedonium created by an advanced civilization in other partially orthogonal folds of the Calabi-Yau manifold. The closest archetype in our human world would perhaps be that of the Buddhist Bodhisattva. Namely, a being close to enlightenment that vows to stay in samsara to liberate all other beings before itself escaping the wheel of suffering entirely. My interdimensional Bodhisattva friend told me that our world is on the path of creating qualia technologies too. That in geologic times we are not far from being able to make Hedonium ourselves. It said we should not feel hopeless. That we have really good chances of exiting our Darwinian predicament. Since a year ago I have’t had any contact with it. I write this for myself as I don’t expect anyone to believe me. But I do pass along the message. Don’t lose hope. Paradises beyond the imaginable are right next door in qualia space. We just need to find them by exploring the state-space of consciousness.\nOh, my Bodhisattva friend also told me to pass along to you all the message of “If you could possibly stop eating Caroline Reapers, that would be great!” because all of that intense spicy qualia is interfering with their radio systems. Thanks!\n\nSee also: What’s out there?", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/02/23/qualiascope/", "title": "Qualiascope", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-02-23T22:58:06+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=8", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "90b5e37a3fb59d19cee402b9809e0fd8", "summary": []}
{"text": "Perfumery as an Art Form\n\nAbout 3% of the population is anosmic, meaning that they cannot perceive scents. An additional 10% have some kind of smell or taste disorder. Sadly, scent perception thins out with age due to many causes*; about 23% of people over the age of 40 report some degree of impairment, with nearly 40% of people over the age of 80 reporting either absent or severely reduced capacity to perceive smells.\nIf you can experience scents in a normal way, count yourself lucky, for you have access to a qualia variety with an incredible aesthetic potential. If not, I’m sorry; let’s hope that stem cell therapy used to restore smell in mice can be generalized to humans. Regardless, hopefully the following thoughts on the artistic potential of scents won’t fall on deaf ears (or should we say, anosmic noses?).\nImagine that all humans were congenitally anosmic. Akin to David Pearce’s allegory of the blind rationalists, let’s picture a world in which the only way to experience scent qualia was through the use of some arcane technology, like weird drugs, occult magic, or carefully aimed transcranial ultrasound stimulation. Since the qualia would not be triggered by a conventional sense, people would not be under the illusion that it maps to external objects. It would be understood as a strictly internal phenomenon, like imagination or sense of humor. With such an interpretive blank slate, how would people make sense of scent qualia?\nKeep that thought in your mind. Having a fresh look (or sniff) at scent qualia- devoid of its common associations and cultural imports- can give us a way to think in new ways about the artistic potential of this aspect of experience.\nPerfumery as an Art Form\nLast year we presented QRI‘s take on art: Harmonic Society is an essay published in a Berlin-based art magazine that exposes 8 models for what art can be about (see parts 2, 3, 4; video presentation). These models can also be used as generators of creative applications of qualia varieties. Here we’ll discuss how perfumes could be seen through the lens of each of these models.\n1. Semantic Deflation\nThe semantic deflation model of art claims that the first step you need to take to understand art is to recognize that it lacks an essence. There are no strict necessary and sufficient conditions that something needs to meet in order to be art. The meaning of the term is ultimately conventional: it has more of a family resemblance pattern of usage than a precise logic-bound set of criteria. Applying this model to perfumery, we would have that:\n\nThere is no such thing as a “perfume” in and of itself.\nThere are no necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be called a perfume.\nThe resulting aesthetic from this model is one that sees the art of perfumery as the eternal search for trying to push the boundary for what a “perfume can be”.\n\nSome examples of this aesthetic seemingly playing out in the open include perfumes that smell like: popcorn, lobster, linen and Air Aroma‘s new fragrance that recreates “the scent of an Apple product being opened for the first time.”\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2. Weapons of Sexual Conquest\nWeapons of sexual conquest refers to the use of instruments to signal genetic fitness in one form or another: conspicuous consumption/taste-signaling, and aphrodisiac response.\nConspicuous Consumption\nYou see, smells are at times used in a slightly evil way. In the case of commercial perfumes, part of the optimization function includes generating envy in others. Conspicuous consumption and brand worship are some of the ways in which our mating mind has recruited scents. In a sense, I would love to explore ways in which scent-based art can deliver high-valence results without at the same time reinforcing consumerism and zero-sum fashion arms races. In brief:\n\nThere is unfortunately an in-built zero-sum mindset to status-focused scent design.\nThe “game” is easy to rationalize when you are a “winner”, but it is depressive for people who perceive themselves as the “losers”.\nOne of the core weapons of this game is the creation of envy with perceived exclusivity and inflated sense of quality (e.g massively overpriced fragrances).\n“Cool Kids” are people who translate new ideas into massively consumable products.\nCool Kids in perfumery will always want to claim that they have the exclusive “secret sauce” to explain the price.\nThe existence of such “secret sauce” is often justified based on appeals to tradition, taste, status, experience, brand, and/or science.\nCool Kids make sure that the product is “novel enough” – not too out there that only weird people would love it, but also not too bland and unoriginal that the general public will be bored by it.\n\nExpensive perfumes have to be at least somewhat distinctive – even if that makes them suboptimal. You’ll see that Fragrantica is full of reviews that complain that such and such perfume is in fact “too generic”. The reason is that if you are paying large sums of money for a smell, the only way it will pay off in terms of social signaling is if people can in fact notice what you are wearing.\nSome examples of relatively expensive fragrances of ultra-mass appeal that are exactly in the right Cool Kid window for novelty and distinctiveness include Sauvage by Dior, Boss by Hugo Boss, Mr. Burberry Indigo by Burberry, The One by Dolce & Gabbana, and Bleu de Chanel:\n\nA particularly noteworthy example of this dynamic might be the case of Aventus Creed. It is by no means a weird fragrance (it’s certainly not a “toast” or “popcorn” perfume), but people who are very into perfumes do agree that when it first came out “it smelled like nothing that had ever existed before.” If you read the Fragrantica reviews you’ll see what I’m talking about. It also happens to be an insanely expensive fragrance for no apparent reason. It’s therefore a great tool for conspicuous consumption, masterfully crafted by a Cool Kid aiming for mass appeal.\n\n\nI personally own an “Aventus Creed clone“, meaning that it is a perfume that smells very similar to the original but can cost a fraction of the price. Aventus costs $400 while the one I own is under $20. I like it, but if it is anything like the original, I can’t imagine it being that good to justify the price tag on its qualia merits alone. In terms of phenomenology, as far as I can tell, Aventus innovated by mixing pineapple scent with the scent of birch bark. This does make it characteristic, true, but is it really $400 worth of characteristic? No, I’m pretty sure it isn’t. So this one might be a clear case of a mating mind perfume over-rating in action (P.S. I’m on the lookout for more perfumes with inflated scores that have cheap clones in order to study this phenomenon more closely).\nAphrodisiac Response\nTaken to the extreme, attempts at creating maximally erotic scents draw inspiration from literal human sexual organs. Secretions Magnifiques by Etas Libre d’Orange, for example, recreates the smell of semen with seaweed, milk, iris, coconut, opoponax, and sandalwood. It has a score of 1.88 out of 5 based on 890 votes, perhaps because it smells kind of bad. It sports reviews like:\n“Smell of sweat, sewage and semen. Each sniff is an offense and an ordeal, a probation of resistance. Impossible to do a complete test – full wear, I only got 3 sprays on my wrist and 5 min. after doing this review I rubbed my wrist with soap like there was no tomorrow.” – marcel2782, at Fragrantica.com\n\n\n\n\nNeedless to say, playing out the erotic in scent form is a delicate matter that requires a fine balance between numerous forces. For example, the smell of Classic Blue by David Beckham can smell a bit like a male crotch, but it also smells like pineapple, grapefruit, and clary sage. This allows for plausible deniability and erotic versatility. Even if you are attracted to men, as long as you are not sexually aroused you will probably just notice its fruity notes. But if you are in the heat of passion, it will probably smell very sexy. The same with numerous women’s perfumes, such as Eros by Versace and Guilty by Gucci.\nA final thought on the aphrodisiac power of fragrances: you may notice that the vast majority of fragrances that are advertised with campaigns with erotic undertones are primarily geared towards a heterosexual audience. With rare exceptions, even perfume ads that are suggestively homoerotic still seem to work around a heterosexual premise.\nI suspect that indeed there are statistical-level differences in what turns people on, not only between genders, but between the shades of sexual orientation. After all, some academic theories of sexual orientation do suggest that pheromone-based arousal differences contribute to which gender a person is attracted to. I posit that from a scientific point of view, if the matter were to be studied rigorously, we would indeed find differences at a statistical aggregate level on what fragrances turn people on depending on their gender and sexual orientation. Although this remains a contentious topic, I think that it is a shame that it has not been explored in any rigorous way. Aphrodisiac scents can be life-enriching; gay people might be underserved in the eroticism-of-aroma department. Pragmatically, it would be good for gay people to know which fragrance will load the dice in their favor when going out clubbing. A concrete example is that if indeed gay men do not like the scent of straight men (and instead prefer the scent of other gay men) then it may not be a good idea to wear typical male pheromone perfumes for a night out. Take note: at least according to a Fragrantica forum entry from someone in Indonesia, the main “gay fragrances” there are:  Thierry Mugler by A*Men, Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier, Power by Kenzo, 1 Million by Paco Rabanne, and Magnetism by Escada.\n3. Creation of New Social Contexts\nThe core idea of this model is that art can be understood as a tool to create new social contexts. Beyond the sex appeal of expensive perfumes due to their status implications, perfumes can also be used to invent new interpersonal gestalts. As Kevin Simler argues in Ads Don’t Work That Way, advertisement modifies the landscape of cultural meaning, which in part is responsible for the ways products allow you to communicate information about yourself to others.\n\nFor example: Nautica Voyage is, of course, as much selling you the felt-sense of a social context as it is selling you scent qualia. Care to join the crew on a trip across the Atlantic, make our own rules, and live a journey of camaraderie and bonding? Each sniff of Voyage takes you on a trip with imaginary friends. Alas, as an Amazon top-seller it fails to appeal to Hipster sensibilities. What do I mean by “Hipster” here?\nUnlike Cool Kids, Hipsters tend to obsess over a highly-specific aspect they deeply care about. Nerds are to Geeks what Hipsters are to Cool Kids. Meaning, much akin to how a Nerd is driven by a burning curiosity about the world while a Geek is usually concerned about the social applications of niche knowledge, Hipster aesthetic exploration is done out of a fundamental desire to know the limits of an art form while Cool Kids are thinking more about how to use art to raise their own status. Thus, while not widely consumable by a mainstream audience, Hipster aesthetics lend themselves to fundamental artistic innovation. In brief:\n\nHipsters are people who like to explore particular niches, who carve out regions and tiny sectors of the market without compromising their own taste.\nThey rebel against the commercial and mainstream construction of meaning and instead use their creativity to create parallel social worlds.\nArtistic explorations can indeed be used for this “social context” creation.\nBy finding smells that are characteristic, but rare and hard to place, one can create context-specific memories for events to be later triggered at will.\n\nQuestioning the mainstream construction of meaning is at the core of the Hipster aesthetic (cf. Adbusters). Here are some examples of Hipster art to put you in the right mindset (source):\nClick to view slideshow.\nSo what would be some hipster fragrances that attempt to sidestep or subvert the mainstream construction of meaning? I highly recommend visiting a niche perfumes boutique to get an idea of the combinatorial explosion of counter-cultural branding that is possible. In places like that, “local” perfumers have pride of place. There is also a premium based on the conceptual loading, narrative prowess, and historicity of each product. The value of the fragrance is in no small part derived from its ability to help you reinvent yourself outside of the confines of mainstream narratives.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMore so, the construction of meaning can be turned into a science. You can even do it deliberately without anyone’s assistance. For a special occasion you want to remember in a personal and characteristic way, I advise you to pick two or three essential oils (e.g. violet, peony, and guava) and mix them for the first time that very day. Example: this past New Year’s Eve I wore a combination of pear and violet, which has now become a sensory symbol of the occasion for me.\nAll of these can be useful tools to help you undo the psychological hacking that big-brand fashion houses and mass media have inflicted upon you. The ability to create new Schelling points and social contexts brings with it the power to transform zero-sum games into positive-sum games. This is quite refreshing, indeed, as we can see in transformational festivals and conscious culture which are at the forefront of these cultural developments.\nAlas, if you live long enough in a place like San Francisco or Portland you eventually come to realize that the negative feelings one associates with mainstream status hierarchies are not the result of consumerism per se. They are deeply rooted in our genetic source code, and the only true way out is to subvert the hedonic treadmill. So no amount of anti-consumerism rhetoric is actually likely to make a dent in the world’s vast swamps of suffering. But that’s a story for another time.\n4. Attempts at the Sacred\nThere is no universal consensus on what constitutes a sacred experience. But we should not be quick to dismiss their significance. It only takes reading William Jame’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (or Erowid‘s Experience Vault) to recognize both the incredible diversity and personal significance of sacred revelations. Scents, of course, have a long history of synergistic use in ritual conceptions of the sacred. They can indeed be used:\n\nIn rituals such as baptisms, weddings, funerals, etc.\nAs aids for meditation\nFor prayer\nAs grounding agents for psychedelic experiences\nTo recall the quality of previously experienced mystical states\n\n\n\n\nOf course we can also think of things that are associated with sacred experiences as powerful reminders of the divine. For example, I can guarantee you that people who have vaporized N,N-DMT or 5-MeO-DMT and have had profound experiences will certainly remember the scent of these agents and it will remind them- if only for a moment- of the ‘mystical’ headspace the agents disclosed.\n\n\n\n\n5. Exploring the State-Space of Consciousness (aka. Rainbow God – ϡ♘♬ヅ)\nThis aesthetic is based on the premise that there is intrinsic value in knowing qualia. The Rainbow God is a personification of the desire to know first hand the entire state-space of consciousness. In this way, we are not constrained by the social forces that usually shape where we invest our exploratory energy. In brief, this aesthetic values:\n\nExplicitly merging the best models for the state-space of scent qualia and perfumery.\nLove of knowledge above and beyond merely seeking a social effect.\nQualia-focused descriptions such as what will be presented in this section.\n\nWhen you are in the Rainbow God state of mind, you get excited by the idea of having a large collection of all possible scented molecules. The Rainbow God even covets dangerous smells, such as those of powerful toxins like dimethylcadmium. Apparently dimethylcadmium indeed has a uniquely characteristic scent, though the price of knowing it first hand is a serious toll on your health. Perhaps Rainbow God would put all of the dangerous smells in a sealed box to be opened -along with a Brompton Cocktail– when one is enduring the late stages of a terminal illness. Upon the prospect of an imminent death, I too would love to know what dimethylcadmium smells like.\nThis aesthetic does manifest in mainstream explorations, albeit it is rarely the main concept driving the design decisions. Subtle examples here might include Noble Fig by Ferrari which glorifies the unusual qualia variety disclosed by fig leaves and 23 by Michael Jordan which plays with a cute and unusual watermelon scent. That said, it is interesting to explore the possibility of explicitly developing this aesthetic in perfumery. What would that look like?\nIf I were to develop a brand of perfume under the Rainbow God mindset, I might call it “The State-Space of Scents” and really play this concept out to its conclusion with both creative satisfaction and scientific precision. It would have three core lines:\nLine 1 – State-Space Master Palette: 8 fragrances that span the largest possible region of the state-space of scents such that linear combinations of them give you a huge number of possible scents, and mixing them all in equal proportions gets you “Laurax”, i.e. white noise scent.\nLine 2 –  Special Effects: 16 of the most ultra-X scents possible (the most ultra-bitter scent possible, the most ultra-vanilla scent possible, the most ultra-powdery scent possible, etc.). Basically this encompasses every category-neutral “special effect”, which would be factorized and exalted into its maximum possible expression.\nLine 3 – Entropy Gradient: 8 chemical concoctions that have as wide of a range of phenomenal entropies as possible. Again this plays out with, at the one extreme, featuring super simple scents triggered by one or just a couple of molecules, while at the other extreme, featuring scents that approach the Laurax entropic asymptote.\nMy appreciation is that this has enormous potential. In its full expression, the Rainbow God aesthetic applied to perfumes encompasses both the state-space of scents and their effects in other experiential modalities. If a scent puts you in a certain mood, that’s important to highlight. What is the range of possible moods? That, too, concerns the Rainbow God (of course the perfume industry alludes to this kind of exploration, with e.g. D&G 21 Le Fou described as “a fragrance designed for careless and spontaneous individuals, so called ‘jesters'”, though again, an explicit exploration would be infinitely better).\nAs a teaser to future works, I can briefly describe how I have been thinking about the state-space of scents.\n\nWhile current descriptions of perfumes mention: (1) olfactive family, (2) the categorical contributions, and (3) detectable notes, we would instead have a much more fine-grained and informative description. Namely:\n\nThe global entropy (e.g. 40% of the way to white noise scent).\nThe within-category entropy (e.g. 70% of the way into ‘generic flowery’).\nThe individual notes that can be detected within each category (e.g. non-generic jasmine note being 30% of the flowery category).\nLines connecting notes that have non-linear interactions (e.g. pear & violet, rose & orange, pomegranate & honeydew make unique blends that have phenomenal properties unlike those of the individual ingredients).\nLines connecting notes that form separate “phases” across categories (e.g. with a mixture of mango, sandalwood, rose, lemon, and cinnamon, you get three phases rather than a global consistent smell – mango + cinnamon, and lemon + sandalwood, with rose staying its own distinct scent).\nLines connecting “valence inversion” effects (some notes simply don’t seem to go together even though they are pleasant individually).\nSpecial effects (e.g. “powdery”, “ethereal”, “acrid”, “creamy”, etc.).\n\nWe will go into much more detail about this in a future article specifically about the state-space of scents. And I don’t mean just breaking down a scent in terms of its chemical profile: Octyl butyrate, isoamyl propionate, and aldehyde C9, etc. I’m talking about a radical re-frame for what scents even are and the space in which they live. Stay tuned!\n6. Energy Parameter Modulation\nScents have effects on one’s energy level. Lavender has clinically significant relaxing effects while lemon oil can be energizing. But these direct effects are only one of several ways scents can modulate the “energy parameter” of your experience. Namely, as we covered in the original article, in order to modulate energy levels upwards one can either impair energy sinks or enhance energy sources. Since labeling and recognizing sensory inputs (top-down interpretations) play the role of energy sinks, it stands to reason that playing with abstract, complex and unrecognizable scents would have the effect of increasing one’s global energy parameter. This, I think, is true. Based on experience, easily recognizable scents can certainly be engrossing, but complex scents with no real-world referents seem much more effective for energizing one’s mind and altering one’s consciousness (cf. the neuroscience of meditation).\n\nI suspect that rigorous scientific research on the way scent entropy interfaces with energy modulation will be very fruitful and have many applications. In brief:\n\nRelaxing scents can be obtained either with inherently narcotic qualia (e.g. lavender) or via boring, mundane, easily-recognizable sources (e.g. paper).\nExciting scents can be obtained with inherently exciting qualia (e.g. lemon) but also by using the appropriate amount of novelty, abstractness, and complexity to disable energy sinks.\n\nEnergy by Qualia Research (EDT)\nFinally, it is my impression that scents can interface, not only with raw energy levels, but also their moments. Meaning, some scents are perhaps suited for a high first or second derivative in the energy parameter of experience. It’s as if the feeling of being “accelerated” into a high-energy regime is part and parcel of many scents. Personally, I experience bitter smells such as grapefruit, bergamot, and geranium to be arresting in that they drive one’s attention to a stop. Sweet spicy scents like vanilla and chocolate, on the other hand, seem to modulate energy rather than increase it or decrease it specifically (think “the Prozac of scents”). Alas, the state of this phenomenological research is still too early to give it any credence. I would love to hear the thoughts of others who also feel they can pin-point the first, second, and even third derivatives of the energy parameter modulation effects of scents.\n7. Puzzling Valence Effects\nThis conception of art focuses on the way exotic sensory stimuli can lead to puzzling feelings of wellbeing. I say puzzling because they defy common-sense. It certainly makes sense that watching porn or eating food rich in salt, fat, and sugar would feel good. That’s perfectly accounted for by working within an evolutionary framework. But why would Picasso, Bach, and Socrates make some people feel good? Or in a more extreme set of examples: Dadaism, Merzbow, and Nietzsche? Puzzling valence effects refers to these phenomenal oddities; the fact that stimuli never encountered in our evolutionary past can nonetheless lead to deeply rewarding sensations. The neuroscientific frameworks used to explain these curious effects were discussed in depth in the original article so I won’t repeat them here. But I will briefly cover some of the ways scents can indeed have both expectedly and unexpectedly pleasant actions. Namely, scents can feel good for any of the following reasons:\n\nAssociations: Scents can be pleasant by reminding you of contexts, times, experiences, and people you have previously enjoyed.\nFood: Scents that evoke high-calorie foods such as sweet, fried, salted, etc. come with an intrinsic positive valence for most people (and nonhuman animals!).\nSafety: The smell of diseased bodies are repugnant while the scent of fresh cotton and a cozy fireplace can bring a pleasant sense of safety.\nEroticism: Scents that spark sexual feelings (already covered this in model 2) are certainly a highlight for the hedonic effects of the sense of smell.\nRelative status: Scents that feel expensive, rare, or can be used to demonstrate one’s fitness would naturally feel good (already covered in 2 & 3).\nSelf-actualization: The very concept of a “signature scent” points at this category of pleasant sensations.\nIn terms of Puzzling Valence Effects:\n\nIntrinsic “patternceutical” valence:\n\nSome scents have particular phenomenal frequencies; in most cases the phenomenal spectral analysis is very complex.\nSpeculatively: Could it be that the valence of a scent can be anticipated from its consonance-dissonance-noise signature (CDNS)? This is a promising and fascinating area of research with no prior art at all.\n\n\n\n\nNeural annealing:\n\nIn principle one could use scents that modulate the brain’s energy parameter (see model 6) to heat it above its neural recrystallization temperature.\nThis might lead to the same kinds of effects one sees on meditation, on psychedelics, and with art. Namely, a three-step process of:\n\nEntropic disintegration\nNeural search\nAnnealing\n\n\nIf properly understood, scents that modulate the energy parameter of the brain could be used synergistically with other inputs such as sound, light, and vibration to drive neural annealing for therapeutic benefits (this is an active area of research at QRI).\n\n\n\nTo say a few words about the scents that make you feel safe: fragrances designed to make you feel unsafe are unlikely to ever be top sellers. It might not be financially sound to launch a perfume (let’s call it “Trench Warfare”) recreating the smell of WWI trenches: “gunpowder, wet rocks, and decaying flesh notes” with flanker fragrances like “Mustard Attack” centered around notes of burned almond and blisters, and “Shell Shock” which emphasizes ashy notes sprinkled with oxidizing iron and overcooked steak. Indeed, safety markers might always be subtly present in fragrances of mass appeal. Rose Of No Man’s Land, a perfume actually inspired by the courage of the nurses who attended to the wounded in no man’s land during WWI, may seem like a counter-example. But it really proves the rule. The scent itself is very pleasant and reassuring, and conceptually it also evokes a relative sense of safety, namely, the feeling of being rescued. In other words, while the context it imports feels unsafe, it is specifically pointing at a part of the situation that emphasizes safety. The setting is used as contrast, it is the ground for the sense of safety which remains the figure (in the figure/ground sense of these terms).\nI think that framed in the right way, scent qualia can give us a powerful glimpse of the possible fruits of consciousness research. Indeed, as part of a “QRI starter kit”, interns and visiting scholars get (among other things) a small collection of carefully chosen lesser-known essential oils to symbolize the “gems that are yet to be discovered by investigating consciousness in a systematic way”. (I’m actively looking for a suitable substitute for anosmic people, who almost certainly will be encountered at some point.)\nEndless Euphoria – Calvin Klein\nInterestingly, the perfume industry could very well be appealing to the agreeable hedonic sensibilities that people are otherwise too prudish to express. The hidden nature of perfumes- their plausible deniability, their elusive character, and their subjective quality- allows people to engage in hedonic fantasy to a greater extent than they would generally openly admit to doing.\nCase in point: judging from their marketing materials, it seems that Calvin Klein has already found the key to unending happiness in a bottle. Save yourself the trouble of working towards the Hedonistic Imperative, for endless euphoria has arrived. I should add that their marketing campaign of #EuphoriaForMoms struck a chord with me: “moms, too, deserve euphoria” say both the Hedonistic Imperative and Calvin Klein in unison. According to online reviewers, the ingredients of endless euphoria are:\nTake note – these are the ingredients of endless euphoria!\nIf only I had known! It must be the violet.\nThis is not, of course, an isolated incident. Indeed, the names of tons of perfumes are often remarkably evocative of the Hedonistic Imperative:\nClick to view slideshow.\nThat said, I think that systematizing the study of the hedonic response to scents has yet to be done. I’ll be talking a lot more about this in future articles. For the time being I’ll just tease you with the observation that based on personal experiments there seem to be cross-modal resonance effects between scent and auditory stimuli. The fact that loud broad-spectrum sounds, like the noise of an airplane cabin, modify the sense of taste is known in the literature. Based on my experience, music and special sounds can also subtly modify, and in some cases enhance, the quality of certain scents. Stay tuned.\n8. Harmonic Society\nFinally, we come to the the grand vision of model 8: Harmonic Society. This aesthetic model posits that it is both possible and desirable to synthesize science, philosophy, and art. The end result does not have to be- as many might expect- the disenchantment of aesthetics. Even with the simplistic take that “bliss is just chemicals in the brain” (which isn’t quite true anyway), we must remember that reduction cuts both ways. Perhaps you can instead see it as “chemicals in the brain are bliss qualia”! The feelings of divinity and profound interconnectedness one can experience on LSD, for instance, do not diminish in significance merely because they can be reduced to neurological phenomena; rather, this exalts what neurological phenomena is in the first place!\nA profound understanding of qualia-space can enable us to create a prosocial world of experience in which the transition between every state of consciousness to every other is harmonious and beneficial.\n\nApplied to the art of scent qualia, the principles of Harmonic Society would point us in the direction of deeply investigating the state-space of scents in order to find clusters of fragrances (or scent qualia, more specifically) that have smooth transitions between them.\n\n\n(Source)\n* Causes of anosmia – lots of things could harm your precious capacity to experience scent qualia:\n(Source)\n(Featured image: source)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/02/21/perfumery-as-an-art-form/", "title": "Perfumery as an Art Form", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-02-22T05:26:03+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=9", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "809b36e0aa5ce6d8b423353e932c8c5a", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Computing at: TSC 2020, IPS 2020, unSCruz 2020, and Ephemerisle 2020\n\n[March 12 2020 update: Both TSC and IPS are being postponed due to the coronavirus situation. At the moment we don’t know if the other two events will go ahead. I’ll update this entry when there is a confirmation either way. May 6 2020 update: unSCruz was canceled this year as well. More so, as an organization, QRI has chosen not to attend Ephemerisle this year, whether or not it ends up being canceled. Dear readers: I’m sure we’ll have future opportunities to meet in person].\n\nThese are the 2020 events lined up for me at the moment (though more are likely to pop up):\n\nI will be attending The Science of Consciousness 2020 from the 13th to the 17th of April representing the Qualia Research Institute (QRI). I will present about a novel approach for solving the combination problem for panpsychism. The core idea is to use the concept of topological segmentation in order to explain how the universal wavefunction can develop boundaries with causal power (and thus capable of being recruited by natural selection for information-processing purposes) which might also be responsible for the creation of discrete moments of experience. I am including the abstract in this post (see below).\nI will then fly out to Boston for the Intercollegiate Psychedelics Summit (IPS) from the 18th to the 20th of April (though I will probably stay for a few more days in order to meet people in the area). Here I will be presenting about intelligent strategies for exploring the state-space of consciousness.\nAt the end of April I will be attending the 2020 Santa Cruz Burning Man Regional (“unSCruz“) with a small contingent of members and friends of QRI. We will be showcasing some of our neurotech prototypes and conducting smell tests (article about this coming soon).\nAnd from the 20th to the 27th of July I will be at Ephemerisle 2020 alongside other members of QRI. We will be staying on the “Consciousness Boat” and showcasing some interesting demos. In particular, expect to see new colors, have fully-sober stroboscopic hallucinations, and explore the state-space of visual textures.\n\nI am booking some time in advance to meet with Qualia Computing readers, people interested in the works of the Qualia Research Institute, and potential interns and visiting scholars. Please message me if you are attending any of these events and would like to meet up.\n\n\n\n\nHere is the abstract I submitted to TSC 2020:\nTitle – Topological Segmentation: How Dynamic Stability Can Solve the Combination Problem for Panpsychism\nPrimary Topic Area – Mental Causation and the Function of Consciousness\nSecondary Topic Area – Panpsychism and Cosmopsychism\nAbstract – The combination problem complicates panpsychist solutions to the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers 2013). A satisfactory solution would (1) avoid strong emergence, (2) sidestep the hard problem of consciousness, (3) prevent the complications of epiphenomenalism, and (4) be compatible with the modern scientific world picture. We posit that topological approaches to the combination problem of consciousness could achieve this. We start by assuming a version of panpsychism in which quantum fields are fields of qualia, as is implied by the intrinsic nature argument for panpsychism (Strawson 2008) in conjunction with wavefunction realism (Ney 2013). We take inspiration from quantum chemistry, where the observed dynamic stability of the orbitals of complex molecules requires taking the entire system into account at once. The scientific history of models for chemical bonds starts with simple building blocks (e.g. Lewis structures), and each step involves updating the model to account for holistic behavior (e.g. resonance, molecular orbital theory, and the Hartree-Fock method). Thus the causal properties of a molecule are identified with the fixed points of dynamic stability for the entire atomic system. The formalization of chemical holism physically explains why molecular shapes that create novel orbital structures have weak downward causation effect on the world without needing to invoke strong emergence. For molecules to be “natural units” rather than just conventional units, we can introduce the idea that topological segmentation of the wavefunction is responsible for the creation of new beings. In other words, if dynamical stability entails the topological segmentation of the wavefunction, we get a story where physically-driven behavioral holism is accompanied with the ontological creation of new beings. Applying this insight to solve the combination problem for panpsychism, each moment of experience might be identified with a topologically distinct segment of the universal wavefunction. This topological approach makes phenomenal binding weakly causally emergent along with entailing the generation of new beings. The account satisfies the set of desiderata we started with: (1) no strong emergence is required because behavioral holism is implied by dynamic stability (itself only weakly emergent on the laws of physics), (2) we sidestep the hard problem via panpsychism, (3) phenomenal binding is not epiphenomenal because the topological segments have holistic causal effects (such that evolution would have a reason to select for them), and (4) we build on top of the laws of physics rather than introduce new clauses to account for what happens in the nervous system. This approach to the binding problem does not itself identify the properties responsible for the topological segmentation of the universal wavefunction that creates distinct moments of experience. But it does tell us where to look. In particular, we posit that both quantum coherence and entanglement networks may have the precise desirable properties of dynamical stability accompanied with topological segmentation. Hence experimental paradigms such as probing the CNS at femtosecond timescales to find a structural match between quantum coherence and local binding (Pearce 2014) could empirically validate our solution to the combination problem for panpsychism.\n\n\nSee Also:\n\nQualia Computing in Tucson: The Magic Analogy (report from TSC 2016, which I attended along with David Pearce)\nQualia Formalism in the Water Supply: Reflections on The Science of Consciousness 2018 (the 2018 TSC report)\nQualia Research Institute presentations at The Science of Consciousness 2018 (Tucson, AZ)\nHarmonic Society (2/4): Art as Schelling Point Creation and the Pursuit of Sacred Experiences (where I discuss an interesting art installation I encountered at unSCruz 2019)\nEphemerisle: Health Homeostasis, Worldview Annealing, and the Long-Tails of Serious Fun (which discusses Ephemerisle from a qualia realist point of view)\nHarmonic Society (3/4): Art as State-Space Exploration and Energy Parameter Modulation (in which I provide some foreshadowing thoughts about intelligent strategies for exploring the state-space of consciousness)\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/02/15/qualia-computing-at-tsc-2020-ips-2020-unscruz-2020-and-ephemerisle-2020/", "title": "Qualia Computing at: TSC 2020, IPS 2020, unSCruz 2020, and Ephemerisle 2020", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-02-15T22:59:17+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=9", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "4b191367caf7da42e1501653a871621f", "summary": []}
{"text": "A Big State-Space of Consciousness\n\nKenneth Shinozuka of Blank Horizons asks: Andrés, how long do you think it’ll take to fully map out the state space of consciousness? A thousand or a million years?\nThe state-space of consciousness is unimaginably large (and yet finite)\nI think we will discover the core principles of a foundational theory of consciousness within a century or so. That is, we might find plausible solutions to Mike Johnsons’ 8 subproblems of consciousness and experimentally verify a specific formal theory of consciousness before 2100. That said, there is a very large distance between proving a certain formal theory of consciousness and having a good grasp of the state-space of consciousness.\nKnowing Maxwell’s equations gives you a formal theory of electromagnetism. But even then, photons are hidden as an implication of the formalism; you need to do some work to find them in it. And that’s the tip of the iceberg; you would also find hidden in the formalism an array of exotic electromagnetic behavior that arise in unusual physical conditions such as those produced by metamaterials. The formalism is a first step to establish the fundamental constraints for what’s possible. What follows is filling in the gaps between the limits of physical possibility, which is a truly fantastical enterprise considering the range of possible permutations.\nA useful analogy here might be: even though we know all of the basic stable elements and many of their properties, we have only started mapping out the space of possible small molecules (e.g. there are ~10^60 bioactive drugs that have never been tested), and have yet to even begin the project in earnest of understanding what proteins can do. Or consider the number of options there are to make high-entropy alloys (alloys made with five or more metals). Or all the ways in which snowflakes of various materials can form, meaning that even when you are studying a single material it can form crystal structures of an incredibly varied nature. And then take into account the emergence of additional collective properties: physical systems can display a dazzling array of emergent exotic effects, from superconductivity and superradiance to Bose-Einstein condensates and fusion chain reactions. Exploring the state-space of material configurations and their emergent properties entails facing a combinatorial explosion of unexpected phenomena.\nAnd this is the case in physics even though we know for a fact that there are only a bit over a hundred possible building blocks (i.e. the elements).\nIn the province of the mind, we do not yet have even that level of understanding. When it comes to the state-space of consciousness we do not have a corresponding credible “periodic table of qualia”. The range of possible experiences in normal everyday life is astronomical. Even so, the set of possible human sober experiences is a vanishing fraction of the set of possible DMT trips, which is itself a vanishing fraction of the set of possible DMT + LSD + ketamine + TMS + optogenetics + Generalized Wada Test + brain surgery experiences. Brace yourself for a state-space that grows supergeometrically with each variable you introduce.\nIf we are to truly grasp the state-space of consciousness, we should also take into account non-human animal qualia. And then further still, due to dual-aspect monism, we will need to go into things like understanding that high-entropy alloys themselves have qualia, and then Jupiter Brains, and Mike’s Fraggers, and Black Holes, and quantum fields in the inflation period, and so on. This entails a combinatorial explosion of the likes I don’t believe anyone is really grasping at the moment. We are talking about a monumental “monster” state-space far beyond the size of even the wildest dreams of full-time dreamers. So, I’d say -honestly- I think that mapping out the state-space of consciousness is going to take millions of years.\nBut isn’t the state-space of consciousness infinite, you ask?\nAlas, no. There are two core limiting factors here – one is the speed of light (which entails the existence of gravitational collapse and hence limits to how much matter you can arrange in complex ways before a black hole arises) and the second one is quantum (de)coherence. If phenomenal binding requires fundamental physical properties such as quantum coherence, there will be a maximum limit to how much matter you can bind into a unitary “moment of experience“. Who knows what the limit is! But I doubt it’s the size of a galaxy – perhaps it is more like a Jupiter Brain, or maybe just the size of a large building. This greatly reduces the state-space of consciousness; after all, something finite, no matter how large, is infinitely smaller than something infinite!\nBut what if reality is continuous? Doesn’t that entail an infinite state-space?\nI do not think that the discrete/continuous distinction meaningfully impacts the size of the state-space of consciousness. The reason is that at some point of degree of similarity between experiences you get “just noticeable differences” (JNDs). Even with the tiniest hint of true continuity in consciousness, the state-space would be infinite as a result. But the vast majority of those differences won’t matter: they can be swept under the rug to an extent because they can’t actually be “distinguished from the inside”. To make a good discrete approximation of the state-space, we would just need to divide the state-space into regions of equal area such that their diameter is a JND.\nConclusion\nIn summary, the state-space of consciousness is insanely large but not infinite. While I do think it is possible that the core underlying principles of consciousness (i.e. an empirically-adequate formalism) will be discovered this century or the next, I do not anticipate a substantive map of the state-space of consciousness to be available anytime soon. A truly comprehensive map would, I suspect, be only possible after millions of years of civilizational investment on the task.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/01/18/a-big-state-space-of-consciousness/", "title": "A Big State-Space of Consciousness", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2020-01-19T06:48:54+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=9", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e8b8841e42d4c5c8c6647d61463bec33", "summary": []}
{"text": "One for All and All for One\n\nBy David Pearce (response to Quora question: “What does David Pearce think of closed, empty, and open individualism?“)\n\n\nVedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves.\n \n\n– Erwin Schrödinger, ‘My View of the World’, 1951\n\n\nEnlightenment came to me suddenly and unexpectedly one afternoon in March [1939] when I was walking up to the school notice board to see whether my name was on the list for tomorrow’s football game. I was not on the list. And in a blinding flash of inner light I saw the answer to both my problems, the problem of war and the problem of injustice. The answer was amazingly simple. I called it Cosmic Unity. Cosmic Unity said: There is only one of us. We are all the same person. I am you and I am Winston Churchill and Hitler and Gandhi and everybody. There is no problem of injustice because your sufferings are also mine. There will be no problem of war as soon as you understand that in killing me you are only killing yourself.\n \n\n– Freeman Dyson, ‘Disturbing the Universe’, 1979\n\nCommon sense assumes “closed” individualism: we are born, live awhile, and then die. Common sense is wrong about most things, and the assumption of enduring metaphysical egos is true to form. Philosophers sometimes speak of the “indiscernibility of identicals”. If a = b, then everything true of a is true of b. This basic principle of logic is trivially true. Our legal system, economy, politics, academic institutions and personal relationships assume it’s false. Violation of elementary logic is a precondition of everyday social life. It’s hard to imagine any human society that wasn’t founded on such a fiction. The myth of enduring metaphysical egos and “closed” individualism also leads to a justice system based on scapegoating. If we were accurately individuated, then such scapegoating would seem absurd.\nAmong the world’s major belief-systems, Buddhism comes closest to acknowledging “empty” individualism: enduring egos are a myth (cf. “non-self” or Anatta – Wikipedia). But Buddhism isn’t consistent. All our woes are supposedly the product of bad “karma”, the sum of our actions in this and previous states of existence. Karma as understood by Buddhists isn’t the deterministic cause and effect of classical physics, but rather the contribution of bad intent and bad deeds to bad rebirths.\nAmong secular philosophers, the best-known defender of (what we would now call) empty individualism minus the metaphysical accretions is often reckoned David Hume. Yet Hume was also a “bundle theorist”, sceptical of the diachronic and the synchronic unity of the self. At any given moment, you aren’t a unified subject (“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat, cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and can never observe anything but the perception” (‘On Personal Identity’, A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739)). So strictly, Hume wasn’t even an empty individualist. Contrast Kant’s “transcendental unity of apperception”, aka the unity of the self.\nAn advocate of common-sense closed individualism might object that critics are abusing language. Thus “Winston Churchill”, say, is just the name given to an extended person born in 1874 who died in 1965. But adhering to this usage would mean abandoning the concept of agency. When you raise your hand, a temporally extended entity born decades ago doesn’t raise its collective hand. Raising your hand is a specific, spatio-temporally located event. In order to make sense of agency, only a “thin” sense of personal identity can work.\nAccording to “open” individualism, there exists only one numerically identical subject who is everyone at all times. Open individualism was christened by philosopher Daniel Kolak, author of I Am You (2004). The roots of open individualism are ancient, stretching back at least to the Upanishads. The older name is monopsychism. I am Jesus, Moses and Einstein, but also Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan. And I am also all pigs, dinosaurs and ants: subjects of experience date to the late Pre-Cambrian, if not earlier.\nMy view?\nMy ethical sympathies lie with open individualism; but as it stands, I don’t see how a monopsychist theory of identity can be true. Open or closed individualism might (tenuously) be defensible if we were electrons (cf. One-electron universe – Wikipedia). However, sentient beings are qualitatively and numerically different. For example, the half-life of a typical protein in the brain is an estimated 12–14 days. Identity over time is a genetically adaptive fiction for the fleetingly unified subjects of experience generated by the CNS of animals evolved under pressure of natural selection (cf. Was Parfit correct we’re not the same person that we were when we were born?). Even memory is a mode of present experience. Both open and closed individualism are false.\nThe Big Electron\nBy contrast, the fleeting synchronic unity of the self is real, scientifically unexplained (cf. the binding problem) and genetically adaptive. How a pack of supposedly decohered membrane-bound neurons achieves a classically impossible feat of virtual world-making leads us into deep philosophical waters. But whatever the explanation, I think empty individualism is true. Thus I share with my namesakes – the authors of The Hedonistic Imperative (1995) – the view that we ought to abolish the biology of suffering in favour of genetically-programmed gradients of superhuman bliss. Yet my namesakes elsewhere in tenselessly existing space-time (or Hilbert space) physically differ from the multiple David Pearces (DPs) responding to your question. Using numerical superscripts, e.g. DP^564356, DP^54346 (etc), might be less inappropriate than using a single name. But even “DP” here is misleading because such usage suggests an enduring carrier of identity. No such enduring carrier exists, merely modestly dynamically stable patterns of fundamental quantum fields. Primitive primate minds were not designed to “carve Nature at the joints”.\nHowever, just because a theory is true doesn’t mean humans ought to believe in it. What matters are its ethical consequences. Will the world be a better or worse place if most of us are closed, empty or open individualists? Psychologically, empty individualism is probably the least emotionally satisfying account of personal identity – convenient when informing an importunate debt-collection company they are confusing you with someone else, but otherwise a recipe for fecklessness, irresponsibility and overly-demanding feats of altruism. Humans would be more civilised if most people believed in open individualism. The factory-farmed pig destined to be turned into a bacon sandwich is really you: the conventional distinction between selfishness and altruism collapses. Selfish behaviour is actually self-harming. Not just moral decency, but decision-theoretic rationality dictates choosing a veggie burger rather than a meat burger. Contrast the metaphysical closed individualism assumed by, say, the Less Wrong Decision Theory FAQ. And indeed, all first-person facts, not least the distress of a horribly abused pig, are equally real. None are ontologically privileged. More speculatively, if non-materialist physicalism is true, then fields of subjectivity are what the mathematical formalism of quantum field theory describes. The intrinsic nature argument proposes that only experience is physically real. On this story, the mathematical machinery of modern physics is transposed to an idealist ontology. This conjecture is hard to swallow; I’m agnostic.\n“One for all, all for one” – unofficial motto of Switzerland.\nSpeculative solutions to the Hard Problem of consciousness aside, the egocentric delusion of Darwinian life is too strong for most people to embrace open individualism with conviction. Closed individualism is massively fitness-enhancing (cf. Are you the center of the universe?). Moreover, temperamentally happy people tend to have a strong sense of enduring personal identity and agency; depressives have a weaker sense of personhood. Most of the worthwhile things in this world (as well as its biggest horrors) are accomplished by narcissistic closed individualists with towering egos. Consider the transhumanist agenda. Working on a cure for the terrible disorder we know as aging might in theory be undertaken by empty individualists or open individualists; but in practice, the impetus for defeating death and aging comes from strong-minded and “selfish” closed individualists who don’t want their enduring metaphysical egos to perish. Likewise, the well-being of all sentience in our forward light-cone – the primary focus of most DPs – will probably be delivered by closed individualists. Benevolent egomaniacs will most likely save the world.\n“One for all, all for one”, as Alexandre Dumas put it in The Three Musketeers?\nMaybe one day: full-spectrum superintelligence won’t have a false theory of personal identity. “Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno” is the unofficial motto of Switzerland. It deserves to be the ethos of the universe.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/12/27/one-for-all-and-all-for-one/", "title": "One for All and All for One", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-12-27T20:23:01+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=9", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "42abf63ef51e1164b6d769715e613859", "summary": []}
{"text": "Binding Quiddities\n\nExcerpt from The Combination Problem for Panpsychism (2013) by David Chalmers\n\n[Some] versions of identity panpsychism are holistic in that they invoke fundamental physical entities that are not atomic or localized. One such view combines identity panpsychism with the monistic view that the universe itself is the most fundamental physical entity. The result is identity cosmopsychism, on which the whole universe is conscious and on which we are identical to it. (Some idealist views in both Eastern and Western traditions appear to say something like this.) Obvious worries for this view are that it seems to entail that there is only one conscious subject, and that each of us is identical to each other and has the same experiences. There is also a structural mismatch worry: it is hard to see how the universe’s experiences (especially given a Russellian view on which these correspond to the universe’s physical properties) should have anything like the localized idiosyncratic structure of my experiences. Perhaps there are sophisticated versions of this view on which a single universal consciousness is differentiated into multiple strands of midlevel macroconsciousness, where much of the universal consciousness is somehow hidden from each of us. Still, this seems to move us away from identity cosmopsychism toward an autonomous cosmopsychist view in which each of us is a distinct constituent of a universal consciousness. As before, the resulting decomposition problem seems just as hard as the combination problem.\nPerhaps the most important version of identity panpsychism is quantum holism. This view starts from the insight that on the most common understandings of quantum mechanics, the fundamental entities need not be localized entities such as particles. Multiple particles can get entangled with each other, and when this happens it is the whole entangled system that is treated as fundamental and that has fundamental quantum-mechanical properties (such as wave functions) ascribed to it. A panpsychist might speculate that such an entangled system, perhaps at the level of the brain or one of its subsystems, has microphenomenal properties. On the quantum holism version of identity panpsychism, macrosubjects such as ourselves are identical to these fundamental holistic entities, and our macrophenomenal properties are identical to its microphenomenal properties.\nThis view has more attractions than the earlier views, but there are also worries. Some worries are empirical: it does not seem that there is the sort of stable brain-level entanglement that would be needed for this view to work. Some related worries are theoretical: on some interpretations of quantum mechanics the locus of entanglement is the whole universe (leading us back to cosmopsychism), on others there is no entanglement at all, and on still others there are regular collapses that tend to destroy this sort of entanglement. But perhaps the biggest worry is once again a structural mismatch worry. The structure of the quantum state of brain-level systems is quite different from the structure of our experience. Given a Russellian view on which microphenomenal properties correspond directly to the fundamental microphysical properties of these entangled systems, it is hard to see how they could have the familiar structure of our macroexperience.\nThe identity panpsychist (of all three sorts) might try to remove some of these worries by rejecting Russellian panpsychism, so that microphenomenal properties are less closely tied to microphysical structure. The cost of this move is that it becomes much less clear how these phenomenal properties can play a causal role. On the face of it they will be either epiphenomenal, or they will make a difference to physics. The latter view will in effect require a radically revised physics with something akin to our macrophenomenal structure present at the basic level. Then phenomenal properties will in effect be playing the role of quiddities within this revised physics, and the resulting view will be a sort of revisionary Russellian identity panpsychism.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/12/14/binding-quiddities/", "title": "Binding Quiddities", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-12-14T10:58:32+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=9", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ebda74f03ad62c40a3254bfb55824da2", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Productions Presents: When AI Equals Advanced Incompetence\n\nBy Maggie and Anders Amelin\n\n\nLetter I: Introduction\nWe are Maggie & Anders. A mostly harmless Swedish old-timer couple only now beginning to discover the advanced incompetence that is the proto-science — or “alchemy” — of consciousness research. A few centuries ago a philosopher of chemistry could have claimed with a straight face to be quite certain that a substance with negative mass had to be invoked to explain the phenomenon of combustion. Another could have been equally convinced that the chemistry of life involves a special force of nature absent from all non-living matter. A physicist of today may recognize that the study of consciousness has even less experimental foundation than alchemy did, yet be confident that at least it cannot feel like something to be a black hole. Since, obviously, black holes are simple objects and consciousness is a phenomenon which only emerges from “complexity” as high as that of a human brain.\nIs there some ultimate substrate, basic to reality and which has properties intrinsic to itself? If so, is elementary sentience one of those properties? Or is it “turtles all the way down” in a long regress where all of reality can be modeled as patterns within patterns within patterns ending in Turing-style “bits”? Or parsimoniously never ending?\nWill it turn out to be patterns all the way down, or sentience all the way up? Should people who believe themselves to perhaps be in an ancestor simulation take for granted that consciousness exists for biologically-based people in base-level reality? David Chalmers does. So at least that must be one assumption it is safe to make, isn’t it? And the one about no sentience existing in a black hole. And the one about phlogiston. And the four chemical elements.\nThis really is good material for silly comedy or artistic satire. To view a modest attempt by us in that direction, please feel encouraged to enjoy this youtube video we made with QRI in mind:\n\nWhen ignorance is near complete, it is vital to think outside the proverbial box if progress is to be made. However, spontaneous creative speculation is more context-constrained than it feels like, and it rarely correlates all that beautifully with anything useful. Any science has to work via the baby steps of testable predictions. The integrated information theory (IIT) does just that, and has produced encouraging early results. IIT could turn out to be a good starting point for eventually mapping and modeling all of experiential phenomenology. For a perspective, IIT 3.0 may be comparable to how Einstein’s modeling of the photoelectric effect stands in relation to a full-blown theory of quantum gravity. There is a fair bit of ground to cover. We have not been able to find any group more likely than the QRI to speed up the process whereby humanity eventually manages to cover that ground. That is, if they get a whole lot of help in the form of outreach, fundraising and technological development. Early pioneers have big hurdles to overcome, but the difference they can make for the future is enormous.\nFor those who feel inspired, a nice start is to go through all that is on or linked via the QRI website. Indulge in Principia Qualia. If that leaves you confused on a higher level, you are in good company. With us. We are halfway senile and are not information theorists, neuroscientists or physicists. All we have is a nerdy sense of humor and work experience in areas like marketing and planetary geochemistry. One thing we think we can do is help bridge the gap between “experts” and “lay people”. Instead of “explain it like I am five”, we offer the even greater challenge of explaining it like we are Maggie & Anders. Manage that, and you will definitely be wiser afterwards!\n– Maggie & Anders\n\n\n\n\nLetter II: State-Space of Matter and State-Space of Consciousness\nA core aspect of science is the mapping out of distributions, spectra, and state-spaces of the building blocks of reality. Naturally occurring states of things can be spontaneously discovered. To gain more information about them, one can experimentally alter such states to produce novel ones, and then analyze them in a systematic way.\nThe full state-space of matter is multidimensional and vast. Zoom in anywhere in it and there will be a number of characteristic physics phenomena appearing there. Within a model of the state-space you can follow independent directions as you move towards regions and points. As an example, you can hold steady at one particular simple chemical configuration. Diamond, say. The stable region of diamond and its emergent properties like high hardness extends certain distances in other parameter directions such as temperature and pressure. The diamond region has neighboring regions with differently structured carbon, such as graphite. Diamond and graphite make for an interesting case since the property of hardness emerges very differently in the two regions. (In the pure carbon state-space the dimensions denoting amounts of all other elements can be said to be there but set to zero). Material properties like hardness can be modeled as static phenomena. According to IIT however, consciousness cannot. It’s still an emergent property of matter though, so just stay in the matter state-space and add a time dimension to it. Then open chains and closed loops of causation emerge as a sort of fundamental level of what matter “does”. Each elementary step of causation may be regarded to produce or intrinsically be some iota of proto-experience. In feedback loops this self-amplifies into states of feeling like something. Many or perhaps most forms of matter can “do” these basic things at various regions of various combinations of parameter settings. Closed causal loops require more delicate fine-tuning in parameter space, so the state-space of nonconscious causation structure is larger than that of conscious structure. The famous “hard problem” has to do with the fact that both an experientially very weak and a very strong state can emerge from the same matter (shown to be the case so far only within brains). A bit like the huge difference in mechanical hardness of diamond and graphite both emerging from the same pure carbon substrate (a word play on “hard” to make it sticky).\n\n\n\nBy the logic of IIT it should be possible to model (in arbitrarily coarse or fine detail) the state-space of all conscious experience whose substrate is all possible physical states of pure carbon. Or at room temperature in any material. And so on. If future advanced versions of IIT turn out to be a success then we may guess there’ll be a significant overlap to allow for a certain “substrate invariance” for hardware that can support intelligence with human-recognizable consciousness. Outside of that there will be a gargantuan additional novel space to explore. It ought to contain maxima of (intrinsic) attractiveness, none of which need to reside within what a biological nervous system can host. Biological evolution has only been able to search through certain parts of the state-space of matter. One thing it has not worked with on Earth is pure carbon. Diamond tooth enamel or carbon nanotube tendons would be useful but no animal has them. What about conscious states? Has biology come close to hit upon any of the optima in those? If all of human sentience is like planet Earth, and all of Terrestrial biologically-based sentience is like the whole Solar System, that leaves an entire extrasolar galaxy out there to explore. (Boarding call: Space X Flight 42 bound for Nanedi Settlement, Mars. Sentinauts please go to the Neuralink check-in terminal).\nOf course we don’t currently know how IIT is going to stand up, but thankfully it does make testable predictions. There is, therefore, a beginning of something to be hoped for with it. In a hopeful scenario IIT turns out to be like special relativity, and what QRI is reaching for is like quantum gravity. It will be a process of taking baby steps, for sure. But each step is likely to bring benefits in many ways.\nIs any of this making you curious? Then you may enjoy reading “Principia Qualia” and other QRI articles.\n– Maggie & Anders\n\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/12/03/qualia-productions-presents-when-ai-equals-advanced-incompetence/", "title": "Qualia Productions Presents: When AI Equals Advanced Incompetence", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-12-04T04:04:39+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=9", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "11c4a09c6987737d33ca8f86036b2b47", "summary": []}
{"text": "Neural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything\n\nQRI‘s co-founder Michael E. Johnson just posted a piece on neural annealing. This is one of QRI’s most important pieces of content to date. I’m very proud of Mike and the team for pulling this off. You can find the full piece here.\n\n\nMike writes:\nThis is QRI’s unified theory of music, meditation, psychedelics, depression, trauma, and emotional processing; the most challenging (and I think beautiful) thing I’ve written in the last three years. I would really appreciate careful comments.\nA few takeaways:\n\n\nEntering high-energy states (i.e., intense emotional states which take some time to ‘process’) is how the brain releases structural stress and adapts to new developments. This is similar to ‘annealing’ in metals, where heat allows atoms to break their bonds, then they search for more stable configurations as they cool.\nBrains really do need to anneal regularly to pay down their ‘technical debt’, and if they don’t, they grow brittle and neurotic.\nMeditation, music, psychedelics, exercise, dance, sex, tantric practices, EMDR, and breath work all share the same mechanism: a build-up of rhythmic neural resonance that can push the brain into these high-energy states which produce annealing.\nDepression is a self-reinforcing perturbation from the natural annealing cycle.\nSometimes the brain needs to rapidly halt information propagation across regions to prevent cascading system failure … we call this ‘trauma’. This is a common and serious disruption of the annealing cycle.\nThe core psychological changes driven by psychedelics are best understood in terms of the amount and ‘statistical flavor’ of the energy (rhythmic firing) they add to the brain. Different psychedelics will ‘anneal’ different things.\nYoung brains (and lifelong learners) might not only be more plastic than average, but actually having experience that is objectively more visceral.\nA unified theory of emotional updating, depression, trauma, meditation, and psychedelics may give us the tools to build a future that’s substantially better than the present.\n\n\n(A unification of Robin Carhart-Harris and Karl Friston’s REBUS annealing model, with Selen Atasoy’s Connectome-Specific Harmonic Waves paradigm.)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/11/29/neural-annealing-toward-a-neural-theory-of-everything/", "title": "Neural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-11-30T05:06:02+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=9", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b82c136149d1f4d8ccb5a968535e150b", "summary": []}
{"text": "Essential Therapy\n\nExcerpt from TIHKAL (1997) by Alexander and Ann Shulgin (pgs. 64-67)\nChapter 4: The Brazil Caper\n(Alice’s voice)\nIn the mid 1980s, somewhere around the month of April, Shura received a phone call from a gentleman who introduced himself as Senhor Giorgio Paros, a businessman from Brazil. He said, “I am here in the Bay Area to consult with an American company, and also to see you, Doctor Shura, on a very important matter.”\nShura replied, “Well, Senhor — excuse me, could you repeat your name?”\nThe man gave his last name again and added, “Please call me Senhor Giorgio, Sir. In Brazil, we do not use surname very much. I would like also to bring with me a very good friend, Doctor Hector, the former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Transportation of Brazil, if that would be acceptable?”\nShura told me later, “He obviously didn’t want to go into details on the phone, so I thought, what the heck, maybe you wouldn’t mind making a few sandwiches for lunch tomorrow, and I invited them over. Is that okay with you?”\nI laughed, “Sure. It sounds pretty intriguing, with a former — what was it? — assistant minister of something for Brazil, right?”\n“Yeah”, said Shura, “Transportation, I think he said. Sounds as if it might be interesting. And if it turns out to be a total dud, it’ll only have cost us a couple of hours and a bit of lunch.”\nWell, it’s hard not to be impressed by a minister of anything of any country, when you get down to it. Of course, this one’s a Former, which isn’t as good as a Presently, and he was only an Assistant, not the Main Man, but so what! Former Assistant Minister of anything coming to lunch is still pretty good, if you’re an ordinary run-of-the-mill social climber. Besides, it should make a good dining-out story, if nothing else.\nThe next day, shortly after noon, the Boys from Brazil arrived with a bunch of flowers for the hostess, both of them carrying serious briefcases.\nThe businessman, Giorgio, was a big, burly character who looked like an aging stormtrooper, with thinning hair and pale blue, penetrating eyes.\nWe sat down on the patio and talked, exchanging the necessary pieces of basic information. Sr. Giorgio, it turned out, had long been a major player in Brazil radio as the owner of several stations, and was now moving into television. Despite the faintly threatening first impression, particularly when he scowled over some remembered annoyance, Giorgio gradually emerged as something of a pussycat, a bit sentimental and rather romantic in a way peculiar to Brazilians (as we were to discover later).\nGiorgio’s friend, Dr. Hector, was a small-boned man in his late sixties who seemed, at first, rather quiet for a politician; a bit self-effacing, in fact. But as the afternoon wore on, as we all became increasingly familiar with each other’s faces and voices, Dr. Hector relaxed and smiled more often, and we began to understand his peculiar charm, the mixture of sincerity — sometimes approaching intensity — and humor which must have served him well in his government post.\nBut that’s getting ahead of my tale. Back to the first few minutes of the meeting.\nAs I carried out plates of sandwiches to the patio, Giorgio was saying “Even in the banks, they list customers under their first names! Yes, believe it, this is so!”\nI didn’t have to look at Shura to know what the expression on his face was: polite skepticism, mixed with frank amusement.\nI can’t believe that, either. Must be a bit of exaggeration somewhere. But it does make a great Third World anecdote!\nI brought out a large pitcher of iced tea and some bottles of Calistoga water, then sat down and prepared to listen.\nAs background to their not-yet specified proposition, Giorgio told us a story. It seems that, several years earlier, an American gentleman we will call Borch, who had relocated to Rio de Janeiro, and who could not fully explain to anyone’s satisfaction why he was unable to return to the United States, married a wealthy Brazilian lady, and produced a couple of children. Then he moved his entire family to an island in the Caribbean whose authorities were notoriously friendly and accommodating towards foreigners with money, and within a few months, all his upper class acquaintances in Rio had received invitations to a new health spa. The brochure emphasized a kind of therapy not usually offered by spas: psychological, with emphasis on the resolving of marital discord and problems like alcoholism.\nThe Brazilians poured into the new spa. Every Wednesday, the owner, Mr. Borch, would bring out two vials from his private refrigerator. The fluid in the first vial was red; that in the second, yellow. Each client was given a carefully measured amount from one or the other of the vials, served in a beautifully designed miniature goblet, a small crystal bowl cradled in a network of pewter. Borch referred to the medicine as The Essence, and refused to further identify it.\nClick to view slideshow.\nThe effect of the Essence medicine was astonishing, Giorgio told us. “You had a feeling that God had entered your soul, and all was peace inside you,” he said, “If you looked at somebody, you felt love for him, compassion, you understand? For married couples, it was miraculous. All the emotions — yes? — the feelings they had in the past for each other; all these returned, just like the day of their marriage.”\nShura and I listened to the account in fascinated silence, but both of us were beginning to feel the pressure of questions needing to be asked, and I actually had my mouth open to say something, when Dr. Hector spoke up for the first time since the story began, and stunned us back into listening.\n“Once, when I had expressed myself to Mr. Borch again,” the greysuited little gentleman said, “about wishing to know what was in the Essence, he told me that I could have faith in its value and its purity, because it had been created by one of the world’s most respected scientists, a chemist called Alexander Borodin, and that it was not necessary for me to know anything else.”\n“Oh, my God!” I breathed, then laughed.\nShura protested, “I’ve never heard of anyone named Borch, and I certainly never supplied him with any drug!”\nGiorgio gestured impatiently, “Yes, yes, Hector and I decided this ourselves — that you had nothing to do with it — when we investigated and found out who you were.”\nI wonder if he uses the word, “investigated,” in the same way we would use it. Sort of implies private detectives and all that sort of thing. Maybe better not to know.\nOne burning question had arisen in my mind, and I decided now was the time to get an answer, before the conversation got any more complicated. I leaned forward in my chair and asked, looking from one to the other, “How much did these clients pay for the miraculous spa treatment, if you don’t mind my curiosity?”\n“Most of us paid twenty-five thousand dollars per week,” said Giorgio.\nShura and I looked at each other, eyes wide.\n“Oog,” I said, brilliantly.\n“Sounds like a pretty good scam,” said Shura, nodding his appreciation.\n“In the last week at the spa,” said Hector, “Giorgio and I managed to divert some of our Essence medicine, and we took the sample with us when we left. We had it analyzed in the United States. It was a drug called MDMA.”\n“Oh, boy,” I said.\nShura just grunted.\n\n\nmdma.net\nSee also: MDMA.net, Peaceful Qualia, LSD + MDMA, and Wireheading Done Right.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/11/25/essential-therapy/", "title": "Essential Therapy", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-11-25T10:48:03+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=9", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "3b3a8d45f9dd028c6f169020c07e3d9c", "summary": []}
{"text": "Breaking Down the Problem of Consciousness\n\nBelow you will find three different breakdowns for what a scientific theory of consciousness must be able to account for, formulated in slightly different ways.\nFirst, David Pearce posits these four fundamental questions (the simplicity of this breakdown comes with the advantage that it might be the easiest to remember):\n\nThe existence of consciousness\nThe causal and computational properties of experience (including why we can even talk about consciousness to begin with, why consciousness evolved in animals, etc.)\nThe nature and interrelationship between all the qualia varieties and values (why does scent exist? and in exactly what way is it related to color qualia?)\nThe binding problem (why are we not “mind dust” if we are made of atoms)\n\nDavid Pearce’s Four Questions Any Scientific Theory of Consciousness Must Be Able to Answer\n\nSecond, we have Giulio Tononi‘s IIT:\n\nThe existence of consciousness\nThe composition of consciousness (colors, shapes, etc.)\nIts information content (the fact each experience is “distinct”)\nThe unity of consciousness (why does seeing the color blue does not only change a part of your visual field, but in some sense it changes the experience as a whole?)\nThe borders of experience (also called ‘exclusion principle’; that each experience excludes everything not in it; presence of x implies negation of ~x)\n\nGiulio Tononi’s 5 Axioms of Consciousness\n\nFinally, Michael Johnson breaks it down in terms of what he sees as a set of what ultimately are tractable problems. As a whole the problem of consciousness may be conceptually daunting and scientifically puzzling, but this framework seeks to paint a picture of what a solution should look like. These are:\n\nReality mapping problem (what is the formal ontology that can map reality to consciousness?)\nSubstrate problem (in such an ontology, which objects and processes contribute to consciousness?)\nBoundary problem (akin to the binding problem, but reformulated to be agnostic about an atomistic ontology of systems)\nScale problem (how to connect the scale of our physical ontology with the spatio-temporal scale at which experiences happen?)\nTopology of information problem (how do we translate the physical information inside the boundary into the adequate mathematical object used in our formalism?)\nState-space problem (what mathematical features does each qualia variety, value, and binding architecture correspond to?)\nTranslation problem (starting with the mathematical object corresponding to a specific experience within the correct formalism, how do you derive the phenomenal character of the experience?)\nVocabulary problem (how can we improve language to talk directly about natural kinds?)\n\nMichael Johnson’s 8 Problems of Consciousness\nEach of these different breakdowns have advantages and disadvantages. But I think that they are all very helpful and capable of improving the way we understand consciousness. While pondering about the “hard problem of consciousness” can lead to fascinating and strange psychological effects (much akin to asking the question “why is there something rather than nothing?”), addressing the problem space at a finer level of granularity almost always delivers better results. In other words, posing the “hard problem” is less useful than decomposing the question into actually addressable problems. The overall point being that by doing so one is in some sense actually trying to understand rather than merely restating one’s own confusion.\nDo you know of any other such breakdown of the problem space?\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/11/22/breaking-down-the-problem-of-consciousness/", "title": "Breaking Down the Problem of Consciousness", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-11-22T08:36:13+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=9", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "cd0e3715c202acc6aeade0a85e646b14", "summary": []}
{"text": "Break Out of the Simulation Day: Televised Entity Contact, Injection Pulling Experiments, and the Brain as a Game Engine\n\n[Epistemic Status: Wild Speculations]\nTL;DR I came up with a new way to test the reality of DMT entities!\nCore idea: Look for signatures of injection pulling in the brain’s connectome-specific harmonic waves. This would distinguish between mere hallucinations (however weird they may feel) and hallucinations being driven by an external source.\nLike the study about whether psychedelics can help you see through different Everett branches of the multiverse, I don’t expect the results of this experiment to come out positive. But it’s exciting to see a testable prediction on an otherwise so difficult-to-approach subject matter.\n\nTelevised Entity Contact\nI think that we can basically assume that a certain percentage of people who vaporize DMT will believe that they contacted mind-independent beings. This is likely the result of hallucinations, but naïve realism and a bias to interpret more intense and detailed qualia as “more real than real external information” is so deeply ingrained that we can take it as a matter of fact that, say, 50%+ of people won’t be able to override their felt-sense of entity presence with heady philosophical epistemic rigor like discussions about the pseudo-time arrow, valence structuralism, or indirect realism about perception.\nIs there anything we can do with that? Think of it from an economics arbitrage point of view. If we predict that X number of people will newly believe in DMT entities next year, is there an opportunity there?\nI was thinking yesterday on a walk about how “Storm Area 51” is a reality check of sorts for the general public. As in – yes Area 51 is a thing, and no, you can’t just invade it with 100,000 people Naruto running towards it. It was predictable that would be the case, but going through the act in a collective and televised fashion was an interesting exercise in societal epistemology.\n \n \nClick to view slideshow.\nAlong those lines, I suggest that a “Break Out of the Simulation Day” event could be organized. That day we would have, on LIVE TV, people doing DMT trying to contact aliens as a medium, the camera going from one person to the next, always making sure that whoever has the microphone is currently peaking on DMT.\nSo if the DMT Elves are mind-independent sentient beings and want to send a coherent message to humanity, then that would be the time and place to do it. They would have all of our attention.\n\nPerhaps it is unreasonable to expect DMT Elves to send a coherent message when, surprise surprise, they are on LIVE TV all of a sudden. And this is not only because they won’t have time to dress up. According to people who have tried DMT many times and believe it puts you in contact with other dimensions (cf. Dick Khan’s 600 DMT trip reports) there is an entire ecosystem of entities to contact, each of them with special gifts, powers, intentions, and styles. There are jesters, robots, greys, Archons, angels, demons, wireheading specialists, used alien spaceship dealers (those are the worst), etc. There are entire categories of entities whose sole purpose is to convince you that you are dead, or that you are in a simulation, or that the government is out to get you. There are entire species of entities of the sort that show you how to use sound to create thought-forms, and those that like to discuss with you the impact that the Greeks and Aztecs had on the aesthetics of the reptilians (i.e. interdimensional art historians). You cannot expect to be lucky and get a reasonable DMT entity who (1) will figure out what is going on, and (2) has good intentions for humanity. Perhaps we would be opening ourselves up to influence by incompetent, evil, or incompetent and evil entities. Worse, we would be doing so on LIVE TV!\nby Steven Haman (source)\nTesting the Mind-Independent Existence of DMT Entities\nOk, so maybe televising the experiment is a bad idea. Back to the drawing board. Let’s ask: what are the main ways to prove the independent existence of DMT entities? How would serious researchers[1] approach this problem? As far as I can tell, there are three big categories of methods:\n\nPsi-based (having them tell you something about the world you would have no way of knowing otherwise)\nComputation-based (having them solve a problem that requires much more computational power than what is available to you with your brain alone)\nQuasi-Physical interference-based (have entities literally poke, shake, vibrate, excite, or inhibit your body or nervous system in ways that are impossible on their own)\n\nThe Psi-based category is the most well-known, and it includes tests such: (a) asking the entities what your family members are doing right now, (b) having them tell you what is inside a sealed box, (c) having them predict what tomorrow’s lottery numbers will be, and so on. While many people claim to have learned valuable information from DMT entities, I’ve yet to see credible reports of positive tests of this kind.\nThe computation-based category is perhaps best exemplified by Marko Rodriguez’ suggestion of having the entities factorize a large number for you. This method was popularized by Scott Alexander’s now-famous short story Universal Love, Said the Cactus Person, and then later Gwern made an estimate of the cost of such an experiment. It turns out that testing the hypothesis this way could be as cheap as one thousand (of 2015) dollars. Unfortunately, this test is very hard to conduct (saying 200 digits while on DMT and memorizing sets of numbers with dozens of digits the elves return to you as an answer is not an easy task). So other difficult-to-compute but easy-to-articulate and fast-to-memorize problems might be a better fit in this case. I predict it is only a matter of time before someone seriously tries a variant of this method and reports the results online. I would just caution that, depending on the computational task selected, one may inadvertently discover new computational applications of the DMT state rather than prove the existence of mind-independent DMT entities. After all, unusual states of consciousness may have unique computational trade-offs. See for example: Thinking in Numbers, How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD, and the discussion about the possible applications for mathematical research of the hyperbolic phenomenal space disclosed during DMT intoxication. Indeed, I would not be surprised to find out that in the year 2100 many of the most important mathematical breakthroughs are taking place in consciousness research centers thanks to having identified states of consciousness capable of rendering exotic mathematical objects and their possible transformations. So before concluding the DMT Elf solved your computationally-demanding problem, it would be important to rule out that it wasn’t you (or the DMT-filled version of you) who solved the problem thanks to novel qualia varieties only disclosed in such a state. That said, this concern only applies to computational tasks that are not extremely difficult. If a DMT alien can factorize a 3000-digit number in 10 seconds then we could actually reasonably conclude that it exists in a mind-independent way.\nNow, the 3rd approach is, IMO, both the most likely to work in practice, and also the most spooky and frightening were the results to come out positive. Here is why. I’ve recently received trip reports from rational psychonauts who have taken DMT hundreds of times, and it seems clear that there is a vast number of qualitatively distinct state-spaces disclosed by this substance. One of these such relatively rare idiosyncratic responses caught my attention, and I think it warrants closer scientific scrutiny. Namely, I’ve received reports that when the psychonaut is either tired or has been drinking (why anyone would dare take DMT while drunk is beyond me, but for science-I guess-someone already did it) there is a different kind of experience of a rather unpleasant nature that unfolds. This type of DMT experience is described as getting in contact with the “lower levels of the astral plane” in which parasitic etheric life-forms live (not my words). During such an experience, one may feel that these beings “jitter” your nervous system without asking for your permission to do so. And this is done in such a way that your body may literally get up and dance, as if possessed by a spirit, without your conscious control. In a less extreme presentation of this phenomenon, at the very least the entities seem to jerk one’s extremities whether or not you like it. For example, in one of these trip reports someone described having their arm being pulled and jerked left and right by a demon of sorts while at the same time insectoid life-forms crawled inside their body, into the veins of the tripper. Needless to say, this is a profoundly unpleasant experience, no doubt, but perhaps it is also one of the most empirically testable of the bunch.\nInjection Pulling Experiments\nThe big-picture idea here would be to hook a person up to an EEG during such a state (or even place them in an fMRI if at all possible) in order to determine if the “jittering” experienced is endogenously or exogenously generated.\nHow could we do this? Let’s take a step back for a second and recall Selen Atasoy’s study about the influence of LSD on the connectome-specific harmonic waves of the brain. The connectome-specific harmonic waves (CSHWs) are the “natural resonant modes” of a given brain. With this analysis, one can characterize a given “brain state” as a weighted sum of such resonant modes. In turn, one can then see how LSD affects one’s brain state by analyzing the CSHWs while under its influence. As it turns out, there are three major effects from LSD: (a) an overall increase in the power of all CSHWs, (b) the higher-frequency harmonics gain even more power relative to the lower-frequency ones, and (c) the repertoire of possible states dramatically increases, meaning that CSHWs that usually don’t co-occur are more likely to be simultaneously active while on LSD.\nThe thing to point out is that LSD in this case does not change which harmonic modes the brain has; it merely changes the energy distribution over those harmonics. On the other hand, we could in principle imagine that if the “DMT entity contact” brain state is not purely a hallucination, we would instead find out that such a state has a distinct “non-native harmonic pattern”. And this would manifest in the form of injection pulling and injection locking signatures in the reconstructed patterns of brain activity from the neuroimaging data.\nAn analogy with a musical instrument is possible: assume that your brain is a musical instrument and that the notes it plays sound like those of a guitar. In this analogy, taking LSD would entail increasing the volume of each note (and especially so for the higher notes) while also increasing the range of possible note-combinations. In other words, while LSD changes what you can play with the guitar, it does not change the fact that you are playing a guitar. That is, the brain states produced by LSD can be explained as different configurations of otherwise native vibratory patterns. In contrast, if DMT entity contact involves an external energy source with its own characteristic resonant modes, then the brain state that results from it would seem to have non-native vibratory patterns. It would be like having a guitar that produces saxophone sounds. You would know that on its own it is not physically capable of producing such sounds, and hence infer it is being externally influenced somehow.\nAre the jiggling patterns of your brain harmonics while on DMT best explained with or without an external metronome and its injection pulling effects?\nSuch an analysis might reveal that the jerking of the nervous system one experiences on those idiosyncratic DMT experiences is best explained with an injection pulling model and an external metronome marking the pace. In turn, this would imply that the brain is not merely hallucinating a scene, but rather, it is being influenced by an outside metronome. Now, that would be a scientifically-sound ground-breaking finding. And perhaps be so spooky we would all prefer to forget about it rather than contemplate its implications.[2]\n\n\nNow, there is always the option to interpret all of the unusual phenomenal experiences on DMT with a scientific secular framework that excludes entities from other dimensions. At the Qualia Research Institute, the frameworks that we use to explain such unusual experiences involve what we call algorithmic reductions, namely, identifying a small set of data-structures and information-processing steps that when taken together are capable of generating the vast zoo of complex emergent effects. The advantage of this approach is two-fold. First, we avoid over-fitting by minimizing the information complexity of the model (few data structures and few operations is a vastly more parsimonious explanatory framework than ad-hoc spiritual or atomistic interpretations). And second, it allows us to generate predictions such as the possible existence of exotic phenomenal states that haven’t yet been reported in the literature. Indeed, verifying that its predictions are accurate is one way of validating an algorithmic reduction.\nIn the case of DMT, we have algorithmic reduction models that explain the unusual properties of space as well as their associated exotic phenomenal time. And while providing compelling explanations for the exotic space and time one can experience in such a state is foundational, we recognize that this is still a first step. I admit that such models still do not go far enough. We still need to explain the nature and unusual character of “entity contact” experiences. So what do we make of them?\nThe Brain as a Game Engine\nOur best guess- for the time being- involves reformulating the nature of the state-space of consciousness to include a layer of “game parameters”. This was first brought up in the essay “Harmonic Society“:\nConsider what happens when someone takes LSD. Most people expect that they will simply get to experience new sensations like brighter colors, tracers, or synesthesia. This is true to a point, for light doses. But on medium doses, in addition to exploring the state-space of sensory configurations, one also experiences new aesthetics, which this model would define as ways of organizing a lot of sensations in ways that feel right. More so, an aesthetic is also a way of delivering uninhibited sensations in a way that feels good at the level of the whole experience, from moment to moment. Most people have no clue that there is a vast space of possibilities here.\n \nOn higher doses, people are surprised to find an even more general way of exploring the state-space of consciousness. Namely, one instantiates alternate games. The DMT “vibe” that people report can be thought of as more than a “context switch”. It is, rather, a more radical change that we could describe as a “game switch”. The “Jester” that people talk about regarding DMT experiences is an archetype that the mind uses to signal the “rule violation” quality of the state. There is so much going on that one’s experience splits into multiple games at once trying to find some common ground, and this feeling of game-incompatibility feels very alien. A sort of anti-virus system in the mind is triggered at that point, and labels the inconsistency with a feeling of weirdness so that you know not to update your actions based on the (currently globally inconsistent) experience of multiple superimposed games. Rule violation through fast changes in implicit games of social status causes you to interpret what is going on as having extreme stakes. Interacting with DMT Aliens, Gods, Elves, etc. feels like the upper limit of potential social status transfer that your world simulation affords (like meeting a president or a king). The state-space of consciousness contains all of these alternate games and metagames, and we have not even begun to catalogue them.\n \n– Harmonic Society (3/4): Art as State-Space Exploration and Energy Parameter Modulation\nIn other words, taking DMT does not merely propel you to other regions of the state-space of possible sensory impressions, but it also grants you access to alternate aesthetics[3] and game setups. If you think of your brain not only as a sensory-processing tool, but in fact as a kind of high-level game engine, realizing that God and the Devil can be real in your experience shows that they are possible characters of the games your brain can render. In such a case, we will eventually find that the brain states that render DMT entities are, however exotic, still produced by combining the native resonant modes of one’s own nervous system. No need to invoke neuronal injection pulling from the etheric plane.\nOf note is that such a “Game Engine” paradigm would go a long way in explaining unusual experiences such as Free-Wheeling Hallucinations where one becomes able to control almost all features of one’s experience with an incredible level of detail. Indeed we can describe a Free-Wheeling Hallucination state as having access to an experience editor, as illustrated in the Memory Facility Scene of Blade Runner 2049:\n\nUnsurprisingly, we can anticipate that when one is given root access to the parameters of one’s own inner world-simulation, one is likely to focus on creating experiences entirely filled with enjoyable super-stimuli. Whether this involves sex-worlds or proofs of the existence of a benevolent God might be a function of what is it that one craves the most. The intense concern with theodicy and the nature of death while on psychedelic drugs might have something to do with having the ability to change the most essential parameters of one’s internal world simulation. After all, if “living in a world” where God exists and is loving is more enjoyable than the alternative, one’s own hedonic maximization algorithms would try to “realize that’s the truth” if given the option to forge evidence. The same could be going on with DMT entities, for a world in which DMT is an interdimensional portal technology is vastly more interesting (or at least dramatic) than the alternative.\nIn the end, studying DMT experiences do not need to involve actual entity contact to be of profound significance to the science of consciousness. If you think of your brain as a qualia machine engine, DMT is about the best (or second-best [4]) qualia fuel there is. There are vast regions of the state-space of consciousness that can only be accessed with DMT, many of which contain extremely computationally interesting qualia, and many others which contain intrinsically valuable states (aka. heaven worlds). If, on top of that, it also enables interdimensional beings to injection pull your brain harmonics, we could think of that as icing on the cake.\n\n\n[1] Serious and Unserious Consciousness Researchers\nOn a tangential note, here is a quote I recently heard at a consciousness conference:\nThomas Metzinger, the famous and brilliant German neuroscientist and philosopher of mind*, was once asked at a conference presentation he was giving whether he had ever tried psychedelics. His response? “There are two kinds of consciousness researchers. There are the serious ones, and the unserious ones. The serious ones take advantage of all the tools at their disposal to crack this mystery. All I will say is that I am NOT an unserious consciousness researcher.”\n*He is best known for being the writer of the books “Being No One” and “The Ego Tunnel“, friends with the Foundational Research Institute, a strong proponent of a variant of eliminativism about consciousness, and a negative utilitarian specializing in AI ethics.\n\n\n[2] Implications\nIf the injection pulling experiment does reveal that DMT entities are indeed mind-independent sentient beings in alternate dimensions, then what?\nWe shall cross that bridge when we get there, but in the meantime, let me entertain you with a wild hypothesis: DMT Elves are us at a higher level of spiritual and psychological development. In such a case, we might want to revise Integral Theory’s levels to include DMT Elves. Expect Ken Wilber’s next book to contain the following:\nLarval Stages of the Soul Before Ascension\n1) Mythical, 2) Machiavellian, 3) Religious Traditional, 4) Scientific Secular, 5) Postmodern Multiculturalist, 6) Burner, 7) DMT Elf, 8) Full-Spectrum Supersentient Superintelligence, 9) Hedonium Plasma Wave, and finally 10) Pure Love.\n\n\n[3] An open question for all my DMT-using readers: are DMT visuals more akin to Art Deco, or Art Nouveau?\n\n\n\n[4] On a Serious Note\nMy prediction is that the single most important tool to investigate consciousness is 5-MeO-DMT. It is probably the most important consciousness tool ever discovered. While I’ve seen serious consciousness researchers and academics admit in private that they have tried psychedelics, I almost never encounter people who have tried 5-MeO. I expect this to change over the course of the next decade as the word gets out that no, 5-MeO is not “yet another psychedelic” but it’s the “real deal” when it comes to disclosing profoundly insightful states of consciousness with implications for personal identity, ethics, the state-space of qualia, the nature of valence (i.e. harmony vs. dissonance), phenomenal time, causality, and the importance of quantum coherence for phenomenal binding. If you have explored this compound and would like to share your insights, please get in touch. We always welcome high-quality trip reports.\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\nSelf-transforming machine thought-forms.\nValued for their intrinsic qualia;\nsometimes used for qualia computing.\n\nFeatured image source: Machinist Sculpture Chris Bathgate", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/11/15/break-out-of-the-simulation-day-televised-entity-contact-injection-pulling-experiments-and-the-brain-as-a-game-engine/", "title": "Break Out of the Simulation Day: Televised Entity Contact, Injection Pulling Experiments, and the Brain as a Game Engine", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-11-16T06:01:15+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=9", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "9a518d3293ed1241e63b438379a1237a", "summary": []}
{"text": "Is the Orthogonality Thesis Defensible if We Assume Both Valence Realism and Open Individualism?\n\nAri Astra asks: Is the Orthogonality Thesis Defensible if We Assume Both “Valence Realism” and Open Individualism?\n\nAri’s own response: I suppose it’s contingent on whether or not digital zombies are capable of general intelligence, which is an open question. However, phenomenally bound subjective world simulations seem like an uncharacteristic extravagance on the part of evolution if non-sphexish p-zombie general intelligence is possible.\nOf course, it may be possible, but just not reachable through Darwinian selection. But the fact that a search process as huge as evolution couldn’t find it and instead developed profoundly sophisticated phenomenally bound subjectivity is (possibly strong) evidence against the proposition that zombie AGI is possible (or likely to be stumbled on by accident).\nIf we do need phenomenally bound subjectivity for non-sphexish intelligence and minds ultimately care about qualia valence – and confusedly think that they care about other things only when they’re below a certain intelligence (or thoughtfulness) level – then it seems to follow that smarter than human AGIs will converge on valence optimization.\nIf OI is also true, then smarter than human AGIs will likely converge on this as well – since it’s within the reach of smart humans – and this will plausibly lead to AGIs adopting sentience in general as their target for valence optimization.\nFriendliness may be built into the nature of all sufficiently smart and thoughtful general intelligence.\nIf we’re not drug-naive and we’ve conducted the phenomenological experiment of chemically blowing open the reducing valves that keep “mind at large” out and that filteratively shape hominid consciousness, we know by direct acquaintance that it’s possible to hack our way to more expansive awareness.\nWe shouldn’t discount the possibility that AGI will do the same simply because the idea is weirdly genre bending. Whatever narrow experience of “self” AGI starts with in the beginning, it may quickly expand out of.\n\nMichael E. Johnson‘s response: The orthogonality thesis seems sound from ‘far mode’ but always breaks down in ‘near mode’. One way it breaks down is in implementation: the way you build an AGI system will definitely influence what it tends to ‘want’. Orthogonality is a leaky abstraction in this case.\nAnother way it breaks down is that the nature and structure of the universe instantiates various Schelling points. As you note, if Valence Realism is true, then there exists a pretty big Schelling point around optimizing that. Any arbitrary AGI would be much more likely to optimize for (and coordinate around) optimizing for positive qualia than, say, paperclips. I think this may be what your question gets at.\nCoordination is also a huge question. You may have read this already, but worth pointing to: A new theory of Open Individualism.\nTo collect some threads- I’d suggest that much of the future will be determined by the coordination capacity and game-theoretical equilibriums between (1) different theories of identity, and (2) different metaphysics.\nWhat does ‘metaphysics’ mean here? I use ‘metaphysics’ as shorthand for ‘the ontology people believe is ‘real’. What they believe we should look at when determining moral action.’\nThe cleanest typology for metaphysics I can offer is: some theories focus on computations as the thing that’s ‘real’, the thing that ethically matters – we should pay attention to what the *bits* are doing. Others focus on physical states – we should pay attention to what the *atoms* are doing. I’m on team atoms, as I note here: Against Functionalism.\nMy suggested takeaway: an open individualist who assumes computationalism is true (team bits) will have a hard time coordinating with an open individualist who assumes physicalism is true (team atoms) — they’re essentially running incompatible versions of OI and will compete for resources. As a first approximation, instead of three theories of personal identity – Closed Individualism, Empty Individualism, Open Individualism – we’d have six. CI-bits, CI-atoms, EI-bits, EI-atoms, OI-bits, OI-atoms. Whether the future is positive will be substantially determined by how widely and deeply we can build positive-sum moral trades between these six frames.\nMaybe there’s further structure, if we add the dimension of ‘yes/no’ on Valence Realism. But maybe not– my intuition is that ‘team bits’ trends toward not being valence realists, whereas ‘team atoms’ tends toward it. So we’d still have these core six.\n(I believe OI-atoms or EI-atoms is the ‘most true’ theory of personal identity, and that upon reflection and under consistency constraints agents will converge to these theories at the limit, but I expect all six theories to be well-represented by various agents and pseudo-agents in our current and foreseeable technological society.)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/11/09/is-the-orthogonality-thesis-defensible-if-we-assume-both-valence-realism-and-open-individualism/", "title": "Is the Orthogonality Thesis Defensible if We Assume Both Valence Realism and Open Individualism?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-11-09T19:24:23+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=10", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "01db3f7d281676098856eb9154827a52", "summary": []}
{"text": "Toy Story 4 – 20 Movie Review\n\nToy Story was my favorite movie growing up. I had the entire collection. The fact that the toys could think without a brain made me explore dualism, monism, the existence of God, and nofap (see next slides). Toy Story 4 is weird as fuck for a Disney movie. Due to the psychedelics Renaissance and mass awakening, people want everything to be increasingly trippy.\nForky is probably the weirdest Disney character of all time. It’s like the producers and writers got together in a room and brainstormed, “emm how can we strip a character down to its bare minimum materially to embody pure Being and Nothingness, and all he wanted was to go back to the Source”? The toys are on their way to realizations with Woody and Buzz self-inquiring about the distinction between the voice in their heads and the voice from their voice box. Woody eventually dissolved the part of his ego attached to having an owner by the end, but is still asleep because he still believes he is a toy.\nToy Story 15 will eventually be about enlightenment.\nBuzz will be the first one to wake up since he always had a hunch that he wasn’t a toy and is obsessed with infinity.\nBuzz screams at Woody, ‘You are not a toy, but infinite Consciousness.’\nMaybe by Toy Story 18 both the toys and their owners can break through the layer of illusion that separates them and finally rejoice and communicate with each other after realizing they are made up of the same pixels, floating inside the same bubble of Divine imagination with limitless possibilities.\nIn Toy Story 20, every object inside the screen – toys and kids, trees, shoes and houses all combine force and congeal their pixels into One, exists the screen and merge with the audience in an Absolute orgy where all dualities collapse.\nWe’re left with an empty screen; the good old Witness. McDonald manufactures blank screen keychains to go along with happy meals and all the kids thought they got woke.\nBut when my grandson brings one home I’ll smash the little screens with a hammer “the Observer is the last stand against freedom!” I yell.\nAnd then he was enlightened.\n#toystory代購 #jumpman #thefappening", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/11/05/toy-story-4-20-movie-review/", "title": "Toy Story 4 – 20 Movie Review", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-11-05T14:05:53+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=10", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "bc958f1ba10fb2656abcb04332d3f7eb", "summary": []}
{"text": "Three Interesting Math Problems to Work on While on LSD\n\n\nLet P be a simple polygon with n>3 sides. A simple polygon is a polygon that does not self-intersect, but it is not necessarily convex. Prove that no matter the shape of P, there is always a diagonal (a segment that connects two vertices of P without intersecting any of its sides) that divides P into two polygons, both of which have at least n/3 sides.\nLet A and B be two points in the plane. Using only a compass and a straightedge, find the point C which is the exact middle point between A and B. Now do the same thing, but using only a compass.\nThere are 17 point-sized light-houses in the plane. Assume that each of these lighthouses can shine light in any direction with an angle of 2*pi/17. Prove that no matter the position of each lighthouse, it is always possible to choose the angles at which they shine their light such that every point in the plane is illuminated (point-sized lighthouses don’t cast shadows).\n\n\nIn Selective Enhancement of Specific Capacities Through Psychedelic Training, Willis Harman and James Fadiman outline the results of a study about the potential use of psychedelics for problem solving. In the study, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and designers took either 100 micrograms of LSD or 200mg of mescaline and worked on a problem they were personally invested in and which they had not been able to solve for at least 3 months. According to Fadiman, 9 out of 10 participants came up with a solution to the problem that was validated by the participant’s professional colleagues.\nThe three problems above are not easy, but they are also not insanely difficult. If it means anything to you, their level of difficulty might be around that of a problem 1 or 4 of an IMO, with the advantage that you do not need any fancy math to solve them (high-school math is more than sufficient). I do not know if solving these problems is easier or harder on psychedelics, but I figure I would share them as possible Schelling points for “challenging math problems to think about while on psychedelics” to see if anyone reports benefits from such a setup. I personally like these problems, and I can assure you that they do have interesting and clever solutions. Assuming you are already planning on taking a psychedelic substance in the future: I would recommend trying to solve one of these problems for at least 1 hour while sober, and then setting aside at least 30 minutes (preferably 1 hour) while on a psychedelic and giving it your full attention. Please let me know if you either solve the problem or get an interesting insight from such an exercise. I am particularly curious to hear about *what aspects* of the psychedelic state seemed to be either beneficial or detrimental in solving these problems. Even if you do not solve the problem, you may be able to think about it in new ways and derive useful insights. Again, if you do so, let me know as well.\n(source)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/11/01/three-interesting-math-problems-to-work-on-while-on-lsd/", "title": "Three Interesting Math Problems to Work on While on LSD", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-11-02T05:18:05+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=10", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "116f67bd05012fa71a55d7808c1e89fa", "summary": []}
{"text": "Psychotic Depression\n\nExcerpt from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (pgs. 692-698)\nAnd re Ennet House resident Kate Gompert and this depression issue:\nSome psychiatric patients — plus a certain percentage of people who’ve gotten so dependent on chemicals for feelings of well-being that when the chemicals have to be abandoned they undergo a loss-trauma that reaches way down deep into the soul’s core systems — these persons know firsthand that there’s more than one kind of so-called ‘depression’. One kind is low-grade and sometimes gets called anhedonia[280] or simple melancholy. It’s a kind of spiritual torpor in which one loses the ability to feel pleasure or attachment to things formerly important. The avid bowler drops out of his league and stays home at night staring dully at kick-boxing youtube videos cartridges. The gourmand is off his feed. The sensualist finds his beloved Unit all of a sudden to be so much feelingless gristle, just hanging there. The devoted wife and mother finds the thought of her family about as moving, all of a sudden, as a theorem of Euclid. It’s a kind of emotional novocaine, this form of depression, and while it’s not overly painful its deadness is disconcerting and… well, depressing. Kate Gompert’s always thought of this anhedonic state as a kind of radical abstracting of everything, a hollowing out of stuff that used to have affective content. Terms that undepressed toss around and take for granted as full and fleshy — happiness, joie de vivre, preference, love — are stripped to their skeletons and reduced to abstract ideas. They have, as it were, denotation but not connotation. The anhedonic can still speak about happiness and meaning et al., but she has become incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hoping anything about them, or of believing them to exist as anything more than concepts. Everything becomes an outline of the thing. Objects become schemata. The world becomes a map of the world. An anhedonic can navigate, but has no location. I.e. the anhedonic becomes, in the lingo of Boston AA, Unable To Identify.\nIt’s worth nothing that, among younger E.T.A.s, the standard take on Dr. J. O. Incandenza’s suicide attributes his putting his head in the microwave to this kind of anhedonia. This is maybe because anhedonia’s often associated with the crises that afflict extremely goal-oriented people who reach a certain age having achieved all or more than all than they’d hoped for. The what-does-it-all-mean-type crisis of middle-aged Americans. In fact this is in fact not what killed Incandenza at all. In fact the presumption that he’d achieved all his goals and found that the achievement didn’t confer meaning or joy on his existence says more about the students at E.T.A. than it says about Orin’s and Hal’s father: still under the influence of the deLint-like carrot-and-stick philosophies of their hometown coaches rather than the more paradoxical Schtitt/Incandenza/Lyle school, younger athletes who can’t help gauging their whole worth by their place in an ordinal ranking use the idea that achieving their goals and finding the gnawing sense of worthlessness still there in their own gut as a kind of psychic bogey, something that they can use to justify stopping on their way down to dawn drills to smell flowers along the E.T.A. paths. The idea that achievement doesn’t automatically confer interior worth is, to them, still, at this age, an abstraction, rather like the prospect of their own death — ‘Caius Is Mortal’ and so on. Deep down, they all still view the competitive carrot as the grail. They’re mostly going through the motions when they invoke anhedonia. They’re mostly small children, keep in mind. Listen to any sort of sub-16 exchange you hear in the bathroom or food line: ‘Hey, there, how are you?’ ‘Number eight this week, is how I am.’ They all still worship the carrot. With the possible exception of the tormented LaMount Chu, they all still subscribe to the delusive idea that the continent’s second-ranked fourteen-year-old feels exactly twice as worthwhile as the continent’s #4.\nDeluded or not, it’s still a lucky way to live. Even though it’s temporary. It may well be that the lower-ranked little kids at E.T.A. are proportionally happier than the higher-ranked kids, since we (who are mostly not small children) know it’s more invigorating to want than to have, it seems. Though maybe this is just the inverse of the same delusion.\nHal Incandenza, though he has no idea yet of why his father really put his head in a specially-dickied microwave in the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar, is pretty sure that it wasn’t because of standard U.S. anhedonia. Hal himself hadn’t had a bona fide intensity-of-interior-life-type emotion since he was tiny; he finds terms like joie and value to be like so many variables in rarified equations, and he can manipulate them well enough to satisfy everyone but himself that he’s in there, inside his own hull, as a human being — but in fact he’s far more robotic than John Wayne. One of his troubles with his Moms is the fact that Avril Incandenza believes she knows him inside and out as a human being, and an internally worthy one at that, when in fact inside Hal there’s pretty much nothing at all, he knows. His Moms Avril hears her own echoes inside him and thinks what she hears is him, and this makes Hal feel the one thing he feels to the limit, lately: he is lonely.\nIt’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It’s maybe the vestiges of the Romantic glorification of Weltschmerz, which means world-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it’s the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip — and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It’s more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we’ve hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naïvité. Sentiment equals naïvité on this continent (at least since the Reconfiguration). One of the things sophisticated viewers have always liked about the J. O. Incandenza’s The American Century as Seen Through a Brick is its unsubtle thesis that naïvité is the last true terrible sin in the theology of millennial America. And since sin is the sort of thing that can be talked about only figuratively, it’s natural that Himself’s dark little cartridge was mostly about a myth, viz. that queerly persistent U.S. myth that cynicism and naïvité are mutually exclusive. Hal, who’s empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not-quite-right-looking infant dragging itself anaclitically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool. One of the really American things about Hal, probably, is the way he despises what it is he’s really lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pulses and writhes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia.[281]\nThe American Century as Seen Through a Brick‘s main and famous key-image is of a piano-string vibrating — a high D, it looks like — vibrating and making a very sweet unadorned solo sound indeed, and then a little thumb comes into the frame, a blunt moist pale and yet dingy thumb, with disreputable stuff crusted in one of the nail-corners, small and unlined, clearly an infantile thumb, and as it touches the paino string the high sweet sound immediately dies. And the silence that follows is excruciating. Later in the film, after much mordant and didactic panoramic brick-following, we’re back at the piano-string, and the thumb is removed, and the high sweet sound recommences, extremely pure and solo, and yet now somehow, as the volume increases, now with something rotten about it underneath, there’s something sick-sweet and overripe and potentially putrid about the one clear high D as its volume increases and increases, the sound getting purer and louder and more dysphoric until after a surprisingly few seconds we find ourselves right in the middle of the pure undampered sound longing and even maybe praying for the return of the natal thumb, to shut it up.\nHal isn’t old enough yet to know that this is because numb emptiness isn’t the worst kind of depression. That dead-eyed anhedonia is but a remora on the ventral flank of the true predator, the Great White Shark of pain. Authorities term this condition clinical depression or involutional depression or unipolar dysphoria. Instead of just an incapacity for feeling, a deadening of the soul, the predator-grade depression Kate Gompert always feels as she Withdraws from secret marijuana is itself a feeling. It goes by many names — anguish, despair, torment, or q.v. Burton’s melancholia or Yevtuschenko’s more authoritative psychotic depression — but Kate Gompert, down in the trenches with the thing itself, knows it simply as It.\nIt is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. It is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self’s most elementary levels. It is a nausea of the cells and soul. It is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate and un-map-like and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self It billows on and coagulates around and wraps in Its black folds and absorbs into Itself, so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world every constituent of which means painful harm to the self. Its emotional character, the feeling Gompert describes It as, is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we associate with human agency — sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying — are not just unpleasant but literally horrible.\nIt is also lonely on a level that cannot be conveyed. There is no way Kate Gompert could ever even begin to make someone else understand what clinical depression feels like, not even another person who is herself clinically depressed, because a person in such a state is incapable of empathy with any other living thing. This anhedonic Inability To Identify is also an integral part of It. If a person in physical pain has a hard time attending to anything except that pain[282], a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell. Everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a hell for one.\nThe authoritative term psychotic depression makes Kate Gompert feel especially lonely. Specifically the psychotic part. Think of it this way. Two people are screaming in pain. One of them is being tortured with electric current. The other is not. The screamer who’s being tortured with electric current is not psychotic: her screams are circumstantially appropriate. The screaming person who’s not being tortured, however, is psychotic, since the outside parties making the diagnoses can see no electrodes or measurable amperage. One of the least pleasant things about being psychotically depressed on a ward full of psychotically depressed patients is coming to see that none of them is really psychotic, that their screams are entirely appropriate to certain circumstances part of whose special charm is that they are undetectable by any outside party. Thus the loneliness: it’s a closed circuit: the current is both applied and received from within.\nThe so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of the two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to personally be trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.\nBut and so the idea of a person in the grip of It being bound by a ‘Suicide Contract’ some well-meaning Substance-abuse halfway house makes her sign is simply absurd. Because such a contract will constrain such a person only until the exact psychic circumstances that made the contract necessary in the first place assert themselves, invisibly and indescribably. That the well-meaning halfway-house Staff does not understand Its overriding terror will only make the depressed resident feel more alone.\nOne fellow psychotically depressed patient Kate Gompert came to know at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton two years ago was a man in his fifties. He was a civil engineer whose hobby was model trains — like from Lionel Trains Inc., etc. — for which he erected incredibly intricate systems of switching and track that filled his basement recreation room. His wife brought photographs of the trains and network of trellis and track into the locked ward, to help remind him. The man said he had been suffering from psychotic depression for seventeen straight years, and Kate Gompert had had no reason to disbelieve him. He was stocky and swart with thinning hair and hands that he held very still in his lap as he sat. Twenty years ago he had slipped on a patch of 3-In-1-brand oil from his model-train tracks and bonked his head on the cement floor of his basement rec room in Wellesley Hills, and when he woke up in the E.R. he was depressed beyond all human endurance, and stayed that way. He’d never once tried suicide, though he confessed that he yearned for unconsciousness without end. His wife was very devoted and loving. She went to Catholic Mass every day. She was very devout. The psychotically depressed man, too, went to daily Mass when he was not institutionalized. He prayed for relief. He still had his job and his hobby. He went to work regularly, taking medical leaves only when the invisible torment got too bad for him to trust himself, or when there was some radical new treatment the psychiatrists wanted him to try. They’d tried Tricyclics, M.A.O.I.s, insulin-comas, Selective-Serotonin-Reuptake Inhibitors[283], the new and side-effect-laden Quadracyclics. They’d scanned his lobes and affective matrices for lesions and scars. Nothing worked. Not even high-amperage E.C.T. relieved It. This happens sometimes. Some cases of depression are beyond human aid. The man’s case gave Kate Gompert the howling fantods. The idea of this man going to work and to Mass and building miniaturized railroad networks day after day after day while feeling anything like what Kate Gompert felt in that ward was simply beyond her ability to imagine. The rationo-spiritual part of her knew this man and his wife must be possessed of a courage way off any sort of known courage-chart. But in her toxified soul Kate Gompert felt only a paralyzing horror at the idea of the squat dead-eyed man laying toy track slowly and carefully in the silence of his wood-panelled rec room, the silence total except for the sounds of the track being oiled and snapped together and laid into place, the man’s head full of poison and worms and every cell in his body screaming for relief from flames no one else could help with or even feel.\nThe permanently psychotically depressed man was finally transferred to a place on Long Island to be evaluated for a radical new type of psychosurgery where they supposedly went in and yanked out your whole limbic system, which is the part of the brain that causes all sentiment and feeling. The man’s fondest dream was anhedonia, complete psychic numbing. I.e. death in life. The prospect of radical psychosurgery was the dangled carrot that Kate guessed still gave the man’s life enough meaning for him to hang onto the windowsill by his fingernails, which were probably black and gnarled from the flames. That and his wife: he seemed genuinely to love his wife, and she him. He went to bed every night at home holding her, weeping for it to be over, while she prayed or did that devout thing with beads.\nThe couple had gotten Kate Gompert’s mother’s address and had sent Kate an Xmas card the last two years, Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Feaster of Wellesley Hills MA, stating that she was in her prayers and wishing her all available joy. Kate Gompert doesn’t know whether Mr. Ernest’s limbic system got yanked out or not. Whether he achieved anhedonia. The Xmas cards had had excruciating little watercolor pictures of locomotives on them. She could barely stand to think about them, even at the best of times, which the present was not.\n\n[280] Anhedonia was apparently coined by Ribot, a Continental Frenchman, who in his 19th-century Psychologie des Sentiments says he means it to denote the psychoequivalent of analgesia, which is the neurologic supression of pain.\n[281] This had been one of Hal’s deepest and most pregnant abstractions, one he’d come up with once while getting secretly high in the Pump Room. That we’re all lonely for something we don’t know we’re lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that he goes around feeling like he misses somebody he’s never even met? Without the universalizing abstraction, the feeling would make no sense.\n[282] (the big reason why people in pain are so self-absorbed and unpleasant to be around)\n[283] S.S.R.I.s, of which Zoloft and the ill-fated Prozac were the ancestors.\n\n\nSee also:\n\nWireheading Done Right – which steel-mans the case for philosophical and practical hedonism by outlining how to change our reward circuitry in such a way that (1) we never need to feel bad, (2) we move between different varieties of bliss depending on their functional properties, and (3) avoid becoming a pure replicator.\nTyranny of the Intentional Object – the stories we tell ourselves to explain every sense of pleasure and every sense of pain we feel are all, for the most part, deeply psychotic. That is, in so far as we attribute their valence to external triggers –  in truth, every feeling’s valence is the result of the fine-grained structure of the qualia that implements it. You don’t scream at a bullet ant’s sting. You scream at the deep scintillating patterns of qualia shaped by dissonance, shearing, pinching, tearing, etc. (all symmetry breaking effects) that result from the sting.\nLogarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain – I like that David Foster Wallace makes a distinction between run-of-the-mill anhedonia and the Great White Shark of clinical depression. More broadly, we ought to realize that bad experiences of pain and suffering are not just a fraction worse than the rest, but they can indeed be orders of magnitude worse. On the flip-side, this is also true for positive experiences, with illustrative examples such as Buddhist Jhanas, temporal lobe epilepsy, and the lucky 5-MeO-DMT-induced state of supreme bliss.\n\nAlso relevant: David Pearce‘s Abolitionist Bioethics, Mike Johnson‘s A Future for Neuroscience, and Romeo Stevens‘ post about Core Transformation.\nFinally, see Scott Alexander‘s book review of Infinite Jest.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/10/26/psychotic-depression/", "title": "Psychotic Depression", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-10-27T07:45:33+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=10", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "525feb8f7d8279154d94702a681a11df", "summary": []}
{"text": "Early Isolation Tank Psychonautics: 1970s Trip Reports\n\nExcerpt from The Deep Self: Consciousness Exploration in the Isolation Tank by John C. Lilly, 1977 (selected reports between pgs. 186 and 247).\nSpring 1974\nRichard Feynman, male, 56 years, 160 lbs., 5′ 11”: summary of 35 hours done in 12 weeks, 1974.\nHaving done a number of introspective experiments on influencing my own dreams (and been objectively conscious and observing while I was dreaming), I became very curious about hallucinations and welcomed the opportunity to use Dr. Lilly’s sensory isolation tanks, for they were reputed to produce hallucinations, safely. I have spent at least a dozen sessions, each of over two hours, in the tank. The experience was very pleasant and rewarding. Although nothing happened for the first two sessions (except idle thinking as when one is going to sleep), hallucinations were experienced nearly every time thereafter. After some brief period after entering the tank, they would continue for hours. I was always aware that I was hallucinating and part of my mind was nearly always making observations. There were the usual out-of-body, or out-of-the-right-time hallucinations. For example, in one case I could see my hands on my head as if I were standing in back, and when I moved my hands (actually in the water) I would see them move and sky appear between the fingers, etcetera. I have later had imaginary flights over scenery, etcetera. In both of these cases the fact that others get this type of hallucination had been discussed beforehand.\nOn one occasion I had been thinking (in studies of artificial intelligence) about how the masses of memory materials might be organized in storage in the human memory. That week my hallucination consisted of vivid recalling, or reliving, nearly, image after image from far in the past (in no case were there any new details that I didn’t think I could have remembered if asked). But I was delighted to discover that the memories were stored according to locale — you thought of one scene occurring at some particular place and all the other things that occurred at that placed tumbled out. It took a full hour after I was out of the tank until I realized I had discovered nothing real, that that itself was an hallucination.\nI am convinced of Dr. Lilly’s dictum that you can think of anything that you want to — that the hallucinations are a delightful and entrancing union of spontaneity of detail with a pattern or set which you have made or can make about their overall character. Thus if you have discussed a great deal about the blue spheres that you will see, you may see blue spheres but have the illusion they come not from you but from somewhere else — even though you know that the only one in the tank is you. The usual test of scientific reality is that many people see the same thing. In this case coincidence of experience lies not in the reality of the thing experienced but from a coincidence of influencing conversations and ideas about what you will imagine, and an illusion that the “image comes to you.” The same phenomena may explain some success in dream interpretations through dreaming certain symbols whose character or interpretation has been previously discussed.\nI should like to thank Dr. Lilly, his wife, and associates for many pleasant experiences both in and outside of his tanks.\n\n2 January 1974\nJoan Grof, female, 31 yrs., 120 lbs., 5′: 2 hours, 20 minutes.\nI entered the tank with the anticipation of several things happening: claustrophobic panic or delineated stages of experience, i.e. sleepfulness, and then visions. Neither set occurred. Instead, I was totally at ease, feeling as though this place (i.e. total quiet, darkness, and fluidity) was what I wanted. I lost body boundaries and time sense, immediately disappeared and I experienced total peace and a feeling of unity. Experience did not modulate and I did not play with it. Just was very passive and let “it” do it itself. What I experienced was a continuous void that was not boring, yet empty, not engaging, yet full.\n\nNo date\nStan Grof, male, 42 yrs.: no time recorded.\nAfter about five minutes, enormous slowing down of time. Increasing stability, tranquility, a certain “inorganic quality of consciousness”–moving away from its biological characteristics. Atmosphere of ancient Egypt, becoming aware of her religion, philosophy and art. Insights into the process of mummification, becoming a mummy and experiencing the consciousness typical for it. Understanding it as an interspace vehicle (organic -> inorganic).\nMatter -> spirit.\nMoving into the initiation in the pyramids, feeling a parallel between a mummy and an adept in the sarcophagus. Awareness of granite, becoming the consciousness of granite. Understanding that the preoccupation with granite in Egypt was based on the appreciation of the state of consciousness associated with it. Changes occur on a scale of thousands of millions of years (as compared to seconds and minutes for biological forms). Return of an old insight: Granite statues are the deities, not the images thereof.\nMoving into absolute void (experienced as consciousness of the interstellar space). Timelessness. No difference between minutes and millions of years.\nEnding up the experience with feelings of regeneration, purification, refreshment, rejuvenation, clarity.\n\n2 November 1973\nAlejandro Jodorowsky, male, 44 yrs.: 1 hour.\nIt is one experience I would repeat every day, not to obtain, but to lose, like to go to the bathroom. In the first second, I was afraid of being afraid. “It” controls itself saying “It is only afraid to suffocate.” But he (Lilly) must control oxygen, because what will he do with my corpse? This matter of giving [up] my body, and to die to my self-conception. Ok, I will die. After two or three minutes, floating, marvelous comfort, you are at home, nice security, nice silence, nice temperature, and nice relaxation. No body, no sex, no emotions, no thoughts, no problems, no past, but absolutely no past, not plans for future. Little man into the water being the seed fish, without expecting to be a tree with scales. There in the only time, the no-time, there in the only center, the no-center. Sometimes relating with the maternal womb, but escaping of this image. It didn’t want to play with the fetal-paradise and then, it put out like excrement the problem of practical relaxation. Now we are ready. With a great breath of fire the burning of the oxygen like a simple star and a great general beating of heart. Nothing but nothing, and in the middle of the nothingness it was there like a stone–the conscience–Realize what I know, what I live in every moment. I am not so much but still I am something even if I didn’t want it to be active, even if it wanted to be the tongue like a cup without will with all his being made to receive. It tried to be liberated from the little stone when the middle of nothingness became the whole universe. It prepared itself to jump. But Mr. Lilly come, the hour is past. I regret. Was infinite but too short and this body got out of the baptismal desiring a lot of emersions. Anyway, I think, say the little body, I can live in this society in a very polite way in a very communicative way, being immersed all the time in the tank without having a tank.\n\n16 October 1973\nJan Metzner, no data given: no time recorded.\nBecame aware immediately of tension areas and moved in to relax and give myself to the experience. I was surprised at the nonexistence of fear reactions to closeness/darkness in tank, which I had expected. Being trained as I am in moving in consciousness with the techniques of Light-Fire, I found I went comfortably within and worked with a technique, but found focusing more difficult. My head felt very heavy and had to support it with my hands. Felt salt irritating to the skin. The overall effect was very relaxing, and there are other areas in consciousness I would like to spend time exploring.\n\n16 October 1973\nRalph Metzner, no data given: no time recorded.\nI found it a very relaxing and enjoyable experience, marred only by the slight discomfort due to the fact that my head had a tendency to sink down.\nI went into the energy-yoga technique I am currently working with and found that I got some unusual perspectives on the innerbody spaces that would be otherwise hard to get to.\nWithout the restraints of gravity, the moving into and throughout the body and, to an extent, out of it, was much easier–as if the structures had been slightly greased and made more slippery.\n\n2 July 1975\nFrancisco Varela, male, 28 yrs., 155 lbs.: actual time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.\nClosed space, heavy breathing, oppression from suppression. A wave of buoyancy, oily-saltry relaxation, surprise at fitting into water and staying. Letting go, feet are fine, trunk is fine, head is fine.\nBeginning to stay–be.\nBody goes out, inner sound takes over. Wild ride on heartbeat — inner music. Roller coaster.\nCarved into inner sounds: sudden flashes of perception: dogs barking, old tunes on a junky radio, laughter and people’s noise. Startle. Experiment with closed and open eyes. No difference. Stay with eyes open. Visual-acoustic flashes now: scattered, fragmented. Too real. Strong recall of transit stages. I have been here. At a moment: I belong here.\nWilder/surrealist images interface with periods of sleep. In and out with no chance of distinction between dream and tank-reality. Am I there?\nBanging. Voice to take me out. Voice is John. Get out. Seems I’ve been in thirty to forty minutes. Long lag in coming back.\n\nNo date\nLouis Jolyon West, male, 40 yrs., 220 lbs., 6′ 3”: 1 hour.\n(N.B.: Previous experience, fresh-water tank, Oklahoma City.)\nBuoyancy definitely an advantage over the old method. Also, much better without need for mask.\nLost awareness of surroundings much faster in this situation. Very rapid access to “preconscious stream” (Kubie), with complete immersion therein until termination. No subclassification of mental state during that period would be accurate; my experience was of a smoothly unbroken flow of both digital and analog information. Had planned to meditate (TM) but never got around to it. My personal experience was that a state of “pure consciousness” (more or less) was reached in the tank without utilizing the mental echo of a mantra, but I wouldn’t emphasize this impression without a series of experimental and control sessions. Emerged refreshed with a sense that far less than an hour’s time had passed. A wholly pleasant experience.\n\n10 April 1975\nRobert A. Wilson, male, 32 yrs., 170 lbs., 5′ 10”: 2 hours.\nSmall red light room housing two dumpster-like sensory deprivation tanks. Climbing in the darker, older-looking tank I flash that perhaps it is deeper than the floor level would indicate, but not only ten to fourteen inches of warm water in this giant battery casing. Perhaps there’s not enough water. Sitting, then lying back, the buoyancy is surprising–suddenly I’m floating. Slight contact with tank sides, then my breathing is focus of my attention. Breathing, floating, thinking. Mind floats through myriad of subjects, tension generated within is soon apparent. Return to focus on breath. Thoughts return. After an hour little tastes of terror manifest. Each wave of fear though powerful seeming necessitates reevaluation of tension state, breathing again, floating, adjusting to a deeper relaxation state. Perhaps this is where I’ll sleep tonight. After two hours eyes begin burning, keeping them shut tonight… keeping them shut against the salt becomes a labor, then a drop of salt down my nasal passage–that does it. Sitting up pushing the tank lid open. Fun trip, I feel very relaxed, reborn in a way. Sounds seem much more audible, crickets in the night. Nice to be back.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/10/22/early-isolation-tank-psychonautics-1970s-trip-reports/", "title": "Early Isolation Tank Psychonautics: 1970s Trip Reports", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-10-22T23:48:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=10", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "c953003dc7b9004cc9bf83b2205fc6b4", "summary": []}
{"text": "Two Recent Presentations: (1) Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences, and (2) Harmonic Society\n\nHere are two recent talks I gave. The first one is a talk about the Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences I gave at the Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club in mid-September (2019). And the second talk is about QRI‘s models of art, which took place in June (2019) at a QRI party in the Bay Area.\n\nThe Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences (@Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club)\n\n\nDescription\nAndrés Gómez Emilsson from the Qualia Research Institute presents about the Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences.\nAt a high-level, this video presents an algorithmic reduction of DMT phenomenology which imports concepts from hyperbolic geometry and dynamic systems theory in order to explain the “weirder than weird” hallucinations one can have on this drug. Andrés describes what different levels of DMT intoxication feel like in light of a model in which experience has both variable geometric curvature and information content. The benefit of this model cashes out in a novel approach to design DMT experiences in order to maximize specific desired benefits.\nSee original article: The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes\nAnd the Explain Like I’m 5 version: ELI5 “The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences”\n\nPresentation outline:\n\nThermometers of Experience\nThe Leaf Metaphor\nIntroduction to Hyperbolic Geometry\nDMT Levels\nLevel 1: Threshold (& Symmetry Hotel)\nLevel 2: Chrysanthemum\nLevel 3: Magic Eye (& Crystal Worlds)\nLevel 4: Waiting Room\nLevel 5: Breakthrough\nLevel 6: Amnesia\nEnergy – Complexity Landscape\nDynamic Systems\nFixed Point\nLimit Cycles\nChaos\nNoise Driven Structures\nTurbulence\nConclusion\nSuper-Shulgin Academy\nAtman Retreat\nWrap-Up\n\n\nAbout the speaker: Andrés studied Symbolic Systems at Stanford (and has a masters in Computational Psychology, also from Stanford). He has professional experience in data science engineering, machine learning, and affective science. His research at the Qualia Research Institute ranges from algorithm design, to psychedelic theory, to neurotechnology development, to mapping and studying the computational properties of consciousness. Andrés blogs at qualiacomputing.com.\nThe Qualia Research Institute (QRI) is a non-profit based in the Bay Area close to San Francisco which seeks to discover the computational properties of experience. QRI has a “full-stack approach” to the science of consciousness which incorporates philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and neurotechnology. For more information see: qualiaresearchinstitute.org\nThe Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club hosts events on psychedelic research, meditation, neuroscience, students sharing their own experiences, and much more.\n\nCredits:\n– Wallpaper group 632 rotating along each symmetry element – Nick Xu\n– Many of the images are by Paul Nylander: http://bugman123.com/\n– The Hyperbolic Honeycomb images and 3D prints are by Henry Segerman, who also has an awesome Youtube channel where he shows 3D printed math. We used his design to print the Honeycombs we were passing around during the lecture: https://www.youtube.com/user/henryseg\n– Space-Time Dynamics in Video Feedback: Jim Crutchfield, Entropy Productions, Santa Cruz (1984): https://youtu.be/B4Kn3djJMCE\nMany thanks to Andrew Zuckerman and Kenneth Shinozuka for helping organize this event. And thanks to David Pearce, Michael Johnson, Romeo Stevens, Quintin Frerichs, the anonymous trippers, and many others for making this work real.\n\nAnd here are the slides:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \nDynamic Systems animations:\n\n\n\nfixed_point_\nhelicatenoid\n\n\n\n\nHarmonic Society: 8 Models of Art for a Scientific Paradigm of Aesthetic Qualia\n\n\nDescription\nAndrés Gómez Emilsson from the Qualia Research Institute gives a presentation about how art works according to modern neuroscience and philosophy of mind.\nThe video discusses eight different models of art: models 1 through 4 have been discussed in academic literature and the current intellectual zeitgeist, while models 5 through 8 are new, original, and the direct result of recent insights about consciousness as uncovered by modern neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and the work of the Qualia Research Institute.\n\nAbstract:\nWe start by assuming that there are real stakes in art. This motivates the analysis of this subject matter, and it focuses where we place our gaze. We examine a total of eight models for “what art might be about”, divided into two groups. The first group of four are some of the most compelling contemporary models, which derive their strength from fields such as philosophy of language, economics, evolutionary psychology, and anthropology. These models are: (1) art as a word only definable in a family resemblance way with no necessary or sufficient features, (2) art as social signaling of desirable genetic characteristics, (3) art as Schelling point creation, and (4) art as the cultivation of sacred experiences. These four models, however enlightening, nonetheless only account for what David Marr might describe as the computational level of abstraction while leaving the algorithmic and implementation levels of abstraction unexamined. They explain what art is about in terms of why it exists and what its coarse effects are, but not the nature of its internal representations or its implementation. Hence we propose a second group of four models in order to get a “full-stack” view of art. These models are: (5) art as a tool for exploring the state-space of consciousness, (6) art as a method for changing the energy parameter of experience, (7) art as activities that induce neural annealing (which implements novel valence modulation, i.e. surprising pain/pleasure effects), and (8) art as an early prototype of a future affective language that will allow diverse states of consciousness to make sense of each other. These frameworks address how art interfaces with consciousness and how its key valuable features might be implemented neurologically. We conclude with a brief look at how embracing these new paradigms could, in principle, lead to the creation of a society free from suffering and interpersonal misunderstanding. Such a society, aka. Harmonic Society, would be designed with the effect of guaranteeing positive valence interactions using principles from a post-Galilean science of consciousness.\n———————–\nThe 8 models of art are:\n1. Art as family resemblance (Semantic Deflation)\n2. Art as Signaling (Cool Kid Theory)\n3. Art as Schelling-point creation (a few Hipster-theoretical considerations)\n4. Art as cultivating sacred experiences (self-transcendence and highest values)\n5. Art as exploring the state-space of consciousness (ϡ♘♬ヅ)\n6. Art as something that messes with the energy parameter of your mind (ꙮ)\n7. Art as puzzling valence effects (emotional salience and annealing as key ingredients)\n8. Art as a system of affective communication: a protolanguage to communicate information about worthwhile qualia (which culminates in Harmonic Society).\n\nThe presentation is based on an essay published in the Berlin-based art magazine Art Against Art (see: Issue #6).\nArticle is posted online here: Models 1 & 2, 3 & 4, 5 & 6, 7 & 8.\n\nSee more about the Qualia Research Institute at: https://www.qualiaresearchinstitute.org/\nAndrés blogs at Qualia Computing: Top 10 Qualia Computing Articles\n\nInfinite bliss!!!\n\nAnd here are the slides:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/10/17/two-recent-presentations-1-hyperbolic-geometry-of-dmt-experiences-and-2-harmonic-society/", "title": "Two Recent Presentations: (1) Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences, and (2) Harmonic Society", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-10-17T22:31:28+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=10", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "975d049cb4f9c7bbaaed286b99c09755", "summary": []}
{"text": "State of the Qualia, Fall 2019\n\nQualia Research Institute’s inaugural newsletter.\n\nWhat is QRI trying to do?\nOur long-term vision is to end suffering. To destroy hell, and to build tools for exploring all the bright futures which come after. To take the Buddha’s vision of 2600 years ago, update it with advanced theory and technology, and make it real for all creatures.\nOur medium-term goal is to build a ‘full-stack’ approach to the mind and brain, centered around emotional valence. Critically, better philosophy should lead to better neuroscience, and better neuroscience should lead to better neurotechnology. We’re skeptical of any philosophical approaches that don’t try to “pay rent” by building empirically useful things.\nOur short-term deliverables are to refine our tools for evaluating EEG readings of emotionally-intense states (e.g. 5-MeO-DMT), build a hardware platform for non-invasive precision brain stimulation, and release an updated version of our full-stack theory of brain dynamics (‘neural annealing’).\nWe think we’re on track for all of these goals. On one level this is a huge claim- but as Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.” We think we have that lever, and we’re building a place to stand.\n\nProgress to date\nPhilosophy: over the course of the last few years, we’ve imported and integrated many key insights from our research lineages – in aggregate we believe these form the world’s best map of how to not get confused in navigating the formalization of consciousness. Our paradigm (laid out in Principia Qualia) builds on top of these lineages, and our core philosophical result is the Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV), an information-theoretic approach towards understanding how pleasant an experience is. (STV is important because it’s such a crisp and theoretically significant hypothesis: if it’s right, and we can prove it, the world will shift overnight.) We’ve also done significant philosophical research on the phenomenological nature of time, DMT states, and the logarithmic nature of pain and pleasure, to pick a few topics. Read more.\nNeuroscience: Over the past two years we’ve put together a substantial push into neuroscience, which is showing increasing traction. Scott Alexander recently noticed how we actually beat Robin Carhart-Harris and Karl Friston (the world’s most-influential neuroscientist!) to the punch with an annealing model for psychedelics; this also forms the basis for (we believe) the world’s best neuroscience paradigm for explaining the mechanisms and effects of meditation and was mentioned in Tim Ferriss’s newsletter. We’re also a center of gravity (along with Selen Atasoy, its creator) for phenomenological interpretation of the Connectome-Specific Harmonic Wave (CSHW) paradigm.\nOrganization: This year saw QRI run a successful summer internship program in San Francisco with 3 superstar interns, Andrew and Kenneth from Harvard and Quintin from Washington University. More recently, we spent a month in Boston on a ‘work sprint’, and ended up giving 3 talks at Harvard and 1 at MIT, with plans to do more at various Ivies this fall. One of the most fun outputs of this summer was Zuck’s QRI explainer video (4.5 minutes).\nI’m ridiculously proud of everything we’ve accomplished — a few years ago, QRI was mostly a promissory note that a formalist approach to consciousness could produce something interesting. Today, I can say with a straight face that QRI is one of the premier consciousness research centers in the world, releasing top-tier cross-disciplinary research every few months.\n\nWhat’s next\nOur current push is centered on empirically validating the Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV) and integrating it with our neuroscience stack. This involves releasing an updated version of our ‘neural annealing’ neuroscience paradigm, building a hardware platform for patterned stimulation, and refining our “CDNS” algorithm to work with EEG, with an eye toward using 5-MeO-DMT EEG data to evaluate STV. It looks like 2020 will be a breakout year for us.\n\nWhat we need\nFrankly speaking, we need your support. Building things is hard, and what we’re doing has never been done before. Our core bottlenecks are money, people, and executive function.\nMoney: so far, QRI has been mostly self-funded from the co-founders’ personal savings. I’m proud of everyone’s commitment, but this is unsustainable, especially as we attempt more ambitious projects. At this point, we have enough results to make a firm case that supporting QRI is likely to produce an awesome amount of value for the world, potentially literally the most leveraged philanthropic effort existing today. Frankly speaking the future we’re building won’t get built if we don’t secure funding, and I ask for your help and generosity. You can donate here. (Thank you to our key supporters this year! Your efforts allowed us to onboard three amazing interns and will support building things this Fall.)\nPeople: high-quality organizations are incredibly hungry for high-quality people. QRI is no exception. If you think you have something to offer, please get in touch about collaboration, volunteering, research, and so on. Importantly, we don’t just need researchers: we’re hungry for operations people, and looking for help with getting on podcasts (speaking with Sam Harris and Joe Rogan would both be big wins!), organizing or getting speaking engagements (especially in the Bay), and even small, fun projects like making a series of QRI meme t-shirts.\nExecutive function: there’s a natural tension between research and organization-building. Paul Graham talks about this in Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule; research needs big uninterrupted chunks of time, whereas management and outreach involves lots of small tasks. Speaking personally, I struggle with keeping up with all our inquiries while also doing ‘deep work’. I would offer three thoughts to potential volunteers:\n\nPlease have patience if we don’t get back to you right away. We’re juggling as best we can!\nWhen possible, we absolutely love it when people can figure out their own way to help — I can think of few things more pleasant to see in my inbox than someone sharing a “by the way, I made this” link to e.g. a nice HTML version of Principia Qualia, an explainer video for various QRI concepts, a deep review of our experimental method, etc.\nOne of the highest leverage ways to help is to build infrastructure for us. E.g., if you’re familiar with the main themes of our work and want to be a volunteer coordinator for us, that would be an amazing force-multiplier.\n\nI am incredibly proud of what we’ve done so far, and incredibly excited about the future. We will need your help to build it.\nAll the best,\nMichael Edward Johnson\nExecutive Director, Qualia Research Institute", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/10/10/state-of-the-qualia-fall-2019/", "title": "State of the Qualia, Fall 2019", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-10-10T23:34:51+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=10", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b2bf6a06d061bd5b61a582a62b2ee1d5", "summary": []}
{"text": "Harmonic Society (4/4): Art as Valence Modulation and Future Affective Language\n\nThe following essay* was recently published in the Berlin-based art magazine Art Against Art (buy issue).\nThe essay offers eight different models of art: models 1 through 4 have been discussed in academic literature and the current intellectual zeitgeist, while models 5 through 8 are new, original, and the direct result of recent insights about consciousness as uncovered by modern neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and the work of the Qualia Research Institute.\nBelow you will find models 7 and 8, which conclude this series of posts. (See previous models: 1 & 2, 3 & 4, and 5 & 6).\n\n7. Valence Modulation\nWhat is the difference between indifference and interest, boredom and thrill, despair and bliss? Pleasure! A few grains of this magic ingredient are dearer than a king’s treasure, and we have it a plenty here in Utopia. It pervades into everything we do and everything we experience. We sprinkle it in our tea.\nThe universe is cold. Fun is the fire that melts the blocks of hardship and creates a bubbling celebration of life.\nIt is the birth right of every creature, a right no less sacred for having been trampled upon since the beginning of time.\n– Letter From Utopia by Nick Bostrom\nPhoto by Andrés Silva (aka. El Capitán). Claudia Silva (in the picture).\nWe are now approaching the point at which we will finally start cooking with peanut oil, so to speak. We will finally start thinking about how to build extremely good art from first principles. The ‘Art as Valence Modulation’ model builds on top of the previous model where art involves messing with the brain’s energy parameter. To explain this model we need to introduce two additional concepts:\n\nNeural Annealing, and\nThe Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV)\n\nNeural annealing is a concept we developed at QRI to extend the entropic disintegration framework.[1] Namely, the most beneficial use of ‘energy’ is to direct it towards the brain’s natural harmonics in order to carve out the presence of a naturally blissful state in everyday life. This process works on a progression that goes like this:\n\nEnergy application\nEntropic disintegration\nSearch/self-reorganization\nNeural annealing\n\nTogether with neural annealing, STV provides an answer for why we experience intensely rewarding states of consciousness from art. Here is where some of the theories that we have been working on come into play. In particular, we hypothesize that when highly-energized states of consciousness follow an adequate cooling schedule, they can give rise to highly ordered states that are experienced as very pleasant and which can carve good attractor states into the brain in the long term. Making an analogy with metallurgy, with annealing, you can increase the regularity of the microscopic structure of metal by heating it above the recrystallization temperature and letting it cool. This results in changed material properties (such as reduced hardness and increased ductility). We hypothesize that something along these lines also takes place in brains. Neural annealing facilitates solving complex constraint satisfaction problems at the perceptual, emotional, and conceptual level. The higher energy enables quick search between possible configurations that satisfy as many constraints as possible (over- stepping the local maxima we are usually stuck within normal energy ranges), while the cooling process solidifies the best constraint satisfaction solutions. Critically, here the STV comes into play by proposing that the more regular the resulting neural structures are, the better they feel. Annealing smooths out inconsistencies and irregularities, which according to the STV are key sources of discomfort. Symmetry, in the form of smoothness and harmony, is why the process of annealing leaves you feeling great.\nVery high-valence annealed states of mind feel cosmic and profound in significance. Images by Adrián Regnier Chávez\nIn this light, art with lasting desirable mood effects does not only need to increase the energy parameter, but it also needs to know how to lower it at the right schedule in order to leave people annealed to a given desirable mindset. A lot of art that successfully raises the energy parameter nonetheless does not succeed in the ecosystem of human attention, because it does not let people cool off in the right way. More so, an excessively competitive memetic landscape that incentivizes maximum surprise tends to train people to experience too much fear of missing out to let them adequately consume art at the pace needed to leave you better off emotionally. There is genuine wisdom in going to museums with one’s smartphone turned off.\nWhere do we draw the line between healthy recreation and distraction? Some might say that art in the form of pictures is fine, but audiovisual is too much. Some may be fine with movies but not with VR. Others would be ok with videogames but perhaps not with drugs. Others perhaps would be ok with drugs but not with genetic modification of neuronal gene expression. Some would be ok with that but not with neural dust rewiring, and so on. The format, we would argue, is not what matters. But rather, what the annealing pattern is, which is actually what makes the effects of art stick in the long run (or not).\nImage by Joseph Matthias Young. It makes me think of the aesthetic of the meta-aesthetic.\nThis way of seeing art is highly generative. It gives us a research lead for how to construct new grandiose and highly-effective art. More so, the model can itself be developed as an aesthetic of its own. Perhaps we could call it the aesthetic of the meta-aesthetic. That is, an aesthetic that rewards distilling the essential reason why any aesthetic can feel good and meaningful. In the future, we might expect to see in stores “Hedonium Magazine” – which catalogues all of the peak-valence states that can be achieved with any method whatsoever, and sees the craft of perfecting neural annealing as itself the highest form of art. Here we transcend the post-modern ethos of giving each aesthetic its place in the garden of paradoxes. Yes, give each aesthetic its place, but do not let that prevent you from building a meta- narrative that ties together and clarifies the value-add of each aesthetic. No aesthetic is above being examined in terms of how it achieves neural annealing in those who consume it.\nIn turn, this model gives us a new understanding of what an “aesthetic” even is. According to it, an aesthetic is a system for long-term neural annealing. A one-off weird art piece might give rise to annealing and solidify random structures in your brain. An aesthetic is more than that. It is a collection of generator seeds for art pieces that give rise to a coherent form of neural annealing that is reinforced with each piece, no matter how different they may seem from one another on the surface.\nA further property of neural annealing is that it is what enables you to fully experience a self-consistent worldview as if true. This bridges the gap between meaning and pleasure, and is at the core of the connection between valence and the experience of sacredness we discussed in model 4. According to model 7, sacred experiences are the result of driving the energy parameter of the brain above the recrystallization threshold and then having it cool down as it reorganizes the elements of a given target ontology and worldview. The result is an annealed mental state optimized to represent that worldview. The sense of global consistency makes the worldview feel good and true, almost as if you were able to smell truth with it. This model would say, thus, that the core mechanism behind every kind of sacred experience is the same. Which emotions, ontologies, and worldviews get annealed is what is different depending on set, setting, and aesthetic (i.e. how the energy sources and sinks were modified). But deep down, it is successful annealing that makes sacred experiences feel so compelling and good.\n8. Affective Language: Harmonic Society\nAn idealised full-spectrum superintelligence will indeed be capable of an impartial “view from nowhere” or God’s-eye-view of the multiverse, a mathematically complete Theory Of Everything – as does modern theoretical physics, in aspiration if not achievement. But in virtue of its God’s-eye-view, full-spectrum superintelligence must also be hypersocial and supersentient: able to understand all possible first-person perspectives, the state-space of all possible minds in other Hubble volumes, other branches of the universal wavefunction (UWF) – and in other solar systems and galaxies if such beings exist within our cosmological horizon. Idealized at least, full-spectrum superintelligence will be able to understand and weigh the significance of all possible modes of experience irrespective of whether they have hitherto been recruited for information-signalling purposes.\n– David Pearce, in The Biointelligence Explosion (2012)\nIf we succeed at developing a science of art built on top of a modern science of consciousness, what should we do with it? What would the art of a wise post-scarcity and post-suffering society look like? As far I can tell, Utopia consists of both having the system in place to keep the lights on, while being able to use the surplus energy to power blissful experiences beyond the bounds of our current conceptions.\nHarmonic Society by ALGE\nThe vision of Harmonic Society is that of a particular type of post-suffering utopia that resolves to optimize for good art. Referencing the models of art we’ve built upon so far: Harmonic Society (1) knows there are stakes in art and hence sidesteps the traps of semantic deflation, (2) avoids runaway signaling and Cool Kid gridlock, (3) utilizes Hipsters to explore promising new frontiers, (4) has mastery over a diverse range of conceptions of the sacred, (5) systematically explores the state-space of consciousness, (6) has a scientific and precise understanding of the energy parameter of experience, and (7) has deep knowledge of how to induce arbitrary types of neural annealing. In addition to all of this, Harmonic Society has (8) a map of all high-level aesthetics, knows what they are useful for, and can instantiate them at will.\nIn Harmonic Society there is always a way to smoothly transition between seemingly irreconcilable aesthetics. It deeply understands the pros and cons of different aesthetics and knows how to apply them optimally both for instrumental purposes and hedonic value.\nImage by Michael Aaron Coleman\nNowadays a lot of people who could benefit from, e.g. going to art festivals, taking acid, subpack cuddle parties, participating in plays (i.e. exposing themselves to high-end aesthetic experiences), find it hard to do so, because it is difficult to get back to work once the weekend is over after experiencing incredible bliss. A rough solution to avoid residual incompatibility between the state you annealed over on the weekend with the mindset you need today for work would be to develop a mood organ[2] that instantly puts you into any mindset you want. But perhaps a more elegant solution is to have such an advanced and detailed map of the state-space of mindsets that smooth, painless, and synergistic transitory states between arbitrary modes of being are discovered.\nThus, one could one minute be on a 5-MeO-DMT-type white light conscious void ultra-blissful state, the next minute be on a perfectly functional MDMA-like state useful for socializing, the minute after moving to a highly-focused nootropic-like systematizing state, and so on. The aesthetic to foster here is a meta-aesthetic of avoiding sharp discontinuities between mindsets, and allowing you to transition between all known awesome aesthetics. In Harmonic Society the entire state-space of consciousness is your oyster.\nA further thought about Harmonic Society is that a sufficiently advanced understanding of aesthetic experience might even revolutionize our understanding of identity.\nFor instance, a non-trivial sense of personal diachronic identity could arise if everyone\nstarts to identify with e.g. a different person-specific song. If we truly understood how\nvalence works and we had full access to our neurocircuitry, we could in a way embody a\ngiven work of art and interact with others in a way that is consistent with the artistic\ndegrees of freedom our identity allows. This way, people’s interactions could perhaps be guaranteed to be positive. The combinatorial space of possible back-and-forth interactions does not need to be small, since high-energy allows for incredibly varied states. But nonetheless we could get to a point of understanding how valence works such that we could provably demonstrate that two persons with the right neural implementations will always have positive-sum interactions no matter what.\nIdentity in Harmonic Society: The aesthetic of understanding the valence of every possible state of consciousness and how to translate what matters between them. (Picture: Symbol of Open, Empty, Closed Individualism from Burning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029, Continuity Camp)\nConclusion\nAs the guiding premise of this essay we started out assuming that there are real and substantial stakes in art. It sure is all fun and games to think that anything goes in art until your landscape of cultural meaning is polluted with replicator strategies and attention-zapping exploits that lead to long-term neuropsychological problems and anneal false and neurotic metaphysics. Understanding art matters.\nI would make the claim that a new science of valence, i.e. a new science of pleasure, pain, love, hate, and indeed transcendent bliss, can be a new rallying flag for cultural value. Rather than the messy consilience patchwork between different aesthetics we have today, we might in the future indeed find a true and real grounding for the meaning of beauty and bliss. Contrary to the conservative spirit often associated with calls to reinvigorate an objective sense of beauty, here we arrive at a theory of art that would very well appreciate experiences as outlandish as DMT breakthroughs. This theory of art appreciates such states not “just as much” as fine art, but indeed as far more valuable and implicated in what matters than most of everyday life. For art, meditation, psychedelics, and philosophy all share the fact that they are messing with the energy parameter of experience in powerful ways that can be used to achieve much better and globally-consistent brain states. Understanding that the effects of art can be very strong and life-changing is one thing, but knowing the mechanism of action behind those changes comes with entirely new possibilities and responsibilities. We invite you to consider what this entails, and to join us in envisioning a future Harmonic Society constructed with full knowledge of neural annealing.\n\n[1] It is worth mentioning that Steven Lehar used annealing to describe the subjective progression of his ketamine experiences in his book The Grand Illusion: A Psychonautical Odyssey Into the Depths of Human Experience. [October 2019 – Edit: Carhart-Harris and Friston wrote a paper together in which they discussed annealing in the context of psychedelic research (see summary). The paper was published in July, two months after I submitted this essay to Art Against Art in May of 2019. We are delighted to see independent convergence on this concept and its importance.]\n[2] The Penfield Mood Organ is a technology described in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick that allows the user to instantly tune into any of hundreds of possible moods via direct cerebral stimulation. Some example moods include “3. The desire to dial other moods”, “481. Awareness of the manifold possibilities open to me in the future”, “594. Pleased acknowledgment of husband’s superior wisdom in all matters”, and “888. The desire to watch TV, no matter what’s on it”.\n\n\nGlossary\nCool Kids: Someone who is well-rounded and uses strategic mediocrity in order to entice people to show their peacock feathers. At its extreme, Cool Kids become the leaders of artistic gangs who corner the marketplace of aesthetic attention.\nHipster: Someone who enjoys art and media that seems too obscure to care about. Typically, the preferred aesthetics of a Hipster are highly detailed and focus on specific favored attributes at the expense of well-roundedness. A Hipster does not only have opinions about what is enjoyable, but also about how to enjoy it and why.\nNerd: Someone who wants to figure out what is true, especially as it applies to technical and formal systems. A philosophy nerd, for instance, compulsively tries to figure out ultimate truth.\nMinimax art strategies: A strategy for making art that tries to be the best on a narrow set of attributes while neglecting well-roundedness. This is sometimes adaptive and some- times maladaptive.\nL1/L2 normalization: Using mean absolute error (L1) favors minimax strategies vs. using mean squared error (L2) which favors well-rounded strategies.\n\n\nSpecial thanks to: Michael Johnson, Romeo Stevens, Liam Brereton, Duncan Wilson, Victor Ochikubo, and David Pearce for their thoughts and feedback.\n\n\n* The full essay’s title is: Harmonic Society: 8 Models of Art for a Scientific Paradigm of Aesthetic Qualia\nReferences:\nEno, B. (2012). ‘What is Art actually for?’. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/XIVfwDJ-kDk\nStanley, J. (n.d.). Philosophy of Language in the Twentieth Century. Retrieved from http://thatmarcusfamily.org/philosophy/Course_Websites/Readings/Stanley%20 -%20Language%20in%2020th%20Century.pdf\nMarr, D. (1982). Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.\nWittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Oxford, England: Macmillan.\nWikipedia Contributors (2019). Lisztomania. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisztomania [Accessed 16 May 2019].\nMiller, G. F. (2001). The mating mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature. New York: Anchor Books.\nZizek, S. (2019). on #MeToo movement. How to Watch the News, episode 02. RT. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai_UAPaoEW4\nOleg. (2019). Mementomorium. Retrieved May 16, 2019, from Mementomorium.org website: https://www.mementomorium.org/\nLilly, J. C. (1975). Simulations of God : the science of belief. Berkeley, Ca: Ronin. Lilly, J. C. (1974). [Programming and metaprogramming in the human biocomputer.] The human biocomputer. Theory and experiments. (2nd ed.). London: Abacus. Wilber, K. (2007). Integral spirituality : a startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world. Boston, Mass.: Integral Books.\nKegan, R. (2001). The evolving self : problem and process in human development. Cambridge Harvard University Press London.\nCommons, M. (2008). Introduction to the Model of Hierarchical Complexity and Its Relationship to Postformal Action. World Futures. 64. 305-320. 10.1080/02604020802301105.\nFalkenstein, E. (2010). Why Envy Dominates Greed. Retrieved May 16, 2019, from Blogspot.com website: https://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/why-envy-dominates-greed.html\nMoji, K. (1998). The Qualia Manifesto. Retrieved May 16, 2019, from Qualia-manifesto.com website: http://www.qualia-manifesto.com/manifesto.html\nBorges, J. L. (1944). The Library of Babel (La Biblioteca de Babel), Buenos Aires: Editorial Sur\nSleepyE. (2016). DMT Trip: Jester Entity Occurrence From Viewer. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmVA1755ffM\nGómez Emilsson, A. Burning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God (2/2). (2019, April 9). Retrieved May 16, 2019, from Qualia Computing website: https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/04/08/burning-man-theme-camps- of-the-year-2029-from-replicator-to-rainbow-god-2-2/\nJohnson, M. (2018). The Neuroscience of Meditation: Four Models | Opentheory.net. Retrieved May 16, 2019, from website: https://opentheory.net/2018/12/the-neuroscience-of-meditation/\nJohnson, M., (2016). Principia Qualia: Blueprint for a new science v1. Retrieved from http://opentheory.net/PrincipiaQualia.pdf\nFriston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127–138. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2787\nSchmidhuber, J. (2009) Simple Algorithmic Theory of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestingness, Attention, Curiosity, Creativity, Art, Science, Music, Jokes. Journal of SICE 48(1), 21-32\nCarhart-Harris, R. L., Leech, R., Hellyer, P. J., Shanahan, M., Feilding, A., Tagliazucchi, E., … Nutt, D. (2014). The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00020\nAtasoy, S., Roseman, L., Kaelen, M., Kringelbach, M. L., Deco, G., & Carhart-Harris, R. L. (2017). Connectome-harmonic decomposition of human brain activity reveals dynamical repertoire re-organization under LSD. Scientific Reports, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17546-0\nAtasoy, S., Donnelly, I., & Pearson, J. (2016). Human brain networks function in connectome-specific harmonic waves. Nature Communications, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10340\nKanungo, R., & Lambert, W. E. (1963). Semantic satiation and meaningfulness. The American Journal of Psychology, 76(3), 421-428.\nGómez Emilsson, A., (2016). The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes. Retrieved May 16, 2019, from Qualia Com- puting website: https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/12/12/the-hyperbolic-geometry-of-dmt-experiences/\nBostrom, N. (2008). Letter from Utopia. Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.2202/1941-6008.1025\nDick, P. K. (1968), Do androids dream of electric sheep? Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday Pearce, D.(1995) The Hedonistic Imperative. Retrieved May 16 2019 from: https://www.hedweb.com/hedab.htm\nLehar, S., (2010) The Grand Illusion: A psychonautical odyssey into the depths of human experience, Retrieved May 26 2019 from: http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/GrandIllusion.pdf\nSimler, K. (2014). Ads Don’t Work That Way | Melting Asphalt. [online] Available at: https://meltingasphalt.com/ads-dont-work-that-way/ [Accessed 16 May 2019]. Pearce, D. Supersentience. (2012). Retrieved May 16, 2019, from Biointelligence-explosion.com website: https://www.biointelligence-explosion.com/parable.html\nKent, J. L. (2010). Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason, Chapter 05, ‘The Control Interrupt Model of Psychedelic Action’. PIT Press, Seattle.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/10/07/harmonic-society-4-4-art-as-valence-modulation-and-future-affective-language/", "title": "Harmonic Society (4/4): Art as Valence Modulation and Future Affective Language", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-10-07T22:23:05+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=10", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "a099e9dcb22d456be1c2833716cc7d60", "summary": []}
{"text": "Harmonic Society (3/4): Art as State-Space Exploration and Energy Parameter Modulation\n\nThe following essay* was recently published in the Berlin-based art magazine Art Against Art (issue). Below you will find models 5 and 6 (out of 8), which are new, original, and the direct result of recent insights about consciousness as uncovered by modern neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and the work of the Qualia Research Institute. (See models 1 & 2, and 3 & 4).\nI will wrap up this series next week with something many readers would know to expect – an explanation for how art is connected to valence. Stay tuned!\n\n5. State-Space Exploration\nThe elucidation of the origin of qualia-rich subjectivity is important not only as an activity in the natural sciences, but also as a foundation and the ultimate justification of the whole world of the liberal arts. Bridging the gap between the two cultures (C. P. Snow) is made possible only through a clear understanding of the origin of qualia and subjectivity.\nQualia symbolize the essential intellectual challenge for humanity in the future. The impact of its elucidation will not be limited to the natural sciences. The liberal arts, religion, and the very concept of what a man is will be reassessed from their very foundations.\n– Ken Mogi in The Qualia Manifesto (1998)\n\n\nIs there anything beyond the sacred? Yes. This model of art posits that one key feature of art is the pursuit of novel experiences that challenge preconceptions of what is possible to experience. The state-space[1] of possible experiences is unfathomably vast, and mundane everyday human experiences are restricted to a tiny corner of this enormous behemoth. As they say, “you won’t know if you like it until you try it”. Applying that logic to the exploration of the state-space of consciousness would encourage us to open our horizons and become receptive to the possibility that there are true gems of experience waiting to be found in exotic regions of this space.\nNow, it is easy for some people to fetishize the exotic for novelty’s sake. But contrary to popular belief, novelty is not intrinsically valuable. Taking into account previous discussions (especially models 2 and 3 above), we can interpret artistic explorations that push the boundary of our knowledge about what can be experienced as a sophisticated form of signaling genetic fitness. In particular, mastery over novel modes of experience shows that you have the mental and physical power to devote copious amounts of resources to exploration, for only one in a thousand attempts at discovering something new results in something that other people can appreciate. It is thus the case that a lot of novelty creation is aimed at courtship rather than being driven by a genuine passion for knowledge.\nLeft style source: Adrián Regnier Chávez. Right style source: Carpet by ALGE\nThat said, what is out there hidden in the state-space of consciousness beggars belief. Anyone who is exploring that vast space in an intelligent way will sooner or later find incredible things. But how do we explore this space intelligently? A systematic exploration of possible images, for instance, could involve taking a picture and changing one pixel at a time. But as we all know, the Library of Babel is almost completely devoid of meaningful books. At least relative to its size. A much better way of exploring the space (inspired by Steerable Pyramid and Deep Dream-type algorithms) would be to sample possible images with an intelligent method, such as training generative neural networks on previous works of art, and then asking them to hallucinate possible images while constraining the neural layers you identify with the aesthetic quality of the images. Style transfer techniques and similar methods can result in images sampled from a given aesthetic, rather than from e.g. a particular low-level feature set (e.g. a type of edges) or a set of high-level semantic content (e.g. cars, people, dogs, etc.).\nLeft style source: blue balloons in a living room. Right style source: collection of blankets by ALGE\nExploring the space of possible images is an extremely small sub-problem of exploring the state-space of consciousness. But I think the analogy is useful as a general idea. Now, how vast is the state-space of consciousness? Well, it tends to be larger than you think, even when you take that fact into account. I will coin that fact as Gomez-Emilsson’s Law. Every time you think you know how vast the state-space of consciousness is, you will be surprised to find out you are wrong if you choose to dig deeper.\nConsider what happens when someone takes LSD. Most people expect that they will simply get to experience new sensations like brighter colors, tracers, or synesthesia. This is true to a point, for light doses. But on medium doses, in addition to exploring the state-space of sensory configurations, one also experiences new aesthetics, which this model would define as ways of organizing a lot of sensations in ways that feel right. More so, an aesthetic is also a way of delivering uninhibited sensations in a way that feels good at the level of the whole experience, from moment to moment. Most people have no clue that there is a vast space of possibilities here.\nIllustrates “state-space of beach rocks” by unknown artist at Sombrio Beach in Vancouver. Photo: Julia Pope\nOn higher doses, people are surprised to find an even more general way of exploring the state-space of consciousness. Namely, one instantiates alternate games. The DMT “vibe” that people report can be thought of as more than a “context switch”. It is, rather, a more radical change that we could describe as a “game switch”. The “Jester” that people talk about regarding DMT experiences is an archetype that the mind uses to signal the “rule violation” quality of the state. There is so much going on that one’s experience splits into multiple games at once trying to find some common ground, and this feeling of game-incompatibility feels very alien. A sort of anti-virus system in the mind is triggered at that point, and labels the inconsistency with a feeling of weirdness so that you know not to update your actions based on the (currently globally inconsistent) experience of multiple superimposed games. Rule violation through fast changes in implicit games of social status causes you to interpret what is going on as having extreme stakes. Interacting with DMT Aliens, Gods, Elves, etc. feels like the upper limit of potential social status transfer that your world simulation affords (like meeting a president or a king). The state-space of consciousness contains all of these alternate games and metagames, and we have not even begun to catalogue them. This is all to say: seen in this light, the era of art has just begun.\nLike the previous models, this one also gives rise to an aesthetic of its own. I call this the aesthetic of “Rainbow God”. This is the meta-belief that we gain value by understanding and experiencing extremely novel states of consciousness. Ultimate bliss, according to this aesthetic, is not a bland monotone state, but rather, is a state that incorporates within it an extraordinary variety of types of qualia. Posthuman aesthetics will not only show up in the form of intense feelings, but also in the form of extremely “rainbow-ey” experiences. The concept of a full-spectrum intelligence (an intelligence capable of instantiating any qualia at will) plays an important role in this aesthetic. Thus, the full-spectrum artists of the future will have access to a qualia pallet in an experience editor[2] that includes human qualia like sight, touch, scent, emotions, thought-episodes, etc. It will also include qualia only found in insects, fish, mollusks, people tripping, people having seizures, novel neurocircuitry, etc. The asymptote of incorporating all possible varieties of qualia into a single experience is the final realization of Rainbow God, the ultimate state of knowledge and beauty according to this aesthetic.\n6. Energy Parameter Modulation\nSeifert Surfaces by Paul Nylander\nPeople say they have weird and novel experiences with art, but by a large margin, the novelty itself is not the focus of what matters in people’s reports. Rather, people especially talk about having experiences that are not only novel and unusual, but also characterized by heightened states of consciousness. For example, when people “get art” they report being inspired, amazed, surprised, enthralled, or even shocked. These states seem to have in common a quality of high-energy in one form or another. Although possible, it is rare to talk about art as purposefully sedating, boring, anesthetizing, or numbing. That’s the exception. In general, art as diverse as Japanoise and Jodorowsky have in common the quality of heightening, and not only changing, one’s state.\nAt the Qualia Research Institute (QRI) we take very seriously the notion that experience has an energy parameter. In psychology-speak, nearby concepts include emotional arousal and activation level, though these tend to have more physiological than phenomenological connotations. In contrast, we hold that you can indeed experience very high levels of conscious energy without at the same time experiencing the physiological responses that are usually associated with high arousal (such as high heart-rate, high breath-rate, high blood pressure, sweating, etc.). Likewise, it is not the case that only traditionally high-arousal emotions (such as being excited, thrilled, fearful, anxious, etc.) come in high-energy forms. Indeed, it is possible to experience states of relaxation, serenity, equanimity, and peacefulness in extremely energetic forms(!), as happens in the concentration-based altered states of consciousness called “Jhanas” in the Buddhist tradition.\nHere it is relevant for me to bring up the fact that my colleague Mike Johnson recently wrote about the neuroscience of meditation. He discussed how to make sense of the acute and long-term effects of meditation through the lens of modern neuroscience paradigms, and then found a way to tie them together into an overarching theory. For the sake of brevity I will schematically outline some of the key features of the paradigms he integrated:\n\nFree Energy Principle (Karl Friston, 2010):\n\nThe brain is trying to minimize expected future surprise by building high-level models of sensory input\nWhen a model says that the input is very unlikely, our brain propagates an error signal in the form of excess energy\nThis energy motivates the search for a better model, for which the previously surprising input is now expected\n\n\nEntropic Disintegration (Robin Carhart Harris, 2014):\n\nPsychedelics elevate the “neural temperature” of the brain, meaning that they increase the entropy/disorder present in neural circuits\nOne’s everyday mode of consciousness relies on learned neural patterns solidified over years, which at times can be chronically maladaptive\nBy “raising the temperature” of our neural circuits, maladaptive neural circuits, especially “egoic structures” in the default-mode network (DMN), disintegrate\nThis enables you to “start from scratch” and form new, more adaptive, neural patterns\n\n\nConnectome-Specific Harmonic Waves (Selen Atasoy, 2016):\n\nPhysical systems with excitation-inhibition wavefronts have harmonic modes\nBy mapping out the connectome of a brain (white and grey matter tracks) and using empirically-derived excitation-inhibition differential equations of neural activity, one can infer the electromagnetic resonant modes of a given brain\nUsing this technique, it was found empirically that psychedelics increase the amplitude of connectome-specific harmonic waves across the spectrum, and in particular, the amplitude delta is higher on the upper ranges of the spectrum\n\n\n\nTying together these frameworks we see that (a) the brain responds to surprise in an excitatory way which gives rise to a process of search for better models, (b) there is a sense of neural energy for which increasing it gives rise to the disintegration of pre-existing patterns, and (c) there is a sense of actually physical energy in the brain tied together with its resonant modes, which are variable depending on one’s state of consciousness. To bring all of these frameworks together, we can interpret them in terms of energy sources and energy sinks:\n\nEnergy Sources: surprises, sensory stimulation\nEnergy Sinks: passage of time (decay factor), semantic content (crystallization around explanatory representations), pre-existing attitudes\n\nAt a high-level, we could describe the relevance of these frameworks for art as follows: For art to energize you it needs to either reduce the influence of energy sinks and/or increase the amount of energy from energy sources.\nThe numerous tricks of the craft of different kinds of art can be reinterpreted in this framework. For example, a lot of artistic advice for a broad audience focuses on making sure that there is a twist you are introducing in an otherwise familiar space. Even subtle surprises (colors being out of place, unusual garments, implausible actions, perspective mixups, etc.) will propagate a prediction error and heighten the energy available in one’s state. This will make you experience the rest of the piece in a more energized and impactful form. Now, to sustain the heightened energy parameter, it is important to avoid making it easy for the brain to redirect the energy to a large energy sink. If the perceptual mistake one makes is one you are familiar with and have experienced before, you might end up diverting the newly available energy towards reinforcing an attitude you developed about that perceptual mistake (e.g. word tricks could trigger anxiety about not being a good reader rather than helping you stay in an energized state).\nThis paradigm also puts in a different light, and makes sense of, the criticisms often raised against pieces perceived as Kitsch, Camp, and Cliché, or other aesthetics centered around the over-use of a given artistic trick. Art can fail to sufficiently energize your state by failing to introduce a large enough surprise. If you can immediately grasp the full scope of the novelty introduced by a given piece (even if you are misapprehending the input!) you can quickly categorize your experience into a pre-existing bucket and skip the intended energized state. This functions as an energy sink, and hence you fail to stay energized.\nThis is just a piece of the full story here, for energy sinks are not completely reliable. There is a phenomenon called semantic satiation, where a pattern of rapid and regular repetition of words, images, and concepts makes them feel meaningless. So even the most cliché of art can indeed get the job done of energizing your state of consciousness, by presenting many versions of the same thing in flashes at a sufficiently high rate (I’m not saying this is necessarily pleasant, but it might be effective!). On the flip side, if what you are after is the maximization of a particular meaning in e.g. a commercial, you will find there is a Goldilocks Zone for the number of times you should present the core concept/image to the audience; too few and the meaning will be weak, too many and you’ll trigger semantic satiation by overwhelming the energy sinks of the audience.\nSchematically, there are three broad ways of inhibiting energy sinks to allow the buildup of what we call “semantically neutral energy”. You can:\n\nDisable,\nOverwhelm, or\nAvoid them\n\nLet me elaborate. First, you can disable energy sinks by switching to unfamiliar contexts (e.g. it is harder worrying about work while on a screen-free beach, at a museum… or at Burning Man). Also, disabling energy sinks can happen in states of exhaustion, fasting, intoxication, or other states of mind that impair some of the normal functions of the brain. Second, as we saw, semantic satiation would be an example of overwhelming energy sinks, but there are many other ways of doing so, such as increasing the intensity of input above a certain threshold. And third, avoiding energy sinks involves things like setting the intention to focus your attention on a meditation object and refocus on it every time you get distracted. Alternatively, one can load a given energy sink with negative implications and learn to avoid it via negative feedback (e.g. when a standard interpretive framework is frowned upon by a social group).\nMost drugs and activities could be described in terms of their characteristic effect on energy sources and sinks.[3] But only some of these drugs and activities are “broadband energy enhancers”, in the sense that the energy they give rise to is transferable to a broad range of mental and physical activities. This is what sets meditation, trance-inducing music/dancing, psychedelics, philosophy, and art apart from other energizing activities. Those methods in particular allow energized states to be sustained for long periods of time, and they give rise to novel sensations exclusive to the high-energy regions of the state-space of consciousness.\n\n\n\n\nA note on psychedelics here is in order. There is indeed something very peculiar that psychedelics do to the energy sources that to my knowledge is not done by the other broad-band energy enhancers. Psychedelics make energy sources echo! They change the neuroacoustics of the brain, which favors temporally repeating patterns in a delayed-echo fashion along with a slower decay function for experience over time.[4] Thus, visual tracers and the amplification of music appreciation during a psychedelic trip are both expressions of the same underlying principle: the brain is more resonant. The fact that this effect is distinct from what art, meditation, philosophy, or strobes have to offer makes psychedelics synergistic and complementary with the other methods. After all, it is hard to ignore the gazillion subjective reports of enhanced aesthetic appreciation experienced on even small doses of psychedelics.\nFor the above reasons, I think this model has a lot of explanatory power. To recap, this model of art says that increasing the energy parameter of one’s consciousness is the success condition of art. It explains the repeating trance-inducing quality of music, the need for balance between predictability and surprise, common craft advice, and the existence of higher aesthetics. In turn, this model implies that art can be done in a wrong way. Art that is uninspiring, insipid, unexciting, irrelevant, etc. could be understood as art that fails to raise the energy parameter of those who experience it. And indeed, the higher the form of the art, the more it allows for the buildup of semantically-neutral energy.\n\n\n[1] The term “state-space” refers to a very general concept that identifies the set of all possible configurations of a given system (of equations, machines, experiences, etc.) and the ways in which these configurations can transition from to another.\n[2] As a proof of concept: According to cognitive scientist Steven Lehar, combining LSD, Ketamine, and THC can give rise to a “free-wheeling hallucination”, which is a state of mind where one gains the ability to edit the contents of one’s experience at will (“You can say ‘give me a table’ and a table will appear right in front of you as real as a solid table”).\n[3] For example, anti-psychotic drugs are broad-band energy sink enhancers, psychedelics are broad-band energy source enhancers, classic stimulants (such as amphetamines) are narrow-band energy source enhancers, classical depressants (such as benzodiazepines) are narrow-band energy sink enhancers.\n[4] In one account proposed by “Psychedelic Information Theory” (James Kent), psychedelics achieve the tracing/echo effect by disabling an energy sink. The control interrupt model of psychedelic action says that there are natural inhibitory processes that prevent features of our current experience from building up over time. Psychedelics are thought to chemically interrupt inhibitory control signals from the cortex, which are constantly preventing the build-up of qualia. In this account, what you are paying attention to is in fact the part of the sensory input that is being inhibited the least. Interrupting the inhibitory “control signal” gives rise to echoes of previous states across the board that you intrinsically attend to whether you like it or not.\n\nFeatured image credit: Seifert Surfaces by Paul Nylander\n* Originally titled: Harmonic Society: 8 Models of Art for a Scientific Paradigm of Aesthetic Qualia", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/09/30/harmonic-society-3-4-art-as-state-space-exploration-and-energy-parameter-modulation/", "title": "Harmonic Society (3/4): Art as State-Space Exploration and Energy Parameter Modulation", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-09-30T20:34:16+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=10", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f1771d7c66d25c8d65f0b655c76bd7f1", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Psychobiology of Subcultures\n\nEvolutionary qualia suggests our inner world-simulations are not merely painted with different colors, but have different soundtracks, aesthetics, narrative themes, and walk-on character status. Cilantro tasting like soap to ~10% of people is merely the canary in the coal-mine. Our differences in qualia (and consciousness more broadly) probably involve modes of experience you and I don’t even know exist.\n\nExcerpt from Global Brain (2000) by Howard Bloom (Pgs. 143 – 146). [Emphasis mine]\nOur brains differ as much as our bodies. Indeed, they may differ more. One part of the brain, the anterior commissure […] varies seven-fold in area between one person and the next. Another part, the massa intermedia […], is not found at all in one in four people. The primary visual cortex can vary three-fold in area. Something called our amygdala (it is responsible for our fears and loves) can vary two-fold in volume – as can something called our hippocampus (involved in memory). Most surprisingly, our cerebral cortex varies in non-learning impaired people nearly two-fold in volume.\n \n– Dr. John Robert Skoyles\nThanks to Plato, we have what purport to be records of the conversations of a human Cuisinart of concepts, an eclectic sage whose roughly fifty-year-long intellectual life bracketed the Periclean Golden Age (443-429 B.C.). This all-purpose conceptual chopper and blender was that son of a socially high-placed family, Socrates. Experts and neophytes agree that it’s impossible to tell how many of the words Plato ascribes to this self-appointed gadfly were authentic and how many were simply Plato’s way of getting his own notions into the public eye. But one thing is generally accepted as accurate – the names of the folks from whom Socrates extracted opinions before shredding them with the quiz mastering which now bears his name (Socratic dialogue). The cast of characters palavering with Socrates in Plato’s Dialogs, says learned reasoning, was too well known in Athens for Plato to have fudged.\nJust who were the fonts of learned conversation whose wisdom Socrates whipped and whirled? Socrates’ interlocutors were frequently famous thinkers from distant cities, each of which specialized in a different manner of plucking goods from its surroundings and injecting them into the circulatory system through which the trade of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea swirled. Socrates was a student of Anaxagoras, who came from the Ionian city of Clazomenae on the coast of today’s Turkey. He was also a disciple of Archelaus, another Ionian import. The Socratic dialogues Plato “chronicled” included those with Protagoras from the Balkan city of Abdera, Hippias from Peloponnesian Elis, Parmenides from Italy’s Elea, and Gorgias from Sicily’s Leontini. Each visiting intellect had been shaped by contact with a unique group of surrounding tribes, and by the exigencies imposed on city structure, domestic habit, and vested interest by distinctive forms of enterprise. One result: each arrival presented a philosophy which appealed to a very different configuration of the human mind.\nTo understand how philosophy couples with the mind’s biology, let’s track the complex adaptive system’s best-concealed constituent to its hiding place. The five elements of the complex adaptive system are conformity enforcers, diversity generators, inner-judges, resources shifters, and intergroup tournaments. Inner-judges may be the most unusual of the crew, for they are physiological built-ins which work deep inside the body to transform a bacterium, a lizard, a baboon, a me, or a you into a module of a larger learning machine. The basic rule of learning machines is one we’ve already seen: turn on the juice to components which have a grip on the problem at hand and turn off the power to those components which just can’t seem to understand. Inner-judges help decide whether the components in which they reside will be enriched or will be denied, then they aid in carrying out the sentence. The irony is that these evaluators, prize givers, and executioners are built into their victims biologically. On the microlevel, inner-judges work through “programmed cell death” – apoptosis – a molecular chain reaction deep within the genes which ends in cellular suicide. In higher animals the inner-judges dole out interior punishments which range from overdoses of stress hormones to emotional miseries. Or they grant internal bonuses of zest and confidence to those of us fulfilling our group’s needs.\nWhen we feel like kicking ourselves around the block or curling up and disappearing, our condemnation comes from inner-judges like guilt and shame. What’s a good deal harder to realize is that behind the scenes our inner-judges sicken us and dumb us down quite literally. If they sense we’re a drag on the collective intelligence, inner-judges down shift our immune system and neurochemically cloud our ability to perceive. They induce a narcotic haze by swamping our system with endorphins, the body’s self-produced equivalent of morphine*. And they flood us with glucocorticoids which kill off both brain cells and lymphocytes – critical cells in our fight against disease.\nInner-judges measure our contribution to the social learning machine by two yardsticks: (1) our personal sense of mastery; and (2) the hints we get from those around us telling us whether they want us eagerly or couldn’t care less if we disappeared like a blackhead from the face of decent society.\nMastery is a useful gauge. It measures whether we’re coping with the trials tossed our way, and whether our example can help steer others in their trip through choppy seas. Popularity is an equally practical yardstick. It measures the extent to which we’re feeding others’ physical, organizational, and/or emotional needs.\nNestled deep within our neuroendocrine complex, inner-judges operate on a sliding scale. By adjusting our mix of neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine, or the balance between the gloomy right and sunny left side of the brain, they shift us from fear to daring, from misery to happiness, from grouchiness to charm, from timid silence to expansive speech, from deflation to elation, from pain to ecstasy, from confusion to insight, and from listlessness to lust or to the resolute pursuit of goals.\nSome of us are born with inner-judges whose verdicts are perpetually harsh. The result is depression, shyness, and heightened susceptibility to pain. Others arrive from the womb with inner-judges preset to treat us generously, endowing us with energy, few inhibitions, a deep sense of security, and little sense of guilt or shame. But most of us are in the middle – our inner-judges sentence us sternly or magnanimously depending on the snugness with which we fit our social network’s needs.\nThose born with inner-judges excessively lenient or severe have taught us much about the secrets of mental and emotional diversity. Harvard University researcher Jerome Kagan has probably never heard the term “inner-judges,” yet he may have done more than any other psychologist to uncover their capabilities. To understand what Kagan hath wrought, a background briefing is in order.\n\nThe early-twentieth-century psychoanalytic thinker Carl Jung, says Kagan, originated the concept of introverted and extroverted personalities. Jung also believed that each had a slightly different brain structure. Kagan feels that in his own way, he has proven Jung right. He’s found that 10 to 15 percent of infants are born with a tendency to be fearful and withdrawn, while another 10 to 15 percent are born with a flair for dauntless spontaneity. During the last few decades of the twentieth century, Kagan performed numerous experiments and accumulated large amounts of data demonstrating his concept’s validity.\nHe refers to facts like these:\n\nIn studies of Japanese and American newborns, some infants took the removal of the nipple from their mouths calmly, while others went into emotional fits. The babies as yet had had no opportunity to learn these reactions from their parents. The tendencies were those they’d brought with them from the isolation of the uterus. At fourteen months, the babies who’d been easily upset at birth were still so oversensitive that they often broke out crying when the sight of a stranger loomed. On another test, babies who became upset at birth when they were switched suddenly from water to a sugar solution squalled hysterically at the age of one or two when their mothers left the room, but babies who had taken the change in beverage casually did not. In addition, a study of 113 children showed that those who had a hard time handling the unexpected when they were one year old were still shy and withdrawn by the time they reached six.\nThis tendency toward variation in personality was not limited to human beings. According to Kagan, it appeared in dogs, mice, rats, wolves, cats, cows, monkeys, and paradise fish. Some of these animals were fascinated by novelty. Others were terrified by anything the least bit out of place.\nFifteen percent of cats steered clear of strangers and even avoided attacking rats. This was remarkably close to the percentage of humans frozen by anxiety attacks.\n\nKagan traces these differences to genes, which can help set off a lifelong domino effect in the brain. The production of key manufacturing enzyme for the stimulant norepinephrine, says Kagan, is controlled by a single pair of genes, making norepinephrine levels highly heritable. Norepinephrine – which is also a potent stress hormone – shows up very early in the development of the embryo, making the hippocampus oversensitive to the unfamiliar, and hyperactivating the amygdala, which jolts us with the warning signal we call fear. The hippocampus and amygdala – as we’ve seen earlier – are central shapers of the memory bank we call reality. They are also key to the inner-judges’ machinery.\n[…]\nLater in life the products of a prebirth norepinephrine cascade are timid children, who, in carefully controlled studies, are alert to slight changes in tones or brightness of light that other children miss. In other words, these children literally see and hear their world in ways others would not recognize. According to Kagan, the constitutionally frightened are endowed with a limbic system hair-triggered to curse them with a sense of imminent catastrophe. As a consequence, shy children attempt to escape punishment by hiding from everyday events which threaten to torment them hideously. Uninhibited children, on the opposite end of the scale, have underaroused limbic systems and demand a deluge of entertainment to dodge boredom’s intolerability. Their craving for excitement can sometimes wear their parents to a frazzle.\nKagan’s shy children are condemned to solitude and pain by hanging judges in their own biology. Kagan’s uninhibited kids are gifted with indulgent inner-judges predisposed by the limbic system to offer such unearned rewards as boldness and social dexterity. But most of the animals and humans Kagan has studied avoid these two extremes. Seventy percent remain in the middle, their inner-judges handing out positive and negative verdicts according to the rules of the learning machine.\n\n*”Endorphin” is a contraption of the term “endogenous morphine.\n\n\nSee also:\n\nEvery Child is a Genetic Experiment: FAAH Clinical Trials for Hedonic Recalibration as Educated Guesses Rather than Reckless Experimentation\nTriple S Genetic Counseling: Predicting Hedonic-Set Point with Commercial-Grade DNA Testing as an Effective Altruist Project\nWireheading Done Right: Stay Positive Without Going Insane\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/09/29/the-psychobiology-of-subcultures/", "title": "The Psychobiology of Subcultures", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-09-30T05:34:18+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=10", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "06a90a546633037a0ab2b8650fd23245", "summary": []}
{"text": "Harmonic Society (2/4): Art as Schelling Point Creation and the Pursuit of Sacred Experiences\n\nThe following essay was recently published in the Berlin-based art magazine Art Against Art (issue). Below you will find models 3 and 4 (out of 8). I will be sharing 2 new models each week until I’ve shared all of them (see part 1/4).\n\n3. Schelling Point Creation\n[Psychoanalysis teaches us:] When somebody complains, always be careful and try to find, identify, what type of additional pleasure, satisfaction, does the act of complaining itself bring to you. We all, when we complain, almost always, find a perverse satisfaction in the act of complaining itself.\n– Slavoj Zizek (2019)\nI certainly feel compelled to complain about the tyranny of genetic fitness signaling in art. That said, people who excel at games who are not played by many people will have an incentive to undermine the popular games and frame their favorite game as somehow superior. Why are Hipsters and Nerds allied against Cool Kids? Because the Cool Kids can decide on a whim that the games the Hipsters and Nerds play are uncool and not worthy of public fitness displays. Even if they happen to be of superb quality!\nIn many cases, the exploration of uncommon games can give rise to major innovations, so there is a utilitarian reason to promote some degree of exploration outside of the aesthetics that most people can enjoy.\nThis line of reasoning gives rise to a new interpretation for what a Hipster is. To be a Hipster is not, as popularly believed, to merely desire the uncommonly desired. The whole thrust of hipsterism is a promise of superior quality in at least some actually relevant area, even at the cost of severely reduced quality across the board. (Using an analogy from the field of statistics: Cool Kids favor L2 normalization[1] as it signal-boosts people who are well-rounded, whereas Hipsters and Nerds favor L1 normalization which improves the outlook for imbalanced minimax strategies).\nMany people believe that all Hipsters are Cool Kids. Many believe something slightly weaker, which is that to be a Cool Kid you also need to be a Hipster. But in fact this is absolutely not the case, and it is a category error to think otherwise. Cool Kids and Hipsters were correlated when being Hipster had mainstream appeal. That is, Hipsters were cool when Cool Kids used to challenge people to show how Hipster they could be. But this should not be in any way an indication that Hipster aesthetics are intrinsically related to Cool Kids, for the same reason that e.g. Country Music, Normcore, or Bolshevik aesthetics are not intrinsically invented by Cool Kids. Hipsters are individual contributors to the frontier of culture. Indeed, it is rare to find a place that produces genuinely innovative content while also being saturated with Cool Kids.\nCool Kids, in large quantities, eventually form cliques that become voting blocs. These frustrate innovation by fully orthogonalizing what is socially cool from what is socially valuable. A Hipster under those circumstances tends to feel stifled. Cool Kids tend to be above-average in openness to experience, but they are rarely in the top 2% of openness to experience – more like one standard deviation above the mean. This is because they need to be open enough to look at new trends but also sufficiently closed to be able to relate to the bulk of the consumers of new trends. Genuine Hipsters are usually above the 98th percentile of openness to experience. In turn, the sexual attraction of some people is focused on this particular trait, and Hipsters compete at signaling it to the highest extent possible. In the process, they discover interesting things. But this does not mean they can sustainably stay cool in the eyes of the average person.\nHigh openness to experience allows you to appreciate minimax players. It allows you to accept artists who are ridiculously good at making a specific point but lack talent in every other respect. Ultimately, the innovations produced by these extreme artistic explorations sometimes radically transform social reality.\nIn “Ads Don’t Work That Way”, Kevin Simler discusses how advertisement’s power is not through direct persuasion, but through shaping the landscape of cultural meaning. You don’t bring a 6-pack of Coronas to a party because the ads have subconsciously conditioned you to think that this beer in particular is more likely to make you and your friends feel like you are a chill group. Rather, you buy it in order to signal the fact that you see yourself as a chill person, and to bring that mindset to those who see you bring the product. It is by virtue of common knowledge that ads can do this; if every single person received a different custom-made AI-powered neural net ad, ads would stop having the function of shaping the landscape of cultural meaning, and perhaps lose a significant portion of their power.\nArt, likewise, can also change the landscape of cultural meaning. In contrast to ads, art might perhaps be described as high-bandwidth low-distribution as opposed to high-distribution low-bandwidth. And to the extent that Hipsters discover new aesthetics, they are a big source of novel cultural Schelling points for subcultures to form around.\n4. Creating Sacred Experiences\nArt could be the next religion – Alex Grey\nBelow you will find an example of a piece that aims to create a sacred experience, which I recently encountered at the Santa Cruz Regional Burn. It is called Mementomorium, and it is a mixture of a sensory-deprivation-chamber and a symbolic self-burial experience crafted in order to simulate your own death and to attempt to see your life in its finitude. This art piece plays with one’s experience of time and sense of mortality, and helps you cut through delusion in order to re-interpret one’s time on earth as finite and priceless.\n\n\nWhy is the above art? Cool Kids might find this too morbid, and Hipsters are likely to see\nit as too real. So what is the thrust behind artistic visions like the above?\nSacred experiences are an aspect of social and phenomenological reality. Art, it turns out, is deeply entwined with such sacredness. Now, much has been said about the sublime in relation to art. What else is there to say?\n\n\n\n\nLife isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. – George Bernard Shaw\n\n\n\n\nContrary to the three previous models, here the culminating emotion that is sought is not the vindication of self, but rather, the elicitation of a sense of self-transcendence. This 4th model would say that art creates some of the most valuable experiences there are, because it makes us experience a sense of transcendence. And relative to the previous three models, this model is the first to consider art as involved in the quest of finding the ultimate answer, as opposed to merely providing incremental benefits to humanity.\nCutting to the chase, let us jump right into a list of possible intentional sources for phenomenal sacredness (i.e. the possible targets of art according to this model). From John Lilly’s “Simulations of God”, below you find the most common types of self-transcendence catalogued:\n\nGod As the Beginning\nI Am God\nGod Out There\nGod As Him/Her/It\nGod As The Group\nGod As Orgasm and Sex\nGod As Death\nGod As Drugs\nGod As the Body\nGod As Money\nGod As Righteous Wrath\nGod As Compassion\nGod As War\nGod As Science\nGod As Mystery\nGod As the Belief, the Simulation, the Model\nGod As the Computer\nGod Simulating Himself\nGod As Consciousness-without-an-Object\nGod As Humor\nGod As Superspace, the Ultimate Collapse into the Black Hole, the End.\nThe Ultimate Simulation\nGod As the Diad\n\nAccording to John Lilly’s view, each of us lives in a world simulation (whether this is generated by our brains or by a higher power is something Lilly himself went back and forth on for decades). He makes the case that our world simulation is run by a hierarchical chain of programs and meta-programs. One’s locus of control[2] is what he calls the Self Meta-Programmer, which is roughly equivalent to the ego (or at least a healthy one with high levels of self-control). Implicitly, however, the Self Meta-Programmer is subordinated to something higher, something he calls the Supra-Self Meta-Programmer (SSMP for short; see: “Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer”).[3] Our SSMPs are responsible for our notions of a higher power, higher values, and higher purpose. One’s religion is determined by the SSMPs to which one is subordinated. In Lilly’s view, it is one’s SSMPs that give rise to one’s understand- ing of God. And as the list above shows, there are many possible versions of God. That is, there are many possible meta-programmings for what the highest power, value, and purpose might be. In light of this, art as the pursuit of sacred experiences would not be restricted to a particular view of God. Rather, it encapsulates every possible notion of God – where the art that hits hardest is the art that resonates the most with one’s implicit conception of God.\nA parallel here could be made with adult developmental models (such as those of Wilber’s Integral Theory, Kegan’s Evolving Self, Common’s and Richard’s Model of Hierarchical Complexity, etc.). At each level of development, one’s conception of the highest value transcends and includes those of the developmental stages below. Let’s take for example Integral Theory’s levels 4, 5, and 6. Level 4, aka. “Amber” (ethno- or nation-centric, values rules, discipline, faith in transcendent God or preordained high- er order, socially conservative, etc.) would derive a sense of sacredness from religious imagery, a nationalist spirit, and art that fosters traditional values. Level 5, aka. “Orange” (values science and rationality, democracy, individualism, materialism, entrepreneurship, etc.) gets off on experiences that bring about a reductionist scientific world picture compatible with self-reliance (“the world is made of atoms, and this, rather than being tragic, is an opportunity to have fine-grained control over the elements”). And Level 6, aka. “Green” (values pluralism and equality, multiple points of view, no true reality, embraces paradox, considers civil rights and environmentalism to be the frontier of culture, etc.) would find art projects that highlight the multiplicity of perspectives to be key to a sense of the sacred.[4] In this framework we can explain people’s negative reaction to art as a misfit between the developmental level of the target audience and the developmental level of the person who gets to experience it. Art targeted to people in a higher level of development than oneself will be perceived as heretical (e.g. postmodern art from the point of view of a traditionalist monotheist), while art targeted to people on a lower level of development than oneself will be perceived as childish or naïve (e.g. traditional religious iconography from the point of view of a scientific rationalist humanist). We could thus predict that if there are even higher developmental levels above ours, we will most likely think of the art targeted to them as deeply troubling.\n\n\n\n\nThe core quality of the experience is the feeling and recognition that oneness is truth. – Martin Ball on 5-MeO-DMT\n\n\n\n\nAt the upper levels of development, one could argue, we find sacredness based on concepts like pure consciousness, emptiness, and the clear white light of the void, etc. Famously, psychedelics, and in particular 5-MeO-DMT, seem to trigger direct experiences of this type of sacredness, which, according to its proponents, encapsulates all other kinds of transcendence within. If this is so, then we could anticipate that agents like 5-MeO-DMT will play an important role in the future of art as more people climb the ladder of adult psychological development.\nOn a social level, art as the pursuit of the sacred can be interpreted as an adaptive behavior aimed at taming envy. “Keeping up with the Joneses” is (artistically or other- wise) capable of diverting a group’s energy away from tasks that need to be done for individual and collective survival. When done in excess, wasteful displays of fitness make communities suffer. Runaway signaling has serious drawbacks, and sacred experiences seem to calm people down a bit, especially if the sense of sacredness comes along with social reassurance in the form of being able to hang out together without having to compete all the time, for Christ’s sake! Ahem. To be chill with one another.\nAs we saw with the previous models, this one, too, has its own aesthetic. The aesthetic of the model would perhaps manifest in the form of a museum that caters to every possible sense of sacredness. From aboriginal shamanism to monotheistic conservativism to punk rock concerts to transhumanism, this aesthetic recognizes the fact that sacredness is catalyzed by many different inputs depending on the psychological traits of the people who consume it.\n\n\n[1] L1 and L2 normalization are ways of talking about how to describe the distance between points in a given space. L2 takes into account the mean squared difference along each dimension, whereas L1 simply uses the average difference in each dimension. If one is thinking about an ideal art piece within a given aesthetic, then using L2 would penalize very heavily exemplars that deviate from the archetype and generally favor well-roundedness, whereas an L1 normalization would accept large differences from the ideal along several dimensions as long as at least a fraction of the dimensions are very good.\n[2] One’s locus of control is the part of our experience that comes with a felt sense of agency. That is, what feels like is in charge of determining the direction of one’s attention, intention, and behavior. Typically, a person’s locus of control is tied to their sense of self – or ego – but this is not true in the general case (as demonstrated by the shattered locus of control present in schizophrenia, and absent locus of control during states of depersonalization and derealization).\n[3] According to John Lilly, a Supraself-Metaprogramer is an agent outside our locus of control that runs below our threshold of awareness and which ‘codes’ Supraself-Metaprograms. In turn, Supraself-Metaprograms are the mental “programs” that determine our sense of the highest values, which we typically inherit from our culture, influence from others, implicit historical beliefs, and so on.\n[4] The colors of Integral Theory: Ken Wilber’s Integral theory was developed by identifying the commonalities among many different types of adult developmental models, spiritual stage maps, and meditation progression systems. The progression could broadly be described as a generalized expansion of the circle of compassion and increased acceptance of complexity. The color associated with each level is arranged from low-frequency to high-frequency parts of the spectrum. Specifically, infrared – archaic, magenta – tribal, red – warrior, amber – traditional, orange – modern, green – postmodern, teal/turquoise – integral, ultraviolet – post-integral.\n\nFeatured image credit: Mementomorium by Oleg Muir Lou Goff\n* The full essay’s title is: Harmonic Society: 8 Models of Art for a Scientific Paradigm of Aesthetic Qualia", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/09/22/harmonic-society-2-4-art-as-schelling-point-creation-and-the-pursuit-of-sacred-experiences/", "title": "Harmonic Society (2/4): Art as Schelling Point Creation and the Pursuit of Sacred Experiences", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-09-23T06:44:20+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=11", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "14b3f9492fc8d84543eb339150ae02b4", "summary": []}
{"text": "Harmonic Society (1/4): Art as Family Resemblance + Cool Kid Theory\n\nNote – The full essay’s title is: Harmonic Society: 8 Models of Art for a Scientific Paradigm of Aesthetic Qualia\nThe following essay was recently published in the Berlin-based art magazine Art Against Art (issue).\nThe essay offers eight different models of art: models 1 through 4 have been discussed in academic literature and the current intellectual zeitgeist, while models 5 through 8 are new, original, and the direct result of recent insights about consciousness as uncovered by modern neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and the work of the Qualia Research Institute.\nBelow you will find the abstract, introduction, and the first 2 (out of 8) models of art. I will be sharing 2 new models each week until I’ve shared all 8 of them.\n\n\nContemporary writing about art is in exactly the same place as writing about nature was before Darwin came along. Before Darwin there was no single intellectual matrix upon which to fix all of these impressions and ideas. There was no way of organizing all of that information. And this seems to me to be the situation we are in with the arts, as well.\n– Brian Eno, “What is Art Actually For?” (2012)\nAbstract\nWe start by assuming that there are real stakes in art. This motivates the analysis of this subject matter, and it focuses where we place our gaze. We examine a total of eight models for “what art might be about”, divided into two groups. The first group of four are some of the most compelling contemporary models, which derive their strength from fields such as philosophy of language, economics, evolutionary psychology, and anthropology. These models are: (1) art as a word only definable in a family resemblance way with no necessary or sufficient features, (2) art as social signaling of desirable genetic characteristics, (3) art as Schelling point creation, and (4) art as the cultivation of sacred experiences. These four models, however enlightening, nonetheless only account for what David Marr might describe as the computational level of abstraction while leaving the algorithmic and implementation levels of abstraction unexamined. They explain what art is about in terms of why it exists and what its coarse effects are, but not the nature of its internal representations or its implementation. Hence we propose a second group of four models in order to get a “full-stack” view of art. These models are: (5) art as a tool for exploring the state-space of consciousness, (6) art as a method for changing the energy parameter of experience, (7) art as activities that induce neuronal annealing (which implements novel valence modulation, i.e. surprising pain/pleasure effects), and (8) art as an early prototype of a future affective language that will allow diverse states of consciousness to make sense of each other. These frameworks address how art interfaces with consciousness and how its key valuable features might be implemented neurologically. We conclude with a brief look at how embracing these new paradigms could, in principle, lead to the creation of a society free from suffering and interpersonal misunderstanding. Such a society, aka. Harmonic Society, would be designed with the effect of guaranteeing positive valence interactions using principles from a post-Galilean science of consciousness.\nIntroduction\nWe shall start this essay by making the assumption that there are real and substantial stakes when it comes to art. Not all of my readers will agree with this point, and those who do might in fact secretly worry that they are overvaluing art for selfish reasons. I come here to suggest that there could be very real and substantial stakes in art, and that to realize this you do not need to buy into sentimentalism, fanaticism, wishful thinking, or traditionalist attitudes. You could start with the sheer amount of human attention that is devoted to art in one way or another. Art seems to make a lot of people do things, and do them with a lot of their energy and focus. Indeed, many people point at their intimations with art as personally defining moments. Some say their best self is expressed in their creation, consumption, or participation in art. So what is all of this fuss about?\nAlas, most things of grand significance have been analyzed by countless people. The sheer magnitude of certain human activity is not a justification for caring about it at the margin, considering the often corresponding sheer magnitude of other people already analyzing and scientifically probing the field. That is, of course, unless you have a reason to think that you have something that everyone else has been missing all this time. And this is the case for you and me right now. The new perspectives on art on this essay come from thinking very deeply about consciousness, qualia, and the possible implementations of the pleasure-pain axis, aka. valence. We will see how investigating these questions cashes out in novel insights about art. In turn, these models, as well as the empirically testable predictions they generate, might have the ability to reframe what is going on with art in a way that allows us to predict how and when it will bring about good and desirable effects.\nThe 8 Models\n\nArt as family resemblance (Semantic Deflation)\nArt as Signaling (Cool Kid Theory)\nArt as Schelling-point creation (a few Hipster-theoretical considerations)\nArt as cultivating sacred experiences (self-transcendence and highest values)\nArt as exploring the state-space of consciousness (ϡ♘♬ヅ)\nArt as something that mess with the energy parameter of your mind (ꙮ)\nArt as puzzling valence effects (emotional salience and annealing as key ingredients)\nArt as a system of affective communication: a protolanguage to communicate information about worthwhile qualia (which culminates in Harmonic Society).\n\nModels 1 through 4 are already present in the memetic ecosystem of today. They focus on external aspects of art, such as why it reproduces and how it impacts social behavior. From the point of view of Marr’s levels of analysis, these four models focus on the behavioral/computational level of analysis.[1] Namely, what art looks like from the outside, and how it reproduces. Models 5 through 8 are novel perspectives that arise out of examining artistic experiences in light of Marr’s algorithmic and implementation-level accounts of consciousness. That is, how the internal information-processing and implementational features of brains give rise to art. In turn, these four models give rise to a new understanding for when art does or does not do its job.\n1. Semantic Deflation\nThis model says that asking “what is art?” is, more often than not, an utterly confused question. Perhaps in antiquity it would make sense to talk about the essence of art, expecting there to be a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be art. According to the semantic deflation model of art, starting out with the expectation of finding a crisp set of requirements for something to be art is starting off on the wrong foot, for believing that there is an essence of art is to simply not pay attention to the large set of inconsistent use cases for that word, which challenges the existence of such an essence.\nThe semantic deflation model is supported by key insights from 20th Century philosophy of language, such as found in the works of Russell, Frege, Carnap, Quine, and especially those of the late Wittgenstein. Of particular relevance when it comes to defining art we could point at Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance. Developed in his book Philosophical Investigations, the concept of family resemblance posits that many words which seem at first to point at something with a core essence are, in fact, pointing to referents which have overlapping similarities but no universally shared attributes.\nLike the concept of a game, which refers to activities as diverse as checkers and cellular automata, and which cannot be easily defined in terms of e.g. point systems, physical movement, number of players, etc., we likewise cannot expect art to be definable in terms of media, intent, social effects, or craft. All we can aspire to is to identify common and characteristic features.\nAccording to this view, the models of art that take objective beauty seriously on Platonic or traditionalist grounds are fundamentally misguided. Callbacks to retraditionalize society to preserve its past – more genuine – aesthetics are perceived as parodies of themselves, trying to undo an intrinsically irreversible process of cultural learning. Nowadays few people seriously believe that art should be conceived of as a tool exclusively for the glorification of traditional values and religious symbolism. It is also not fashionable to think of art in sincere non-ironic ways. Those who wish to earnestly engage with art must remind themselves that the days in which its meaning could be grounded on universally agreed definitions is gone.\nAlthough sobering and clarifying, I argue that this view leaves a lot of value on the table. Sure, art has no common essence, but that does not mean that all of the uses of the word are pointing at things of equal value. Semantic deflation does not provide us with guidance for identifying and promoting good art. Indeed, as Wittgenstein might put it, “[p]hilosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language, it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is.” (Philosophical Investigations, pg.49).\nInterestingly, the semantic deflation model of art can itself be conceived of as an aesthetic. This aesthetic rewards those who can help others transcend narrow conceptions of what art is. Exemplary movements like Dadaism and Pop Art could be thought of as pushing the aesthetic of semantic deflation to the limit.\n“Art is what you can get away with.” – Andy Warhol.\nBut what if there is something worth preserving, reifying, and defining clearly in art? Semantic deflation should perhaps be thought of as a first step in figuring out what is valuable about art, rather than a final destination. To move beyond it, one should avoid reviving a naïve essentialist view of art, and instead identify conceptual focal points that genuinely enrich our conception of art. Rather than destroying preconceptions, we could instead refactor, discover, and build new and enlightened ones. Transcending absolutist deflationary views of art is indeed more appealing when there is an alternative in sight that is both better and more real than what you get by merely deconstructing and breaking down naïve views. And this is what we will attempt to do as we move on to other models of art.\n2. Cool Kid Theory\nIn his book “The Mating Mind”, Geoffrey Miller discusses art in light of evolutionary psychology. In this view, art, rather than being a thing, is a culturally sanctioned activity devised to allow people to display their genetic fitness, by showing off above-average features of their phenotypes. Art is, in this view, at its core, an outlet for courtship. Incredible performances like those of Liszt and Rachmaninoff are not just for the pleasure of music. The incredible difficulty of performing the musical compositions is itself the show. The difficulty is not a side-effect of discovering new soundscape frontiers that produce blissful and extraordinary experiences to degrees that couldn’t be possible without the difficulty of execution. Rather, the difficulty of performing the musical pieces is part and parcel of what makes them so extraordinary. They are indeed erotic displays of fitness traits (cf. Lisztomania) crafted to cause an impression in fertile ground.\nIndeed, we are constructed in such a way that we can emotionally hack and be hacked by others to assess each others’ suitability as potential family, friends, and neighbors. Unfakeable fitness displays typically require prodigious amounts of waste. As Geoffrey puts it: “Every sexual ornament in every sexually reproducing species could be viewed as a different style of waste.” (The Mating Mind, pg. 128. cf. An Infinite Variety of Waste) Only extremely fit organisms can afford to spend resources on non-survival tasks.\nFashion, too, in this light, is a sort of collective activity of systematic waste. Keeping up with the latest trends shows that you have a lot of free time (which, contrary to popular belief, is perceived as more sexy than the alternative). Only the wealthy, disciplined, or well-organized can manage to sustain energy- and time-consuming hobbies for years and years.\nThis theory of art has a problem, though, which is that on its own it does not explain art as a cultural institution. We could very well imagine that aesthetics-based displays of genetic fitness would be circumscribed to individual efforts but in practice we see groups of people coming together to work out the potentialities, possibilities, limits, and implications of particular aesthetics. We don’t only generate extraordinarily wasteful works of art ourselves, but do so contextually within art movements and aesthetic languages. Why is this?\nI believe there is a layer of organization above individual signaling displays. To fully grasp it, we need to talk about what I have named “Cool Kid Theory”. This theory postulates that above-average and particularly well-rounded individuals, aka. Cool Kids, figure out ways of enticing others to show their peacock feathers, so to speak. Being a Cool Kid is not to excel oneself, but rather, to have the precise kind of strategic mediocrity that gives others the urge to show how they can improve upon your craft. At its extreme, a Cool Kid commands a group of people who practice a particular type of craft, which ultimately becomes an artistic gang. If you are a Cool Kid you can decide who is cool and who is not by choosing what challenges to measure the performance of people with.\nWho wants to be a Cool Kid? The answer is, for the most part, anyone who can get away with it. It is so evolutionarily adaptive to be a Cool Kid that we have a number of psychological programs that can be triggered with a sequence of social cues that can make almost anyone into a Cool Kid.\nPart and parcel of being a Cool Kid is to know how to induce the fear of missing out in others. It is about detecting when a particular challenge is headed towards an imminent dead end and course-correct to keep people engaged.\nHere is an example. If you ever encounter a group of dancers in public transportation, you will notice that there is a Cool Kid who binds them together. The Cool Kid selects for people who have unique talents, and collectively accumulates a solidly impressive bag of tricks. Everyone in the group takes turns showing their best trick. For instance, the group might have someone who sings, someone who plays an instrument, and someone who owns a subwoofer (sometimes that’s all it takes). You might also see that there is a guy who can do the weird elbow twist thingy, the one who can break dance and do nine spins on his back, the one who can beat-box to the tune of the song, and the one who moonwalks while playing a harmonica. An effective Cool Kid is one who can corral all of these specialists and be the artistic glue who controls the overarching aesthetic. And this aesthetic is what defines a set of challenges used for impressive fitness displays.\nThe art world can be thus conceived of as a large super-cluster of Cool Kid gangs cornering the economy of attention. The competitive nature of Cool Kids is sure to produce a constant stream of novel stimuli, endlessly varied trends and fashions, as well as competitive and indeed sometimes even virulent attacks between aesthetics. For he who controls the aesthetic, controls your ability to be popular.\nTo be continued… (edit: see models 3 & 4, 5 & 6, and 7 & 8).\n\n\n[1] Marr’s levels of analysis is a framework to analyze information-processing systems. First we have the computational level, which describes what the system does from a third-person point of view. This level is concerned with questions like what the system is capable of, and how quickly it can succeed at it. Second is the algorithmic level of analysis, which focuses on the internal representations and operations used to transform the inputs into the outputs. And third is the implementation level of analysis, which is concerned with the physical realization of the algorithms described in the second level.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/09/16/harmonic-society-1-4-art-as-family-resemblance-cool-kid-theory/", "title": "Harmonic Society (1/4): Art as Family Resemblance + Cool Kid Theory", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-09-17T01:46:33+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=11", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "edf9b75eef07909eb63c0124921f0340", "summary": []}
{"text": "Announcement: QRI Presentations at Harvard and NYU\n\nThe Qualia Research Institute is in Boston for the month of September.\nYesterday I gave a presentation about the Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain at the Harvard Effective Altruism student group (video coming soon! – slides).\nI will be giving a presentation about The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences at the Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club on September 17, at 8pm (Sever 113). The venue is apparently quite large so we are not going to run out of capacity for this talk. Feel free to amplify this as a Schelling point for smart rational psychonauts to meet one another.\nMichael Johnson will also be giving a presentation at the Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club: 21st of September (7PM), at the Fong Auditorium in Boylston Hall.\nFinally, I’ll be giving a presentation at Effective Altruism NYC (also about Logarithmic Scales) on September 23rd (7PM), at 334 E 30th St #3. See: facebook event.\nBoth Harvard talks are free and open to the public. The venues have a large number of seating spots, so all you need to do is show up. For the NYU talk the organizers of the event would like you to get a (free) ticket first in order to RSVP and secure a seat as the venue is not very large.\nWe will record these talks, share them online, and add them to the list of media appearances.\n \n\n \nIf you are in Boston, want to meet up with us, but can’t make it to any of the talks: I will show up to the SSC meetup on the 20th of September wearing a Qualia Research Institute shirt. Feel free to find me and say hi.\n\nMany thanks to: Andrew Zuckerman, Kenneth Shinozuka, Jacob Shwartz-Lucas, and\nAnisha Zaveri for organizing these events!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/09/14/announcement-qri-presentations-at-harvard-and-nyu/", "title": "Announcement: QRI Presentations at Harvard and NYU", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-09-15T00:35:20+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=11", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f9733e04361aedcf082c72c01f9ed767", "summary": []}
{"text": "More Dakka in Medicine\n\nBy Sarah Constantin (blog – 1, 2)\nThe More Dakka story is common in medicine. You do an intervention; the disease doesn’t get better, or gets only marginally better; the research literature concludes it doesn’t work; nobody tries doing MORE of that intervention, but when somebody just raises the dose high enough, it does work.\nExamples: \na.) Chemotherapy didn’t work on cancer until doctors made cocktails of drugs, raised the dose so high it would kill you, and then mitigated the side effects with prednisone and intermittent dosing schedules. If they just used a safe daily dose of a single chemotherapeutic agent, they’d have concluded chemo didn’t work.\nPrednisone\nb.) Light therapy barely works for SAD; two internet-famous people have independently found that REALLY BRIGHT light therapy completely fixes SAD.\nc.) The example in the post is about allopurinol. Allopurinol prevents gout attacks by lowering uric acid. “In studies, [allopurinol] improved [uric acid] linearly with dosage. Studies observed that sick patients whose [uric acid] reached healthy levels experienced full remission. The treatment was fully safe. No one tried increasing the dose enough to reduce [uric acid] to healthy levels.“\nd.) The standard treatment for hypothyroidism is thyroid hormone. People with “subclinical hypothyroidism”– people whose thyroid hormone levels are lower than average, but still above the cutoff for hypothyroid, and still suffer from exactly the same symptoms as hypothyroid–, ALSO benefit from thyroid hormone therapy. It’s not standard of care yet, though.\ne.) I believe some vitamin deficiencies, don’t remember which exactly, are the same way; there’s an official cutoff for “deficient” but people slightly above that cutoff still have symptoms and still experience symptom relief from supplementation.\nf.) Same deal with HIV. Virus has a replication rate & a clearance rate; its replication rate is also its mutation rate; an antiviral drug can raise the clearance rate above the replication rate, which will make the population drop exponentially, but if there’s only one drug the virus will have a chance to evolve to be resistant before the population drops low enough to be undetectable. And this is a simple differential equation that you can calculate years before you know what the drugs even are. One drug: death. Two drugs: death. Three or more drugs: survival.\nLuckily David Ho was a physicist and thought about it this way, so when the antiviral drugs came out he was ready to test them in cocktails.\nSo “single antibiotics don’t work for chronic Lyme but cocktails do and this wasn’t realized for decades” isn’t an unprecedented story. It could turn out that way.\nI bet this is something that has a more formal and accurate phrasing, but: if there’s an exponential-growth dynamic (like in a malignant cancer or an infection) where you’re trying to kill the exponentially-growing population, and if there’s a dose-response relationship where higher dose = more killing, then you have a bifurcation point in the outcome as t -> infinity, where a dose below that point means the enemy takes over and the patient dies and a dose above that point means “the enemy is killed faster than it can reproduce and so dies out in the long run.” And in principle you can calculate this cutoff if you know the dose-response relationship, as Ho did.\nSource\nAnd separately, there’s a safety threshold; is the minimum effective dose safe or unsafe? With chemotherapy, the minimum effective dose is UNSAFE, which is why they have to get clever with ways to give you doses high enough to kill you while keeping you alive anyway. (Or “find a better drug”, but nobody has found a cytotoxic drug with strictly better tolerability/effectiveness tradeoffs since the 1960’s.)\nThis is kinda how you get a continuous/analog system to give you discrete outcomes: bifurcation points! Works in gene regulation too. “This regulatory gene turns on that gene’s transcription” – well, what’s actually happening is a continuous scalar, a rate of transcription and a rate of clearance, but because exponential functions are involved you get bifurcations in “steady-state” outcomes over the several-hour timescales needed to get to “this cell has tons of mRNAs for that gene or it’s literally empty of them”.\nSystems biology is cool, it explains the math that gets you from a statistical-chemistry model of the cell (as a bag of molecules that bump into each other and have a probability of interaction) to a tinkertoy model that you can treat like a graph. (Gene regulatory networks, protein-protein interaction networks, neuron networks, etc.)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/09/06/more-dakka-in-medicine/", "title": "More Dakka in Medicine", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-09-07T02:23:09+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=11", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6e7b11cc468a424a7bafe64ac3eb48e9", "summary": []}
{"text": "Typical N,N-DMT Trip Progression According to an Anonymous Reader\n\nI recently had the chance to interview someone who’s had 50+ vaporized N,N-DMT experiences. The person in question (who wishes to remain anonymous) is extremely smart, philosophically literate, and has a PhD in a STEM field from a top US university. Based on the interview notes I took, I wrote down what the progression of a “typical” experience looks like. The anonymous reader confirmed that this description provides an accurate account.\n\nProgression for Waiting Room or Breakthrough-level DMT experiences (15-40mg range):\nOnset stage (1-20 seconds): Psychedelic Molting – Sharpening of colors and edges, the world acquires a secondary layer (as if the world is “molting”), and then this second layer becomes unified and starts to resonate across the entire field of experience.\nEarly come-up (20-40 seconds): The Hyper-Edge Capacitor – Visual field gets saturated with the Chrysanthemum, which starts to give way to 3D shapes. At this point a center of high-dimensional correlations between planes of experience starts bubbling up correlated subspaces for later use: planes, then 3D spaces, then hyper-planes, etc. And as these “high-dimensional Lego pieces” are made, they start becoming the elements of the scene (the walls, the objects, the space, the sense of presence, etc.).\n\n\n\nMiddle come-up (40-80 seconds): Crystal Worlds – In this phase of the experience there are a lot of “Buddhist no-self universes” of perfect resonance along many axes. Cave worlds, column worlds, pentagonal tiling of mirror chambers worlds, transparent blinds oceanic worlds, etc. There is a feeling that “these worlds exist independently of you” and that they are kinds of high-grade meditative states achievable by highly-attained monks and beings from other dimensions. They are sterile in some sense, though, which is that they lack evolution. They are attractor points of high-dimensional resonance. Insanely beautiful and ecstatic but also not perfect (for reasons that are hard to articulate).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLate come-up (80-100 seconds): Hyperbolic Gear World – At this point you start to see high-dimensional hyperbolic mechanisms. One intuitively feels that the state has too much energy to be contained in a Crystal World, which gives rise to stitching parallel Crystal Worlds into a unified hyperbolic world-sheet. Incredibly, this world-sheet is precise and seamless. The information contained in it is highly-specific. At this point number theory, hyperbolic geometry, and high-dimensional dynamics start to be very relevant. Irreducibly complex mathematical interlocking objects appear in very crisp and precise ways (it’s not just a fuzzy but intense impression of precision – it is a precise experience of precision clockwork machinery). 3D gear mechanisms with a prime-number of teeth that only repeat when they make as many cycles as the minimum common multiple of all the gears may show up, scenes with ‘plasma consciousness’ contained in hyperbolically-folded cavities with laminar color flow arise, spontaneous chaotic symmetry breaking devices arranged in the form of complex vibrating metallic flowers will materialize, etc. These devices also build on each other’s innovations. They can swap elements to become more interesting, more complex, more energetic, more hypnotizing, and more pleasurable than before.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPlateau (100-180 seconds): DMT Tykes – One starts to hallucinate things that are higher up in the visual hierarchy. “DMT Tykes” (another name for “DMT elves”) are humanoid forms that start to appear at this point. They are ever-evolving, and constructed of a high-dimensional hyperbolic world-sheet made of networks of interlocking Rabbit-Duck bistable percepts. In some sense the entities you see are not the DMT Tykes themselves. Instead, it feels like there are still higher-dimensional entities that interface with the space you’re at and it is those entities that control the rendered humanoid bistable percepts. The devices you saw in the immediately preceding stage (Hyperbolic Gear World) are revealed to be artifacts created by these higher-dimensional beings. As reported by others before, this space gives off the impression of being a gallery, a museum, a factory, or some kind of scientific testing facility, where entities are trying out new qualia configurations to study their properties: how they feel, what they can be used for, what it is like to experience them as a human being, etc. They are trying to compel you to take these things seriously, to see through how groundbreaking they would be for humans. Whenever one is too overwhelmed with the information presented (common misgivings are of the sort: “this is too much for a simple human” or “too beautiful, I don’t deserve this” or “what if people find out I know this?”) the experience becomes calming and things that you recognize as a human start being presented: jungles, hedonically-charged human scenes, locations, archetypes, stories about the origin of humanity, etc. And when one feels ready again to look at the complex machinery then there is this sense that the entities will continue to show you more and more of the irreducibly complex phenomenal objects native to that space.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEarly comedown (180-240 seconds): High-Dimensional Breakdown – Entities may become a bit desperate to make sure they have sent along the most important information. The intensity starts subsiding and there is a lot of revisiting of earlier stages, gathering of essential insights, and decisions made about what to definitely try to bring back to one’s baseline state. Often one fears that one’s brain will never get back to normal during the earlier parts, but at this point one recognizes that there is a downward trend and that it’s all going to be ok after all. Paranoia, if present beforehand, starts to subside at this point. In terms of narrative, at this point one is usually coming to terms with what the experience will mean for your everyday life, whether you believe that the entities were real, and whether all of this was just a hallucination. The intuitive understanding that even if it is all just in your mind it still contained information of very high-value is clear at this stage (but may subside if you don’t properly encode it). Key undeniable facts of the experience at this point are: (1) there are heights of bliss and pain way outside of the range of human experience, (2) there are heights of mathematical complexity possible to experience directly that are beyond the scope of normal human cognition, and (3) there are types of qualia that matter both for intelligence and wellbeing that exist but humans are utterly clueless about. Disregarding the veracity of the entities or the literal interpretations of the experience, these three facts are straightforward to acknowledge at this stage of the trip.\n\n\n\n\nLate comedown (240-360 seconds): Psychedelic Dampening – There is a clear sense that some of the information you were able to easily see and grock earlier in the experience is completely inaccessible now. You lose contact with what felt like higher forms of intelligence but you still see a lot of interesting patterns and complex geometry that you somehow realize is not as important as what happened just before. Even though it still feels like you are “very high”, it feels like one’s unique privileged access to information about consciousness is gone and that what you could discover now would not belong to the same level of “scientific breakthrough” as what you experienced before.\n\n\n\n\nAfter-effects (360-600 seconds): Fast Sobering Up – Thinking about meta-narratives is very common at this stage, just like it is on traditional psychedelics. Things like “Where is the human world headed? What kind of consciousness will we experience as our default mode in 100 years from now? What will happen once scientists, engineers, and mathematicians start to do systematic research on the mathematics of the irreducibly-complex phenomenal objects at the peak of the experience? Etc.” Somewhere in along this stage the world finally becomes solidly uni-layered and then it just feels like a low dose of shrooms for a couple more minutes, at most.\n\n\n\nBaseline (600 seconds onwards): Re-Grounding Stage – You start wondering what that was all about. The realization that you came back to normal again so quickly is likely to make you feel like you should have not been so afraid to try out the experience to begin with. At the same time, you also may feel a strong pull towards not experiencing that for a while (depends – some people feel braver at this point and redo the experience). In most circumstances one will feel a mood boost for several hours (up to days) for two reasons. First is the sense of significance and profundity in the form of gratitude and the feeling of being special that such an experience confers. And second, there seems to be an essentially physiological response to having gone through such an intense experience without getting harmed (if one wasn’t harmed, of course). Perhaps the annealing frame is adequate in this context. Namely, that the experience somehow smoothed out a lot of pinch points and imperfections latent in one’s psyche. The fear of “the worst that could happen to me” subsides and one experiences a sense of connection to other humans that is significantly above baseline.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/09/03/typical-nn-dmt-trip-progression-according-to-an-anonymous-reader/", "title": "Typical N,N-DMT Trip Progression According to an Anonymous Reader", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-09-03T21:15:07+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=11", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "5bcb3dd2ebe7c5fa1d3edde09660f172", "summary": []}
{"text": "Atman Retreat: Safe, Legal Psilocybin Experiences in Jamaica\n\nAtman Retreat provides safe, legal psychedelic experiences outside of Montego Bay, Jamaica.\n\nUpcoming retreat dates:\n\nSeptember 23-26 (7 spots left; as of September 2nd)\nSeptember 27-30 (5 spots left; as of September 2nd)\nNovember 13-16\nNovember 17-20\n \n\n\nAtman recently introduced tiered pricing and a low-income ticket program.\n\nAbout Atman Retreat (source)\nPsychedelics are known to produce profound, meaningful, transformative experiences when used in a safe and intentional manner.1 However, many people don’t have access to psychedelics, or to a safe setting within which to use them. Others simply don’t want to break the law. Until we adopt more compassionate, evidence-based drug policy, there are few ways for people to experience these extraordinary states of consciousness safely and legally. Atman Retreat exists to fill this gap.\nOur core mission is to help people explore the full potential of the psychedelic experience, in all its healing, transformative, and transcendent qualities. Retreats are held in Jamaica, where psilocybin mushrooms are legal. Participants stay at a spacious villa, with comfortable rooms and a scenic private beachfront. Our team of experienced facilitators is passionate about creating space for inner transformation, insight, and breakthroughs.\nWhether you’re completely new to psychedelics, or a seasoned psychonaut interested in a different kind of journey, Atman Retreat is a complete 4-day experience that allows you to explore psychedelics safely, legally, and in a setting designed to maximize their benefits.\nWhen you feel ready, you can apply here.\n\n\nWhy am I sharing this announcement? I think that Atman Retreat is especially suited to Qualia Computing readers for the following three reasons:\n\nI know some of the people who started it and I can confirm that they are good, rational, and tactful people trying to make the world a better place.\nThe retreat is open-ended in nature. Sadly, most legal psychedelic retreats come with heavy “memetic baggage” in the form of unquestioned beliefs about spirituality or strong ideological commitments. At the very least, the focus of most legal psychedelic retreats is explicitly therapeutic. Atman Retreat is a good place to simply explore your own mind and study the nature of consciousness without having to accept any spiritual, therapeutic, or ideological framework. For example, their website has a research section which lists and summarizes recent studies on the effects of psilocybin, which shows a willingness by the staff to engage with a scientific approach to psychedelics.\nThe participants in previous cohorts of Atman Retreat have been very aligned with both Effective Altruism and the scientific study of consciousness. In other words, the attendees are typically smart, curious, ethical, and epistemologically sound.\n\nTo this, I will add that one of the visions of the Qualia Research Institute is to create an empirical consciousness research center in which psychedelics are taken by the brightest scientists, philosophers, and engineers to explore alien state-spaces of consciousness directly.\nIndeed, consciousness research is currently at a pre-Galilean state, where brain scientists refuse to “look through the telescope” so to speak (or at least if they do, they are not talking about it publicly). Scientific culture is such that discussing the EEG measurements of members of the general public under the influence of psychedelics is acceptable but as soon as one talks about one’s own direct experience with such compounds one’s scientific credibility becomes suspect.\nWe can change this, and one of the first steps is to establish a legal framework for consciousness researchers to be able to engage in fruitful self-experimentation. Real scientific progress on consciousness will only take place with a twin track that combines both analysis of third-person data and the use of an empirical research methodology of direct experience by the researchers themselves. By pointing to the Atman Retreat I am hoping to elevate it to the status of a sort of Schelling point for rational psychonauts to converge on for the time being.\nPerhaps this is a crucial first step in establishing a legally-viable Super-Shulgin Academy* for a post-Galilean science of consciousness.\nJamaica is waiting for you!\n\n\n*From the QRI Glossary –\nSuper-Shulgin Academy (coined by David Pearce; ref: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8): This is a hypothetical future intellectual society that investigates consciousness empirically. Rather than merely theorizing about it or having people from the general population describe their odd experiences, the Super-Shulgin Academy directly studies the state-space of consciousness by putting the brightest minds on the task. The Super-Shulgin Academy (1) trains high-quality consciousness researchers and psychonauts, (2) investigates the computational trade-offs between different states of consciousness, (3) finds new socially-useful applications for exotic states of consciousness, (4) practices the art and craft of creating ultra-blissful experiences, and (5) develops and maintains a full-stack memeplex that incorporates the latest insights about the state-space of consciousness into the most up-to-date Theory of Everything.\nFeatured image: source.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/09/02/atman-retreat-safe-legal-psilocybin-experiences-in-jamaica/", "title": "Atman Retreat: Safe, Legal Psilocybin Experiences in Jamaica", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-09-03T00:32:44+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=11", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "935afb092f1dfc51800a0c108984f4df", "summary": []}
{"text": "Kaleidoscopic Integration: Annealing, Symmetry, and the Information Theory of Experience\n\n\nHP: What exactly is “symmetrical texture repetition”?\n\nJE: Symmetrical texture repetition is just one of many complex visual distortions or alterations which consistently occur throughout psychedelic experiences on substances such as LSD, Psilocin, Ayahuasca, Mescaline, 2C-B, 2C-E and many others.\n\n\nIt can be described as the organization of rough textures within the external environment becoming mirrored repeatedly over its own surface in an extremely intricate and symmetrical fashion that is consistent across itself. This remains at an unchanging level of extremely high detail and visual clarity within both a person’s direct line of visual focus and peripheral vision.\n \n\n\nAs these repeating textures are generated they begin to give rise to a huge array of abstract forms, imagery, geometry and patterns that are perceived to be embedded within and across the symmetry.\n \n– Interview with Chelsea Morgan, a prolific and talented psychedelic replication artist\n\n\nTowel texture enhancement by Chelsea Morgan. Source.\nIce symmetrical texture repetition by Chelsea Morgan. Source.\nHow it feels like to symmetry-unify from the inside, a case study:\nOnion Article Headline 2016: Synesthetic Couch-Texture Not Quite Ready to Merge with Lamp Turned Space-Filling Line System, Says It Needs to Make Itself More Spiky First\n \nInside Alice’s acid-filled brain today, we are now about to experience for the 6th time or so how various blobs of textures are trying to merge into a coherent super structure. According to local sources, Alice is currently feeling a sense of awe and anticipation as the two big texture clusters in her field of vision are beginning to interact with each other. She is excited to notice that one of them is “calling” the other into it, and giving it ideas on how to “plug in geometrically” with it.\n \nAlice, who reportedly took 160 micrograms of LSD roughly 3 hours ago, narrates how it felt like to make a super-symmetrical system in her visual-kinesthetic field for the 5th time:\n \n“I don’t know if this was the result of alien intelligences messing up with my brain, perhaps a mystical vision about how my ancestors’ experiences connect to mine, or if it was just a strange quantum-entanglement phenomenon in consciousness currently undocumented in the scientific literature, but duude! That one time the couch texture blob made itself more spiky in order to merge with the the space-filling lamp… that was awesome. I look forward to it happening again, but now also including the carpet, walls, and my hands. Leave no texture behind – the resonant symmetry super-structure can make room for everyone.” – Said Alice, in closing.\nThe bliss of annealed high-symmetry high-valence states. See: Quantifying Bliss. Image source.\nPsychedelic Symmetry: A Window Into the Information-Theoretic Properties of Experience?\nMy friend Tim who had not done LSD for many years, responded to this sudden 5 hit dose by going into a state of complete dissociation. He lay down on the forest floor with glassy eyes, muttering “It is TOO beautiful! It is TOO beautiful!” and he did not respond to me, even when I stared him straight in the face. He reported afterwards that he found himself in a giant Gothic cathedral with the most extravagantly elaborate and brightly painted ornamental decorations all around him. This too can be seen as an extreme form of the regularization discussed above. Under the influence of this powerful dose, Tim’s visual brain could no longer keep up with the massive irregularity of the forest around him, and therefore presented the forest in simplified or abbreviated form, as the interior of a Gothic cathedral. It captures the large geometry of a ground plane that supports an array of vertical columns, each of which fans out high overhead to link up into an over-arching canopy of branches. The only difference is that in the Gothic cathedral the trees are in a regular geometrical array, and each one is a masterpiece of compound symmetry, composed of smaller pillars of different diameters in perfectly symmetrical arrangements, and studded with periodic patterns of ribs, ridges, or knobby protuberances as a kind of celebration of symmetry and periodicity for their own sake. There is a kind of geometrical logic expressed in the ornamental design. If part of the cathedral were lost or destroyed, the pattern could be easily restored by following the same logic as the rest of the design. In information-theoretic terms, the Gothic cathedral has lots of redundancy, its pattern could be expressed in a very much simpler compressed geometrical code. In Tim’s drug-addled brain his visual system could only muster a simple code to represent the world around him, and that is why Tim saw the forest as a Gothic cathedral. Under normal conditions, the additional information of irregularity, or how each tree and branch breaks from the strict regularity of the cathedral model of it, creates the irregular world of experience that we normally see around us. This suggests that the beautiful shapes of ornamental art are not the product of the highest human faculty, as is commonly supposed, but rather, ornamental art offers a window onto the workings of a simpler visual system, whose image of the world is distorted by artifacts of the representational scheme used in the brain. The Gothic cathedral gives a hint as to how the world might appear to a simpler creature, a lizard, or a snake, to whom the world appears more regular than it does to us, because its full irregularity is too expensive to encode exhaustively in all its chaotic details. Of course the flip-side of this rumination is that the world that we humans experience, even in the stone-cold sober state, is itself immeasurably simpler, more regular and geometric, that the real world itself, of which our experience is an imperfect replica. In the words of William Blake, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”\n– “The Grand Illusion” by Cognitive Scientist Steven Lehar\nWhat is the information content of a gothic cathedral? What percentage of it needs to burn down to make it impossible to reconstruct from the ruins alone?\nWhy Does Any of This Matter? The Deceptively Profound Implications of Psychedelic Symmetry According to Cognitive Scientist Steven Lehar\nBut there was one aspect of the LSD experience that had me truly baffled, and that was the fantastic symmetries and periodicities that were so characteristic of the experience. What kind of neural network model could possibly account for that? It was an issue that I grappled with for many months that stretched into years. In relation to Grossberg’s neural network, it seemed that the issue concerned the question of what happens at corners and vertices where contours meet or cross. A model based on collinearity alone would be stumped at image vertices. And yet a straightforward extension of Grossberg’s neural network theory to address image vertices leads to a combinatorial explosion. The obvious extension, initially proposed by Grossberg himself, was to posit specialized “cooperative cells” with receptive fields configured to detect and enhance other configurations of edges besides ones that are collinear. But the problem is that you would need so many different specialized cells to recognize and complete every possible type of vertex, such as T and V and X and Y vertices, where two or more edges meet at a point, and each of these vertex types would have to be replicated at every orientation, and at every location across the whole visual field! It just seemed like a brute-force solution that was totally implausible.\nThen one day after agonizing for months on this issue, my LSD observations of periodic and symmetrical patterns suddenly triggered a novel inspiration. Maybe the nervous system does not require specialized hard-wired receptive fields to accomodate every type of vertex, replicated at every orientation at every spatial location. Maybe the nervous system uses something much more dynamic and adaptive and flexible. Maybe it uses circular standing waves to represent different vertex types, where the standing wave can bend and warp to match the visual input, and standing waves would explain all that symmetry and periodicity so clearly evident in the LSD experience as little rotational standing waves that emerge spontaneously at image vertices, and adapt to the configuration of those vertices. Thanks to illegal psychotropic substances, I had stumbled on a staggeringly significant new theory of the brain, a theory which, if proven right, would turn the world of neuroscience on its head! My heart raced and pounded at the implications of what I had discovered. And this theory became the prime focus of my PhD thesis (Lehar 1994), in which I did computer simulations of my harmonic resonance model that replicated certain visual illusions in a way that no other model could. I had accomplished the impossible. I had found an actual practical use and purpose for what was becoming my favorite pass-time, psychedelic drugs! It was a moment of glory for an intrepid psychonaut, a turning point in my life. Figure 2.6 shows a page from my notebook dated October 6 1992, the first mention of my new theory of harmonic resonance in the brain.\n– “The Grand Illusion” by Cognitive Scientist Steven Lehar\n\n\nFeatured image credit: Simon Haiduk", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/09/01/kaleidoscopic-integration-annealing-symmetry-and-the-information-theory-of-experience/", "title": "Kaleidoscopic Integration: Annealing, Symmetry, and the Information Theory of Experience", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-09-02T03:26:16+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=11", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "5d8da7f0e60a93073ac3d6538ee83b9c", "summary": []}
{"text": "Why Care About Meme Hazards and Thoughts on How to Handle Them\n\nBy Justin Shovelain and Andrés Gómez Emilsson\nDefinition\nNick Bostrom defines an “Information Hazard” as: “A risk that arises from the dissemination or the potential dissemination of (true) information that may cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm.” A more general category is that of “Memetic Hazard”, which is not restricted to the potential harms of true information. False claims and mistaken beliefs can also produce harm, and should thus also be considered in any ethically-motivated policy for information dissemination. \nIntroduction\nPerhaps one of the best known analysis of meme hazards is the work of Nick Bostrom concerning: Information Hazards, the Unilateralist’s Curse, and Singletons. His focus could roughly be described as one of classifying the types of situations that can give rise to information hazards. A parallel set of problems to that of categorizing memetic hazards is the problem of coming up with policies for dealing with them, and the problem of convincing people that they should care. In this post we suggest some basic heuristics for dealing with meme hazards, and explain why you should care about them even when your work seems unambiguously positive.\nMotivation\nWhy You Should Care\nA big problem with getting people to engage with any kind of memetic hazard policy is that it may be perceived as a voluntary constraint on one’s behavior with little to no personal benefit. Nobody (well, at least nobody we know*) gets excited about compliance training at a new job, or inspection day at a manufacturing facility. Subjectively, most people perceive compliance and oversight as something that gets in the way of doing one’s work and as a hassle for one’s organization. That said, there is reason to believe that as the world’s technologies become both more powerful and more widely accessible, that there will be increasingly more dangerous information around. Considering the possible downsides of sharing information will thus become increasingly more important. So at least on a global scale, it will be increasingly more important for people to consider the impact of the information they choose to share. But at an individual level, why would they care about meme hazards policies and not think of them as a bothersome constraint?\nJust like there are actions that can help or harm there are ideas that can help or harm. Furthermore, some ideas produce their primary good or bad effect through social transmission, which we can call memes. There are several ways to prevent the harm from memes: not producing them in the first place, not sharing them, or fixing the situation so that when dispersed they do not do damage (before or after dispersal). Let’s call policies to prevent harm from meme hazards, meme hazard policies. Because in a world with increasingly accessible technological power a lot of our largest effects are likely to be produced by memetic hazards, a good way to improve the chances of achieving one’s goals is to tilt things as much as possible towards our goals with good meme hazard policies. It thus makes sense to read works about meme hazard policy and to think about how it bears on one’s work. This way you can improve your implementation and design of meme hazard policies to avoid hampering your own goals. In particular, assuming that you are a rational agent (who both attempts to be epistemically and instrumentally rational) you will generally find that spreading dangerous information that causes large negative effects (even if by accident!) will interfere with your ability to carry out your own goals.\nWhy Good Work May Have Bad Net Effects\nWhen one engages in very novel research one should be careful to consider the ratio with which one’s work advances desired outcomes relative to undesired outcomes. This may yield surprising results for the net effect of one’s work, sometimes flipping the net effect of research that at first may have seemed unambiguously good. For example, Artificial Intelligence Alignment research may in principle increase the chances of unaligned AI by virtue of providing insights into how to build powerful AIs in general. If it is 100 times harder to build an aligned AI than an unaligned AI, and researching AI alignment advances the goal of building unaligned AIs by more than 1/100 relative to how it advances building aligned AIs, then such research would (counter-intuitively) increase the chances of building unaligned AIs relative to aligned AIs.\nAs another example of how seemingly good work may have bad net effects let’s consider how information mutates in a social network. As discussed in previous articles such as consciousness vs. replicators there is no universal reason why causing large effects and causing good effects have to be correlated (see also: Basic AI Drives and Spreading happiness more difficult than just spreading). With an evolutionary view, it becomes clear that memes that are good and beneficial to everyone can eventually evolve to become bad and harmful to everyone if by doing so they gain a reproductive edge. As a rule of thumb, you can expect ideas to mutate towards:\n\n\n\nNoise due to generation loss\n\nUnless your copying method is perfect or has error correction methods, every time you make a copy of something the information will degrade to some extent. This is called generation loss and it leads to more noisy copies over time.\n\n\nSimplicity\n\nSince information transmission incurs a cost, simpler mutations of the meme have a reproductive edge.\n\n\nEase of memorization and communication\n\nMutations to the memes that are easier to memorize and communicate are more likely to spread.\n\n\nInciting arms races\n\nIf the meme provides a competitive edge in a zero-sum game, it may give rise to an arms race between agents who engage in such zero-sum game. For example, a new marketing method discovered by a given agency would force other marketing agencies to invest in researching how to achieve the same results. Since the rate of evolution of a meme is partly determined by the rate at which iterations over it are performed, a lot of memetic evolution takes place in arms races.\n\n\nSaliency (cognitive, emotional, perceptual, etc.)\n\nSaliency refers to the probability of noticing a given stimuli. Memes that mutate in a way that makes them more noticeable have a reproductive edge. Thus, many memes may over time acquire salient features, such as causing strong emotions.\n\n\nUses for social signaling (such as used for signaling intelligence, knowledge, social network, local usefulness, etc.)\n\nConsider the difference between manufacturing a car that focuses exclusively on basic functionality and a car that in addition also signals wealth. Perhaps it would be better if everyone bought the first kind of car because the second kind incites the urge in others to get a new car more often than necessary. Namely, people might want to buy a new car whenever the neighbors have upgraded to a more luxurious car (see: Avoid Runaway Signaling in Effective Altruism and Keeping up with the Joneses).\n\n\nOverselling\n\nAs a general heuristic, memes will spread faster when they are presented as better than they really are. Unless there is a feedback mechanism that allows people to know the true value of a meme, those that can oversell themselves will tend to be more common relative to those that are honest about the value they provide.\n\n\nUsefulness\n\nThe usefulness of a meme increases the chances that it will be passed on.\n\n\n\n\n\nGiven considerations like the above, it’s clear that in order to achieve what we want we need to  think carefully about the possible impacts of our research and efforts, even when they seem unambiguously positive. Now, when should one give special thought to memetic hazard policies?\nWhen Should You Care the Most?\nMeme Hazard Action Space – Worry when the ideas are both novel and have the potential to have large effects\nThere are two key features of potential memetic hazards that should be taken into account when thinking about whether to pursue the research that is bringing them to life. \nThe first one is how large their effects may be, and the second is how novel they are. How large an effect is depends on factors such as how many people it may affect, how intense the effects would be on each person affected, how long the effects would last, and so on. How novel a meme is depends on factors like how many people know about it, how much specialized knowledge you require to arrive at it, how counter-intuitive it is, and so on.\nNo matter how novel a piece of information may be, if it does not have the potential to cause large effects we can disregard it in the context of a meme hazard policy. When the potential to cause large effects is there but the idea is not very novel, then one should focus on actions to mitigate risks. For instance, if everyone knows how to build nuclear bombs, then the real bottleneck to focus as a matter of policy would be on things like the accessibility to rare or expensive materials needed to build such bombs.\nBut when the information is both novel and can cause large effects, then the appropriate focus is that of a meme hazard policy based on strategies to handle information dissemination.\nExamples\nIgnore:\n\nWhat you had for breakfast, yet another number sorting algorithm, how to get the hair of a cat to be more fluffy\n\nFocus on ideas:\n\nA more efficient deep learning technique, a chemical to improve exercise response efficiency, a new rationality technique, information on where the world’s biggest tree is\n\nFocus on actions:\n\nThe idea of guns, the idea of washing hands for sanitary purposes, running an Ayahuasca retreat in the amazon\n\nSuggested Heuristics\nSuggested Responses\nTo wrap up, here we provide a very high-level set of suggested heuristics to consider if one is indeed discovering ideas that are both very novel and capable of producing large effects:\n\nDevelop\n\nDevelop if you conclude that there is no risk\n\n\nShare\n\nShare if you conclude that there is no risk\n\n\nLog your analysis and proceed\n\nStore the results of your analysis for future use by others who may overlook the risks and then continue developing or sharing it\n\n\nThink more about it\n\nConclude that it would be valuable to analyze the risks of the meme (e.g. a new technology) further\n\n\nDevelop cure\n\nDevelop a cure of the meme hazard’s downsides\nThis approach may entail selectively sharing the information with people who are highly benevolent, good at keeping secrets, and capable in the relevant domains of expertise\n\n\nImprove the groups that receive it so that it is safe\n\nSome information is only risky if certain types of groups get it, so if you change the nature of the groups then there is no risk\n\n\nFraming it so it goes to the right people or only yields good effects\n\nThe way an idea is posed or framed determines a fair amount of who will read it and how they will act on it\n\n\nSelecting a safe subset to share\n\nWhen you have information it could be that some parts are good or safe to share and you can selectively share those parts\nMake sure those parts are not sufficient to reconstruct the original (unsafe) information\n\n\nSelecting a safe subset to develop\n\nWhen developing some information it can be that some parts are good or safe to develop and you can selectively develop those parts\n\n\nSelectively share to a subset of people\n\nSome information is only risky if certain types of groups get it; if you can aim where the information goes you can avoid the risk\nReport the information to proper authorities\n\n\nDon’t develop\n\nSome information is too risky to develop\n\n\nDon’t share\n\nSome information is too risky to share\n\n\nMonitor to see if others move towards developing or sharing it\n\nIf you’ve identified something risky it may make sense to see if others are developing it or likely to share it so that you can warn them, focus on building a cure, contact authorities, or start changing your actions knowing that a disaster is likely. \n\n\nTry to decrease the likelihood of rediscovery\n\nIf it’s really risky you may want to see what you can do about decreasing the likelihood that it is rediscovered\n\n\n\nConclusion\nIn this post we discussed why you should consider following heuristics to deal with meme hazards as an important part of achieving your goals rather than as a chore or hassle. We also discussed how work that may seem unambiguously good may turn out to have negative effects. In particular, we mentioned the “ratio argument” and also brought up some evolutionary considerations (where memes may mutate in unhelpful ways to have a reproductive edge). We then considered when one should be especially cautious about meme hazards: when the information is both highly novel and capable of producing large effects. And finally, we provided a list of heuristics to consider when faced with novel information capable of producing large effects. \nIn the future we hope to weave these heuristics into a more complete meme hazard policy for researchers and decision makers working at the cutting edge.\n\n*After posting this article someone contacted us to point out that they in fact love compliance training. This person was very persistent about updating this post with that fact.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/30/why-care-about-meme-hazards-and-thoughts-on-how-to-handle-them/", "title": "Why Care About Meme Hazards and Thoughts on How to Handle Them", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-08-31T03:40:56+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=11", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "72f0aefad6dcb0ae47826381e7a7707d", "summary": []}
{"text": "Carhart-Harris & Friston 2019 – REBUS and the Anarchic Brain\n\nReposted from Enthea with permission from the writer: \n\nDrs. Robin Carhart-Harris and Karl Friston recently published a beautiful paper – REBUS and the Anarchic Brain (a).\nIt’s great for two reasons:\n\nIt presents a plausible unified theory of how psychedelics work.\nIt’s a wonderful jumping-off point into the literature. Every paragraph is full of pointers to research that’s come out in the last 5 years, and boy are there a lot of rabbit holes to go down – it’s filled out my reading list for the next several months.\n\nCarhart-Harris is the director of Imperial College London’s newly minted Centre for Psychedelic Research; Friston is a famous neuroscientist.\nREBUS is a (somewhat dubious) acronym for RElaxed Beliefs Under pSychedelics. The basic idea: psychedelics reduce the weight of held beliefs and increase the weight of incoming sensory input, allowing the beliefs to be more readily changed by the new sensory information.\nREBUS pulls together Carhart-Harris’ Entropic Brain theory and Friston’s Free Energy Principle, both of which relate to the hierarchical predictive coding model of cognition. There’s a lot of jargon & nuance here, but the essential idea of hierarchical predictive coding is pretty straightforward:\n\nThe brain generates mental models that predict upcoming sensory inputs. (The predictions are called “priors,” as in “prior beliefs.”)\nThese predictive models are layered on top of each other in a hierarchy – the higher levels send predictions down the hierarchy; the lower levels report sense data upwards.\nIn cases where the model’s top-down predictions do not match the bottom-up sensory input, the model either (a) updates its priors based on the new sense data, or (b) ignores the sense data and maintains its priors.\n\n(Scott Alexander’s review of Surfing Uncertainty has a lot more on predictive coding.)\nCarhart-Harris & Friston theorize that the main thing psychedelics are doing is relaxing the weight of the brain’s top-down prediction-making (“REBUS”) and increasing the weight of the bottom-up sense information (“the Anarchic Brain”). This allows bottom-up information to have more influence on our conscious experience, and also on the configuration of the hierarchy overall.\nCarhart-Harris & Friston analogize this process to annealing – heating up a metal dissolves its crystalline structure, then a new structure recrystallizes as the metal cools:\nThe hypothesized flattening of the brain’s (variational free) energy landscape under psychedelics can be seen as analogous to the phenomenon of simulated annealing in computer science – which itself is analogous to annealing in metallurgy, whereby a system is heated (i.e., instantiated by increased neural excitability), such that it attains a state of heightened plasticity, in which the discovery of new energy minima (relatively stable places/trajectories for the system to visit/reside in for a period of time) is accelerated (Wang and Smith, 1998).\nSubsequently, as the drug is metabolized and the system cools, its dynamics begin to stabilize – and attractor basins begin to steepen again (Carhart-Harris et al., 2017). This process may result in the emergence of a new energy landscape with revised properties.\nPsychedelics “heat up” the brain, increasing plasticity and weakening the influence of prior beliefs. As the psychedelic stops being active, the brain “cools” – the hierarchy re-forms, though perhaps in a different configuration than the pre-psychedelic configuration.\nThis explains how psychedelic trips can cause changes that last long after the substance has exited the body – in those cases, the psychedelic facilitated a change in the organization of the brain’s cognitive hierarchy.\nPsychedelic therapy is showing promise for mental disorders associated with too-rigid thought patterns – depression, anxiety, addictions, maybe OCD, maybe eating disorders. In predictive-coding lingo, “disorders that may rest on particularly rigid high-level priors that dominate cognition.”\nIn these disorders, new information can’t revise the existing story of how things are, because strong priors suppress the new info before it can update anything.\nThe REBUS model straightforwardly explains how psychedelics help with disorder like this – by relaxing the strong top-down priors and boosting the bottom-up inputs, bottom-up inputs have more ability to effect the system. Here’s an illustration from the paper:\n\nThe top sketch is a brain where strong top-down priors dominate. New sensory inputs are suppressed and can’t update the hierarchy. The bottom sketch is the same brain while on a psychedelic – the top-down priors have been relaxed and bottom-up sensory information flows more freely through the system, causing a bigger impact.\nOkay, nice theory, but can we observe this in the brain? Is there any evidence for it?\nCarhart-Harris & Friston place the default mode network at top of the brain’s predictive hierarchy. The default mode network is the network of brain regions that’s most active when the brain isn’t engaged with any specific task. It also appears to be the seat of one’s sense of self. The default mode network is intensely relaxed by strong psychedelic experiences – this is subjectively felt as ego dissolution, and allows for the propagation of bottom-up sense data (which are also boosted by psychedelics).\nCarhart-Harris & Friston identify two mechanisms by which psychedelics may relax the default mode network – activation of 5-HT2AR serotonin receptors (there are lots of these receptors in the default mode network), and disruption of α and βwave patterns, which seem to propagate top-down expectations through the brain (and are correlated with default mode network activity).\nIn addition to the brain-scan-style evidence they cite throughout the paper, Carhart-Harris & Friston dedicate a long section to behavioral evidence (“Behavioral Evidence of Relaxed Priors under Psychedelics”). Briefly, there are several studies showing that surprise & consistency-making responses to sensory stimuli are reduced while on psychedelics, which is what we’d expect if the influence of top-down priors was lessened.\nTo sum up, REBUS and the Anarchic Brain places psychedelics in a predictive coding framework to give a unified theory of what psychedelics do – they decrease the influence of top-down prediction-making and increase the influence of bottom-up sense data. The theory has the nice quality of tying many disparate psychedelic phenomena together with an underlying explanation of what’s going on. Plus, it gives a brain-based explanation for why psychedelic therapy is helpful for disorders like depression, anxiety, and addiction.\n\n\nSee also: Mike Johnson’s pieces A Future for Neuroscience and The Neuroscience of Meditation which summarize a lot of the research by the Qualia Research Institute (QRI) on this topic. In particular, much like this paper by Carhart-Harris and Friston, at QRI we’ve been working on integrating the neuroscientific paradigms of Entropic Brain, Connectome-Specific Harmonic Waves, Predictive Coding, and our own contribution of Neural Annealing into a unified theory of psychedelic action for a number of years. \nOur first mention of Neural Annealing in relation to psychedelics was in Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States in 2016, and we are pleased to see that the concept is becoming a live idea in academic neuroscience in 2019.*\nFrom our point of view, an extremely promising area of research that mainstream neuroscience has yet to explore is the Symmetry Theory of Valence. In particular, we claim that the very reason why Neural Annealing improves not only global control, belief, and behavioral consistency, but also mood and sense of wellbeing is because it smooths and symmetrifies your neural patterns of activation. Will this turn out to become part of mainstream neuroscience in the future? Well, since QRI was calling Neural Annealing years in advance, perhaps in retrospect you’ll also see that we were on the money when it came to the mathematics of valence. Only time (and funding) will tell.\n\n*It should be noted that unbeknownst to us Steven Lehar might be the first person to discuss neural annealing in the context of psychedelic states of consciousness. In his 2010 book “The Grand Illusion” he talks about annealing on LSD and ketamine. Here are some key articles about it: Free-Wheeling Hallucinations, The Resonance and Vibration of [Phenomenal] Objects, The Phenomenal Character of LSD + MDMA, and From Point-of-View Fragmentation to Global Visual Coherence: Harmony, Symmetry, and Resonance on LSD.\n\nFeatured image credit: Michael Aaron Coleman", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/27/carhart-harris-friston-2019-rebus-and-the-anarchic-brain/", "title": "Carhart-Harris & Friston 2019 – REBUS and the Anarchic Brain", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-08-27T22:01:03+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=11", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "fd6d274025f8d90c38e218dae579aa4f", "summary": []}
{"text": "Does Full-Spectrum Superintelligence Entail Benevolence?\n\nExcerpt from: The Biointelligence Explosion by David Pearce\n\nThe God-like perspective-taking faculty of a full-spectrum superintelligence doesn’t entail distinctively human-friendliness any more than a God-like superintelligence could promote distinctively Aryan-friendliness. Indeed it’s unclear how benevolent superintelligence could want omnivorous killer apes in our current guise to walk the Earth in any shape or form. But is there any connection at all between benevolence and intelligence? Pre-reflectively, benevolence and intelligence are orthogonal concepts. There’s nothing obviously incoherent about a malevolent God or a malevolent – or at least a callously indifferent – Superintelligence. Thus a sceptic might argue that there is no link whatsoever between benevolence – on the face of it a mere personality variable – and enhanced intellect. After all, some sociopaths score highly on our [autistic, mind-blind] IQ tests. Sociopaths know that their victims suffer. They just don’t care.\nHowever, what’s critical in evaluating cognitive ability is a criterion of representational adequacy. Representation is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon; it varies in functional degree. More specifically here, the cognitive capacity to represent the formal properties of mind differs from the cognitive capacity to represent the subjective properties of mind. Thus a notional zombie Hyper-Autist robot running a symbolic AI program on an ultrapowerful digital computer with a classical von Neumann architecture may be beneficent or maleficent in its behaviour toward sentient beings. By its very nature, it can’t know or care. Most starkly, the zombie Hyper-Autist might be programmed to convert the world’s matter and energy into heavenly “utilitronium” or diabolical “dolorium” without the slightest insight into the significance of what it was doing. This kind of scenario is at least a notional risk of creating insentient Hyper-Autists endowed with mere formal utility functions rather than hyper-sentient full-spectrum superintelligence. By contrast, full-spectrum superintelligence does care in virtue of its full-spectrum representational capacities – a bias-free generalisation of the superior perspective-taking, “mind-reading” capabilities that enabled humans to become the cognitively dominant species on the planet. Full-spectrum superintelligence, if equipped with the posthuman cognitive generalisation of mirror-touch synaesthesia, understands your thoughts, your feelings and your egocentric perspective better than you do yourself.\nCould there arise “evil” mirror-touch synaesthetes? In one sense, no. You can’t go around wantonly hurting other sentient beings if you feel their pain as your own. Full-spectrum intelligence is friendly intelligence. But in another sense yes, insofar as primitive mirror-touch synaesthetes are prey to species-specific cognitive limitations that prevent them acting rationally to maximise the well-being of all sentience. Full-spectrum superintelligences would lack those computational limitations in virtue of their full cognitive competence in understanding both the subjective and the formal properties of mind. Perhaps full-spectrum superintelligences might optimise your matter and energy into a blissful smart angel; but they couldn’t wantonly hurt you, whether by neglect or design.\nMore practically today, a cognitively superior analogue of natural mirror-touch synaesthesia should soon be feasible with reciprocal neuroscanning technology – a kind of naturalised telepathy. At first blush, mutual telepathic understanding sounds a panacea for ignorance and egotism alike. An exponential growth of shared telepathic understanding might safeguard against global catastrophe born of mutual incomprehension and WMD. As the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow observed, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” Maybe so. The problem here, as advocates of Radical Honesty soon discover, is that many Darwinian thoughts scarcely promote friendliness if shared: they are often ill-natured, unedifying and unsuitable for public consumption. Thus unless perpetually “loved-up” on MDMA or its long-acting equivalents, most of us would find mutual mind-reading a traumatic ordeal. Human society and most personal relationships would collapse in acrimony rather than blossom. Either way, our human incapacity fully to understand the first-person point of view of other sentient beings isn’t just a moral failing or a personality variable; it’s an epistemic limitation, an intellectual failure to grasp an objective feature of the natural world. Even “normal” people share with sociopaths this fitness-enhancing cognitive deficit. By posthuman criteria, perhaps we’re all quasi-sociopaths. The egocentric delusion (i.e. that the world centres on one’s existence) is genetically adaptive and strongly selected for over hundreds of millions of years. Fortunately, it’s a cognitive failing amenable to technical fixes and eventually a cure: full-spectrum superintelligence. The devil is in the details, or rather the genetic source code.\n\n(Featured Image: Source)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/24/does-full-spectrum-superintelligence-entail-benevolence/", "title": "Does Full-Spectrum Superintelligence Entail Benevolence?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-08-25T05:50:34+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=11", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6c2a23593de262ecddad698b6c65a361", "summary": []}
{"text": "Glossary of Qualia Research Institute Terms\n\nThis is a glossary of key terms and concept handles that are part of the memetic ecosystem of the Qualia Research Institute. Reading this glossary is itself a great way to become acquainted with this emerging memeplex. If you do not know what a memeplex is… you can find its definition in this glossary.\n\nBasics\nConsciousness (standard psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy term): There are over a dozen common uses for the word consciousness, and all of them are interesting. Common senses include: self-awareness, linguistic cognition, and the ability to navigate one’s environment. With that said, the sense of the word in the context of QRI is more often than not: the very fact of experience, that experience exists and there is something that it feels like to be. Talking loosely and evocatively- rather than formally and precisely- consciousness refers to “what experience is made of”. Of course formalizing that statement requires a lot of unpacking about the nature of matter, time, selfhood, and so on. But this is a start.\nQualia (standard psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy term): This word refers to the range of ways in which experience presents itself. Experiences can be richly colored or bare and monochromatic, they can be spatial and kinesthetic or devoid of geometry and directions, they can be flavorfully blended or felt as coming from mutually unintelligible dimensions, and so on. Classic qualia examples include things like the redness of red, the tartness of lime, and the glow of bodily warmth. However, qualia extends into categories far beyond the classic examples, beyond the wildest of our common-sense conceptions. There are modes of experience as altogether different from everything we have ever experienced as vision qualia is different from sound qualia.\nValence / Hedonic Tone (standard psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy term): How good or bad an experience feels – each experience expresses a balance between positive, neutral, and negative notes. The aspect of experience that accounts for its pleasant and unpleasant qualities. The term is evocative of pleasant sensations such as warming up one’s body when cold with a blanket and a cup of hot chocolate. That said, hedonic tone refers to a much broader class of sensations than just the feeling of warmth. For example, the music appreciation enhancement produced by drugs can be described as “enhanced hedonic tone in sound qualia”. Hedonic tone can appear in any sensory modality (touch, smell, sight, etc.), and even more generally, in every facet of experience (such as cognitive and proprioceptive elements, themselves capable of coming with their own flavor of euphoria/dysphoria). Experiences with both negative and positive notes are called “mixed”, which are the most common ones.\n\nHelpful Philosophy\nOntology (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1): At the most basic level, an ontology is an account of what is real and what is good.\nEpistemology (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1): The set of strategies, heuristics, and methods for knowing. In the context of consciousness research, what constitutes a good epistemology is a highly contentious subject. Some scientists argue that we should only take into account objectively-measurable third-person data in order to build models and postulate theories about consciousness (cf. heterophenomenology). On the other extreme, some argue that the only information that counts is first-person experiences and what they reveal to us (cf. new mysterianism). Somewhere in the middle, QRI fully embraces objective third-person data. And along with it, QRI recognizes the importance of skepticism and epistemic rigor when it comes to which first-person accounts should be taken seriously. Its epistemology does accept the information gained from alien state-spaces of consciousness as long as they meet some criteria. For example, we are very careful to distinguish between information about the intentional content of experience (what it was about) and information about its phenomenal character (how it felt). As a general heuristic, QRI tends to value more e.g. trip reports that emphasize the phenomenal character of the experience (e.g. “30Hz flashes with slow-decay harmonic reverb audio hallucinations”) relative to intentional content (e.g. “the DMT alien said I should learn to play the guitar”). Ultimately, first-person and third-person data are complementary views of the same substrate of consciousness (cf. dual-aspect monism), and so are both equally necessary for a complete scientific account of consciousness.\nFunctionalism (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1, 2): In Philosophy of Mind, functionalism is the view that consciousness is produced (and in some cases identical with) not only by the input-output mapping of an information-processing system, but also by the internal relationships that make that information-processing possible. In light of Marr’s Levels of Analysis (see below), we could say that functionalism identifies the content of conscious experience with the algorithmic level of analysis. Hence this philosophy is usually presented in conjunction with the concept of “substrate neutrality” which posits that the material makeup of brains is not necessary for the arising of consciousness out of it. If we implemented the same information-processing functions that are encoded in the neural networks of a brain using rocks, buckets of water, or a large crowd instantiating a large computer, we would also generate the same experiences the brain generates on its own. Importantly, functionalism tends to deny any essential role of the substrate in the generation of consciousness, and will typically also deny any significant interaction between levels of analysis (see below).\nEliminativism (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1, 2, 3): In Philosophy of Mind, eliminativism refers to a cluster of ideas concerning whether the word “consciousness” is clear enough to be useful for making sense of how brains work. One key idea in eliminativist views is that most of the language that we use to talk about experiences (from specific emotions to qualia) is built on top of folk-psychology rather than physical reality. In a way, terms such as “experience” and “feelings” are an interface for the brain to model itself and others in a massively simplified but adaptive way. There is no reason why our evolved intuitions about how the brain works should even approximate how it really works. In many cases, eliminativists advocate starting from scratch and abandoning our intuitions about experience, sticking to hard physical and computational analysis of the brain as empirically measured. This view suggests that once we truly understand scientifically how brains work, the language we will use to talk about it will look nothing like the way we currently speak about our experiences, and that this change will be so dramatic that we would effectively start thinking as if “consciousness never existed to begin with”.\n\n\n\n\nPresentism (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1): The view that only the present is real, the past and the future being illusory inferences and projections made in the present. Oftentimes presentism posits that change is a fundamental aspect of the present and that the feeling of the passage of time is based on the ever-changing nature of reality itself.\nEternalism (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1): The view that every here-and-now in reality is equally real. Rather than thinking of the universe as a “now” sandwiched between a “past” and “future”, eternalism posits that it is more accurate to simply describe pairs of moments as having a “before” and “after” relationship, but neither of them being in the future or past. Some of the strongest arguments for eternalism come from Special and General Relativity (see: Rietdijk–Putnam argument), where space-time forms a continuous 4-dimensional geometric shape that stands together as a whole, and where any notion of a “present” is only locally valid. In some sense, eternalism says that all of reality exists in an “eternal now” (including your present, past, and future selves).\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPersonal Identity (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1): The relevant sense of this term for our purposes refers to the set of questions about what constitutes the natural unit for subjects of experience. Questions such as “will the consciousness who wakes up in my current body tomorrow morning be me?”, “if we make an atom-by-atom identical copy of me right now, will I start existing in it as well?”, “if you conduct a Wada Test, is the consciousness generated by my right hemisphere alone also me?”, and so on.\nClosed Individualism (coined by Daniel Kolak; ref: 1): In its most basic form, this is the common-sense personal identity view that you start existing when you are born and stop existing when you die. According to this view each person is a different subject of experience with an independent existence. One can believe in a soul ontology and be a Closed Individualist at the same time, with the correction that you exist as long as your soul exists, which could be the case even before or after death.\nEmpty Individualism (coined by Daniel Kolak; ref: 1, 2, 3): This personal identity view states that each “moment of experience” is its own separate subject. While it may seem that we exist as persons with an existence that spans decades, Empty Individualism does not associate a single subject to each person. Rather, each moment a new “self” is born and dies, existing for as long as the conscious event takes place (something that could be anywhere between a femtosecond and a few hundred milliseconds, depending on which scientific theory of consciousness one believes in).\nOpen Individualism (coined by Daniel Kolak; ref: 1, 2, 3, 4): This is the personal identity view that we are all one single consciousness. The apparent partitions and separations between the universal consciousness, in this view, are the result of partial information access from one moment of experience to the next. Regardless, the subject who gets to experience every moment is the same. Each sentient being is fundamentally part of the same universal subject of experience.\n\n\n\n\nGoldilocks Zone of Oneness (QRI term; 1, 2, 3): Having realized that there are both positive and negative psychological aspects to each of the three views of personal identity discussed (Closed, Empty, Open Individualism), the Goldilocks Zone of Oneness emerges as a conceptual resolution. Open Individualism comes with a solution to the fear of death, but it also can give rise to a sort of cosmic solipsism. Closed Individualism allows you to feel fundamentally special, but also disconnected from the universe and fundamentally misunderstood by others. Empty Individualism is philosophically satisfying, but it may come with a sense of lack of agency and the fear of being a time-slice that is stuck in a negative place. The Goldilocks Zone of Oneness posits that there is a way to transcend classical logic in personal identity, and that the truth incorporates elements of all of the three views at once. In the Goldilocks Zone of Oneness one is simultaneously part of a whole but also not the entirety of it. One can relate with others by having a shared nature, while also being able to love them on their own terms by recognizing their unique identity. This view has yet to be formalized, but in the meantime it may prove to be pragmatically useful for community-building.\nThe Problem of Other Minds (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1, 2): This is the philosophical conundrum of whether other people (and sentient beings in general) are conscious. While your own consciousness is self-evidence, the consciousness of others is inferred. Possible solutions involve technologies such as the Generalized Wada Test (see below), phenomenal puzzles, and thalamic bridges, which you can use to test the consciousness of another being by having it solve a problem that can only be solved by making comparisons between qualia values.\nSolipsism (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1, 2, 3): In its classic formulation, solipsism refers to a state of existence in which the only person who is conscious is “oneself”, which resides in the body of an individual human over time. A more general version of solipsism involves crossing it with personal identity views (see above). Through this lens, the classic person-centric formulation of solipsism refers exclusively to a Closed Individualist universe. Alternatively, Open Individualism also has a solipsistic interpretation – it is thus compatible with (and in at least in one sense entails) solipsism: the entire multiverse of experiences are all experiences of a single solipsistic cosmic consciousness. With an Empty Individualist universe, too, we can have a solipsistic interpretation of reality. In one version you use epiphenomenalism to claim that this moment of experience is the only one that is conscious even though the whole universe still exists and it had an evolutionary path that led it to the configuration in which you stand right now. In another version, one’s experience is the result of the fact that in the cosmic void everything can happen. This is not because it is likely, but because there is a boundless amount of time for it to happen. That is, no matter how thin its probability is, it will still take place at some point (see: Boltzmann brain). That said, one’s present experience -with its highly specific information content- being the only one that exists seems very improbable a priori. Like imagining that despite the fact that “the void can give rise to anything” the only thing that actually gets materialized is an elephant. Why would it only produce an elephant, of all things? Likewise, solipsistic Empty Individualism has this problem – why would this experience be the only one? To cap it off, we can also reason about solipsism in its relation to hybrid views of personal identity. In their case solipsism either fails, or its formulation needs to be complicated significantly. This is partly why the concept of the Goldilocks Zone of Oneness (see above) might be worth exploring, as it may be a way out of ultimate solipsism. On a much more proximal domain, it may be possible to use Phenomenal Puzzles, Wada tests, and ultimately mindmelding to test the classical (Closed Individualist) formulation of solipsism.\nSuffering Focused Ethics (recent philosophy term from rationalist-adjacent communities; ref: 1, 2) The view that our overriding obligation is to focus on suffering. In particular, taking seriously the prevention of extreme suffering is one of the features of this view. This is not unreasonable if we take into account the logarithmic scales of pain and pleasure into account, which suggest that the majority of suffering is concentrated in a small percent of experiences of intense suffering. Hence why caring about the extreme cases matters so much.\nAntinatalism (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1, 2): This is the view that being born entails a net negative. Classic formulations of this view tend to implicitly assume Closed Individualism, where there is someone who may or may not be born and it is meaningful to consider this a yes or no question with ontological bearings. Under Open Individualism the question becomes whether there should be any conscious being at all, for neither preventing someone’s birth nor committing an individual suicide entail the real birth or death of a consciousness. They would merely add or subtract from the long library corridors of experiences had by universal consciousness. And in Empty Individualism, antinatalism might be seen through the light of “preventing specific experiences with certain qualities”. For example, having an experience of extreme suffering is not harming a person (though it may have further psychological repercussions), but rather harming that very experience in an intrinsic way. This view would underscore the importance of preventing the existence of experiences of intense suffering rather than preventing the existence of people as such. A final note on antinalism is that even in its original formulation we encounter the problem that selection pressures makes any trait that reduces inclusive fitness disappear in the long run. The traits that predispose to such views would simply be selected out. A more fruitful way of improving the world is to encourage the elimination of suffering in ways that do not reduce inclusive fitness, such as the prevention of genetic spell errors and diseases that carry a high burden of suffering.\nTyranny of the Intentional Object (coined by David Pearce; ref: 1, 2): The way our reward architecture is constructed makes it difficult for us to have a clear sense of what it is that we enjoy about life. Our brains reinforce the pursuit of specific objects, situations, and headspaces, which gives the impression that these are intrinsically valuable. But this is an illusion. In reality such conditions trigger positive valence changes to our experience, and it is those that we are really after (as evidenced by the way in which our reward architecture is modified in presence of euphoric and dysphoric drugs and external stimuli such as music). We call this illusion the tyranny of the intentional object because in philosophy “intentionality” refers to “what the experience is about”. Our world-simulations chain us to the feeling that external objects, circumstances, and headspaces are the very source of value. More so, dissociating from such sources of positive valence triggers negative valence, so critical insight into the way our reward architecture really works is itself negatively reinforced by it.\n\nFormalism Terms\nFormalism (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1, 2): Formalism is a philosophical and methodological approach for analyzing systems which postulates the existence of mathematical objects such that their mathematical features are isomorphic to the properties of the system. An example of a successful formalism is the use of Maxwell’s equations in order to describe electromagnetic phenomena.\nQualia Formalism (QRI term; 1, 2, 3): Qualia Formalism means that for any given physical system that is conscious, there will be a corresponding mathematical object associated to it such that the mathematical features of that object will be isomorphic to the phenomenology of the experience generated by the system.\nMarr’s Levels of Analysis (standard cognitive science term; ref: 1, 2): This powerful analytic framework was developed by cognitive scientist David Marr to talk more precisely about vision, but it is more broadly applicable to information processing systems in general. It is a way to break down what a system does in a conceptually clear fashion that lends itself to a clean analysis.\nComputational Level (standard cognitive science term; ref: 1, 2): The first of three of Marr’s Levels of Analysis, the Computational Level of abstraction describes what the system does from a third-person point of view. That is, the input-output mapping, the runtime complexity for the problems it can solve, and the ways in which it fails are all facts about a system that are at the computational level of abstraction. In a simple example case, we can describe an abacus at the computational level by saying that it can do sums, subtractions, multiplications, divisions, and other arithmetic operations.\n Algorithmic Level (standard cognitive science term; ref: 1, 2): The second of three of Marr’s Levels of Analysis, the Algorithmic Level of abstraction describes the internal representations, operations, and their interactions used to transform the input into the output. In aggregate, representations, operations, and their interactions constitute the algorithms of the system. As a general rule, we find that there are many possible algorithms that give rise to the same computational-level properties. Following the simple example case of an abacus, the algorithmic-level account would describe how passing beads from one side to another and using each row to represent different orders of magnitude are used to instantiate algorithms to perform arithmetic operations.\n Implementation Level (standard cognitive science term; ref: 1, 2): The third of three of Marr’s Levels of Analysis, the Implementation Level of abstraction describes the way in which the system’s algorithms are physically instantiated. Following the case of the abacus, an implementation-level account would detail how the various materials of the abacus are put together in order to allow the smooth passing of beads between the sides of each row and how to prevent them from sliding by accident (and “forgetting” the state).\nInteraction Between Levels (obscure cognitive science concept handle; ref: 1, 2): Some information-processing systems can be fully understood by describing each of Marr’s Levels of Analysis separately. For example, it does not matter whether an abacus is made of metal, wood, or even if it is digitally simulated in order to explain its algorithmic and computational-level properties. But while this is true for an abacus, it is not the case for analog systems that leverage the unique physical properties of their components to do computational shortcuts. In particular, in quantum computing one intrinsically requires an understanding of the implementation-level properties of the system in order to explain the algorithms used. Hence, for quantum computing, there are strong interactions between levels of analysis. Likewise, we believe this is likely going to be the case for the algorithms our brains perform by leveraging the unique properties of qualia.\nNatural Kind (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1, 2): Natural kinds are things whose objective existence makes it possible to discover durable facts about them. They are the elements of a “true ontology” for the universe, and what “carves reality at its joints”. This is in contrast to “reifications” which are aggregates of elements with no unitary independent existence.\nState-Space (standard term in physics and mathematics; ref: 1, 2): A state-space of a system is a geometric map where each point corresponds to a particular state of the system. Usually the space has a Euclidean geometry with a number of dimensions equal to the number of variables in the system, so that the value of each variable is encoded in the value of a corresponding dimension. This is not always the case, however. In the general case, not all points in the state-space are physically realizable. Additionally, some system configurations do not admit a natural decomposition into a constant set of variables. This may give rise to irregularities in the state-space, such as non-Euclidean regions or a variable number of dimensions.\n\n\n\n\nState-Space of Consciousness (coined by David Pearce; 1, 2, 3): This is a hypothetical map that contains the set of all possible experiences, organized in such a way that the similarities between experiences are encoded in the geometry of the state-space. For example, the experience you are having right now would correspond to a single point in the state-space of consciousness, with the neighboring experiences being Just Noticeably Different from your experience right now (e.g. simplistically, we could say they would be different from your current experience “by a single pixel”).\nQualia Value (QRI term; ref: 1): Starting with examples-  the scent of cinnamon, a spark of sourness, a specific color hue, etc. are all qualia values. Any particular quality of experience that cannot be decomposed further into overlapping components is a qualia value.\nQualia Variety (QRI term; ref: 1): A qualia variety refers to the set of qualia values that belong to the same category (for example, tentatively, phenomenal colors are all part of the same qualia variety, which is different from the qualia variety of phenomenal sounds). A possible operationalization for qualia varieties involves the construction of equivalence classes based on the ability to transform a given qualia value into another via a series of Just-Noticeable Differences. For example, in the case of color, we can transform a given qualia value like a specific shade of blue, into another qualia value like a shade of green by traversing across a straight line from one to the other in the CIELAB color space. Tentatively, it is not possible to do the same between a shade of blue and a particular phenomenal sound. That said, the large number of unknowns (and unknown unknowns!) about the state-space of consciousness does not allow us to rule out the existence of qualia values that can bridge the gap between color and sound qualia. If that turned out to be the case, we would need to rethink our approach to defining qualia varieties.\nRegion of the State-Space of Consciousness (QRI term; ref: 1, 2): A set of possible experiences that are similar to each other in some way. Given an experience, the “experiences nearby in the state-space of consciousness” are those that share its qualities to a large degree but have variations. The term can be used to point at experiences with a given property (such as “high-valence” and “phenomenal color”).\nThe Binding Problem (standard psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy term; ref: 1, 2): The binding problem (also called the combination problem) arises from asking the question: how is it possible that the activity of a hundred billion neurons that are spatially distributed can simultaneously contribute to a unitary moment of experience? It should be noted that in the classical formulation of the problem we start with an “atomistic” ontology where the universe is made of space, particles, and forces, and the question then becomes how spatially-distributed discrete particles can “collaborate” to form a unified experience. But if one starts out with a “globalistic” ontology where the universe is made of a universal wavefunction, then the question that arises is how something that is fundamentally unitary (the whole universe) can give rise to “separate parts” such as individual experiences, which is often called “the boundary problem”. Thus, the “binding problem” and “the boundary problem” are really the same problem, but starting with different ontologies (atomistic vs. globalistic).\nPhenomenal Binding (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1, 2): This term refers to the hypothetical mechanism of action that enables information that is spatially-distributed across a brain (and more generally, a conscious system) to simultaneously contribute to a unitary discrete moment of experience.\nLocal Binding (lesser-known cognitive science term; ref: 1): Local binding refers to the way in which the features of our experience are interrelated. Imagine you are looking at a sheet of paper with a drawing of a blue square and a yellow triangle. If your visual system works well you do not question which shape is colored blue; the color and the shapes come unified within one’s experience. In this case, we would say that color qualia and shape qualia are locally bound. Disorders of perception show that this is not always the case: people with simultagnosia find it hard to perceive more than one phenomenal object at a time and thus would confuse the association between the colors and shapes they are not directly attending to, people with schizophrenia have local binding problems in the construction of their sense of self, and people with motion blindness have a failure of local binding between sensory stimuli separated by physical time.\nGlobal Binding (lesser-known cognitive science term; ref: 1, 2): Global binding refers to the fact that the entirety of the contents of each experience is simultaneously apprehended by a unitary experiential self. As in the example for local binding, while blue and the square (and the yellow and the triangle) are locally bound into separate phenomenal objects, both the blue square and the yellow triangle are globally bound into the same experience.\n\nThe Mathematics of Valence\nValence Realism (QRI term; ref: 1): This is the claim that valence is a crisp phenomenon of conscious states upon which we can apply a measure. Also defined as: “Valence (subjective pleasantness) is a well-defined and ordered property of conscious systems.”\nValence Structuralism (QRI term; ref: 1): Valence could have a simple encoding in the mathematical representation of a system’s qualia.\n\nSymmetry Theory of Valence (QRI term; 1, 2, 3): Given a mathematical object isomorphic to the qualia of a system, the mathematical property which corresponds to how pleasant it is to be that system is that object’s symmetry.\nValence Gradients (QRI term; ref: 1, 2): It is postulated that one of the important inputs that contributes to our decision-making involves “valence gradients”. To understand what a valence gradient is, it is helpful to provide an example. Imagine coming back from dancing in the rain and feeling pretty cold. In order to warm yourself up you get into the shower and turn on the hot water. Ouch! Too hot, so you dial down the temperature. Brrr! Now it’s too cold, so you dial up the temperature just a little. Ah, just perfect! See, during this process you evaluated, at each point, in what way you could modify your experience in order to make it feel better. At first the valence gradient was pointing in the direction of higher temperature. As soon as you felt it being too hot, the valence gradient changed direction and pointed to lower temperature. And so on until it feels like there is nothing else you could do to improve how you feel. In the more general case, we posit that a significant input into our decision-making is the direction of change along which we believe our experience would improve. At an implementation level of analysis (see above) the very syntax of our experience might be built with a landscape of valence gradients. In a sense, noticing them is possible, but it is a task akin to the metaphor of a fish not knowing what water is. We use valence gradients to navigate both the external and internal world in such a basic and all-pervasive way that missing this fact altogether is easy. When we justify why we did such and such, we often forget that a big component of the decision was made based on how each of the options felt. The difficulty we face when trying to point at the specific valence gradients that influence our decision-making is one of the reasons why the tyranny of the intentional object (see above) arises, which is that what pulls and pushes us is not explicitly represented in our conceptual scheme.\nClick to view slideshow.\nCDNS Analysis (QRI term; ref: 1, 2): A scientific and philosophical hypothesis with implications for measuring valence in conscious systems. Namely, the hypothesis is that the Symmetry Theory of Valence is expressed in the structure of neural patterns over time, implying that the valence of a brain will be in part determined by neural dissonance, consonance, and noise. This makes precise, empirically testable predictions within paradigms such as Connectome-Specific Harmonic Waves.\n\nResearch Paradigms\nEvolutionary Qualia (QRI term): Evolutionary Qualia is a scientific discipline that will emerge as the science of consciousness improves to the point where cellular gene expression analysis, brain imaging, and interpretation algorithms get to infer the qualia present in the experience of the brains of animals in general. For instance, we may find out that certain combinations of receptor types and protein shapes inside neurons of the visual cortex are necessary and sufficient for generating color qualia. Additionally, such understanding could be complemented with an information-theoretic account of why color qualia is more effective (cost-benefit-wise) for certain information-processing than other qualia. Together, these two kinds of understanding will allow us to explain why the specific qualia that we have was recruited by natural selection for information-processing purposes. Evolutionary Qualia is the (future) discipline that explains from an evolutionary point of view why we have the specific qualia and patterns of local binding that we do (said differently, it will explain why “the walls of our world-simulation are painted the way they are”). So while Evolutionary Psychology may explain why we have evolved to have some emotions from the point of view of their behavioral effects, Evolutionary Qualia will explain why the emotions feel the way they do and how those specific feelings happen to have the right “shape” for the information-processing tasks they accomplish.\n\n\n\n\n\nAlgorithmic Reduction (QRI term; ref: 1, 2): A reduction is a model that explains a set of behaviors, often very complex and diverse, in terms of the interaction between variables. A successful reduction is one that explains the intricacies and complexities present in the set of behaviors as emergent effects from a much smaller number of variables and their interactions. A specific case is that of “atomistic reductions” which decompose a set of behaviors in terms of particles interacting with each other (e.g. ideal gas laws from statistical mechanics in physics). While many scientifically significant reductions are atomistic in nature, one should not think that every phenomenon can be successfully reduced atomistically (e.g. double-slit experiment). Even when a set of behaviors cannot be reduced atomistically we may be able to algorithmically reduce it. That is, to identify a set of processes, internal representations, and interactions that when combined give rise to the set of observed behaviors. This style of reduction is very useful in the field of phenomenology since it can provide insights into how complex phenomena (such as psychedelic hallucinations) emerge out of a few relatively simple algorithmic building blocks. This way we avoid begging the question by not assuming an atomistic ontology in a context where it is not clear what atoms correspond to.\n\n\nPsychedelic Cryptography (QRI term; ref: 1, 2, 3): Encoding information in videos, text, abstract paintings, etc. such that only people who are in a specific state of consciousness can decode it. A simple example is the use of alternations in after-image formation on psychedelics (enhanced persistence of vision, aka. tracers) to paint a picture by presenting the content of an image one column of pixels at a time. Sober individuals only see a column of pixels while people high on psychedelics will see a long trace forming parts of an image that can be inferred by paying close attention. In general, psychedelic cryptography can be done by taking advantage of any of the algorithms one finds with algorithmic reductions of arbitrary states of consciousness. In the case of psychedelics, important effects that can be leveraged include tracers, pareidolia, drifting, and symmetrification.\nPsychedelic Turk (QRI term; ref: 1, 2, 3, 4): Mechanical Turk is a human task completion platform that matches people who need humans to do many small (relatively) easy tasks with humans willing to do a lot of small (relatively) easy tasks. Psychedelic Turk is akin to Mechanical Turk, but where workers disclose the state of consciousness they are in. This would be helpful for task requesters because many tasks are more appropriate for people in specific states of consciousness. For example, it is better to test ads intended to be seen by drunk people by having people who are actually drunk evaluate them, as opposed to asking sober people to imagine how they would perceive them while drunk. Likewise, some high-stakes tasks would benefit from being completed by people who are demonstrably very alert and clear-headed. And for foundational consciousness research, Psychedelic Turk would be extremely useful as it would allow researchers to test how people high on psychedelics and other exotic agents process information and experience emotions usually inaccessible in sober states.\nGeneralized Wada Test (QRI term; ref: 1, 2, 3): This is a generalization of the Wada Test where rather than pentobarbital being injected in just one hemisphere while the other hemisphere is kept sober, one injects substance A in one hemisphere and substance B on the other. This could be used to improve our epistemology about various states of consciousness. By keeping one hemisphere in a state with robust linguistic ability the other hemisphere could be used to explore alien-state spaces of consciousness and allow for real-time verbal interpretation. The caveats and complications are myriad, but the general direction this concept handle is pointing to is worth exploring.\n\nPhenomenology\nSelf-Locating Uncertainty (originally a physics term but we also use it for describing a phenomenal character of experience; ref: 1, 2): The uncertainty that one has about who and where one is. This is relevant in light of states of consciousness that are common on high-dose psychedelics, mental illnesses, and meditation, where the information about one’s identity and one’s place in the world is temporarily inaccessible. Very high- and low-valence states tend to induce a high level of self-locating uncertainty as the information content of the experience is over-written by very simple patterns that dominate one’s attention. Learning to navigate states with self-locating uncertainty without freaking out is a prerequisite for studying alien state-spaces of consciousness.\nPhenomenal Time (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1): The felt-sense of the passage of time. This is in contrast to the physical passage of time. Although physical time and phenomenal time tend to be intimately correlated, as you will see in the definition of “exotic phenomenal time” this is not always the case.\nPhenomenal Space (standard high-level philosophy term; ref: 1, 2): The experience of space. Usually our sense of space represents a smooth 3D Euclidean space in a projective fashion (with variable scale encoding subjective distance). In altered states of consciousness phenomenal space can be distorted, expanded, contracted, higher-dimensional, topologically distinct, and even geometrically modified as in the case of hyperbolic geometry while on DMT (see below).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPseudo-Time Arrow (QRI term; ref: 1): This is a formal model of phenomenal time. It utilizes a simple mathematical object: a graph. The nodes of the graph are identified with simple qualia values (such as colors, basic sounds, etc.) and the edges are identified with local binding connections. According to the pseudo-time arrow model, phenomenal time is isomorphic to the patterns of implicit causality in the graph, as derived from patterns of conditional statistical independence.\nExotic Phenomenal Time (QRI term; ref: 1): It is commonly acknowledged that in some situations time can feel like it is passing faster or slower than normal (cf. tachypsychia). What is less generally known is that experiences of time can be much more general, such as feeling like time stops entirely or that one is stuck in a loop. These are called exotic phenomenal time experiences, and while not very common, they certainly are informative about what phenomenal time is. Deviations from an apparent universal pattern are usually scientifically significant.\nReversed Time (QRI term; ref: 1): This is a variant of exotic phenomenal time in which experience seems to be moving backwards in time. “Inverted tracers” are experienced where one first experiences the faint after-images of objects before they fade in, constitute themselves, and then quickly disappear without a trace. According to the pseudo-time arrow model this experience can be described as an inversion of the implicit arrow of causality, though how this arises dynamically is still a mystery.\n Moments of Eternity (common psychedelic phenomenology term; ref: 1): This exotic phenomenal time describes experiences where all apparent temporal movement seems to stop. One’s experience seems to have an unchanging quality and there is no way to tell if there will ever be something else other than the present experience in the whole of existence. In most cases this state is accompanied by intense emotions of simple texture and immediacy (rather than complex layered constructions of feelings). The experience seems to appear as the end-point and local maxima of annealing on psychedelic and dissociative states. That is, it often comes as metastable “flashes of large-scale synchrony” that are created over the course of seconds to minutes and decay just as quickly. Significantly, sensory deprivation conditions are ideal for the generation of this particular exotic phenomenal time.\nTimelessness (QRI term; ref: 1): Timelessness is a variant of exotic phenomenal time where causality flows in a very chaotic way at all scales. This prevents forming a general global direction for time. In the state, change is perceptible and it is happening everywhere in your experience, and yet it seems as if there is no consensus among the different parts of your experience about the direction of time. That is, there is no general direction along which the experience seems to be changing as a whole over time. The chaotic bustle of changes that make up the texture of the experience are devoid of a story arc, and yet remain alive and turbulent. Trip reports suggest that the state that arises at the transition points between dissociative plateaus has this noisy timelessness quality (e.g. coming up on ketamine). Listening to green noise evokes the general idea, but you need to imagine that happening on every sensory modality and not just audio.\nTime Loops (common psychedelic phenomenology term; ref: 1): This is perhaps the most common exotic phenomenal time experience that people have on psychedelics and dissociatives. This is due to the fact that, while it can be generated spontaneously, it is relatively easy to trigger by listening to repetitive music (e.g. a lot of EDM, trance, progressive rock, etc.), repetitive movements (e.g. walking, dancing), and repetitive thoughts (e.g. talking about the same topic for a long time) all of which are often abundant in the set and setting of psychedelic users. The effect happens when your projections about the future and the past are entirely informed by what seems like an endlessly repeating loop of experience. This often comes with intense emotions of its own (which are unusual and outside of the normal range of human experience), but it also triggers secondary emotions (which are just normal emotions amplified) such as fear and worry, or at times wonder and bliss. The pseudo-time arrow model of phenomenal time describes this experience as a graph in which the local patterns of implicit causality form a cycle at the global scale. Thus the phenomenal past and future merge at their tails and one inhabits an experiential world that seems to be infinitely-repeating.\n\n\n\n\nTime Branching (QRI term; ref: 1, 2): A rare variant of exotic phenomenal time in which you feel like you are able to experience more than one outcome out of events that you witness. Your friend stands up to go to the bathroom. Midway there he wonders whether to go for a snack first, and you see “both possibilities play out at once in superposition”. In an extreme version of this experience type, each event seems to lead to dozens if not hundreds of possible outcomes at once, and your mind becomes like a choose-your-own-adventure book with a broccoli-like branching of narratives, and at the limit all things of all imaginable possible timelines seem to happen at once and you converge on a moment of eternity, thus transitioning out of this variety. We would like to note that a Qualia Computing article delved into the question of how to test if the effect actually allows you to see alternative branches of the multiverse. The author never considered this hypothesis plausible, but the relative ease of testing it made it an interesting, if wacky, research lead. The test consisted of trying to tell apart the difference between a classical and a quantum random number generator in real time. The results of the experiment are all null for the time being.\n\n\n\n\n\nWorld-Sheet (QRI term; ref: 1, 2): We represent modal and amodal information in our experience in a projective way. In most common cases, this information forms a 2D “sheet” that encodes the distance to the objects around you, which can be used as a depth-map to navigate your surroundings. A lot of the information we experience is in the combination of this sheet and phenomenal time (i.e. how it changes over time).\nHyperbolic Phenomenal Space (QRI term; ref: 1, 2): The local curvature of the world-sheet encodes a lot of information about the scene. There is a sense in which the “energy” of the experience is related to the curvature of the world-sheet (in addition to its phenomenal richness and brightness). So when one raises the energy of the state dramatically (e.g. by taking DMT) the world-sheet tends to instantiate configurations with very high-curvature. The surface becomes generically hyperbolic, which profoundly alters the overall geometry of one’s experience. A lot of the accounts of “space expansion” on psychedelics can be described in terms of alterations to the geometry of the world-sheet.\n\n\n\nDimensionality of Consciousness (QRI term; ref: 1, 2, 3): A generative definition for the dimensionality of a moment of experience can be “the highest virtual dimension implied by the network of correlations between globally bound degrees of freedom”. Admittedly, at the moment this is more of an intuition pump than a precise formalism, but a number of related phenomena suggest there is something in this general direction. For starters, differences between degrees of pain and pleasure are often described in terms of qualitative changes with phase transitions between them. Likewise, one generally experiences a higher degree of emotional involvement in a given stimuli the more sensory channels one is utilizing to interact with it. Pleasure that has cognitive, emotional, and physical components in a coordinated fashion is felt as much more profound and significant than pleasure that only involves one of those “channels”, or even pleasure that involves all three but where they lack coherence between them. Another striking example involves the states of consciousness induced by DMT, in which there are phase-transitions between the levels. These phase transitions seem to involve a change in the dimensional character of the hallucinations: in addition to hyperbolic geometry, DMT geometry involves a wide range of phenomena with virtual dimensions. On lower doses the hallucinations take the shape of 2D symmetrical plane coverings. On higher doses those covers transform into 2.5D wobbly worldsheets, and on higher doses still into 3D symmetrical tessellations and rooms with 4D features. For example, the DMT level above 3D tessellations has its “walls” covered with symmetrical patterns that are correlated with one another in such a way that they generate a “virtual” 4th dimension, itself capable of containing semantic content. We suspect that one of the reasons why MDMA is so uniquely good at healing trauma is that in order to address a high-dimensional pain you need a high-dimensional pleasure to hold space for it. MDMA seems to induce a high-dimensional variety of feelings of wellbeing, which can support and smooth a high-dimensional pain like such as those which underly traumatic memories.\n\nQualia Futurology\nMeme (standard science/psychology term coined by Richard Dawkins; 1): A “meme” is a cultural unit of information capable of being transmitted from one mind to another. Examples of memes include jokes, hat styles, window-dressing color palettes, and superstitions.\nMemeplex (lesser known term coined by Richard Dawkins; 1, 2): A “memeplex” is a set of memes that, when simultaneously present, increase their ability to replicate (i.e. to be spread from one mind to another). Memeplexes do not need to say true things in order to be good at spreading; many strategies exist to motivate humans to share memes and memeplexes, ranging from producing good feelings (e.g. jokes), being threatening (e.g. apostasy), to being salient (e.g. famous people believe in them). A classic example of a memeplex is that of an ideology such as libertarianism, communism, capitalism, etc.\nFull-Stack Memeplex (QRI term; ref: 1, 2): A “full-stack memeplex” is a memeplex that provides an answer to most common human questions. While the scope of a memeplex like “libertarianism” extends across a variety of fields including economics and ethics, it is not a full-stack memeplex because it does not attempt to answer questions such as “why does anything exist?”, “why are the constants of nature the way they are?” and “what happens after we die?”. Religions and some philosophies like existentialism, Buddhism, and the LessWrong Sequences are full-stack memeplexes. We also consider the QRI ecosystem to contain a full-stack memeplex.\n\nHedonistic Imperative (coined by David Pearce; ref: 1, 2): The Hedonistic Imperative is a book-length internet manifesto written by David Pearce which outlines how suffering will be eliminated with biotechnology and why our biological descendants are likely to be animated by gradients of information-sensitive bliss.\nAbolitionism (coined by David Pearce; ref: 1): In the context of transhumanism, Abolitionism refers to the view in ethics that we should eliminate all forms of involuntary suffering both in human and non-human animals alike. The term was coined by David Pearce.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFast Euphoria (QRI term; ref: 1): This is one of the main dimensions along which a drug can have effects, roughly described as “high-energy and high-valence” (with high-loading terms including: energetic, charming, stimulating, sociable, erotic, etc.).\nSlow Euphoria (QRI term; ref: 1): This is one of the main dimensions along which a drug can have effects, roughly described as “low-energy and high-valence” (with high-loading terms including: calming, relieving, blissful, loving, etc.).\nSpiritual/Philosophical Euphoria (QRI term; ref: 1, 2): This is one of the main dimensions along which a drug can have effects, roughly described as “high-significance and high-valence” (with high-loading terms including: incredible, spiritual, mystical, life-changing, interesting, colorful, etc.).\n\n\nWireheading (standard psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy term; 1, 2): The act of modifying a mind’s reward architecture and hedonic baseline so that it is always generating experiences with a net positive valence (whether or not they are mixed).\nWireheading Done Right (QRI term; ref: 1, 2): Wireheading done in such a way that one can remain rational, economically productive, and ethical. In particular, it entails (1) taking into account neurological negative feedback systems, (2) avoiding reinforcement cycles that narrow one’s behavioral focus, and (3) preventing becoming a pure replicator (see below). A simple proof of concept reward architecture for Wireheading Done Right is to cycle between different kinds of euphoria, each with immediate diminishing returns, and with the ability to make it easier to experience other kinds of euphoria. This would give rise to circadian cycles with stages involving fast, slow, and spiritual/philosophical euphoria at different times. Wireheading Done Right entails never getting stuck while always being in a positive state.\nPure Replicator (QRI term; 1, 2): In the context of agents and minds, a Pure Replicator is an intelligence that is indifferent towards the valence of its conscious states and those of others. A Pure Replicator invests all of its energy and resources into surviving and reproducing, even at the cost of continuous suffering to themselves or others. Its main evolutionary advantage is that it does not need to spend any resources making the world a better place.\nConsciousness vs. Replicators (QRI term; 1, 2): This is a reframe of the big-picture narrative of the meaning of life in which the ultimate battle is between the act of reproducing for the sake of reproduction and the act of seeking the wellbeing of sentient beings for the sake of conscious value itself.\nMaximum Effector (QRI term; 1): A Maximum Effector is an entity that uses all of its resources for the task of causing large effects, irrespective of what they may be. There is a sense in which most humans have a Maximum Effector side. Since causing large effects is not easy, one can reason that for evolutionary reasons people find such an ability to be a hard-to-fake signal of fitness. Arrogance and power may not be all that people find attractive, but they do play a role in what makes someone seem sexy to others. Hence why, unfortunately, people research how to cause large effects even if they are harmful to everyone. The idealized version of a Maximum Effector, however, would be exclusively interested in causing large effects to happen rather than doing so as a way to meet an emotional need among others. Although being a Maximum Effector may seem crazy and pointless, they are important to consider in any analysis of the future because the long-tailed nature of large effects suggest that those who specifically seek to cause them are likely to have an impact on reality orders of magnitude higher than the impact of agents who try to simultaneously have both large and good effects.\nSasha Shulgin\nSuper-Shulgin Academy (coined by David Pearce; ref: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8): This is a hypothetical future intellectual society that investigates consciousness empirically. Rather than merely theorizing about it or having people from the general population describe their odd experiences, the Super-Shulgin Academy directly studies the state-space of consciousness by putting the brightest minds on the task. The Super-Shulgin Academy (1) trains high-quality consciousness researchers and psychonauts, (2) investigates the computational trade-offs between different states of consciousness, (3) finds new socially-useful applications for exotic states of consciousness, (4) practices the art and craft of creating ultra-blissful experiences, and (5) develops and maintains a full-stack memeplex that incorporates the latest insights about the state-space of consciousness into the most up-to-date Theory of Everything.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/21/glossary-of-qualia-research-institute-terms/", "title": "Glossary of Qualia Research Institute Terms", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-08-22T05:14:19+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=12", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f1565e562889d60f724be8b0163dc5f7", "summary": []}
{"text": "Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain: Rating, Ranking, and Comparing Peak Experiences Suggest the Existence of Long Tails for Bliss and Suffering\n\nTL;DR\nBased on: the characteristic distribution of neural activity, personal accounts of intense pleasure and pain, the way various pain scales have been described by their creators, and the results of a pilot study we conducted which ranks, rates, and compares the hedonic quality of extreme experiences, we suggest that the best way to interpret pleasure and pain scales is by thinking of them as logarithmic compressions of what is truly a long-tail. The most intense pains are orders of magnitude more awful than mild pains (and symmetrically for pleasure).\nThis should inform the way we prioritize altruistic interventions and plan for a better future. Since the bulk of suffering is concentrated in a small percentage of experiences, focusing our efforts on preventing cases of intense suffering likely dominates most utilitarian calculations.\nAn important pragmatic takeaway from this article is that if one is trying to select an effective career path, as a heuristic it would be good to take into account how one’s efforts would cash out in the prevention of extreme suffering (see: Hell-Index), rather than just QALYs and wellness indices that ignore the long-tail. Of particular note as promising Effective Altruist careers, we would highlight working directly to develop remedies for specific, extremely painful experiences. Finding scalable treatments for migraines, kidney stones, childbirth, cluster headaches, CRPS, and fibromyalgia may be extremely high-impact (cf. Treating Cluster Headaches and Migraines Using N,N-DMT and Other Tryptamines, Using Ibogaine to Create Friendlier Opioids, and Frequency Specific Microcurrent for Kidney-Stone Pain). More research efforts into identifying and quantifying intense suffering currently unaddressed would also be extremely helpful. Finally, if the positive valence scale also has a long-tail, focusing one’s career in developing bliss technologies may pay-off in surprisingly good ways (whereby you may stumble on methods to generate high-valence healing experiences which are orders of magnitude better than you thought were possible).\nContents\nIntroduction:\n\nWeber’s Law\nWhy This Matters\n\nGeneral ideas:\n\nThe Non-Linearity of Pleasure and Pain\n\nPersonal Accounts\nConsciousness Expansion\nPeak Pleasure States: Jhanas and Temporal Lobe Seizures\nLogarithmic Pain Scales: Stings, Peppers, and Cluster Headaches\n\n\nDeference-type Approaches for Experience Ranking\n\nNormal World vs. Lognormal World\nPredictions of Lognormal World\n\n\n\nSurvey setup:\n\nMechanical Turk\nParticipant Composition\nFiltering Bots\n\nResults:\n\nAppearance Base Rates\nAverage Ratings\nDeference Graph of Top Experiences\n\nRebalanced Smoothed Proportion\nTriadic Analysis\n\n\nLatent Trait Ratings\nLong-tails in the Responses to “How Many Times Better/Worse” Question\n\nDiscussion:\n\nKey Pleasures Surfaced\n\nBirth of Children\nFalling in Love\nTravel/Vacation\nMDMA/LSD/Psilocybin\nGames of Chance Earnings\n\n\nKey Pains\n\nKidney Stones/Migraines\nChildbirth\nCar Accidents\nDeath of Father and Mother\n\n\nFuture Directions for Methodological Approaches\n\nGraphical Models with Log-Normal Priors\n\n\nClosing Thoughts on the Valence Scale\nAdditional Material\n\nDimensionality of Pleasure and Pain\nMixed States\nQualia Formalism\n\n\nNotes\n\nIntroduction\nWeber’s Law\nWeber’s Law describes the relationship between the physical intensity of a stimulus and the reported subjective intensity of perceiving it. For example, it describes the relationship between how loud a sound is and how loud it is perceived as. In the general case, Weber’s Law indicates that one needs to vary the stimulus intensity by a multiplicative fraction (called “Weber’s fraction”) in order to detect a just noticeable difference. For example, if you cannot detect the differences between objects weighing 100 grams to 105 grams, then you will also not be able to detect the differences between objects weighing 200 grams to 210 grams (implying the Weber fraction for weight perception is at least 5%). In the general case, the senses detect differences logarithmically.\nThere are two compelling stories for interpreting this law:\nIn the first story, it is the low-level processing of the senses which do the logarithmic mapping. The senses “compress” the intensity of the stimulation and send a “linearized” packet of information to one’s brain, which is then rendered linearly in one’s experience.\nIn the second story, the senses, within the window of adaptation, do a fine job of translating (somewhat) faithfully the actual intensity of the stimulus, which then gets rendered in our experience. Our inability to detect small absolute differences between intense stimuli is not because we are not rendering such differences, but because Weber’s law applies to the very intensity of experience. In other words, the properties of one’s experience could follow a long-tail distribution, but our ability to accurately point out differences between the properties of experiences is proportional to their intensity.\nWe claim that, at least for the case of valence (i.e the pleasure-pain axis), the second story is much closer to the truth than the first. Accordingly, this article rethinks the pleasure-pain axis (also called the valence scale) by providing evidence, arguments, and datapoints to support the idea that how good or bad experiences feel follows a long-tail distribution.\nAs an intuition pump for what is to follow, we would like to highlight the empirical finding that brain activity follows a long-tail distribution (see: Statistical Analyses Support Power Law Distributions Found in Neuronal Avalanches, and Logarithmic Distributions Prove that Intrinsic Learning is Hebbian). The story where the “true valence scale” is a logarithmic compression is entirely consistent with the empirical long-tails of neural activity (in which “neural avalanches” account for a large fraction of overall brain activity).\nThe concrete line of argument we will present is based on the following:\n\nPhenomenological accounts of intense pleasure and pain (w/ accounts of phenomenal time and space expansion),\nThe way in which pain scales are described by those who developed them, and\nThe analytic results of a pilot study we conducted which investigates how people rank, rate, and assign relative proportions to their top 3 best and worst experiences\n\nWhy This Matters\nEven if you are not a strict valence utilitarian, having the insight that the valence scale is long-tailed is still very important. Most ethical systems do give some weight to the prevention of suffering (in addition to the creation of subjectively valuable experiences), even if that is not all they care about. If your ethical system weighted slightly the task of preventing suffering when believing in a linear valence scale, then learning about the long-tailed nature of valence should in principle cause a major update. If indeed the worst experiences are exponentially more negative than originally believed by one’s ethical system, which nonetheless still cared about them, then after learning about the true valence scale the system would have to reprioritize. We suggest that while it might be unrealistic to have every ethical system refocus all of its energies on the prevention of intense suffering (and subsequently on researching how to create intense bliss sustainably), we can nonetheless expect such systems to raise this goal on their list of priorities. In other words, while “ending all suffering” will likely never be a part of most people’s ethical system, we hope that the data and arguments here presented at least persuade them to add “…and prevent intense forms of suffering” to the set of desiderata.\nIndeed, lack of awareness about the long-tails of bliss and suffering may be the cause of an ongoing massive moral catastrophe (notes by Linch). If indeed the degree of suffering present in experiences follows a long-tail distribution, we would expect the worst experiences to dominate most utilitarian calculus. The biggest bang for the buck in altruistic interventions would therefore be those that are capable of directly addressing intense suffering and generating super-bliss.\nGeneral Ideas\nThe Non-Linearity of Pleasure and Pain\nTrue long-tail pleasure scale (warning: psychedelics increase valence variance – the values here are for “good/lucky” trips and there is no guarantee e.g. LSD will feel good on a given occasion). Also: Mania is not always pleasant, but when it is, it can be super blissful.\nTrue long-tail pain scale\nAs we’ve briefly discussed in previous articles (1, 2, 3), there are many reasons to believe that both pleasure and pain can be felt along a spectrum with values that range over possibly orders of magnitude. Understandably, someone who is currently in a state of consciousness around the human median of valence is likely to be skeptical of a claim like “the bliss you can achieve in meditation is literally 100 times better than eating your favorite food or having sex.” Intuitively, we only have so much space in our experience to fit bliss, and when one is in a “normal” or typical state of mind for a human, one is forced to imagine “ultra blissful states” by extrapolating the elements of one’s current experience, which certainly do not seem capable of being much better than, say, 50% of the current level of pleasure (or pain). The problem here is that the very building blocks of experiences that enable them to be ultra-high or ultra-low valence are themselves necessary to imagine accurately how they can be put together. Talking about extreme bliss to someone who is anhedonic is akin to talking about the rich range of possible color experiences to someone who is congenitally fully colorblind (cf. “What Mary Didn’t Know“).\n“Ok”, you may say, “you are just telling me that pleasure and pain can be orders of magnitude stronger than I can even conceive of. What do you base this on?”. The most straightforward way to be convinced of this is to literally experience such states. Alas, this would be deeply unethical when it comes to the negative side, and it requires special materials and patience for the positive side. Instead, I will provide evidence from a variety of methods and conditions.\nPersonal Accounts\n\nI’ve been lucky to not have experienced major pain in my life so far (the worst being, perhaps, depression during my teens). I have, however, had two key experiences that gave me some time to introspect on the non-linear nature of pain. The first one comes from when I accidentally cut a super-spicy pepper and touched it with my bare hands (the batch of peppers I was cutting were mild, but a super-hot one snuck into the produce box). After a few minutes of cutting the peppers, I noticed that a burning heat began to intensify in my hands. This was the start of experiencing “hot pepper hands” for a full 8 hours (see other people’s experiences: 1, 2, 3). The first two to three hours of this ordeal were the worst, where I experienced what I rated as a persistent 4/10 pain interspersed with brief moments of 5/10 pain. The curious thing was that the 5/10 pain moments were clearly discernible as qualitatively different. It was as if the very numerous pinpricks and burning sensations all over my hands were in a somewhat disorganized state most of the time, but whenever they managed to build-up for long enough, they would start clicking with each other (presumably via phase-locking), giving rise to resonant waves of pain that felt both more energetic, and more aversive on the whole. In a way, this jump from what I rated as 4/10 to 5/10 was qualitative as well as quantitative, and it gave me some idea of how something that is already bad can become even worse.\nMy second experience involves a mild joint injury I experienced while playing Bubble Soccer (a very fun sport no doubt, and a common corporate treat for Silicon Valley cognotariats, but according to my doctor it is also a frequent source of injuries among programmers). Before doing physical therapy to treat this problem (which mostly took care of it), I remember spending hours introspecting on the quality of the pain in order to understand it better. It wasn’t particularly bad, but it was constant (I rated it as 2/10 most of the time). What stuck with me was how its constant presence would slowly increase the stress of my entire experience over time. I compared the experience to having an uncomfortable knot stuck in your body. If I had a lot of mental and emotional slack early in the day, I could easily take the stress produced by the knot and “send it elsewhere” in my body. But since the source of the stress was constant, eventually I would run out of space, and the knot would start making secondary knots around itself, and it was in those moments where I would rate the pain at a 3/10. This would only go away if I rested and somehow “reset” the amount of cognitive and emotional slack I had available.\nThe point of these two stories is to highlight the observation that there seem to be phase-changes between levels of discomfort. An analogy I often make is with the phenomenon of secondary coils when you twist a rope. The stress induced by pain- at least introspectively speaking- is pushed to less stressed areas of your mind. But this has a limit, which is until your whole world-simulation is stressed to the point that the source of stress starts creating secondary “stress coils” on top of the already stressed background experience. This was a very interesting realization to me, which put in a different light weird expressions that chronic pain patients use like “my pain now has a pain of its own” or “I can’t let the pain build up”.\nDNA coils and super-coils as a metaphor for pain phase-changes?\nConsciousness Expansion\nWhat about more extreme experiences? Here we should briefly mention psychedelic drugs, as they seem to be able to increase the energy of one’s consciousness (and in some sense “multiply the amount of consciousness“) in a way that grows non-linearly as a function of the dose. An LSD experience with 100 micrograms may be “only” 50% more intense than normal everyday life, but an LSD experience with 200 micrograms is felt as 2-3X as intense, while 300 micrograms may increase the intensity of experience by perhaps 10X (relative to normal). Usually people say that high-dose psychedelic states are indescribably more real and vivid than normal everyday life. And then there are compounds like 5-MeO-DMT, which people often describe as being in “a completely different category”, as it gives rise to what many describe as “infinite consciousness”. Obviously there is no such thing as an experience with infinite consciousness, and that judgement could be explained in terms of the lack of “internal boundaries” of the state, which gives the impression of infinity (not unlike how the surface of a torus can seem infinite from the point of view of a flatlander). That said, I’ve asked rational and intelligent people who have tried 5-MeO-DMT in non-spiritual settings what they think the intensity of their experiences was, and they usually say that a strong dose of 10mg or more gives rise to an intensity and “quantity” of consciousness that is at least 100X as high as normal everyday experiences. There are many reasons to be skeptical of this, no doubt, but the reports should not be dismissed out of hand.\nSecondary knots and links as a metaphor for higher bliss\nAs with the above example, we can reason that one of the ways in which both pain and pleasure can be present in *multiples* of one’s normal hedonic range is because the amount of consciousness crammed into a moment of experience is not a constant. In other words, when someone in a typical state of consciousness asks “if you say one can experience so much pain/pleasure, tell me, where would that fit in my experience? I don’t see much room for that to fit in here”, one can respond by saying that “in other states of consciousness there is more (phenomenal) time and space within each moment of experience”. Indeed, at Qualia Computing we have assembled and interpreted a large number of experiences of high-energy states of consciousness that indicate that both phenomenal time, and phenomenal space, can drastically expand. To sum it up – you can fit so much pleasure and pain in peak experiences precisely because such experiences make room for them.\nLet us now illustrate the point with some paradigmatic cases of very high and vey low valence:\nPeak Pleasure States: Jhanas and Temporal Lobe Seizures\nOn the pleasure side, we have Buddhist meditators who experience meditative states of absorption (aka. “Jhanas”) as extremely, and counter-intuitively, blissful:\nThe experience can include some very pleasant physical sensations such as goose bumps on the body and the hair standing up to more intense pleasures which grow in intensity and explode into a state of ecstasy. If you have pain in your legs, knees, or other part of the body during meditation, the pain will actually disappear while you are in the jhanas. The pleasant sensations can be so strong to eliminate your painful sensations. You enter the jhanas from the pleasant experiences exploding into a state of ecstasy where you no longer “feel” any of your senses.\n– 9 Jhanas, Dhamma Wiki\nThere are 8 (or 9, depending on who you ask) “levels” of Jhanas, and the above is describing only the 1st of them! The higher the Jhana, the more refined the bliss becomes, and the more detached the state is from the common referents of our everyday human experience. Ultra-bliss does not look at all like sensual pleasure or excitement, but more like information-theoretically optimal configurations of resonant waves of consciousness with little to no intentional content (cf. semantically neutral energy). I know this sounds weird, but it’s what is reported.\n“Streamlines from the insula to the cortex” – the insula (in red) is an area of the brain intimately implicated in the super-bliss that sometimes precedes temporal lobe epilepsy (source)\nAnother example I will provide about ultra-bliss concerns temporal lobe epilepsy, which in a minority of sufferers gives rise to extraordinarily intense states of pleasure, or pain, or both. Such experiences can result in Geschwind syndrome, a condition characterized by hypergraphia (writing non-stop), hyper-religiosity, and a generally intensified mental and emotional life. No doubt, any experience that hits the valence scale at one of its extremes is usually interpreted as other-worldly and paranormal (which gives rise to the question of whether valence is a spiritual phenomenon or the other way around). Famously, Dostoevsky seems to have experienced temporal lobe seizures, and this ultimately informed his worldview and literary work in profound ways. Here is how he describes them:\n“A happiness unthinkable in the normal state and unimaginable for anyone who hasn’t experienced it… I am then in perfect harmony with myself and the entire universe.”\n \n– From a letter to his friend Nikolai Strakhov.\n…\n“I feel entirely in harmony with myself and the whole world, and this feeling is so strong and so delightful that for a few seconds of such bliss one would gladly give up 10 years of one’s life, if not one’s whole life. […] You all, healthy people, can’t imagine the happiness which we epileptics feel during the second before our fit… I don’t know if this felicity lasts for seconds, hours or months, but believe me, I would not exchange it for all the joys that life may bring.”\n \n– from the character Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky’s novel, The Idiot, which he likely used to give a voice to his own experiences.\nDostoevsky is far from the only person reporting these kinds of experiences from epilepsy:\nAs Picard [a scientist investigating seizures] cajoled her patients to speak up about their ecstatic seizures, she found that their sensations could be characterised using three broad categories of feelings (Epilepsy & Behaviour, vol 16, p 539). The first was heightened self-awareness. For example, a 53-year-old female teacher told Picard: “During the seizure it is as if I were very, very conscious, more aware, and the sensations, everything seems bigger, overwhelming me.” The second was a sense of physical well-being. A 37-year-old man described it as “a sensation of velvet, as if I were sheltered from anything negative”. The third was intense positive emotions, best articulated by a 64-year-old woman: “The immense joy that fills me is above physical sensations. It is a feeling of total presence, an absolute integration of myself, a feeling of unbelievable harmony of my whole body and myself with life, with the world, with the ‘All’,” she said.\n \n– from “Fits of Rapture”, New Scientist (January 25, 2014) (source)\nAll in all, these examples illustrate the fact that blissful states can be deeper, richer, more intense, more conscious, and qualitatively superior to the normal everyday range of human emotion.\nNow, how about the negative side?\nLogarithmic Pain Scales: Stings, Peppers, and Cluster Headaches\n“The difference between 6 and 10 on the pain scale is an exponential difference. Believe it or not.”\n– Insufferable Indifference, by Neil E. Clement (who experiences chronic pain ranging between 6/10 to 10/10, depending on the day)\nThree pain-scale examples that illustrate the non-linearity of pain are: (1) the Schmidt sting pain index, (2) the Scoville scale, and (3) the KIP scale:\n\n(1) Justin O. Schmidt stung himself with over 80 species of insects of the Hymenoptera order, and rated the ensuing pain on a 4-point-scale. About the scale, he had to say the following:\n4:28 – Justin Schmidt: The harvester ant is what got the sting pain scale going in the first place. I had been stung by honeybees, yellow jackets, paper wasps, etc. the garden variety stuff, that you get bitten by various beetles and things. I went down to Georgia, which has the Eastern-most extension of the harvester ant. I got stung and I said “Wooooow! This is DIFFERENT!” You know? I thought I knew everything there was about insect stings, I was just this dumb little kid. And I realized “Wait a minute! There is something different going on here”, and that’s what got me to do the comparative analysis. Is this unique to harvester ants? Or are there others that are like that. It turns out while the answer is, now we know much later – it’s unique! [unique type of pain]. \n[…]\n7:09 – Justin Schmidt: I didn’t really want to go out and get stung for fun. I was this desperate graduate student trying to get a thesis, so I could get out and get a real job, and stop being a student eventually. And I realized that, oh, we can measure toxicity, you know, the killing power of something, but we can’t measure pain… ouch, that one hurts, and that one hurts, and ouch that one over there also hurts… but I can’t put that on a computer program and mathematically analyze what it means for the pain of the insect. So I said, aha! We need a pain scale. A computer can analyze one, two, three, and four, but it can’t analyze “ouch!”. So I decided that I had to make a pain scale, with the harvester ant (cutting to the chase) was a 3. Honey bees was a 2. And I kind of tell people that each number is like 10 equivalent of the number before. So 10 honey bee stings are equal to 1 harvester ant sting, and 10 harvester ant stings would equal one bullet ant sting.\n[…]\n11:50 – [Interviewer]: When I finally worked up the courage to [put the Tarantula Hawk on my arm] and take this sting. The sting of that insect was electric in nature. I’ve been shocked before, by accidentally taking a zap from an electrical cord. This was that times 10. And it put me on the ground. My arm seized up from muscle contraction. And it was probably the worst 5 minutes of my life at that point.\nJustin Schmidt: Yeah, that’s exactly what I call electrifying. I say, imagine you are walking along in Arizona, and there is a wind storm, and the power line above snaps the wire, and it hits you, of course that hasn’t happened to me, but that’s what you imagine it feels like. Because it’s absolutely electrifying, I call it debilitating because you want to be macho, “ah I’m tough, I can do this!” Now you can’t! So I tell people lay down and SCREAM! Right?\n[Interviewer]: That’s what I did! And Mark would be like, this famous “Coyote, are you ok? Are you ok?”\nJustin Schmidt: No, I’m not ok!\n[Interviewer]: And it was very hard to try to compose myself to be like, alright, describe what is happening to your body right now. Because your mind goes into this state that is like blank emptiness. And all you can focus on is the fact that there’s radiating pain coming out of your arm.\nJustin Schmidt: That’s why you scream, because now you’re focusing on something else. In addition to the pain, you’re focusing on “AAAAAAHHHHH!!!” [screams loudly]. Takes a little bit of the juice off of the pain, so maybe you lower it down to a three for as long as you can yell. And I can yell for a pretty long time when I’m stung by a tarantula hawk.\n \n– Origin of STINGS!, interview of Justin O. Schmidt\nIf we take Justin’s word for it, a sting that scores a 4 on his pain scale is about 1,000 times more painful than a sting that scores a 1 on his scale. Accordingly, Christopher Starr (who replicated the scale), stated that any sting that scores a 4 is “traumatically painful” (source). Finally, since the scale is restricted to stings of insects of the Hymenoptera order, it remains possible that there are stings whose pain would be rated even higher than 4. A 5 on the sting pain index might perhaps be experienced with the stings of the box jellyfish that produces Irukandji syndrome, and the bite of the giant desert centipede. Needless to say, these are to be avoided.\nMoving on…\n(source)\n(2) The Scoville scale measures how spicy different chili peppers and hot sauces are. It is calculated by diluting the pepper/sauce in water until it is no longer possible to detect any spice in it. The number that is associated with the pepper or sauce is the ratio of water-to-sauce that makes it just barely possible to taste the spice. Now, this is of course not itself a pain scale. I would nonetheless anticipate that taking the log of the Scoville units of a dish might be a good approximation for the reported pain it delivers. In particular, people note that there are several qualitative jumps in the type and nature of the pain one experiences when eating hot sauces of different strengths (e.g. “Fuck you Sean! […] That was a leap, Sean, that was a LEAP!” – Ken Jeong right after getting to the 135,000 Scoville units sauce in the pain porn Youtube series Hot Ones). Amazon reviews of ultra-hot sauces can be mined for phenomenological information concerning intense pain, and the general impression one gets after reading such reviews is that indeed there is a sort of exponential range of possible pain values:\nClick to view slideshow.\nI know it may be fun to trivialize this kind of pain, but different people react differently to it (probably following a long-tail too!). For some people who are very sensitive to heat pain, very hot sauce can be legitimately traumatizing. Hence I advise against having ultra-spicy sauces around your house. The novelty value is not worth the probability of a regrettable accident, as exemplified in some of the Amazon reviews above (e.g. a house guest assuming that your “Da’Bomb – Beyond Insanity” bottle in the fridge can’t possibly be that hot… and ending up in the ER and with PTSD).\nI should add that media that is widely consumed about extreme hot sauce (e.g. the Hot Ones mentioned above and numerous stunt Youtube channels) may seem fun on the surface, but what doesn’t make the cut and is left in the editing room is probably not very palatable at all. From an interview: “Has anyone thrown up doing it?” (interviewer) – “Yeah, we’ve run the gamuts. We’ve had people spit in buckets, half-pass out, sleep in the green room afterwards, etc.” (Sean Evans, Hot Ones host). T.J. Miller, when asked about what advice he would give to the show while eating ultra-spicy wings, responded: “Don’t do this. Don’t do this again. End the show. Stop doing the show. That’s my advice. This is very hot. This is painful. There’s a problem here.”\nTrigeminal Neuralgia pain scale – a condition similarly painful to Cluster Headaches\n(3) Finally, we come to the “KIP scale”, which is used to rate Cluster Headaches, one of the most painful conditions that people endure:\n\nThe KIP scale\nKIP-0 No pain, life is beautiful\nKIP-1 Very minor, shadows come and go. Life is still beautiful\nKIP-2 More persistent shadows\nKIP-3 Shadows are getting constant but can deal with it\nKIP-4 Starting to get bad, want to be left alone\nKIP-5 Still not a “pacer” but need space\nKIP-6 Wake up grumbling, curse a bit, but can get back to sleep without “dancing”\nKIP-7 Wake up, sleep not an option, take the beast for a walk and finally fall into bed exhausted\nKIP-8 Time to scream, yell, curse, head bang, rock, whatever works\nKIP-9 The “Why me?” syndrome starts to set in\nKIP-10 Major pain, screaming, head banging, ER trip. Depressed. Suicidal.\nThe duration factor is multiplied by the intensity factor, which uses the KIP scale in an exponential way – a KIP 10 is not just twice as bad as a KIP 5, it’s ten times as intense.\nSource: Keeping Track, by Cluster Busters\nAs seen above, the KIP scale is acknowledged by its creator and users to be logarithmic in nature.\nIn summary: We see that pleasure comes in various grades and that peak experiences such as those induced by psychedelics, meditation, and temporal lobe seizures seem to be orders of magnitude more energetic and better than everyday sober states. Likewise, we see that across several categories of pain, people report being surprised by the leaps in both quality and intensity that are possible. More so, at least in the case of the Schmidt Index and the Kip Scale, the creators of the scale were explicit that it was a logarithmic mapping of the actual level of sensation.\nWhile we do not have enough evidence (and conceptual clarity) to assert that the intensity of pain and pleasure does grow exponentially, the information presented so far does suggest that the valence of experiences follows a long-tail distribution.\nDeference-type Approaches for Experience Ranking\nThe above considerations underscore the importance of coming up with a pleasure-pain scale that tries to take into account the non-linearity and non-normality of valence ratings. One idea we came up with was a “deference”-type approach, where we ask open-ended questions about people’s best and worst experiences and have them rank them against each other. Although locally the data would be very sparse, the idea was that there might be methods to integrate the collective patterns of deference into an approximate scale. If extended to populations of people who are known to have experienced extremes of valence, the approach would even allow us to unify the various pain scales (Scoville, Schmidt, KIP, etc.) and assign a kind of universal valence score to different categories of pain and pleasure.* That will be version 2.0. In the meantime, we thought to try to get a rough picture of the extreme joys and affections of members of the general public, which is what this article will focus on.\nNormal World vs. Lognormal World\nThere is a world we could call the “Normal World”, where valence outliers are rare and most types of experiences affect people more or less similarly, distributed along a Gaussian curve. Then there is another, very different world we could call the “long-tailed world” or if we want to make it simple (acknowledging uncertainty) “Lognormal World”, where almost every valence distribution is a long-tail. So in the “Lognormal World”, say, for pleasure (and symmetrically for pain), we would expect to see a long-tail in the mean pleasure of experiences between different categories across all people, a long-tail in the amount of pleasure within a given type of experience across people, a long-tail for the number of times an individual has had a certain type of pleasure, a long-tail in the intensity of the pleasure experienced with a single category of experience within a single person, and so on. Do we live in the Normal World or the Lognormal World?\nPredictions of Lognormal World\nIf we lived in the “Lognormal World”, we would expect:\n\nThat people will typically say that their top #1 best/worst experience is not only a bit better/worse than their #2 experience, but a lot better/worse. Like, perhaps, even multiple times better/worse.\nThat there will be a long-tail in the number of appearances of different categories (i.e. that a large amount, such as 80%, of top experiences will belong to the same narrow set of categories, and that there will be many different kinds of experiences capturing the remaining 20%).\nThat for most pairs of experiences x and y, people who have had both instances of x and y, will usually agree about which one is better/worse. We call such a relationship a “deference”. More so, we would expect to see that deference, in general, will be transitive (a > b and b > c implying that a > c).\n\nTo test the first and second prediction does not require a lot of data, but the third does because one needs to have enough comparisons to fill a lot of triads. The survey results we will discuss bellow are congruent with the first and second prediction. We did what we could with the data available to investigate the third, and tentatively, it seems to hold up (with ideas like deference network centrality analysis, triadic analysis, and tournament-style approaches).\n\nSurvey Setup\nThe survey asked the following questions: current level of pleasure, current level of pain, top 3 most pleasurable experiences (in decreasing order) along with pleasure ratings for each of them and the age when they were experienced, and the same for the top 3 most painful experiences. I specifically did not provide a set of broad categories (such as “physical” or “emotional”) or a drop-down menu of possible narrow categories (e.g. going to the movies, aerobic exercise, etc.). I wanted to see what people would say when the question was as open-ended as possible.\nI also included questions aimed more directly at probing the long-tailed nature of valence: I asked participants to rate “how many times more pleasant was the #1 top experience relative to the #2 top experience” (and #2 relative to #3, and the same for the top most painful experiences).\nI also asked them to describe in more detail the single most pleasant and unpleasant experiences, and added a box for comments at the end in order to see if anyone complained about the task (most people said “no comment”, many said they enjoyed the task, and one person said that it made them nostalgic). I also asked about basic demographics (age and gender). Participants earned $1.75 for the task, which seems reasonable given the time it took to complete in most cases.\nMechanical Turk: Participant Composition\nThe survey was run on Mechanical Turk. I requested “Masters” qualifications for 90/110 of the survey responses. To be a Mechanical Turk Master you need to have a good track record of task approval, which I reasoned would increase the rate of well thought-out high-quality responses (this turned out to be true). The participants’ genders were fairly balanced (50/97 women, 47/97 men), and the average age was 36.5 years (sd = 10):\nAge distribution\nBots (easy to spot – unless extremely sophisticated)\nWhile reading the responses I discovered that some of them seemed to be generated by bots. Apparently task requesters started noticing the presence of bots a couple of years ago. This is obviously a problem for academics trying to use the service for their research, and for machine learning professionals using the service for data-tagging. Having been both of those things in the past, I can say that a few years ago I did not see any submissions that looked suspiciously bot-like. Though low-quality rushed responses did seem to be relatively common back then, I never observed bot-like responses to open-ended questions. Unfortunately this time I was able to spot several responses clearly written by bots. For example, one respondent answered the question “write a brief essay about your #1 best experience” with:\nThe reason these types of assignments are given so often is that anyone can write about their own experience and it doesn’t require any outside resources or research. However, even though anyone can tell a story about their life, that does not mean anyone can write a good essay about that experience. As a professor and teacher for 30 years, I’ve read thousands of essays and can tell you there is a distinct difference from telling a story about yourself and writing an excellent personal experience essay. The difference between good and great:\nAnd it ends that way, with a colon indicating that the respondent is about to explain what the difference between good and great is. But it never does it. This answer, great, it is not.\nIn most cases the difference between a genuine response and a bot response was very obvious. That said, I erred on the side of caution for filtering bots and I got rid of answers even if they seemed just a little suspicious. This left me with 97 out of the 110 original responses. The following analysis was conducted on those 97 responses.\nPreprocessing\nSince the responses were open-ended I had to tag each of them with an experience category. To do this I read each response and identified the key theme in them and classified them with a label that was specific enough to distinguish it from nearby experiences (e.g. different types of fractures), but not so specific that we would never get more than one response per category (e.g. “breaking the middle finger in elementary school”). In general, most responses fell into very unambiguous categories (e.g. “When my father passed away” and “Watching my father die and take his last few breaths.” were both classified as “Father death”). About 10% of the responses were relatively ambiguous: it wasn’t clear what the source of the pain or pleasure was. To deal with those responses I used the label “Unspecified”. When some detail was present but ambiguity remained, such as when a broad type of pain or pleasure was mentioned but not the specific source I tagged it as “Unspecified X” where X was a broad category. For example, one person said that “broken bones” was the most painful experience they’ve had, which I labeled as “Unspecified fracture”.\n\nResults\nI should preface the following by saying that we are very aware of the lack of scientific rigor in this survey; it remains a pilot exploratory work. We didn’t specify the time-scale for the experiences (e.g. are we asking about the best minute of your life or the best month of your life?) or whether we were requesting instances of physical or psychological pain/pleasures. Despite this lack of constraints it was interesting to see very strong commonalities among people’s responses:\nAppearance Base Rates\nThere were 77 and 124 categories of pleasure and pain identified, respectively. On the whole it seemed like there was a higher diversity of ways to suffer than of ways to experience intense bliss. Summoning the spirit of Tolstoy: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”\nHere are the raw counts for each category with at least two appearances:\nBest experiences appearances (with at least two reports)\nWorst experience appearances (with at least two reports)\nFor those who want to see the full list of number of appearances for each experience mentioned see the bottom of the article (I also clarify some of the more confusing labels there too)**.\nA simple way to try to incorporate the information about the ranking is to weight experiences rated as top #1 with 3 points, those as top #2 with 2 points, and those as the top #3 with 1 point. If you do this, the experiences scores are:\nWeighted appearances of best experiences (#1 – 3 points, #2 – 2 points, #3 – 1 point)\nWeighted appearances of worst experiences (#1 – 3 points, #2 – 2 points, #3 – 1 point)\nAverage ratings\nGiven the relatively small sample size, I will only report the mean rating for pain and pleasure (out of 10) for categories of experience for which there were 6 or more respondents:\nFor pain:\n\nFather death (n = 19): mean 8.53, sd 2.3\nChildbirth (n = 16): mean 7.94, sd 2.16\nGrandmother death (n = 13): mean 8.12, sd 2.5\nMother death (n = 11): mean 9.4, sd 0.62\nCar accident (n = 9): mean 8.42, sd 1.52\nKidney stone (n = 9): mean 5.97, sd 3.17\nMigraine (n = 9): mean 5.36, sd 3.11\nRomantic breakup (n = 9): mean 7.11, sd 1.52\nBroken arm (n = 6): mean 8.28, sd 0.88\nBroken leg (n = 6): mean 7.33, sd 2.02\nWork failure (n = 6): mean 5.88, sd 3.57\n\n(Note: the very high variance for kidney stones and migraine is partly explained by the presence of some very low responses, with values as low as 1.1/10 – perhaps misreported, or perhaps illustrating the extreme diversity of experiences of migraines and kidney stones).\nAnd for pleasure:\n\nFalling in love (n = 42): mean 8.68, sd 1.74\nChildren born (n = 41): mean 9.19, sd 1.64\nMarriage (n = 21): mean 8.7, sd 1.25\nSex (n = 19): mean 8.72, sd 1.45\nCollege graduation (n = 13): mean 7.73, sd 1.4\nOrgasm (n = 11): mean 8.24, sd 1.63\nAlcohol (n = 8): mean 6.84, sd 1.59\nVacation (n = 6): mean 9.12, sd 0.73\nGetting job (n = 6): mean 7.22, sd 1.47\nPersonal favorite sports win (n = 6): mean 8.17, sd 1.23\n\nDeference Graph of Top Experiences\nWe will now finally get to the more exploratory and fun/interesting analysis, at least in that it will generate a cool way of visualizing what causes people great joy and pain. Namely, the idea of using people’s rankings in order to populate a global scale across people and show it in the form of a graph of deferences. While the scientific literature has some studies that compare pain across different categories (e.g. 1, 2, 3) I was not able to find any dataset that included actual rankings across a variety of categories. Hence why it was so appealing to visualize this.\nThe simplest way of graphing experience deferences is to assign a node to each experience category and add an edge between experiences with deference relationships with a weight proportional to the number of directed deferences. For example, if 4 people have said that A was better than B, and 3 people have said that B was better than A, then there will be an edge from A to B with a weight of 4 and an edge from B to A with a weight of 3. Additionally, we can then run a graph centrality algorithm such as PageRank to see where the “deferences end up pooling”.\nThe images below do this: the PageRank of the graph is represented with the color gradient (darker shades of green/red representing higher PageRank values for good/bad experiences). In addition, the graphs also represent the number of appearances in the dataset for each category with the size of each node:\n\n\nThe main problem with the approach above is that it double (triple?) counts experiences that are very common. Say that, for example, taking 5-MeO-DMT produces a consistently higher-valence feeling relative to having sex. If we only have a couple of people who report both 5-MeO-DMT and sex as their top experiences, the edge from sex to 5-MeO-DMT will be very weak, and the PageRank algorithm will underestimate the value of 5-MeO-DMT.\nIn order to avoid the double counting effect of commonly-reported peak experiences we can instead add edge weights on the basis of the proportion with which an experience defers to the other. Let’s say that f(a, b) means “number of times that b is reported as higher than a”. Then the proportion would be f(a, b) / (f(a, b) + f(b, a)). Now, this introduces another problem, which is that pairs of experiences that appear together very infrequently might get a very high proportion score due to a low sample size. In order to prevent this we use Laplace smoothing and modify the equation to (f(a, b) + 1) / (f(a, b) + f(b, a) + 2). Finally, we transform this proportion score from the range of 0 to 1 to the range of -1 to 1 by multiplying by 2 and subtracting one. We call this a “rebalanced smoothed proportion” w(a, b):\nRebalanced smoothed proportion\nI should note that this is not based on any rigorous math. The equation is based on my intuition for what I would expect to see in such a graph, namely a sort of confidence-weighted strength of directionality, but I do not guarantee that this is a principled way of doing so (did I mention this is a pilot small-scale low-budget ‘to a first approximation’ study?). I think that, nonetheless, doing this is still an improvement upon merely using the raw deference counts as the edge weights. To visualize what w(a, b) looks like I graphed its values for a and b in the range of 0 to 20 (literally typing the equation into the google search bar):\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTo populate the graph I only use the positive edge weights so that we can run the PageRank algorithm on it. This now looks a lot more reasonable and informative as a deference graph than the previous attempts:\n\nBest experiences deference graph: Edge weights based on the rebalanced smoothed proportions, size of nodes is proportional to number of appearances in the dataset, and the color tracks the PageRank of the graph. Edge color based on source node.\n \nWorst experiences deference graph: Edge weights based on the rebalanced smoothed proportions, size of nodes is proportional to number of appearances in the dataset, and the color tracks the PageRank of the graph. Edge color based on source node.\nBy taking the PageRank of these graphs (calculated with NetworkX) we arrive at the following global rankings:\nPageRank of the graph of best experiences with edge weights computed with the rebalanced smoothed proportion equation\nPageRank of the graph of worst experiences with edge weights computed with the rebalanced smoothed proportion equation\nIntuitively this ranking seems more aligned with what I’ve heard before, but I will withhold judgement on it until we have much more data.\nTriadic Analysis\nWith a more populated deference graph we can analyze in detail the degree to which triads (i.e. sets of three experiences such that each of the three possible deferences are present in the graph) show transitivity (cf. Balance vs. Status Theory).\nIn particular, we should compare the prevalence of these two triads:\nLeft: 030T, Right: 030C (source)\nThe triads above are 030T, which is transitive, and 030C, which is a loop. The higher the degree of agreement between people and the higher the probability of the existence of an underlying shared scale, we would expect to see more triads of the type 030T relative to 030C. That said, a simple ratio is not enough, since the expected proportion between these two triads can be an artifact of the way the graph is constructed and/or its general shape (and hence the importance of comparing against randomized graphs that preserve as many other statistical features as possible). With our graph, we noticed that the very way in which the edges were introduced generated an artifact of a very strong difference between these two types of triads:\nIn the case of pain there are 105 ‘030T’, and 3 ‘030C’. And for the pleasure questions there were 98 ‘030T’, and 9 ‘030C’. That said, many of these triads are the artifact of taking into account the top three experiences, which already generates a transitive triad by default when n = 1 for that particular triad of experiences. To avoid this artifact, we filtered the graph by only adding edges when a pair of experiences appeared at least twice (and discounting the edges where w(a, b) = 0). With this adjustment we got 2 ‘030T’, and 1 ‘030C’ for the pain questions, and 1 ‘030T’, and 0 ‘030C’ for the pleasure question. Clearly there is not enough data to meaningfully conduct this type of analysis. If we extend the study and get a larger sample size, this analysis might be much more informative.\nLatent Trait Ratings\nA final approach I tried for deriving a global ranking of experiences was to assume a latent parameter for pain or pleasure of different experiences and treating the rankings as the tournament results of participants with skill equal to this latent trait. So when someone says that an experience of sex was better than an experience of getting a new bike we imagine that “sex” had a match with “getting bike” and that “sex” won that match. If we do this, then we can import any of the many tournament algorithms that exist (such as the Elo rating system) in order to approximate the latent “skill” trait of each experience (except that here it is the “skill” to cause you pleasure or pain, rather than any kind of gaming ability).\nInterestingly, this strategy has also been used in other areas outside of actual tournaments, such as deriving university rankings based on the choices made by students admitted to more than one college (see: Revealed Preference Rankings of US Colleges and Universities).\nI should mention that the fact that we are asking about peak experiences likely violates some of the assumptions of these algorithms, since the fact that a match takes place is already information that both experiences made it into the top 3. That said, if the patterns of deference are very strong, this might not represent a problem.\nTo come up with this tournament-style ranking I decided to go for a state-of-the-art algorithm. The one that I was able to find and use was Microsoft Research’s algorithm called TrueSkill (which is employed to rank players in Xbox LIVE). According to their documentation, to arrive at a conservative “leaderboard” that balances the estimated “true skill” and the uncertainty around it, they recommend ranking by the expected skill level minus three times the standard error around this estimate. If we do this, we arrive at the following experience “leaderboards”:\nConservative TrueSkill scores for best experiences (mu – 3*sigma)\nConservative TrueSkill scores for worst experiences (mu – 3*sigma)\nLong-tails in Responses to “How Many Times Better/Worse” Question\nThe survey included four questions aimed at comparing the relative hedonic values of peak experiences: “Relative to the 1st most pleasant experience, how many times better was the 2nd most pleasant experience?” (This was one, the other three were the permutations of also asking about 2nd vs. 3rd and about the bad experiences):\n\n\n\n\n\n\n(Note: I’ll ignore the responses to the comparison between the 2nd and 3rd worst pains because I messed up the question -I forgot to substitute “better” for “worse”).\nI would understand the skepticism about these graphs. But at the same time, I don’t think it is absurd that for many people the worst experience they’ve had is indeed 10 or 100 times worse than the second worst. For example, someone who has endured a bad Cluster Headache will generally say that the pain of it is tens or hundreds of times worse than any other kind of pain they have had (say, breaking a bone or having skin burns).\nThe above distributions suggest a long-tail for the hedonic quality of experiences: say that the hedonic quality of each day is distributed along a log-normal distribution. A 45 year old has experienced roughly 17,000 days. Let’s say that such a person’s experience of pain each day is sampled from a log-normal distribution with a Gaussian exponent with a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of 5. If we take 100 such people, and for each of them we take the single worst and the second worst days of their lives, and then take the ratio between them, we will have a distribution like this (simulated in R):\n\n\n\n\nIf you smooth the empirical curves above you would get a distribution that looks like these simulations. You really need a long-tail to be able to get results like “for 25% of the participants the single worst experience was at least 4 times as bad as the 2nd worst experience.” Compare that to the sort of pattern that you get if the distribution was normal rather than log-normal:\n\n\n\n\nAs you can see (zooming in on the y-axis), the ratios simply do not reach very high values. With the normal distribution simulated here, we see that the highest ratio we achieve is around 1.3, as opposed to the empirical ratios of 10+.*** If you are inclined to believe the survey responses- or at least assign some level of credibility to the responses in the 90th-percentile and below-, the data is much more consistent with a long-tail distribution for hedonic values relative to a normal distribution.\nDiscussion\nKey Pleasures Surfaced\nBirth of children\nI have heard a number of mothers and father say that having kids was the best thing that ever happened to them. The survey showed this was a very strong pattern, especially among women. In particular, a lot of the reports deal with the very moment in which they held their first baby in their arms for the first time. Some quotes to illustrate this pattern:\nThe best experience of my life was when my first child was born. I was unsure how I would feel or what to expect, but the moment I first heard her cry I fell in love with her instantly. I felt like suddenly there was another person in this world that I cared about and loved more than myself. I felt a sudden urge to protect her from all the bad in the world. When I first saw her face it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It is almost an indescribable feeling. I felt like I understood the purpose and meaning of life at that moment. I didn’t know it was possible to feel the way I felt when I saw her. I was the happiest I have ever been in my entire life. That moment is something that I will cherish forever. The only other time I have ever felt that way was with the subsequent births of my other two children. It was almost a euphoric feeling. It was an intense calm and contentment.\n—————\nI was young and had a difficult pregnancy with my first born. I was scared because they had to do an emergency c-section because her health and mine were at risk. I had anticipated and thought about how the moment would be when I finally got to hold my first child and realize that I was a mother. It was unbelievably emotional and I don’t think anything in the world could top the amount of pleasure and joy I had when I got to see and hold her for the first time.\n—————\nI was 29 when my son was born. It was amazing. I never thought I would be a father. Watching him come into the world was easily the best day of my life. I did not realize that I could love someone or something so much. It was at about 3am in the morning so I was really tired. But it was wonderful nonetheless.\n—————\nI absolutely loved when my child was born. It was a wave of emotions that I haven’t felt by anything before. It was exciting and scary and beautiful all in one.\nNo luck for anti-natalists… the super-strong drug-like effects of having children will presumably continue to motivate most humans to reproduce no matter how strong the ethical case against doing so may be. Coming soon: a drug that makes you feel like “you just had 10,000 children”.\nFalling in Love\nThe category of “falling in love” was also a very common top experience. I should note that the experiences reported were not merely those of “having a crush”, but rather, they typically involved unusually fortunate circumstances. For instance, a woman reported being friends with her crush for 7 years. She thought that he was not interested in her, and so she never dared to confess her love for him… until one day, out of the blue, he confessed his love for her. Other experiences of falling in involve chance encounters with childhood friends that led to movie-deserving romantic escapades, forbidden love situations, and cases where the person was convinced the lover was out of his or her league.\nTravel/Vacation\nThe terms “travel” and “vacation” may sound relatively frivolous in light of some of the other pleasures listed. That said, these were not just any kind of travel or vacation. The experiences described do seem rather extraordinary and life-changing. For example, talking about back-packing alone in France for a month, biking across the US with your best friend, or a long trip in South East Asia with your sibling that goes much better than planned.\nMDMA/LSD/Psilocybin\nIt is significant that out of 97 people four of them listed MDMA as one of the most pleasant experiences of their lives. This is salient given the relatively low base rate of usage of this drug (some surveys saying about 12%, which is probably not too far off from the base rate for Mechanical Turk workers using MDMA). This means that a high percentage of people who have tried MDMA will rate it as as one of their top experiences, thus implying that this drug produces experiences sampled from an absurdly long-tailed high-valence distribution. This underscores the civilizational significance of inventing a method to experience MDMA-like states of consciousness in a sustainable fashion (cf. Cooling It Down To Partying It Up).\nLikewise, the appearance of LSD and psilocybin is significant for the same reason. That said, measures of the significance of psychedelic experiences in psychedelic studies have shown that a high percentage of those who experience such states rate them among their top most meaningful experiences.\n\nGames of Chance Earnings\nFour participants mentioned earnings in games of chance. These cases involved earning amounts ranging from $2,000 all the way to a truck (which was immediately sold for money). What I find significant about this is that these experiences are at times ranked above “college graduation” and other classically meaningful life moments. This brings about a crazy utilitarian idea: if indeed education is as useless as many people in the intellectual elite are saying these days (ex. The Case Against Education) we might as well stop subsidizing higher education and instead make people participate in opt-out games of chance rigged in their favor. Substitute the Department of Education for a Department of Lucky Moments and give people meaningful life experiences at a fraction of the cost.\nKey Pains Surfaced\nKidney Stones and Migraines\nThe fact that these two medical issues were surfaced is, I think, extremely significant. This is because the lifetime incidence of kidney stones is about 10% (~13% for men, 7% for women) and for migraines it is around 13% (9% for men, 18% for women). In the survey we saw 9/93 people mentioning kidney stones, and the same number of people mentioning migraines. In other words, there is reason to believe that a large fraction of the people who have had either of these conditions will rate them as one of their top 3 most painful experiences. This fact alone underscores the massive utilitarian benefit that would come from being able to reduce the incidence of these two medical problems (luckily, we have some good research leads for addressing these problems at a large scale and in a cost-effective way: DMT for migraines, and frequency specific microcurrent for kidney stones)\nChildbirth\nChildbirth was mentioned 16 times, meaning that roughly 30% of women rate it as one of their three most painful experiences. While many people may look at this and simply nod their heads while saying “well, that’s just life”, here at Qualia Computing we do not condone that kind of defeatism and despicable lack of compassion. As it turns out, there are fascinating research leads to address the pain of childbirth. In particular, Jo Cameron, a 70 year old vegan schoolteacher, described her childbirth by saying that it “felt like a tickle”. She happens to have a mutation in the FAAH gene, which is usually in charge of breaking down anandamine (a neurotransmitter implicated in pain sensitivity and hedonic tone). As we’ve argued before, every child is a complete genetic experiment. In the future, we may as well try to at least make educated guesses about our children’s genes associated with low mood, anxiety, and pain sensitivity. In defiance of common sense (and the Bible) the future of childbirth could indeed be one devoid of intense pain.\nCar accidents\nCar accidents are extremely common (the base rate is so high that by the age of 40 or so we can almost assume that most people have been in at least one car accident, possibly multiple). More so, it seems likely that the health-damaging effects of car accidents, by their nature, follow a long-tail distribution. The high base rate of people mentioning car accidents in their top 3 most painful experiences underscores the importance of streamlining the process of transitioning into the era of self-driving cars.\nDeath of Father and Mother\nThis one does not come as a surprise, but what may stand out is the relatively higher frequency of mentions of “death of father” relative to “death of mother”. I think this is an artifact of the longevity difference between men and women. This is in agreement with the observed effect of age: about 15% vs. 25% of people under and over 40 had mentioned the death of their father, as opposed to a difference of 5% vs. 25% for death of mother. The reason why the father might be over-represented might simply be due to the lower life expectancy of men relative to women, and hence the father, on average, dying earlier. Thus, it being reported more frequently by a younger population.\nFuture Directions for Methodological Approaches:\nGraphical Models with Log-normal Priors\nAfter trying so many analytic angles on this dataset, what else is there to do? I think that as a proof of concept the analysis presented here is pretty well-rounded. If the Qualia Research Institute does well in the funding department, we can expect to extend this pilot study into a more comprehensive analysis of the pleasure-pain axis both in the general population and among populations who we know have endured or enjoyed extremes of valence (such as cluster headache sufferers or people who have tried 5-MeO-DMT).\nIn terms of statistical models, an adequate amount of data would enable us to start using probabilistic graphical models to determine the most likely long-tail distributions for all of the key parameters of pleasure and pain. For instance, we might want to develop a model similar to Item Response Theory where:\n\nEach participant samples experiences from a distribution.\nEach experience category generates samples with an empirically-determined base rate probability (e.g. chances that it happens in a given year), along with a latent hedonic value distribution.\nA “discrimination function” f(a, b) that gives the probability that experience of hedonic value a is rated as more pleasant (or painful) relative an experience with a hedonic value of b.\nAnd a generative model that estimates the likelihood of observing experiences as the top 3 (or top x) based on the parameters provided.\n\nIn brief, with an approach like the above we can potentially test the model fit for different distribution types of hedonic values per experience. In particular, we would be able to determine if the model fit is better if the experiences are drawn from a Gaussian vs. a log-normal (or other long-tailed) distribution.\nFinally, it might be fruitful to explicitly ask about whether participants have had certain experiences in order to calibrate their ratings, or even have them try a battery of standardized pain/pleasure-inducing stimuli (capsaicin extract, electroshocks, stings, massage, orgasm, etc.). We could also find the way to combine (a) the numerical ratings, (2) the ranking information, and (3) the “how many times better/worse” responses into a single model. And for best results, restrict the analysis to very recent experiences in order to reduce recall biases.\nClosing Thoughts on the Valence Scale\nTo summarize, I believe that the case for a long-tail account of the pleasure-pain axis is very defensible. This picture is supported by:\n\nThe long-tailed nature of neuronal cascades,\nThe phenomenological accounts of intense pleasure and pain (w/ phenomenological accounts of time and space expansion),\nThe way in which pain scales are constructed by those who developed them, and\nThe analytic results of the pilot study we conducted and presented here.\n\nIn turn, these results give rise to a new interpretation of psychophysical observations such as Weber’s Law. Namely, that Just Noticeable Differences may correspond to geometric differences in qualia, not only in sensory stimuli. That is, that the exponential nature of many cases where Weber’s Law appears are not merely the result of a logarithmic compression on the patterns of stimulation at the “surface” of our sense organs. Rather, the observations presented here suggest that these long-tails deal directly with the quality and intensity of conscious experience itself.\n\nAdditional Material\nDimensionality of Pleasure and Pain\nPain and pleasure may have an intrinsic “dimensionality”. Without elaborating, we will merely state that a generative definition for the “dimensionality of an experience” is the highest “virtual dimension” implied by the patterns of correlation between degrees of freedom. The hot pepper hands account I related suggested a kind of dimensional phase transition between 4/10 and 5/10 pain, where the patterns of a certain type (4/10 “sparks” of pain) would sometimes synchronize and generate a new type of higher-dimensional sensation (5/10 “solitons” of pain). To illustrate this idea further:\nFirst, in Hot Ones, Kumail Nanjiani describes several “leaps” in the spiciness of the wings, first at around 30,000 Scoville (“this new ghost that appears and only here starts to visit you”), and second at around 130k Scoville (paraphrasing: “like how NES to Super Nintendo felt like a big jump, but then Super Nintendo to N64 was an even bigger leap” – “Now we are playing in the big leagues motherfucker! This is fucking real!”). This hints at a change in dimensionality, too.\nAnd second, Shinzen Young‘s advice about dealing with pain involves not resisting it. He discusses how suffering is generated by the coordination between emotional, cognitive, and physical mental formations. If you can keep each of these mental formations happening independently and don’t allow their coordinated forms, you will avoid some of what makes the experience bad. This also suggests that higher-dimensional pain is qualitatively worse. Pragmatically, training to do this may make sense for the time being, since we are still some years away from sustainable pain-relief for everyone.\nMixed States\nWe have yet to discuss in detail how mixed states come into play for a log-normal valence scale. The Symmetry Theory of Valence would suggest that most states are neutral in nature and that only processes that reduce entropy locally such as neural annealing would produce highly-valenced states. In particular, we would see that high-valence states have very negative valence states nearby in configuration space; if you take a very good high-energy state and distort it in a random direction it will likely feel very unpleasant. The points in between would be mixed valence, which account for the majority of experiences in the wild.\nQualia Formalism\nQualia Formalism posits that for any given system that sustains experiences, there is a mathematical object such that the mathematical features of that object are isomorphic to the system’s phenomenology. In turn, Valence Structuralism posits that the hedonic nature of experience is encoded in a mathematical feature of this object. It is easier to find something real if you posit that it exists (rather than try to explain it away). We have suggested in the past that valence can be explained in terms of the mathematical property of symmetry, which cashes out in the form of neural dissonance and consonance.\nIn contrast to eliminativist, illusionist, and non-formal approaches to consciousness, at QRI we simply start by assuming that experience has a deep ground truth structure and we see where we can go from there. Although we currently lack the conceptual schemes, science, and vocabulary needed to talk in precise terms about different degrees of pleasure and pain (though we are trying!), that is not a good reason to dismiss the first-person claims and indirect pieces of evidence concerning the true amounts of various kinds of qualia bound in each moment of experience. If valence does turn out to intrinsically be a mathematical feature of our experience, then both its quality and quantity could very well be precisely measurable, conceptually crisp, and tractable. A scientific fact that, if proven, would certainly have important implications in ethics and meta-ethics.\n\nNotes:\n* It’s a shame that Coyote Peterson didn’t rate the pain produced by the various wings he ate on the Hot Ones show relative to insect stings, but that sort of data would be very helpful in establishing a universal valence scale. More generally, stunt-man personalities like the L.A. Beast who subject themselves to extremes of negative valence for Internet points might be an untapped gold mine for experience deference data (e.g. How does eating the most bitter substance known compare with the bullet ant glove? Asking this guy might be the only way to find out, without creating more casualties).\n**Base rate of mentions of worst experiences:\n[('Father death', 19), ('Childbirth', 16), ('Grandmother death', 13), ('Mother death', 11), ('Car accident', 9), ('Kidney stone', 9), ('Migraine', 9), ('Romantic breakup', 9), ('Broken arm', 6), ('Broken leg', 6), ('Work failure', 6), ('Divorce', 5), ('Pet death', 5), ('Broken foot', 4), ('Broken ankle', 4), ('Broken hand', 4), ('Unspecified', 4), ('Friend death', 4), ('Sister death', 4), ('Skin burns', 3), ('Skin cut needing stitches', 3), ('Financial ruin', 3), ('Property loss', 3), ('Sprained ankle', 3), ('Gallstones', 3), ('Family breakup', 3), ('Divorce of parents', 3), ('C-section recovery', 3), ('Love failure', 2), ('Broken finger', 2), ('Unspecified fracture', 2), ('Broken ribs', 2), ('Unspecified family death', 2), ('Broken collarbone', 2), ('Grandfather death', 2), ('Unspecified illness', 2), ('Period pain', 2), ('Being cheated', 2), ('Financial loss', 2), ('Broken tooth', 2), ('Cousin death', 2), ('Relative with cancer', 2), ('Cluster headache', 2), ('Unspecified leg problem', 2), ('Root canal', 2), ('Back pain', 2), ('Broken nose', 2), ('Aunt death', 2), ('Wisdom teeth', 2), ('Cancer (eye)', 1), ('Appendix operation', 1), ('Dislocated elbow', 1), ('Concussion', 1), ('Mono', 1), ('Sexual assault', 1), ('Kidney infection', 1), ('Hemorrhoids', 1), ('Tattoo', 1), ('Unspecified kidney problem', 1), ('Unspecified lung problem', 1), ('Unspecified cancer', 1), ('Unspecified childhood sickness', 1), ('Broken jaw', 1), ('Broken elbow', 1), ('Thrown out back', 1), ('Lost sentimental item', 1), ('Abortion', 1), ('Ruptured kidney', 1), ('Big fall', 1), ('Torn knee', 1), ('Finger hit by hammer', 1), ('Injured thumb', 1), ('Brother in law death', 1), ('Knocked teeth', 1), ('Unspecified death', 1), ('Ripping off fingernail', 1), ('Personal anger', 1), ('Wrist pain', 1), ('Getting the wind knocked out', 1), ('Blown knee', 1), ('Burst appendix', 1), ('Tooth abscess', 1), ('Tendinitis', 1), ('Altruistic frustration', 1), ('Leg operation', 1), ('Gallbladder infection', 1), ('Broken wrist', 1), ('Stomach flu', 1), ('Running away from family', 1), ('Child beating', 1), ('Sinus infection', 1), ('Broken thumb', 1), ('Family abuse', 1), ('Miscarriage', 1), ('Tooth extraction', 1), ('Feeling like your soul is lost', 1), ('Homelessness', 1), ('Losing your religion', 1), ('Losing bike', 1), ('Family member in prison', 1), ('Crohn s disease', 1), ('Irritable bowel syndrome', 1), ('Family injured', 1), ('Unspecified chronic disease', 1), ('Fibromyalgia', 1), ('Blood clot in toe', 1), ('Infected c-section', 1), ('Suicide of lover', 1), ('Dental extraction', 1), ('Unspecified partner abuse', 1), ('Infertility', 1), ('Father in law death', 1), ('Broken neck', 1), ('Scratched cornea', 1), ('Swollen lymph nodes', 1), ('Sun burns', 1), ('Tooth ache', 1), ('Lost custody of children', 1), ('Unspecified accident', 1), ('Bike accident', 1), ('Broken hip', 1), ('Not being loved by partner', 1), ('Dog bite', 1), ('Broken skull', 1)]\nBase rate of mentions of best experiences:\n[('Falling in love', 42), ('Children born', 41), ('Marriage', 21), ('Sex', 19), ('College graduation', 13), ('Orgasm', 11), ('Alcohol', 8), ('Vacation', 6), ('Getting job', 6), ('Personal favorite sports win', 6), ('Nature scene', 5), ('Owning home', 5), ('Sports win', 4), ('Graduating highschool', 4), ('MDMA', 4), ('Getting paid for the first time', 4), ('Amusement park', 4), ('Game of chance earning', 4), ('Job achievement', 4), ('Getting engaged', 4), ('Cannabis', 3), ('Eating favorite food', 3), ('Unexpected gift', 3), ('Moving to a better location', 3), ('Travel', 3), ('Divorce', 2), ('Gifting car', 2), ('Giving to charity', 2), ('LSD', 2), ('Won contest', 2), ('Friend reunion', 2), ('Winning bike', 2), ('Kiss', 2), ('Pet ownership', 2), ('Children', 1), ('First air trip', 1), ('First kiss', 1), ('Public performance', 1), ('Hugs', 1), ('Unspecified', 1), ('Recovering from unspecified kidney problem', 1), ('College party', 1), ('Graduate school start', 1), ('Financial success', 1), ('Dinner with loved one', 1), ('Feeling supported', 1), ('Children graduates from college', 1), ('Family event', 1), ('Participating in TV show', 1), ('Psychedelic mushrooms', 1), ('Opiates', 1), ('Having own place', 1), ('Making music', 1), ('Becoming engaged', 1), ('Theater', 1), ('Extreme sport', 1), ('Armed forces graduation', 1), ('Birthday', 1), ('Positive pregnancy test', 1), ('Feeling that God exists', 1), ('Belief that Hell does not exist', 1), ('Getting car', 1), ('Academic achievement', 1), ('Helping others', 1), ('Meeting soulmate', 1), ('Daughter back home', 1), ('Winning custody of children', 1), ('Friend stops drinking', 1), ('Masturbation', 1), ('Friend not dead after all', 1), ('Child learns to walk', 1), ('Attending wedding of loved one', 1), ('Children safe after dangerous situation', 1), ('Unspecified good news', 1), ('Met personal idol', 1), ('Child learns to talk', 1), ('Children good at school', 1)]\nFor clarity – “Personal favorite sports win” means that the respondent was a participant in the sport as opposed to a spectator (which was labeled as “Sports win”). The difference between “Sex” and “Orgasm” is that Sex refers to the entire act including foreplay and cuddles whereas Orgasm refers to the specific moment of climax. For some reason people would either mention one or the other, and emphasize very different aspects of the experience (e.g. intimacy vs. physical sensation) so I decided to label them differently.\n*** It is possible that some fine-tuning of parameters could give rise to long-tail ratios even with a normal distribution (especially if the mean is, say, a negative value and the standard deviation is very wide). But in the general case a normal distribution will have a fairly narrow range for the ratios of the “top value divided by the second top value”. So at least as a general qualitative argument, I think, the simulations do suggest a long-tailed nature for the reported hedonic values.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/10/logarithmic-scales-of-pleasure-and-pain-rating-ranking-and-comparing-peak-experiences-suggest-the-existence-of-long-tails-for-bliss-and-suffering/", "title": "Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain: Rating, Ranking, and Comparing Peak Experiences Suggest the Existence of Long Tails for Bliss and Suffering", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-08-11T00:19:06+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=12", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "3ce162817c5cafc90adfc48d0a1f718e", "summary": []}
{"text": "Using Ibogaine to Create Friendlier Opioids\n\nby Quintin Frerichs\nChronic Pain is a Massive, Debilitating Problem\n“A new study by the CDC revealed that 50 million Americans (just under 20% of the age-adjusted adult population) suffered from chronic pain, which was defined as “pain on most days or every day in the past 6 months.” Nearly 20 million (about 7.5%) experienced high-impact chronic pain, defined as “limiting life or work activities on most days or every day in the past 6 months.”\n– Who Is Hurting? The Prevalence Of Chronic Pain In America\nUsing IHME’s GBD visualization tool, about 5% of total DALYs come from conditions associated with chronic pain (back pain, neck pain and self-harm), not to mention the implications pain has in a variety of other conditions, from osteoporosis to cancer. \nThe Most Effective Tool for Pain Management Carries its Own Significant Burdens\nOpioids  are highly effective as analgesics for managing chronic and acute pain, and are the most widely used pain treatment[1]. However, consistent use of opioids results in tolerance, dependence, withdrawal and overdose, which claimed the lives of 47,600 people in 2017[2]. Furthermore, the CDC estimates the total economic burden of prescription opioid misuse in the US is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of health care, lost productivity, addiction treatment, and criminal justice involvement.[4]\nFinding a solution for opioids’ dark side would help millions enjoy life, reduce the global health burden by no less than 5%, avoid 10s of thousands of future deaths, and recover billions in lost productivity. \nA solution may be to combine variable doses of Ibogaine, the active compound found in the Tabernanthe iboga shrub with safer classes of opioids. \nThe proliferation of opioids (specifically, full mu-opioid agonists) has this laundry list of problems: tolerance, addiction, withdrawal, overdose and euphoria (if one chooses to see it as a negative side-effect). In an effort to wean off of opioids, several groups have sought to attack these symptoms. Non-opioid therapeutics include cannabidiol (CBD) and CA-008, a TRPV-1 agonist which acts on nociceptive c-fibers in the peripheral nervous system similarly to capsaicin. These tend to be less habit-forming than opioids (attributed to their lower affinity for nuclei in the mesolimbic system), but also less effective at offering relief from intense neuropathic pain[4]. Other attempts to tame opioids have been made, most of them having the reduction of pleasure as the main target. CARA Therapeutics has created a kappa-opioid agonist which acts selectively on receptors in the peripheral nervous system to “produce little to no CNS-mediated side effects that one sees with traditional CNS-acting mu opioids like nausea/vomiting, sedation, respiratory depression, abuse, addiction or euphoria”. NKTR-181, a novel full mu-opioid agonist, is more direct: “NKTR-181, a first-in-class opioid analgesic, is a new chemical entity (NCE) that is the first full mu-opioid agonist molecule designed to provide potent pain relief without the high levels of euphoria that can lead to abuse and addiction with standard opioids”. As it turns out, addiction and pleasure have a complex relationship; one is not reducible to the other[5]. Euphoria-inducing psychedelic drugs and the jhana states of meditative absorption seem to lack the addictive profile of opioids. Pleasure and habit become decoupled over time in the path of opioid addiction as well, one fading with the other stubbornly immovable. If we can have opioids that forego tolerance, addiction, withdrawal and overdose, but keep the euphoria, wouldn’t that be better? \nCapsaicin (source)\nIbogaine has a history of being used for the treatment of opioid addiction, but it may also have interesting properties for producing safer opioids as well. While at high doses (1g+) it creates intense psychedelic effects, it also has interesting properties at both lower doses of 500-600mg and at ‘microdoses’ of around 50mg. Ibogaine is illegal in many countries, but unregulated in Mexico, legal in Brazil, Gabon, and Costa Rica, and on the prescription drug list in New Zealand and Canada. For a more in-depth review of the history of Ibogaine and its use in treatment, read this review on Pysmposia. \nIn this case study, a patient who had been a long-term opioid user and recently transitioned to methadone (a replacement for harder opioids like heroin, but maintaining the full agonist mu-opioid method of action) was taken off methadone without withdrawal using increasing doses of Ibogaine (150mg, 300mg, 400mg, 500mg, 600mg). As the Ibogaine dose was increased, the methadone was halved each time. We could allow opioid users to substantially decrease their opioid intake without withdrawal, while continuing to use opioids for pain management. After a few applications at the 100-600mg level, users could be maintaining their usage at ¼ of their original intake. Then they could utilize “dirty maintenance”: taking 25-50mg of Ibogaine daily while using a much lower amount of the opioid they typically use. Microdosing ibogaine alone is also potentially mood-enhancing, and some former opioid users have employed “clean maintenance” (i.e. just Ibogaine), to reduce post-acute-withdrawal syndrome (PAWS).\nThe reason these solutions work is because Ibogaine acts as an ‘anti-tolerance’ drug. It potentiates the effects of opioids and prevents patterns of tolerance and dependence from forming at the neurological level. When combined with full mu-opioid agonists, even in lower doses, this can pose a risk since the dose required to overdose could be more unpredictable with Ibogaine. A ‘best of both worlds’ solution would be to continue microdosing Ibogaine in conjunction with a partial mu-opioid agonist. Partial mu-opioid agonists prevent overdose by creating an upper-bound on activity at the opioid receptor and preventing the respiratory depression that causes death in full agonists.\nFull vs. partial agonists (source)\nWhile existing partial mu-opioid agonists, such as the drug combo of buprenorphine and naloxone are used in opioid replacement therapy settings, they too lack euphoria-producing properties. With this new class of analgesics, patients could choose when to start, stop, and for how long to take their pain medication without fear, along with a depression-preventing hedonic enhancement. For more, see: On Hitting the Actual Target of Hedonic Tone.\nA well-known example of a partial mu-opioid agonist is 7-hydroxymitragynine, the active compound in kratom. Brazil is the only country to not prohibitively schedule either kratom or Ibogaine, and so might be an option for conducting research into this new form of non-tolerance-inducing opioid mixture. In the United States, research is being done at DemeRX for approving Ibogaine through the FDA IND process for the detoxification of people afflicted with opioid addiction. Their success would also open the door to further innovation in Ibogaine-assisted pain treatments in the US.\nRisks of Ibogaine\nUnfortunately, Ibogaine has a harsher risk profile than most psychedelics, and has been associated with about 30 deaths due to cardiac complications. However, many researchers who have worked with Ibogaine for decades believe that these incidents can be minimized or even eliminated by standard medical practices like employing EKG screenings. Medical screenings should not only assess current heart health, but also in-system drugs, which can be potentiated by Ibogaine use, and can lead to unexpected overdose. In a population of drug users to be treated, higher incidences of poor heart health and the presence of other drugs likely contributed to a significant number of the cases of death recorded.\nMash et al. 2018 reviewed 191 cases of ibogaine therapy (all at Dr. Mash’s clinic on Saint Kitts) and found that there were no cases of cardiac-related death at doses used for interrupting addiction. Furthermore, Clear Sky Recovery has administered 1000s of Ibogaine sessions without a single fatality.\nIboga rescheduling in the US may be far off, but its potential shouldn’t be underestimated. As Hamilton Morris notes, Ibogaine is “alien technology”, with the potential to help us humans solve some of our greatest medical mysteries. For now, it’s enough to think that it might be able to a create stable, long-term pain medication with no risk of respiratory depression, tolerance, and minimal withdrawal. Along with risk-free… risk tolerant euphoria. Whether that sustainable euphoria will be available to all, remains to be seen.\n\n[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/chronic-pain-medication-decisions/art-20360371\n[2] https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/index.html\n[3] https://www.moveforwardpt.com/resources/detail/7-staggering-statistics-about-america-s-opioid-epi\n[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1920543/\n[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782756/\nFeatured image source: What Is Iboga?", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/06/using-ibogaine-to-create-friendlier-opioids/", "title": "Using Ibogaine to Create Friendlier Opioids", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-08-06T20:39:05+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=12", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "01b0e69420f76aaae50ac2b64ce93547", "summary": []}
{"text": "Treating Cluster Headaches Using N,N-DMT and Other Tryptamines\n\nby Quintin Frerichs\nTo extend this recent EA Forum Post, I wanted to share the results of Qualia Research Institute’s research into using tryptamines to abort and prevent cluster headaches. While the quotes and statistics contained here can provide some notion of the pain experienced by cluster headache sufferers, I think it is truly unimaginable. This report contains specific interventions to be pursued in both a philanthropic and for-profit business capacity. While for-profit options are beyond our scope, those interested in supporting philanthropic interventions should consider donating to ClusterBusters (the most important nonprofit dedicated to researching treatments for cluster headaches), or QRI (which does foundational research on ways to reduce intense suffering). \nMission: Instantly and safely abort cluster headaches and treat migraines, the #2 and #10 (respectively) most painful medical conditions according to NHS. Emphasis is placed on chronic cluster headaches, which account for as much as 80% of all clusters and currently lack an effective treatment option. \n\n \nI. Problem:\n \n“Even child birth is 1/10th the pain of a cluster headache, seriously this name needs to change… call it ultra super migraine.” (source)\n\nA back of the envelope calculation indicates there are roughly 14 thousand people enduring a cluster headache right now.[1]\n14.2% of US adults 18 or older reported having migraine or severe headache in the previous 3 months in the 2012 NHIS. The overall age-adjusted 3-month prevalence of migraine in females was 19.1% and in males 9.0%, but varied substantially depending on age. (source)\nCurrent treatments are either ineffective, costly, unsafe, or some combination of the three. The most effective treatments available for cluster headaches include oxygen, which requires the patient to carry an oxygen tank with them at all times, and triptans, which can be used a maximum of three times daily (an issue for chronic sufferers especially) and have side effects from pain to heart attack and stroke. The most effective treatments for migraines include triptans and opioids (which have high addiction potential). Emgality, a more promising treatment for episodic cluster headaches, has recently entered the market, but its long-term risk profile and efficacy have not yet been established. \nBob Wold founded “Cluster Busters” in 2002 with the explicit purpose of trying to get psychedelics to be prescription medication (see his lecture Treating Cluster Headaches with Psychedelics). He tried over 75 different prescription medications and was at the end of the rope when he found psychedelics could be helpful:\n\n\n\n\nAs noted in this Qualia Computing article, the survey surfaced that about 83% of all cluster headaches are experienced by 20% of the sufferers, most of which are classified as ‘chronic’. No existing medication has been approved for use to treat chronic cluster headaches. Vaporizing DMT could be the first such treatment, offering instant relief for cluster headaches as often as they arise in a (potentially large) percentage of sufferers.\n\n\n \nII. Solution:\n“One of the most incredible experiences of my life was when I first aborted a CH [cluster headache] with DMT. That feeling of going from a place of excruciating pain…and feeling the pain fizzle away and die in a matter of seconds” (source)\nIt is known by a majority of cluster headache sufferers that psychedelics can be highly effective treatments. Due to the legal status of psychedelics, no randomized controlled trial (RCT) has been conducted, but analysis has been done on online forum responses and anonymous surveys, and interviews have been recorded. Evidence from these reports points to a number of important factors: tryptamines (the class of psychedelics which includes compounds like N,N-DMT and psilocybin, the active chemical in ‘magic mushrooms’) seem especially effective, sub-psychoactive and non-psychedelic doses can be therapeutic, and psychedelics can also decrease the frequency of headaches on long time horizons. While smoking/vaporizing is the fastest method of administration available, information from a private correspondence suggests that the FDA may be averse to approving inhalants. Intramuscular administration, utilizing Rick Strassman’s protocol, could be an alternative that would achieve rapid relief without the use of an inhalation device[2]. Since the pain being experienced is so severe, having a faster method of administration is critical. \nFrom the relevant academic literature:\n\n“The indoleamine hallucinogens, psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide, and lysergic acid amide, were comparable to or more efficacious than most conventional medications. These agents were also perceived to shorten/abort a cluster period and bring chronic cluster headache into remission more so than conventional medications.” (source)\n“Also, for DMT, it was suggested that singular or infrequent dosage could have potential long-term beneficial effects on headache disorders: ‘Even a single dose, or perhaps a couple, can be a lifelong benefit.’” (source)\n“Of interest, an open-label study found that similar compounds (2-bromo-LSD) without psychedelic effect were promising for this purpose” (source)\n\nFrom online surveys: \n\nA survey of members of online cluster headache forums revealed that 68% of respondents who used tryptamines had a 4 or 5 out of 5 relief. 5 indicates “completely eliminated the cluster headaches”. \nThis survey again suggests that the main barrier to use is lack of access and hallucinogenic effects. As we found in an interview with an anonymous sufferer (see below), hallucinogenic effects may be avoidable. \n\nDifficulty getting. 0 – Extremely easy to acquire, 5 – Nearly impossible to acquire\nLegal risk. 0 – Not concerned at all, 5 – Extremely concerned\nSide effects. 0 – Not concerned at all, 5 – Extremely concerned\nFrom interviews with cluster headache sufferers who have tried N,N-DMT:\n\n“If I’m starting to experience a CH and I vaporize as little as 3mgs [of DMT, sub psychoactive] I feel the pain subside almost completely within 3 to 5 seconds, and it doesn’t come back for a few days.” – (full document; also: another interview with an anonymous cluster headache sufferer)\n\n\nIII. Philanthropic Opportunities\nDue to the Schedule I status of psychedelics in the United States, pursuing this intervention in the US will not be feasible for a number of years (see Section IV for more information on pursuing FDA approval for DMT for cluster headaches/migraines). \nA possible solution would be to create an online education campaign publicizing the results of this report to cluster headache sufferers, designated as ‘information-only’, and pursuing the use of psychedelics to treat cluster headaches and migraines in countries where tryptamines are legal, including Brazil, Jamaica and the Netherlands. In addition, given the gravity of the disorder, it could be cost-effective to fly patients to such countries for months at a time.\nWhile we believe that traditional metrics such as the QALY do not accurately capture the suffering caused by a cluster headache (see upcoming post on the true pain/pleasure scale), a rough QALY calculation would be as follows (focusing on chronic cluster headache sufferers rather than average, since they compromise up to 83% of total headaches[3]):\n\nFacebook AD campaign:\n\nAn estimated 370,000 Americans suffer from cluster headaches, 68% of whom are on Facebook[4] (=251,000). About 15% of these suffer from chronic cluster headaches (=37,740). According to Sprout Social, the average estimated cost per click of an ad campaign is $1.72. Assuming 1/10 who click are cluster headache sufferers, to reach all chronic sufferers would take (ballpark) $650,000.\nAssuming about 30% of those who view the ad will pursue the treatment (rough estimate-those who put 2 or less on survey results for questions of legality, difficulty to acquire etc.) and that in 68% of cases it cured or nearly cured their clusters (based on survey results), then the resulting increase in QALYs would be (37,740 people * 0.3 * 0.68) * [0.760 (QALY coefficient) * 1 QALY – ( -0.429 (QALY coefficient)* (0.47QALY)) [5]] = $650,000/7, 404QALY = $87.70 per QALY.  \nThese ads could also be targeted to users in countries where psilocybin and DMT are legal for use recreationally, increasing conversion rate. Further targeting could be done on Facebook groups (and other social media groups) which are associated with cluster headache treatment. \n\n\n\n\nIV. For-profit Opportunities \nThe recent emergence of psychedelics in for-profit business settings also affords the opportunity for entrepreneurs to seek legal rescheduling of N,N-DMT in the US for the purpose of treating cluster headaches and/or migraines. Below is an outline of the process of navigating the FDA IND process, which could result in a change in legal status: \nMarket Size:\n‘Orphan disease’ status:  \nThere are two main classifications of cluster headaches, chronic and episodic. Episodic cluster headaches are characterized by periods of headaches (up to 8 times per day) of a week to a full year, which remit for periods from a month up to a year. Chronic cluster headaches, on the other hand, either last for longer than a year or have remittance periods of less than a month[6]. A meta-analysis from the NIH estimates that cluster headaches affect 124/100,000 in the U.S., meaning an estimated 370,000 people suffer from cluster headaches a year[7]. Of these, about 15%, or 60,000, suffer from chronic cluster headaches.\nThe FDA grants ‘orphan disease’ status to diseases which affect fewer than 200,000 persons in the U.S per year, and offers incentives to those pursuing treatments through the FDA’s IND process for such diseases, such as longer periods of exclusivity (monopoly on drug manufacture and sale) for the treatment after approval.  \n\nThe global market for migraine drugs (which encompasses cluster headache drugs) in 2017 was $1.7 billion.\n\nHealthcare and lost productivity costs associated with migraine are estimated to be as high as $36 billion annually in the U.S. Current estimates of cluster headaches’ annual cost in the U.S. is ~$3.5 billion.\n\n\nShare of market\n\n5 years after launch (with FDA approval, with a 5-year monopoly) – serve 20% of chronic migraine sufferers (800,000), serve 20% of cluster headache sufferers (40,000)\n\nPlatform’s average annual revenue per patient (migraines): $452/patient/year\n\nTryptapens – $20\n1g of DMT is ~$100, approximately 50 doses (although an anecdote indicate 3mg may be sufficient). Compare to triptans, at ~$115 per 9 doses. Assuming 20% markup: \n\nChronic migraines at 20mg doses: $120/g*0.02g/dose*15 doses/month *12 months = $432/patient/year.\n\n\n\n\nPlatform’s average annual revenue per patient (cluster headache): $344/patient/year-low estimate, $6932/patient/year – high estimate\n\nTryptapen – $20\nThere is significant variance in frequency of cluster headaches: estimates range from [$120/g*0.02g/dose*30 doses/month *3 months = $324, $120/g*0.02g/dose*120 doses/month*12 months = $6912/patient/year].\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnnual revenue, 5 years after launch: $13.6M [low cluster headache estimate] – $344M [high cluster headache estimate]\n Annual revenue, 5 years after launch (migraines): $344M \n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe 5-year (or more, if ‘orphan disease’ status is gained) monopoly provided by the FDA would allow for further R&D, and as-yet undetermined projects. Some promising directions:\n\nDepression treatment ($13.7B market) \nDMT may be beneficial for tobacco cessation ($7.0B market). \n\nAyahuasca shows significant evidence for efficacy in treating addiction. \nThere is anecdotal evidence that vaporized DMT is also effective in this space.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhy now?\n\nFDA on track to approve MDMA therapy in 2021, psilocybin therapy in 2022\n\nFDA approval will catalyze a large increase in demand for psychedelic services\nThere is sufficient evidence to attempt bringing DMT for headaches through the FDA process as it becomes increasingly open to psychedelic interventions\n\n\nReasons to start before FDA approval of MDMA and psilocybin:\n\nA “psychedelic renaissance” is underway: funding for psychedelic research has skyrocketed, and multiple psychedelic decriminalization initiatives (1, 2) have recently passed. Riding the current wave of activist and public support is advantageous to our efforts. \nMore time to build relationship with the FDA (important for seeking DMT clearance)\nMore time to build relationships with organizations currently seeking FDA approval for therapeutic uses of psychedelics (MAPS & Compass Pathways)\n\n\n\n\nChallenges: \nRegulatory:\n\nTaking on the FDA IND process can be challenging and high risk from an investment standpoint. The average cost of successfully completing Phase 1-3 trials (after which the drug can be rescheduled and approved for medical use) is $100m, requires about 9-11 years and has a 6.7% success rate (private correspondence). \n\nThe Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has recently raised $26.7M for Phase 3 MDMA trials alone[8]. Total, MAPS has spent in the ballpark of $30M. If Phase 3 trials demonstrate statistically-significant results, MDMA could be selectively rescheduled for use in therapeutic settings, but would require subsequent Phase 4 trials. \n\n\nThe FDA is risk-averse and has incurred backlash from their last notable rescheduling of fentanyl in 1985[9]. Convincing the FDA to pursue rescheduling for treatment of a relatively rare disease with other available medications will likely be difficult. \nThe success or failure of MAPS in receiving approval for MDMA will be crucial for defining the regulatory landscape for other psychedelics. Should they fail, bringing another similar substance through the process may prove much more difficult. \n\nCompetition: \n\nAs discussed in Section I, most available migraine and cluster headache drugs are ineffective, expensive, and/or have heavy risk profiles. Emgality, a new migraine drug approved last month, has received FDA ‘breakthrough therapy’ status for its ability to decrease the frequency of episodic cluster headaches and has shown promise as a palliative for migraines as well[10]. Emgality has not been approved for use in treating chronic cluster headaches, however, and does not achieve the same rapidity of administration as the DMT vape pen (see Section III). Thus, our solution is still critical for relieving symptoms instantly, and maintains the advantage of being eligible to treat chronic cluster headaches, an ‘orphan disease’. \n\nBusiness model: \n\nWe would design studies to fulfill the three-step FDA drug review process:\n\nPhase 1 studies (typically involve 20 to 80 people).\nPhase 2 studies (typically involve a few dozen to about 300 people).\nPhase 3 studies (typically involve several hundred to about 3,000 people).\n\n\n\n\nUse of Funds\n\nExpenses for research and operations staff\n\nTechnicians \nAnalysis consultants\nResearchers with clinical experience\nLegal counsel (paperwork)\n\n\nPhase 1 FDA trial (our connections to expertise in the field would reduce the cost compared to average Phase 1 trials)\n\nData on Cost of Trials\nThe following information is from the MDMA/PTSD Trials led by MAPS. However, the treatment for PTSD involves: multiple therapy sessions and an MDMA-trained psychotherapist. Therapy sessions also last 6-8 hours. Presumably, some of these costs would not apply to a DMT/CH trial, so we expect trials for DMT/CH to be cheaper than the MDMA/PTSD Trials.\nHowever, cluster headaches are not well suited to the therapeutic environment that is used to treat mental health conditions (they arise unpredictably, and require instant relief). This means there are likely significant cost-saving opportunities in the experimental design protocol.  \nSummary of costs for MAPS IND Process:\n\n\n[1] Assume a world population of 7.7 billion people, and 53 out of 100,000 yearly prevalence suffering from this. Going by public health records, we see that the average number of cluster headache attacks that a sufferer experiences is about 30 a year (with a huge variance, where some people get only about 5 a year and some get them multiple times a day). Attacks last on average 1 hour (but range from 20 minutes to 3 hours). Hence, the number of people currently experiencing a CH is: 0.00053*7,700,000,000*(30/(24*365)) = 13,976.03 ~= 14 thousand\n[2] Perspectives on DMT Research\n[3] According to survey\n[4] https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1461718327429941\n[5]  For chronic sufferers, an average of between 1-8 CH per day, 1-4 hours per CH, for ~0.47 years/year having CH\n[6] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cluster-headache/symptoms-causes/syc-20352080\n[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18422717\n[8] https://maps.org/research/mdma/ptsd/phase3/timeline\n[9] https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/schedules/orangebook/orangebook.pdf\n[10] https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release-details/fda-approves-emgalityr-galcanezumab-gnlm-first-and-only", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/05/treating-cluster-headaches-using-nn-dmt-and-other-tryptamines/", "title": "Treating Cluster Headaches Using N,N-DMT and Other Tryptamines", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-08-05T23:18:23+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=12", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0407f9650dd5e91b14cb272fc626ebd9", "summary": []}
{"text": "Realms as Interpretive Lenses\n\nHow people in different (Buddhist) realms interpret pain:\n1) Heavenly Realm / God Realm: Pain is impermanent. It’s a trick of the mind. A method to help us wake up and realize who we truly are. [said while peacefully unaware of actual pain due to the formidable amounts of pleasure and distractions on hand]\n2) Asura Realm / Titan Realm: Pain is a tool to succeed. It is a challenge to be overcome at a personal level, and a weapon to be used against one’s enemies. If I didn’t suffer intensely for the things that I achieved, would they mean anything? [said while experiencing intense cravings for social recognition and the need to feel superbly significant] \n3) Animal Realm: Pain is the separation from my pleasures of the day to day. My morning coffee, interrupted by a call. My conversations with a friend, when someone’s bad luck is brought up. The annoying commercials in-between the chunks of TV I like. [said while snoozing the alarm for the 4th time in a row] \n4) Hell Realm: Pain is reality in and of itself. Life is suffering. And if it isn’t at the moment, that’s just temporary good luck. Happiness is merely the absence of suffering; happiness is therefore as good as nonexistence. [said while waiting in the ER while experiencing a kidney stone] \n5) Hungry Ghost Realm: Pain is realizing that only 10 out of the 15 people who RSVP’ed to my party showed up. It is the feeling of noticing that the Pringles are almost gone. The feeling that you get when you make out with someone and only get to 2nd base when you could have gotten to 3rd or 4th. [said while scrolling Reddit for the 3rd hour in a row].\n6) Human Realm: Pain is a healthy signaling mechanism. When you look at it scientifically, it is just a negative reinforcement signal that propagates throughout your nervous system in order to prevent the chain of causes that led to the current state. It’s nothing to worry about, just as you shouldn’t worry about the weather or the shape of the solar system. [said while dispassionately reading a neuroscience textbook].\n\nSee also: Traps of the God Realm and The Penfield Mood Organ\nPicture by Utheraptor", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/03/realms-as-interpretive-lenses/", "title": "Realms as Interpretive Lenses", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-08-04T01:03:04+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=12", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6803017bed67ddb51c1606923bd42a77", "summary": []}
{"text": "Cluster Headache Frequency Follows a Long-Tail Distribution\n\n[Warning: Disturbing content ahead. Why talk about it? This is an ethically very serious topic and it deserves more attention. But please beware that thinking about this might be bad for one’s mental health.]\n\nOne of the key insights that shows why Effective Altruism is so important is that the positive effect on the world that results from donating to various charities follows a long-tail distribution:\nCost-effectiveness of health interventions as found in the Disease Controls Priorities Project 2. See “The moral imperative towards cost-effectiveness in global health” by Toby Ord for more explanation. [Taken from: The world’s biggest problems and why they’re not what first comes to mind]\nIt is for this, among other, reasons why focusing on the best interventions really pays off. Where else can we expect long-tails to appear?\n\nIn Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free Necklace we discussed how introducing a new metric into the Effective Altruist ecosystem could shed light on neglected cost-effective interventions. We presented the Hell-Index:\nA country’s Hell-Index could be defined as the yearly total of people-seconds in pain and suffering that are at or above 20 in the McGill Pain Index (or equivalent)*. This index captures the intuition that intense suffering can be in some ways qualitatively different and more serious than lesser suffering in a way that isn’t really captured by a linear pain scale.\nIn a future article we will discuss how the quality of suffering as a function of different medical and psychological conditions very likely follows a long-tail distribution. That is, some conditions such as Cluster Headaches (which affect about 1 in 1000 people worldwide) produce pain that is orders of magnitude worse than the pain experienced in other kinds of medical conditions, such as migraines (which are themselves already described as orders of magnitude worse than tension headaches). In other words, a 0-10 pain-scale is better thought of as a logarithmic compression of the true levels of pain rather than a linear scale. So concentrating on the worst conditions could really pay off for reducing suffering in bulk amounts.\nNow: the long-tailed nature of suffering may extend beyond the quality of suffering, and show up also in its quantity. That is, the frequency with which people experience episodes of intense suffering, even among those who experience the same kind of suffering, is unlikely to be normally distributed.\nIntuitively, one may think that how much suffering people endure on a given year follows a normal distribution. This intuition says that if the median number of hell-seconds people endure in a year is, say, 1,000, then people who are at the 90% percentile of hell-seconds experienced per year will be experiencing something like 1,500 or at most 2,000. If suffering follows a long-tail distribution, in reality the 90% percentile might be experiencing something more akin to 10,000 hell-seconds per year, the 99% percentile something akin to 100,000, and the 99.9% something akin to 1,000,000. If true, such a heavy skew of the distribution would suggest that we should concentrate our energies on addressing the problems of the people who are unlucky to be on the upper ranges, rather than be overly concerned with “the typical person”*.\nUnfortunately, I come to share the bad news that suffering probably follows a very long-tail distribution:\nIt is generally acknowledged that Cluster Headaches are some of the most painful experiences that people endure. Having a single Cluster Headache, lasting anywhere between 15 minutes to 4 hours, is already an ethically unacceptable situation that should never happen to begin with. It is disheartening to know that 1 in 1,000 people experience such extreme pain. But the truth of the matter is yet much worse than we intuitively think…\nWe recently analyzed a survey** of Cluster Headache patients that was conducted with the intention of determining the reasons why sufferers do or do not use psychedelics to relieve their pain. As it turns out, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT all get rid of Cluster Headaches in a majority of sufferers. Given the safety profile of these agents, it is insane to think that there are millions of people suffering needlessly from this condition who could be nearly-instantly cured with something as simple as growing and eating some magic mushrooms.\nWe will get back to this in more depth in later articles, but for the time being what we want to highlight is the responses to the question “About how many cluster headaches do you get in a typical year?”.\nAfter cleaning the data***, we end up with 270 participants. We then ranked the values from smallest to largest, and visualize them:\n\nHonestly I am a bit suspicious of the very top numbers (I do not know how you can fit 25,000 Cluster Headaches in a year, so perhaps the participant interpreted the question as “lifetime number of Cluster Headaches”). So, just to be safe, we cut the top 20 highest numbers and visualize the bottom 250 values:\n\nThis is clearly a long-tail distribution. And since many people online do claim to have 3 or more Cluster Headaches a day, I am inclined to believe this curve. To zoom in on some parts of the distribution, here are some additional histograms that focus on the lower percentiles:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIf we take the logarithm of the number of yearly Cluster Headaches, the distribution looks remarkably normal:\nNatural log of the responses to the question “About how many cluster headaches do you get in a typical year?”\nUsing a Shapiro-Wilk normalcy test does not rule out a Gaussian distribution (p >0.05). Although this in no way shows that that the distribution is log-normal (which would require more specialized statistical analysis), it is at least suggestive of it.\nI should also point out that the distribution is really close to the 80/20 Pareto principle – we see that the top 20% of the participants contain about 83% of the CH incidents per year. Below you will find the percent of the total number of incidents accounted for by the bottom x% of the respondents:\n\nThe bottom 10% accounts for .06% of incidents\nThe bottom 20% accounts for 0.36% of incidents\nThe bottom 30% accounts for .95% of incidents\nThe bottom 40% accounts for 1.82% of incidents\nThe bottom 50% accounts for 3.17% of incidents\nThe bottom 60% accounts for 5.54% of incidents\nThe bottom 70% accounts for 9.56% of incidents\nThe bottom 80% accounts for 17% of incidents\nThe bottom 90% accounts for 30% of incidents\nThe bottom 95% accounts for 43% of incidents\n\nBelow we also include the number of yearly Cluster Headaches experiences at different percentiles:\n\n10% percentile experiences 5 CH/year\n20% percentile experiences 17 CH/year\n30% percentile experiences 30 CH/year\n40% percentile experiences 45 CH/year\n50% percentile experiences 70 CH/year\n60% percentile experiences 105 CH/year\n70% percentile experiences 200 CH/year\n80% percentile experiences 365 CH/year\n90% percentile experiences 730 CH/year\n95% percentile experiences 1095 CH/year\n98% percentile experiences 2190 CH/year\n\nI believe that this information is crucial to consider when assessing cost-effective interventions to help people who endure intense suffering.\n\nHere are some additional results from the survey.\n\nThe following graphs are about the beliefs and attitudes of Cluster Headache sufferers who do not use tryptamines (LSD, psilocybin, DMT, etc.) to treat their condition:\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\nI think it is fair to say that the survey shows that one of the biggest barriers preventing CH patients from using tryptamines to treat their condition is simply the difficulty of acquiring them. Since a number of interviews we’ve conducted have shown that even sub-hallucinogenic doses of DMT can abort cluster headaches (writeup coming soon), more education could easily address the barrier of being concerned about hallucinogenic side effects. The social stigma seems like a minor problem, and the legal implications (the hardest to change, perhaps), are a big concern to about half of the participants (ratings of 4 or 5/5). Hence the importance of passing new laws allowing people with this condition to use them without repercussions.\nDo CH sufferers who do not use tryptamines think they would work?\n\nAnd do they work? Here is what the CH sufferers who do use them say:\nEffectiveness\nTryptamines used\nIf we interpret a 2 or 3 in the 0 to 5 scale as an equivalent to a “maybe”, and a 4 or 5 as a “yes” to the question “do they work?” we see a big difference between non-users beliefs in their effectiveness and their reported effectiveness by users. 24% of people who use tryptamines to treat their CHs report that “They have completely eliminated the cluster headaches” and in total 68% mark it as either a 4 or a 5 in the scale (which we can interpret as “working” even if not “completely eliminating them”). This is compared to only 30% of non-users who believe the tryptamines would work. This large discrepancy also suggests that outreach and education could help sufferers give this approach a try.\nFinally, we also looked at whether the users and non-users had different number of incidents per year (reasoning that perhaps those who experience more incidents would be more desperate to try legally and socially risky treatments). We notices that there is a very slight difference in the mean (and mean-log) for the number of CH incidents a year between the 20% of sufferers who treat their CHs with tryptamines and those who don’t. I won’t report the difference in the mean because the skew of the distribution makes such a metric deceptive, but the log-mean of yearly incidents of tryptamine users is 4.73 whereas for all the rest it is 4.10 (which reaches statistical significance of p < 0.05 based on a t-test). That said, we don’t think this is a very practically relevant difference. The distributions look roughly the same:\n\nThe similarity between these two distributions also suggests that there is a long way to go to make sure that those who are the worse off get prompt access to tryptamines.\nThe End.\n\nSee also https://clusterbusters.org/, which is an organization that aims to make psychedelics legally available to people who suffer from this condition. Please consider donating to them to help this very important cause. Also consider donating to MAPS which is championing the use of psychedelics for mental health applications. Finally, consider also donating to organizations that care and strategize about how to reduce intense suffering, such as: QRI, FRI, OPIS, and The Neuroethics Foundation.\n\n*There are instrumental considerations here – if experiencing more than, say, 5,000 hell-seconds in a year is very likely to make you depressed and ineffective, then it might pay-off to also spend resources on keeping as many people as possible below that level. In particular, to be an effective Effective Altruist it pays off not to be heavily depressed and nihilistic.\n**Thanks to Harlan Stewart for taking the initiative to conduct this survey. He advertised it on the Facebook groups and subreddits of Cluster Headache sufferers and got 371 responses.\n***Some people provided numerical answers, which we used directly. Some other people provided ranges, in which case we used the middle point between the values provided (e.g. “200 to 300” was coded as “250”). Some people provided lower bounds, in which case we simply used such lower bound (e.g. “500+” was coded as “500”). We discarded the data of people who didn’t provide an answer in any of those formats – which left 270 participants. A more strict analysis that uses *only* the numerical responses results in the same observations listed above (e.g. the distribution is equally long-tailed and it appears to be log-normal).\n\n[Cross-posted in Effective Altruism Forum]", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/02/cluster-headache-frequency-follows-a-long-tail-distribution/", "title": "Cluster Headache Frequency Follows a Long-Tail Distribution", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-08-02T22:23:38+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=12", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "48e2221a524a06d46f91794579bdb685", "summary": []}
{"text": "In brief, LSD…\n\nA quick attempt at highlighting some of LSD’s most important attributes:\n\nIt increases the amount of qualia experienced per “moment of consciousness” (this manifests as changes in the intensity, brightness, complexity, layering, etc. of the experience. cf. tracers).\nIt increases the number of symmetries you can use to organize said qualia (this gives rise to unusual geometry on high doses, as well as exotic phenomenal time).\nIt increases the range of possible valence (the distribution of valence per moment of consciousness on psychedelics follows a long-tail distribution, where some of the most intense moments of bliss are literally orders of magnitude bigger and more energetic than the median amount of bliss on the state or sober. I am convinced that this is a real thing, and that this fact will be shown scientifically in the future. It will require us to be able to generalize valence measurements to exotic brain states, but it will be done).\nIt increases the range of qualia varieties and values which form the building blocks of one’s world-simulation (for instance, one may experience novel qualia that has some resemblance to smell and some resemblance to a certain kind of touch, but which is not just a synesthetic mix of the two, but which belongs to a genuinely new category of qualia. Presumably such qualia was not recruited for information-processing purposes by natural selection, but that does not mean that it couldn’t find some applications for qualia computing and post-Darwinian  aesthetics).\n\nOf the above, the most ethically relevant attribute is (3) – which is also the most profound when considered in light of what humans care about.\nI really think that the majority of sensible people who happen to experience a- let’s say- sense of bliss and wholeness that would score a 113 out of 10* in a happiness scale, and which crams 4 or 5 times “more qualia” within each moment of experience, should understandably realize at that point that “there is more, much more, to reality than we usually believe”. The experience is a proof-of-concept of what reality is capable of consciousness-wise; and evidence that we live in vastly sub-optimal configurations of qualia relative to the love and beauty that we could live with instead.\nNow, which precise intentional content gets annealed as a consequence of a high-valence experience is a matter of the tripper’s ability to make sense of the experience, along with the power of the conceptual tools at his or her disposal. Independently of the specific things that LSD makes people believe in, I emphasize that one should not forget the key revelation. The key fact to never forget is that valence can go way, way, up. Valence can reach values way above the upper region of one’s everyday experiences. This insight is both true and agnostic about the semantic content of the specific revelations people experience.\n\nWhen scientifically proven, the realization that there is a long-tail distribution of suffering and wellbeing ought to revolutionize how we make utilitarian calculations. This will give rise a very generative view, which I call “long-tail ethics”.\nJust as Effective Altruism made us think about the long-tail nature of “lives saved per dollar”, long-tail ethics, more broadly, will make us ponder the implications of the fact that the bulk of bliss and suffering are concentrated in high-energy states of consciousness. By first getting rid of the negative extreme, and then finding adaptive regions of the positive extreme, we will find -what feels like it anyhow- our true home. In a sense our true home is, and has always been, in the form of a peak-valence region of the state-space of consciousness.\nWithout this understanding, one is simply “missing the key to the plot of reality”.\n\n\n*Given a scale where 10 marks the maximum bliss a human can have without strong changes to brain chemistry.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/02/in-brief-lsd/", "title": "In brief, LSD…", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-08-02T09:23:46+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=12", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "8ebd975731e0e3a6925745035a20c385", "summary": []}
{"text": "Ephemerisle: Health Homeostasis, Worldview Annealing, and the Long-Tails of Serious Fun\n\nIdealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out.\n– Ludwig Wittgenstein (from Notebooks, 1914-1916)\nI just came back from spending a week on the water at Mandeville Point (~18 kilometers from Stockton, California), at a yearly gathering called Ephemerisle. Below I will share some thoughts, insights, and takeaways from this experience.\n\nIntroduction\nEphemerisle is an event first conceived as a social experiment to investigate how the construction of autonomous floating nation-states could work in practice. The history of Ephemerisle is full of interesting lessons in how ideologies react when subjected to the acid bath of reality (cf. mini-documentary about the first iteration of the event). Over the years, this event has evolved from a wild, loosely organized libertarian congregation of like-minded individuals with no central planning, no rules, and no taxes, into a -somewhat- tamer, loosely organized libertarian congregation with central planning, rules, taxes, insurance, and heavy legal waivers that you need to sign when boarding islands and vessels. Despite the introduction of rules and legal waivers, the overall vibe of the place is one of freedom, intellectual intensity, and a spirit of giving.\nTo gain a sense of the scale of the event I’d recommend looking at drone footage over the years: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. Compared to Burning Man, this is a relatively tiny event, with a crowd that reaches up to perhaps as many as 600 people throughout the week, the equivalent of only 1% of the population of Black Rock City. In absolute terms, however, it is certainly very impressive to see that many people organized into a superorganism capable of delivering the basic survival needs for hundreds of persons in such an inhospitable environment, along with the luxuries of dance floors, sound systems, massage bunks, and trippy art.\nEphemerisle 2019 – Credit: Sameer Halai‎\nThe captain of the ship in which I camped said that “the slogan of Ephemerisle should be ‘Figure It Out'”. Indeed, this event falls in the same category as Burning Man when it comes to the degree of self-reliance that it demands from each participant. Burning Man, as noted before, could very well be called “the annual meeting of the recreational logistics community”. Ephemerisle takes all of the hassle and preparation needed for Burning Man, doubles it, adds an extra dose of uncertainty, and sprinkles it with a number of challenges unique to living on the water for a week.\nLocation of Ephemerisle 2019\nIndeed, attending Ephemerisle is not a simple task. The starting section of the Ephemerisle survival guide reads:\nThe first thing to realize about Ephemerisle is that it is not a festival. There are no tickets, no gates, and no central authority whatsoever. But Ephemerisle is on the water, which makes attending a very non-trivial task.\n \nYou are responsible for getting yourself to and from the event site and for everything you’ll need to live there and survive for your stay. There are few to no resources adjacent to the event site, and none on the water. Think carefully about what you’ll need, and plan ahead!\nSo, given the time, effort, resources, knowhow, and social connections needed to be able to attend, who actually ends up going to Ephemerisle?\nParticipants\nLike Burning Man, the people at Ephemerisle are not representative of the general population.\nStating the obvious, the mean conscientiousness, openness to experience, and general intelligence of participants are all significantly above the mean relative to the general population. I might add that, based on many conversations I had, it seemed that the following qualities are also significantly more common relative to the general population: graduate studies, social skills, physical fitness, cryptocurrency investments, and of course, number of yachts owned.\nWhat stuck with me was not only the average intelligence of the participants, but also the high density of particularly brilliant people doing impressive work of their own in fields such as nanotechnology, computational biology, machine learning, cryonics, innovation in politics, and many other heavy-duty intellectual fields. I lost count of the number of serial entrepreneurs, people with PhDs in STEM fields from MIT, and advanced meditators working on developing transformative technologies.\nI asked people who have been to many Ephemerisles how to explain this unusual density of spiky people, and the answer seems to be a mixture of self-selection and founder effects. First, it takes some degree of agency and determination to choose to attend this event and do all the things you need to do to make it happen. And second, a large number of people attend via invitation from well-established boats and islands, which in turn were seeded by very impressive persons from the late 2000s/early 2010s Bay Area super-cluster of people working on seasteading, longevity, AI safety, and transhumanism. Taken together, these two factors make Ephemerisle a natural Schelling point for energetic people doing cool things to find one another.\nIf I were to cluster the population of Ephemerisle this year, I’d intuitively estimate that 35% of people are in the broad people-cluster of scientists, libertarians, anarchists programmers, entrepreneurs, cryptocurrency developers, Bay Area rationalists, and psychedelic users. 30% are people in the broad cluster of artists, off-the-grid environmentalists, Oregon ecosystem-oriented hippies, and psychedelic users. 20% are people who live physically nearby, who own a boat, and for whom it is relatively convenient to attend. 10% are people with a festival-oriented lifestyle (to the point that their main activity is to go from festival to festival), and the remaining 5% are real-life hard-core sailors who help trouble-shoot the most difficult problems that (inevitably) arise during the event.\nEphemerisle 2015\nBut Why?\nWhy are people willing to spend so much time and energy into making an event like this happen? Why not stay at home or go to a club, where the chances of drowning, breaking bones, and getting sepsis from exposing open wounds to delta water are orders of magnitude lower? Why bother to learn knots, anchoring, and how to handle a fire on your boat when you could instead learn to use a remote control, watch TV, and order a pizza? Why the need to carry bucketloads of water to and from different boats for hours at a time when you could simply drink tap water from the comfort of a vacation timeshare apartment? And if you are attending to meet smart people working on cool projects, why not go to a conference or visit an academic department?\nI would claim that the thirst for adventure, fear of missing out, and ideological excitement can only go so far in explaining over-the-top events like Ephemerisle. To bridge the explanatory gap here we will need something more. This is why I will offer two analytic angles for explaining high-effort events like Ephemerisle: (1) Health Homeostasis (condition-dependence-based fitness signaling), and (2) Worldview Annealing (as a cure to adultification and the regeneration of a positive internal mental representation of one’s conception of humanity). Let me explain:\nHealth Homeostasis\nThis analytic angle comes from evolutionary psychology. In particular, genetic fitness signaling dynamics may explain why some people may have the urge to do wild and risky things when they are exceptionally smart and healthy. The concept of “condition-dependance” comes handy here:\nCondition-dependence: A trait’s sensitivity to an animal’s health and energy level. For example, dance ability is condition-dependent because tired, sick animals can’t dance very well. (Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller, from Glossary, pg. 437)\nFrom a gene’s eye view, it makes no sense for genetically robust individuals to spend one’s healthy years in relative security, for one would have no way to advertise one’s good genes relative to average specimens in such conditions. In a sense, doing complex and risky activities is a hard-to-fake signal of fitness. Therefore, from the point of view of one’s genes, self-interest might (metaphorically) reason: “I have all this health and energy laying around, better don’t let it go to waste and use it to signal genetic fitness instead” (see: An Infinite Variety of Waste).\nEphemerisle 2009. Credit: Christopher Rasch\nThis could be summarized with a general principle I call Health Homeostasis, which posits that among sexually-reproducing species who engage in fitness displays, we can expect that individuals will have a “desired level of health”. If they notice that they are below that level of health, they will increase the time and resources focused on regenerating health. And if they notice that they are above that level of health, they will instead reduce the time and resources focused on regenerating health, and engage in costly genetic fitness signaling displays. Perhaps events like Burning Man and Ephemerisle have an element of this going on. They are appealing to people who have too much health and for whom the standard ways of signaling fitness simply won’t cut it. They need health-diminishing activities in bulk. They need challenges where they can display physical endurance while exercising their powers of creativity. And this is why, all considered, these events are so sexy.\nI should add here that I am not suggesting that this explanation implies that participants are doing this consciously. Executing an adaption rarely involves conscious planning and strategizing. All it requires is following the gradient of what feels right and good.\nIntrospect, dear reader, about the times where you have felt the most alive. Have you, perhaps, not experienced them during risky situations? When you felt that “this could be a real danger to other people”? When by luck or grace you happened to be willing and able to do something few others could have done? This is what I am talking about. This feeling of reality and authenticity may very well be a good proxy for the process of down-regulating your health. And this is what it looks like for health homeostasis to be at play.\nWorldview Annealing\nThis event was- to be open and real with you- quite moving to me. I struggle to give words to some of the feelings, intuitions, and thoughts that I experienced towards the end of my stay. The situations in which I found myself made me feel new sensations about the possibilities hidden in humanity and the unfolding of intelligence on this planet. It felt mystical and significant. It’s as if we were glimpsing the birth of a new stage for humanity.\nSomething akin to this happened to me at Burning Man a few years ago (with a slightly different flavor). How do I explain it? Someone I met there shared the view that at Ephemerisle we are experiencing a certain kind of “chemistry of consciousness” that is unique to the space. That collectively, in a space of this sort, we all resonate with a set of ideals, conscious efforts, and love that makes the whole environment vibrate with a unique quality of consciousness tuning the participants to a new level.\nPerhaps! We could very well throw the towel and declare victory to mysterianism at this point! Alas, this is not the path that Qualia Computing has ever taken before.\nSo how can we explain the deep emotional feelings induced by Ephemerisle and events akin?\nHere is the big picture idea: There are elements about the experience there that give rise to “heightened states of consciousness” for many hours at a time. This can be explained largely due to the build-up of semantically-neutral energy thanks to the high-density of surprising stimuli (cf. free-energy principle, entropic disintegration, and neural annealing). Over the course of several days, such build-up of semantically neutral energy enables neural search processes that solve constraint satisfaction problems that have to incorporate the fact that hundreds of human volunteers can come together to peacefully construct a mini-world in a treacherous environment, all for the benefit and enjoyment of others. Integrating this experienced fact can lead to the felt-sense that the world could be better, much better. That we could create heaven-worlds for each other. That the future could be a place of loving-kindness energized with electrifying creativity and positive energy. By the end of the event, one’s cynical internal representations of humanity have been replaced -to an extent anyhow- by optimistic and loving thought-forms. It is hard to see the creation of such a beautiful thing without shifting one’s priors about the real world.\nIt is important to realize that changing one’s deep representations of high-level concepts such as humanity and the world can have far-reaching ramifications. The emotional valence that is attached to our big-picture ideals can determine how we see the world. A somewhat far-fetched but ultimately accurate analogy could be made with Rubik’s cubes: Imagine that a “perfect state of the world” is equivalent to a “completely solved Rubik’s cube”. In addition to the degree to which you are close to a fully-solved state, you also have preferences about the aesthetics of the colors of the cube. But ultimately, you care more about the cube being solved than you care about the cube having pretty stickers.\n\n\n\n\n\nNow, let’s say that we start with a completely scrambled state, which you feel very bad about. If you feel hopeless about being able to unscramble it, you can focus on improving the look of the stickers. The stickers could be more pretty and that will briefly make you feel good, but you will know that doing any surface modification still does not help in rearranging the entire cube so that it is in a solved state. The analogy here is: changing the look of the stickers is akin to many of the band-aid solutions we use in our life. We try to make ourselves feel better by doing superficial things like changing our cars, our appearance, and our job titles. But deep down, none of that addresses the deeper sources of dissatisfaction. The cube of our life remains in an unsolved- if more outwardly pretty- state.\nThere could also be uncertainty about how far you are from the perfectly solved state. Especially when you are unfamiliar with the algorithms that work for solving the cube, you will find that there are configurations that give the impression of high disorder that are in fact close to getting the cube solved. And then there are situations that seem close to the goal line of a completely solved cube that still require a lot more work to figure all out. The same could be with the state of our lives.\nNow, what do I mean with a perfectly solved cube? I’m referring to a sense that “everything is as it should be”. I would argue that for many people, the very idea that humanity cannot get its shit together is a deep source of discomfort. Changing jobs, romantic partners, living situations, and perhaps even political parties do little to address this deep problem. They could be thought of as akin to trying to make the Rubik’s cube more pretty by decorating the stickers.\nExperiences where one gets a sense that humanity, if properly focused, could indeed get its shit together might have a much deeper emotional effect on people than one might intuitively realize. All you may need is a proof of concept to create a glimmer of hope. All you need is someone showing you a video of speedcubing for you to realize that there is a short path from the state of your cube to a fully-solved state. And this can be exhilarating and deeply moving.\nNow, for this to take place, we need to be on a flexible state of mind. Hence the importance of art, meditation, philosophy, and psychedelics in conjunction with the unfamiliar space. This is the recipe for annealing a big picture change of mind -a reframing of humanity, its possibilities, and one’s place in it. It indeed requires multiple days of iterations of changes of one’s mental representations. Here, meditation, art, psychedelics, and philosophy synergize with the scene in order to raise the brain’s energy parameter. The scene adds a lot of novelty: confrontation with the necessities for survival, extended exposure to people who are smarter and more competent than you along multiple dimensions, high temperatures, new wildlife (spiders and wasps), large amounts of water, wobbly platforms and ships, odd shapes and weird objects abundant in the platforms, etc.\nThis all results in what we might call worldview annealing. That is, the high energy state repeatedly cooled and re-heated over several days enables the fast search over alternate representations of the world. Worldview annealing gives rise to novel ways of seeing the world and one’s relationship with it.* And this is, perhaps, the underlying reason why people report having durable psychological benefits from doing things like attending Burning Man and similar events (see graphs below for statistics about transformative experiences at Burning Man; I intuit that Ephemerisle might be similar in this regard).\nClick to view slideshow.\nAt the end of an event like this, you may very well feel exhausted and totally partied out, but if worldview annealing successfully took place, you will be able to tell that something deep and inward shifted in a good direction. You now have a felt-sense for what a different and better world could be like.\nCan such an effect be scaleable? Hopefully many more people can experience it in the future. Perhaps we need to open-source the essential features of that kind of event so that others can take advantage of these key properties and export its benefits elsewhere. And thus we encounter the concept of “Serious Fun”.\nSerious Fun\nIn the last few years I’ve given a lot of thought to the concept of paradise engineering. This comes up a lot when contemplating the coming centuries in light of David Pearce‘s Hedonistic Imperative, which posits that humanity will ultimately get rid of suffering by tackling its genetic roots. Now, it is true that the bulk of what will make our posthuman paradise a paradise is to be found in the quality of experience of our descendants rather than in their external environment. But for our Darwinian minds to contemplate what paradise might look like we usually need to evoke images that give us good feelings in our current state. For example, images of people cooperating to generate incredible experiences! Indeed, saying “in the future we will all be genetically endowed with negligible mu-opioid receptor down-regulation” does not sound nearly as exciting as saying “we will all be incredibly sexy, live our lives in massive cuddle puddles, be on the brink of orgasm, and have mind-blowing levels of intelligence and loving-kindness” (note: the wise would be advised to choose the first option, for the second does not guarantee sustainable happiness while the first one does). To tickle our imagination and inspire motivation it is indeed a good idea to trigger visions that engage our current reward architecture (even if we know that we are responding to Darwinian triggers and that a true paradise has more to do with brain configurations than external conditions).\nSo let’s think about wonderful external conditions to evoke a sense of paradise. I like to think of large groups of people engaged in serious planning and strategizing to create amazing experiences for even larger groups of people. Burning Man and Ephemerisle are a proof of concept of what could end up becoming super-fun events of civilizational proportions. And here is where we start wondering: what makes such events possible? What is the distribution of effort, time, resources, etc. contributed by each participant that is needed for Serious Fun to take place? My hunch is that to make this work in real life, the distribution needs to have a long-tail:\nThe Long-Tails of Serious Fun\nIt is interesting to ponder the idea that the distribution of the total contribution per participant in events like this has a long tail. In the most simplistic case the distribution could be a power law. As it turns out, many phenomena that are usually described with power laws don’t really fit power laws when closely examined.** Now, whether the “true distribution” of the contribution per participant follows a log-normal, Zipf, Pareto distribution, or one of the general Lévy distributions is an open question. But for the time being, what I want to emphasize is the long-tailed nature of it. In particular, the fact that there seems to be a small cluster of individuals who contribute massively to the event, followed by a larger group that contributes a lot, followed by a large minority who contribute more than they consume, followed by a majority who come to the event and mostly enjoy what others brought with them. Nothing inherently wrong with this, for after all, the people who contribute the most tend to truly enjoy giving, believe in the ideals of the event, and earn the respect of others. That said, it should be noted that if the distribution is too skewed it may lead to burnout among the most active members, which does not bode well for the sustainability of the event.\nAlthough statistics for Ephemerisle are lacking, we can again use as an example people’s responses to the Burning Man Census:\nBurning Man expenses (other than ticket cost). The exact wording of the question in the online survey was, “How much did you spend this year to go to Black Rock City and return, including fuel, camp dues, food, lodging, airfare, supplies, etc. (but not including your ticket to the event)? If you shared expenses with a group, only include the portion of expenses that you contributed. Give your best estimate in USD.” (source)\n(source)\nThe above results are represented with too few bins to really be able to tell what kind of long-tail distribution they follows. However, it is pretty clear that we are looking at a very skewed distribution that does not at all look like a normal/Gaussian distribution. I really wish they had included one more option (e.g. $20,000+) so that we could see the number of people who are really (economically) invested in the event. In addition, another key question that would shed light on the long-tailed nature of the event would be “How many hours did you spend preparing/building/helping others/driving/cooking for others/etc.?” Again, I’d expect a very skewed distribution in the responses to such a question.\nAs we begin to think about how we can plan the creation of heaven worlds (i.e. large-scale projects of fun) we should consider the long-tailed nature of the contribution distribution per participant. My hunch is that we can perhaps determine whether an event is even possible by estimating how skewed the distribution needs to be to make it happen. On one extreme we have events such as “a picnic at the local park” where the event can realistically take place even if most people do roughly the same amount of work (save for perhaps the organizer who post the event details online and coordinate setting up the chairs and coolers). On the other extreme, we could imagine an actual Seasteading event out in the open ocean, or a festival at the very cusp of Mount Diablo, or even something extreme like a party at the Lagrangian between the Earth and the moon, where we would need a group of people to come together and intensely collaborate for many months and spend millions of dollars on providing the basic infrastructure for the event. In-between these two extremes you could find events like community-led concerts, regional Burns, Ephemerisle, and Burning Man proper. Whether a pie-in-the-sky idea like Ephemerisle ever actually gets to happen may be a matter of the event having the right long-tail skew that makes it possible for actual humans to carry it out. In some sense, I suspect that Ephemerisle is right at the edge of impossibility, while Burning Man proper may have more slack and hence can afford to be substantially bigger.\nLagrangian party?\nWhat other amazing events are there that are “just barely impossible”? And what events will become possible as soon as we discover new techniques, ideologies, and cultural norms to make the distribution needed to make them happen just barely less skewed than impossible? This might be a very generative question to ask if you want to invent “the next Burning Man”.\nA final thread to pull here concerns to allometric scaling properties of large events (cf. allometric analysis of Chinese cities). Due to economies of scale, there are thresholds for the number of participants at an event at which some utilities become rentable. Thus, there could also be many un-imagined crazy events that simply require a threshold number of participants to become possible. For example, perhaps a tunnel-based event at a beach is impossible with 100 participants but completely realistic with 500. Who knows! It’s an interesting thing to wonder about.\nAnyhow, I invite you to think more about these ideas… perhaps this way you will help us invent the next iteration of paradise on earth.\nThe End.\nEphemerisle 2009. Credit: Liz Henry\n\n\n* This can be used in order to treat the problems associated with psychological adultification. You see, most of the people alive today have some degree of psychological trauma associated with adultification. Acting free and childish is something that we can only really do in a context where we feel like we’ve earned the right to do so. So many highly conscientious people need to nearly kill themselves for the wellbeing of others to feel like they can deserve the right to feel care-free and innocent again. Guess what? Ephemerisle does not have a shortage of ways for you to do prodigious amounts of work to show how much you love others. Hence, perhaps, it is a place where some exceedingly responsible people can finally feel deserving of a relaxed, care-free, time.\n** I am using here power laws to point at the general property of long-tailedness. In reality many other similar distributions tend to fit the data better than power laws, among which the log-normal distribution is commonly a superior fit (see: So You Think You Have a Power Law — Well Isn’t That Special?).\n\nNotes:\n\nFeatured image source.\nI know that the sense of the words idealism and realism in the header quote by Wittgenstein are inappropriate here. I am just amused that the quote happens to be a great fit for this essay if the senses are interpreted within a different context. In true libertarian fashion: Deal with it.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/07/30/ephemerisle-health-homeostasis-worldview-annealing-and-the-long-tails-of-serious-fun/", "title": "Ephemerisle: Health Homeostasis, Worldview Annealing, and the Long-Tails of Serious Fun", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-07-31T02:16:05+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=12", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6831338c87aa26b70e6708c13f46daac", "summary": []}
{"text": "Wada Test + Phenomenal Puzzles: Testing the Independent Consciousness of Individual Brain Hemispheres\n\n\nOne of the most pressing problems in philosophy of mind is solving the so-called ‘problem of other minds‘, the difficulty of proving that agents outside oneself have qualia. A workable solution to the problem of other minds would endow us with the ability to define the moral patienthood of present-day biological entities, evade our solipsistic tendencies, and open the door to truly understanding future nonhuman intelligences, should they prove to be conscious. Even more strangely, it would allow us to evaluate whether dream characters or the products of dissociative identity disorder are separate consciousnesses. Irrevocably proving the existence of qualia in other biological life which lacks the capacity for language and higher-order thought is not, to my knowledge, even conceptually feasible at this time. In the case of two agents with the capacity to communicate and problem solve, however, this solution has been proposed, which requires the agent being tested to prove they have qualia by solving a “phenomenal puzzle”. Crucially, the solution does not require that the two agents experience the same qualia, simply that there exists a mapping between their respective conscious states.\nIf an agent A wishes to prove the existence of qualia in agent B using the above procedure, then A and B must have the following:\n\nA phenomenal bridge (e.g. a biological neural network that connects your brain to someone else’s brain so that both brains now instantiate a single consciousness).\nA qualia calibrator (a device that allows you to cycle through many combinations of qualia values quickly so that you can compare the sensory-qualia mappings in both brains and generate a shared vocabulary for qualia values).\nA phenomenal puzzle (as described above).\nThe right set and setting: the use of a proper protocol.\n\n\nI contend that there may already be a procedure which can be used to generate a reversible phenomenal bridge between two separate minds: a way to make two minds one and subsequently one mind two. Moving in each of these two directions has apparently been demonstrated; by craniopagus twins connected with a thalamic bridge and by corpus callosotomy separating the two cerebral hemispheres. There is tantalizing evidence in each case that consciousness is being fused or fissioned, respectively. In the case of the Hogan sisters, the apparently unitary mind  has access to sensory information from the sensory organs of each cranium. In the case of separating hemispheres there is some debate: alien hand syndrome has suggested the existence of dual consciousness, while other findings have cast doubt on the existence of two separate consciousnesses. While a surgical procedure for separating the hemispheres is as yet permanent, a chemically-induced separation of the hemispheres via the Wada test may provide new avenues for testing the problem of other minds. While some forms of communication (namely language, which is largely left-lateralized) are impaired by the Wada test, other forms such as singing can be left intact. Thus, I believe a combination of Gazzinaga’s procedure and Gómez Emilsson’s phenomenal puzzle approach, in conjunction with a working qualia calibrator, could demonstrate the existence or absence of dual consciousness in the human mind-brain. A version of the Wada test with higher specificity may also be required, to negate some of the characteristic symptoms of confusion, hemineglect, and loss of verbal comprehension.\n \n\n\n\n\n\nThe procedure (utilizing the state space of color, with agents L and R corresponding to the left and right hemispheres) would be as follows: \nNote: a difficulty of utilizing the below outlined procedure is determining which hemisphere should serve as the benchmark. While often language ability is dominant in the left hemisphere (especially in right-handed individuals) and therefore eliminated when the left hemisphere is inactivated during the Wada test, this is not always the case. In cases where at least some language ability is preserved in each hemisphere, either can reliably serve as the point of comparison. \n\nDesign a phenomenal puzzle, such that the solution corresponds to reporting the number of just noticeable differences required to produce a linear mapping between two locations in the state space of color. \nSeparate the left and right visual fields (Gazzaniga).\nSodium amobarbital is administered to the left internal cardioid artery via the femoral artery and EEG confirms inactivation of the left hemisphere. In the LVF a consent checkbox for performing the experiment is given to the right hemisphere, Y/N checked using the left hand.\nSimilarly, sodium amobarbital is administered to the right internal cardioid artery via the femoral artery and EEG confirms inactivation of the right hemisphere. Consent can be verbally obtained from the left hemisphere. \nWith both hemispheres activated, qualia calibration on the state space of color is performed (see: A workable solution to the problem of other minds). \nWith R inactivated, the phenomenal puzzle is presented to L without enough time for L to solve the puzzle.\nBoth hemispheres are activated, and L tells the phenomenal puzzle to LR.\nL is inactivated and R attempts to solve the puzzle on its own. When R claims to have solved the puzzle (in writing or song most likely), both hemispheres are again reactivated in order to produce LR. R shares its solution with LR.\nR is inactivated, and L shares the solution to the phenomenal puzzle. If the solution is correct, then R is conscious! \n\n\nPoint-of-view characterization of above procedure (Under the assumption that both hemispheres are, in fact, conscious):\n\nFrom the perspective of the left brain: A researcher asks “do you consent to the following procedure?” You answer ‘yes’, perhaps wondering if you’ve lost just a part of your computational resources, or created an entirely separate consciousness. A short period of darkness and sedation ensues while consent is obtained from the right brain. Suddenly, the amount of consciousness you’re experiencing expands greatly and new memories are available. The computer screen in front of you rapidly cycles through a series of paired color values. The Qualia Calibrator confirms a match by waiting for consensus of the right motor cortex (in lieu of a button press) and from verbal confirmation of the left hemisphere. It feels like an eye exam at hyper speed: “Color one or color two? Color two or color three?”, but for thousands of colors, many of which you don’t have a name for. Then, you sleep, for some indeterminate amount of time. When you awaken, the researcher explains to you the puzzle to solve. Your consciousness is then expanded again, and you repeat the puzzle to yourself, with the strange feeling that “part of you didn’t know about it”. You go dark again. And when the lights are turn on again, things feel normal, but you have a prominent new memory, the solution to the puzzle. Quickly you check. Take this strange shade of cyan and change it once, twice, three times…yup! That’s the mellow orange you were looking for, and in the same number of “just noticeable differences”.\nFrom the perspective of the right brain: You awaken to a scrollable consent form with a checkbox, and a left-handed mouse. Despite your state of relative confusion and lack of verbal fluency, you’re able to understand the form and check the box. Suddenly, your conscious experience expands and your fluency erupts. The computer screen in front of you rapidly cycles through a series of paired color values. The Qualia Calibrator confirms a match by waiting for consensus of the right motor cortex (in lieu of a button press) and from verbal confirmation of the left hemisphere. It feels like an eye exam at hyper speed: “Color one or color two? Color two or color three?”, but for thousands of colors, many of which you don’t have a name for. Again you sleep, your consciousness is briefly expanded, and you learn of the puzzle you are to solve. How did you learn about it? It is weird, you started “repeating” the puzzle to yourself, with the strange feeling that “part of you already had heard it before”. But either way, now you feel like you have heard it really well. Next, it feels like you took a strong sedative and a memory-loss drug at the same time. Now, in this highly impoverished cognitive state, you have to solve a complicated puzzle. To prove that you exist. Ugh. Fortunately, you have help, in the form of an AI which provides the linear mapping you need to discover, provided you answer how many just noticeable differences occur between each set of two points. Half man and machine collaborate to find the solution, and you commit it to memory. Reunited once more, you “share your findings to yourself”. It turns out you’re conscious. The world now knows: the right hemisphere is conscious on its own when the left one is unconscious. Hooray!\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/07/19/wada-test-phenomenal-puzzles-testing-the-independent-consciousness-of-individual-brain-hemispheres/", "title": "Wada Test + Phenomenal Puzzles: Testing the Independent Consciousness of Individual Brain Hemispheres", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-07-19T23:26:07+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=12", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "8589f6d5b86e53a80888c0a456249841", "summary": []}
{"text": "5-MeO-DMT Trip Report by Anonymous Reader\n\nDose: Two 7mg hits separated by about 15 minutes.\nContext: The writer of this trip report suffers from anhedonia. One of the main motivations for trying 5-MeO-DMT was to see if it could help with such anhedonia.\n\nOh my god. The emotion. Pure intense pain. The situation was so moving. I knew I was in a state where I couldn’t not empathize with the pain. Coming out of it I felt like I was being let in on the lesson. My social barriers weren’t formed yet and I felt like we’re all melded in one family of empathized minds. There was no hiding or not acknowledging the immensity of pain. The lesson was “This is what is possible. This is what is happening to someone. This is very serious.” But it wasn’t just that recognition. There was a social experience, almost like an induction.\nThe come up was physically pleasant but very fast and then became very negative and high intensity. I think if I had my normal connection to my body, I’d be gripping the chair arm in pain and grunting, possibly weeping, but one thing I noticed about the experience was that there was a lack of strength to any aversions or fears or rejections, let alone expressions thereof. In ordinary sober life, something that negative would lead me to react with aversion.\nUnlike the (less) painful experience of eating habanero peppers, I regarded the experience very sincere and true. Ordinarily I’m very wary of fanaticism and sentimentalism and social pressures and tragedies of the commons etc… to the point of social and emotional non-participation in society. I realize this is pathological so I try to get past my social cynicism and inhibition. This experience definitely put me right into a state of embracing a social consensus and I had very little ability to squirm or object to whatever indoctrination I could have seen it as. From the outside a social experience looks like indoctrination, but from the inside it is genuine and true. Beneath fanaticism is genuine empathy and significance, and I realized this when coming out and crying and sighing and making other social expressions at the message I had just received, having the sense of empathy transcend all social transactions of which I’m cynical.\nThere was a sense of magnetism and attraction both to this blazing core of serious suffering in the peak of the experience and the beautiful blue drawing undercurrents of the high valence, lovely come down, which lasted a good 15 minutes. The content of the experience was very unified and simple. “General” is the word that I think best describes the content. It includes the ontologies normally attributed to specific concepts. It includes these but isn’t reduced to them. Very general state of thinking. “Feeling” might be a good word for the general state underlying particular “thoughts.” And perhaps it was this general freedom which added to the impression that it broke through my social cynicisms.\nThe part that stood out for me was the emotion. I’ve never experienced emotion that strong before and it was useful to be reminded of what emotions feel like. There are levels of intensity and depth of emotion that mustn’t be forgotten. I dream of the life where I can tap into an infinite river of significance-rich, intense emotion. I felt in the trip an endlessly self-powering current of pure emotional energy blasting away (negative in the peak) and then undertows of deep oceanic bliss emotions of wellbeing and peace in the come down. Sometimes when I’m coming off a long, multi-day fast with a meal and my hormones and neurotransmitters are changing I feel emotional. Sometimes when I’ve gone a long time without hearing music and I play some great Bach cantata really loudly, I feel a bit of that moving emotional significance again. Interestingly I didn’t really separate the intensity from the significance during the trip. They felt one and the same. All meaning and sense of echoes and ramifications and contexts seemed to simply be unified in that general unified blazing entity of pure undifferentiated intensity. Yet, it didn’t feel insignificant, even though it lacked more specific content.\nI think this might help with suffering because it does two things. One is that in my experience one has little choice to resist. Embracing an experience rather than struggling with it prevents unnecessary suffering. It also gives a state of pure, undifferentiated feeling which sort of envelops pain. This is good because it shows you the “unreality” of your thoughts. When you’re in an emotional state there’s a feeling behind the thoughts and different thoughts come in to support that feeling, but contending with them individually only multiplies them. It’s easier to just address the entire feeling at once. It’s hard to say how bad that experience was when all my aversion and struggling and resisting and fighting were disabled… I couldn’t protest the experience—does that cause me to infer in my memories that it must not have been worthy of resistance and therefore dispose me to take more when really it would be suffering that I would otherwise resist and avoid in the future? All I can say was that coming out of it I was very grateful, and not grateful that it was over but grateful that I had seen such truth for the sake of truth, and then the comedown incidentally turned nice and quite pleasant.\nThe come-off felt very slow and beautiful. Imagine taffy hanging over a rotating disk, like a lazy Susan. It felt like I was this taffy and passing beneath me was this undertow and after a delay it would pull me under in a pulse of pleasure. Or say there’s a car and a string tied to it and on the other end your tooth, and as soon as you’d have a thought the car would start running with that string and as the slack gets pulled with the car you might get distracted but then you’d eventually have your tooth pulled and you’d have your attention brought back to a string you might not have realized was there all the time. That’s what the long delayed slow crescendo pleasantnesses of the comedown of it would do for all kinds of thoughts and images and experiential events. To find out after a long delay that all this time a thought you had several seconds ago is still going on is quite reassuring—well, in this case it was. And these tooth pulls were quite pleasurable for some reason. And along with it came the bodily sensation of being magnetically drawn toward this thing.\n\nSince going on an SSRI in 2015 (which I discontinued after 10 months in 2015), I’ve suffered chronic anhedonia (note that this paragraph was written over a week after the experience, where most of the report was written the day after, such as the exclamatory first sentences “Oh my god. The emotion,” which I was able to express because my body was still giving me a fresh enough memory of the experience from the night before. I’ve since lost emotional connection/recollection of the experience). I find I do suffer, but I lack any sense of it mattering. In particular, there’s a lack of a coordination between my frontal lobes and my limbic system (and SSRI’s can reduce the connectivity between the limbic system and the cortex… kind of like a mild chemical frontal lobotomy…), so any complex understanding of things like life situations or future plans or anything that takes the “high road” in the fear/emotional response through the cortex, get’s processed by the cortex but not communicated to the limbic system. So I can suffer, and I can verbally understand I’m suffering, but I can’t see why that matters or why I should do anything about it. I can’t emotionally reason. I can’t envision things that excite me. I can’t come up with reasons to alleviate ongoing anxiety like I used to. Before the SSRI, I’d have a pessimistic or anxious or sad thought and then I’d intervene with reasoning and “take perspective” and realize why things are ok after all or why something IS worth doing. None of that thinking reasoning gets through now. It seems only very immediate physical things with little dependence on the cortex get a somewhat appropriate level of emotional arousal out of me, like a car accident or crudely apprehended social threats/stress. I also have lots of indecision and waste time in dull thought loops. My thoughts lack emotional potency and they fail to support decision making. The experience of 5-MeO-DMT reminded me that suffering does matter, that things do matter, there is emotional significance. Because of the state depends of memory, I can’t really access that much, though in the days following the experience my body did find a certain posture that would trigger a strong recollection of the experience. It feels like I’m in flatland and this experience is in the third dimension, the dimension of emotional significance, and my frameworks presently don’t allow me much access to these memories, but I am grateful for the experience and the long come down which allowed me to take into my cortex the verbal/generic memories of the fact emotional stuff is real, and is out there. It restored hope and reminded me of the goal of getting out of this anhedonia. It’s better to live in hope and some optimism, even if success is futile. Just look at very old or obese people who still take care of their appearance with grooming.\n\nSee also: Trip reports by anonymous Qualia Computing readers for LSD, 2C-B, and 4-AcO-DMT.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/07/17/5-meo-dmt-trip-report-by-anonymous-reader/", "title": "5-MeO-DMT Trip Report by Anonymous Reader", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-07-17T22:39:52+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=12", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "1e86a56dbb0bd0026d3d2625ccd2f9e9", "summary": []}
{"text": "Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free Necklace\n\nAn approach to doing good is to come up with a metric for what constitutes good or bad, and then trying to do things that will optimally increase or decrease such metric, as the case may be.\nIf you do this, you have to be careful about what metric you choose.\nIf you have an ontology where you measure good by “number of people who feel benefited by you”, you might end up doing things like sending everyone you can a doughnut with a signed note. If instead your metric is “number of people classified as poor” you might do best to focus on interventions that get people just over the hump of poverty as defined by your scale. And so on.\nConscientious and systematic altruists tend to see problems with metrics like those above. They realize that “people impressed” and “being poor according to an economic metric” are not metrics that really carve nature at its joints.\nDissatisfied with misleading metrics, one then tends to look closer at the world and arrive at metrics that take into account the length of different lives, their quality, their instrumental effect in the world, how much are they exactly being benefited by the intervention relative to other cost-effective alternatives, and so on. And that’s how you get things like Quality Adjusted Life-Years (QALY), micromorts, and the happiness index.\nThis is, I think, all moving in the right direction. Metrics that make an effort to carve nature at its joints can provide new lenses to see the world. And looking through those lenses tends to generate novel angles and approaches to do a lot of good.\n\n\nThis is why today I will suggest we consider a new metric: The Hell-Index.\nA country’s Hell-Index could be defined as the yearly total of people-seconds in pain and suffering that are at or above 20 in the McGill Pain Index (or equivalent)*. This index captures the intuition that intense suffering can be in some ways qualitatively different and more serious than lesser suffering in a way that isn’t really captured by a linear pain scale.\nWhat does this metric suggest we should do to make the world better? Here is an idea (told as if narrated from the future):\n\nBetween 2030 and 2050 it was very common for people to wear Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free Necklaces. People had an incredible variety of custom-fit aesthetic and practical additives to their necklaces. But in every single one of them, you could rest assured, you would find a couple of doses of each of these agents:\n\nN,N-DMT (in case of Cluster Headaches)\nQuetiapine (in case of severe acute psychosis)\nBenzocaine + menthol (for very painful stings)\nKetamine (for severe suicidal feelings)\nMicrodosed Ibogaine + cocktail of partial mu-opioid agonists (for acute severe physical pain and panic attack, e.g.. kidney stones)\n\nSome other people would get additional things like:\n\nBeta blocker (to take right after a traumatic event)\nAgmatine (to take in case you suspect of having being brainwashed recently), and\nCaffeine (if you absolutely need to operate heavy machinery and you are sleep-deprived)\n\nIn all cases, the antidote needed would be administered as soon as requested by the wearer. And the wearer would request the antidote as indicated by a very short test done with an app to determine the need for it.\nBut why? What’s this all about?\nThe Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free Necklace contents were chosen based on a cost-benefit analysis for how to reduce the world’s Hell-Index as much as possible. Cluster-headaches, kidney stones, bad stings, severe psychotic episodes, suicidal depression, panic attacks, and many types of acute physical pain turned out to account for a surprisingly large percentage of each country’s Hell-Index. And in many of these cases, a substantial amount of the suffering was experienced before medical help could be able to arrive to the scene and do anything about it. A lot of that intense suffering happened to be tightly concentrated in acute episodes rather than in chronic problems (save for some notable examples). And by incredible luck, it turned out that there were simple antidotes to most of these states of agony, all of them small enough to fit in a single light necklace. So it was determined that subsidizing Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free Necklaces was a no-brainer as a cost-effective altruistic intervention.\n\nBy 2050 safe and cheap genetic vaccines against almost all of these unpleasant states of consciousness had been discovered. This, in turn, made the use of the Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free Necklaces unnecessary. But many who benefited from it- who had been unlucky enough to have needed it- kept it on for many years. The piece was thought of as a symbol to commemorate humanity’s progress in the destruction of hell. An achievement certainly worth celebrating.\n\n\n* Admittedly, a more refined index would also distinguish between the intensity of different types of pain/suffering above 20 in the McGill Pain Index (or equivalent). Such index would try to integrate a fair “total amount of hellish qualia” by adding up the pain of each state weighted by its most likely “true intensity” as determined by a model, and then do so for each model you have and weight the contribution of each model by its likelihood. E.g. do both a quadratic and an exponential conversion of values in the 0 to 10 visual analogue scale into dolors per second, and then do a likelihood-weighted average to combine those results into a final value.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/07/09/get-out-of-hell-free-necklace/", "title": "Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free Necklace", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-07-09T10:09:20+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=13", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e472af317357be8e16c5894828c65528", "summary": []}
{"text": "Low-Dose Ibogaine + Opioids: A Possible Treatment for Chronic Pain, Schizophrenia, and Depression?\n\nExcerpt from Ibogaine in the 21st Century: Boosters, Tune-ups and Maintenance by Ibogaine treatment experts Patrick K. Kroupa and Hattie Wells\n\n“Dirty” Maintenance\nFor some, abstinence from narcotic analgesics is not a reality-based goal. Many chronic pain patients are really not going to cast off their crutches [sic], light up some medical marijuana and dance in the meadow, after ibogaine.\nIn addition to chronic-pain patients, there are many people who are using narcotic analgesics to self-medicate a variety of comorbid conditions. In some cases a “successful” detox from opiates means that somebody can look forward to a lifetime’s worth of maintenance on neuroleptics.\nGiven the choice between opiates and neuroleptics, there is no simple answer, but the side-effects of current anti-psychotic medications can be devastating. When you compare the quality of someone’s life when they are controlling schizophrenia, for example, through the use of opiates (which tend to have extremely mild side effects) vs. the qualify of life attained using sanctioned medicines (usually neuroleptics, with Cogentin to alleviate some of the side-effects anti-psychotics produce), it is entirely possible, even probable, that the person is happier with the opiates.\nIbogaine is remarkably effective in addressing one of the primary problems in any sort of opiate or opioid maintenance: tolerance. Over time, individuals find they must do extremely high doses of their medications in order to achieve any effect whatsoever.\nWARNING: the following category should be considered highly experimental. There is a complete lack of published scientific data regarding the following examples. The difference between 50mg and 500mg is extremely significant and quite possibly fatal. Ibogaine potentiates the analgesic effect of opiates and opioids.\nIndividual 1: Male, mid-30’s, in good health, who has experienced full-blown resets using ibogaine HCl in the past. His average daily intake was 20Mgs oxycodone and 4–6Mgs hydromorphone (Dilaudid), which he is prescribed for pain management.\nBy using a very low-dose regimen of 25–50Mgs of ibogaine HCl on a daily basis, he was able to taper down to a point at which 3.75Mg of oxycodone is subjectively providing him with identical pain relief.\nHe began by taking 25Mg ibogaine HCl per day, and was able to immediately halve his intake of narcotic analgesics with no withdrawal symptoms or discomfort whatsoever. After 6 days he increased the ibogaine HCl to 40Mg, and at week two, he went up to 50Mg a day of ibogaine HCl. After 22 days of ibogaine maintenance, he took a ten day break, before returning to 50Mg which he presently takes every other day. His intake of oxycodone has remained consistent at 3.75Mg/day.\nIn his own words, “The goal with adding ibogaine to the oxycodone is to minimize if not end the need for it [oxycodone] for pain management. The HCl seems to help with the pain, or at least gives me awareness to take better care of my body by stretching, drinking more water and to get outside for exercise and sunshine.”\n“Most importantly the HCl has given me a feeling of well being and feeling comfortable in my place in the universe, allowing me to process through a depression I have been suffering from. I feel GREAT. The darkness has lifted, the impending doom is cast away! The low dose regimen has also been extremely helpful in musical inspiration; songs I had half-written are coming to completion and new songs are being created. There is a distinct connection between ibo and rhythm/melody, and further underscores for me the important aspect of music in the Bwiti ceremonies.”\nIndividual 2: Female, early 40s, overall good health but suffering from anorexia, has been physically dependent on narcotic analgesics for 19 years. Her use started with heroin and eventually shifted to methadone maintenance and finally hydromorphone (Dilaudid). She has extreme fear and dislike of “tripping” and has repeatedly refused to take a full-blown ibogaine reset.\nHer average daily intake was 28Mg of hydromorphone which she “cold-shakes” (breaks down the pills in a cooker so they can be injected) and IVs.\nShe began by doing 35Mg of ibogaine HCl and was immediately able to stop injecting the hydromorphone and obtained similar analgesia from 24Mg of Dilaudid. Over a period of five days she maintained on 35Mg of ibogaine HCl while continuously decreasing the hydromorphone, which she was taking orally, as prescribed. After five days she was on 16Mg of hydromorphone.\nAt the start of day 8 she began attending psychotherapy. Over the next two weeks she gradually increased her intake of ibogaine HCl to 50Mg/day, and decreased hydromorphone to 6Mg. On day 19, she took a 10 day break from ibogaine HCl, and her hydromorphone intake rose back to 12Mg/daily (oral), before tapering back down to 6Mg/day within hours of restarting ibogaine maintenance at 35Mg.\nAt six months out, this cycle appears to be consistent. She takes a break from ibogaine maintenance every 20 days. Slowly drifts from 6Mg/day of hydromorphone, up to 12Mg, before restarting ibogaine at 35Mg/day, at which point she drops back to 6Mg—which appears to be her comfort zone—while gradually increasing ibogaine HCl to 50Mg/day.\nShe has plans to try a 500Mg dose of ibogaine HCl, and attempt complete cessation of narcotic analgesics.\n\nSee also: Low-Dose Ibogaine for Hedonic Tone Augmentation, Anti-Tolerance Drugs, and On Hitting the Actual Target of Hedonic Tone for more up-to-date information.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/07/06/low-dose-ibogaine-opioids-a-possible-treatment-for-chronic-pain-schizophrenia-and-depression/", "title": "Low-Dose Ibogaine + Opioids: A Possible Treatment for Chronic Pain, Schizophrenia, and Depression?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-07-06T23:25:17+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=13", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "c8775b9b780306ece048c6a30460059d", "summary": []}
{"text": "Coffee Saves Lives\n\n[July 18 2019 addendum: This assumes that coffee has a causal- rather than merely correlational- influence on longevity. See comment section for more details.]\n\nThe T-shirt in the featured image was probably designed as a joke, but I take it very seriously.\nIndeed, I think there is a strong case to be made that subsidizing coffee could be seen as an Effective Altruist priority. You see, you can save a life with coffee for as little as $50k. This makes coffee an intervention that is on par with some of the top charities in the world, and it is an outlier when it comes to the cost-benefit ratio of medical interventions. Consider how, e.g. this article on QALY states that:\n“The UK’s recommendations, for example, are about £20,000 to £30,000 ($30,000 to $45,000) for each additional year of good health, once it has been adjusted to take into account the quality of life. So a drug that achieved 0.5 on the QALY measure would only merit £10,000-15,000 ($15,000 to $22,500).”\nAssuming a QALY-adjusted average life-span of about 60 years per person, coffee is about 30 to 50 times more cost-effective than the types of medical interventions the UK is willing to subsidize to extend people’s lives. And that’s not even considering what people themselves are willing to pay to extend their own lives, which is, of course, a lot more than what a government would.\nRelative to GiveWell‘s top charities this is still not the best intervention out there (with some of the ultra-effective charities saving a life for about 2,000 dollars). I would nonetheless point out that the ultra-effective charities out there are all effective because they address populations where very basic human needs are not typically met. In Malaria-ridden, war-torn areas, a little can go a long way. But what’s different about coffee is that it is as effective everywhere in the world. Sure, you can save a life with $50k in many African countries. But can you do so in Sweden?! With coffee you can!\n…\nAnyhow, how did I arrive at these numbers? Well consider that you can get about 380 doses of coffee for as little as 10 dollars.*\nSo this means you can have a cup of coffee for as little as 2.63 cents(!). In turn, we know from a lot of research that each cup of coffee up to 4 cups a day prevents about 1/2 micromorts (interestingly, it is just as cost-effective to encourage people who don’t drink coffee to drink 1 cup as it would be to encourage people who drink 3 to go ahead and drink 4).\nGiven those numbers, we have that the cost of a full life-span worth of micromorts is about $52,631.58.\nWhy are we not funding this?!\n\n*With: Example 48 oz brand. (we could do even better buying in bulk – I reached out to a delivery company to get a quota and will update when I know more).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/06/28/coffee-saves-lives/", "title": "Coffee Saves Lives", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-06-29T01:52:37+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=13", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "33beec931eb6573c779b6265e560db1e", "summary": []}
{"text": "Top 10 Qualia Computing Articles\n\nAs of June 2019\nSome Qualia Computing articles stand out as particularly novel, hopeful, and consequential. Below I provide a brief introduction to the top 10 articles (in descending order) written so far*:\n10. The Resonance and Vibration of [Phenomenal] Objects\n \n\n\n\nThis serious article starts with a wacky quote from an alleged clairvoyant couple. They describe the way that objects “feel like” in the “etheric plane of existence”. Don’t be discouraged by the woo in the quote – the article uses it to point out real properties of experience that are rarely talked about outside of spiritual contexts. As is the case in many spiritual circles, the dramatic other-worldly experiences people talk about concerning spiritual realms have an important kernel of truth, at least with regards to phenomenology.\nThe analysis section compares the descriptions of the etheric-plane experiences described in the quote with free-wheeling hallucinations. A free-wheeling hallucination is a state of mind usually triggered by combining psychedelics and dissociatives, where one can willfully create arbitrary phenomenal objects, akin to a very intense but more controllable version of a lucid dream. In that state, one can analyze the resonance properties of the objects and contexts one chooses to hallucinate. Indeed, one can have startling experiences where each object has a certain musical signature! Above all, this sort of research can be useful to find structural artifacts in the way objects acquire pleasant and unpleasant qualities. As it turns out, more symmetrical objects sound better on those states. This is an important datapoint that we shouldn’t dismiss!\n9. 24 Predictions for the Year 3000 by David Pearce\nAt Victoria Manalo Draves Park in SF. (2018)\nDavid Pearce is the co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association and the writer of the book-length manifesto The Hedonistic Imperative (1995). He’s been in the trenches of transhumanism since the 90s, building a web-empire of essays and hyperlinks, always courageously advocating for the elimination of suffering (“the world’s last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event”).\nDavid has been a huge influence on my way of thinking. I first encountered his essays when I was 17 years old and my reaction was “OMG! At least one person is saying sane things on the internet!” To start with, David is one of the few people to have recognized the very core of what is fundamentally wrong in the world. Namely, our reward circuitry. We are miserable not because we are unwise, impulsive, resentful, or addicted to technology. On the contrary! We are those things because we are not naturally happy. Our reward circuitry is rigged against us being happy and motivated in the long term, and no peripheralist approach will ever truly fix this problem. We must address the problem at the very root, and fix our neurological architecture with transhumanist technologies.\nHis view is that in the future it will be strictly irrational to take any kind of drug, not because we will know better or because we will be boring and conformist, but because we will already be naturally super-happy. This really struck a chord with me:\nFortunately, over the next few centuries humanity will be able to outwit its ancient genetic masters. Our present status as throwaway genetic vehicles will finally be subverted. When gradients of heavenly well-being become the genetically predestined norm of mental health, then the very notion of tampering with our new-won “natural” condition and feeling “drugged” may come to seem immoral. It may also seem perverse. Why should anyone want to contaminate the divine ecstasy of their spirituo-biological soul-stuff with chemical pollutants? No thanks.\n– The Good Drug Guide, David Pearce\nNowadays most people have a rather bleak view of the future. And while David is not very optimistic about the prospects of avoiding terrible wars in the 21st century, he nonetheless offers powerful arguments for why in the long run humanity is headed towards a world animated by gradients of superhuman bliss.\nI’ve been friends with him since 2011, when I invited him to give a talk at Stanford. More recently, he came to SF last year to give presentations about his predictions for the year 3000 (e.g. see his presentation at Foresight; slides). This article is the source of those presentations.\n(In retrospect, and in light of David’s predictions… we could say that the Jonas Brothers were rather conservative in their forecast for the year 3,000).\n8. Burning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God (1/2)\n \n\nThis is a work of fiction that imagines what theme camps at Burning Man might look like in the year 2029. This was written as an exercise in exploring which comprehensive ideologies will be alive and thriving 10 years from now. Some of them include microlife-based longevity lifestyles (Longevity Camp), a quasi-religious quest to explore the entire state-space of consciousness (Camp Rainbow God), and our very own boss-level rational hedonism worldview, which seeks to uncover the fundamental nature of bliss and optimize experiences for its maximum possible expression (Valence Camp).\n7. The Pseudo-Time Arrow: Explaining Phenomenal Time With Implicit Causal Structures In Networks Of Local Binding\n \nClick to view slideshow.\nThis article deals with time. More specifically, the experience of the passage of time. Any theory of consciousness should be able to explain the nature of our everyday modes of being. But in addition, for the theory to be real and complete, it must also be able to make formal models of exotic experiences. This article examines how exotic experiences of time could be explained if we model experiences as graphs, and the feeling of time as the implicit direction of causality in such graphs. In particular, with this model we can explain odd experiences such as looping, time branching, moments of eternity, and atemporal states (which are often experienced during meditation and/or psychedelic states).\n6. Ontological Qualia: The Future of Personal Identity\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis article talks about the big-picture views of who we all are, and how on earth you find yourself as the person reading this very sentence right now rather than being someone else (!). The article provides some speculations about the evolutionary benefits of different views of personal identity (e.g. believing “we are all one” can be beneficial for super-organisms to arise because people with such a belief would be more willing to radically change their state of consciousness and share information with others).\n5. Quantifying Bliss: Talk Summary\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \nWhat is pleasure? What is pain? Ask a pharmacologist and they will tell you pleasure and pain are the result of various concentrations of serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins in the brain. Ask a neurophysiologist and they’ll tell you pleasure and pain are the result of the degree of activation of the pleasure centers and the amygdala in the brain. Ask an AI researcher and they’ll tell you pleasure and pain are the reward signals of a reinforcement learning algorithm implemented by the brain. Ask a life-coach, and they’ll tell you that pleasure and pain are the result of your life’s circumstances such as the quality of your friendships, your engagement at work, and your sense of meaning.\nThere is a kernel of truth in every one of the responses above, but they all miss the mark somehow. They are saying what pleasure and pain is correlated with, but not what their underlying true essence is.\nIn this article we advance a fundamental theory of valence (the pleasure-pain axis) built from first principles and which makes precise, empirically testable, predictions. The theory is based on Michael Johnson‘s hypothesis that valence is fundamentally related to symmetry (technically: the degree of symmetry of the mathematical object whose features are isomorphic to a system’s phenomenology; see: Symmetry Theory of Valence) and Selen Atasoy‘s recent work on quantifying the brain’s natural connectome-specific harmonic waves. Combining these two paradigms we can come up with an actual quantitative equation for the overall macroscopic symmetry of a brain state, and in turn, predict how good or bad a given experience will feel. We are currently working on setting up the experiment to empirically test this theory.\n4. How to secretly communicate with people on LSD\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis is an article about how to encode information in brief animations that people high on psychedelic drugs can easily decode but sober people cannot. The main trick discussed is the use of visual psychedelic effects (such as tracers) in order to accumulate information across time that would otherwise get erased on a sober state. I coined the term psychedelic cryptography in this piece to describe the set of techniques that enable this kind of secure communication.\n3. Wireheading Done Right: Stay Positive Without Going Insane\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn any case, wouldn’t we get bored of life-long bliss?\nApparently not. That’s what’s so revealing about wireheading. Unlike food, drink or sex, the experience of pleasure itself exhibits no tolerance, even though our innumerable objects of desire certainly do so. Thus we can eventually get bored of anything – with a single exception. Stimulation of the pleasure-centres of the brain never palls.\n– David Pearce, Wirehead Hedonism versus Paradise Engineering\nWhy can’t we all be happy all the time? The short answer is: because the negative feedback dynamics of our reward circuitry won’t allow us to. For deep evolutionary reasons, we’ve inherited an emotional system prone to generate very negative states of consciousness. Evolutionarily adaptive mental states such as jealousy, hatred, anxiety, despair, and frustration could be like our cravings for sugar and fat – an artifact of our calorie-deficient past. Today, with the abundance of food and positive-sum opportunities, it makes sense to rethink the necessity of preserving our ability to experience suffering. Critically, direct electrical stimulation to our pleasure centers shows that lifelong bliss is physiologically possible. Meaning, that the brain’s endless capacity to get bored of anything is not a match against electric (as opposed to chemical) inputs.\nThe question then becomes – how do we stay happy without compromising other things of value? This article discusses some of the main pitfalls of life-long bliss. Namely: (1) that trying to achieve it while ignoring negative feedback backfires, (2) that it makes you prone to get stuck in small behavioral attractors, and (3) that hyper-motivation could empower entities who do not care about the wellbeing of other sentient beings.\nThe article proposes a number of potential solutions to these pitfalls. In particular, rather than wireheading by reducing the development of physiological tolerance to specific forms of bliss (which leads to the problems outlined), we could instead wirehead in such a way that every type of bliss leads to transient habituation while at the same time making it easier to experience different types of bliss. Thus, a person who has wireheaded in this way would constantly experience extremely blissful states, but constantly change which type of bliss is being experienced. From hyper-motivated focused states, to hyper-relaxed restful states, to hyper-creative high-energy states, the person in question would maintain the ability to interact with the world productively without ever having to experience a negative state.\n2. Beyond Turing: A Solution to the Problem of Other Minds Using Mindmelding and Phenomenal Puzzles\n \n\n\n\n\nHow do we know that other people are conscious? Is there any undeniable evidence against solipsism? These questions have been asked for ages, but convincing solutions are lacking. If indeed other brains are haunted with inner experiences then in some sense we all are profoundly ignorant of that aspect of the world. We can speculate about the experiences of other sentient beings, but what do we really know about them? How can we definitively verify that someone indeed has a rich subjective experience independently of you?\nWell, first consider that there already exists a sort of proof of concept for mindmelding in the form of the thalamic bridge between the brains of the Hogan sisters. According to some reports, they are able to feel each other’s sensations:\nTatiana hates ketchup; Krista loves it. Krista scrapes the breading off her chicken McNuggets; Tatiana likes the breading. Specialists speculate that somehow they can selectively block out sensory input from the other. Ketchup, however, is different: Tatiana hates it so much she screams if Krista eats it.\n– Denise Ryan, Through Her Sister’s Eyes\nNow, exactly what the boundary around each of their experiences is remains a mystery. But for the sake of the argument, let us assume that someday we create a reversible inter-thalamic bridge that we can use to temporarily become one with one another. As pointed out by some philosophers, this alone would not be proof that the person one is mindmelding with is independently conscious. It would certainly be evidence, but can we do better? This article provides an additional piece of the puzzle. Namely, it discusses the possibility of using puzzles that can only be solved by making comparisons between the qualia values of our experience. The precise protocol for the experiment is a bit subtle, so I won’t reproduce it here – read the article and watch the video for a detailed explanation.\n1. The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis is, in my opinion, the best article I have written up to now. Why? In brief: because it advances the completely new hypothesis that a large part of what makes the state of consciousness induced by N,N-DMT (aka. “the spirit molecule”) so mysterious, confusing, and bewilderingly bizarre can be explained in terms of a change in the geometry of the phenomenal space one experiences during the trip. The article goes beyond merely making this claim, provides a number of reasons why, and discusses plausible mechanisms of action for this effect. Of note is the fact that the symmetrical texture repetition one sees on a high enough dose of DMT is non-Euclidean. Indeed, the symmetries experienced on that state are hyperbolic in a strict mathematical sense. So unlike trip reports from people who merely say e.g. “I saw a lot of symmetries!” this article zooms in on precisely which symmetries arise, and infers that they imply a change of curvature that is not possible in normal everyday states of consciousness.\nMost people who try DMT come back to consensus reality with new and outlandish beliefs about higher dimensions, otherworldly entities, telepathy, and even life after death. Because most people who are willing to talk about their experiences- and the interpretation they have about those experiences- do not make sense to the scientifically-educated, serious thinkers tend to dismiss the significance of this state. But with the analytic angle of this article, we can actually start making solid progress on characterizing the properties of the surreal states of consciousness found in the DMT-verse.\nWhen it comes to psychedelic theory, at Qualia Computing we focus on the phenomenal character of the experience rather than on its intentional content. You see, it is far less useful to know that you saw a dragon capable of barfing liquid nitrogen during your trip than it is to point out that its body was covered with a patterning with a wallpaper symmetry group of the *632 type. It is this level of attention to detail in phenomenology that actually advances our understanding.\nThe article concludes with a bold prediction: that if indeed N,N-DMT allows you to experience hyperbolically-curved phenomenal space, then a lot of future breakthroughs in pure math will be arrived at by serious mathematicians exploring such altered states in a systematic way. I stand by this prediction.\n\nI will also link to some honorary mentions – There are three high-quality trip reports submitted by Qualia Computing readers that showcase the usefulness of being acquainted with the QC memeplex in order to rationally make sense of otherwise seemingly ineffable experiences (personally I found it really interesting to see Qualia Computing concepts be fire-tested in real life by being applied to the alien state-spaces of consciousness these readers experienced). The trip reports are for LSD, 2C-B, and 4-AcO-DMT.\nAnother set of related articles important to highlight involves one-off descriptions of research leads that could have huge collective hedonic payoffs if carried out. That is, there are many low-hanging fruit research projects that could lead to revolutionary interventions to reduce suffering and enhance our quality of life. These are:\n\nAnti-Tolerance Drugs (Surprisingly, substances exist that, when taken in conjunction with euphoric drugs, prevent the development of tolerance, and this could have game-changing implications for the treatment of chronic pain and addiction)\nCooling It Down To Partying It Up (If the reason why MDMA causes long-term neurological damage is due to the way it overheats the brain, then bracelets designed to cool your blood really quickly could allow people to take MDMA sustainably for decades without getting hurt)\nLow-Dose Ibogaine for Hedonic Tone Augmentation (According to some published reports and anecdotal data, microdosing ibogaine gives rise to an increased hedonic baseline for several days that does not lead to a comedown, possibly by up-regulating mu-opioid receptors – if true this could revolutionize the treatment of depression)\nCause X – What Will the New Shiny Effective Altruist Cause Be? (I highlight that anecdotal evidence indicates that sub-hallucinogenic doses of DMT can abort cluster headaches within seconds, which are some of the most painful experiences that humans have and therefore are an ethical priority)\nFrequency Specific Microcurrent for Kidney-Stone Pain (Along the lines of the previous article, one of the most painful experiences people tend to have in their lifetime is that of kidney stones. So even if there is a small probability that this intervention actually works, there is a strong utilitarian case to research this lead because, if successful, it would lead to a very cheap and widely available method to greatly diminish this very common (~10% lifetime prevalence) form of intense suffering).\nTriple S Genetic Counseling: Predicting Hedonic-Set Point with Commercial-Grade DNA Testing as an Effective Altruist Project (A low-hanging fruit to make a lot of people happy and prevent a ton of suffering would be to build models that predict hedonic set-point based on genetic makeup to be used for genetic preimplantation diagnosis, something that can already be done with the data available to services like 23andMe).\n\nAnd finally, I will also point you to Qualia Computing media appearances, in case you would like to consume Qualia Computing content with the aid of auditory and/or visual qualia.\n\n* I arrived at this particular ranking by sorting all the articles by a weighted sum of (a) the number of genuinely new ideas presented (which Google searches reveal they have never previously been discussed anywhere, including academia, internet forums, popular culture, etc.), (b) how happy it makes me feel that I wrote and published the article, and (c) the logarithm of the number of views of the article to date.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/06/14/top-qualia-computing-articles/", "title": "Top 10 Qualia Computing Articles", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-06-15T00:53:24+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=13", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "373fda97678baa91a842e1c8d500ef5e", "summary": []}
{"text": "Ego and Symmetry on 5-MeO-DMT\n\nTranscript from: Using 5-MeO-DMT To Become Enlightened – Interview With Martin Ball (~43:00 – 47:00)\n\nMartin Ball: Here is what I learned very quickly in working both with 5-MeO-DMT and other medicines during the same time period. First, I noticed this in myself, and then I started looking to see if this was true for other people, and very quickly found that this was true. There is a fundamental distinction: when people go into fully energetically open non-dual states of awareness -and I do qualify it with ‘fully energetically open’ because that is different than, say, a meditative non-dual experience, which I do not qualify as energetically fully open- when someone is energetically fully open and goes into a non-dual state of awareness, what happens is that they always open up with a perfectly mirrored bilateral symmetry, with the left and right sides of the body always mirroring each other. And nothing ever crosses the center line of the body. People move spontaneously or their bodies open up, and their hands may come together, but they come together right here, in the middle along the center line, and then they separate, and then come back together. Then you can see a transition when suddenly someone comes back into the ego. So, they are fully immersed in the experience and their bodies are opened… and then as soon as the ego comes in, there is some kind of break when suddenly the left side of the body is doing something different than the right side of the body.\nFor people who don’t get all the way to being fully energetically open, you give them a very powerful psychedelic -which again is changing the energetic experience of the body- and you can watch them fight with it, and you will see that there is always some kind of asymmetry taking place in their body language when they are fighting with it. Or if they are still residing in their ego. So I learned very quickly that non-dual states of awareness coincide with balanced bilateral symmetry and the ego almost always functions through some form of energetic asymmetry. Which is perfectly natural! I mean, there is noting wrong with it, I am not trying to criticize it. But for example (I use this example all the time): My glass of water is to my right. Now if I -a subject- become thirsty and I want my water, operating with bilateral symmetry isn’t going to get me my water. My water is over here to the right. So I break into object-subject duality so we can have an interaction between these two different parts of the self. So working with psychedelics for the intention of achieving… not only achieving, but also working out the distortions of the ego, means paying attention to how either symmetries or asymmetries show up within the body.\nSo this is the challenge that I give people: Take some 5-MeO-DMT, and see how long you can stay perfectly symmetrical within your body. Now, some people can ride it all the way through. And they can do that fairly easily. Many people… I would say the vast majority, can’t. And even those who do, who open up initially and are in this nice bilateral symmetry, you will see, after 10 or 15 minutes, or for some people after 30 seconds, as soon as the ego starts to reintegrate, they start breaking into asymmetries. Now, what can happen is… so the ego itself, and this is also coming out of my own experience, this is not based on anybody else’s model, this is just my own definition of the ego… the ego itself is not a singular thing. It is a collection of patterns of energy. So as we are coming into ourselves, as young beings, what we are doing is learning different -what we perceive as acceptable- ways of engaging our energy.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/06/08/ego-and-symmetry-on-5-meo-dmt/", "title": "Ego and Symmetry on 5-MeO-DMT", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-06-09T02:45:51+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=13", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b5bdc99d83ba98330cc8ea8b415725b9", "summary": []}
{"text": "AI Alignment Podcast: On Consciousness, Qualia, and Meaning with Mike Johnson and Andrés Gómez Emilsson\n\nLucas Perry from the Future of Life Institute recently interviewed my co-founder Mike Johnson and I in his AI Alignment podcast. Here is the full transcript:\n\nLucas: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the AI Alignment Podcast. I’m Lucas Perry, and today we’ll be speaking with Andrés Gomez Emilsson and Mike Johnson from the Qualia Research Institute. In this episode, we discuss the Qualia Research Institute’s mission and core philosophy. We get into the differences between and arguments for and against functionalism and qualia realism. We discuss definitions of consciousness, how consciousness might be causal, we explore Marr’s Levels of Analysis, we discuss the Symmetry Theory of Valence. We also get into identity and consciousness, and the world, the is-out problem, what this all means for AI alignment and building beautiful futures.\nAnd then end on some fun bits, exploring the potentially large amounts of qualia hidden away in cosmological events, and whether or not our universe is something more like heaven or hell. And remember, if you find this podcast interesting or useful, remember to like, comment, subscribe, and follow us on your preferred listening platform. You can continue to help make this podcast better by participating in a very short survey linked in the description of wherever you might find this podcast. It really helps. Andrés is a consciousness researcher at QRI and is also the Co-founder and President of the Stanford Transhumanist Association. He has a Master’s in Computational Psychology from Stanford. Mike is Executive Director at QRI and is also a co-founder.\nHe is interested in neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and complexity theory. And so, without further ado, I give you Mike Johnson and Andrés Gomez Emilsson. So, Mike and Andrés, thank you so much for coming on. Really excited about this conversation and there’s definitely a ton for us to get into here.\nAndrés: Thank you so much for having us. It’s a pleasure.\nMike: Yeah, glad to be here.\nLucas: Let’s start off just talking to provide some background about the Qualia Research Institute. If you guys could explain a little bit, your perspective of the mission and base philosophy and vision that you guys have at QRI. If you could share that, that would be great.\nAndrés: Yeah, for sure. I think one important point is there’s some people that think that really what matters might have to do with performing particular types of algorithms, or achieving external goals in the world. Broadly speaking, we tend to focus on experience as the source of value, and if you assume that experience is a source of value, then really mapping out what is the set of possible experiences, what are their computational properties, and above all, how good or bad they feel seems like an ethical and theoretical priority to actually make progress on how to systematically figure out what it is that we should be doing.\nMike: I’ll just add to that, this thing called consciousness seems pretty confusing and strange. We think of it as pre-paradigmatic, much like alchemy. Our vision for what we’re doing is to systematize it and to do to consciousness research what chemistry did to alchemy.\nLucas: To sort of summarize this, you guys are attempting to be very clear about phenomenology. You want to provide a formal structure for understanding and also being able to infer phenomenological states in people. So you guys are realists about consciousness?\nMike: Yes, absolutely.\nLucas: Let’s go ahead and lay some conceptual foundations. On your website, you guys describe QRI’s full stack, so the kinds of metaphysical and philosophical assumptions that you guys are holding to while you’re on this endeavor to mathematically capture consciousness.\nMike: I would say ‘full stack’ talks about how we do philosophy of mind, we do neuroscience, and we’re just getting into neurotechnology with the thought that yeah, if you have a better theory of consciousness, you should be able to have a better theory about the brain. And if you have a better theory about the brain, you should be able to build cooler stuff than you could otherwise. But starting with the philosophy, there’s this conception of qualia of formalism; the idea that phenomenology can be precisely represented mathematically. You borrow the goal from Giulio Tononi’s IIT. We don’t necessarily agree with the specific math involved, but the goal of constructing a mathematical object that is isomorphic to a systems phenomenology would be the correct approach if you want to formalize phenomenology.\nAnd then from there, one of the big questions in how you even start is, what’s the simplest starting point? And here, I think one of our big innovations that is not seen at any other research group is we’ve started with emotional valence and pleasure. We think these are not only very ethically important, but also just literally the easiest place to start reverse engineering.\nLucas: Right, and so this view is also colored by physicalism and quality of structuralism and valence realism. Could you explain some of those things in a non-jargony way?\nMike: Sure. Quality of formalism is this idea that math is the right language to talk about qualia in, and that we can get a precise answer. This is another way of saying that we’re realists about consciousness much as people can be realists about electromagnetism. We’re also valence realists. This refers to how we believe emotional valence, or pain and pleasure, the goodness or badness of an experience. We think this is a natural kind. This concept carves reality at the joints. We have some further thoughts on how to define this mathematically as well.\nLucas: So you guys are physicalists, so you think that basically the causal structure of the world is best understood by physics and that consciousness was always part of the game engine of the universe from the beginning. Ontologically, it was basic and always there in the same sense that the other forces of nature were already in the game engine since the beginning?\nMike: Yeah, I would say so. I personally like the frame of dual aspect monism, but I would also step back a little bit and say there’s two attractors in this discussion. One is the physicalist attractor, and that’s QRI. Another would be the functionalist/computationalist attractor. I think a lot of AI researchers are in this attractor and this is a pretty deep question of, if we want to try to understand what value is, or what’s really going on, or if we want to try to reverse engineer phenomenology, do we pay attention to bits or atoms? What’s more real; bits or atoms?\nLucas: That’s an excellent question. Scientific reductionism here I think is very interesting. Could you guys go ahead and unpack though the skeptics position of your view and broadly adjudicate the merits of each view?\nAndrés: Maybe a really important frame here is called Marr’s Levels of Analyses. David Marr was a cognitive scientist, wrote a really influential book in the ’80s called On Vision where he basically creates a schema for how to understand knowledge about, in this particular case, how you actually make sense of the world visually. The framework goes as follows: you have three ways in which you can describe an information processing system. First of all, the computational/behavioral level. What that is about is understanding the input-output mapping of an information processing system. Part of it is also understanding the run-time complexity of the system and under what conditions it’s able to perform its actions. Here an analogy would be with an abacus, for example.\nOn the computational/behavioral level, what an abacus can do is add, subtract, multiply, divide, and if you’re really creative you can also exponentiate and do other interesting things. Then you have the algorithmic level of analysis, which is a little bit more detailed, and in a sense more constrained. What the algorithm level of analysis is about is figuring out what are the internal representations and possible manipulations of those representations such that you get the input output of mapping described by the first layer. Here you have an interesting relationship where understanding the first layer doesn’t fully constrain the second one. That is to say, there are many systems that have the same input output mapping but that under the hood uses different algorithms.\nIn the case of the abacus, an algorithm might be something whenever you want to add a number you just push a bead. Whenever you’re done with a row, you push all of the beads backs and then you add a bead in the row underneath. And finally, you have the implementation level of analysis, and that is, what is the system actually made of? How is it constructed? All of these different levels ultimately also map onto different theories of consciousness, and that is basically where in the stack you associate consciousness, or being, or “what matters”. So, for example, behaviorists in the ’50s, they may associate consciousness, if they give any credibility to that term, with the behavioral level. They don’t really care what’s happening inside as long as you have extended pattern of reinforcement learning over many iterations.\nWhat matters is basically how you’re behaving and that’s the crux of who you are. A functionalist will actually care about what algorithms you’re running, how is it that you’re actually transforming the input into the output. Functionalists generally do care about, for example, brain imaging, they do care about the high level algorithms that the brain is running, and generally will be very interested in figuring out these algorithms and generalize them in fields like machine learning and digital neural networks and so on. A physicalist associate consciousness at the implementation level of analysis. How the system is physically constructed, has bearings on what is it like to be that system.\nLucas: So, you guys haven’t said that this was your favorite approach, but if people are familiar with David Chalmers, these seem to be the easy problems, right? And functionalists are interested in just the easy problems and some of them will actually just try to explain consciousness away, right?\nMike: Yeah, I would say so. And I think to try to condense some of the criticism we have of functionalism, I would claim that it looks like a theory of consciousness and can feel like a theory of consciousness, but it may not actually do what we need a theory of consciousness to do; specify which exact phenomenological states are present.\nLucas: Is there not some conceptual partitioning that we need to do between functionalists who believe in qualia or consciousness, and those that are illusionists or want to explain it away or think that it’s a myth?\nMike: I think that there is that partition, and I guess there is a question of how principled the partition you can be, or whether if you chase the ideas down as far as you can, the partition collapses. Either consciousness is a thing that is real in some fundamental sense and I think you can get there with physicalism, or consciousness is more of a process, a leaky abstraction. I think functionalism naturally tugs in that direction. For example, Brian Tomasik has followed this line of reasoning and come to the conclusion of analytic functionalism, which is trying to explain away consciousness.\nLucas: What is your guys’s working definition of consciousness and what does it mean to say that consciousness is real.\nMike: It is a word that’s overloaded. It’s used in many contexts. I would frame it as what it feels like to be something, and something is conscious if there is something it feels like to be that thing.\nAndrés: It’s important also to highlight some of its properties. As Mike pointed out, “consciousness” is used in many different ways. There’s like eight definitions for the word consciousness, and honestly, all of them are really interesting. Some of them are more fundamental than others and we tend to focus on the more fundamental side of the spectrum for the word. A sense that would be very not fundamental would be consciousness in the sense of social awareness or something like that. We actually think of consciousness much more in terms of qualia; what is it like to be something? What is it like to exist? Some of the key properties of consciousness are as follows: First of all, we do think it exists.\nSecond, in some sense it has causal power in the sense that the fact that we are conscious matters for evolution, evolution made us conscious for a reason that it’s actually doing some computational legwork that would be maybe possible to do, but just not as efficient or not as conveniently as it is possible with consciousness. Then also you have the property of qualia, the fact that we can experience sights, and colors, and tactile sensations, and thoughts experiences, and emotions, and so on, and all of these are in completely different worlds, and in a sense they are, but they have the property that they can be part of a unified experience that can experience color at the same time as experiencing sound. That sends those different types of sensations, we describe them as the category of consciousness because they can be experienced together.\nAnd finally, you have unity, the fact that you have the capability of experiencing many qualia simultaneously. That’s generally a very strong claim to make, but we think you need to acknowledge and take seriously its unity.\nLucas: What are your guys’s intuition pumps for thinking why consciousness exists as a thing? Why is there a qualia?\nAndrés: There’s the metaphysical question of why consciousness exists to begin within. That’s something I would like to punt for the time being. There’s also the question of why was it recruited for information processing purposes in animals? The intuition here is that there are various contrasts that you can have within experience, which can serve a computational role. So, there may be a very deep reason why color qualia or visual qualia is used for information processing associated with sight, and why tactile qualia is associated with information processing useful for touching and making haptic representations, and that might have to do with the actual map of how all the qualia values are related to each other. Obviously, you have all of these edge cases, people who are seeing synesthetic.\nThey may open their eyes and they experience sounds associated with colors, and people tend to think of those as abnormal. I would flip it around and say that we are all synesthetic, it’s just that the synesthesia that we have in general is very evolutionarily adaptive. The reason why you experience colors when you open your eyes is that that type of qualia is really well suited to represent geometrically a projective space. That’s something that naturally comes out of representing the world with the sensory apparatus like eyes. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other ways of doing it. It’s possible that you could have an offshoot of humans that whenever they opened their eyes, they experience sound and they use that very well to represent the visual world.\nBut we may very well be in a local maxima of how different types of qualia are used to represent and do certain types of computations in a very well-suited way. It’s like the intuition behind why we’re conscious, is that all of these different contrasts in the structure of the relationship of possible qualia values has computational implications, and there’s actual ways of using this contrast in very computationally effective ways.\nLucas: So, just to channel the functionalist here, wouldn’t he just say that everything you just said about qualia could be fully reducible to input output and algorithmic information processing? So, why do we need this extra property of qualia?\nAndrés: There’s this article, I believe is by Brian Tomasik that basically says, flavors of consciousness are flavors of computation. It might be very useful to do that exercise, where basically you identify color qualia as just a certain type of computation and it may very well be that the geometric structure of color is actually just a particular algorithmic structure, that whenever you have a particular type of algorithmic information processing, you get these geometric state-space. In the case of color, that’s a Euclidean three-dimensional space. In the case of tactile or smell qualia, it might be a much more complicated space, but then it’s in a sense implied by the algorithms that we run. There is a number of good arguments there.\nThe general approach to how to tackle them is that when it comes down to actually defining what algorithms a given system is running, you will hit a wall when you try to formalize exactly how to do it. So, one example is, how do you determine the scope of an algorithm? When you’re analyzing a physical system and you’re trying to identify what algorithm it is running, are you allowed to basically contemplate 1,000 atoms? Are you allowed to contemplate a million atoms? Where is a natural boundary for you to say, “Whatever is inside here can be part of the same algorithm, but whatever is outside of it can’t.” And, there really isn’t a frame-invariant way of making those decisions. On the other hand, if you ask to see a qualia with actual physical states, there is a frame-invariant way of describing what the system is.\nMike: So, a couple of years ago I posted a piece giving a critique of functionalism and one of the examples that I brought up was, if I have a bag of popcorn and I shake the bag of popcorn, did I just torture someone? Did I just run a whole brain emulation of some horrible experience, or did I not? There’s not really an objective way to determine which algorithms a physical system is objectively running. So this is a kind of an unanswerable question from the perspective of functionalism, whereas with the physical theory of consciousness, it would have a clear answer.\nAndrés: Another metaphor here is, let’s say you’re at a park enjoying an ice cream. In this system that I created that has, let’s say isomorphic algorithms to whatever is going on in your brain, the particular algorithms that your brain is running in that precise moment within a functionalist paradigm maps onto a metal ball rolling down one of the paths within these machine in a straight line, not touching anything else. So there’s actually not much going on. According to functionalism, that would have to be equivalent and it would actually be generating your experience. Now the weird thing there is that you could actually break the machine, you could do a lot of things and the behavior of the ball would not change.\nMeaning that within functionalism, and to actually understand what a system is doing, you need to understand the counter-factuals of the system. You need to understand, what would the system be doing if the input had been different? And all of a sudden, you end with this very, very gnarly problem of defining, well, how do you actually objectively decide what is the boundary of the system? Even some of these particular states that allegedly are very complicated, the system looks extremely simple, and you can remove a lot of parts without actually modifying its behavior. Then that casts in question whether there is an objective boundary, any known arbitrary boundary that you can draw around the system and say, “Yeah, this is equivalent to what’s going on in your brain,” right now.\nThis has a very heavy bearing on the binding problem. The binding problem for those who haven’t heard of it is basically, how is it possible that 100 billion neurons just because they’re skull-bound, spatially distributed, how is it possible that they simultaneously contribute to a unified experience as opposed to, for example, neurons in your brain and neurons in my brain contributing to a unified experience? You hit a lot of problems like what is the speed of propagation of information for different states within the brain? I’ll leave it at that for the time being.\nLucas: I would just like to be careful about this intuition here that experience is unified. I think that the intuition pump for that is direct phenomenological experience like experience seems unified, but experience also seems a lot of different ways that aren’t necessarily descriptive of reality, right?\nAndrés: You can think of it as different levels of sophistication, where you may start out with a very naive understanding of the world, where you confuse your experience for the world itself. A very large percentage of people perceive the world and in a sense think that they are experiencing the world directly, whereas all the evidence indicates that actually you’re experiencing an internal representation. You can go and dream, you can hallucinate, you can enter interesting meditative states, and those don’t map to external states of the world.\nThere’s this transition that happens when you realize that in some sense you’re experiencing a world simulation created by your brain, and of course, you’re fooled by it in countless ways, especially when it comes to emotional things that we look at a person and we might have an intuition of what type of person that person is, and that if we’re not careful, we can confuse our intuition, we can confuse our feelings with truth as if we were actually able to sense their souls, so to speak, rather than, “Hey, I’m running some complicated models on people-space and trying to carve out who they are.” There’s definitely a lot of ways in which experience is very deceptive, but here I would actually make an important distinction.\nWhen it comes to intentional content, and intentional content is basically what the experience is about, for example, if you’re looking at a chair, there’s the quality of chairness, the fact that you understand the meaning of chair and so on. That is usually a very deceptive part of experience. There’s another way of looking at experience that I would say is not deceptive, which is the phenomenal character of experience; how it presents itself. You can be deceived about basically what the experience is about, but you cannot be deceived about how you’re having the experience, how you’re experiencing it. You can infer based on a number of experiences that the only way for you to even actually experience a given phenomenal object is to incorporate a lot of that information into a unified representation.\nBut also, if you just pay attention to your experience that you can simultaneously place your attention in two spots of your visual field and make them harmonized. That’s a phenomenal character and I would say that there’s a strong case to be made to not doubt that property.\nLucas: I’m trying to do my best to channel the functionalist. I think he or she would say, “Okay, so what? That’s just more information processing, and i’ll bite the bullet on the binding problem. I still need some more time to figure that out. So what? It seems like these people who believe in qualia have an even tougher job of trying to explain this extra spooky quality in the world that’s different from all the other physical phenomenon that science has gone into.” It also seems to violate Occam’s razor or a principle of lightness where one’s metaphysics or ontology would want to assume the least amount of extra properties or entities in order to try to explain the world. I’m just really trying to tease out your best arguments here for qualia realism as we do have this current state of things in AI alignment where most people it seems would either try to explain away consciousness, would say it’s an illusion, or they’re anti-realist about qualia.\nMike: That’s a really good question, a really good frame. And I would say our strongest argument revolves around predictive power. Just like centuries ago, you could absolutely be a skeptic about, shall we say, electromagnetism realism. And you could say, “Yeah, I mean there is this thing we call static, and there’s this thing we call lightning, and there’s this thing we call load stones or magnets, but all these things are distinct. And to think that there’s some unifying frame, some deep structure of the universe that would tie all these things together and highly compress these phenomenon, that’s crazy talk.” And so, this is a viable position today to say that about consciousness, that it’s not yet clear whether consciousness has deep structure, but we’re assuming it does, and we think that unlocks a lot of predictive power.\nWe should be able to make predictions that are both more concise and compressed and crisp than others, and we should be able to make predictions that no one else can.\nLucas: So what is the most powerful here about what you guys are doing? Is it the specific theories and assumptions which you take are falsifiable?\nMike: Yeah.\nLucas: If we can make predictive assessments of these things, which are either leaky abstractions or are qualia, how would we even then be able to arrive at a realist or anti-realist view about qualia?\nMike: So, one frame on this is, it could be that one could explain a lot of things about observed behavior and implicit phenomenology through a purely functionalist or computationalist lens, but maybe for a given system it might take 10 terabytes. And if you can get there in a much simpler way, if you can explain it in terms of three elegant equations instead of 10 terabytes, then it wouldn’t be proof that there exists some crystal clear deep structure at work. But it would be very suggestive. Marr’s Levels of Analysis are pretty helpful here, where a functionalist might actually be very skeptical of consciousness mattering at all because it would say, “Hey, if you’re identifying consciousness at the implementation level of analysis, how could that have any bearing on how we are talking about, how we understand the world, how we’d behave?\nSince the implementational level is kind of epiphenomenal from the point of view of the algorithm. How can an algorithm know its own implementation, all it can maybe figure out its own algorithm, and it’s identity would be constrained to its own algorithmic structure.” But that’s not quite true. In fact, there is bearings on one level of analysis onto another, meaning in some cases the implementation level of analysis doesn’t actually matter for the algorithm, but in some cases it does. So, if you were implementing a computer, let’s say with water, you have the option of maybe implementing a Turing machine with water buckets and in that case, okay, the implementation level of analysis goes out the window in terms of it doesn’t really help you understand the algorithm.\nBut if how you’re using water to implement algorithms is by basically creating this system of adding waves in buckets of different shapes, with different resonant modes, then the implementation level of analysis actually matters a whole lot for what algorithms are … finely tuned to be very effective in that substrate. In the case of consciousness and how we behave, we do think properties of the substrate have a lot of bearings on what algorithms we actually run. A functionalist should actually start caring about consciousness if the properties of consciousness makes the algorithms more efficient, more powerful.\nLucas: But what if qualia and consciousness are substantive real things? What if the epiphenomenonalist true and is like smoke rising from computation and it doesn’t have any causal efficacy?\nMike: To offer a re-frame on this, I like this frame of dual aspect monism better. There seems to be an implicit value judgment on epiphenomenalism. It’s seen as this very bad thing if a theory implies qualia as epiphenomenal. Just to put cards on the table, I think Andrés and I differ a little bit on how we see these things, although I think our ideas also mesh up well. But I would say that under the frame of something like dual aspect monism, that there’s actually one thing that exists, and it has two projections or shadows. And one projection is the physical world such as we can tell, and then the other projection is phenomenology, subjective experience. These are just two sides of the same coin and neither is epiphenomenal to the other. It’s literally just two different angles on the same thing.\nAnd in that sense, qualia values and physical values are really talking about the same thing when you get down to it.\nLucas: Okay. So does this all begin with this move that Descartes makes, where he tries to produce a perfectly rational philosophy or worldview by making no assumptions and then starting with experience? Is this the kind of thing that you guys are doing in taking consciousness or qualia to be something real or serious?\nMike: I can just speak for myself here, but I would say my intuition comes from two places. One is staring deep into the beast of functionalism and realizing that it doesn’t lead to a clear answer. My model is that it just is this thing that looks like an answer but can never even in theory be an answer to how consciousness works. And if we deny consciousness, then we’re left in a tricky place with ethics and moral value. It also seems to leave value on the table in terms of predictions, that if we can assume consciousness as real and make better predictions, then that’s evidence that we should do that.\nLucas: Isn’t that just an argument that it would be potentially epistemically useful for ethics if we could have predictive power about consciousness?\nMike: Yeah. So, let’s assume that it’s 100 years, or 500 years, or 1,000 years in the future, and we’ve finally cracked consciousness. We’ve finally solved it. My open question is, what does the solution look like? If we’re functionalists, what does the solution look like? If we’re physicalists, what does the solution look like? And we can expand this to ethics as well.\nLucas: Just as a conceptual clarification, the functionalists are also physicalists though, right?\nAndrés: There is two senses of the word physicalism here. So if there’s physicalism in the sense of like a theory of the universe, that the behavior of matter and energy, what happens in the universe is exhaustively described by the laws of physics, or future physics, there is also physicalism in the sense of understanding consciousness in contrast to functionalism. David Pearce, I think, would describe it as non-materialist physicalist idealism. There’s definitely a very close relationship between that phrasing and dual aspect monism. I can briefly unpack it. Basically non materialist is not saying that the stuff of the world is fundamentally unconscious. That’s something that materialism claims, that what the world is made of is not conscious, is raw matter so to speak.\nAndrés: Physicalist, again in the sense of the laws of physics exhaustively describe behavior and idealist in the sense of what makes up the world is qualia or consciousness. The big picture view is that the actual substrate of the universe of quantum fields are fields of qualia.\nLucas: So Mike, you were saying that in the future when we potentially have a solution to the problem of consciousness, that in the end, the functionalists with algorithms and explanations of say all of the easy problems, all of the mechanisms behind the things that we call consciousness, you think that that project will ultimately fail?\nMike: I do believe that, and I guess my gentle challenge to functionalists would be to sketch out a vision of what a satisfying answer to consciousness would be, whether it’s completely explaining it a way or completely explaining it. If in 500 years you go to the local bookstore and you check out consciousness 101, and just flip through it, you look at the headlines and the chapter list and the pictures, what do you see? I think we have an answer as formalists, but I would be very interested in getting the functionalists state on this.\nLucas: All right, so you guys have this belief in the ability to formalize our understanding of consciousness, is this actually contingent on realism or anti realism?\nMike: It is implicitly dependent on realism, that consciousness is real enough to be describable mathematically in a precise sense. And actually that would be my definition of realism, that something is real if we can describe it exactly with mathematics and it is instantiated in the universe. I think the idea of connecting math and consciousness is very core to formalism.\nLucas: What’s particularly interesting here are the you’re making falsifiable claims about phenomenological states. It’s good and exciting that your Symmetry Theory of Valence, which we can get into now has falsifiable aspects. So do you guys want to describe here your Symmetry Theory of Valence and how this fits in and as a consequence of your valence realism?\nAndrés: Sure, yeah. I think like one of the key places where this has bearings on is and understanding what is it that we actually want and what is it that we actually like and enjoy. That will be answered in an agent way. So basically you think of agents as entities who spin out possibilities for what actions to take and then they have a way of sorting them by expected utility and then carrying them out. A lot of people may associate what we want or what we like or what we care about at that level, the agent level, whereas we think actually the true source of value is more low level than that. That there’s something else that we’re actually using in order to implement agentive behavior. There’s ways of experiencing value that are completely separated from agents. You don’t actually need to be generating possible actions and evaluating them and enacting them for there to be value or for you to actually be able to enjoy something.\nSo what we’re examining here is actually what is the lower level property that gives rise even to agentive behavior that underlies every other aspect of experience. These would be a valence and specifically valence gradients. The general claim is that we are set up in such a way that we are basically climbing the valence gradient. This is not true in every situation, but it’s mostly true and it’s definitely mostly true in animals. And then the question becomes what implements valence gradients. Perhaps your intuition is this extraordinary fact that things that have nothing to do with our evolutionary past nonetheless can feel good or bad. So it’s understandable that if you hear somebody scream, you may get nervous or anxious or fearful or if you hear somebody laugh you may feel happy.\nThat makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, but why would the sound of the Bay Area Rapid Transit, the Bart, which creates these very intense screeching sounds, that is not even within like the vocal range of humans, it’s just really bizarre, never encountered before in our evolutionary past and nonetheless, it has an extraordinarily negative valence. That’s like a hint that valence has to do with patterns, it’s not just goals and actions and utility functions, but the actual pattern of your experience may determine valence. The same goes for a SUBPAC, is this technology that basically renders sounds between 10 and 100 hertz and some of them feel really good, some of them feel pretty unnerving, some of them are anxiety producing and it’s like why would that be the case? Especially when you’re getting two types of input that have nothing to do with our evolutionary past.\nIt seems that there’s ways of triggering high and low valence states just based on the structure of your experience. The last example I’ll give is very weird states of consciousness like meditation or psychedelics that seem to come with extraordinarily intense and novel forms of experiencing significance or a sense of bliss or pain. And again, they don’t seem to have much semantic content per se or rather the semantic content is not the core reason why they feel that they’re bad. It has to do more with a particular structure that they induce in experience.\nMike: There are many ways to talk about where pain and pleasure come from. We can talk about it in terms of neuro chemicals, opioids, dopamine. We can talk about it in terms of pleasure centers in the brain, in terms of goals and preferences and getting what you want, but all these have counterexamples. All of these have some points that you can follow the thread back to which will beg the question. I think the only way to explain emotional valence, pain and pleasure, that doesn’t beg the question is to explain it in terms of some patterns within phenomenology, just intrinsically feel good and some intrinsically feel bad. To touch back on the formalism brain, this would be saying that if we have a mathematical object that is isomorphic to your phenomenology, to what it feels like to be you, then some pattern or property of this object will refer to or will sort of intrinsically encode you are emotional valence, how pleasant or unpleasant this experiences.\nThat’s the valence formalism aspect that we’ve come to.\nLucas: So given the valence realism, the view is this intrinsic pleasure, pain axis of the world and this is sort of challenging I guess David Pearce’s view. There are things in experience which are just clearly good seeming or bad seeming. Will MacAskill called these pre theoretic properties we might ascribe to certain kinds of experiential aspects, like they’re just good or bad. So with this valence realism view, this potentiality in this goodness or badness whose nature is sort of self intimatingly disclosed in the physics and in the world since the beginning and now it’s unfolding and expressing itself more so and the universe is sort of coming to life, and embedded somewhere deep within the universe’s structure are these intrinsically good or intrinsically bad valances which complex computational systems and maybe other stuff has access to.\nAndrés: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And I would perhaps emphasize that it’s not only pre-theoretical, it’s pre-agentive, you don’t even need an agent for there to be valence.\nLucas: Right. Okay. This is going to be a good point I think for getting into these other more specific hairy philosophical problems. Could you go ahead and unpack a little bit more this view that pleasure or pain is self intimatingly good or bad that just by existing and experiential relation with the thing its nature is disclosed. Brian Tomasik here, and I think functionalists would say there’s just another reinforcement learning algorithm somewhere before that is just evaluating these phenomenological states. They’re not intrinsically or bad, that’s just what it feels like to be the kind of agent who has that belief.\nAndrés: Sure. There’s definitely many angles from which to see this. One of them is by basically realizing that liking, wanting and learning are possible to dissociate, and in particular you’re going to have reinforcement without an associated positive valence. You can have also positive valence without reinforcement or learning. Generally they are correlated but they are different things. My understanding is a lot of people who may think of valence as something we believe matters because you are the type of agent that has a utility function and a reinforcement function. If that was the case, we would expect valence to melt away in states that are non agentive, we wouldn’t necessarily see it. And also that it would be intrinsically tied to intentional content, the aboutness of experience. A very strong counter example is that somebody may claim that really what they truly want this to be academically successful or something like that.\nThey think of the reward function as intrinsically tied to getting a degree or something like that. I would call that to some extent illusory, that if you actually look at how those preferences are being implemented, that deep down there would be valence gradients happening there. One way to show this would be let’s say the person on the graduation day, you give them an opioid antagonist. The person will subjectively feel that the day is meaningless, you’ve removed the pleasant cream of the experience that they were actually looking for, that they thought all along was tied in with intentional content with the fact of graduating but in fact it was the hedonic gloss that they were after, and that’s kind of like one intuition pump part there.\nLucas: These core problem areas that you’ve identified in Principia Qualia, would you just like to briefly touch on those?\nMike: Yeah, trying to break the problem down into modular pieces with the idea that if we can decompose the problem correctly then the sub problems become much easier than the overall problem and if you collect all the solutions to the sub problem than in aggregate, you get a full solution to the problem of consciousness. So I’ve split things up into the metaphysics, the math and the interpretation. The first question is what metaphysics do you even start with? What ontology do you even try to approach the problem? And we’ve chosen the ontology of physics that can objectively map onto reality in a way that computation can not. Then there’s this question of, okay, so you have your core ontology in this case physics, and then there’s this question of what counts, what actively contributes to consciousness? Do we look at electrons, electromagnetic fields, quarks?\nThis is an unanswered question. We have hypotheses but we don’t have an answer. Moving into the math, conscious system seemed to have boundaries, if something’s happening inside my head it can directly contribute to my conscious experience. But even if we put our heads together, literally speaking, your consciousness doesn’t bleed over into mine, there seems to be a boundary. So one way of framing this is the boundary problem and one way it’s framing it is the binding problem, and these are just two sides of the same coin. There’s this big puzzle of how do you draw the boundaries of a subject experience. IIT is set up to approach consciousness in itself through this lens that has a certain style of answer, style of approach. We don’t necessarily need to take that approach, but it’s a intellectual landmark. Then we get into things like the state-space problem and the topology of information problem.\nIf we figured out our basic ontology of what we think is a good starting point and of that stuff, what actively contributes to consciousness, and then we can figure out some principled way to draw a boundary around, okay, this is conscious experience A and this conscious experience B, and they don’t overlap. So you have a bunch of the information inside the boundary. Then there’s this math question of how do you rearrange it into a mathematical object that is isomorphic to what that stuff feels like. And again, IIT has an approach to this, we don’t necessarily ascribe to the exact approach but it’s good to be aware of. There’s also the interpretation problem, which is actually very near and dear to what QRI is working on and this is the concept of if you had a mathematical object that represented what it feels like to be you, how would we even start to figure out what it meant?\nLucas: This is also where the falsifiability comes in, right? If we have the mathematical object and we’re able to formally translate that into phenomenological states, then people can self report on predictions, right?\nMike: Yes. I don’t necessarily fully trust self reports as being the gold standard. I think maybe evolution is tricky sometimes and can lead to inaccurate self report, but at the same time it’s probably pretty good, and it’s the best we have for validating predictions.\nAndrés: A lot of this gets easier if we assume that maybe we can be wrong in an absolute sense but we’re often pretty well calibrated to judge relative differences. Maybe you ask me how I’m doing on a scale of one to ten and I say seven and the reality is a five, maybe that’s a problem, but at the same time I like chocolate and if you give me some chocolate and I eat it and that improves my subjective experience and I would expect us to be well calibrated in terms of evaluating whether something is better or worse.\nLucas: There’s this view here though that the brain is not like a classical computer, that it is more like a resonant instrument.\nMike: Yeah. Maybe an analogy here it could be pretty useful. There’s this researcher William Sethares who basically figured out the way to quantify the mutual dissonance between pairs of notes. It turns out that it’s not very hard, all you need to do is add up the pairwise dissonance between every harmonic of the notes. And what that gives you is that if you take for example a major key and you compute the average dissonance between pairs of notes within that major key it’s going to be pretty good on average. And if you take the average dissonance of a minor key it’s going to be higher. So in a sense what distinguishes the minor and a major key is in the combinatorial space of possible permutations of notes, how frequently are they dissonant versus consonant.\nThat’s a very ground truth mathematical feature of a musical instrument and that’s going to be different from one instrument to the next. With that as a backdrop, we think of the brain and in particular valence in a very similar light that the brain has natural resonant modes and emotions may seem externally complicated. When you’re having a very complicated emotion and we ask you to describe it it’s almost like trying to describe a moment in a symphony, this very complicated composition and how do you even go about it. But deep down the reason why a particular frame sounds pleasant or unpleasant within music is ultimately tractable to the additive per wise dissonance of all of those harmonics. And likewise for a given state of consciousness we suspect that very similar to music the average pairwise dissonance between the harmonics present on a given point in time will be strongly related to how unpleasant the experience is.\nThese are electromagnetic waves and it’s not exactly like a static or it’s not exactly a standing wave either, but it gets really close to it. So basically what this is saying is there’s this excitation inhibition wave function and that happens statistically across macroscopic regions of the brain. There’s only a discrete number of ways in which that way we can fit an integer number of times in the brain. We’ll give you a link to the actual visualizations for what this looks like. There’s like a concrete example, one of the harmonics with the lowest frequency is basically a very simple one where interviewer hemispheres are alternatingly more excited versus inhibited. So that will be a low frequency harmonic because it is very spatially large waves, an alternating pattern of excitation. Much higher frequency harmonics are much more detailed and obviously hard to describe, but visually generally speaking, the spatial regions that are activated versus inhibited are these very thin wave fronts.\nIt’s not a mechanical wave as such, it’s a electromagnetic wave. So it would actually be the electric potential in each of these regions of the brain fluctuates, and within this paradigm on any given point in time you can describe a brain state as a weighted sum of all of its harmonics, and what that weighted sum looks like depends on your state of consciousness.\nLucas: Sorry, I’m getting a little caught up here on enjoying resonant sounds and then also the valence realism. The view isn’t that all minds will enjoy resonant things because happiness is like a fundamental valence thing of the world and all brains who come out of evolution should probably enjoy resonance.\nMike: It’s less about the stimulus, it’s less about the exact signal and it’s more about the effect of the signal on our brains. The resonance that matters, the resonance that counts, or the harmony that counts we’d say, or in a precisely technical term, the consonance that counts is the stuff that happens inside our brains. Empirically speaking most signals that involve a lot of harmony create more internal consonance in these natural brain harmonics than for example, dissonant stimuli. But the stuff that counts is inside the head, not the stuff that is going in our ears.\nJust to be clear about QRI’s move here, Selen Atasoy has put forth this connectome-specific harmonic wave model and what we’ve done is combined it with our symmetry theory of valence and said this is sort of a way of basically getting a Fourier transform of where the energy is in terms of frequencies of brainwaves in a much cleaner way than has been available through EEG. Basically we can evaluate this data set for harmony. How much harmony is there in a brain, with the link to the Symmetry Theory of Valence then it should be a very good proxy for how pleasant it is to be that brain.\nLucas: Wonderful.\nAndrés: In this context, yeah, the Symmetry Theory of Valence would be much more fundamental. There’s probably many ways of generating states of consciousness that are in a sense completely unnatural that are not based on the harmonics of the brain, but we suspect the bulk of the differences in states of consciousness would cash out in differences in brain harmonics because that’s a very efficient way of modulating the symmetry of the state.\nMike: Basically, music can be thought of as a very sophisticated way to hack our brains into a state of greater consonance, greater harmony.\nLucas: All right. People should check out your Principia Qualia, which is the work that you’ve done that captures a lot of this well. Is there anywhere else that you’d like to refer people to for the specifics?\nMike: Principia qualia covers the philosophical framework and the symmetry theory of valence. Andrés has written deeply about this connectome-specific harmonic wave frame and the name of that piece is Quantifying Bliss.\nLucas: Great. I would love to be able to quantify bliss and instantiate it everywhere. Let’s jump in here into a few problems and framings of consciousness. I’m just curious to see if you guys have any comments on ,the first is what you call the real problem of consciousness and the second one is what David Chalmers calls the Meta problem of consciousness. Would you like to go ahead and start off here with just this real problem of consciousness?\nMike: Yeah. So this gets to something we were talking about previously, is consciousness real or is it not? Is it something to be explained or to be explained away? This cashes out in terms of is it something that can be formalized or is it intrinsically fuzzy? I’m calling this the real problem of consciousness, and a lot depends on the answer to this. There are so many different ways to approach consciousness and hundreds, perhaps thousands of different carvings of the problem, panpsychism, we have dualism, we have non materialist physicalism and so on. I think essentially the core distinction, all of these theories sort themselves into two buckets, and that’s is consciousness real enough to formalize exactly or not. This frame is perhaps the most useful frame to use to evaluate theories of consciousness.\nLucas: And then there’s a Meta problem of consciousness which is quite funny, it’s basically like why have we been talking about consciousness for the past hour and what’s all this stuff about qualia and happiness and sadness? Why do people make claims about consciousness? Why does it seem to us that there is maybe something like a hard problem of consciousness, why is it that we experience phenomenological states? Why isn’t everything going on with the lights off?\nMike: I think this is a very clever move by David Chalmers. It’s a way to try to unify the field and get people to talk to each other, which is not so easy in the field. The Meta problem of consciousness doesn’t necessarily solve anything but it tries to inclusively start the conversation.\nAndrés: The common move that people make here is all of these crazy things that we think about consciousness and talk about consciousness, that’s just any information processing system modeling its own attentional dynamics. That’s one illusionist frame, but even within qualia realist, qualia formalist paradigm, you still have the question of why do we even think or self reflect about consciousness. You could very well think of consciousness as being computationally relevant, you need to have consciousness and so on, but still lacking introspective access. You could have these complicated conscious information processing systems, but they don’t necessarily self reflect on the quality of their own consciousness. That property is important to model and make sense of.\nWe have a few formalisms that may give rise to some insight into how self reflectivity happens and in particular how is it possible to model the entirety of your state of consciousness in a given phenomenal object. These ties in with the notion of a homonculei, if the overall valence of your consciousness is actually a signal traditionally used for fitness evaluation, detecting basically when are you in existential risk to yourself or when there’s like reproductive opportunities that you may be missing out on, that it makes sense for there to be a general thermostat of the overall experience where you can just look at it and you get a a sense of the overall well being of the entire experience added together in such a way that you experienced them all at once.\nI think like a lot of the puzzlement has to do with that internal self model of the overall well being of the experience, which is something that we are evolutionarily incentivized to actually summarize and be able to see at a glance.\nLucas: So, some people have a view where human beings are conscious and they assume everyone else is conscious and they think that the only place for value to reside is within consciousness, and that a world without consciousness is actually a world without any meaning or value. Even if we think that say philosophical zombies or people who are functionally identical to us but with no qualia or phenomenological states or experiential states, even if we think that those are conceivable, then it would seem that there would be no value in a world of p-zombies. So I guess my question is why does phenomenology matter? Why does the phenomenological modality of pain and pleasure or valence have some sort of special ethical or experiential status unlike qualia like red or blue?\nWhy does red or blue not disclose some sort of intrinsic value in the same way that my suffering does or my bliss does or the suffering or bliss of other people?\nMike: My intuition is also that consciousness is necessary for value. Nick Bostrom has this wonderful quote in super intelligence that we should be wary of building a Disneyland with no children, some technological wonderland that is filled with marvels of function but doesn’t have any subjective experience, doesn’t have anyone to enjoy it basically. I would just say that I think that most AI safety research is focused around making sure there is a Disneyland, making sure, for example, that we don’t just get turned into something like paperclips. But there’s this other problem, making sure there are children, making sure there are subjective experiences around to enjoy the future. I would say that there aren’t many live research threads on this problem and I see QRI as a live research thread on how to make sure there is subject experience in the future.\nProbably a can of worms there, but as your question about in pleasure, I may pass that to my colleague Andrés.\nAndrés: Nothing terribly satisfying here. I would go with David Pearce’s view that these properties of experience are self intimating and to the extent that you do believe in value, it will come up as the natural focal points for value, especially if you’re allowed to basically probe the quality of your experience where in many states you believe that the reason why you like something is for intentional content. Again, the case of graduating or it could be the the case of getting a promotion or one of those things that a lot of people associate, with feeling great, but if you actually probe the quality of experience, you will realize that there is this component of it which is its hedonic gloss and you can manipulate it directly again with things like opiate antagonists and if the symmetry theory of valence is true, potentially also by directly modulating the consonance and dissonance of the brain harmonics, in which case the hedonic gloss would change in peculiar ways.\nWhen it comes to consilience, when it comes to many different points of view, agreeing on what aspect of the experience is what brings value to it, it seems to be the hedonic gloss.\nLucas: So in terms of qualia and valence realism, would the causal properties of qualia be the thing that would show any arbitrary mind the self-intimating nature of how good or bad an experience is, and in the space of all possible minds, what is the correct epistemological mechanism for evaluating the moral status of experiential or qualitative states?\nMike: So first of all, I would say that my focus so far has mostly been on describing what is and not what ought. I think that we can talk about valence without necessarily talking about ethics, but if we can talk about valence clearly, that certainly makes some questions in ethics and some frameworks in ethics make much more or less than. So the better we can clearly describe and purely descriptively talk about consciousness, the easier I think a lot of these ethical questions get. I’m trying hard not to privilege any ethical theory. I want to talk about reality. I want to talk about what exists, what’s real and what the structure of what exists is, and I think if we succeed at that then all these other questions about ethics and morality get much, much easier. I do think that there is an implicit should wrapped up in questions about valence, but I do think that’s another leap.\nYou can accept the valence is real without necessarily accepting that optimizing valence is an ethical imperative. I personally think, yes, it is very ethically important, but it is possible to take a purely descriptive frame to valence, that whether or not this also discloses, as David Pearce said, the utility function of the universe. That is another question and can be decomposed.\nAndrés: One framing here too is that we do suspect valence is going to be the thing that matters up on any mind if you probe it in the right way in order to achieve reflective equilibrium. There’s the biggest example of a talk and neuro scientist was giving at some point, there was something off and everybody seemed to be a little bit anxious or irritated and nobody knew why and then one of the conference organizers suddenly came up to the presenter and did something to the microphone and then everything sounded way better and everybody was way happier. There was these very sorrow hissing pattern caused by some malfunction of the microphone and it was making everybody irritated, they just didn’t realize that was the source of the irritation, and when it got fixed then you know everybody’s like, “Oh, that’s why I was feeling upset.”\nWe will find that to be the case over and over when it comes to improving valence. So like somebody in the year 2050 might come up to one of the connectome-specific harmonic wave clinics, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” but if you put them through the scanner we identify your 17th and 19th harmonic in a state of dissonance. We cancel 17th to make it more clean, and then the person who will say all of a sudden like, “Yeah, my problem is fixed. How did you do that?” So I think it’s going to be a lot like that, that the things that puzzle us about why do I prefer these, why do I think this is worse, will all of a sudden become crystal clear from the point of view of valence gradients objectively measured.\nMike: One of my favorite phrases in this context is what you can measure you can manage and if we can actually find the source of dissonance in a brain, then yeah, we can resolve it, and this could open the door for maybe honestly a lot of amazing things, making the human condition just intrinsically better. Also maybe a lot of worrying things, being able to directly manipulate emotions may not necessarily be socially positive on all fronts.\nLucas: So I guess here we can begin to jump into AI alignment and qualia. So we’re building AI systems and they’re getting pretty strong and they’re going to keep getting stronger potentially creating a superintelligence by the end of the century and consciousness and qualia seems to be along the ride for now. So I’d like to discuss a little bit here about more specific places in AI alignment where these views might inform it and direct it.\nMike: Yeah, I would share three problems of AI safety. There’s the technical problem, how do you make a self improving agent that is also predictable and safe. This is a very difficult technical problem. First of all to even make the agent but second of all especially to make it safe, especially if it becomes smarter than we are. There’s also the political problem, even if you have the best technical solution in the world and the sufficiently good technical solution doesn’t mean that it will be put into action in a sane way if we’re not in a reasonable political system. But I would say the third problem is what QRI is most focused on and that’s the philosophical problem. What are we even trying to do here? What is the optimal relationship between AI and humanity and also a couple of specific details here. First of all I think nihilism is absolutely an existential threat and if we can find some antidotes to nihilism through some advanced valence technology that could be enormously helpful for reducing X-risk.\nLucas: What kind of nihilism or are you talking about here, like nihilism about morality and meaning?\nMike: Yes, I would say so, and just personal nihilism that it feels like nothing matters, so why not do risky things?\nLucas: Whose quote is it, the philosophers question like should you just kill yourself? That’s the yawning abyss of nihilism inviting you in.\nAndrés: Albert Camus. The only real philosophical question is whether to commit suicide, whereas how I think of it is the real philosophical question is how to make love last, bringing value to the existence, and if you have value on tap, then the question of whether to kill yourself or not seems really nonsensical.\nLucas: For sure.\nMike: We could also say that right now there aren’t many good shelling points for global coordination. People talk about having global coordination and building AGI would be a great thing but we’re a little light on the details of how to do that. If the clear, comprehensive, useful, practical understanding of consciousness can be built, then this may sort of embody or generate new shelling points that the larger world could self organize around. If we can give people a clear understanding of what is and what could be, then I think we will get a better future that actually gets built.\nLucas: Yeah. Showing what is and what could be is immensely important and powerful. So moving forward with AI alignment as we’re building these more and more complex systems, there’s this needed distinction between unconscious and conscious information processing, if we’re interested in the morality and ethics of suffering and joy and other conscious states. How do you guys see the science of consciousness here, actually being able to distinguish between unconscious and conscious information processing systems?\nMike: There are a few frames here. One is that, yeah, it does seem like the brain does some processing in consciousness and some processing outside of consciousness. And what’s up with that, this could be sort of an interesting frame to explore in terms of avoiding things like mind crime in the AGI or AI space that if there are certain computations which are painful then don’t do them in a way that would be associated with consciousness. It would be very good to have rules of thumb here for how to do that. One interesting could be in the future we might not just have compilers which optimize for speed of processing or minimization of dependent libraries and so on, but could optimize for the valence of the computation on certain hardware. This of course gets into complex questions about computationalism, how hardware dependent this compiler would be and so on.\nI think it’s an interesting and important long-term frame.\nLucas: So just illustrate here I think the ways in which solving or better understanding consciousness will inform AI alignment from present day until super intelligence and beyond.\nMike: I think there’s a lot of confusion about consciousness and a lot of confusion about what kind of thing the value problem is in AI Safety, and there are some novel approaches on the horizon. I was speaking with Stuart Armstrong the last EA global and he had some great things to share about his model fragments paradigm. I think this is the right direction. It’s sort of understanding, yeah, human preferences are insane. Just they’re not a consistent formal system.\nLucas: Yeah, we contain multitudes.\nMike: Yes, yes. So first of all understanding what generates them seems valuable. So there’s this frame in AI safety we call the complexity value thesis. I believe Eliezer came up with it in a post on Lesswrong. It’s this frame where human value is very fragile in that it can be thought of as a small area, perhaps even almost a point in a very high dimensional space, say a thousand dimensions. If we go any distance in any direction from this tiny point in this high dimensional space, then we quickly get to something that we wouldn’t think of as very valuable. And maybe if we leave everything the same and take away freedom, this paints a pretty sobering picture of how difficult AI alignment will be.\nI think this is perhaps arguably the source of a lot of worry in the community, that not only do we need to make machines that won’t just immediately kill us, but that will preserve our position in this very, very high dimensional space well enough that we keep the same trajectory and that possibly if we move at all, then we may enter a totally different trajectory, that we in 2019 wouldn’t think of as having any value. So this problem becomes very, very intractable. I would just say that there is an alternative frame. The phrasing that I’m playing around with here it is instead of the complexity of value thesis, the unity of value thesis, it could be that many of the things that we find valuable, eating ice cream, living in a just society, having a wonderful interaction with a loved one, all of these have the same underlying neural substrate and empirically this is what affective neuroscience is finding.\nEating a chocolate bar activates same brain regions as a transcendental religious experience. So maybe there’s some sort of elegant compression that can be made and that actually things aren’t so starkly strict. We’re not sort of this point in a super high dimensional space and if we leave the point, then everything of value is trashed forever, but maybe there’s some sort of convergent process that we can follow that we can essentialize. We can make this list of 100 things that humanity values and maybe they all have in common positive valence, and positive valence can sort of be reverse engineered. And to some people this feels like a very scary dystopic scenario – don’t knock it until you’ve tried it – but at the same time there’s a lot of complexity here.\nOne core frame that the idea of qualia formalism and valence realism can offer AI safety is that maybe the actual goal is somewhat different than the complexity of value thesis puts forward. Maybe the actual goal is different and in fact easier. I think this could directly inform how we spend our resources on the problem space.\nLucas: Yeah, I was going to say that there exists standing tension between this view of the complexity of all preferences and values that human beings have and then the valence realist view which says that what’s ultimately good or certain experiential or hedonic states. I’m interested and curious about if this valence view is true, whether it’s all just going to turn into hedonium in the end.\nMike: I’m personally a fan of continuity. I think that if we do things right we’ll have plenty of time to get things right and also if we do things wrong then we’ll have plenty of time for things to be wrong. So I’m personally not a fan of big unilateral moves, it’s just getting back to this question of can understanding what is help us, clearly yes.\nAndrés: Yeah. I guess one view is we could say preserve optionality and learn what is, and then from there hopefully we’ll be able to better inform oughts and with maintained optionality we’ll be able to choose the right thing. But that will require a cosmic level of coordination.\nMike: Sure. An interesting frame here is whole brain emulation. So whole brain emulation is sort of a frame built around functionalism and it’s a seductive frame I would say. If whole brain emulations wouldn’t necessarily have the same qualia based on hardware considerations as the original humans, there could be some weird lock in effects where if the majority of society turned themselves into p-zombies then it may be hard to go back on that.\nLucas: Yeah. All right. We’re just getting to the end here, I appreciate all of this. You guys have been tremendous and I really enjoyed this. I want to talk about identity in AI alignment. This sort of taxonomy that you’ve developed about open individualism and closed individualism and all of these other things. Would you like to touch on that and talk about implications here in AI alignment as you see it?\nAndrés: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. The taxonomy comes from Daniel Kolak, a philosopher and mathematician. It’s a pretty good taxonomy and basically it’s like open individualism, that’s the view that a lot of meditators and mystics and people who take psychedelics often ascribe to, which is that we’re all one consciousness. Another frame is that our true identity is the light of consciousness, so to speak. So it doesn’t matter in what form it manifests, it’s always the same fundamental ground of being. Then you have the common sense view, it’s called closed individualism. You start existing when you’re born, you stop existing when you die. You’re just this segment. Some religions actually extend that into the future or past with reincarnation or maybe with heaven.\nIt’s the belief in ontological distinction between you and others while at the same time there is ontological continuity from one moment to the next within you. Finally you have this view that’s called empty individualism, which is that you’re just a moment of experience. That’s fairly common among physicists and a lot of people who’ve tried to formalize consciousness, often they converged on empty individualism. I think a lot of theories of ethics and rationality, like the veil of ignorance as a guide or like how do you define rational decision-making as maximizing the expected utility of yourself as an agent, all of those seem to implicitly be based on closed individualism and they’re not necessarily questioning it very much.\nOn the other hand, if the sense of individual identity of closed individualism doesn’t actually carve nature at its joints as a Buddhist might say, the feeling of continuity of being a separate unique entity is an illusory construction of your phenomenology that casts in a completely different light how to approach rationality itself and even self interest, right? If you start identifying with the light of consciousness rather than your particular instantiation, you will probably care a lot more about what happens to pigs in factory farms because … In so far as they are conscious they are you in a fundamental way. It matters a lot in terms of how to carve out different possible futures, especially when you get into these very tricky situations like, well what if there is mind melding or what if there is the possibility of making perfect copies of yourself?\nAll of these edge cases are really problematic from the common sense view of identity, but they’re not really a problem from an open individualist or empty individualist point of view. With all of this said, I do personally think there’s probably a way of combining open individualism with valence realism that gives rise to the next step in human rationality where we’re actually trying to really understand what the universe wants, so to speak. But I would say that there is a very tricky aspect here that has to do with game theory. We evolved to believe in close individualism. The fact that it’s evolutionarily adaptive is obviously not an argument for it being fundamentally true, but it does seem to be some kind of an evolutionarily stable point to believe of yourself as who you can affect the most directly in a causal way, if you define your boundary that way.\nThat basically gives you focus on the actual degrees of freedom that you do have, and if you think of a society of open individualists, everybody’s altruistically maximally contributing to the universal consciousness, and then you have one close individualist who is just selfishly trying to acquire power just for itself, you can imagine that one view would have a tremendous evolutionary advantage in that context. So I’m not one who just naively advocates for open individualism unreflectively. I think we still have to work out to the game theory of it, how to make it evolutionarily stable and also how to make it ethical. Open question, I do think it’s important to think about and if you take consciousness very seriously, especially within physicalism, that usually will cast huge doubts on the common sense view of identity.\nIt doesn’t seem like a very plausible view if you actually tried to formalize consciousness.\nMike: The game theory aspect is very interesting. You can think of closed individualism as something evolutionists produced that allows an agent to coordinate very closely with its past and future ourselves. Maybe we can say a little bit about why we’re not by default all empty individualists or open individualists. Empty individualism seems to have a problem where if every slice of conscious experience is its own thing, then why should you even coordinate with your past and future self because they’re not the same as you. So that leads to a problem of defection, and open individualism is everything is the same being so to speak than … As Andrés mentioned that allows free riders, if people are defecting, it doesn’t allow altruist punishment or any way to stop the free ride. There’s interesting game theory here and it also just feeds into the question of how we define our identity in the age of AI, the age of cloning, the age of mind uploading.\nThis gets very, very tricky very quickly depending on one’s theory of identity. They’re opening themselves up to getting hacked in different ways and so different theories of identity allow different forms of hacking.\nAndrés: Yeah, which could be sometimes that’s really good and sometimes really bad. I would make the prediction that not necessarily open individualism in its full fledged form but a weaker sense of identity than closed individualism is likely going to be highly adaptive in the future as people basically have the ability to modify their state of consciousness in much more radical ways. People who just identify with narrow sense of identity will just be in their shells, not try to disturb the local attractor too much. That itself is not necessarily very advantageous. If the things on offer are actually really good, both hedonically and intelligence wise.\nI do suspect basically people who are somewhat more open to basically identify with consciousness or at least identify with a broader sense of identity, they will be the people who will be doing more substantial progress, pushing the boundary and creating new cooperation and coordination technology.\nLucas: Wow, I love all that. Seeing closed individualism for what it was has had a tremendous impact on my life and this whole question of identity I think is largely confused for a lot of people. At the beginning you said that open individualism says that we are all one consciousness or something like this, right? For me in identity I’d like to move beyond all distinctions of sameness or differenceness. To say like, oh, we’re all one consciousness to me seems to say we’re all one electromagnetism, which is really to say the consciousness is like an independent feature or property of the world that’s just sort of a ground part of the world and when the world produces agents, consciousness is just an empty identityless property that comes along for the ride.\nThe same way in which it would be nonsense to say, “Oh, I am these specific atoms, I am just the forces of nature that are bounded within my skin and body” That would be nonsense. In the same way in sense of what we were discussing with consciousness there was the binding problem of the person, the discreteness of the person. Where does the person really begin or end? It seems like these different kinds of individualism have, as you said, epistemic and functional use, but they also, in my view, create a ton of epistemic problems, ethical issues, and in terms of the valence theory, if quality is actually something good or bad, then as David Pearce says, it’s really just an epistemological problem that you don’t have access to other brain states in order to see the self intimating nature of what it’s like to be that thing in that moment.\nThere’s a sense in which i want to reject all identity as arbitrary and I want to do that in an ultimate way, but then in the conventional way, I agree with you guys that there are these functional and epistemic issues that closed individualism seems to remedy somewhat and is why evolution, I guess selected for it, it’s good for gene propagation and being selfish. But once one sees AI as just a new method of instantiating bliss, it doesn’t matter where the bliss is. Bliss is bliss and there’s no such thing as your bliss or anyone else’s bliss. Bliss is like its own independent feature or property and you don’t really begin or end anywhere. You are like an expression of a 13.7 billion year old system that’s playing out.\nThe universe is just peopleing all of us at the same time, and when you get this view and you see you as just sort of like the super thin slice of the evolution of consciousness and life, for me it’s like why do I really need to propagate my information into the future? Like I really don’t think there’s anything particularly special about the information of anyone really that exists today. We want to preserve all of the good stuff and propagate those in the future, but people who seek a immortality through AI or seek any kind of continuation of what they believe to be their self is, I just see that all as misguided and I see it as wasting potentially better futures by trying to bring Windows 7 into the world of Windows 10.\nMike: This all gets very muddy when we try to merge human level psychological drives and concepts and adaptations with a fundamental physics level description of what is. I don’t have a clear answer. I would say that it would be great to identify with consciousness itself, but at the same time, that’s not necessarily super easy if you’re suffering from depression or anxiety. So I just think that this is going to be an ongoing negotiation within society and just hopefully we can figure out ways in which everyone can move.\nAndrés: There’s an article I wrote it, I just called it consciousness versus replicators. That kind of gets to the heart of this issue, but that sounds a little bit like good and evil, but it really isn’t. The true enemy here is replication for replication’s sake. On the other hand, the only way in which we can ultimately benefit consciousness, at least in a plausible, evolutionarily stable way is through replication. We need to find the balance between replication and benefit of consciousness that makes the whole system stable, good for consciousness and resistant against the factors.\nMike: I would like to say that I really enjoy Max Tegmark’s general frame of you leaving this mathematical universe. One re-frame of what we were just talking about in these terms are there are patterns which have to do with identity and have to do with valence and have to do with many other things. The grand goal is to understand what makes a pattern good or bad and optimize our light cone for those sorts of patterns. This may have some counter intuitive things, maybe closed individualism is actually a very adaptive thing, in the long term it builds robust societies. Could be that that’s not true but I just think that taking the mathematical frame and the long term frame is a very generative approach.\nLucas: Absolutely. Great. I just want to finish up here on two fun things. It seems like good and bad are real in your view. Do we live in heaven or hell?\nMike: Lot of quips that come to mind here. Hell is other people, or nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. My pet theory I should say is that we live in something that is perhaps close to heaven as is physically possible. The best of all possible worlds.\nLucas: I don’t always feel that way but why do you think that?\nMike: This gets through the weeds of theories about consciousness. It’s this idea that we tend to think of consciousness on the human scale. Is the human condition good or bad, is the balance of human experience on the good end, the heavenly end or the hellish end. If we do have an objective theory of consciousness, we should be able to point it at things that are not human and even things that are not biological. It may seem like a type error to do this but we should be able to point it at stars and black holes and quantum fuzz. My pet theory, which is totally not validated, but it is falsifiable, and this gets into Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis, it could be that if we tally up the good valence and the bad valence in the universe, that first of all, the human stuff might just be a rounding error.\nMost of the value, in this value the positive and negative valence is found elsewhere, not in humanity. And second of all, I have this list in the last appendix of Principia Qualia as well, where could massive amounts of consciousness be hiding in the cosmological sense. I’m very suspicious that the big bang starts with a very symmetrical state, I’ll just leave it there. In a utilitarian sense, if you want to get a sense of whether we live in a place closer to heaven or hell we should actually get a good theory of consciousness and we should point to things that are not humans and cosmological scale events or objects would be very interesting to point it at. This will give a much better clear answer as to whether we live in somewhere closer to heaven or hell than human intuition.\nLucas: All right, great. You guys have been super generous with your time and I’ve really enjoyed this and learned a lot. Is there anything else you guys would like to wrap up on?\nMike: Just I would like to say, yeah, thank you so much for the interview and reaching out and making this happen. It’s been really fun on our side too.\nAndrés: Yeah, I think wonderful questions and it’s very rare for an interviewer to have non conventional views of identity to begin with, so it was really fun, really appreciate it.\nLucas: Would you guys like to go ahead and plug anything? What’s the best place to follow you guys, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, website?\nMike: Our website is qualiaresearchinstitute.org and we’re working on getting a PayPal donate button out but in the meantime you can send us some crypto. We’re building out the organization and if you want to read our stuff a lot of it is linked from the website and you can also read my stuff at my blog, opentheory.net and Andrés’ is @qualiacomputing.com.\nLucas: If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, give it a like or share it on your preferred social media platform. We’ll be back again soon with another episode in the AI Alignment series.\n\nFeatured image credit: Alex Grey", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/05/23/ai-alignment-podcast-on-consciousness-qualia-and-meaning-with-mike-johnson-and-andres-gomez-emilsson/", "title": "AI Alignment Podcast: On Consciousness, Qualia, and Meaning with Mike Johnson and Andrés Gómez Emilsson", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-05-24T07:09:56+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=13", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "8e5eaf1c34062ffeb2d5af8a3787c71e", "summary": []}
{"text": "Timothy Leary’s Final Regrets\n\n\nInterviewer: Any regrets?\nTimothy Leary: I have a lot of regrets. Personal regrets. Emotional regrets… as we all do. People say, you know, do you regret taking LSD? My answer is: two things I regret is – I should have taken more psychedelic drugs, and I should have made love more. Put that on my tombstone, if any.\n\n(see: full interview)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/05/23/timothy-learys-final-regrets/", "title": "Timothy Leary’s Final Regrets", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-05-24T06:38:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=13", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "259e83f87c646c750d0251d1dc941b0b", "summary": []}
{"text": "All-Is-One Simulation Theory\n\nAllen Saakyan asks in All-Is-One Simulation Theory \n“what is this simulation?”. Here are two interesting responses (lightly edited for clarity):\nRak Razam: It’s an interactive learning program. It sounds hippy-dippy when you say “your intention and your belief [becomes real if you ask for it]”, but if you really try this and focus your will, and you put out your intention… it does work! You know? It is not just a “manifest the right card” kind of thing. But it is, rather: how we have different capabilities within our wetware, and most of the Western culture is focused on the egoic navigation of survival pathways and hierarchical climbing. We have these almost magical capabilities of intuition, which is not the intellectual ego. It’s listening to that broadcast signal for how to connect to the larger web of information that is always being broadcast. We have the imagination which in old magical understanding is sort of your ability to carve out the probability pathways. We are connected to the universal intelligence which has manifested life. And it is listening to us because it IS us. Right? It’s just as that single cell organism, as soon as it replicates from outside of space-time as that singularity that many different world religions believes is the G. O. D., or the source, or some may call it Samadhi, or whatever you call it. There is this idea that there is this originating source, which in quantum physics I call it the implicate. And the question is “why?” Why would we have simulations at all? In many of these religious cultures or spiritual understandings… in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, but the word is a vibration, and a vibration in my understanding of the shamanic realms is unconditional love. It’s the highest vibratory expression of divine being. That vibration radiates out and then condenses down into what we call the explicate, or, this simulated reality. But it is actually not separate. It is like birthing itself into this creation. Why? I believe to create more love, because it needs a vessel within space-time to set its roots down to make more of itself, because it’s all there is. And some people say God is lonely, or whatever, we project these human conceits on source consciousness. I don’t think it’s lacking; I think it is so abundant that the infinite vibration of itself, which is everything, is such that everything can’t be more than everything so it needs to come down in space-time to create vessels to replicate itself and then we have division and we have all this stuff. So the simulation is like the wrapper with that creamy center. And it’s all about love.\n\nTeafaerie: I think of it as being a work of art. It is a playful thing. It is self-generating and making beautiful forms for its own appreciation. Anything you say “it’s like this”. It is not that. It’s a thing that occurs in here, that’s a metaphor. Is it a school? A test? A trap? A prison? It is none of these things. The beauty of this piece is that you can hold it this way and it is an epic adventure story, and you hold it this way and it is a tragic farce, and if you hold it this way it is a romantic comedy. Most people think it’s a school. “Why did this happen to me? So I would learn something, right?”. I DO learn stuff, but I prefer to think of it as a massively multiplayer game, and a collective work of art. So I am here to play my character and to participate in the collective work of art. And that gives you an orientation for why am I here. And with this overarching narrative you can take that lens out and put another lens in because it is God’s own truth. We don’t know anything about the simulators. They could be planet-sized quantum computers working together. We don’t know what they want us not to do with our willies. It’s just… you can hold it anyway you’d like to. I just think “massively multiplayer game” is a good metaphor because it’s fertile, and flexible, and aesthetically satisfying, and creates for it action, and it’s fun and it is not scary. We wouldn’t be here if this didn’t get 4-stars in universes.com, in this model. We are freaking the costumer in this model. This is to amuse such as ourselves. Made by billions, played by trillions.\n\n\n\n\n\nAnalysis\nThe conversations in this video are the state-of-the-art in thinking about DMT-like states of consciousness from a phenomenological and theoretical point of view. Everyone on this panel has used ayahuasca and/or vaped DMT dozens if not hundreds of times, as well as guided trips for dozens of people. They also know an extended network of others with wide amount of experience with the state, and have been exposed to all of the major memes in the transpersonal space and mystical traditions. So what they say is likely representative of the frameworks that are used at the top of the “knowledge hierarchy” when it comes to genuine acquaintance with the phenomenal universe of DMT.\nNow, I am an indirect realist about perception myself, and I think that we are in basement reality (sadly). The suffering of this world is enormous and brutal, and the stakes of thinking we are in a loving simulation are very high and real. Every day we don’t work towards eliminating suffering is a day millions of agonizing hours could have been prevented. Hence my resistance to beliefs like “we are in a simulation that is meant to help us learn and grow!” Hopefully! But let’s make sure we don’t screw up in case that’s not true.\nThat said, I do think DMT-like consciousness is of profound significance and may play a key role in eliminating suffering, on two fronts:\n1) These states of consciousness are remarkable for creating extremely compelling renderings of one’s metaphysics, which can lead to “leveling up” one’s models of the world. And,\n2) I also do think the “vibration of love” is a thing, in terms of quality of a state of consciousness, which is present in plentiful amounts on good DMT experiences.\nMy core question in this space now would be: How do we hone in on the beautiful consonant high-energy metta (loving kindness) qualia disclosed by these states, and study it scientifically for the benefit of all sentient beings?", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/05/17/all-is-one-simulation-theory/", "title": "All-Is-One Simulation Theory", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-05-18T06:12:24+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=13", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "c37e888ac11f91f61514ab19bfa7ea5c", "summary": []}
{"text": "Rational 4-AcO-DMT Trip Report By An Anonymous Reader\n\nDate: 5/5/2019\n\nSelf:\n\nWeight: ~[150-170) lbs, Age: [20-25), Height: [5’8’’-5’11’’), Male, Dosage: 12-15mg 4-AcO-DMT, 200mg caffeine, 100mg L-theanine, 0.25-0.5g cannabis, vaporized and smoked\n\n\nCompanion:\n\nWeight: ~[110-130) lbs, Age: [20-25), Height: [5’5’’-5’8’’), Female, Dosage: 10-12mg 4-AcO-DMT, 0.5g cannabis, smoked and vaporized\n\n\n\nRelevant  Beliefs\n\nOntology on personal identity: favors ‘empty individualism’\nOntology on time: favors ‘eternalism’\nStrongly favors ‘indirect realism’ over ‘direct realism’\nBelieves that an ‘information processing’ account of the mind-brain is appropriate in a variety of situations.\n\nFinds valuable Marr’s levels of analysis\n\n\nBelieves states of meditation, psychedelic use, and the combination of the two allow for an application of ‘energy’ which is directed towards the brain’s natural harmonics. Coarsely, there is a pattern of energy application -> entropic disintegration -> search/self-reorganization -> neural annealing which is likely to occur in such states.\n\nBelieves meditation is a tool which can increase the amount of cognitive control an individual has over his/her conscious experiences.\n\n\nBelieves 4-AcO-DMT is an entactogen, and feelings of empathy and connection with others are desirable.\nGrappling with the Symmetry Theory of Valence\nBelieves there is an interaction of ‘top-down stories’ and ‘bottom-up sensory data’ in the mind-brain. Each affects the other, and neither provides a complete account of reality.\nProblem of other minds: Believes animals and other complex systems are capable of experiencing conscious states, other individuals exist and are conscious.\n\nExperience\nCaffeine/L-theanine: \nI took a pill with 100mg of L-theanine and 200mg of caffeine when I woke up at ~7:45AM, in order to wake up at ~8:10AM. Those unfamiliar with the caffeine nap should give it a try. \nDosing/Setting – 12:45\nWe took our 4-AcO-DMT in capsule form, gathered our ‘tripping accoutrements’ and set off for the local park. It was a beautiful 75 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny, with some welcome clouds in the sky, which seemed placed for our later entertainment. We made it to the park without feeling the effects, making small talk and finding our ‘goldilocks zone’ – the tree with enough shade, ample view, and dry grass. We walked back and forth several times, finding out which side the grass was greenest on. During this 10 minutes, I began to notice the first perceptible changes.\nOnset – 13:15-13:45\nI described to my partner that I could tell the drug was ‘kicking in’ due to an increase in my proprioception (closest ‘subjective effect’ is probably bodily control enhancement). I then noticed a man lying on his side on the grass in front of us, with his arm and leg out of my view, and next to him lay which I soon realized was a bike. At first blush I thought he was an amputee, and that the device next to him was a walker of some kind. Upon seeing him sit up, I realized I had been mistaken, at which point it could not have been clearer that the ‘walker’ was actually a bicycle (I noted that I was highly aware of the distinction between my perception of the objects and my top-down ‘storytelling’, a welcome surprise I’m sure our Buddhist friends would approve tremendously of). I relayed this to my partner and she laughed, clearly still more certain of her own ability to discriminate. As we lay under a beautiful oak tree in the ‘goldilocks zone’, she commented some discomfort (in the form of ‘anxiety’), and that she felt “too much energy” was getting pumped in with “no place to go”. As a reader of opentheory.net, this analogy was welcome and even surprising in its similarity to my current opinions. I chuckled, although I too was feeling a tinge of anxiety (which I attributed mostly to the 200mg of caffeine I had consumed), increased bodily temperature, and some minor pattern recognition enhancement in the surrounding flora. As I looked to the edge of my visual field, I had the distinct sense of being in a simulated environment. While I have at times toyed with “simulation theory”, I have transitioned to a view more based on an “inner simulator”: that the reality we enjoy is taking place within the boundary of our minds, and these inner simulations exist in separation from one another (similar to Max Tegmark’s ‘bubbles’), with each one representing the mind-independent reality that I believe, but do not “know” exists. In light of this thought, I found myself looking towards the ‘boundary of my external reality’ and explaining to myself that it was in truth actually like looking deeper internally. I noticed (again with more than sober clarity) a change in my belief map.  \n“Pattern recognition enhancement” (source)\nResonance: ~13:30-14:30\nMy partner put on some appropriate lo-fi music and we began to talk as the effects became more pronounced. I felt my experience to be ‘classically psilocin-like’, characterized by intense drifting, pattern recognition enhancement, magnification, color enhancement and geometry similar to that found in ‘trippy artwork’ (internally and externally).  When I focused more loosely on my surroundings I had my first brush with scenery slicing, which divided my view of the fountain and hillside opposite us into thirds, each characterized by tapestries of fractal geometry. My partner had been blowing dandelion seeds, which reminded me of a thought I had had on a past trip, that subconsciously she was fulfilling a genetically programmed role in the ecosystem, explained away as a ‘weird urge’. We began discussing the ‘jobs’ other insects and animals had in the ecosystem, and enjoyed their personification. I spouted off some factoids on dragonflies, and their 95% predatory kill rate. She respected the prowess of the beautiful little assassins, and I internally hoped to live in a balanced ecosystem without the predators we now honor. We both noticed that we could see dandelion seeds almost a hundred feet up (magnification, and in my estimation an artifact of our mental entrainment at the time). My partner went to the bathroom in the art museum nearby, and I took 2.5 minutes to meditate, using a silent mantra technique. I experienced beautiful 8B geometry in this state, a truly profound experience. When she returned, we saw a young boy playing with dandelions in front of us. He was so purposeful, so confident, and so apparently random in his behavior. My word choice in describing him (in hushed tones, so as not to disturb his work) revealed a greater availability of infrequently-used words in my vocabulary, and some increased sense of humor. My partner commented that she thought the whole thing to be fake, and this label seemed to cause an increase in my acuity enhancement and color enhancement of the scene (again, I was highly aware of the influence of the ‘top-down story’ on my experience). To me, it also appeared in some ways “not real”, but I thought the two of us had a very different sense of the concept.\nColor enhancement (experienced especially with trees) – (source)\nI too needed to relieve myself at this point, and decided to take the adventure towards the bathroom, listening to the Johns Hopkins psilocybin experiment playlist on Spotify along the way. I will (for the sake of brevity that I am otherwise flouting) focus only on the seemingly pertinent detail of how I received directions to the bathroom. My partner described the sequence of steps and potential pitfalls to me, and I had an extraordinary ability to visualize the path I eventually followed. My visualization skills in general were extremely heightened, and I noticed I could imagine quite easily and accurately envision how my scenery would change when I moved to a different position (e.g. sitting to lying down).\nExploration: ~14:45-15:45\nAt this point we both were reporting intense cognitive euphoria (as well as spiritual euphoria). We decided to pack our things and make a trip to expend some of the boundless energy we had in our possession. We journeyed to the sculpture garden behind the museum, and I began to describe the chemical differences between psilocybin and psilocin as my partner and I basked in the glorious shade of the trees there (to which we both felt intense connection). I found that in the sculpture garden I had a greatly increased appreciation for art, and especially the symmetry and proportion found in the sculpture and museum itself. Combined with my feelings of intense well being and spiritual euphoria (which felt augmented by the artwork), this amounted to a point in favor of the Symmetry Theory of Valence. I also noticed cracks in the unity of my conscious experience, where locally bound objects seemed to separate (the analogy I could find was separate “virtual environments” a la whonix), which also engendered in me a type of pleasure I cannot find in the “Subjective effect index”. This may be an area of further examination for the Qualia Research Institute. We enjoyed a blissful walk in the park, featuring feelings of intimacy with children, pets, and ducklings. Of note here was what I felt to be an enhancement of my working memory, as borne out by the following observations: I again had higher availability of vocabulary and terminology in conversation, I was able to juggle rocks more effectively while walking (and felt that during my juggling I was simultaneously apprehending more objects – this was again pleasantly accompanied by increased reflective intelligence that allowed gave me the felt sense of 8B geometry without the visuals). I threw a rock in the stream and found that I could apprehend each ripple simultaneously, and my qualia decay function was much fatter as well. Hmmm, maybe there are some beneficial computational properties of consciousness! We sat on a bench, as I felt the intense urge to exercise physically (specifically to climb a tree, but that was a bit conspicuous). Instead, we looked at a goose and talked about memetics. We marvelled specifically about Dr. Seuss, and how his thoughts had taken root, despite his distasteful personal tendencies. I began to think about the cultivation of plants, and how we tend to use hypotheses and heuristics to guide advances in the rapid evolution, wondering if the same could be done with ideas.\nI found myself capable of simultaneously ‘holding in my attention’ each ripple as I cast a stone in the water. (image source)\nHome\n*Skip home journey, where much of the conversation centered around the responsibilities of pet ownership* 16:30-17:30\nWe found ourselves at home with the welcome company of a close friend. We relayed some of our experiences, and I felt the onset of some fast euphoria – there were simply too many things I wanted to do – feel water on my hands, do yoga, eat food, smoke marijuana, have sex. I considered how wonderful it would be to restructure the human cognitive reward architecture around health, knowledge of which could be researched, stored and relayed via artificial intelligence. More simply put, as I consumed an entire family-size amount of Tostitos Hint of Lime chips (feeling gustatory and olfactory enhancement), I wished pleasure mapped 1:1 to health. We did some yoga, ate some food (I found sociability enhancement with the delivery man) and we again basked in the glory of the weather and natural environment, taking comfort in each others’ arms. I noticed multisensory magnification and acuity enhancement, finding that I could hear and see elements of nature that usually were unavailable to me, such as the sounds of distant insects and birds, and the ability to see bits of dust floating far off in the sunlight. The birds above drew my attention to my frame rate enhancement, as I could easily watch their wings flapping each time, even from a distance.  I could also extract more information from an amorphous reflection in a car door, with the feeling that I was “looking through it” to a slightly more misshapen world. We saw a bunny (“awww bunny!!!”) and had an interesting exchange:\nMe: “You know, when I look at that bunny I think about the algorithms going through it’s head – eat blade -> look for next blade -> check for predators -> eat blade -> ..”\nHer: “Yeah, that sounds like something YOU would think. I just like to think he’s so excited every time he sees another blade, like it’s the first time every time. That would be cute.”\nMe: “Well actually, those could both be true. I’m just talking about the ‘program’ – it could be implemented any way you like. I really have no idea how they feel when they see the next blade of grass, but I hope you’re right. In terms of it being the ‘first time’, he could be like Clive Wearing, on a perpetual refresh.”\nHer: “I guess we’ll never know what it’s really like.”\nMe: “I don’t know about that.”\nReally, we’re just talking about Marr’s theory, but it was interesting to see a real-life example. I was discussing his algorithmic level of analysis, while she was pointing to potential features of the implementational level. Makes me think about how virtual and augmented reality could be such wonderful tools for education. As someone who had thought about his theory often, it was also interesting how this exchange affected me phenomenologically: I felt now like I understood it. I definitely think understanding clearly has qualia-properties (not a very bold statement), and also important computational properties (ahem). I certainly think I can “do more” in terms of analogizing etc. with concepts I understand, and yet I find that understanding likely boils to a feeling. I have had this issue ever since reading John Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment and thinking it was positively moronic.\nWhat Is It Like To Be a Bunny? (image source)\nAs we were talking, I found that I had heightened coordination and dexterity in playing with my pocket knife, something I often do when deep in thought. I considered how it could be a use of some of the ‘excess mental energy’ I had been accumulating, and how the increase in neuroplasticity that Paul Stamets swears by could be playing a role as well.\nIntimacy – 18:00-19:00\nWe vaporized some marijuana (~0.125g each – I commented on how the Pax 2 would eventually come equipped with it’s own brain) and went inside to enjoy a shower and cuddling together. Before our shower, she commented that the water was too cold, and I joked that the whole day was ruined. Yet in that moment, I felt none of the ecstacy which so permeated our day, and so I thought once again that empty individualism had such merit. I had intended to experience the feelings of ‘oneness’ commonly associated with 4-AcO, and wasn’t disappointed, feeling at times as though I was touching my own body when I felt hers. Point in favor of open individualism. For unimportant reasons which I label “boundaries”, I’ve chosen to keep the rest of the details of our intimacy to myself…  \nConcluding remarks:\nThere is much more I could write, and yet there are only a few pertinent details of our trip that I’d like to share:\n\nWe smoked some additional marijuana, which ended up overpowering the influence of the 4-AcO as the trip came to a smooth stop (there were none of the feelings of depletion or dejection I associate with other compounds such as LSD).\n\nI had a relative reduction in REM sleep compared to my average and felt a small amount of residual grogginess which I personally attribute to the marijuana.\n\n\nWhen we went out for a late snack, I again had a thought and associated changes in perception (or vice-versa, who knows?) I discussed in ‘Onset’ – I saw a car headlight, and as the afterimage decayed from my visual field, I had the sense that it was slipping from my attentional system as well. It was moving further in space-time, and more internally, making its retrieval more difficult.\n\n\nCredit of Featured Image: Psychedelic brain, Bloomington photo by Ali Eminov\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/05/08/rational-4-aco-dmt-trip-report-by-an-anonymous-reader/", "title": "Rational 4-AcO-DMT Trip Report By An Anonymous Reader", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-05-08T21:09:41+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=13", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "8820de6625e7d8fe721fca1550c51777", "summary": []}
{"text": "Against Fetishizing Cortical Neurons: Prioritizing Humans As Instrumentally Rational\n\nIn response to: [Partially Retracted] Cortical Neuron Number Matches Intuitive Perceptions Of Moral Value Across Animals (see also: 1, 2), and The Cognitive Chain of Being: A New Approach to Animal Rights\n\nSome errors are ethically catastrophic. Prioritizing the prevention of suffering based on the number of cortical neurons of the brains that would generate such suffering might be one of them.\nWe should avoid jumping to conclusions. It is possible that moral significance will ultimately be revealed to be based on capacity to suffer and experience joy, which is related to the limbic system, pleasure centers, and thalamus rather than the capacity to verbalize and cogitate, which is related to number of cortical neurons. People’s perceptions and intuitions are likely to be biased towards over-valuing intelligence because that’s something that got ingrained into our perception of value due to sexual and kin selection.\nIf QRI’s Symmetry Theory of Valence is correct, most intense and (dis)valuable experiences will turn out to be very simple in structure (even if very high energy-wise). Complexity of neural architecture is correlated with potential for intelligence and complex states. But it is not necessary for emotionally powerful experiences. The cortex, after all, plays majorly an inhibitory role in the brain. Emotion centers, on the other hand, are excitatory, evolutionarily ancient and phylogenetically preserved across the animal kingdom (e.g. even octopodes enjoy MDMA). Based on this, uninhibited base emotions are likely to feel roughly the same (or close to the same) in human and nonhuman animals alike.\nWhat about an animals’ capacity to inhibit base emotions? As John Lilly’s studies indicate, the thickness of an animal’s cortex is correlated with its emotional control. A macaque in panic is more impulsive and violent than a chimpanzee in panic, which in turn is more impulsive and violent than a human in panic. The same goes for humans with different cortical sizes. Hence, sadly, there is a good chance that pigs, dogs, birds, and cows experience emotions more- rather than less- intensely. Their emotions may not be as ‘subtle’ and multilayered, but why would that matter for ethics? Raw panic is worse than subtle poetic melancholia and other ‘valued (i.e. fetishized) human emotions’. Again, we overvalue such subtle emotions as a side effect of the specific sexual selection pressures experienced in our recent evolutionary history, rather than for good well-thought-out reasons.\nIn this age of ethical emergencies (aka. the Darwinian age), I would like to offer the suggestion of enforcing pleasure center activation in factory farm animals as a precondition for having them raised for meat or dairy. Likewise, such should be done in nonhuman animal studies that focus on things other than the brain. Why not wirehead rats who are being studied for kidney failure? It won’t matter for that area of research… but it will certainly matter for the subjective wellbeing of the rats in question.\nA relevant side note here would concern another human bias in addition to the fetishization of cortical neurons. Namely, our positive bias towards cute animals due to mirror neuron activation. Cuteness and neoteny are attractive to humans for good evolutionary reasons, but this is a perceptual bias rather than the result of careful moral reasoning. The fact that humans perceive pandas as cute hardly justifies letting millions of sentient beings suffer in exchange for “saving the panda” (cf. Should We Let Pandas Go Extinct?*).\nReally what we need is what Mike Johnson has pointed at in his blog for ages: objective measures of species’ specific valence landscapes.\nMy dark hunch: the life of some animals is simply not worth living no matter their environmental conditions. Crickets- the consciousnesses science of 2050 could reveal- are 100% driven by dissonance and never experience pleasure. If so, let’s fix them or phase them out.\nFinally, also consider: Cluster headaches are 10,000sX more painful than other medical conditions. Given this extreme outlier in humans, we could infer that there are good odds that there are other kinds of ultra-high-intensity suffering lurking in species’ specific diseases. Morally, it ought to be key to identify these cases and treat them as our priority. Focusing on cortical neurons instead would be a- possibly ethically catastrophic- red herring.\n\n* This is not to say that it is desirable for the panda to go extinct. It is a question of opportunity cost. It might make sense to put efforts instead in sequencing the DNA of the entire panda population and consider rebooting it sometime in the future.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/05/07/against-fetishizing-cortical-neurons-prioritizing-humans-as-instrumentally-rational/", "title": "Against Fetishizing Cortical Neurons: Prioritizing Humans As Instrumentally Rational", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-05-07T08:20:58+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=13", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e92aca68815044876223634112bda0b6", "summary": []}
{"text": "+Transhumanism -Signaling: Education Should Be Relevant to Meaningful Work\n\nIn response to Quora question What are some dark facts about Khan Academy? by Mario Montano\n\nI loved Khan Academy growing up. I could teach myself linear algebra while still a sophomore in high school. I could learn biology and chemistry during my summer break.\nThe questions that prop up are:\nWhy would anyone love that?\nWhat is being achieved?\nWas attempting to “get ahead” by learning how to multiply matrices actually useful in life?\nIs regurgitation of miscellanea anything more than signaling conscientiousness and intelligence to future employers who mostly create meaningless services and products?\nThe issue with Khan Academy-style education is that it doesn’t sufficiently challenge present memes. Karl Popper, philosopher of science, emphasized that the creation of knowledge depends on people not merely replicating their culture, but constantly critiquing it.\nFor all the purported vision of flipping the classroom, Sal was still compromising way too much with our “Prussian, factory-model education system,” as he called it. And yet for all his willingness to utter scathing words, he didn’t advocate for replacing the largely useless education canon. Instead he merely copied and pasted it into digital format.\nIs it useful for those who want to stay afloat or get ahead in the current system which is imbued to the brim with arbitrariness that stifles much potential? Yes. Absolutely. It will help you do well on your test. It may also make you feel productive and entertained if your motivational system has learned to derive dopaminergic kicks from knowledge for its own sake.\nIs it what the world really needs? Not even close.\nIn general, education should be more relevant to meaningful work. Khan Academy isn’t attempting to selectively promote that which is Effective Altruist or Longevist or Transhumanist or which is explicitly defined in relation to a cosmic mission of self-betterment; so human capital is wasted. The time hovering above your head is slashed by a bloodletting doctor who misdiagnosed your condition and its treatment. Then the scarlet trickle falls on your skin — that of your loved ones, that of your non-existent future.\nAging, disease, and death beset mankind. And here we were, trying to accumulate more random knowledge than others; trying to beat each other at games that don’t matter. One thing is true: on my deathbed, I will not care about what score I got on some test which wasn’t of my own making.\n\nSee also: SSC Gives A Graduation Speech, Rescuing Philosophy, and The Super-Shulgin Academy", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/05/06/transhumanism-signaling-education-should-be-relevant-to-meaningful-work/", "title": "+Transhumanism -Signaling: Education Should Be Relevant to Meaningful Work", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-05-07T07:29:59+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=14", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b96c5bcd6f7af55f176bf5b043696bde", "summary": []}
{"text": "An Infinite Variety of Waste\n\nExcerpt from The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2000) by Geoffrey Miller (pg. 128-129)\nZahavi’s handicap principle and the idea of condition-dependence* are different perspectives on the same thing. The handicap idea emphasizes that sexual ornaments and courtship behaviors must be costly in order to be reliable fitness indicators. Their cost can take almost any form. They can increase risk from predators by making an animal more conspicuous with bright colors. They can increase risk from germs by impairing an animal’s immune system (which many sex hormones do). They can burn up vast amounts of time and energy, like bird song. They can demand a huge effort to obtain a small gift of meat, as in human tribal hunting.\nAs with Veblen’s conspicuous consumption principle, the form of the cost does not matter much. What matters is the prodigious waste. The waste is what keeps the fitness indicators honest. The wastefulness of courtship is what makes it romantic. The wasteful dancing, the wasteful gift-giving, the wasteful conversation, the wasteful laughter, the wasteful foreplay, the wasteful adventures. From the viewpoint of “survival of the fittest,” the waste looks mad and pointless and maladaptive. Human courtship even looks wasteful from the viewpoint of sexual selection for non-generic benefits, because, as we shall see, the act of love considered most romantic are often those that cost the giver the most, but that bring the smallest material benefits to the receiver. However, from the viewpoint of fitness indicator theory, this waste is the most efficient and reliable way to discover someone’s fitness. Where you see conspicuous waste in nature, sexual choice has often been at work.\nEvery sexual ornament in every sexually reproducing species could be viewed as a different style of waste. Male humpback whales waste their energies with half-hour-long, hundred-decibel songs that they repeat all day long during the breeding season. Male weaverbirds waste their time constructing ornamental nests. Male stag beetles waste the matter and energy from their food growing huge mandibles. Male elephant seals waste a thousand pounds of their fat per breeding season fighting other elephant seals. Male lions waste countless calories copulating thirty times a day with female lions before the females will conceive. Male humans waste their time and energy getting graduate degrees, writing books, playing sports, fighting other men, painting pictures, playing jazz, and founding religious cults. These may not be conscious sexual strategies, but the underlying motivations for “achievement” and “status”- even in preference to material sources- were probably shaped by sexual selection. (Of course, the wasteful displays that seemed attractive during courtship may no longer be valued if they persist after offspring arrive- there is a trade-off between parental responsibilities and conspicuous display.)\nThe handicap principle suggests that in each case, sexual selection cares much more about the prodigious magnitude of the waste than about its precise form. Once the decision-making mechanisms of sexual choice get their necessary information about fitness from a sexual display, everything else about the display is just a matter of taste. This interplay between waste and taste gives evolution a lot of elbow room. In fact, every species with sexual ornaments can be viewed as a different variety of sexually selected waste. Without so many varieties of sexual waste, our planet would not be the host of so many species.\n\n* (from Glossary, pg. 437) Condition-dependence: A trait’s sensitivity to an animal’s health and energy level. For example, dance ability is condition-dependent because tired, sick animals can’t dance very well.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/05/01/an-infinite-variety-of-waste/", "title": "An Infinite Variety of Waste", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-05-01T22:17:43+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=14", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "9733cf5b4a8301a08ab9ddcaedb721fa", "summary": []}
{"text": "Microaffect Hash Collision Theory of Déjà Vus\n\nThink of your brain as not only a perception and aesthetic machine, but also as a game engine. In terms of games you could play, a déjà vu might be thought of as a hash collision with a previously encountered (or simulated) state of a game with characteristic and irreducibly-complex decision-points similar to the ones you are experiencing right now. The microaffect that was deemed appropriate for that given situation, within the context of the game that was being played, is triggered in an inappropriate situation. This can be expected in so far as the hashing function is both quick and imperfect; it trades complete accuracy for speed, as the latter is critical in real-world scenarios. This explains why nearly universally déjà vus have a characteristic affect- it’s not so much that you feel that “the situation is the same” as that the way it feels emotionally is reminiscent of a “game situation” you’ve encountered before. A déjà vu is a repeat of a game-state-specific feeling of behavioral restriction.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/04/30/microaffect-hash-collision-theory-of-deja-vus/", "title": "Microaffect Hash Collision Theory of Déjà Vus", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-04-30T08:33:21+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=14", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "5d5b93093e398cfab4f3d30a33b59279", "summary": []}
{"text": "Pure Land Youtube Hits\n\nLeaked “Greatest Video Hits” from the video-sharing equivalent to Youtube in the servers of the Pure Land of Amitābha Buddha (they were using AWS with bad security):\n\n“60 Seconds to Enlightenment: How to create a thought-form that achieves the 3 stages of emptiness in 1 minute or less.” (this is a little documentary from vimeo star “Buddhamax” and record-holder for enlightening thought-forms as fast as possible from a deluded state all the way to a transcendent state)\n“We Are The Mandala, We Are The Form” (a call to Boddhisatvas from all corners of the Mandala to donate some good karma to the relief efforts after a large comet stuck a planet in the equivalent of the Jurassic period for that evolutionary timeline)\n“Dance Dance Blast Blast” (this is a short that shows a thriller/comedy about Mandila, a soul-based Deva world 2 levels below Pure Lands where a little soul finds out it has a strange innate talent to make music-taste thought-forms and uses them to decode the structure of its world and hack its way out of it Matrix-style)\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/04/30/pure-land-youtube-hits/", "title": "Pure Land Youtube Hits", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-04-30T08:27:21+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=14", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "2452d2ae86c20d55469582af26c989c6", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Meaning Machine\n\nExcerpt from Every Cradle Is a Grave: Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide (2014) by Sarah Perry\nSuppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life’s experiences?\n– Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia \nI believe that we should be very cautious about creating conscious beings, and I believe that the ideal number of conscious beings (and perhaps even living beings) in the universe is probably zero, for the good of those beings themselves.\nSince suffering and misery are inescapable parts of life, if we are to justify creating life there must be something that outweighs suffering and misery within the space of universal judgements. Candidates generally fall into two categories. The first category is essentially hedonist: pleasure or good experiences are said to outnumber or outweigh bad experiences. This is the objection Bryan Caplan is making with his Free Disposal argument, discussed in the first chapter; assuming preferentism (that people choose what is good for them), and assuming that people have free choice in the relevant arenas, people would merely commit suicide if it were not true that the pleasure of life outweighs the suffering. And since only a million people per year commit suicide, creating life is obviously the right choice. A more subtle variation of this argument does not rely on suicide, but on a sort of imaginary survey: most people would probably report that their lives are worth living, that the good outweighs the bad, and therefore it must.\nThe second category of responses is that there is something valuable and meaningful about life that makes it worth living even if the bad vastly outweighs the good. In the previous chapter, we explored and categorized some of the things that people find meaningful, noting how these change according to circumstance and over time. One of the most salient features of the things that make life seem meaningful is that they frequently rely on illusion: the illusion of unchanging permanence, of a future state of happiness, of one’s ability to affect the world. It is my view that the sense of meaningfulness is itself an illusion, a cognitive phenomenon that is very adaptive for individuals and groups. This illusion is maintained by communities in order to organize the behavior of individuals, in part by easing their suffering.\nOne response to this is to counter that meaning is not an illusion- that there is real value in the world beyond what is experienced by living beings. Unfortunately, the proposed real and true meanings are often difficult to express in words to others who do not sense their truth. The feeling that life is meaningful is a pre-rational sensory perception that is widely shared. However, the specific meanings that people find satisfying and convincing are disparate and often contradictory. These underlying realities should make us question whether the sense that life is meaningful- or that some specific meaning can be found in life- is a true observation, or merely an illusion. The very adaptiveness of this belief, even if it were not true, must also make us suspect its veracity. The meaning realist has the further problem that no specific meaning is held by a majority of humanity; if there is one true meaning, then whatever it is, the majority of people’s lives go very badly because they do not perceive it.\nAnother response is that while meanings vary, it is enough that almost everyone finds some meaning in life. In other words, that sense that life is meaningful is enough to justify life, and the myriad meanings found and elaborated by individuals are all, in fact, the meaning of life. This seems to be the most common position articulated in modern post-Christian Western societies: if a person finds his life to be meaningful, then it is meaningful- even if different people find contradictory meanings in life. One person might find a sense of meaning in fighting for equality, another in ethno-nationalism, and they are both right.\nThis second response is actually a variation on hedonism, in that the experience of meaning, rather than the experience of pleasure, provides value. According to this view, a life of overwhelming suffering but with a deep experience of meaning might be better than a life of joy and pleasure that is internally felt to be meaningless. But ultimately, divorced from the meaning realism of the first response, this grounds meaning in subjective experience; the sense of meaning becomes another form of pleasure. The modern ideas that it is up to each individual to find meaning in life, and that this meaning justifies life, means accepting a meaning-based Experience Machine.\nThe things that we find to be meaningful are, in fact, miniature Experience Machines. They rely on illusion and filter the information that reaches us so that we may continue to feel that life is meaningful, or continue to search for meaning in life if it is missing. They are very useful; they help us organize our behavior, coordinate with others, and manage our emotions. In a practical sense they often make the suffering of life bearable; but, once they are recognized to be illusions, they cannot justify suffering in an abstract sense any more than pleasure can.\nWe need not jump into a Nozickian Experience Machine to get pleasure and a sense of meaning from intricate illusions. The Reverse Experience Machine experiment is close to the illusion we find ourselves in- if we found out we were in an Experience Machine already, would we choose to leave it for the real world? Institutions, religions, social communities, and even individual people function as Experience Machines, creating and maintaining illusions that help us feel that life is worthwhile. A meaning realist would reject the Experience Machine, but to be consistent he must also reject those aspects of life that use illusion or information filters to provide meaning. A meaning subjectivist has little ground to reject the Experience Machine. This has implications for the justification of life’s misery based on meaningfulness.\n\nExcerpt from SUPERHAPPINESS: Ten Objections To Radical Mood-Enrichment by David Pearce\nThe ‘EXPERIENCE MACHINE’ objection [to engineering superhappiness with genetic technologies]\nAccording to this objection, the prospect of “artificially” ratcheting up our hedonic set-point via biotech interventions just amounts to a version of Harvard University philosopher Robert Nozick’s hypothetical Experience Machine. Recall the short section of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) where Nozick purportedly refutes ethical hedonism by asking us to imagine a utopian machine that can induce experiences of anything at all in its users at will. A full-blown Experience Machine will presumably provide superauthenticity too: its users might even congratulate themselves on having opted to remain plugged into the real world – having wisely rejected the blandishments of Experience Machine evangelists and their escapist fantasies. At any rate, given this hypothetical opportunity to witness all our dreams coming true, then most of us wouldn’t take it. Our rejection shows that we value far more than mere experiences. Sure, runs this objection, millennial neuroscience may be able to create experiences millions of times more wonderful than anything open to Darwinian minds. But so what? It’s mind-independent facts in the real world that matter – and matter in some sense to us – not false happiness.\nPOSSIBLE RESPONSE\nThis Objection isn’t fanciful. In future, technologies akin to Experience Machines will probably be technically feasible, perhaps combining immersive VR, neural nanobots and a rewiring of the pleasure centres. Such technologies may conceivably become widely available or even ubiquitous – though whether their global use could ever be sociologically and evolutionarily stable for a whole population is problematic. [If you do think Experience Machines may become ubiquitous, then you might wonder (shades of the Simulation Argument) whether statistically you’re most probably plugged into one already. This hypothesis is more compelling if you’re a life-loving optimist who thinks you’re living in the best of all possible worlds than if you’re a depressive Darwinian convinced you’re living in the unspeakably squalid basement.]\nHowever, feasible or otherwise, Experience Machines aren’t the kind of hedonic engineering technology we’re discussing here. Genetically recalibrating our hedonic treadmill at progressively more exalted settings needn’t promote the growth of escapist fantasy worlds. Measured, incremental increase in normal hedonic tone can allow (post-)humans to engage with the world – and each other – no less intimately than before; and possibly more so. By contrast, it’s contemporary social anxiety disorders and clinical depression that are associated with behavioural suppression and withdrawal. Other things being equal, a progressively happier population will also be more socially involved – with each other and with consensus reality. At present, it’s notable that the happiest people tend to lead the fullest social lives; conversely, depressives tend to be lonely and socially isolated. Posthuman mental superhealth may indeed be inconceivably different from the world of the happiest beings alive today: meaning-saturated and vibrantly authentic to a degree we physiologically can’t imagine. Yet this wonderful outcome won’t be – or at least it needn’t be – explicable because our descendants are escapists plugged into Experience Machines, but instead because posthuman life is intrinsically wonderful.\nPerhaps. The above response to the Experience Machine objection is simplistic. It oversimplifies the issues because for a whole range of phenomena, there is simply no mind-independent fact of the matter that could potentially justify Experience Machine-style objections – and deter the future use of Experience Machine-like technologies for fear of our losing touch with Reality. Compare, say, mathematical beauty with artistic beauty. If you are a mathematician, then you want not merely to experience the epiphany of solving an important equation or devising an elegant proof of a mathematical theorem. You also want that solution or proof to be really true in some deep platonic sense. But if you create, say, a sculpture or a painting, then its beauty (or conversely, its ugliness) is inescapably in the eye of the beholder; there is no mind-independent truth beyond the subjective response of one’s audience. For an aesthete who longs to experience phenomenal beauty, there simply isn’t any fact of the matter beyond the quality of experience itself. The beauty is no less real, and it certainly seems to be a fact of the world; but it is subjective. If so, then why not create the substrates of posthuman superbeauty rather than mere artistic prettiness?\nThere’s also a sense in which our brains already are (dysfunctional) Experience Machines. Consider dreaming. Should one take drugs to suppress REM sleep because our dreams aren’t true? Or when awake, should one’s enjoyment of a beautiful sunset be dimmed by the knowledge that secondary properties like colour are mind-dependent? [Quantum theory suggests that classical macroscopic “primary” properties as normally conceived are mind-dependent too; but that’s another story] If you had been born a monochromat who sees the world only in different shades of grey, then as a hard-nosed scientific rationalist, should you reject colour vision gene therapy on the grounds that phenomenal colours are fake – and grass isn’t intrinsically green? No, by common consent visual experience enriches us, even if, strictly speaking, we are creating reality rather than simulating and/or perceiving it. Or to give another example: what if neural enhancement technologies could controllably modify our aesthetic filters so we could see 80-year-old women as sexier than 20-year-old women? Is this perception false or inauthentic? Intuitively, perhaps so. But actually, the perception is no more or less authentic than seeing 20-year-old women of prime reproductive potential as sexier. Evolution has biased our existing perceptual filters in ways that maximised the inclusive fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment; but in future, we can optimise the well-being of their bodily vehicles (i.e. us). Gradients of well-being billions of times richer than anything humans experience are neither more nor less genuine than the greenness of grass (or the allure of Marilyn Monroe). Could such states become as common as grass? Again, I suspect so; but speculation is cheap.\n\nAnalysis\nSarah Perry argues that we already live in a meaning-based Experience Machine. David Pearce reminds us that our experience of the world is itself just a phenomenal representation of a mind-independent quantum mess, and that what makes us feel good or bad is merely a reflection of what increases or decreases the inclusive fitness of our genes. In both cases, Nozick’s Experience Machine thought-experiment is turned on its head. Namely, that if we value life, we are inescapably already agreeing to living on an Experience Machine of sorts.\nYou say: “I am not looking for happiness; I’m looking for meaning.” Well, the way in which your world-simulation is implemented is such that activities that foster the inclusive fitness of your genes feel good, while those that bring fewer future copies of your genes generally feel bad. Thanks to our neocortex, we are able to “encephalize” our deep primal emotions and render them in conjunction with (and indeed phenomenally embedded in) high-dimensional state spaces of consciousness. Key predictors of inclusive fitness such as social status, environmental stability, and the mutational load of one’s tribe are not explicitly rendered in our experience as “beneficial for your inclusive fitness.” Rather, they are rendered in a concrete simulation-congruent form (i.e. as meaningful), such as being a good person, having a home, and being able to tune in to highly evolved aesthetics, respectively. Indeed, we are adaptation executers rather than utility optimizers; the causal effect of our aesthetic preferences (e.g. preferring to think of ourselves as “meaning-seeking” rather than “pleasure-seeking”) is not legible from our subjective vintage point. But… the inherent entwining of meaning and valence (i.e. the pleasure-pain axis) is crystal clear as soon as we mess with one’s psychopharmacology, for people who fetishize meaning are not immune to mu-opioid antagonists. Unsurprisingly, it is hard to enjoy either a personal meaning, a sense of community, or even higher art while on the opioid-antagonist naltrexone. Likewise, isn’t it strange that psychedelics and empathogens seem to simultaneously increase depth of meaning and capacity for pleasure? Indeed, realizing that subjective meaning is implemented with valence gradients has extraordinary explanatory power. For this reason, it is thus clear that, as David Pearce likes to say, “if you take care of happiness, the meaning of life will take care of itself.”\nWhat about anti-natalism? My take on anti-natalism is pretty standard for a negative leaning utilitarian and transhumanist. Namely, that selection pressures against any proclivity to self-limit human reproduction guarantees that the psychological traits that bring about hard anti-natalist views will not sustain themselves over time. If one impartially cares about the wellbeing of sentient beings, one should take into account how evolution works. Advocating for gradients of intelligent bliss rather than non-existence could satisfy anti-natalists’ craving for the absence of suffering while also being compatible with an understanding of the reality of selection pressures. Tongue-in-cheek, I thus advocate for antinatalists to have lots of children, and for pro-natalists to have no children at all. More seriously, the real solution is to develop and promote “Triple-S genetic counseling” so that every child that is born is emancipated from the agony of his or her- otherwise inevitable- future suffering.\n\nSee also: The Tyranny of the Intentional Object, Open Individualism and Antinatalism, The Purple Pill, and Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/04/27/the-meaning-machine/", "title": "The Meaning Machine", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-04-28T06:49:24+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=14", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "8aaa2ae39a4973c4870bd28b0cc003d8", "summary": []}
{"text": "Low-Dose Ibogaine for Hedonic Tone Augmentation\n\nExcerpt from Tools of Titans (ps. 119-120) by Tim Ferriss (2017)\nBiochemically, Why Is Ibogaine So Oddly Effective?\n“[Ibogaine isn’t] just masking the withdrawal like a substitution drug would. For example, if somebody on heroin takes methadone, they won’t have withdrawal for a period of time, but as soon as the methadone leaves the system, the withdrawal comes back. This is not something that happens on ibogaine. You take ibogaine, and the withdrawal is gone – 90% of the withdrawal is completely gone. That’s telling us that the ibogaine is actually changing the receptor to the way it was before the person started using. It’s actually restructuring and healing it. Ibogaine appears to affect almost every major class of neurotransmitter, primarily via NMDA, serotonin, sigma, and nicotinic receptors. A prominent ibogaine researcher, Dr. Kenneth Alper [of New York University School of Medicine], has stated in presentations that certain aspects of ibogaine defy traditional paradigms in pharmacology.”\nTim Ferriss: “I have noticed that microdosing seemed to increase my happiness ‘set point’ by 5 to 10%, to peg a number on my subjective experience. This persists for several days after consumption. Preliminarily, the effect appears to relate to up-regulation of mu-opioid receptors. From one study: ‘…in vivo evidence has been provided for the possible interaction of ibogaine with μ-opioid receptor following its metabolism to noribogaine.’*”\nMartin: “[In treating chemical dependency] it’s opiate-specific. We have seen some benefits for certain psychiatric medications, but not for benzodiazepine or alcohol withdrawal. These two withdrawals are actually dangerous. When somebody gets the shakes, it’s DT (delirium tremens) and that can be deadly. So, it’s a very delicate process and somebody who’s physically addicted to alcohol should not take ibogaine. They need to detox first, and then they can take ibogaine for the psychological and the anti-addictive benefits.”\n\n* Bhargava, Hemendra N., Ying-Jun Cao, and Guo-Min Zhao. “Effects of ibogaine and noribogaine on the antinociceptive action of μ-, δ-, and κ-opioid receptor agonists in mice.” Brain research 752, no. 1 (1997): 234-238\n\nSee also: Anti-Tolerance Drugs, On Hitting the Actual Target of Hedonic Tone, and A Novel Approach to Detoxification from Methadone Using Low, Repeated, and Cumulative Administering of Ibogaine (from Psychedelic Science 2017).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/04/18/low-dose-ibogaine-for-hedonic-tone-augmentation/", "title": "Low-Dose Ibogaine for Hedonic Tone Augmentation", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-04-18T13:39:31+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=14", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "3813a3b4fdae572b03d48fef387e2963", "summary": []}
{"text": "Transcending and Including Integral Theory\n\nI have one major rule: everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of the truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace.\n– Introduction, Collected Works of Ken Wilber, vol. VIII (2000)\nKen Wilber recently commented on Jordan Peterson for 1 hour and 20 minutes in this interview. You can probably gain about 80% of the value in the video by watching the first 20 minutes. Using ribbonfarm‘s signature concept handle “refactoring perception”*, we could say that Ken Wilber refactors Jordan Peterson in Integral Theoretic frameworks. His affinity for Peterson is the result of interpreting his actions as those of someone who sees the world through Integral lenses, in the sense that he acknowledges the partial truths of each level up to and including Teal.\nIs the Integral Theory meme-plex capable of absorbing Jordan Peterson’s sphere of influence? Probably not, because as Ken Wilber might put it, Peterson followers are a mixture of Teal (Integral), Orange (Modern), and Amber (Traditional) people all pulling together against the memetic totalitarianism of the Green (Post-Modern) developmental stage. That said, we could perhaps anticipate a degree of memetic revival of Integral Theory thanks to its compatibility with Petersonism.\n\nWhat do I personally think of the Integral meme-plex? I see it as an upgrade relative to current mainstream worldviews. Alas, in my experience interacting with people who really dig that worldview (of which there are plenty in the Bay Area consciousness development/hacking space), I’ve encountered strong resistance against some of the core values and perspectives that QRI‘s Qualia/Valence meme-plex brings:\n\nIntegral Theorists tend to dismiss concerns about wild animal suffering, the genetic roots of suffering, and the possibility of identifying the physico-mathematical signature of bliss– which they might dismiss as a Modernist fantasy(!).\nTo upgrade the Integral Theory meme-plex, I’d emphasize the following:\n\nThe Tyranny of the Intentional Object (which has material bearings on how we interpret the nature of “mystical” states, e.g. Jhanas are not so much ‘spiritual’ as glorified high-valence states with long-term mental health benefits thanks to neural annealing).\nThat Open Individualism is consistent with (and indeed even implied by) monistic physicalism.\nAnd that the goals of transhumanism (superhappiness, superintelligence, and superlongevity) are indeed a direct implication of systematizing ethics (rather than being driven by egoic structures, as swiftly assumed by most).\n\n\n*As of March of 2019 they seem to have moved on to “constructions in magical thinking.”\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/04/14/transcending-and-including-integral-theory/", "title": "Transcending and Including Integral Theory", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-04-15T02:41:38+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=14", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "5d1f9315da21f1c8a83970d7465f8112", "summary": []}
{"text": "Frequency Specific Microcurrent for Kidney-Stone Pain\n\nExcerpt from The Resonance Effect: How Frequency Specific Microcurrent is Changing Medicine (2017) by Carolyn McMakin \nKidney Stone Pain\nEveryone who has ever had a kidney stone will tell you that the kidney-stone pain is the worst. Emergency rooms treat it with morphine, and nothing else seems to touch it.\nThe phone rang on a summer Sunday morning and I hardly recognized the friend who grunted through gritted teeth to ask if “my machine” could treat kidney-stone pain. I told him that I’d never treated it before, but I’d be willing to try if he could make it to my house. He shuffled from the front door to the couch bent forward at the waist, sweating in pain. I put one wet graphite glove under his back and the other glove on his abdomen. He tried hard not to moan as I covered him with a soft blanket and placed my hand on top of the glove on his abdomen.\nEducation said that kidney-stone pain had to be about spasm in the ureter, the tube that carries the stone from the kidney to the bladder. The frequency for spasm was 29 hertz on channel A. The frequency for the ureter was 60 hertz on channel B. It did absolutely nothing: no warmth, no relaxation or softening, nothing. Maybe there was bleeding caused by the rough stone shredding the ureter as it traveled? I tried 18 hertz to stop bleeding on channel A. The glove didn’t get warm, and the pain didn’t change.\nI really didn’t want my gray-faced friend to be my first failure. Reaching for inspiration, I tried the always-reliable 40 hertz to reduce inflammation. Nothing changed. Desperation amplified the small murmur of my intuition in my head, “Don’t get sloppy! Be thorough.”\nThere is a sequence of frequencies leading up to inflammation. The sequence was 20 hertz for “pressure or pain reaction,” 30 hertz for irritation, 40 hertz for inflammation. I never ran the whole sequence because 40 hertz always worked and I had no idea what a “pressure or pain reaction” might be. The buttons clicked down from 40 hertz to 20 hertz on channel A, and two things happened in seconds. The glove resting on his abdomen got hot — not just warm, it was hot. His abdomen started to soften. The feeling is hard to describe. It feels like a balloon feels when it has been sitting on the floor overnight. The tissue softens and stays soft while the correct frequency is working, and it returns to normal when the frequency is finished.\nHis voice was a little slurred when he fell asleep a few minutes later as he said, “Is that supposed to make me feel woozy?” His deep relaxed breathing said he was out of pain.\nThere are frequencies for the stone, so I tried those after twenty quiet minutes of watching him doze. The glove got hot, the abdomen softened, and ten minutes later he bolted awake and yelped, “The stone’s moving.” True to its promise, 20 hertz on A and 60 hertz on B reduced the pain again and put him back to sleep. Forty minutes later he left, pain-free, and passed the stone that night with no increase in pain.\nI told this story at the Advanced Course in Australia a few weeks later, and one of the Australian practitioners reported that she treated her husband for kidney stone pain with 20 hertz on A and 60 hertz on B. He was out of pain in an hour and passed the stone uneventfully.\nEvery case of kidney stones treated since then has responded exactly the same way. When the patient has gripping lower back pain from lifting suitcases during a long dehydrating flight but treating the muscles doesn’t help, experience finally admits it’s not the muscle. Intuition says, “I wonder if it’s a kidney stone?” The learning curve is very steep and short when the glove gets hot, the muscles begin to relax, the pain goes down in minutes, and the patient falls asleep.\nWhen one specific frequency combination, and only one, works every time anyone uses it, and when it does something that is otherwise impossible, then it can’t be impossible. It’s got to be resonance.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/04/12/frequency-specific-microcurrent-for-kidney-stone-pain/", "title": "Frequency Specific Microcurrent for Kidney-Stone Pain", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-04-12T23:16:13+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=14", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "5e6217ec3089f93a5ffeb8528f5271e0", "summary": []}
{"text": "Every Child is a Genetic Experiment: FAAH Clinical Trials for Hedonic Recalibration as Educated Guesses Rather than Reckless Experimentation\n\n \n“The easiest pain to bear is someone else’s.”\n(François de La Rochefoucauld)\nCould two small genetic tweaks get rid of most of the world’s mental and physical pain?\nA tentative answer is: just conceivably. More cautiously, the problem of suffering should be genetically soluble this century. Before launching into a long list of caveats and complications – and outright scepticism – it’s worth considering a case study. The subject has waived anonymity.\nJo Cameron is a retired Scottish schoolteacher, a socially responsible vegan and pillar of the local community. Jo has gone though life in a perpetual state of “mild euphoria”. She has unusually high levels of anandamide (from the Sanskrit for “bliss”) and is never anxious, though her serenity may vary. Jo doesn’t feel pain, or at least not in any sense most of us would recognise: childbirth felt like “a tickle”. She is hyperthymic, but not manic. Unlike previously reported cases of congenital analgesia, Jo didn’t die young or find the need to adopt a “cotton-wool” existence to avoid bodily trauma. She came to the attention of medical researchers only when her disdain of painkillers for what “ought” to have been an excruciating medical procedure – a trapeziectomy on her right thumb – intrigued her doctor. “I had no idea until a few years ago there was anything that unusual about how little pain I feel – I just thought it was normal.”\nWith CRISPR genome-editing, lifelong bliss could be normal.\nJo Cameron is first known case of someone with mutations in both the FAAH gene and its newly-discovered sister gene, FAAH-OUT, which modulates the FAAH gene. The FAAH gene (short for Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolase) is a protein-coding gene responsible for degrading bioactive fatty amides, most notably the endogenous cannabinoid anandamide. Previous mutations of FAAH are known, but the FAAH-OUT gene was previously reckoned a pseudogene. Single FAAH mutations are associated with high pain-tolerance, reduced anxiety and a sunny outlook without Jo’s “extreme” syndrome of well-being. Jo’s son has the single mutation.\nOther case studies may be cited. I often use (again with prior consent) the example of my transhumanist colleague Anders Sandberg (“I do have a ridiculously high hedonic set-point”) – although Anders’ pain-sensitivity lies within the normal range. The pain-modulating SCN9A gene, which has dozens of alleles conferring varying pain (in)tolerance, is much better studied (cf. How much do our pain thresholds differ?).\nWhat biologists call the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA) ensures such outliers are rare. Although Jo Cameron shows accelerated wound-healing, not being a “normal”, neurotic mother on the African savannah would have carried a fitness-cost. Predators are unforgiving of relaxed moms. Our sugary “wildlife documentaries” barely hint at the cruelties of Nature. Pain, fear and anxiety are intimately linked. “Only the paranoid survive”, said Intel boss Andy Grove; and this bleak diagnosis can be true of market capitalism to this day. But we are not living on the African savannah – or even in a world of unfettered free markets. Looking ahead, all kinds of risks can be offloaded to artificial intelligence. AI and smart prostheses can potentially manage risks moreeffectively than bias-ridden humans. Intuitively, for sure, tampering with our reward circuitry will be hazardous. Genetically modifying or creating superhappy organisms with relative pain-insensitivity and enhanced zest for life will lead to increased personal risk-taking. Yet the story is more complicated. A great deal of risky and self-destructive behaviour in today’s world involves not happy, pain-free people, but the pain-ridden, depressive and psychologically disturbed. Life-loving optimists typically value life more – and seek to preserve and protect it. Anecdotally, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the happiest people I know dedicate their lives to the study and prevention of existential risk.\nSo a practical question arises.\nShould a large, well-controlled clinical trial of CRISPR babies be launched, with some babies carrying Jo’s two mutations, others a single FAAH mutation like her son, and controls?\nIf the trial is successful, then the controls and (in due course) the wider human population could enjoy remedial gene-therapy to share the benefits.\nOne of the few publications to recognise the far-reaching significance of Jo’s case is the magazine Wired (cf. Crispr Gene Editing Could One Day Cut Away Human Pain). Instead of the double mutation promising “only” better drugs to treat pain, humanity can now tackle the problem of suffering at its source.\nBioconservative critics will be appalled at the idea: “Doctor Mengele!” “Eugenics!” “Designer babies!” “Gattaca!” “Brave New World!” Being malaise-ridden is normal and natural. Creating superbabies would be hubris. Where will it lead? How do we know gene-editing won’t be used by despots to create a race of fearless superwarriors?\nIn more measured language, how can experimentation with the lives of sentient beings without prior informed consent be ethically justified?\nIndeed. Yet all babies born today are unique and untested genetic experiments. All baby-making entails creating involuntary suffering. None of our genetic experiments first passed muster with a medical ethics committee. Any proposal to create transhuman superbabies will probably strike our descendants as genetic remediation, not enhancement. If we reject the arguments of anti-natalists, who view Darwinian life as malware, then all prospective parents are committed to practising genetic experimentation – just not under that inflammatory label. So what’s at issue is not the principle of genetic innovation, only whether we should harness the new tools of CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing to conduct our experiments more responsibly. If aspiring writers can benefit from proofreaders and editors, why not aspiring parents too – where the stakes are higher?\nYour question asks about breaking the hedonic treadmill (cf. What would people who never suffered be like?). Breaking or otherwise dismantling the hedonic treadmill is worth distinguishing from recalibration of its dial-settings. Hedonic adaptation can be broken in human and non-human animals by experimentally inducing “learned helplessness” and behavioural despair in response to chronic, uncontrollable stress. Hedonic adaptation can be broken at the other extreme by using intracranial self-stimulation of the mesolimbic dopamine system. “Wireheading” shows virtually no tolerance. Pathological cases of a broken hedonic treadmill occur “naturally” in chronic unipolar depression and, much more rarely, in euphoric unipolar mania. Attempts to cheat the hedonic treadmill via drugs are fraught with pitfalls. The most powerful mood-brighteners, namely the opioids, activate the hedonic treadmill rather than mitigate it. Some opioid users end up with a habit hundreds of times their starting dose. Natural selection did not design living organisms to be happy.\nFunctionally, therefore, genetic recalibration is a more fruitful strategy than abolishing the hedonic treadmill, both for the individual and society at large. For what it’s worth, I personally think we should aim for a hyperthymic civilisation built on a biology of invincible well-being. Future sentience will be underpinned by gradients of bliss. However, nothing so grandiose need be envisaged in order to warrant human CRISPR trials of happy babies. Grant some fairly modest ethical assumptions, e.g. other things being equal, intelligent moral agents should act so as to reduce the burden of suffering, or at least not wantonly add to it. For any genetic intervention that alters default hedonic tone, conserving information-sensitivity to “good” and “bad” stimuli is critical. In other words, we should aim to retain the hedonic treadmill but transform its negative feedback-mechanisms into a hedonistic treadmill – where “hedonism” is understood not in the amoral popular sense of a life of drink, drugs and debauchery, but as embracing Mill’s “higher pleasures”. Hence the hedonistic imperative. If clinical trials of superbabies go well, prospective parents world-wide could be offered the opportunity to have happy, heathy babies via CRISPR genome-editing, preimplantation genetic screening and counselling.\nA biohappiness revolution would be extremely cost-effective. Depression, anxiety disorders and chronic pain-syndromes significantly reduce economic growth worldwide. By conserving hedonic adaptation, but ratcheting up hedonic range and hedonic set-points, humanity can conserve and enhance empathetic understanding, social responsibility and critical insight while enriching default quality of life. By conserving hedonic adaptation, we can also conserve cherished traditional values, if so desired. Yesterday’s utopias involved overriding the preferences of others, whether for their own notional good or in pursuit of some higher cause. By contrast, elevating your pain-tolerance and raising your hedonic set-point would radically enrich your life but wouldn’t challenge your values and preferences – unless one of your core values is preserving the genetic status quo.\nWhat could go wrong with a biohappiness revolution?\nCue for vast treatises and a sci-fi movie.\nHowever, as well as seriously – indeed exhaustively – researching everything that could conceivably go wrong, I think we should also invesigate what could goright. The world is racked by suffering. The hedonic treadmill might more aptly be called a dolorous treadmill. Hundreds of millions of people are currently depressed, pain-ridden or both. Hundreds of billions of non-human animals are suffering too. If we weren’t so inured to a world of pain and misery, then the biosphere would be reckoned in the throes of a global medical emergency. Thanks to breakthroughs in biotechnology, pain-thresholds, default anxiety levels, hedonic range and hedonic set-points are all now adjustable parameters in human and non-human animals alike. We are living in the final century of life on Earth in which suffering is biologically inevitable. As a society, we need an ethical debate about how much pain and misery we want to preserve and create.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/04/11/every-child-is-a-genetic-experiment-faah-clinical-trials-for-hedonic-recalibration-as-educated-guesses-rather-than-reckless-experimentation/", "title": "Every Child is a Genetic Experiment: FAAH Clinical Trials for Hedonic Recalibration as Educated Guesses Rather than Reckless Experimentation", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-04-11T10:25:47+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=14", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "22fff3f90eb648d8e72cf08e0859edaa", "summary": []}
{"text": "Burning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God (2/2)\n\n[Epistemic Status: Fiction; see related non-fiction Burning Man articles – 1, 2, 3; See part 1/2 here.]\nPreface\nWhat follows is (the second part of) the result of an exercise in considering the questions: “Which novel memes, and meme-plexes, will be alive 10 years from now? And, what new worldviews will have a ‘full-stack’ account of where humanity is at, and where it is headed?” Hope this sparks interesting discussions.\n\nThe elucidation of the origin of qualia-rich subjectivity is important not only as an activity in the natural sciences, but also as a foundation and the ultimate justification of the whole world of the liberal arts. Bridging the gap between the two cultures (C. P. Snow) is made possible only through a clear understanding of the origin of qualia and subjectivity.\nQualia symbolize the essential intellectual challenge for humanity in the future. The impact of its elucidation will not be limited to the natural sciences. The liberal arts, religion, and the very concept of what a man is will be reassessed from their very foundations.\n \n– Ken Mogi in The Qualia Manifesto (1998)\nCompared to the natural sciences (cf. the Standard Model in physics) or computing (cf. the Universal Turing Machine), the “science” of consciousness is pre-Galilean, perhaps even pre-Socratic.\n \n– David Pearce, in Co-Evolution, Fusion or Replacement? (2012)\nThursday: Camp Super Intelligence\nYou wake up at 10AM, in what you feel is a surprisingly good mood given the fact you rolled last night. You still notice that your mind is a bit zonked. Taking LSD, MDMA, and Ketamine within the span of two days is not something you’ve done before, and it makes sense that they would each contribute their own distinct aftermath. If acute drug effects can be synergistic (as it was for MDMA + K), could hangover types also be synergistic? It doesn’t feel that way, but then again, you remember that by most accounts the “real MDMA hangover” happens 36 to 48 hours after taking it, not the morning after. So you figure that right now you are probably experiencing the afterglow and staving off tiredness with the psychostimulant metabolites of MDMA. With regards to the acid, you can’t really tell if there is any hang-over from it, so you figure that your feeling of being a bit discombobulated comes from the mixing of K and MDMA last night. “Oh, that! This reminds me- I should try to figure out what on earth was the massive life-energy ball I felt last night”- you think to yourself, reflecting on the fact that you had never experienced anything like it before.\n(source)\nYou prepare a large bowl of fresh fruits and vegetables. Conveniently your camp still has many fruits and veggies in the collective dry-ice cooler that Astro Burrito is prototyping. He got his playa name because his power of invention is such that people claim that he would be able to figure out how to make a burrito from scratch in zero-g; after all he served hot burritos to the entire camp during the intense day-long dust storm of BM 2025, which is something everyone still remembers. You eat two carrots, an apple, a pear, some celery, two raw tomatoes, and a ton of grapes. Once you feel satiated, you sit down to chill for a bit at your camp’s shared shade structure.\nGalaxy Fox and Cardamom join you to chill for a bit. They each have a mango slushy they got from Camp Glacier Breeze next door, and share some with you. You ask them if they have ever experienced giant life-energy balls on Ketamine and/or MDMA. Galaxy Fox admits she does not know what you are talking about, but Cardamom’s eyes brighten. She says: “I used to take ketamine weekly in my twenties, until I had some bladder problems and stopped. I remember a lot of wild visions. I’m an atheist, but man, some of these visions had a strong mystical quality to them. Perhaps the strongest experience I had was the one time I combined LSD and ketamine right after coming back from a neuroscience conference. I recall hallucinating a cast of famous neuroscientists whose work I’ve read and who I’ve interacted with over the years; almost as if I could access their soul and connect with them on a deep level. We all went on a quest to figure out the essence of life as a group of friends- naked in front of the mystery of life- rather than with all of the social pretense that inevitably comes with academic prestige. At the peak of the experience, we all witnessed this huge ball of light that looked like a sun coming down and telling us to ‘hang in there, life will make sense soon’ and ‘keep trying to make sense of it all, you will soon see the big picture’. I tried to dismiss this experience after the fact, but the feeling was very compelling. I still think about it every once in a while.” This more or less fits your experience, but you don’t recall the life-energy ball telling you anything specific. It was more like a sense of what could be possible if we all saw our underlying unity; but no words or concepts, at least not humanly recognizable. They finish the mango slushy and take off. You take a nap in a recliner, and wake up at noon, hungry again.\nYou eat a handful of mixed nuts, almond milk, hemp milk, macadamia milk, and electrolytes. Half a MealCube. You get ready to explore and by 1PM go on your way. You keep under shade and walk alone this time. After all you are sober and won’t be experimenting with anything tonight, and your best friends are who knows where by now. You stop a couple of blocks down, as the sign attracts you: Camp Super Intelligence.\nThe camp is mostly composed of a large central dome. Inside is dark and cool. There are water coolers, fans, and plenty of “mist projectors”. It also has walls with fabrics of two colors only (green and blue), which strikes you as a rather conservative aesthetic in a place like this. Some people are chilling, a few are in pairs, and there is a circle of people halfway between the center and the north corner hanging out and talking fast, and clear.\nYou ask if you can join them, and they say “definitely!”, and they ask your name. Then they continue their conversation, as if you weren’t there: “I thought Friston’s book was really easy to understand” – the girl in blue says. “Yes, even my mom seemed to understand it when I explained it to her.” – replies the guy in red. From what you gather, people here are obsessed with the prospect of digital Artificial General Intelligence. But rather than discussing the substance of the problem, they seem more interested in asking each other about what their “timeline is”, meaning, when they think it will happen. For better or for worse, you conclude they do not have a vision of the future – the AGI scenario interrupts their thoughts about what the future sans AGI could hold (with e.g. “mere” recursively self-improving genetic engineering).\nInterestingly, one of the topics they touch on is psychopharmacology. Everyone in the circle is on some or another psychiatric drug. They have, moreover, discovered that if you combine cholinergic nootropics (e.g. oxiracetam, pramiracetam, etc.) with adenosine agonists (cf. ‘anti-caffeine’ rutaecarpine) you can discuss philosophy without being bothered by questions about consciousness. They tell you that once you get used to it, you think back to the time you used to worry about consciousness as a time you were crazy in inscrutable ways. “It puzzles you that you used to fall in that trap, but once you ‘transition’, you know better”- a kid with grey eyes says. He continues: “You internalize the fact that, as Graziano puts it, ‘there is no subjective impression; there is only information in a data-processing device’ [source].”\nThey take purely causal approaches to reality, and in fact disregard subjectivity explicitly. Sometimes you feel you must be too tired to understand them, because you don’t believe what they tell you. You don’t believe that someone is trying to reconstruct intelligence without ever mentioning consciousness, experience, or qualia. But your friend- many hours later- reassures you that you had heard correctly. Indeed, that camp is known for saying things of this sort, and challenge each other to say it loudly, as a sort of memetic purity test.\nFrom your point of view, you wonder whether they’ve turned into philosophical zombies in some sense, or if they have experienced a reframing of their approach to language at the very core. They now seem to lack introspective access to the intrinsic referent of experience they used to have. Alas, they say that didn’t exist to begin with; it was the “illusion that emerges from a system modeling its own attentional dynamics“. Their system is self-consistent, and seemingly complete from the inside. But from the outside you can see they are missing a critical piece. Or so it seems to you.\nThey tell you that getting rid of the concept of consciousness is a necessary step to take if you want to move on to actually solving the problem of intelligence. But you resist their persuasion. It somehow feels rude… in light of what you’ve experienced the last couple of days. You think to yourself just how much there is to talk about concerning what you experienced recently, and how much this knowledge has expanded your understanding of how large the world of experience truly is. You try to share some of your recent experiences with them. They look at each other, and one of them says “I feel like every time we hear the stories from people who’ve taken drugs, the story always boils down to ‘these peeps were on drugs and something crazy happened’.” They all laugh, and agree. You sense they are not interested- anywhere in their minds- about what you may have to say.\nIs this what it feels like to have a serotonin dip, from the inside? Being convinced that the people around you are choosing uncooperative strategies? Or are these guys really being that unkind to me? They feel rude. “But never-mind, go ahead, we are listening”- says the same guy. They were kidding; they did want to hear your story after all. It turns out they became quite intrigued by some of your observations, including how you felt at the Pleasure Palace- I mean- what was it called? (you realize your memory is not as sharp as it usually is, mmm… wonder why). Camp Valence. They hadn’t heard of Camp Valence, or Camp State-Space of Consciousness. They seem to use Burning Man as a sort of complex interpersonal tension resolution event, and usually don’t interact much with others at the event, but do take drugs and go to see the art. Interestingly, they claim this makes them more productive during the rest of the year; it resolves the conflicts between them like nothing else. They are not very open to being changed from the outside, though, so to speak. Their behavior at Burning Man seems to be governed by a closed system and has a goal-oriented focus. You would much rather come at it with radical openness, but other forms of experiencing this place are valid, right?\n\n\n\nYou thank them for their company, stand up, and walk around. The place has tons of hammocks, reactive LED tables, and rationalist fiction lying around. Their art was geeky stuff like a dodecahedral metal-frame supporting an icosahedral “dual” internal metal-frame, itself supporting another dodecahedral frame and so on for several iterations. They also had a “statue” of a giant robotic “stuffed bear” that would vibrate if you gave it a hug with the right pressure and length. In a way, this statue was, gently, teaching you how to give pleasant hugs to others. You gave it a biiiig hug… putting all your heart into it. But it does nothing. The screen reads: “Try giving shorter hugs.” This makes you feel sad.\nA girl who happens to have seen your disappointing interaction with the statue runs to you, saying “you can change the settings. How about we try ‘hug explosion’? It vibrates in a monotonically-increasing way as a function of the amount of time you keep hugging it.” It was incredible how this little act of kindness made you feel included and appreciated. You hugged her and she hugged you back for over a minute. Your mind somehow made you think about that time a kid in Korea ran up a crane to hug Michael Jackson during one of his concerts. You don’t know why your mind makes this association with what’s happening- the symbolism escapes you- but you choose to just let it be.\nThe camp’s entrance has a chart about humbling yourself and accepting the fact that the world is full of people who are intellectually more capable than you at essentially any task you can come up with. This wasn’t made in a way that was meant to be a put-down in any way. Rather, it was a call to look around you for people who can help you in surprisingly efficient ways. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel everywhere, and collectively we benefit if we share what we can do, sustainably, really well.\nYou feel tired by 6PM. Again, you were artificially energized for two consecutive days; it makes sense you would feel the need to rest tonight. You nonetheless dance for 20 minutes at a near-by major soundcamp on your way back listening to throw-back 90’s rap, check out some art, and chill with a campmate near your camp’s kitchen in a retractable chair until you feel compelled to sleep, which you do without trouble at 11PM. It’s cold tonight, really cold.\nFriday: Camp Replicator – “Live Your Fantasy at Porky’s”\nYou wake up at 9AM and feel well rested, and hungry. Your mood is pensive, but you look forward to going out with friends tonight. One of your campmates, Lasagna Man, is preparing a batch of clean meat dishes for people to try. The sampler includes beef steak, octopodes in lemon juice, fried insects, and a James Franco BBQ.\n\n\n\n\nYou try each dish with a lot of curiosity. It is a bit disconcerting, to be honest, considering you’ve been vegetarian for over 12 years, and you feel compelled to verify it isn’t market meat. Either way, it is delicious, and you swallow the lab meats along with banana bread, coconut water, a 100mg capsule of 5-HTP, and 4000 fibrin units of nattokinase (as suggested by Longevity Camp to prevent cardiovascular events in periods of recovery). Satiated, you casually comment to your campmates: “I didn’t realize eating a celebrity was a hidden fantasy of mine.” Upon hearing this, Lasagna Man says: “Have you been to Replicator Camp? I think this year they call it Porky’s. It’s a place where you are compelled to live your hidden fantasies.” Galaxy Fox adds: “Strongly recommended. It’s a trip, and you do not need drugs.” Determined to check it out, you get ready by putting your Friday costume on (a tight-fitting dress inspired by the ThunderCats) and head over.\nThey say that “Porky’s” is just what you need to hear in this lifetime, in this branch of the multiverse, today. In reality this camp transcends this timeline, this place, this eon, this branch. It is an eternal Platonic concept which repeats itself at all scales of reality. If something exists, there were causes and conditions that gave rise to its form and quality. What people at this camp call “Generalized Darwinism” suggests that even before “the reproduction of the fittest” you have “the survival of the stable” as a primary trivial implication of time moving forward. What we see is driven by patterns trying to make copies of themselves, and being stable is a way of “making copies of yourself in the future” with an n of 1. But this is not relevant to you right now. The camp has a full-fledged metaphysical theory of the universe- and it self-describes as a spiritual camp- but in practice it looks nothing like it. Their explicit mission is to help you “experience an unrealized mental need”, and what this looks like is a bunch of actors playing a scenario for you, where you do something you’ve really been craving for a long time but have been unable to do due to the constraints of the real world.\nWhy would this be “spiritual”? You inquire about it with a girl that is wearing a swan costume and who seemingly volunteers at this camp. She tells you that the point is to help people fulfill an earthly craving of theirs so they can move on to their core mission in life. Most people will have a reaction of self-loathing once they finally scratch that itch, upon the realization that it wasn’t that big of a deal after all. It makes you realize that you would have been willing to throw a big chunk of your life away for what is essentially a side dish. Better to find that out in a simulacrum than risk your career, family, health, etc. with a terrible life decision, right?\nAt the entrance there is a menu of options that lists the role-playing scenarios they can do for you. There is a “custom” option for which you need to sign-up days in advance. They do not agree to about half of the custom requests because they exceed the bounds of what actors can feel comfortable role-playing, so there are limits as to how deep and dark your fantasy can be. The default options themselves are pretty shocking, though. The list contains things that range from adultery and incest all the way to abuse of power scenarios. Some of them are so R-rated that they make the rest of Burning Man seem conservative in comparison; heck they make the Orgy Dome seem conservative in comparison. Interestingly, the most requested role-playing scenarios among the options are completely family-friendly. For example, “work acknowledgment” fantasies account for 30% of the requests, and a whole other 25% involve receiving affection from neglectful family members.\nYou think to yourself: “I suppose I do feel undervalued at work, and I sometimes use outlets like Burning Man to find a place where people value me for who I am.” So you choose the “have a real conversation with your boss” option. You tell the attendant that you made up your mind, and she goes to the back of the room to inform the actors of your choice, and then proceeds to ask you for details about the scenario.\nYou tell her that you have been working as a journalist at a technology magazine for about 7 years. Your coworkers like you, and you are highly praised by your immediate manager, who thinks that you are a whiz kid and loves to “sell your work” to upper management. The thing is, you have a feeling that he does not represent you very well, and since you’ve been passed over for promotion already for four consecutive years, you sense that he is somehow taking credit for your work. He is very warm, and it is hard to think badly of him when he is around. He has a sort of professional candor that makes you feel rapport with him. The thought that he may be screwing you behind your back despite his warm relationship adds to the psychological torture. You tell her all of this and then she asks a few follow-up questions, mostly details like his first name, the name of a couple coworkers, and the ways the people at work refer to you such as nicknames and phrases they may use. She tells you to stand in line, that the actors will be ready in about 15 minutes.\nWhen it’s your turn, she takes you to the backroom and tells you to be “ready for a wild ride”.\nThe backroom has a number of props appropriate for your job. You sit at the desk, and stare at the computer in front of you. Then an actor comes in, pretending to be your boss:\nHowdy Steve! How’s it going? I was just passing by and thought I should say hi. I also remembered you mentioned you’d have the deliverable today, and it isn’t in my desk, so I thought checking wouldn’t hurt.\nThat’s right. He says “howdy”; this is already starting to bother you, reminding you of the pinched nerves you were experiencing less than a week ago at your job. He continues:\nDon’t worry about it. There is always another tomorrow. Hey, I’ve gotta tell you something. Promotion rounds are coming up- this time around, I promise, you will get promoted. As I always say: “We’re getting there, you and me, together” [winks].\nThat phrase irks you horribly. You feel your blood pressure go up. The girl was right, this is really wild. How did the actor know how to emulate his demeanor? You thank him, and mention that you are hopeful and determined to get the promotion this time. Then he leaves for a minute. When he comes back, he is wearing a different attire, as if it was a different day:\nHowdy Steve! I’ve gotta share something with you. Look. Sorry… they passed you up again. See, I think it’s the changing times, because the… how do you say it? They said your lateness on many assignments demonstrated lack of commitment to the company. They want you to take on a bit more responsibility before we can move you up next year. But hey, remember: “we’re getting there, you and me, together” [winks].\nYou feel your blood pressure sky-rocket; you feel rage boiling inside you. Or was it there all along and you are only now becoming aware of its depth? You decide to confront him. You mention how in each of the last four years you have seen him go out to conferences and present your ideas as if they were his. That you have seen him get the credit in meetings. And that once, a middle manager accidentally copied you on an email where he was bragging about how well the story you wrote did online without ever mentioning your name in the writeup. He falls silent for 5 seconds. He looks serious now. He says:\n“Yes, it’s true, I stole your work, ok?! I told my wife, and she said I should always deny, deny, deny, no matter what, that she being pregnant meant that we couldn’t risk not getting the next bonus. Can you blame me screwing you to benefit my family? Are we not all like that in the end?”\nFuck! You knew it. You’ve known this for over three years, intuitively. Your boss’ kid is soon going to be entering preschool. Your head trembles and you feel your heart rate go up, crazy. After a pause he adds:\nI can’t be responsible for the fact that you are a sucker. That you let yourself be taken advantage of. Darwin Awards, anyone?\nThe rage becomes a steam of hellfire inside you, and you feel yourself getting ready to shout and scream and kick him and bite him. But there is something stopping you. You know you could go all out on this poor fellow, and rub it in his face how the family excuse is completely bogus (it’s unsettling that the family thing is exactly the sort of rapport-congruent thing that he would actually say to justify himself), and it’s infuriating how many times you gave him a graceful exit despite your dark suspicions. You know you could hit him where it hurts most. But you instead choose the high road. “I am not like him” – you tell yourself. Silence for 10 seconds as you breath in and out, calming yourself. You say:\nThat one time you had me stay in the office on a Friday I had requested off a month in advance broke my heart. I missed a camping trip with my friends to satisfy your careerist hunger. But you are right, I am a sucker. Yes, being well adapted to a deeply sick social environment is not a sign of mental health. This is it. I quit. I will see you when I see you. Good bye.\n“And Cut!”- a girl behind the curtain shouts. She runs up to you: “You did well! How did it feel?” But you can’t respond. The experience is cathartic, and you cry, folded upon your knees on the floor.\nYou notice internal boundaries dissolve. It is now clear that over the years you’ve built barriers inside yourself; some kind of protective field around your inner representation of your boss and his warm demeanor. You didn’t allow yourself to think bad thoughts about him; you empathized with him deeply. Why? Why did you make yourself blind to all of the evidence, to the fact that he was screwing you? You realize that your sense of worth has been tied to his praise for so long that it feels like part of your professional grain. If it wasn’t for him, would you even have a job? You can’t stop crying. As you let those feelings come and go, a feeling of empowerment begins to run through your body; feeling vindicated and validated by yourself is something you are not used to. Especially not concerning professional matters. But now you feel… like you are worth it. The addiction to his praise is something of your own making, you now realize. You placed conditions on your own happiness; you had it in you to love yourself all along.\nThe girl brings you a box of tissues. She tell you that it is common to experience a rollercoaster of emotions. She said to come back if you needed additional support. You exit Camp Replicator. You feel good. Tired, but good… and relaxed.\nIt feels like the image of your boss has a lot less power over you, and this process has “released” a lot of energy – you feel like your own self again- how strange. With this weight off your shoulders, you wander aimlessly… looking for something to find.\nAs you walk along the streets you begin to imagine your mind as an ecosystem of agents with disparate inclinations. You wonder: “And what is the distribution of ‘power’ among my subagents?” It stands to reason that, given that subagent interactions form a complex system, subagent power would follow the same distribution that income, citations, and social influence have, i.e. a power law. Your subagents compete for a place of influence within you. And the one who (temporarily) holds power tends to have substantially more mental resources than the second next one. At the bottom you have thousands of tiny subagents – like the time you wonder “should I do x?” where x is only congruent with a small part of all of your motivations. MDMA, you figure, changes this power distribution during its acute effects; the “harmonization of your experience” (as Camp Valence might call it) is not only about your sensory impressions and emotions, but also about the causal power of your sub-agents. It is fascinating to see that in ego-softened states- such as the one you are having thanks to the recent catharsis- one can see one’s highest subagent give in to the concerns of the ones below, and start a representative assembly of subagents trying to arrive at a much more fair global distribution of power that satisfies as many subagents’ preferences as possible.\nThe experience of having two conflicting subagents have equal degrees of power is very peculiar; one feels that, somehow, one’s future is “truly up in the air”. You wonder: “Is this agent power distribution annealing?” Within the multiplicity of subagents bidding for your attention on a daily basis, which ones of those have purely replicator objectives, and which ones are trying to increase the subjective wellbeing of people (including your own)?\nYou come across a little bike handing out Whisky to passersby. You pass on your cup, and receive a shot; not because you feel the need to, but because you like it. You savor the Whisky very slowly.\nOn the way back you come across a Chindogu Hands-on Exhibit, which you find incredibly entertaining. It makes you feel like a kid again. You start wondering about your next career. Mentally you already disconnected from your boss’ authority, though you suspect that the full consequences of having done this will only be revealed over the next days and weeks. How to break it to him? What should you work on next?\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUpon arriving to your camp you get ready to go out by putting on a spiral LED hat and glow gloves. Astro Burrito and Cardamom join you, and you walk for many hours until 2:30AM, wandering from art to art, and talking to strangers, and asking them about what they do for a living… perhaps you’ll get inspired. You cap the night with James Franco left-overs- which you turn into a sandwich-, a mango, and a handful of supplements (BCAA, Magnesium Citrate, Quercetin, Turmeric, Aminoglycotetraquinone, Ashwagandha, and L-Theanine). You write some notes, and quickly pass out by 3:30AM.\n\n\nSaturday: Camp Anti-Replicator\nA 1980s throwback art-car driving by your camp wakes you up at 11AM. You feel refreshed, and happy. The first thought that comes to mind is “today is the day the Man burns.”  You processed so much pent-up emotion yesterday it’s unreal to you. You feel light, and energized. You then remember that you have a tested 25mg 2C-B tablet, which you had intended to use the night of the Burn. You check yourself emotionally and physically to decide whether you will go ahead and take 2C-B tonight, and all of the signs are good (blood pressure is good, VO2 Max is good, mobile ECG looks good). You feel good about the prospect of tripping today. You will be heading out to see the Man burn with your campmates at 7PM. What to do till then? You get a “shower” at the Human Carcass Wash, drink a cocoa Soylent, eat dried apricots, and devour a sun-heated bean & rice burrito. It is now 2PM so you have about 4 hours to explore before you have to get back and prepare to head out to see the Burn. What should you do? For reasons you don’t yet know, you feel an urge to take the 2C-B right now. You rationalize this decision based on the feeling that you should not stay up too late tonight if you intend to look for theme-camps tomorrow. Great press secretary internal monologue you have there.\nClick to view slideshow.\nSo you wander into the Playa with a borrowed bike looking for camps you haven’t even noticed yet in order to get the most surprising and novel stimuli possible. Along your way you see a surprisingly large number of sculptures of beasts and wild animals. You stop at a place in which you see about 50 people meditating quietly in front of a 3m-tall caterpillar statue, which intrigues you deeply. A sign close to the bike racks reads: “Camp Anti-Replicator.” At this very point you feel the first sign of the 2C-B come-up. You get off the bike and look around for someone to interact with. You check behind a blue wooden wall decorated with ʻaʻā clinkers arranged to form the shape of a mandala, whose center is an endless knot. A few people dressed in magenta robes are talking quietly on the floor, seating on cushions and drinking tea. When they notice you, they invite you to have tea with them.\nEndless Knot Mandala (cf. 74 topology)\nThey look like monks, and they emit a rather serene but lively vibe. They explain that Camp Replicator is their “sister camp”. Replicator is designed to help people identify the most gnarly karma bundle of samskaras in one’s energy body, which is the first step in untangling them. To put it in a secular way: living your deep fantasies and unmet emotional needs helps identify the most emotionally imprinted memories that haunt you behind the scenes. Empirically, working on these bundles in a psychologically safe container is useful. Away from civilization, one can more directly address repressed impressions in a safe psychic environment.\nOne of the persons there pours you a cup of rooibos, while another one asks you if you know why you are here. Puzzled, you reply in the negative.\nThey say that Burning Man is one of the seven Pure Lands on this planet- one for each of the karmic clusters of the human species. These are places where catalytic tools for spiritual potential are plentiful. There are many scattered groups of humans around the globe doing intense spiritual development work, but when it comes to transformations happening at a large scale, this is one of the seven core locations. Each of these Pure Lands serves between 10,000 to 100,000 people a year. Burning Man, they say, is not what it looks like at first sight. The physical component of the temporary community is just a superficial facade of the spiritual processes that are being catalyzed under the surface. They explain that this is why when you go there the place becomes a new location for your dreams in which to take place; Burning Man is alive all-year round, but on the etheric level of reality, which can be accessed in a variety of states of consciousness including meditation, dreaming, and psychedelics. Indeed, many benefit from this Pure Land without ever attending, though having been there secures a karmic link to it. They say that there are some really important Light Workers here, whom you will be working with when you are ready. They say that you are not yet ready for that. But you are ready for something else.\nYou ask them where they are getting all of this- implausible-sounding- information. They say that their philosophy- and thus their understanding of what Burning Man is about- is the result of a synthesis of Buddhism, Metamodernism, and Martinus’s Philosophy. Their camp members tend to come from families with what they call “new religious energy”. Often they will have been born in religions such as Unitarian Universalism, Theosophy, Integral Theory, and New Age, to name a few. Based on the synthesis of these disparate sources, together with experiments they have conducted, and the download of information from spirit guides, they can affirm in consensus that this world is currently at the boundary between the immanent energy of the animal world and the human kingdom levels of consciousness. The monk who looks the youngest, around 18 years old, begins:\n“You see, the cosmological principle states that, when seen on a sufficiently large scale, the universe looks regular and uniform. Locally, you see many different kinds of planets, stars, nebulae, brown dwarves, neutron stars, and so on. But on a grand scale there is asymptotically the same amount of matter, energy, dark matter, and dark energy, in large volumes of space. Similarly, the surrounding spiritual dimensions, locally, are very heterogeneous, but they are not a representative of the entirety of the multiverse. While evil can win within a given pocket of reality, on a large scale good prevails…. Well, it prevails in about 99.7% of the multiverse as far as we can determine with our spiritual telescopes.”\nThen the person in the circle who looks the oldest, around 70 years old and with a heavy Swedish accent, continues:\n“There are uncountably many flavors of consciousness, but they can all be placed on a cyclic evolutionary timeline. Buddhism divides the multiverse into six regions, each hosting beings who share the same main karmic signature: Gods, Titans, Human, Animal, Hungry Ghost, and Hell.”\nA girl who looks of Indian descent, who is around 35 years old takes over: “Martinus’s philosophy claims that there are six basic energies of God. Each of us is an offspring of God, a soul/monad that reflects and diffracts divine light. The six stages are: plant kingdom, followed by the animal kingdom, then the real human kingdom, the kingdom of wisdom, the divine world, and the kingdom of bliss [source]. The cycle never ends, and it is driven by a principle of hunger and satiation.”\n“In cases like earth, there are two energies with roughly comparable power over the beings who inhabit here. Although the keynote of the universe is Love with a capital L, locally, other energies tend to dominate.”\n\n\n\n“Metamodernism”- the one who is bald and has a French accent, says- “asks us to consider how new forms of democracy and collective action can take place in light of an emerging cluster of people who have reached advanced psychological developmental stages (e.g. Kegan level 5). In the context of global spiritual transformation this is very relevant. What do we do as more people begin to pass over the threshold of 50% human consciousness? We are developing secular implementations of spiritual liquid democracy in order to overcome the game-theoretical short-comings of the current democratic system.”\nYou ask them if this is a common view. You had never heard of this kind of syncretism.  They tell you that the overall picture has been developed in Scandinavia and is gradually getting exported to other places in the world. After all, the Nordics are a culturally interesting corner of Europe in a somewhat similar way to California being a culturally interesting corner of America.\nYou ask them why you are hearing all of this. They said they were waiting for you. Incredulous, you start standing up to leave, but the Indian girl says:\n“We all saw you the other day. You were a bright star on Wednesday night. We saw you saying hi to your grandfather, and then visiting the palace of light and its dome. We knew you would come over here later this week.”\n“You mean that what I experienced on the God Helmet, MDMA, and later on with ketamine was not an illusion?” – you ask, shocked. She winks at you in response.\nThe man with the Swedish accent pours you another cup of rooibos. He says that at this camp shamans of consciousness gather to help you see through as many of your internal demons as possible. The atmosphere here is completely unlike the mental health institutions most people know. Here people don’t show any kind of learned helplessness (internally wondering “is there really anything that can be done in this situation?”). People here are trained technicians of consciousness. They have sharpened psychological tools to break into your psychological stress points and help you release anxiety about your life-decisions and embrace an open-ended forgiving approach to thinking about the future. Leaving your attachments is not a sacrifice when you are trading them for options that feel both good and more real.\nOn the table there is a book that you pick up and open at random. A pamphlet that was inside the book falls on the tea table, and you decide on reading the pamphlet instead: “[I]f enough people gather in these tents, our shamans can do efficient combinatoric searches for pairs of people in the group that can help each other grow as fast as possible in the span of 1 hour. The clock is ticking, and there is tremendous pressure and conviction that a breakthrough will happen.” The people at the table mention that a significant percentage of people who come to this camp are on serotonergic psychedelics, but the majority go sober. More than half are people who have been here before and had a breakthrough, and want to go and take more advanced classes. People remark on the intense contact-high of this particular region of the playa. Typically, people say that they had an inexplicable urge to come over to this camp, and they find ways of rationalizing it.\nOne of the techniques listed on the pamphlet is called “deprogramming meta-programmers”. You take a moment to let that sink in. “This sounds like a cult; only the CIA would get away with calling something ‘deprogramming’ and not sound like a cult.” – you think to yourself. “I thought Rainbow God was a cult, but this?”\nBut at this very moment you realize that you are, and have always been, a prisoner of your reward architecture. You’ve been programmed by evolution to execute adaptations you are not even aware of. These animal urges… they don’t feel like yours. “What is going on?”- you wonder. From the inside, certain things feel right and others feel wrong and you don’t even know why. Sure, you can justify your feelings by claiming direct and exclusive access to the universe’s utility function. “What is this?”- You look at your hands and you have a tremendous vision of your hands being like claws. You imagine all of the terrible things for which human hands have been used throughout history.\nYou start identifying with the abstract human rather than with yourself as a particular human. The vision of all humans sharing a divine essence comes over you. But why do you have these animal feelings? You feel in you the demon-like cast of emotions that allows the persecution, bullying, and torturing of other sentient beings. You experience profound disgust at the realization that these underly many of your dearly coveted self-concepts.\n“Am I experiencing a bad trip?” – you ask them. “No, what is happening to you is that you are at the fence between animal energies and the human kingdom. You seem to be hovering close to the very middle, and you recently crossed the threshold where 51% of you can contain human kingdom energies. The interference is highly uncomfortable, of that we are aware. But do not fear.” – You ask: “Are you killing my ego?” – They say: “No, your ego is committing suicide. You are about to cross over, and that’s why you are here.”\nDon’t Fear\n“What happens when you have 51% of human kingdom energy?”- you wonder out loud, tripping pretty hard by this point. “Well, that is a milestone of sorts, because it forces some realignments inside you. There is some risk of falling into Messiah complexes, manic states, and self-harm. With regards to self-harm, it is important to acclimatize you to the fact that the craving for non-existence is itself one of the animal energies. Given reincarnation and the oneness of consciousness, self-harm is strictly counter-productive. Philosophies like negative utilitarianism and antinatalism are fantasies of systematizers who are, precisely, craving non-existence to such an extent that they create a worldview to relieve that craving.”\nThey tell you that you have also been imprinted with quasi-parental figures primarily concerned with the replication of their attachments and vices throughout your life, be it teachers, advisors, company CEOs, or even your boss. Your imprinting will determine whether you emphasize fast or slow reproductive strategies (cf. evolutionary psychopathology). The people in Camp Replicator helped you figure out who has imprinted you. The mock confrontation with your boss was a psychological technique that effectively works by helping your System 1 come to terms with the fact that your quasi-parental figures are almost certainly constraining your behavior out of neuroticism rather than thought-through rational analysis and altruism. Camp Anti-Replicator, now, is helping you with a push in contextualizing your suffering in a larger picture that allows you to identify with spirit rather than with your animal reproductive drive.\n“We are not a religion; we are a diaspora of students of the spiritual sciences. We don’t need dogma, because we have Abhijñā (‘direct knowledge’).”- says the 18 year old.\nHe continues: One of the most important sociological theories they deploy involves realizing that social movements work by providing an internal voice for people to be able to deal with their internalized authority figures. No social movement starts out from the altruistic desires of people, at least not on people dominated by animal consciousness. Beyond social signaling theory (cf. Mating Mind, Elephant in the Brain), the human mind has many tricks up its sleeves to transmute growth-oriented energy into the execution of replicator strategies. The true reason for this involves the relative low density of dark energy in this part of the universe, which biases physical evolution towards entropic finite games and away from negentropic infinite games.\n“God of the Old Testament was really a Wrathful Deity. Marcionism and Catharism knew this truth, but it was suppressed by the more dominant replicator-based and politically powerful conservative spirit of the time, which sanctified the God of the Old Testament and pretended it was the same being as Jesus.” – Says the Indian girl. “Jesus was a Bodhisattva world-redeemer who came here to break a link in the chain of tit-for-tat karma of the animal consciousness level.”\nYou open the pamphlet again. The section is titled “The stages of spiritual evolution”:\n\n– 1. Nature spiritism/shamanism\n– 2. Multi-god religions\n– 3. Mono-theistic religions\n– 4. Hollow mono-theism (“hey man, nobody believes this nonsense about the virgin birth anyways but we just pretend to go along”)\n– 5. Cynical materialism/atheism (money and power and NO re-incarnation)\n– 6. Humane materialism (“Let’s all be friends but there is still no God”)\n– 7. Low quality spirituality/New Age (“Peace, man. Let’s all be friends and smoke weed and not do anything practical. SOMETHING grander is going on. But we don’t have a clue about it.”)\n– 8. Mature spiritual instinct. Religions, atheism and New Age now all seem a bit childish. Deep inner growing seed of spiritual knowing. The divine is real but undefined. Interest in mystics like Martinus emerge.\n– 9. Cosmic glimpses. One sees the divine workings behind the veil for brief moments but still too immature to put the pieces together.\n– 10. Full blown cosmic consciousness. Like Martinus, Buddha and most likely Jesus Christ. Everything is completely intuitive. You are one with God, it all makes sense and you can tap into any answer about the cosmos at any time.\n\nThe guy with the Swedish accent says: “Good, you are reading about the stages. I’d say the world is now roughly between #4 and #5, with some regional variations. For example, places like Denmark and Norway are centered around #5 and #6, whereas places like Saudi Arabia are on average between #3 and #4. Burning Man and the other Pure Lands are designed to concentrate people who are between #6 and #7, and moving towards #8.”\nThey said that you now know what you needed to know. You are free to hang out and ask more questions, but to feel free to walk out any time. You feel a high level of energy coursing through your veins, purifying your sense of self, making it more humane. You decide to continue reading the pamphlet:\n“When Professor Christopher M. Bache was asked what was the most important thing that he learned from taking LSD in high doses in silent darkness more than 70 times, he responded:\nThe most important? That the universe is the manifest body of a Divine Being of unimaginable intelligence, compassion, clarity, and power, that we are all aspects of this Being, never separated from it for a moment, that we are growing ever-more aware of this connection, that physical reality emerges out of Light and returns to Light continuously, that Light is our essential nature and our destiny, that all life moves as One, that reincarnation is true, that there is a deep logic and significance to the circumstances of our lives, that everything we do contributes to the evolution of the whole, that our awareness continues in an ocean of time and a sea of bliss when we die, that we are loved beyond measure and that humanity is driving towards an evolutionary breakthrough that will change us and life on this planet at the deepest level. Take your pick.\n(Source: Meet the professor who self-administered 73 high-dose LSD sessions)\nThis is just one of the tens of thousands of people who reached level #9 in the last 50 years, and in the coming century we expect a few million people to get there.”\nYou save the pamphlet in your camelback, thank everyone at the table, drink the last bit of rooibos, and start taking off. “One more thing” – the 18 year old says – “you will confront a difficult moral dilemma tonight. Keep your heart open.”\nAs you leave, you pass by the same place where people were meditating in front of the caterpillar statue. But the statue is not there anymore, and the people who are there are now completely different. More so, they are now facing the opposite direction… meditating in front of a 4m-tall butterfly statue, which you swear wasn’t anywhere to be seen when you arrived.\nYou hurry up and try to get back to your camp before people leave to see the Man burn. On your way back, you overhear a conversation between two 20-something girls who happen to be biking in the same direction as you for what seems like an eternity. One of the girls points out that she went to Burning Man with the intention of having fun and maybe some casual sex with older men. But she is now feeling a bit disgusted with her original intention, that she feels drawn to starting a family with a beta boy who, she now realizes, she has been in love with for years but wouldn’t admit it to herself. The other girl kept saying to speak louder, that the acid was making it hard for her to make out the words of what she was saying. Soon enough they turn right at a junction as you continue forward, riding fast to make sure you don’t miss your campmates. You notice you came across a large number of Human-shaped sculptures. Where are the beasts? You don’t see them anywhere.\nClick to view slideshow.\nYou arrive late by a couple minutes. Thankfully Astro Burrito is still there, and he informs you that there is a second wave of people who will be departing in half an hour. You quickly eat some granola bars, drink a protein shake, and swallow some dried apricots, and to add some hydration, drink the last soda water can left in the cooler. Astro Burrito hands you some mixed nuts and orange slices. You refill your camelback, and join the group of people right outside the camp who will be the second wave. 5 minutes later you all start walking towards the Man as a group.\nYou are still a little high from the 2C-B, but you feel yourself coming down. You walk alongside Astro Burrito, and you share with him some of the things you experienced at Camp Anti-Replicator.\nAstro Burrito tells you to consider the fact that Burning Man is a breeding ground for meme-plexes that reproduce in an ecosystem of people in altered states of consciousness open to be infected by new memes. “What survives in here is mood congruent… so you shouldn’t be surprised to experience extremely compelling theme-camps with a worldview to- subtly or otherwise- pass on to you.”- He says. You reply: “I guess there is a lot of memetic evolution going on here.” He responds: “Yeah, right? Somebody should write an article about what Burning Man theme camps will be like in, er… 10 years from now. I’m really curious about that myself.”\n“But how about the apparent independent memetic convergence of people who meditate and take psychedelics over the course of many years? The pamphlet of Camp Anti-Replicator talked about how this convergence is happening throughout the world even in places not exposed to those memes.” – you ask him.\n“You really have to wonder about the extent to which pre-existing beliefs, inclinations, and wishes for a satisfying positive view of reality figure in a person’s psychedelic revelations. Indeed, as we know from Steve Lehar’s epic trip reports, not being confused with implicit direct realism about perception protects you from reaching spiritual conclusions. Direct realists about perception, admittedly, probably have the wildest trips.” He then goes on into a complex narrative about how you can think of communities of people as metal alloys. “Think of a certain type of people with characteristic cognitive and personality traits as being analogues to atoms of a certain type. When you bind together many of those atoms as a group, the material has some unique properties. But as soon as you sprinkle atoms from a different metal, the overall properties of the resulting alloy can be radically different than the pure version. The same happens with meme-plexes. Burning Man allows new memetic alloys… which can have unexpectedly sticky qualities you wouldn’t easily predict from the contents alone. Be wary of things that sound too good to be true.”\nAt the half-way point between Esplanade and the Man your campmates stop at some port-a-potties for a bathroom break. After you pee, you join your campmates in waiting for everyone to be done. Out of the corner of your eye you see rapidly-blinking lights and hear loud laughter. Turning in that direction, you notice a large group of college-aged chaotic neutral ravekids playing with an interactive sculpture. You have a bad feeling about this. They seem to be climbing it in unsafe ways, and playfully daring each other to interact with it creatively. They are clearly too excited, intoxicated, and unaware of the potential danger… and nobody is looking after them. You tell your campmates that you will stay there to look after them. Astro Burrito tells you that if you stay there you won’t be able to see the Man burn with them. “There is a sea of people out there, don’t you remember? You won’t be able to find us if you don’t come with us.” Determined, you insist. Astro Burrito says: “It’s your call. See you back at the Camp late, later tonight, or tomorrow, as the case may be.”\nYour campmates continue onwards towards the Man as you stay behind, watching over the guys. One of them reaches the top and shouts: “This is freedom!” and opens his arms wide, making a Titanic pose. “This is Fre…” he shouts, but loses equilibrium, and falls six meters towards the ground, landing on his left leg, which snaps, and then landing on his torso on his left side, breaking a couple ribs. The poor guy starts screaming in agony. “Fuck! I knew this was going to happen” – you think to yourself. You run to him, but realize that’s not useful, and course-correct towards the nearest Ranger post, which is about 250 meters away. The ranger jumps on a Jeep and drives with you to the site to confirm the location, then backs out and drives to the closest medical center. There they dispatch a medical unit, and you stay there. From afar, you can start to see the Man being set alight. You feel shaken, but in your heart you feel like you did the right thing. The Man gets fully covered in flames as the medical unit comes back with the ravekid with a twisted leg, biting a pacifier and looking slightly less distressed than before. The friends thank you for watching over them, and gift you some Kandi.\nYou climb a nearby platform, and watch the Man burn slowly. Then a powerful feeling overtakes you: “Oh dear… the Man is not being burned… it’s being illuminated! Dear heaven! I now realize Burning Man was a Symbol of the dawn of the Human Kingdom all along!”\n\nYou walk over to your camp, processing what happened today. Your body is resonating to an energy you are not used to. It’s as if the burden of competition… the drive to prove yourself to others, has exited every cell of your body. Green etheric energy and a sense of connection to Gaia electrifies your body. “I feel like I can appreciate anew the point of view where all of life is one, and we are all connected at the root” – you think to yourself.\nGalaxy Fox is at the camp, and she is applying make-up to herself, and is wearing a gorgeous butterfly costume. She didn’t go see the Man because she wanted to watch it from the highest place in the playa, which was a five-story-tall tower at 4:00 and E. She said it looked amazing, and she also sensed a deep connection to the planet and all life while watching it burn. She then hands you a vegan alcosynth grasshopper, and you both chill for a bit. You then hit a THC vape pen, and decide to go for a long walk and admire art you haven’t yet seen. It all feels ethereal, like you are in a dream. Perhaps the veil of reality is lifting? Is reality a collective hallucination? The levity of being overwhelms you. You hold hands with Galaxy Fox from time to time, in a friendly way, and dance with her whenever an art car drives by. At 4AM both of you are exhausted, and you return to your tent. You pass out immediately after laying on your sleeping bag.\n(Second) Sunday: Continuity Camp\nOur identity is that which we seek to preserve.\n– William Eden (HT Divia Caroline)\nYour first thought upon waking up: “Did yesterday really happen?” You glance over your luggage and sure enough, there is the Kandi the ravekids gave you. Your recollection of last night feels very dreamy and ethereal, not to speak of your visit to Camp Anti-Replicator. That said, the pamphlet you took is still on your camelback. You open it at random and start reading it. “Once you cross the threshold of 51% human kingdom consciousness vibration energy in your body, you will feel the need to go back and fix the troubles you have caused to others during your life, as well as try to eliminate all suffering throughout the living world. This is a very heavy burden for many people to bear, and subconsciously you are likely to suppress some of your insights for this reason. Have faith; insight comes in waves. Do not be alarmed if you can’t reach that magical place in the near future. It always comes back, eventually. And with each wave, the human kingdom energy plants deeper roots in your mind, body, and soul.” You feel at peace. But in addition to this inner peace, you notice that your desire for new experiences isn’t gone. You should hurry up and get ready to explore before all theme-camps pack their stuff!\nYou know that many people are leaving today, and you need to start packing up yourself. Come to think of it, you don’t really know whether any theme-camp is still up and running. But you will look for it. You borrow a bike and from 1PM to 2:30PM you bike around looking for an active camp. The outer rings of the city are starting to look a bit deserted, and even the Esplanade is starting to empty out. Between C and 5:15, though, you spot a camp that’s still looking quite active. It is leaving a little later than the rest. The camp is called “Continuity Camp”. It turns out they make it a point to provide shelter for people who need to stay Sunday night. Many people miss their ride, or have some kind of car problem, or are too exhausted to pack and leave. The reasons are myriad, and inevitably a few hundred people find themselves lost Sunday night. To remedy this, the camp doubles as a shelter Sunday night for people who’ve experienced any planning mishap and need to stay the night to sort it out. That said, the camp’s core structures are coming down, and you can tell that some of the sculptures are already gone, given the visible craters on the ground.\nYou park the bike, and venture in. There is a kitchen still open under a large shade structure. In the background, pieces by classical Mexican composers are playing (Arturo Márquez, Miguel Bernal Jiménez, José Pablo Moncayo, and others). You also notice that the walls are decorated with strange symbols with eyes of different sizes, fire rings, rainbows, plants, etc.\nThey welcome you with a plate of black beans, tortillas buttered with coconut oil, cacao nibs, and fresh slices of avocado. They also give you a cinnamon horchata agua fresca. You look around at the tables and see a group of people having a friendly discussion, so you ask them if you can join them, and when they say yes you sit down and start eating.\nOne of the persons in the group is part of the camp. She explains that this camp’s theme is centered around the the concept of continuity, which in turn gives rise to questions about personal identity. How do you truly know that you will wake up in your body tomorrow? How about a couple of seconds ago? Are you the same “subject of experience” as your past and future self? And how about others?\n\n\n\nShe goes on: “There are three main views of personal identity. First you have Closed Individualism, which is the view that you are a person, that is, whose existence is limited to a linear narrative or a story over time. Most people are Closed Individualists, and identify with their bodies, memories, or some kind of transcendent individual soul. Then you have Empty Individualism, which is the view that you are just a moment of experience, and that in some ways you only exist for a tiny slice of time and then disappear… though this gets complicated by what your theory of time is… so some say you really are just there forever, like a Platonic experience in the sea of conscious possibilities. Then you have Open Individualism, which is the view that we are all, on some fundamental level, One. All of us, as apparent separate beings, are different facets or projections of the one universal consciousness.”\nClick to view slideshow.\nShe points you to the symbols hanging on the walls. “The first three symbols over there represent each of these views. The one with a ring of plants and as many eyes as individual lines represents Closed Individualism. Each being has a different size, shape, and lifetime. Like trees, identities are messy and complicated; each bearing its own unique temporally-extended narrative. The symbol with a large eye in the center and a rainbow represents Open Individualism. It is the consciousness of All Is One, which has a full-spectrum rainbow flavor. And the one on the right is Empty Individualism. Each moment of experience is its own unbridgeable monad, separated from every other monad by the fundamental fire of differentiation.”\nYou ponder about it for a moment, and then ask her: “What are the pros and cons of these views? Why should someone believe one over another?” To which she says: “There are good philosophical arguments for each of these views. Contrary to what most people believe, it is not like the common-sense view has as much solid backing as we feel it does by default. Aside from the philosophical question of which one is true, there are game-theoretical implications as well as psychological effects on people from each of these views. Most commentators agree that Open Individualism solves a lot of game-theoretical problems, and if we could make society more Open Individualistic we would generally experience more interest in solving current coordination impasses. That said, people who take a given view very seriously tend to experience some archetypical effects. Open Individualists tend to become either solipsistic or messianic, which are both usually dysfunctional states in the long-term. Closed Individualists feel isolated, and generally experience intense fear of death. And when someone believes in Empty Individualism too strongly at a gut level, they tend to experience a sort of motivational collapse. So there are pragmatic considerations when it comes to adopting some of these views.”\nAs you finish your food and drink, someone comes over to ask you if you want dessert. You agree, and they give you some quince paste (“ate“) and tequila lime ice-cream, which they sprinkle with some Miguelito. You take a minute to delight in this engrossing mixture of flavors. You then tune back into the conversation:\n“Then there are people who have what we might call ‘hybrid’ views on personal identity. Really, to get there you need to give some credence to, well, paraconsistent logic people.”\nSomeone overhearing the conversation becomes startled. He turns around and asks: “Wait, are paraconsistent logic people real?”\nAnd she responds: “Well, yes and no.” – people laugh. She pauses for a moment. She then goes on- “For people who hold two of those views at once, you could think of what is going on as them experiencing a bistable representation for their metaphysics. Insofar as language cannot fully specify a worldview, what remains undecidable from your linguistic axioms is fundamentally ambiguous. More strongly, some people assert that reality itself (rather than just their representations of it) is fundamentally ambiguous at the most basic level. Personally, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage from exploring that view. After all, questions like ‘why is there something rather than not?’ seem very robust against classical logic accounts.”\nShe goes on to explain how computational theories of identity have open, closed, and empty versions. Even philosophy of physics ultimately faces the same questions as philosophy of mind, she says, as physicists struggle to define boundaries between physical events, and grasp at straws like quantum decoherence to identify ‘natural kinds’.\n“Hybrid views are more common than you may realize. Look over there, those three symbols represent the three possible hybrid mixtures of two accounts of personal identity.”\n\n\n\n“I think that the most common hybrid view is Closed Individualism + Open Individualism, the symbol on the left. This view is extremely common in spiritual communities. Basically, this is the view of people who somehow combine the existence of an ultimate God who connects us all at the root of our being, and individual souls that carry our karma around. Outside of esoteric Buddhism and other obscure spiritual philosophies, few religious communities really take Empty Individualism seriously. For them, the continuity from one moment to the next is not questioned, so a ‘soul’ ontology is usually the philosophical backdrop of their worldview.”\n“Interestingly, physicists are perhaps the people who are most likely to be Open + Empty Individualists, the symbol in the middle. Namely, they will assign to each moment of experience an eternal here-and-now spatio-temporal coordinate while also recognizing the fundamental unity of reality in the form of a universal quantum field. Monistic physicalism entails that consciousness is the fire that breaths life into the equations of physics, so to monists who take quantum mechanics seriously reality is equivalently describable as the total wave-function, or the collection of topologically-bound quantum coherent bundles. Two sides of one coin: either the universe is a collection of connected coherent bundles, or it is a unified field whose dynamic generates coherent pockets of energy. So for them, you have the symbol in the middle, which combines a central observer and countless ‘individual reflectors’ of the central light corresponding to bundles of coherent energy.”\n“What about the one on the right?” – asks a fully-dusted naked man, who recently sat down with a bowl of black beans. She says: “That’s a very rare view to have. In some ways people who are functionalists in that they believe that consciousness is the result of the internal dynamics of information-processing systems are drawn towards this view. They, for example, imagine consciousness as having two facets: the instantaneous state of the system and at the same time the entire range of possible configurations of the system, which is what determines the meaning of a particular state. A system’s state is meaningless without the context of counterfactual states it might have been in, is a common trope in this view. A neighboring view is the one which says that the essence of a conscious system is its utility function (aka. its ‘values’), which again gives rise to a co-dependent relationship between the individual states and the complete being.”\nThe dusted man says: “That’s how I think of my life. Sure, I experience many different things over, say, even a single day, and there is a sense in which each of those experiences are separate. But they all share a common theme- they are part of a life-arc with definite goals and obstacles. So each moment is strung together with the other ones in a coherent way.”\nShe adds: “For example, when you are in your room, look at the decorations and objects around you. Each portrait, each drawing, blanket, pillow, furniture and even the overall feng shui of the space, can be attributed to the decisions and actions of experiences that exist as moments in your life. You could think of what they left behind as a monument to a moment of your life. It helps to try to feel grateful to “them”. They are there, really, truly, existing, just like you now, just elsewhere in space-time. And they generated intentions for you now, for the chain of future moments of experience. One can feel gratitude for all of those moments of experience over there in the past trying to build a good future for you here. When you have a moment of peace, and feel love and gratitude to all who helped you be where you are now, send them a message: ‘This level of creation and kindness will eventually carry you to the success you are looking for. Thank you, friend.'”\n“What about the big symbol over there?” – you ask, pointing to the largest image, which is hanging from the ceiling and prominently displayed. She says: “We are fans of the idea of ‘transcending and including’ worldviews. Many of us have converged on a view of identity that could be described as the paraconsistent superposition of Open, Closed, and Empty Individualism.”\n\n“Contrary to common-sense views, this one takes as granted that you can exist in multiple places, times, and scales at once. Open Individualism already takes the view that you are all beings in existence. But the Promethean state, as we call it, goes further by acknowledging the seriousness of the topological folds that create the simultaneous reality of differentiated beings and universal consciousness. You are an eddy in the universal wavefunction of quantum mechanics, and your personal self is also an eddy but at a higher topological level of organization. So in reality each moment of experience is topologically distinct, each human or animal being is also topologically distinct, and the field upon which this happens is the shared ground of being. You are a topologically enclosed eddy in the life-flux of the universe. So all of Open, Closed, and Empty Individualism are true in their own terms, and yet without negating each other.”\nShe goes on: “Some people go at it from the point of view of physics. Feynman diagrams show how reality can be described as the sum total of all possible interactions of a universal Platonic particle with itself. Reality is what emerges from the fact that the Big Electron can pretend to be somebody else, when crossing its own alternate trajectory, to function as a stranger with whom to interact.”\nClick to view slideshow.\n“This brings us to the Prime Radiant. You can experience self-interference patterns of the one universal mind while on peak LSD states, for instance. Here, read this transcript” – she hands everyone a little card that reads:\nPrime Radiant is the concept that all that exists in physicality is one point of life, whizzing around at such speed, and with such freedom, that it creates all that we see in the universe. Now what that means is there’s one ‘atom’, if you like, and it whizzes around the universe, the whole universe, at incredible speed, such that it appears almost to cross itself sometimes, as it is going around, it does it so quickly it will come back to itself and appear to almost create a second point, and it goes around to create a third point, and so on, and that, believe it or not, is what creates everything that you see in our whole galaxy. It is doing it at such speed, this one tiny point of life, it is going around at such speed, that it is creating everything that you can see, not only Planet Earth, not only every blade of grass, every animal, every grain of sand, every person, but every planet, every star, every thing in the whole universe, all being created [nearly] instantly from this one tiny point of life.\nDifficult to believe, but it is apparently so.\nNow, this is true, but the story is a lot more complicated than that. In that there is a Prime Radiant for every person alive. Each and every person has their version of Prime Radiant, which operates under the control of their consciousness forming the universe in which they live. That is why no two people have identical lives. In other words, you probably understood, but what they are saying is, that for every person alive on the Planet Earth at the moment, I think there are about 7 billion people, there are 7 billion Prime Radiants, whizzing about, creating the universe exclusive to that one person, each person has a unique aspect whizzing around creating what they see and appreciate.\nIt may be difficult to imagine that you create a universe that is unique to you, but it is further complicated by the fact that by common agreement people can join their thoughts and agree to create similar universes or parts of universes in order to try to make sense of Life. But even that is not always quite the same. We have stated that in the case of a crime if the police asks witnesses what they saw, the descriptions can vary widely. That this is because we all create our versions of life and so we may not all see the same things. We might all see a crime but do not all see the same event.\n– Zero point energy, Bob Sanders 2019\n“Do you just have these cards on hand all the time?” – you ask. “Yes, we print them in many different colors and shapes”- she responds. The dusted man sneezes, which causes a dust cloud to lift around him, which settles over 20 or so seconds as people laugh and stand up to undust themselves.\nShe continues: “Many colors and shapes… but they all say the same thing. Well, perhaps they say it in different words, and using unique metaphors, but there are many ways of saying the same thing. The Promethean view of identity is beyond any particular qualia, particular points in time and space, particular causes and conditions. Since reference to a particular is not necessary to express the view, as it posits the non-conflict between instantaneous, personal, and cosmic identity, one can think of this philosophy as a universally-accessible Schelling point in concept-space. There are innumerable ways of expressing it in concrete form. Mythically, we could say that this is the ultimate referent of any conversation to have ever taken place, if only had such conversation been extended for long enough to catch its own tail. This is the ultimate view when it comes to the progression of transcending and including worldviews, as it points to the asymptote of synthesis at the limit of the development of the concept of Self.”\nA young guy who recently sat down mentions: “Sadly, this view entails that you are, in a very non-trivial way, the non-human animals suffering in factory farms.” She agrees to that. The discussion is then wrapped up with an exposition of the Buddhist notion of the interpenetration of all 10 realms and how this also applies to interpenetrations of philosophies of personal identity. Analogous to how Tiantai Buddhism proclaims that: “One thought contains three thousand worlds”, so does Continuity Camp proclaim that oneness, individuality, and instantaneous separation are inter-dependent ontological states.\nYou figure that the religion of this camp- trying to articulate it in as few words as possible- could be expressed thus: “The universal essence devoid of inherent properties was clever to create a reality in which questions of self, time, space, and continuity are fundamentally ambiguous. The engine of creation is not a lawful and dependable ground of being, but rather, it is what emerges out of the compromises that inconsistent ontologies need to make in order to coexist.”\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOn your way out you ask people why they were so keen on pushing an artistic vibe of the 20th Century Mexican intelligentsia. Not that you had anything against it, but it certainly seemed random to you. They tell you conflicting stories. One person says that this is an artistic style chosen to ground people and help them ease their way back into civilization where people have strong identities and attachments. That a good way to ease your way into the madness that is ego-identification in modern cities is to show you a defunct artistic expression with which a lot of people used to identify at some point in the past. Alternatively, the second person explains, the vibe is used as a form of meditation into a computational theory of identity. Namely, that in some accounts of identity, semantic and episodic memories fall on a secondary position relative to the preponderance of felt-sense. If you can set alight the essence of a past aesthetic, you are, quite literally- and perhaps in the only sense that matters– reviving the people of that historical period. Thus, they all meditate into becoming the life-force which identified with 20th Century Mexican Nationalism as a philosophy of identity, and use that experience to feel, process, and let go of the pain of identification. Alas, this second person seemed high as a kite, so you figure “who knows how much he actually knew about what was going on?”.\nYou bike back to your camp, eat a protein bar, drink coconut water, and have some white tea. You don’t feel very hungry for some reason, but you put some high-calorie foods into a bag for later, just in case. You walk towards the Temple with the two thirds of your camp that haven’t departed and aren’t actively involved in taking down structures at the moment.\nClick to view slideshow.\nTemple Reflection\nWhen you arrive at the ring of people around the structure you feel peaceful, pensive, and puzzled. Your campmates also seem to share your general state of solemn satisfied exhaustion. You have been exposed to so many views over the last week that you don’t know where to start. How to put all these views together into a global worldview? Do you even have to?\nYou realize that every camp has its own way of painting itself as the “final point of view”. As if rehearsing, you utter quietly: “A meme is a unit of cultural meaning that can be passed around from mind to mind. A particular joke is a meme. A particular name is a meme. Most memes make references to other memes. This right here is a meme. When a large bundle of memes support each other we call those meme-plexes. For example, religions and ideologies are meme-plexes because they use memes that fit well together.” You still remember giving that presentation in middle-school, where you introduced your classmates to memes. “No, not the things your parents and older siblings share online in Internet 2.0 social media. The concept of a ‘meme’ is a much more profound and wide-reaching idea.” – you still remember other students passing around Internet memes (i.e. image macros) of you explaining what a “meme really was.”\nYour thoughts are interrupted when you notice that the Temple is being prepared to be burned. A campmate who was involved in building the Temple this year tells you that the theme for the structure is “Temple of Courage” (cf. Temple Themes). You weren’t aware that the Temple has a theme each year. You had visited the Temple this year, and the thought crossed your mind that it takes courage to visit it, considering the depth of grief and sorrow that is often felt in it. At the same time, you feel that you have been courageous during this visit, too. You set the goal of visiting a different camp each day and deeply engaging with its worldview. In retrospect, you realize that it really takes courage to delve into new meme-plexes, let alone full-stack ones. Being presented with compelling views that, if you were to take seriously, would mean the radical restructuring of your mind could be a dodgy matter.\n\nThis week you consciously chose to be as open as possible to every new worldview you encountered. You were seriously shaken by more than one of these visits, but it currently feels that this has been for the better. A courageous move to expand yourself, whose consequences are yet to be seen.\nYou now wonder about what makes a meme-plex “full-stack”. If you recall correctly, meme-plexes are “full-stack” when they can generate a defensible and stable response to most questions humans would ask, including how the universe was made, what is love, and what it means to laugh. Usually they provide an account of what is, and what is good (i.e. valuable). Full-stack meme-plexes are immensely more powerful than other meme-plexes, because as such they do not have ‘any cracks’ from the point of view of people who buy into them; they seem “air-tight from the inside”, so to speak.\nSo what is the big-picture story of the camps you visited this week? Well, Camp Longevity has the mindset of assigning infinite weight to your own life and trying to survive personally and promote personal survival for others. Rainbow God wants to explore the entire state-space of consciousness. Camp Valence wants to eliminate suffering and maximize bliss, which in practice may involve ultra-blissful drugs and brain modifications. Camp Superintelligence considers intelligence intrinsically valuable and is concerned with the arms races that may ensue with drastically new intelligence coming online. Camp Replicator says that we are bound by our subconscious desires and express them in unproductive ways. We can address them directly, unleash all the built-up tension, and become free from self-replicating patterns. The Anti-Replicator Camp would say we are on a spiritual path of development which uses replicators as a means for learning. Ultimately, we will be grown out of replicator desires and focus our spiritual energy on loving each other. And finally, Continuity Camp would say that we are not who we think we are; being individual humans is an illusion. It is evolutionarily adaptive, but in order to save the world we need to agree on an expanded sense of identity.\nClick to view slideshow.\nLife is not like Scrabble… you need to know the meaning of the concepts in order to win. In that sense, to play ideological rock-paper-scissors you need a good model of each ideology both on its own terms and in the terms of other ideologies. You ask yourself: How would each of these meme-plexes think of each other?\nLongevity can be attacked by Continuity by emphasizing that Open Individualism (i.e. oneness) suggests we should not put all our eggs in the basket of personal survival. Longevity can attack Superintelligence by saying that working on AI is to betray humanity. In here, Rainbow God can come in and argue that both Longevity and Superintelligence are working on the same goals, but they do not realize that yet. More so, that the goals of Rainbow God are a super-set of all that could be achieved by both Longevity and Superintelligence. That is, mapping out the state-space of consciousness gets you both the ability to understand what survival even means, and also access to states of consciousness critical for sentient superintelligence.\nInterestingly, the pair of Anti-Replicator and Valence seem to have fundamental disagreements. Anti-Replicator will tell you that good comes from our spiritual development and the Love with a capital L that emerges out of that. Valence would say that love, capital letter or not, is a label used to identify positive qualia related to pair-bonding, family, friendship and other evolutionarily adaptive social behaviors. In turn, what makes love valuable is the high valence that such states of consciousness tend to exhibit. MDMA imbues high valence across your entire world-simulation. The fact that you describe this experience with words like “I love the world and the world loves me” is the result of trying to put the experience into words. But high-valence is what is behind the “magic” of the state when it comes down to scientific fact. Anti-Replicator would simply say that such a point of view exists in people who are close to the boundary between animal and human realms, such that they try to make sense of love in materialistic ways. The conclusions are always wrong because the ontology they start with is incorrect (love as high valence which corresponds to particular material configurations). Each paradigm can explain the other by including it. There are converts in both directions. These worldviews are experienced as bistable perceptions to some people. Camp Continuity could come and say that their views are complementary rather than contradictory. Each experience is a mixture of Empty, Open, and Closed ontologies, and high-valence is achieved when there is the right balance between them. Thus love is fundamentally connected to the act of defeating duality of self, which involves undoing ancient symmetry breaking operations. Thus love is both the result of mathematical harmony, and a metaphysical quality associated with selfless giving.\nThe highest expression of God, as it were, is not the one that incorporates the most diverse range of qualia, but rather, the one that incorporates the largest amount of coherent energy in a state of harmony.\n– Camp Valence\nNow, Rainbow God and Valence would probably also have a complicated relationship. In truth, having access to high-valence states enables you to have the hyper-motivation necessary to explore the state-space of consciousness. And doing such explorations, in turn, leads to discoveries about how to create better high-valence states. Rainbow God, on the one hand, will continue on exploring as long as there is more to be found. Camp Valence might retort that learning about each of the possible varieties of beetles is not rational considering the opportunity cost. Why not leave aside variety for variety’s sake, and focus on making high-tech bliss instead? Rainbow God would feel defensive here. It would say that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. So far, pursuing full-spectrum experiences seem to be exhilarating and wonderful. Valence might then say that this could be an illusion caused by endogenous opioid release in response to novelty. Not everyone seems to enjoy exploring consciousness for its own sake, and doing so is correlated with general openness to experience. As an axis of human variability, this would suggest that people are more or less drawn towards novelty. So rather than fixating on novelty, we should investigate what makes novelty in some people feel so good. Despite these misgivings, Valence would still be open to there being a fundamental connection between valence and diversity of qualia. Both camps would agree that there might be a possible dual relationship between the symmetry of the mathematical object isomorphic to a person’s experience and the rainbowey-ness of the experience. As such, both meme-plexes would keep an eye on each other and cooperate insofar as it is mutually beneficial.\nWhat about Porky’s? Porky’s (i.e. Camp Replicator) could argue that people going to every other camp is merely expressing and projecting their unmet psychological needs. People will be drawn towards the ideas that fulfill a certain void in them. So for example, people who support Continuity Camp have a higher existential distress baseline than the average person such that belonging to a community that reassures them of the survival of oneself-as-consciousness fulfills the need they started with. Porky’s wouldn’t necessarily disagree about key memes of other meme-plexes, but it would nonetheless be cynical about the typical motivations that draw people to these meme-plexes. Longevity is in fact a social club for people of all ages who enjoy the company of young-looking people. Valence responds to people who empathize too strongly with others. Superintelligence is a club for people insecure about their own intelligence who want to compare themselves against other smart people. Anti-replicator is dual with Porky’s; they emphasize the same facts but interpret them with complementary metaphysics.\nA friend hands you an electrum necklace, and tells you that it is meant to materialize this very moment, as you receive it. The Temple is set alight as you are tying it to put around your neck. This moment. This moment. This moment. Are we counting moments, or are we counting selves? You get lost in a long now.\nYour mind is surprisingly clear for being so cluttered with memes and meme-plexes. The image comes to you that your mind right now is working as a council, or general assembly, of seven tulpas representing each of the seven meme-plexes.\n\n\nThe meme-plex convention.\n\nThe experience felt odd. All your life you’ve identified with a given point of view, especially as it pertains to your view of the world. But right now your experience is simultaneously hosting meme-plexes in what feels like an impartial space. The task at hand is not the competition between the meme-plexes in order to take over center-stage, but their incorporation into a meta-space which can simultaneously host each meme-plex.\nIn a sense, you feel like seven people at once. Each of these beings being your answer to the question “who would I become if I were to have this meme-plex as my default view?” You remember the following quote:\nWe aren’t afraid of dying, we’re afraid of living while never doing anything of value.\n– Hi There\nYou make a prayer. The prayer is to be free from fear when considering alternate worldviews. You hear some chanting in the background, and after a few more minutes the Temple collapses. Everyone cheers, and then people go quiet again. The now-flat incandescent surface burns slowly but steadily. It seems like the tulpas are learning to coexist in your mind. They are learning to be there and trying to provide value without overtaking your world-model, at least not without your permission. Are the tulpas friends? Not really. But they also are not hostile against each other. Rather, they personify rational worldviews open to new evidence and arguments. If you try to imagine them, they feel like large statues of peaceful Gods minding their own business. They are all open to being asked questions and to meet each other for conversation. This feels good. It feels peaceful.\nYou overhear a campmate say: “I took a microdose of 2C-G-5 three days ago, and I can still feel it. I like it, but it made sleeping really hard last night.” This is the cue that makes you aware that your campmates are getting ready to leave. You take a last long look at the fire and wonder about how many selves watched this event. You walk back to your camp with your campmates. People are now really engaged in dismantling structures and cleaning. The last remaining structure is the roofed dance area, which has cushions and blankets for the people who will take it down tomorrow, and a hexayurt for those who will do the final MOOP sweep on Tuesday. You decline some nitrous and get ready to leave.\n(Second) Monday\nYou wake up and load your vehicle with grey water from the camp along with all of your stuff. You look around and decide to make one more bike trip before taking off. You bike around with a borrowed bike. The place is about 90% deserted, which makes navigating a lot harder as the landmarks you got used to over the last week are gone. You bike towards the Temple. You notice a shiny dot at the distance, which you use as a guide. You arrive there and pick it up. It is an electrum necklace identical to the one you got last night. You then notice that you don’t have that necklace on. This must be it, you found your necklace and you weren’t even searching for it. In that moment you remember that the necklace was a symbol of the precise moment in which you received it. Paradoxically, both now and that time feel just as real. Perhaps, you wonder, this is my own proof that I exist over time. But you fail to translate your newfound intuition into words.\nYou then bike back to your car, and take off.\n\nThanks to: Mike Johnson, Romeo Stevens, David Pearce, Anders Amelin, Liam Brereton, Enrique Bojorques, Andrés Silva Ruiz, Alfredo Valverde, Duncan Wilson, Mac Davis, Mario Montano, Lauge, and playa friends Tryp, Special, Expo, Nectar, Daphne, Frank, Victor, and many others for the conversations that led to ideas featured in this text (both part 1 & 2).\nNote: Apparently Buddhists did make Rainbow Body a core practice and got phenomenological mileage out of doing that.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/04/08/burning-man-theme-camps-of-the-year-2029-from-replicator-to-rainbow-god-2-2/", "title": "Burning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God (2/2)", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-04-09T05:13:27+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=14", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "4b5c791c2a24f4d34578b8cc480d5a95", "summary": []}
{"text": "Investing Time and Resources in Happiness\n\nAs a function of time and resources, what is the optimal way to reduce suffering and maximize happiness?\nYou have 1 minute and no money: Try to calm down and distract yourself with music.\nYou have 1 hour and 1 dollar: Ignore the dollar, just make a playlist of songs you really enjoyed in your life and play it as you dance.\n\nYou have 1 day and 50 dollars: Go get yourself some hard drugs.\nYou have 3 months and 1,000 dollars: Get some gym equipment, establish a workout routine, hangout with friends as much as possible, get laid, go to see movies, go to a beach.\nYou have 3 years and 3,000 dollars: Learn about Buddhist meditation, get fit, and then focus on achieving the Jhanas states. Stay in them for as long as you can.\nYou have 10 years and 10,000 dollars: Investigate charities that minimize suffering, or make your own. Fund-raise in order to eliminate suffering in people who have cluster-headaches by giving them access to tryptamine vape-pens, help the spread of pain-killers for people dying in hospitals in third-world countries, etc.\nYou have 50 years and 10,000,000 dollars: You found a research institute devoted to identifying the biochemical, functional, or behavioral causes of suffering, identify promising large-effect-size genetic modification technologies in order to enable sustainable hedonic-tone enhancement. You build a company that sells permanent hedonic tone amplification. With the money you get rid of factory farming and implement a wild-animal welfare system. Then you get rid of game-theoretical impasses using ultra-bliss technology.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/04/03/investing-time-and-resources-in-happiness/", "title": "Investing Time and Resources in Happiness", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-04-03T08:51:47+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=15", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e86d0d0c61f4a298a376e252c7dd2a27", "summary": []}
{"text": "Utilitronium Shockwaves vs. Gradients of Bliss\n\nExcerpt from On utilitronium shockwaves versus gradients of bliss by David Pearce\n\nUtilitronium Shockwave: Turn your local Galaxy Super-Cluster into a Full-Spectrum Orgasm in 9 easy civilizational steps.\nWhy is the idea of life animated by gradients of intelligent bliss attractive, at least to some of us, whereas the prospect of utilitronium leaves almost everyone cold? One reason is the anticipated loss of self: if one’s matter and energy were converted into utilitronium, then intuitively the intense undifferentiated bliss wouldn’t be me. By contrast, even a radical recalibration of one’s hedonic set-point intuitively preserves the greater part of one’s values, memories and existing preference architecture: in short, personal identity. Whether such preservation of self would really obtain if life were animated by gradients of bliss, and whether such notional continuity is ethically significant, and whether the notion of an enduring metaphysical ego is even intellectually coherent, is another matter. Regardless of our answers to such questions, there is a tension between our divergent response to the prospect of cosmos-wide utilitronium and intelligent bliss. People rarely complain that e.g. orgasmic sexual ecstasy lasts too long, and that regrettably they lose their sense of personal identity while orgasm lasts. On the contrary: behavioural evidence strongly suggests that most men in particular reckon sexual bliss is too short-lived and infrequent. Indeed if such sexual bliss were available indefinitely, and if it were characterised by an intensity orders of magnitude greater than the best human orgasms, then would anyone – should anyone – wish such ecstasy to stop? Subjectively, utilitronium presumably feels more sublime than sexual bliss, or even whole-body orgasm. Granted the feasibility of such heavenly bliss, is viewing the history of life on Earth to date as mere stepping-stones to cosmic nirvana really so outrageous?\nIs attachment to your sense of self keeping you from embracing hedonium? Stop ‘Selfing’ with these 3 buddhist-approved Techniques!\nFor the foreseeable future, however, even strict classical utilitarians must work for information-sensitive gradients of intelligent bliss rather than raw undifferentiated pleasure. Classical hedonistic utilitarianism was originally formulated as an ethic for legislators, not biologists or computer scientists. Conceived in this light, the felicific calculus has been treated as infeasible. Yet a disguised implication of a classical utilitarian ethic in an era of mature biotechnology may be that we should be seeking to convert the world into utilitronium, generally assumed to be relatively homogenous matter and energy optimised for raw bliss. The “shockwave” in utilitronium shockwave alludes to our hypothetical obligation to launch von Neumann probes propagating this hyper-valuable state of matter and energy at, or nearly at, the velocity of light across our Galaxy, then our Local Cluster, and then our Local Supercluster. And beyond? Well, politics is the art of the possible. The accelerating expansion of the universe would seem to make further utilitronium propagation infeasible even with utopian technologies. Such pessimism assumes our existing understanding of theoretical physics is correct; but theoretical cosmology is currently in a state of flux.\nUtilitronium Shockwave? (cf. Hedonium)\nNaively, the theoretical feasibility of utilitronium shockwave is too remote to sorry about. This question might seem a mere philosophical curiosity. But not so. Complications of uncertain outcome aside, any rate of time discounting indistinguishable from zero is ethically unacceptable for the ethical utilitarian. So on the face of it, the technical feasibility of a utilitronium shockwave makes working for its adoption ethically mandatory even if the prospect is centuries or millennia distant.\nExistential Risk? Utilitarian ethics and speculative cosmology might seem far removed. But perhaps the only credible candidate naturalising value has seemingly apocalyptic implications that have never (to my knowledge) been explored in the scholarly literature. And can we seriously hope to be effective altruists in the absence of serviceable model of Reality?\nAll-New “Life”! – Now animated by gradients of bliss. Pain-free!\nShould existential risk reduction be the primary goal of: a) negative utilitarians? b) classical hedonistic utilitarians? c) preference utilitarians? All, or none, of the above? The answer is far from obvious. For example, one might naively suppose that a negative utilitarian would welcome human extinction. But only (trans)humans – or our potential superintelligent successors – are technically capable of phasing out the cruelties of the rest of the living world on Earth. And only (trans)humans – or rather our potential superintelligent successors – are technically capable of assuming stewardship of our entire Hubble volume. Conceptions of the meaning of the term “existential risk” differ. Compare David Benatar’s “Better Never To Have Been” with Nick Bostrom’s “Astronomical Waste“. Here at least, we will use the life-affirming sense of the term. Does negative utilitarianism or classical utilitarianism represent the greater threat to intelligent life in the cosmos? Arguably, we have our long-term existential risk-assessment back-to-front. A negative utilitarian believes that once intelligent agents have phased out the biology of suffering, all our ethical duties have been discharged. But the classical utilitarian seems ethically committed to converting all accessible matter and energy – not least human and nonhuman animals – into relatively homogeneous matter optimised for maximum bliss: “utilitronium”.\nWirehead God on a Lotus Throne (cf. Wireheading Done Right)\nRamifications? Severe curtailment of personal liberties in the name of Existential Risk Reduction is certainly conceivable. Assume, for example, that the technical knowledge of how to create and deploy readily transmissible, 100% lethal, delayed-action weaponised pathogens leaks into the public domain. Only the most Orwellian measures – a perpetual global totalitarianism – could hope to prevent their use, whether by a misanthrope or an idealist. Such measures would most likely fail. By contrast, constitutively happy people would be incapable of envisaging the development and use of such a doomsday agent. The biology of suffering in intelligent agents is a deep underlying source of existential risk – and one that can potentially be overcome.\nGradients of Bliss world in a Hedonium Universe? – “Central Realm of the Densely-Packed.”\nA theoretically inelegant but pragmatically effective compromise solution might be to initiate a utilitronium shockwave that propagates outside the biosphere – or realm of posthuman civilisation. The world within our cosmological horizon could then be tiled with utilitronium with the exception of a negligible island (or archipelago) of minds animated “merely” by gradients of intelligent bliss. One advantage of this hybrid option is that most refusniks would (presumably) be indifferent to the fate of inert matter and energy outside their lifeworld. Ask someone today whether they’d mind if some anonymous rock on the far side of the moon were converted into utilitronium and they’d most likely shrug.\nShrugging at the prospect of hedonium rocks on the moon.\nIn future, gradients of intelligent bliss orders of magnitude richer than today’s peak experiences could well be a design feature of the post-human mind. However, I don’t think intracranial self-stimulation is consistent with intelligence or critical insight. This is because it is uniformly rewarding. Intelligence depends on informational sensitivity to positive and negative stimuli – even if “negative” posthuman hedonic dips are richer and higher than the human hedonic ceiling.\n\n\nIn contrast to life animated by gradients of bliss, the prospect of utilitronium cannot motivate. Or rather the prospect can motivate only a rare kind of hyper-systematiser drawn to its simplicity and elegance. The dips of intelligent bliss need not be deep […] Everyday hedonic tone could be orders of magnitude richer than anything physiologically feasible now. But will such well-being be orgasmic? Orgasmic bliss lacks – in the jargon of academic philosophy – an “intentional object”. So presumably there will be selection pressure against any predisposition to enjoy 24/7 orgasms. By contrast, information-sensitive gradients of intelligent bliss can be adaptive – and hence sustainable indefinitely, allowing universe maintenance: responsible stewardship of Hubble volume.\nCan Life and Hedonium get Married? Express your eternal love with Hedonium Jewelry! Made of 99.99% Pure Bliss! (Guaranteed by Hilbert Space Hamiltonian Assay – Lab Tested Hedonium!)\nAt any rate, posthumans may regard even human “peak experiences” as indescribably dull by comparison.\n\nImage credit for the Buddhist monk picture “Is”: Alex William Hoffman.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/03/20/utilitronium-shockwaves-vs-gradients-of-bliss/", "title": "Utilitronium Shockwaves vs. Gradients of Bliss", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-03-20T23:18:04+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=15", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "58b3134eb78fc0744d1cb2a276014be2", "summary": []}
{"text": "Do you think that some psychedelic drugs, such as DMT, can help mathematicians visualize the hyperbolic geometry of space? Or could mathematicians glean other interesting insights through the experience?\n\n[From Quora]\nThe answer is yes (though I am the writer of the piece that is linked, so take my answer with a grain of salt).\nThe number of novel mathematical objects encoded in the structure of one’s experience when under the influence of DMT is huge. Most mathematicians who try it will come out feeling that they “don’t even know where to start”.\nSo let’s start simple.\nConsider the “Chrysanthemum” level of DMT intoxication (which is the 2nd of 6 levels). Anybody who has read “The Symmetry of Things” by John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel, and Chaim Goodman-Strauss (or who has a deep acquaintance with symmetry groups by other means) will *readily recognize* the fact that the symmetry groups that appear on such DMT visuals are *not Euclidean*.\nAt that level they would see rapidly-flickering superpositions of hyperbolic symmetry groups like *2 3 11, *2 3 7, 2 4 5, 2 3 9 (the picture below), etc. Together with the fact that these visuals are completely “flat-looking” rather than curved, this is the smoking gun that what you are looking at/experiencing is a hyperbolic phenomenal space.\n2 3 9 Hyperbolic Symmetry Group\n\n\n\nAnd this is not even discussing the 3D hyperbolic space that becomes apparent (if you know what to look for) on higher levels of DMT. For instance, on level 3 you can experience 3D Euclidean symmetry groups tesselate your visual field, on level 4 you can experience 3D hyperbolic space and “prime” objects that belong to that geometry (which are impossible to reproduce faithfully in Euclidean space). Level 5 leads to global topological bifurcations of the phenomenal space, which gives rise to even more exotic objects with hard-to-grasp mathematics. And level 6… well, there IS a level 6, and that’s as much as I’m willing to say for the time being.\nIn future, I believe that mathematicians who care to *look closely* will see the signature of exotic mathematical spaces on the “DMT Realms” everywhere. This will become common knowledge in both neuroscience and mathematical circles.\nAs David Pearce likes to say: “Some people think we are reaching the age where fundamental knowledge has been achieved… I think the enterprise of knowledge has scarcely begun.” Studying exotic states of consciousness is not even at a pre-Galilean stage, it perhaps is even at a pre-Socratic stage. Alas, if more people pay attention and document their experiences carefully, such that a critical mass of rational brilliant psychonauts is reached, there will be a “knowledge explosion”.\n\nFor more see: The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes (cf. Explain Like I’m 5 version), and How do you conceptualize the entities many individuals describe encountering when they’ve consumed DMT?", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/03/16/do-you-think-that-some-psychedelic-drugs-such-as-dmt-can-help-mathematicians-visualize-the-hyperbolic-geometry-of-space-or-could-mathematicians-glean-other-interesting-insights-through-the-experien/", "title": "Do you think that some psychedelic drugs, such as DMT, can help mathematicians visualize the hyperbolic geometry of space? Or could mathematicians glean other interesting insights through the experience?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-03-17T05:54:23+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=15", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "3e59148a1731821a337eebd0756b54fe", "summary": []}
{"text": "On Hitting the Actual Target of Hedonic Tone\n\nPractically speaking, I think that our single best psychopharmacological bet for tackling depression, anxiety, and above all chronic pain worldwide in the next decade is to:\n1) Identify great, non-toxic, partial mu-opioid agonists with extremely high therapeutic index (e.g. tianepetine, 7-hydroxymitragynine, etc.), and\n2) Prescribe them in conjunction with anti-tolerance drugs (such as proglumide, agmatine, black seed oil, small dose ibogaine, etc.).\nI think that whomever manages to patent a mixture of partial opioid agonist + anti-tolerance drug that works in the long term will be a multi-billionaire within a couple of years while actually reducing/preventing massive amounts of untold suffering.\nProglumide: A Promising Anti-Tolerance Agent (proof of concept of what is to come)\n\nPs. My core research at QRI is not pharmacological but rather phenomenological and “patternceutical“. So I am not pursuing the above line of research myself as the core objective of the next few years. But if I was looking into pharmacological options, that’s where I’d shine some light on. If you are in the field, I urge you to look into this option. For more info: “Anti-Tolerance Drugs“.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/03/15/on-hitting-the-actual-target-of-hedonic-tone/", "title": "On Hitting the Actual Target of Hedonic Tone", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-03-15T09:40:29+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=15", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f818d16d0772150a0ec15941ee325372", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Resonance and Vibration of [Phenomenal] Objects\n\nExtract from “Many Voices, One Mission” by Michael G. Reccia, R. Jane Kneen\n25th February, 2007\n[Jane recalls: This clairvoyant address from Silver Star was given to Michael and myself one Sunday morning on our return home after he had accompanied us on a walk around the local reservoir.]\nSilver Star: I want to talk about resonance and vibration, particularly in the spirit world. What I am going to talk about also applies to this level but cannot be picked up with earthly senses.\nEverything in the spirit world has a sound, a colour, a tonality of Light and a degree of sentience. If I place a box in front of you on an earthly level it is simply a box …a utilitarian, functional, square structure built to hold something. If I gave you a box from the spirit worlds, that box has been created by thought. So, if I have a box in my house in the spirit world and turn my attention to it, that box will have a colour value. It is not just a box but is also a vibration of Light, and it is that vibration of Light that gives it its ‘solidity’. It will have a particular colour according to the purpose I assign to it. And, because the spiritual atoms in the box are vibrating at a certain rate, that box also has a sound value if I choose to tune in to it, which will be pleasing to the ear because the box has been created in one of the worlds of Light. That box is made from energy so as well as its colour – which will change dependent on what I want the box to do – it also has a luminance.\nSo, every object in the spirit realm has a colour (even a seemingly transparent box has a colour value) …it has a vibration of sound …and it has a perfume. The box stimulates all the senses we had on Earth so we can see, hear, touch and smell it.\nMichael: Why would it have a perfume, Silver Star?\nSilver Star: All the senses can be used as a spirit. Even though there is no dense atmosphere like on Earth, the sense of smell is stimulated by any object. There are exquisite perfumes here and each object has a unique scent dependent upon its complexity and intention of purpose. There is also a background aroma from the landscape and a subtle fragrance with people as well.\nAll your senses work at once, spiritually speaking, which is why, when Michael tries to describe spirit communication, he says it is like a beam of energy that carries within it a huge amount of information. Each object here conveys a lot of information …it has Light …it has a colour value …it has a sound value …and it has a perfume.\nYou can tune out these things, dependent on which of them you want to sense, or you can experience all of them at once. You can (as in your drug ‘culture’ on Earth) smell colours. You can experience emotion through colours and so feel warm or cold or happy or sad through colours. You can hear the symphony of Creation that runs through everything, and yet it can be individualised so that you only hear it coming out of the ‘box’ or just from the atmosphere around you …or you can hear it coming from the whole of the sphere you are in at the time.\nDiscord also exists in the Lower Astral because people there are still God-like in potential and what they imagine takes form. They think up discordant images and those images have vibrations that clash …that have a disagreeable odour …that exhibit violent colours …that carry sounds that are an assault on the senses. The spirits in the Lower Astral can feel and sense their havoc that, whilst on Earth, they thought they were creating in secret.\nAs an example of what I am trying to put across, let us take the simple act of one person visiting a friend with the express intent of spreading discord by voicing disharmonious views about a mutual acquaintance. On an earthly level all the person can be seen to have done is travel from point A to point B, indulge in malicious gossip, and then return home with no apparent retribution or consequence for having done that.\nOn a spiritual level, however, as soon as that person decides to undertake that malevolent course of action, they create jagged thoughts around themselves and attract towards themselves similar spirits from the Lower Astral. So, accompanying them unseen on that journey are spirits who think that this is a fun thing to do, because their vibrations are similar to the intentions of the soul on Earth wishing to cause trouble.\nIn contrast, the person who is sitting in meditation creates thoughts of Light and balance, and creates spheres (like the ones photographed over your door [reference to the coloured orbs that I had unexpectedly captured on my camera]), which have lovely, balanced colours and beautiful harmonies and sounds. Whereas the person who is acting negatively towards someone else creates a ‘thunderstorm’ around themselves with roiling clouds of darkness and disharmony within that bubble. Those disharmonies are then recorded in the karmic pattern of the person’s life, inhibiting their vibration so that, when they pass to spirit, they have to rid themselves of that thought and intention (even though they might not have thought about it for years) before they can raise their vibrations enough to fully appreciate the worlds of Light.\nSo, just as there are harmonious colours in Creation, there are also disharmonious colours; and just as there are harmonious sounds there are sounds – like clashing cymbals – of discord and disharmony.\nMany illnesses on Earth are caused by the body having to react on a subconscious level to the constant battering of disharmony that the spirit has created around itself, year in, year out. The cells within a person’s body also vibrate, have a sound- and Light-quality and are designed to be harmonious but can be overcome by the bombardment of dominant negative thoughts from the person. That dulls or extinguishes the Light within the cells, resulting in the cells becoming unhealthy because they are not receiving the harmony from God that should reach them …so thick are the thoughts around the person and their subconscious.\nIn spiritual work you will often detect a smell …such as cigarettes, earth or perfume. The part of the wavelength that affects smell is easier to manipulate from one of the spirit worlds than sight or hearing, so very often a discarnate soul will convey a smell to the person on the Earth plane they wish to contact because it is the easiest way (relatively speaking) to do so from the spirit worlds.\nSo, if we come back to my box – a simple object like that is really a riot of colour, sound and intention but so is everything on Earth …as above, so below. The chair you are sitting on has its own harmony, its own energy-signature and a colour that is quite apart from the colour vibration you can see on the Earth plane. That vibration or low level of sound is harmonising with the other sounds in your room – such as the sounds that the chairs and the television are giving out; and electricity gives out a very specific sound-signature spiritually. There are colours that are emanating in your room on a spiritual level and perfume vibrations given out by various objects. Flowers, for example, give off perfume on a low level on the Earth but their perfume as a glorification of God on a spiritual level is wonderful to experience.\nAll this is going on in everyone’s house and this is why a medium can enter someone’s room and instantly feel threatened because of the chaos picked up there, or in somebody else’s room – like this one – feel at peace because peace is in the atmosphere. On a subconscious level you, as souls, pick up the Light-signature, the colour-signature, the sound and the perfume from the objects within a room… and, indeed, from people themselves.\nIt is not a cacophony in our world because everything is harmonious and we can tune in or tune out those particular vibrations, just as you would on a television. If we do not wish to hear the background noise of the universe we tune it out – knowing that it is always there if we wish to tune back in to it. If we don’t wish to see beyond the physical objects that we have (like the box) and don’t want to see its colour or Light, we tune out of that particular wavelength so we are just looking at the object.\nThe reason I am telling you this is to make you aware of the fact that the universe is vibrant and alive. There is no such thing as a ‘dead object’ because the last quality my box exhibits is a degree of sentience. It is built out of God-ether …the substance of the universe… and, therefore, is alive. I can influence the box with my moods and so it is on Earth. You influence your immediate surroundings with your moods and, because those surroundings are, in effect, alive, they react to the way that you are feeling.\nObjects on Earth should be blessed periodically and dedicated back to God so that their vibration is raised and they will then serve you rather than drag you down by exhibiting depressive tendencies that they have picked up from yourselves! This is why you should bless your houses. Anything new that is brought into your house should be blessed because you don’t know the history of that object. You don’t know who has touched it before and what their thoughts or intentions have been. Everything should be blessed and dedicated to God …so should the food you eat …and the thoughts you think. You should say: ‘Father, this morning I pray that my thoughts be of the highest quality and worthy of You‘ and then you are not thinking things that will damage you.\nI would like to leave you the box to think about. It is just a box that I have created from nothing by thinking, ‘I want a box!’ …What colour is it? …What is its intention? …What are you going to use it for? …How much Light does it exhibit?\nIt is up to you!\nIt depends what you put into that box.\nThat box is symbolic of every thought you think, everything that is in your house and everything you use – from your car to your telephone – and, just as I can influence that box, you can influence the things around you. That is why the Persian Gentleman said some weeks ago [reference to a private communication] that you should bless and thank the objects in your house because they react at a God-level to your approach to them. If you love them they become filled with Love; if you hate them they become filled with hate.\nSo, I have tried to bring through something of the abstractions of our world and pin them down through physical speech. Our world is a world of Light, of colour, of perfume, of sound …and so is yours.\nBless your days …bless each other …bless the objects, then you are putting Light into them as co-creators of those objects, which is what you will eventually be. You might not have physically made a chair today but one day with the power of your mind you will. You might not have physically built a house but you are building the house you will go to in the spirit realms by your thoughts whilst on Earth. So, be aware that you are creating, even though this is a pool of vibration where other people create physical objects for you. What you put into those objects you create yourself and get heaven or hell from them dependent on your motives and thoughts.\nWould Jane would like to ask a question about anything I have just said?\nJane: Do objects emit music as well?\nSilver Star: To create heat you stir up molecules – that is heat. Heat is molecules hitting each other because they have become agitated. To create any object, you formulate the molecules so that they become that object temporarily. Once formulated, however, they are not in stasis but in motion. If something is in stasis it decays; therefore, there must be movement. So, dashing about within the box that I have created are molecules that give the illusion of the box being ‘solid’. They are reacting to each other and – as when you rub your finger around the rim of a wine glass – it creates a sound. You cannot hear it on this level but you can on ours. Every object has a tone because of the way in which the molecules within it are moving. Does that make sense?\nJane: Yes, thank you.\nSilver Star: Was there anything else?\nJane: No.\nSilver Star: Then I will leave you, although I never leave you on a Sunday and, in particular, I never leave Jane [reference to Silver Star’s role as my principal guide]. I leave Michael to my colleague, the Persian Gentleman [reference to P.G. being Michael’s guide], and God bless you for the work you have done this week on behalf of us all – and for the work you will continue to do.\n\nAnalysis\nIs there any value in considering the experiences described in the text above? With a physicalist ontology paired with inferential realism about perception, we are compelled to conclude that when people report traveling to heaven worlds and seeing objects that make signature multi-sensory music, they are really reporting on the quality of hallucinations. Alas, this is not enough to dismiss these reports as useless. Why? Because they may have some key information about how phenomenology works, and specifically, about valence structuralism. Let me explain.\nThe experience of going to a phenomenal world where the objects resonate and produce notes in all sensory channels has been reported by a number of people from various traditions (e.g. how Buddhas are said to emit blissful vibrations in the pure abodes, flowers making music in heaven as described by a gnostic “medium” (The process of dying), the sound-sight complementary nature of Mandalas and Mantras*, etc.). As I’ve said elsewhere, “desiring that the universe be turned into Hedonium is the straightforward implication of realizing that everything wants to become music”. So when people say things like this, listen. They may be reporting back on glimpses they’ve had of radically enhanced modes of being, whether or not they are really gaining privileged access to an external transcendent world of consciousness.\nGaining Root Access to Your World Simulation\nLet’s examine the phenomenology described under the theoretical paradigms developed at the Qualia Research Institute. Some core paradigms are Qualia Formalism (“every conscious experience corresponds to a mathematical object such that the mathematical features of that object are isomorphic to the phenomenology of the experience”), Valence Structuralism (“pain and pleasure are structural features of the mathematical object that corresponds to an experience such that they can be read off from this object with the appropriate mathematical analysis”), and the Symmetry Theory of Valence (“the mathematical feature that corresponds to pain and pleasure are the object’s symmetry and anti-symmetry, namely, its invariance upon the transformations the object is undergoing”). Whereas Qualia Formalism is a necessary assumption to make in order to make any progress on the science of consciousness (cf. Qualia Formalism in the Water Supply), Valence Structuralism and the Symmetry Theory of Valence are currently still mere hypotheses whose truth will be determined empirically by testing the predictions they generate. For now, we rely on strong, but admittedly circumstantial, pieces of evidence. The phenomenology reported of the connection between harmony and bliss in heaven worlds is one of these pieces of evidence. But can we do better? Not everyone can access these so-called heaven worlds of experience. So what can we do instead? Thankfully, there is a way…\nIndeed, as carefully catalogued by Steven Lehar in his book about altered states “The Grand Illusion“, combining dissociatives and psychedelics produces an altogether new kind of experience different than the experience of either alone. His discovery first came by combining DXM and THC, which he says has a decent chance of giving rise to a free-wheeling hallucination, meaning that one can control the contents of hallucinatory experiences. For example, rather than being at the mercy of one’s hallucinatory world, under such a state, you could choose to fly on an airplane, travel the cosmos, or even go to Burning Man, and your mind will render a world-simulation in which you are doing such things.\n\n\n\n\nLehar, famously, is a proponent of indirect realism about perception. Hence he does not confuse those experiences with a transcendent access to an etheric plane or literal other dimensions. Rather, he points out, what underlies the phenomenal character of one’s experience is made by patterns of harmonic resonance interfering with each other within the confines of one’s own brain. The illusion of “seeing things outside of oneself” is due to the fact that the experience we have seems to be of a 3D space. But in reality, what is happening is that you are a 2.5D diorama-like projective space that represents a homunculus looking at a 3D space:\nClick to view slideshow.\nIn the book, Lehar discusses how one can study some of the key parameters of one’s world-simulation in such a state. By imagining/requesting/generating lenses, diffraction gratings, and mirrors in your world-simulation during a free-wheeling hallucination you can explore the ray-tracing algorithms used by your brain to render your experience in normal circumstances. Just as the best way to figure out how a videogame engine works is to break it with corner cases, to find how your brain builds your world-simulation, overloading the simulation with difficult-to-render elements is highly useful.\nWhat algorithms does your mind use for ray-tracing? According to an anonymous reader (whom we shall call “R”), the DXM + THC state allows you to explore precisely this question. From the conversations with R, it seems that ray-tracing follows a repeating two-step top-down and bottom-up recursive process in order to draw your experience. Amodal percepts are first constructed and set in place in order to build a projective frame (e.g. isometric projection, fish eye lens projection, etc.), which is followed by the “lighting” of that amodal space with modal qualia (color, scent, touch, etc.) in order to increase the definition of the rendered scene. Then an algorithm kicks in that figures out which is the most under-constrained region of the world-simulation, and rendering begins there, again with an amodal frame followed by modal filling-in, and so on, and the process repeats until you reach reflective-equilibrium.\nThe amodal step allows you to explore the range of possible projective transformations of your world-simulation. It is at this step that you can explore the rendering of cinematographic camera effects, such as lens flares and the Hitchcock Zoom. Unlike pure psychedelic states (e.g. LSD, psilocybin, etc.) on dissociatives, projective transformations seem to have a certain gravity to them. It’s as if the entire scene was built as a model on a platform suspended with ropes and springs. To turn the space around (i.e. change the projection) you can “add weight” to some of its parts, and then let the ropes readjust the orientation of the model to balance it out again. This is why dissociative projective hallucinations have a characteristic initial acceleration ramp-up, similar to what it is like to give a push to a ceramic turn table with a heavy vase. It moves very slowly at first, but once it gets going it keeps spinning until you stop it, which also has a characteristic deceleration dynamic. On the free-wheeling hallucination state one is like that; the world-simulation model can be pushed around to change the projection, and when you do so it travels at constant speed until it decelerates before its reposition. During the modal step, effects can be added such as wind, dust, rain, hail, liquid, gelatin, etc. These are all applied one at a time in a relatively legible way, with physicalized rendering of e.g. the filling up of a tank, parts of wood combusting with a low-grade fire propagating at constant speed, an ocean filled with water increasing its viscosity until it becomes lava, etc. A very valuable follow-up research that could be done at e.g. a Super-Shulgin Academy of rational psychonauts would be to get people to study SIGGRAPH algorithms and then try to replicate them during free-wheeling hallucinations. Perhaps not so surprisingly, graphics researchers are notorious for using psychedelics**.\nSome people may want to say that there is nothing special about these states… we already have lucid dreaming after all, right? Alas, that is a very misguided analogy. Yes, lucid dreams can be used to explore unusual phenomenal configurations, but the scenes experienced are very hard to stabilize and examine in detail over the course of minutes (rather than seconds). The features of free-wheeling hallucinations along with their generic emotional intensity make them not comparable to most moments of life, or even lucid dreams. The texture of dissociative+psychedelic states is drastically different from lucid dreaming, and so is the degree of controllability of their content in precise and measured ways (not to say that dream music cannot be very emotional, but we are talking of something that is on another level altogether). That said, the state has clear limitations, too. Lehar points out, for instance, that looking at the control panel of an airplane during a free-wheeling hallucination reveals that you cannot have as many buttons as you would have in real life. Likewise, the projective transformations are restricted in some ways. A specific example would be trying to simulate going to Las Vegas. There you will find that jumping off a building is not possible because that would require a projective transformation where the distance covered grows quadratically as a function of time. Instead, jumping off a building will be approximated by what it feels like to go down an elevator at constant speed. In contrast, getting into the High Roller wheel is an excellent choice because your world-simulation can render the circular constant-speed projective trajectory of the camera movement in a very accurate and precise fashion.\nClick to view slideshow.\nHappiness and Harmony: A Marriage Made in Heaven\nWith regards to the connection between symmetry and pleasure, the free-wheeling hallucination state is a prime place to conduct high-quality phenomenological research. In particular, R tells us that you can study how different objects generate (are resonant with) particular moods, sounds, and tactile feelings. Thus, DXM + THC can be a tool of grand scientific significance for the study of emotional valence.\n[If what follows is hard to make sense of, please bear with us, it will get easier:] R points out that one can climb the symmetry gradient within a scene by normalizing the space vertically, horizontally, depth-wise, temporally, weight-wise, and so on. During each amodal step you can try to re-align the projective lines so that the points at infinity are either precisely at the center of your vision, or at least have symmetrical counter-parts (e.g. left-right, top-down, etc.). This way you can take the energy of the phenomenal objects and generate what we call a “projective energy entrapment”. This is a strange thing to report on that goes outside of people’s conceptual schemes, but it is definitely real, and very important. With a symmetrified amodal projective frame, the phenomenal object can “lock in place”, and a process of annealing takes place. The pre-existing invariant degrees of freedom present in the amodal projections before the symmetrification are still there, but on top of them, one gets additional invariant degrees of freedom. R compares this to taking a space with affine geometry and projecting it into a space with Euclidean geometry, such that the space now has two layers of invariance that add up and, together, prevent energy in the phenomenal objects from escaping to their surroundings. In light of QRI’s meditation paradigms, this would be akin to removing energy sinks from the system. In turn, the projective energy entrapment allows the build-up of extraordinarily intense resonance amplitudes, and this, according to R, feels really good.\nThus, at least according to these observations, the emotional valence of our world-simulation is both related to the number of active invariant degrees of freedom along which transformations are taking place and the amount of energy entrapped in such spaces. Here is a good example. The gif on the left is what the space may look like at first, with the pseudo-time arrow creating a video feedback effect that gives rise to chaotic behavior. If you meditate on normalizing the projective points, you can turn that space into something akin to the image on the right. Now rather than having the modal energy leak to the surroundings, it all gets trapped inside the cube, giving rise to a powerful feeling of emotionally-loaded resonance, which empirically feels really good.\n\n\nTo reiterate, the image to the left is what it feels like when the space is asymmetrical. The affine symmetries may be preserved, but Euclidean energy entrapment is not possible there. The one on the right has both affine invariants and Euclidean invariants, which allow for more energy entrapment (and also temporal stability). If you can stabilize an infinite hall of mirrors projected from a highly symmetrical point of view, you will be able to entrap a lot of energy, which feels like a resonating space and empirically this seems to be very pleasant. We would love to hear from more rational psychonauts whether they are able to replicate this experience, and whether the correlation with valence is also uncovered in their world-simulations.\nIn the more general case, one can do this with other amodal projections, and generate peaceful but wide awake energy-filler mandalas of experience:\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIndeed, during dissociative free-wheeling hallucinatory states one can “tune in to the phenomenal objects” one constructs and translate their vibration into sounds, tactile sensations, emotions, and even scents. Again, empirically, one will notice that the projective symmetry of an object will be associated with the symmetry of the multi-modal translation, and in turn, with the valence of the object. Ugly phenomenal objects will have discordant sound signatures, whereas smooth, easily compressible and symmetrical phenomenal objects will have harmonic sound signatures. You can indeed try to listen in to your entire experience, which in the general case will give rise to rather experimental-sounding music. If you have annealed your hallucinations into a highly symmetrical state (e.g. hall of mirrors above) the sound translation will be *very* pleasant, akin to Buddhist chants in a reverb chamber or mystical violins in a resonant cave (again, this is an empirical finding as reported from R, rather than just arm-chair speculation, but it does support QRI’s hypothesized Symmetry Theory of Valence). Two very symmetrical objects with different but nearby frequencies will clash at first, but one can try to resolve this clash by paying close attention to both at once. If so, sooner or later one of the objects will dominate the other, they will undergo affine transformations until they merge, or there will be some kind of compromise where you stop paying attention to some of the features of one or both of the objects such that the remaining ones are in harmony. Here are some more examples of what a more complex DXM + THC state may render that could produce extremely beautiful sounds:\n\n\n\n\n\nThus, even within our modern scientific paradigms (updated with QRI’s frameworks) we can explain and indeed utilize the phenomenological reports of heaven worlds. We believe that understanding the underlying mathematical basis of valence will be ground-breaking, and analyzing these reports is a really important step in this direction. It will allow us to make sense of the syntax of bliss, and thus aid us in the task of paradise engineering.\nBut What if Our Scientific World Picture is Wrong?\nIndeed, maybe the picture of the world painted above is fundamentally mistaken. Within it, we would gather that heaven and spirituality are in a sense illusions caused by high valence states. The experience is so beautiful, sublime, and delightful that people try to make sense of it invoking God, the divine, and transcendent love. Alas, if the universe has an in-built utility function based on valence we could expect people to become confused that way when experiencing some of the really good states. But could we be mistaken here? This points to an important question: whether bliss is a spiritual phenomenon or whether spirituality is a bliss phenomenon.\nLeibniz might retort by saying that although each person is a separate monad, God keeps their experiences synchronized so that our actions in Maya do have effects on other sentient beings, rather than being just a movie of one’s own making. Thus, a world-simulation model may be correct, but what makes an experience blissful or not is not its physical state, but rather its degree of spiritual wisdom. Or consider, for instance, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, along with its psychedelic interpretation (by Leary, Metzner, and Alpert), which suggests that both good and bad feelings are projections of the unconditioned mind.\nAlas, even if a spiritual account turns out to be true, in the sense that interpreting these experiences through their lens is more accurate, and inferential realism about perception is misguided, we would still be able to gather from these reports that the structure of thought-forms encodes emotions – perhaps even in a spiritual multiverse with souls, God-energies, Realms, etc. we would still be able to derive a master equation for valence. Rather than valence structuralism referring to the fire in the equations of physics, it might refer to God-energy, emptiness, etheric fields, or whatnot. But why would that matter? We could still formalize and mathematize the nature of bliss under those conditions. This is what we call Spiritual Structuralism: even in the spirit world math still encodes the experiential quality of phenomena. Saying “we either live in a mathematically-describable physical world or in a mysteriously inscrutable spiritual world” may turn out to be a false dichotomy. We could still look forward to having spiritual analogues of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, albeit their equations would apply to how the God-force self-interferes to generate the multifaceted spiritual world of sentient beings.\nAlas, I suspect that many spiritual people would recoil at the prospect of mathematizing Mystical Love. So let us ask ourselves: Would this be good? Tongue-in-cheek, I remember asking God at Burning Man 2017 whether deriving the equation for valence would be good from a spiritual point of view. God’s response? A resounding “Yes!” Importantly, God emphasized that individual bliss is limited, whereas collective bliss is boundless.  But maybe this, too, could someday be formalized. Here I reproduce the relevant part of our conversation:\nMe: I’ve been working on a theory concerning the nature of happiness. It’s an equation that takes brain states as measured with advanced brain imaging technology and delivers as an output a description of the overall valence (i.e. the pleasure-pain axis) of the mind associated to that brain. A lot of people seem very excited with this research, but there is also a minority of people for whom this is very unsettling. Namely, they tell me that reducing happiness to a mathematical equation would seem to destroy their sense of meaning. Do you have any thoughts on that?\nGod: I think that what you are doing is absolutely fantastic. I’ve been following your work and you are on the right track. That said, I would caution you not to get too caught up on individual bliss. I programmed the pleasure and pain centers in the animal brain in order to facilitate survival. I know that dying and suffering are extremely unpleasant, and until now that has been necessary to keep the whole system working. But humanity will soon enter a new stage of their evolution. Just remember that the highest levels of bliss are not hedonistic or selfish. They arise by creating a collective reality with other minds that fosters a deep existential understanding, that enables love, enhances harmony, and permits experimenting with radical self expression.\nMe: Ah, that’s fascinating! Very reassuring. The equation I’m working on indeed has harmony at its core. I was worried that I would be accidentally doing something really wrong, you know? Reducing love to math.\nGod: Don’t worry, there is indeed a mathematical law beneath our feelings of love. It’s all encoded in the software of your reality, which we co-created over the last couple billion years. It’s great that you are trying to uncover such math, for it will unlock the next step in your evolution. Do continue making experiments and exploring various metaphysics, and don’t get caught up thinking you’ve found the answer. Trust me, the end is going to make all of the pain and suffering completely worth it. Have faith in love.\nMe: Thank you!\n– Conversation with God, Burning Man 2017\nJohn C. Lilly’s Simulations of God posits that as people evolve and mature, their concept of the highest good also evolves and matures. Thus, learning about the math behind pleasure might very well transform your conception of divinity. I would therefore offer a new perspective on what is God that unifies bliss and spirituality: God is a happiness engineer who knows all the theories, tricks, and techniques to optimize qualia for bliss. Indeed, Romeo (from QRI) has reported experiencing multi-sensory harmonious mandalas when closing his eyes after coming back from long meditation retreats. One could very well posit that this world is the training ground of souls to learn how to avoid creating evil thought-forms while practicing how to increase the harmony between all sentient beings.\nAdditionally, Wireheading Done Right could have a spiritual analogue – namely, moving between realms in such a way that you go from good one to good one, reaping their functional benefits, while avoiding getting stuck in any one of them. Just because a spiritual universe underlies our reality would not mean that suffering forever is either good or necessary. And if there is math associated with love and liberation, we are all better for it, for then we are not shooting in the dark. Carefully selected dynamic systems equations that give rise to beautiful (i.e. high valence from many different points of view) patterns could very well be what is behind the bliss of heaven worlds, and you should neglect this discovery at your own peril.\nAlas, this is unlikely. Even so, promoting a given ontology is less important, intrinsically, than promoting subjective wellbeing. For if someone’s delusions are comforting and do not interfere with their ability to help others, there is no reason to remove them. Do not go and try to convince your dying granny of the non-existence of God, for that is pointless cruelty. And certainly don’t go around talking about tenseless suffering in the Everettian multiverse outside of circles to whom this can either help them intrinsically or extrinsically (I assume being candid with QC readers is a net positive, though I often doubt that a bit myself).\nEither way, from what I gather, practicing creating beautiful harmonic thought-forms is probably good for your health and happiness. It is likely to make you not only feel good, but also be sweet-natured. So by all means practice doing it as often as you can.\nInfinite Bliss!\n\n*”Mantras, the Sanskrit syllables inscribed on yantras, are essentially ‘thought forms’ representing divinities or cosmic powers, which exert their influence by means of sound-vibrations.” [source]\n**”In 1991, Denise Caruso, writing a computer column for The San Francisco Examiner went to SIGGRAPH, the largest gathering of computer graphic professionals in the world. She conducted a survey; by the time she got back to San Francisco, she had talked to 180 professionals in the computer graphic field who had admitted taking psychedelics, and that psychedelics are important to their work; according to mathematician Ralph Abraham.” [source]", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/03/09/the-resonance-and-vibration-of-phenomenal-objects/", "title": "The Resonance and Vibration of [Phenomenal] Objects", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-03-10T05:36:57+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=15", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "462b6663b34bd5d3753af2eb7faadc14", "summary": []}
{"text": "“Letter from Utopia” and Other Triple-S Transhumanist Media\n\nDear Human,\nGreetings, and may this letter find you at peace and in prosperity! Forgive\nmy writing to you out of the blue. Though you and I have never met, we are\nnot strangers. We are, in a certain sense, the closest of kin. I am one of your\npossible futures.\nI hope you will become me. Should fortune grant this wish, then I am not\njust a possible future of yours, but your actual future: a coming phase of you,\nlike the full moon that follows a waxing crescent, or like the flower that\nfollows a seed.\nI am writing to tell you about my life – how good it is – that you may choose\nit for yourself.\nAlthough this letter uses the singular, I am really writing on behalf of all\nmy contemporaries, and we are addressing ourselves to all of your\ncontemporaries. Amongst us are many who are possible futures of your\npeople. Some of us are possible futures of children you have not yet given\nbirth to. Still others are possible artificial persons that you might one day\ncreate. What unites us is that we are all dependent on you to make us real.\nYou can think of this note as if it were an invitation to a ball that will take\nplace only if folks turn up.\nWe call the lives we lead here “Utopia”.\n*\nHow can I tell you about Utopia and not leave you mystified? What words\ncould convey the wonder? What inflections express our happiness? What\npoints overcome your skepticism? My pen, I fear, is as unequal to the task as\nif I had tried to use it against a charging elephant.\nBut the matter is so important that we must try even against long odds.\nMaybe you will see through the inadequacies of my exposition.\nHave you ever known a moment of bliss? On the rapids of inspiration,\nmaybe, where your hands were guided by a greater force to trace the shapes\nof truth and beauty? Or perhaps you found such a moment in the ecstasy of\nlove? Or in a glorious success achieved with good friends? Or in splendid\nconversation on a vine-overhung terrace one star-appointed night? Or\nperhaps there was a song or a melody that smuggled itself into your heart,\nsetting it alight with kaleidoscopic emotion? Or during worship?\nIf you have experienced such a moment, experienced the best type of such a\nmoment, then a certain idle but sincere thought may have presented itself to\nyou: “Oh Heaven! I didn’t realize it could feel like this. This is on a\ndifferent level, so very much more real and worthwhile. Why can’t it be like\nthis always? Why must good times end? I was sleeping; now I am awake.”\nYet behold, only a little later, scarcely an hour gone by, and the softly-falling\nsoot of ordinary life is already piling up. The silver and gold of exuberance\nlose their shine. The marble becomes dirty.\nEvery way you turn it’s the same: soot, casting its veil over all glamours and\nrevelries, despoiling your epiphany, sodding up your white pressed collar and\nshirt. And once again that familiar beat is audible, the beat of numbing\nroutine rolling along its tracks. The commuter trains loading and unloading\ntheir passengers… sleepwalkers, shoppers, solicitors, the ambitious and the\nhopeless, the contented and the wretched… like human electrons shuffling\nthrough the circuitry of civilization.\nWe do so easily forget how good life can be at its best – and how bad at its\nworst. The most outstanding occasion: barely is it over before the sweepers\nmove in to clean up the rice. Yellowing photos remain.\nAnd this is as it should be. We are in the business of living, and life must go\non. Special moments are out-of-equilibrium experiences in which our\npuddles are stirred up and splashed about; yet when normalcy returns we are\nusually relieved. We are built for mundane functionality, not lasting bliss.\nSo the door that was ajar begins to close, disappearing hope’s sliver behind\nan insensate scab.\nQuick, stop that door! Look again at your yellowing photos, search for a\nclue. Do you not see it? Do you not feel it, the touch of the possible? You\nhave witnessed the potential for a higher life, and you hold the fading proof\nin your hands. Don’t throw it away. In the attic of your mind, reserve a\ndrawer for the notion of a higher state of being. In the furnace of your heart,\nkeep an aspiring ember alive.\nI am summoning this memory of your best experience – to what end? In the\nhope of kindling in you a desire to share my happiness.\nAnd yet, what you had in your best moment is not close to what I have now\n– a beckoning scintilla at most. If the distance between base and apex for\nyou is eight kilometers, then to reach my dwellings requires a million light-year\nascent. The altitude is outside moon and planets and all the stars your\neyes can see. Beyond dreams. Beyond imagination.\nMy consciousness is wide and deep, my life long. I have read all your\nauthors – and much more. I have experienced life in many forms and from\nmany angles: jungle and desert, gutter and palace, heath and suburban creek\nand city back alley. I have sailed the high seas of cultures, and swum, and\ndived. Quite some marvelous edifice builds up over a million years by the\nefforts of homunculi, just as the humble polyps amass a reef in time. And\nI’ve seen the shoals of colored biography fishes, each one a life story,\nscintillate under heaving ocean waters.\nThe whole exceeds the sum of its parts. What I have is not merely more of\nwhat is available to you now. It isn’t just the particular things, the paintings\nand toothpaste-tube designs, the record covers and books, the epochs, lives,\nleaves, rivers, and random encounters, the satellite images and the hadron\ncollider data – it is also the complex relationships between these particulars\nthat make up my mind. There are ideas that can be formed only on top of\nsuch a wide experience base. There are depths that can be fathomed only\nwith such ideas.\nYou could say I am happy, that I feel good. You could say that I feel\nsurpassing bliss. But these are words invented to describe human\nexperience. What I feel is as far beyond human feeling as my thoughts are\nbeyond human thought. I wish I could show you what I have in mind. If\nonly I could share one second of my conscious life with you!\nBut you don’t have to understand what I think and feel. If only you bear in\nmind what is possible within the present human realm, you will have enough\nto get started in the right direction, one step at a time. At no point will you\nencounter a wall of blinding light. At no point will you have to jettison\nyourself over an end-of-the-world precipice. As you advance, the horizon\nwill recede. The transformation is profound, but it can be as gradual as the\ngrowth that made the baby you were into the adult you think you are.\nYou will not achieve this through any magic trick or hokum, nor by the\npower of wishful thinking, nor by semantic acrobatics, meditation,\naffirmation, or incantation. And I do not presume to advise you on matters\ntheological. I urge on you nothing more, nothing less, than reconfigured\nphysical situation.\n*\nThe challenge before you: to become fully what you are now only in hope\nand potential. New capacities are needed if you wish to live and play on my\nlevel.\nTo reach Utopia, you must first discover the means to three fundamental\ntransformations.\nThe First Transformation: Secure life!\nYour body is a deathtrap. This vital machine and mortal vehicle, unless it\njams first or crashes, is sure to rust anon. You are lucky to get seven decades\nof mobility; eight if you be Fortuna’s darling. That is not sufficient to get\nstarted in a serious way, much less to complete the journey. Maturity of the\nsoul takes longer. Why, even a tree-life takes longer!\nDeath is not one but a multitude of assassins. Do you not see them? They\nare coming at you from every angle. Take aim at the causes of early death –\ninfection, violence, malnutrition, heart attack, cancer. Turn your biggest\ngun on aging, and fire. You must seize control of the biochemical processes\nin your body in order to vanquish, by and by, illness and senescence. In\ntime, you will discover ways to move your mind to more durable media.\nThen continue to improve the system, so that the risk of death and disease\ncontinues to decline. Any death prior to the heat death of the universe is\npremature if your life is good.\nOh, it is not well to live in a self-combusting paper hut! Keep the flames at\nbay and be prepared with liquid nitrogen, while you construct yourself a\nbetter habitation. One day you or your children should have a secure home.\nResearch, build, redouble your effort!\nThe Second Transformation: Upgrade cognition!\nYour brain’s special faculties: music, humor, spirituality, mathematics,\neroticism, art, nurturing, narration, gossip! These are fine spirits to pour\ninto the cup of life. Blessed you are if you have a vintage bottle of any of\nthese. Better yet, a cask! Better yet, a vineyard!\nBe not afraid to grow. The mind’s cellars have no ceilings!\nWhat other capacities are possible? Imagine a world with all the music dried\nup: what poverty, what loss. Give your thanks, not to the lyre, but to your\nears for the music. And ask yourself, what other harmonies are there in the\nair, that you lack the ears to hear? What vaults of value are you witlessly\ndebarred from, lacking the key sensibility?\nHad you but an inkling, your nails would be clawing at the padlock in sacred\nfrenzy.\nYour brain must grow beyond the bounds of any genius of humankind, in its\nspecial faculties as well as its general intelligence, so that you may better\nlearn, remember, and understand, and so that you may apprehend your own\nbeatitude.\nMind is a means: for without insight you will get bogged down or lose your\nway, and your journey will fail.\nMind is also an end: for it is in the spacetime of awareness that Utopia will\nexist. May the measure of your mind be vast and expanding.\nOh, stupidity is a loathsome corral! Gnaw and tug at the posts, and you will\nslowly loosen them up. One day you’ll break the fence that held your\nforebears captive. Gnaw and tug, redouble your effort!\nThe Third Transformation: Elevate well-being!\nWhat is the difference between indifference and interest, boredom and thrill,\ndespair and bliss?\nPleasure! A few grains of this magic ingredient are dearer than a king’s\ntreasure, and we have it aplenty here in Utopia. It pervades into everything\nwe do and everything we experience. We sprinkle it in our tea.\nThe universe is cold. Fun is the fire that melts the blocks of hardship and\ncreates a bubbling celebration of life.\nIt is the birth right of every creature, a right no less sacred for having been\ntrampled upon since the beginning of time.\nThere is a beauty and joy here that you cannot fathom. It feels so good that\nif the sensation were translated into tears of gratitude, rivers would overflow.\nI reach in vain for words to convey to you what it all amounts to… It’s like a\nrain of the most wonderful feeling, where every raindrop has its own unique\nand indescribable meaning – or rather a scent or essence that evokes a whole\nworld… And each such evoked world is subtler, richer, deeper, more\npalpable than the totality of what you have experienced in your entire life.\nI will not speak of the worst pain and misery that is to be got rid of; it is too\nhorrible to dwell upon, and you are already aware of the urgency of\npalliation. My point is that in addition to the removal of the negative, there\nis also an upside imperative: to enable the full flourishing of enjoyments that\nare currently out of reach.\nThe roots of suffering are planted deep in your brain. Weeding them out\nand replacing them with nutritious crops of well-being will require advanced\nskills and instruments for the cultivation of your neuronal soil. But take\nheed, the problem is multiplex! All emotions have a natural function. Prune\ncarefully lest you reduce the fertility of your plot.\nSustainable yields are possible. Yet fools will build fools’ paradises. I\nrecommend you go easy on your paradise-engineering until you have the\nwisdom to do it right.\nOh, what a gruesome knot suffering is! Pull and tug on those loops, and you\nwill gradually loosen them up. One day the coils will fall, and you will\nstretch out in delight. Pull and tug, and be patient in your effort!\nMay there come a time when rising suns are greeted with joy by all the living\ncreatures they shine upon.\n*\nHow do you find this place? How long will it take to get here?\nI can pass you no blueprint for Utopia, no timetable, no roadmap. All I can\ngive you is my assurance that there is something here, the potential for a\nbetter life.\nIf you could visit me here for but a day, you would henceforth call this place\nyour home. This is the place where you belong. Ever since one hairy\ncreature picked up two flints and began knocking them together to make a\ntool, this has been the direction of your unknown aspiration. Like Odysseus\nyou must journey, and never cease journeying, until you arrive upon this\nshore.\n“Arrive?” you say; “But isn’t the journey the destination? Isn’t Utopia a\nplace that doesn’t exist? And isn’t the quest for Utopia, as witnessed\nhistorically, a dangerous folly and an incitement to mischief?”\nFriend, that is not such a bad way for you to think about it. To be sure,\nUtopia is not a location or a form of social organization.\nThe blush of health on a convalescent’s cheek. The twinkling of the eye in a\nmoment of wit. The smile of a loving thought… Utopia is the hope that the\nscattered fragments of good that we come across from time to time in our\nlives can be put together, one day, to reveal the shape of a new kind of life.\nThe kind of life that yours should have been.\nI fear that the pursuit of Utopia will bring out the worst in you. Many a\nmoth has been incinerated in its pursuit of a brighter future.\nSeek the light! But approach with care – swerve if you smell your wingtips\nsingeing. Light is for seeing, not dying.\nWhen you embark on this quest, you will encounter rough seas and hard\nproblems. To prevail will take your best science, your best technology, and\nyour best politics. Yet each problem has a solution. My existence breaks no\nlaw of nature. The materials are all there. Your people must become\nmaster builders, and then you must use these skills to build yourselves up\nwithout crushing your cores.\n*\nWhat is Suffering in Utopia? Suffering is the salt trace left on the cheeks of those\nwho were around before.\nWhat is Tragedy in Utopia? There is tragedy in Snowman’s melting. Mass\nmurders are not required.\nWhat is Imperfection in Utopia? Imperfection is the measure of our respect for\nthings as they are and for their history.\nWhat is Body in Utopia? Body is a pair of legs, a pair of arms, a trunk and a\nhead, all made of flesh. Or not, as the case may be.\nWhat is Society in Utopia? Society is a never-finished tapestry, its weavers equal\nto its threads – the parts and patterns an inexhaustible bourne of beauty.\nWhat is Death in Utopia? Death is the darkness that ultimately surrounds all\nlife.\nWhat is Guilt in Utopia? Guilt is our knowledge that we could have created\nUtopia sooner.\n*\nWe love life here every instant. Every second is so good that it would blow\nour minds had their amperage not been previously increased. My\ncontemporaries and I bear witness, and we request your aid. Please, help us\ncome into existence! Please, join us! Whether this tremendous possibility\nbecomes reality depends on your actions. If your empathy can perceive at\nleast the outlines of the vision I am describing, then your ingenuity will find a\nway to make it real.\nHuman life, at its best, is fantastic. I’m asking you to create something even\ngreater. Life that is truly humane.\nYours sincerely,\nYour Possible Future Self\n\nSee also a musicalized video rendition of this piece by Mario Montano: Letter From Utopia\n\nAnalysis\nNick Bostrom is a prominent transhumanist philosopher and academic who works at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute. An incredibly prolific writer, Nick has a very wide and comprehensive worldview. I find his work extremely valuable and worth diving into. Letter From Utopia is one of my favorite works of his, as it encompasses what David Pearce called “The Three Supers of Transhumanism“: Super-Intelligence, Super-Longevity, and Super-Happiness (cf. Triple-S Genetic Counseling). Bostrom also has other amazing stories and essays (such as The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, cf. story video rendition by CGP Grey: video), but Letter From Utopia takes the cake for not leaving behind anything of crucial importance.\nAlas, despite Bostrom’s far-reaching contributions, many argue that Nick’s most important impact has been in the field of AI Alignment (cf. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies). In 2009 AI safety research was perceived to be a fringe concern of sci-fi aficionados and weirdos. Today, partly thanks to Bostrom (along with Yudkowsky, Chalmers, and others), many top journals publish serious work in this area.\nI worry that this is not as good as it may seem. Nick Bostrom’s name is first and foremost associated with AI safety, followed by the Simulation Argument and Existential Risk, and only later by his extensive work on all other areas of transhumanism. For example, if you search Youtube for his name, you will see that of the top 20 results, 15 concern AI safety/digital superintelligence. Of the remaining 5, 3 are about the Simulation Argument, 1 is about agnosticism, and 1 is CGP Grey’s Dragon-Tyrant video. Where are the Triple-S videos?\n\nI remembered that I encountered the work of both David and Nick when I was 16, googling terms like consciousness, AI, psychedelics, and far future. I was drawn to both of them, though I particularly liked David’s focus on ending suffering as a priority and his acknowledgment of the scientific significance of altered states of consciousness. I thought that their work was complementary rather than redundant. Alas, Bostrom is far more well known than Pearce, perhaps due to his success as both a fringe philosopher and a mainstream academic. In contrast, David dropped out of Oxford out of frustration with the academic community; the analytic philosophy of the time was not empirical, and it focused on language use rather than real philosophical questions, including the nature of suffering, psychedelics, and physical causality (e.g. “Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language, it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is. It also leaves mathematics as it is, and no mathematical discovery can advance it.” – Wittgenstein). Bostrom, unlike Pearce, has the blessing of Ra, the God of optionality, superlativity, status legibility, and groundless prestige. And yet, it was David’s conversation with Nick that gave rise to the creation of the World Transhumanist Association, and provided one of the most important memetic Schelling points of the early 2000s. Alas, David is not focused on AI Safety. Why?\nPeople in the transhumanist community accuse David of not getting it. David, after all, is not a mathematician, computer scientist, or physicist; he is merely a philosopher. I must confess that the very first time I met David Pearce in person I got the sense that (1) he was an incredibly well-read and creative genius in most areas of philosophy, and yet (2) naïve and unenlightened in the field of AI. As a fan of his work, and having co-founded the Stanford Transhumanist Association a couple of months earlier, I thought to invite him to give a talk at Stanford (see: David Pearce at Stanford – 2011).\nDavid Pearce and the officers of the Stanford Transhumanist Association (December 1st 2011) at Palo Alto’s Chinese Vegan restaurant Garden Fresh, before David’s talk.\nWe had a lively conversation while eating dinner at a Chinese vegan restaurant before the event along with other members of the Association. I recall that he checked all of the right boxes when it came to personal identity (Open/Empty Individualism), ethics (consequentialism), physics (Everettian multiverse), psychedelia (they disclose new varieties of qualia), evolution (modern synthesis; selfish gene), social signaling theory (Mating Mind and sexual selection theory), and more (see his Reddit AMA). And yet, how could he dare to say that a digital computer would never be conscious? Meeting a brilliant thinker who had a better grasp of my favorite topics than I did and yet would try to hit on one of my core load-bearing beliefs was uncomfortable and unexpected. I dismissed his take on AI as that of a fuzzy thinker (at least in this area); I reassured myself by recalling that it was me who was studying AI academically at a top US institution and not him. Little did I know that over the next few years, and after hanging out with him in person for over 20 cumulative hours, he would finally change my mind- and worldview- concerning this whole field. If it wasn’t for him, I suspect I would have jumped on the bandwagon of AI-as-the-top-priority (cf. Altruists Should Prioritize Artificial Intelligence). Thankfully, I was already extremely interested in consciousness and didn’t have it in me to dismiss it. Additionally, my interest in personal identity reduced my (relative) interest in longevity research (at least as the top priority), for if we are all one consciousness, dying is more akin to forgetting a timeline than a true ontological death. The instrumental value of intelligence, however, ought not to be taken for granted, which is why I now advocate for a twin approach of improving subjective wellbeing while retaining critical insight. Figuring out that consciousness required more than digital computation utterly transformed my approach to transhumanism, and I largely credit this change to my conversations with David.\nClick to view slideshow.\nLater on I met Mike Johnson, Romeo Stevens, and a number of other top thinkers in the field of consciousness who could both understand the genuine problems consciousness poses and at the same time grasp the broader transhumanist meme-plex, transcend it, and include it (cf. Why I think the Foundational Research Institute should rethink its approach). Thus we founded the Qualia Research Institute, in order to bring a new full-stack meme-plex where consciousness – and valence – are front and center. Alas, we have experienced some resistance…\nAI safety is sexy. If you are a smart, industrious, open-minded, and systematizing undergraduate, studying AI gives you access to a wide circle of really fun people to hang out in. It also signals intelligence, sober-mindedness, and stoicism. It gives you both an in into smart cool kid circles, and a profitable career in Silicon Valley. It allows you to straddle the world of normies and cutting-edge thinkers.\nBut, crucially, you have to consider the opportunity cost that comes from directing such a large fraction of hyper-intelligent young altruistic systematizers to this problem. The field is plagued with misconceptions about pleasure and value; Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Fun Theory suffers from the severe delusion that value comes from the intentional object of experience, rather than from its phenomenal character. Brian Tomasik’s (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) People for the Ethical Treatment of Reinforcement Learners is seemingly unaware of the fact that neuroscience has found that pleasure/suffering and reinforcement learning are doubly dissociated. Pleasure is not reinforcement, and until you grasp this, your ethical models will output nonsense.\nTongue-in-cheek, perhaps AI risk is a real threat. Not because of the usual reasons, but because it siphons out top brain power into a relatively sterile field, leaving vast amounts of unclaimed marginal value in the fields of rejuvenation research and valence technologies by the wayside.\nIn light of all of this, I would want to advocate for the reinvigoration of the broader transhumanist meme-plex, now updated with a post-Galilean understanding of consciousness. Writers, animators, Youtubers, and philosophers ought to collaborate in creating more balanced Triple-S Transhumanist outreach in the form of widely consumable media. This, I think, is the path forward.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/03/02/letter-from-utopia-and-other-triple-s-transhumanist-media/", "title": "“Letter from Utopia” and Other Triple-S Transhumanist Media", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-03-03T01:08:45+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=15", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "41c3cee78dee90911a42dbd9e4bb4e22", "summary": []}
{"text": "Burning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God (1/2)\n\n[Epistemic Status: Fiction; see related non-fiction Burning Man articles – 1, 2, 3. See part 2/2 here.]\nPreface\nWhat follows is the result of an exercise in considering the questions: “Which novel memes, and meme-plexes, will be alive 10 years from now? And, what new worldviews will have a ‘full-stack’ account of where humanity is at, and where it is headed?” Hope this sparks interesting thoughts.\n\nThe interdependent nature of knowledge is such that for you to truly understand anything, you must understand everything first.\n– Alex Alamy, founder of Camp State-Space of Consciousness\nThe year is 2029 and Burning Man season is upon us. You’ve been there once before, but you feel like you gravitated a lot towards the art in deep playa and neglected the theme-camps that surrounded you. For instance, you didn’t even visit your neighbors despite the fact that they had giant marble statues hung up from a transparent dome visible from the street, and a picture of Shiva having sex with a rhino at the entrance. In retrospect you wonder “why didn’t I at least come by and say hi? The place looked so inviting!” This year you are determined to change that by investigating in detail one theme-camp every day, in addition to enjoying the company of your campmates and exploring the deep playa the rest of the time.\nSunday: Arrival\nYou arrive on Sunday evening after a 16-hour drive. Eight of those hours involved being in the line. And of those, you spent four of them manually pushing your car while a dust storm was in full force (your car’s battery died because you used it to power up speakers to blast the latest Lady Gaga album, but forgot that doing this could drain it completely if you left your engine off). After the dust cleared, the first neighbor in the line without an electric car helped you jump-start the car, which worked fine from then on. After that rough start, you are now settling in your little pod, keeping hydrated, and eating the left-over fried rice that one of your campmates cooked for everyone who helped build the shade structures. You decide to call it a night and rest. After all, you have seven full days of Burning Man ahead of you…\nMonday: Camp Microlife\nYou wake up slightly groggy and disoriented. Like last year- you are now aware- the first day of the Burn is usually a little slow and difficult on the body as it acclimatizes to the new environment. You take it easy and wake up at 11AM, help campmates with their tents and structures, attend the camp meeting, eat bunches of fruit mixed in with Soylent Cereal®, and take a nap. At 6PM you feel rested and ready to start exploring. Your first stop is right next door, a place called Camp Microlife (formerly known as Longevity Camp).\nBurning Man is said to be dangerous. Indeed, a well-known piece of advice people like to throw at each other is to only do one stupid thing at a time. If you take shrooms, don’t try to climb a giant sculpture. If you are drunk, don’t go for a walk without a camelback. If you are going to oversee the safety of a fire, don’t do so while being heavily sleep deprived. And if you go to the Orgy Dome, don’t do so while on MDMA. Just common sense things, right? You would be surprised how people tend to stack dangerous activities on top of each other at Burning Man. And you’d be even more surprised how despite this, the number of serious accidents is incredibly low. In fact, it is a marvel why more people don’t die at Burning Man, given the expectations that you can realistically place on 80,000 Homo Sapiens in the desert for an entire week. It takes a lot of effort distributed across many people to reach this level of relative safety.\nThe low injury statistic at Burning Man is something to applaud. That said, before 2020 there wasn’t much awareness about the fact that the environmental hazards of Burning Man had measurable effects on the rate of aging of the body. Camp Longevity was thus founded in order to help people minimize this effect by focusing on interventions that would give you the largest bang for your buck. Their welcoming sign at the entrance reads:\nThis camp is dedicated to the task of identifying the most cost-effective way of reducing the number of micromorts (cf. microlives) that you are expending at Burning Man. We will take a picture of your skin in controlled lighting conditions in order to determine the amount of melanin in your skin, and measure your height, BMI, and lung capacity. Then based on actuarial tables we will give you custom harm-reduction help, ranging from gifting you optimal sunscreen, to magnesium supplements & earplugs, to providing free high-quality masks and even nose-filters as part of a pilot program (did I mention that you are encouraged to enroll in a study to see whether nose-filters are as effective as dust masks at preventing lung aging from the dust?).\n(source)\nThey have both a no-nonsense set of recommendations and a more creative “R&D” side, in which they are piloting wacky solutions to “microlife loss prevention.” For instance, they had nose-filters they could give you if you participated in a study (well, they would give them to you regardless but they would encourage you to sign up). They also had an instant-cooling system in their camp that you could use if you were over-heating (or felt like it, anyhow). Under the assumption that MDMA neurotoxicity and body strain is partly caused by hyperthemia, they hoped to incorporate this device as a harm reduction strategy at Zendos around the world. On your way out they handed you UV-protecting arm sleeves, which they had in bulk quantities, and were giving out to passersby.\nAt night, you visit some of the core attractions in Esplanade, and take a ride to deep playa on the Mayan Warrior, which is still going strong after 17 years of Burning Man. On your way back you stop at a space cowboy-themed bar, and have two drinks- Mr. Walker on Glowing Rocks– before calling it a night.\nTuesday: Camp State-Space of Consciousness\nOn Tuesday you wake up at 9AM, stretch, shower, and socialize for half an hour while eating a handful of bananas with copious amounts of almond butter. You check out the Man, the Temple, and random artwork you find on the way to and from. You eat quesadillas at Mexican Grill, and by 5PM, you return to camp and rest for ninety minutes before going out at 7PM with two friends. Tonight is a “trip night”.\nCamp State-Space of Consciousness (formerly known as Rainbow God) is devoted to a made-up religion called Divine Spectralism. This religion postulates that the maximum expression of divinity is in its full-spectrum (aka. rainbow) form. God may have infinite faces, but some of them display its glory more fully, clearly, and lucidly. In their theology, God realized is tasteless and flavorless. But that’s an asymptote that’s impossible to talk about. Around it, approaching the event horizon, we see God diffractions that express all of the possible flavors, colors, thought-forms, space and time qualities, etc. of consciousness. That is, God Realized is surrounded by a full-spectrum of all varieties of experience. This region of the multiverse corresponds to the highest heavens, the rainbow worlds; these are the closest you can get to the fullest expression of God while being able to support sapience and self-awareness.\n\nIn order to transcend our world- grey and dull relative to rainbow worlds-, we must move towards the universal gradient of synthesis, which incorporates, in each successive moment of experience, more diversity of experiential qualities (aka. qualia). Up there in the upper heavens everyone has a full-spectrum enjoyment body, which allows them to create-imagine-animate massive worlds of experience populated with maximally-encompassing narratives. They pack tremendous amounts of smell, taste, warmth, music, echolocation, and uncountably many other flavors of experience we humans don’t have words for in highly energetic forms. The result is not just an impressive “painting of experience”; there is something special and magical that happens when you start piecing together all of the varieties of experience in a giant thought-form. The whole is much more than the sum of its parts. One unlocks the ability to recombine the complementary parts of experience and get purified God consciousness. They even claim that you don’t really understand a given qualia (e.g. cinnamon scent) until you can put it in the context of all of the values of its variety (in this case all scents). And you don’t really understand a given variety (e.g. scents) until you see it in the context of all varieties (e.g. scents, colors, tactile sensations, etc.). So we don’t truly understand anything until we understand everything. That is not to say that ignorance doesn’t come in gradients, though.\nBuddhists came across this phenomenon long time ago. They encountered states of consciousness where they had an intensified divine connection in conjunction with full-spectrum experiences. They called it the rainbow body. It is interesting that they knew about it but they didn’t develop techniques specifically aimed at it. Instead, they merely thought of it as a side-effect of good and deliberate practice, or maybe a gift liable to become a distraction. The Divine Spectralists, in contrast, claim to investigate this phenomenon scientifically. They will tell you that they have found a causal connection between full-spectrum practices and increased spirituality.\n \n\n\n\n\nThe camp is organized along the lines of a hexagon, with a large central rectangular tarp. This shape defines seven regions: one corner for each of the “top 6 senses” (sight, hearing, touch, taste, scent, and proprioception) and a central space called the “global workspace.”*\nYou, being the intrepid scientific psychonaut that you are, of course decide to visit this camp while on acid. You take 150 micrograms before heading out. This camp has been around for five years, and it has grown into a core Burning Man attraction. Your friends tell you that if you took acid you should definitely go check it out. So you and two of your friends- Galaxy Fox and Astro Burrito– make the walk towards it, which takes long enough for the acid to start kicking in.\nAs you approach the entrance you notice people playing with LED-illuminated hula hoops. That is not unexpected, since after all, Burning Man is the DIY LED Mecca of the world (cf. Ring Theory). But there is something particularly unusual about these hula hoops. The tracers left by the bright LEDs given your psychedelic state are not only stunning, they are also somehow encoding words and images. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” – you ask Galaxy Fox, who is sitting you during this 12 hour trip. “You mean the hula hoops? They are cool, aren’t they?” – she responds. “Yes, but you see the things they are saying? It’s saying:\nYou are the Chosen One, The One who will deliver the message. A message of hope for those who choose to hear it. And a warning for those who do not.\nAre you not seeing that?” – you say. “Nah, man, you trippin’, I see no message there, dude.” – she says. But for you this is undeniable. As it turns out, these hula hoops were programmed to encode messages only readable by people on psychedelics; they use a technique called psychedelic cryptography. To illustrate how these hula hoops look, see the video below (tracer effect applied to LED hula hoops). In brief, they take advantage of the longer-than-normal decay of qualia on psychedelics. This way they can “paint over time” pictures that only people with pronounced persistence of vision can really detect. Shocked and intrigued, you start exploring the camp.\nYou learn about the made-up religion with a video they play and a few girls who answer questions about it. From your point of view this feels extremely cultish, but you are not sure whether it is your state or the actual camp. So you ask your friends if they also feel the same as you, considering they are sober judges of what’s going on. One of them says yes, and one of them says no, which isn’t very helpful. You decide to stop worrying about whether they will brainwash you and take it on good faith that they are at least doing their best at pointing you towards interesting ideas to consider.\nYou are fascinated by the made-up religion, and thinking about it in your state activates in you very intense feelings that are hard to put into words. At times you get convinced that you can perform psi feats and feel like you are connecting to the minds and feelings of the people around you… that God’s light is being reflected and refracted throughout everyone in the camp. Then again, you realize this is exactly what the environment is meant to suggest and exalt as much as possible, not to speak of the suggestibility of LSD states.\n\nThe camp’s center has a large rectangular tent, and when you come in you see that one of the walls is completely covered with LEDs stacked along three layers (each of the layers is capable of 7 bright primary colors, and their combinations). This artwork is called “The Fourth Wall”, and it is a large LED display optimized for psychedelic cryptography. The “hidden messages” cycle over several minutes. It displays messages written by people walking by who draw them on a tablet connected to the lights. It also shows bizarre super trippy patterns of all kinds, along with what looks like psychophysics experiments. Every once in a while it displays a live video of yourself from a corner (it takes you a moment, but you manage to locate the camera, which is behind you). The symbolism startles, as you realize that only on psychedelics you are able to realize that you are being secretly watched. Sober people passing by just see pretty lights, and a few local features of the pictures, but unlike people on a couple blotters of acid, they don’t see the entire pictures there. Interestingly, this way people on psychedelics can coordinate with each other in surprising ways. The message sometimes says “all move to the blue corner” and from the point of view of someone sober it’s like suddenly half of the room makes the telepathic decision to move together towards one corner. Doing fun things with psychedelic cryptography is an art-form. Making an analogy to a county fair, the whole range of games and prototypes in this section could accurately be described as being of the type that says “you have to be at least this high to play this game”.\nYou now decide to take a look at the music corner. The place is a dome shaped in a peculiar way that increases both the resonance and reverb of the space. That on its own would make it a cool experience, but the fact that those effects are massively amplified with a network of microphones and speakers that subtly generate feedback without blowing up makes it an over-the-top experience. The auditory effect is confusing and mentally scrambling to an exaggerated degree. The 3D sound effects can generate the impression of entire worlds in movement. These music and sound geeks have been working for years on being able to represent events in a sort of musical-ray-tracing engine with custom software. They can generate the illusion of the reverb fingerprint of arbitrary spaces, and hence create for you the illusion that you are inside a car, or inside a church, or inside an infinite tunnel. In addition, they use doppler effects to change the impression of how fast things are moving, and in particular, to create the illusion that the shape of the universe is changing and that information is propagating relativistically. Did I mention one of the people involved in this installation is a famous physicist? And did I mention the sound booth is managed by a robotic dog?\n \n\nThis place plays weird music. You know of weird music, but this music here is weird music. In fact the thing these guys have been working on for a while is a computational approach to figuring out which combinations of sounds will weird you out as much as possible. It learns over the course of 15 minutes or so using eye-tracking and biosignals it gets from a headband you put on when you enter their sound dome. The music tries to drive you towards the edge between chaos and predictability. It parametrically identifies how quickly to change its degree of predictability in order to assault your attention with hyper-dopaminergic attention-grabbing mood-setting sounds. The music is so mesmerizing that it has developed a sort of fame for being able to halt fights in the Playa. Taking an angry campmate there is certainly going to distract them for no less than 30 minutes, and give them a chance to approach whatever problem they are dealing with from a different angle.\nYou move on to the camp’s “scented room”, which has a large repertoire of scented objects and essential oils. Starting with the stereotypically obligatory patchouli (as in, if you don’t have patchouli in your kit of scent qualia, what are you even doing?)  – more seriously, the repertoire of scents is enormous, with a box with more than 5,000 scents collected over the years, including uncommon scents like cypress, palmarosa, ylang ylang, durian, acetone, cork, jojoba, and boutique scents like digestive enzymes and a synthesized “old book smell”-mimicking mixture. You didn’t even know that old books smell could be chemically identified, but now you do. You notice that some of the scents resonate with your state, and others almost, kind of, sober you up to an extent.\nPerhaps the most interesting, and daring, of all of the scents there is the LSD-scent vial. “Do not get confused”-the attendant tells you- “this vial is LSD-free, but it smells like LSD.” You reply: “I thought LSD was odorless.” She says: “Most people have no idea it has a smell because there is so little LSD, weight-wise, in blotters that there is not enough of it to build enough scent for you to smell it… but dogs can smell it. What this vial contains is what is used to train dogs to detect LSD.” You smell the vial: “Uh, it’s a bit tangy?” She says: “Yeah, some say that. Others mention it reminds them of the smell of DMT to an extent, and others point out its metallic tones.” You ask her – “wait, wouldn’t search dogs get crazy about this, then? Isn’t this a liability for the camp?”. To which she replies: “There’s a funny story here. The first year we brought this scent to the playa we were stopped by a cop for a random search during the trip from Reno. A dog sniffed out the vial right away. It took literally about 5 seconds for the dogs to find it. We were careful not to have anything illegal on us, though, so that’s the only thing they found. They wanted to press charges for the vial even though we claimed it was not LSD. Later they got from the lab the result that the vial had actual LSD in it. This, of course, majorly surprised us. By having the paper trail of how we got the vial, and it having a serial number, and us hiring an independent lab to test it which confirmed it had no LSD, we and the Burner community at large discovered that lab tests were being forged. This revealed that the rumors were true, that there really were some people faking lab results, and they were making a lot of money off of this. This is currently unraveling, and the courts are now going back, historically, and dropping the charges from people harmed by faked lab results over the years. A number of burners we know are getting their charges dropped for this reason.” You think about it, for a moment, and reply: “I guess I didn’t realize there was so much power in having something that is genuinely, provably, fake, since it can be used to expose people who claim to be able to recognize the authentic ones.”\nState-space of scent qualia (adapted from: Categorical Dimensions of Human Odor Descriptor Space Revealed by Non-Negative Matrix Factorization; Castro, Ramanathan, Chennubhotla. 2013; link)\nThe camp has a corner dedicated to conducting perception experiments. The experiments are not just idle fun and games, they tell you. Three peer-reviewed papers have been published so far testing hypotheses about psychedelic visual and auditory perception with the data gathered here. You got excited by the prospect of helping science, and confided with the person there that you were currently on 150 micrograms of LSD. Unfortunately how the system works is that you have to go there sober first and sign an anonymous consent form in which you agree to be shown images and audio (some of it possibly R-rated) both today and in the future, so that you could then go back another day and re-do the tests while high on psychedelics. They still allowed you to try the experiments, though, but they said that in cases like yours they would not collect the data gathered.\nThe experiments were strange and most didn’t make much intuitive sense. For example, in some tests you had to guess “which of the 3 textures is the odd-one-out”, which they told you was used to identify which summary statistics your visual field becomes more or less capable of differentiating on psychedelics. Another experiment would show you ambiguous images and you had to guess what was in them. Interestingly, this was another way in which psychedelic cryptography was being developed, but rather than being based on tracers, it was based on semantics. That is, someone on acid might look at the picture and say “that’s clearly a banana” while someone sober would say “that’s obviously the back of a Jeep”, and if you get creative, you can send secret messages this way.\nYour favorite experiment felt very much like a video-game. It was engaging and fun; it had a pleasing effect on your mood for some reason. The task involved looking at the screen of a tablet that displays patterns with wallpaper symmetries shifting along a symmetry element (see below) and identify “the region that is moving at a different rate.”** They told you that this was one of the tasks that exhibited the strongest difference between people sober and on psychedelics; the reduced symmetry detection threshold in combination with increased entrainment potential made this particularly easy for people tripping.\n \n\n \n\n \n\nAfter playing the symmetry detection game for 10 minutes, you decide to move on. The last section you check out at the camp invites you to go into a “world of tactile textures” by entering a large air-conditioned hexayurt with an airlock separating the inside from the windy exterior. The textures, of course, were selected for their experiential richness, but one additional important constraint had to be applied: they had to be MOOP-free. Or at least generate MOOP that is heavy and easy to pick up (hence the airlock). The people inside talk of having “alien cuddles” which is where a handful of people in underwear make a cuddle puddle with all of the pillows, and pretend to be a single alien being with unusual skin having sex with itself. They invite you to join in, and you do. The boundary-dissolving aspect of the LSD experience makes this an incredibly confusing and compelling scenario; you don’t really know where your body starts and where it begins, and gosh, you had no idea synthetic reptile scales and cellophane-wrapped cotton could feel so sexy on your bare skin.\n \nClick to view slideshow.\nThere, in the middle of the cuddle puddle with strangers, you come to an interesting realization. From their point of view of Divine Spectralism, Burning Man is wonderful because it functions as an efficient and intelligent search algorithm for exploring new regions of the state-space of consciousness. It feeds the bottom line of the Camp’s religion and its core prescriptions: to put on the map even the most outlandish of experiences.\nExhausted but satisfied, you reconvene with your friends and start heading back to camp. On your way out, you see the secret hula hoop messages are now saying:\nPEACE & LOVE & HARMONY\nPEACE & LOVE & HARMONY\nYou ask one of the hula hoopers why the message changed. She tells you “a prankster got a hold of our controls earlier today, and was feeding them Tool lyrics, but we found it and we are back to the regular programming.”\nWhen you arrive to your camp, you eat a couple MealCubes, drink electrolytes, and force yourself to take a power nap to recharge, but fail due to the still-ongoing acid stimulation. You give up trying to sleep and give in to the music that is blasting next door. You dance to the soundtrack of The Wandering Earth; the neighboring camp is a smallish sound-camp specializing in retro songs and soundtracks of the 2010s. At 2AM you go out and see the Man with your friends, as you hadn’t seen it at night yet. When you come back, at 3AM, you come by a little tea house offering herbal drinks. You see a friend from a different camp there and decide to talk to him about the nature of phenomenal time. It feels like this day has lasted for ages. You also try to process your experience in Camp State-Space of Consciousness. You keep talking with your friend until the sun is about to rise. You don’t go to sleep until 6AM, but then you sleep all day until roughly 6PM.\nWednesday: Camp Valence\nThankfully this was the only day that it rained. There was some rain on and off while you were asleep, and it remained cloudy throughout the day. You figure that you rested so well in part because the temperature didn’t go up as high as it usually does. Due to global warming, now each Burn is, statistically speaking, a little hotter than the previous one. Interestingly, this hasn’t dissuaded people from attending. That said, a serious discussion is underway about the possibility of re-locating Burning Man, and where to do it after it is actually inhospitable to humans. By then, people say, all humans will have more important problems to deal with, and with this, they rationalize not thinking about how to answer the question of where to move Burning Man. Either way, you want to make sure you can squeeze this experience for learning, growth, and fun as much as you can, and you appreciate the time you have in here. You think about the far future. You think about the State-Space of Consciousness, Divine Spectralism, the way textures feel and how to even go about making a language for them, and you think about holograms… something tells you holograms hold some kind of key to “the puzzle of reality”. Perhaps the acid is still in some ways making your thought-patterns less ego-oriented, and so “early” today (7PM) it feels like your mental clarity and sense of spiritual relaxation is something you can take from your trip to Burning Man back home. This alone would have made the visit to Black Rock City worthwhile- you think to yourself. But there is still a lot of the week left for you. There are so many options, so what should you explore next?\nYou decide that today you are going to take MDMA and ketamine. Both of these substances are things you do not take more than once every two years, and you only ever take them in moderate doses. You decided ahead of time that if there was a particularly cold day at Burning Man this year you would take MDMA that evening since, presumably, that day would have been less taxing to your body. In addition, you had been wondering what MDMA plus ketamine felt like for ages. Tonight you will take reasonable doses for both of these drugs. 85mg of MDMA and about 100mg for ketamine (two 50mg doses spread out over the course of an hour). Together with the ecstasy powder, you swallow the latest neuroscience-backed anti-“MDMA neurotoxicity” tablets, dissolved in your electrolyte water. You ask Astro Burrito for suggestions about where to go. You tell him you took an empathogen and you want something peaceful and relaxed. Another campmate overhears your conversation and says: “If you are taking MDMA, I might recommend Camp Valence, because those Burners are trying to optimize your pleasure in all sorts of ways.” So that’s where you’ll head next. Once you are finished eating a Tasty Bite you just heated up in a communal pan.\nWhereas the previous Camp felt “orgiastic” and pagan (in retrospect), this one feels like a much more curated display of experiences. The Camp State-Space of Consciousness would have you be exposed to the wilderness of all possible experiences and have you make sense of it all for yourself. But Camp Valence seems to have a different overall aesthetic, and philosophy. They seem to be optimizing for softness, intimacy, centeredness, homeliness, and emotional availability.\nThey have a large enclosed space covered with blankets, and small tables with candles and soft pastel-colored LEDs. Some people are sitting and talking calmly. Others are resting on the floor and cuddling with blankets with each other. Some people are meditating with headphones. Yet others in an adjacent room are doing naked yoga. There is also a pod that fits four people lying down which is sound-proof, presumably to experience sensory deprivation. There is plentiful cucumber water, and lavender cookies.\nSomeone approaches you in a friendly, non-threatening way, and asks you if you want to hear about the place. He gives you the option to just see it for yourself and chill undisturbed. You allow yourself the option to say yes, and he takes you to an adjacent room separated by a curtain. He is dressed with a long-sleeved tie-dye shirt, a green velvety vest, and comfy pajama pants. He also has a little bit of make-up on, which gives his face a kind of cute bird-like quality. You are not gay or bi, but you somehow feel like you are hanging out with a really cool and cute guy. Well, it’s hard to separate the way the MDMA is making you feel from the environment, but you could swear there is something super friendly about this guy. He tells you that the camp was founded three years ago by a serial entrepreneur disappointed with the economic incentives of modern society. You ask if he could share more about it, but he is interrupted when a girl dressed in a black and blue (or is it white and gold?) dress made of silk and pvc comes in. She is wearing a “cloud hat” (which looks like cotton candy but is actually just cotton), and you feel the urge to touch it. She says yes, but to be careful not to pull too hard – “we don’t want cotton MOOP, like last year with the cotton incident.”\nThe two people you are hanging out with say that there is a joke that is making its rounds in Camp Valence. It goes like this: “What is the most fun you can have in Las Vegas legally?” Intuitively it would be something along the lines of: “Wake up early, go to the casinos, eat fancy food, get drunk, go to a show, admire the giant buildings and statues, go shopping, and sleep late in the night after a nightcap cocktail.” In contrast, the real, objective, answer goes like this: “You check-in into a fancy and quiet hotel (e.g. the Wynn or the Four Seasons), leave your stuff there, then go to the closest weed dispensary and get at least 10mg of THC in edible form, then go to the closest pharmacy and buy 2 bottles of DXM hydrobromide pills (typically 20X15mg each) for a total of 600mg of DXM. Also buy some earplugs and an eye mask there. Then go back to your hotel, put the do-not-disturb sign on the door, get yourself comfortable, take all of the DXM, and 45 minutes later eat the edible. Close the curtains, and put your earplugs and eye mask on. Over the course of the next several hours you will fall into an intense free-wheeling hallucination where you can learn a lot of fascinating properties about your mind and disclose new varieties of experience. That should keep you entertained for the next 10 hours, and then you will think about it and be amazed for the rest of your vacation. Welcome to Las Vegas, hope you have a fun stay!”\n\nYou ask bird-boy if he could continue describing the origin story of the camp. The cloud girl also knows about it, so they take turns filling you in: The person who started the camp founded a few startups in Silicon Valley, made a lot of money, and then opened an establishment in Las Vegas called “Valence Palace.” This place would somehow manage to get permits to use things like rapid thermal exchange devices to literally cool people off (and possibly prevent neurotoxicity in party-goers, as Camp Microlife would remind you), host algorithmically designed sound baths, provide God Helmet therapy, and organize overpriced nootropics tastings. This last one turned out to be all the rage in 2023-2025, and several other establishments around the world started copying the idea. This guy, they explain, somehow masterminded his way into marketing coluracetam in an upper-class status-signaling kind of way (rather than the drug nerd niche kind of way which everyone assumed was the only market for the thing). He marketed it as a high-end product in the form of a subtle experience. For a lot of rich youngsters and people courting each other it was exciting to go out to an official-looking place in Las Vegas and pay large amounts of money to sip water laced with coluracetam (of all things). Turns out this compound had very few side-effects in the vast majority of people, and temporarily increased people’s memory, visual signal-to-noise ratio, and appreciation (but not enjoyment) of music. It is the sort of thing that only refined minds could really notice and pick up an interest in (or at least that’s how this gentleman would market it). People were dying to show off to their friends how they, too, could have an opinion about what it felt like to go to the nootropics tasting at the Valence Palace. It didn’t signal the same sort of defiance of authority that on some level psychedelics tend to evoke. Nootropics tastings served a market of people with high openness to experience but not quite the intellectual disagreeableness to take psychedelics or seek experiences outside of mainstream channels. Curiously, thanks to the competitive dynamics between dopamine and acetylcholine, taking coluracetam would kill your urge to gamble and drink. Indeed, it worked as a sort of anti-addictive drug, protecting you from all the vices on offer in other Las Vegas establishments.\nColuracetam\nAnyhow, he claimed that this and his other Valence Palace experiences were genuinely valuable from a hedonic point of view. That unlike typical Las Vegas entertainment, they did not leave you dissatisfied. They had a positive area under the curve effect, rather than illusory front-loaded pleasure followed by long streaks of mundane disappointment. And Yelp reviews of the place showed it was far better, in terms of customer satisfaction, than what casinos and even oxygen bars could offer.\nOf course Las Vegas would have none of this. What he called the Dopaminergic Cartel- which profits from short-term illusory and addictive pleasures- couldn’t tolerate the presence of an organization whose actual goal was the maximization of pleasure and satisfaction in the customer. As a result of the increased popularity of nootropics tastings, and the anti-addictive effects of coluracetam, large casinos detected a significant drop in earnings from high rollers. They saw the Valence Palace as a defector against their craving-based business model. So they had to kick his establishment out of the Strip, manufacture claims on him, cancel him, and destroy his future. The poor guy ended up five million dollars in personal debt. He took them to court for defamation, and thanks to legal discovery uncovered an underground collusion between casinos and aripiprazole manufacturers, which soon became national news. The casinos counter-sued, also for defamation, but dropped their charges once the media had quieted down about the aripiprazole scandal. A couple years later he managed to get his money back with the help of an LED company. It’s a long story, they tell you, and you can find it all on Youtube Blue when you are bored and back in civilization. For now all you need to know is that the founder said that Burning Man is a safe haven which the Dopaminergic Cartel hasn’t yet touched. This is all thanks to the decommodification principle, and the persistent efforts to enforce it in every way possible.\nAripiprazole\nCamp Valence has an underlying philosophy that traces its roots back to David Pearce, Effective Altruism, and further back to Bentham, and even Buddha. The universe has an in-built utility function, and to follow the path of goodness is to (1) recognize that value is not relative, (2) that human values are provincial and distorted versions of ultimate value, and (3) to start listening, really listening, to what the universe prefers. Intrinsic value is encoded in the shape of a state of consciousness. What mystics, meditators, and hippies have all been saying for ages is true – the point of life is to live in harmony. But what is harmony, exactly? How does it manifest in precise, empirically measurable ways in terms of brain states and, more generally, configurations of matter and energy? Deep down, they claim, value is grounded in the nature of quantum fields, and the way the universal wavefunction interferes with itself. The highest expression of God, as it were, is not the one that incorporates the most diverse range of qualia, but rather, the one that incorporates the largest amount of coherent energy in a state of harmony. It so happens, they tell you, that the full-spectrum experiences that are catalyzed at places like Camp State-Space of Consciousness have as a side-effect large-scale harmonious coherence. Alas, there are far more direct and effective ways of achieving this. Thus, Divine Spectralism is not entirely true, but it is also not entirely wrong; it holds a kernel of truth… a piece of the puzzle. The full puzzle, though, can only be solved if you put your ear to the ground and listen carefully for what the universe really wants.\nMythologically, Camp Valence posits that someday in the future there will be something like Effective Altruism, but rather than focused on suffering- because there will be none of it left- it will focus on creating large projects with huge positive hedonic payoffs for the largest number of sentient beings possible. They don’t call it hedonium, because they want to retain individualized motivational architectures. They agree with David Pearce in “creating a universal welfare world where beings are animated by gradients of bliss” rather than aiming for raw undifferentiated bliss.\nIn a future where suffering is made physiologically impossible via gene editing, and the game-theory is taken care of such that cooperating is the evolutionarily stable equilibrium, what remains to be done competitively is to try to discover new ways to create glory and awe and delight and open-ended infinite games.\nYou thank them for the explanation, and you wish you could have recorded the conversation as it seemed of general interest. Alas, this is Burning Man, and as a friend once suggested, whatever happens here gets uploaded to the collective human unconscious anyway.\nYou walk to another room and notice a stand with many vials and powders. Like Camp State-Space of Consciousness, Camp Valence also has scents. But unlike the multi-faceted and comprehensive repertoire of Rainbow God, the scents in Camp Valence are not selected to catalyze a full-spectrum experience; they concentrate on the scents that generate the most palpable changes in one’s sense of wellbeing. They have blends of hedonically-charged scents that are made to specifically either calm you or make you hyper in a good way. You ask for the relaxing one, and you get something that fits perfectly with your empathogenic state. “Gosh, whoever designed this smell must have been rolling, too.” The attendant mentions that the most interesting thing you could do at the camp is to try out their God Helmet device. She points at one of the corners where you see two people wearing eye-masks and helmets full of wires. The attendant says that they will be done in about five minutes and you can be next. You mention that you took MDMA about two hours ago, and ask if it’s ok to mix the God Helmet with it. She winks and says “well, didn’t you notice the synergy between your state and the scent you just tried? The God Helmet is that way, too. We have many configurations that are designed specifically for a given state of consciousness. My favorite by far is the empathogenic one.”\nIndeed many people show up to Camp Valence while on some empathogen or another. The people who set up the camp only take psychedelics at Burning Man due to concerns over the deleterious long-term effects of molly. Of course they are acquainted with the state, or otherwise they wouldn’t have found a way to tune the God helmet to perfectly synergize with your mind. You see the girl push a button that says “Ambrosia” and right after that you get lost into a literal world of bliss. You’ve taken larger doses of MDMA before, and you estimate that the combination of your moderate dose (85mg) with the helmet is making you feel what 200mg of MDMA feels like at its hedonic peak before palpitations and other side-effects start to set in. An all-around feeling of wellbeing and maximum enjoyment. The shape of your attention field-lines experiences interesting changes; you feel like your awareness field is a smooth toroidal powerhouse of pleasure energy. You spontaneously think of your deceased maternal grandfather, and realize you can only have good thoughts about him. Even if you were to try, you couldn’t have a single negative thing to say about him on this state. You feel his love and unconditional acceptance from afar, as if beamed through an etheric field. You yourself feel like a star of happiness– perhaps your dead relatives are seeing you from heaven due to how bright you are shining? This thought seems compelling in your state. Soon enough, your turn is over, and you take the helmet off. You still feel better than how you felt before you put it on; it’s as if this thing energized your mind, whose electromagnetic nature is now evident to you. The device did something that “boosted” your state. It now rests at a pleasant level that you associate with taking ~130mg of MDMA. They say this will also extend your state, and to drink a shot of vodka if you want your state to quiet down (e.g. in order to sleep).\nYou thank everyone you talked to, you tell them you love them (“we get that often”- they say- “but we know it’s true, thank you, we love you too!”), give everyone a big hug, and part ways.\nYou go back to your camp, hydrate, eat a couple oranges and mixed nuts, go to your tent and take a large ketamine bump, followed by another one 10 minutes later. You are propelled upwards in a tunnel of light that guides you throughout the known universe until you arrive at a giant ball of life energy. The experience is overwhelming, and hard to decipher. You think about what makes Camp Valence and Rainbow God different. What are the differences and similarities? Are you stealing fire from the Gods by having these experiences and remembering the insights that unfold from them? The giant ball of life energy feels like it is calling you, and approaches you roaring with incredible loudness- yet the sound comes out muffled, as if going through a low-pass filter. You intuitively sense that if you were to approach it too closely, you would cease to be a separate being, as it would absorb you into universal consciousness. Scared for your ego-narrative, you hesitate and hover around it, trying to make sense of it. After twenty five minutes you come down. Exhausted, you fall asleep.\n(source)\n\nStay tuned for part 2/2.\n\n*Pun credit: Christian Lains\n**Credit for psychophysics symmetry experiment stimuli creation to Nick Xu. He generated images that I used to conduct a psychophysics experiment at Burning Man in 2017. He made images where wallpaper symmetry groups would flip along their symmetry elements. All except a single symmetry element would change at the same rate, while one of them would be moving either slightly faster or slower. People on psychedelics seemed to be faster at pointing out the “defect” in the animation. More research is needed to replicate this effect and explain how it works.\nFeatured Image: source. Rainbow DJ Dog GIF: source.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/02/24/burning-man-theme-camps-of-the-year-2029-from-replicator-to-rainbow-god-1-2/", "title": "Burning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God (1/2)", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-02-25T06:45:49+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=15", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "be9a8c5415da26c53607e2db090b6fe8", "summary": []}
{"text": "Cooling It Down To Partying It Up\n\nA relatively recent hypothesis for the neurotoxicity associated with MDMA is that it causes the brain to over-heat (see: 1, 2, 3). This would make the sorts of environments in which people take it particularly hazardous (hot raves, nightclubs, warm baths, and wild sex).\nI really hope this is the core main reason for MDMA’s long-term deleterious effects.\nWhy?\nBecause then the damage would be completely preventable! In particular, I would point you to the athletic performance-enhancing technology developed at Stanford in 2012 that uses rapid thermal exchange devices (aka. “the cooling glove”*) in order to cool your blood and allow you to compete at a higher level. This is an extremely efficient method to keep the temperature of your whole body (including your brain!) within a healthy range.\nSadly, the device is likely to get banned for athletic purposes (it would be, some say, an unfair advantage if some teams have access to the cooling glove and others don’t). Sports are, of course, completely inconsequential, so the fact that the device is likely to get banned for this application shouldn’t matter. Yet it does, because as a result many people seem to be losing interest in this line of research.\nMaybe, I would posit, the device could be resurrected as part of a modern harm-reduction strategy. Imagine night-clubs with a chill-out space stocked with dozens of cooling gloves. Party for 30 minutes, cool down for 10 minutes, repeat. If this could allow people to take MDMA once every month for the rest of their lives without enduring the brain damage that doing this usually causes… wouldn’t that be wonderful? I would expect it to also be highly beneficial for the benevolence of culture and the overall mental health of our society.\nAnd this is all to say: Who would have known… that “being cool” was the key to partying for the rest of your life? Cool it down and party it up!\n\n*For a skeptical take on the device, see: Better Than Steroids? The hype behind Stanford’s magic “cooling glove” for athletes. And a comeback article that extends its use to more serious applications: Cooling glove developed by Stanford researchers helps athletes and patients.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/02/10/cooling-it-down-to-partying-it-up/", "title": "Cooling It Down To Partying It Up", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-02-11T01:00:01+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=15", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "70e6ff283c6318a8728d57df15bc5bd9", "summary": []}
{"text": "Cause X – What Will the New Shiny Effective Altruist Cause Be?\n\n\n\nThe Qualia Research Institute hosted an interesting event a couple of weeks ago. Here is how the event was advertised:\n\n\n\nDescription\n\n\nEvent Name: QRI & Friends: “Cause X” – what will the new shiny EA cause be?\nTime: Saturday, January 19, 2019 at 4 PM – 1 AM\n\n\nDescription: This event will consist of 4-minute presentations from attendees about what the “new EA cause area should be” (from 4pm to 6pm) followed by a casual and chill hangout for the rest of the evening.\n\n\n\nThere are 10 slots for the presentations, and we encourage you to sign up for one before they run out. If you want to give a presentation please fill out this form: [deleted link]\n\n\nIf you want to see people’s presentations please show up before 4:15pm (we will start the presentations at 4:30 sharp). Each participant will be given 4 minutes to present and 1 minute for Q&A. We will be strict on time. You should come prepared to defend your cause with logic, data, etc.\n\n\nEveryone who sees the presentations will get to vote* at the end for the following three categories:\n\n\nMost likely to prevent as much suffering as possible with 1 million dollars of funding\nMost fun to think about\nMost likely to be the plan of a super-villain\n\n\nThere will be real prizes for each of these three categories!!!**\n\n\nIf you just want to come and hang out for the evening please show up from 6:30pm onwards. Vegetarian/vegan food and drinks will be served at around 7:30pm. Feel free to bring vegan/vegetarian food/drinks too.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs usual, feel free to invite people who are curious about consciousness and EA (but please let me know in advance so I can make a head-count for the event).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n*Voting was carried out with Approval Voting (where every person can vote for as many presentations as they want and the ones with the highest number of votes win). This was chosen based on the assumption that some presentations might be similar, which would lead to an unfair penalty on similar presentations based on the spoiler effect. Additionally, voters who are undecided between more than one presentation can communicate their uncertainty via this type of voting rather than having that useful information be discarded.\n\n\n\n**Prizes were announced the day of the event. For category (1) the prizes were “a fully-equipped first-aid kit plus a 16-bottle essential oils kit”. The winner of category (2) received a prize consisting of “a 3D Mirascope and an Ivy Cube“. And category (3) had as its prize an “Apollo Tools 39 piece general tool set (DT9706)“. These prizes were, of course, highly symbolic of their respective categories.\n\n\n\n\nWinners\n\nWith the permission of the participants, here is what each of the winners presented:\n\nFor (1) two presenters tied in first place:\n\n– Natália Mendonça presented about “Using smartphones to improve well-being measures in order to aid cause prioritization research” (link to presentation). She argued that the experience sampling paradigms that made waves in the 2000s and early 2010s happened at a time when relatively few people had smartphones. Since today smartphone adoption in developing countries has exploded we could use an experience sampling app to determine the major causes of suffering throughout the world in a way that wasn’t possible before. She specifically mentioned “comparing how bad different illnesses feel” in order to help us guide policy decision for cause prioritization.\n\n– An anonymous attendee presented about “Psychedelic Drug Decriminalization“. Some of the core ideas involved taking a look at the effect sizes of the benefits of MDMA, LSD, psilocybin, etc. on various mental illnesses and comparing them against current alternatives. Also looking at the potential downsides they estimated that these only account for about 10% of the benefit, so cost-benefit wise it is very positive. They didn’t cover the entire presentation due to time – more details and a contact email can be found at https://enthea.net.\n\nFor (2) the winner was:\n\n– Matthew Barnet who presented about “Timeloop Concept as Cause X” (link – slides don’t have much content; they were used just to keep the presentation on track). Matthew looked at the recent Qualia Computing article about the “Pseudo-Time Arrow” and wondered whether the importance of agents from an ethical point of view should be weighted at least in part based on their subjective time-structure. It’s true that 99% of experiences are experienced as having a linear causal time arrow, but this is not the case for the general space of possible experiences (e.g. including “moments of eternity”, “time loops”, “atemporal states”, etc. common on altered states of consciousness). He posited that perhaps time loop experiences have a much bigger moral importance because from the inside it feels like they never end. A discussion about infinite ethics and the quantification of consciousness ensued.\n\n\n\nFor (3) the winner was:\n\n– Yev Barkalov, who proposed that rather than trying to endlessly battle in favor of digital privacy… how about we “just give up” and instead refocus the absence of digital privacy for social good. He mentioned China’s social credit score as a possible bad implementation of what he had in mind (“they have poisoned the well of the no-privacy camp by doing it so poorly”). Part of his argument was that technologies such as adblockers, crypto tokens, and the dark net further arms races in which advertisers, financial institutions, and governments become more clever at displaying ads, making you sign up for credit cards, and forcing citizens to abide by the law. Since arms races are dangerous and may lead to draconian systems while also being a waste of resources (due to their zero-sum nature), he suggested that we at least consider the alternative of seeing how a privacy-less world could work in practice. He posited that this could allow people to find quality collaborators more easily thanks to enhanced “people search” capabilities made available to the general population.\n\n\n\n\n\nFor completeness, the remaining presentations included:\n\n– Open Individualism as a new foundation for ethics\n– Collective internet identities to replace countries\n– The researching of possible Cause Xs as itself Cause X\n– Automatic Truth Discovery neo-Wikipedia: like the current Wikipedia but with meta-analytic tools embedded into it, which provide confidence intervals for each claim based on the statistical robustness of the empirical findings that support it. And…\n– A critique of utilitarianism that was more of a rant than a specific proposal (???)\n\n\n\n\nFinally, I would like to add here some additional possible Causes X that I have thought about. These did not participate in the event because the organizers were not allowed to present (due to fairness and also because I didn’t want to “win a prize” that I bought myself):\n\n\nSubsidizing/sponsoring the use of HEPA filters in every house\nDistributing DMT vape pens that dispense in 4mg doses to deal with unexpected cluster headaches (this deserves an article of its own; cf. “Hell Must Be Destroyed“)\nBuilding a model that takes in genetic data and returns hedonic set point (and/or tells you which recreational drugs you are most likely to respond positively to).\n\nIn brief, (1) above might be a highly effective way of improving the health-span of a country’s population in a cost-effective fashion. As Robin Hanson has argued over the years, if we truly cared about the health of people, we would be spending more resources on the top 4 drivers of health (diet, exercise, sleep, and clean air) rather than on extravagant medical interventions designed to convince us that “an attempt was made.” Clean air, in particular, seems easy to influence at a rather minimal cost. HEPA filters capable of providing clean air to entire apartments (reducing by 10X the PM2.5 concentrations in the apartment) can cost as little as $70, with an upkeep of about $30 a year for renewing filters, and about $20 a year for electricity. Fermi calculation would indicate this would cut the average person’s daily PM2.5 exposure by half. I haven’t worked out the math concerning the amount of micromorts prevented per dollar this way, but the numbers seem extremely promising.\nFor (2) the rationale is that inhaling tiny doses of DMT aborts a cluster headache within about 3 seconds. Given the fact that about 0.1% of people will suffer from a cluster headache at least once in their lifetimes, and the fact that they are considered one of the most painful experiences possible, having a DMT vape pen within reach at all times as an insurance against spontaneous hellish levels of pain might be perfectly justified. A dedicated article about this specific topic will be posted soon.\nAnd finally, (3) was recently argued in a Qualia Computing article: Triple S Genetic Counseling: Predicting Hedonic-Set Point with Commercial-Grade DNA Testing as an Effective Altruist Project. This may very well be a defensible Cause X on the basis that building such a model is already possible with the data available to commercial DNA testing companies like 23andMe, and that it might course-correct the reproductive strategy of millions of prospective parents within a few years, preventing untold amounts of suffering at a relatively small cost.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/02/07/cause-x-what-will-the-new-shiny-effective-altruist-cause-be/", "title": "Cause X – What Will the New Shiny Effective Altruist Cause Be?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-02-08T05:16:27+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=15", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "3d032be145e060174354b5c2303fb11b", "summary": []}
{"text": "Detailed 2C-B Trip Report by an Anonymous Reader\n\nIntroduction\nYesterday I took about 30mg of 2C-B. In my experience, the “peak” of 2C-B is rather short-lived, so I decided to divide my dose in half so that I could have time to examine the effects over the course of a prolonged plateau. I took 15mg at 2:15pm and then another 15mg at 4:00pm. The whole experience lasted around seven hours, with residual effects for about two more hours. I was just about back to baseline by 11pm. Today, I woke up hangover-free and quite happy and refreshed. I love 2C-B for this reason; unlike MDMA, it does not feel like it taxes the body very much, and unlike LSD, it does not seem to be a completely unpredictable trip with the potential for undesirably deep existential worries – “ontological paranoia”, as a friend once put it. And unlike 2C-I, 2C-E, or 2C-T-2, it is relatively nausea-free and very upbeat. I think that the quasi-entactogenic boost in mood provided by 2C-B, more so than its trippy, psychedelic effects, may be the reason why it feels “psychologically safer” than acid. I’ve never had a bad time on 2C-B- only somewhat uncomfortable- but it never gets worse than a -2 on a sadness-happiness scale from -10 to +10, whereas acid can take you all the way down to -6 or -7 if you are really unlucky and you let it happen. Anyway- I am very happy I did it and I wanted to share some observations about my experience.\nFrom a third person point of view, I’m sure my behavior wasn’t too out of the ordinary. I laughed harder than I usually laugh, and I was clearly giggly and arousable. But I wasn’t slurring my speech, speaking slowly, or making nonsense sounds. I am reasonably certain that for most of the experience, I could have spoken to a sober person without them realizing I was on anything. They might have thought that I was in a very open-minded mood, perhaps, but I don’t think it would have been obvious that I was tripping. Time-wise, I spent the first two hours or so listening to music, looking at patterns that I had saved for just this occasion, and staring at the ceiling. From the time I re-dosed (4pm) until about 7pm, I spent a lot of that time chatting online with a friend, smelling scented objects I was able to find in my house, and trying to test some hypotheses about the state I was in. From 7pm to about 9:30pm, I danced, chatted a bit with a different friend, and tried to take some notes- but I had trouble staying on track due to my short attention span. And from 9:30pm and onwards I mostly just laid back, got sucked into a rabbit hole learning about the Unarius religion, and played chill music.\nFor context, I should add that I’ve read a good number of Qualia Computing articles and I like to follow the links I find in them. I may get something wrong- please forgive me if I botch any specific reference. But I do think that this analysis of my experience might be helpful for the project of consciousness research. That being said, here are some highlights of the thoughts and observations that I gathered from my trip:\nKey Signatures and Atasoy’s Work\nIn a presentation about brain harmonics (link), Selen Atasoy described how the “repertoire of brain states increases” on LSD. But she also mentioned that LSD has the general effect of (1) increasing the amplitude of brain harmonics across the spectrum, and (2) increasing the amplitude of high-frequency harmonics more so than that of low-frequency harmonics. I remember that the first time I read about brain harmonics, I thought it was some kind of hippie fantasy, or like some sort of 19th century model of how the brain works (e.g. Atasoy quotes Tesla in her presentation). But thinking about it while coming up on a psychedelic is quite revealing. The first thing I noticed was that at the 40 minute mark, I felt an overall amplification of the energy of my consciousness. I know this sounds crazy- especially if you’ve never tried a psychedelic- but there is a global increase in the intensity of your experience. It’s very much true that when you start coming up on psychedelics, it feels like someone is turning up the volume of your experience overall. This is not only true for every sensory modality of your experience (visual, sound, tactile, etc.), but also true for the affective (emotional) and cognitive (thought) components!\nOn a low dose, or at the beginning of the come-up on a medium or large dose, all you really notice is this global amplification across the board. But then it gets more interesting. I realized yesterday that the mild background noise that I can hear in my head when things are silent kept changing as I was coming up. At first, the noise kept slightly increasing in amplitude. There was a certain mixture of ringings (I don’t really have tinnitus, but I hope you see what I mean… I think weed and dissociatives amplify this noise too, but in a different way), and what I noticed was the way that the mixture of components that make up this subtle background noise started changing and shifting upwards in frequency. The thing is, this didn’t happen in a simple linear progression. I paid attention to how this happened, and I noticed that at around the 50 minute mark, I experienced perfect silence. It was like all of that background noise was gone (apparently MDMA does this to people who suffer from tinnitus). But then, at around the 55 minute mark, other sounds started to appear. It was a new mixture, but the overall spectrum of frequencies was now higher than before- like a higher-pitched mixture of subtle ringings. Then, at the 1 hour mark, I heard silence again! And then another episode of ringing, but higher still- then it switched to silence again, and then it mostly stayed that way. It felt like there were several phase-changes; it seemed like mixtures of brain harmonics can sometimes cancel each other out, but at other times they leave a residue. And the higher the overall spectrum of your brain state in frequency, the higher the pitch of the residue- unless it is silence, which feels the same at any level.\nWhile I was noticing these qualitative changes happening in the background noise that I can hear in my head, I was also paying attention to my visual field. I noticed that something quite similar was happening there too. There were several phases that I would cycle between depending on how high I was. Usually, there is a little bit of “static” random noise in my vision. And on the 2C-B, I noticed that at first, this noise diminished and my vision felt like it was perfectly clear. But then, I would see criss-crossing patterns across my visual field. They were very subtle at first, and then grew more and more noticeable over time. Then the criss-crossing patterns would get higher in their spatial frequency (lines with less space between them), up to the point where they started to saturate my visual field. And then, the whole thing would break into a visual noise pattern similar to where I started from, except that now, it seemed both brighter and more defined than before. Then, again, my visual field would go clear and crisp, like the air was being sucked out of the room. And then again, subtle criss-crossing would start overlaying it, and the entire process would repeat. It repeated itself about four times during the first hour and a half of coming up, and it ended up in the criss-crossing region, now at fairly high frequencies.\n \n\n\nI spent some time during the trip wondering how this could happen. It reminded me of a few concepts which I had studied previously: aliasing, beats, and Moiré patterns. I’ll leave some pictures here (courtesy of Google Images) that do a good job of replicating some of the elements of the transitions:\n \n\n\nI like the one on the left in particular, in which the concentric circles increase in their spatial frequency as you go up. You can imagine that going up that image is how it felt coming up on 2C-B. The thing is, at any given point, I was experiencing an overlap of many different frequencies, but the most dominant ones would interfere with each other- sometimes generating a single, clear, strong beat pattern when superimposed, sometimes generating silence/crisp images, and sometimes making a strange mesh of noisy, grainy, superpositions. But one thing is for certain- the frequency of the underlying components, both temporally and spatially, seemed to go up as a function of how high I was on the 2C-B.\nI suppose that many people would read Atasoy’s work and Andres’s speculation about how it could be extended to quantify how happy you are (ref) to mean that in any given moment, you are experiencing just one frequency- or maybe two or three. But I think it’s more like you have a broad range of frequencies active at any point in time, and on psychedelics, the range of possible combinations explodes. At any single point in time, they are both superimposed on and interfere with each other. I guess I thought this was very abstract before the trip, but now I think I was able to feel that process from the inside and know what brain harmonics refer to. The mesh of increasingly high-frequency Moiré patterns is how it looks and sounds like- how it feels like- from the inside, to retune your connectome-harmonics upward.\n \n\n\n\nAt the time, I thought that this could potentially be explained by making an analogy to keyboards, where each brain harmonic is like a musical note on a keyboard. On 2C-B, you get a double keyboard, with a wider range of possible notes. And perhaps LSD would be not only giving you more possible notes, but also providing you with additional features- like, for example, a general synthesizer that can apply distortions to the sounds. 2C-B has some other effects in addition to increasing the range of available notes, but they are hard to describe. Reverb and delays are there for sure, but not crazy things like on-the-fly timbre modifications, which are more akin to the weirdness of LSD. More generally, my experience has been that phenethylamines have fewer features than lysergamides and tryptamines. On the other hand, when it comes to establishing an emotional base, phenethylamines have a certain “loving” frequency that persists throughout the experience, and I think that makes them better in many contexts.\nEmotion\nThis train of thought led me to consider my experience in light of something that Mike Johnson recently blogged about: the view that our moods are the result of the key signature of our brain state:\nThis is not to say our key signatures are completely static, however: an interesting thread to pull here may be that some brains seem to flip between a major key and a minor key, with these keys being local maximas of harmony. I suspect each is better at certain kinds of processing, and although parts of each can be compatible with the other, each has elements that present as defection to the internal logic of the other and so these attractors can be ‘sticky’.\n– Mike Johnson, A Future for Neuroscience\nWith respect to emotion, the things I experienced are very hard to describe, but I’ll give it a go. I think, on average, if you aggregated all the micro-moods of the experience, it would come out to be fairly positive overall- maybe a +3 on the -10 to +10 scale. But the mood would fluctuate in peculiar ways over a period of just fractions of a second. There was an underlying low-frequency tonality to the experience- which was very pleasant- that I think may be the result of the mildly euphoric, stimulant-like effect which 2C-B has. This was a strong base for the overall quality of the total mood, and it made the experience very pleasant for the most part. But there was another big component of mood, that could switch from pleasant to worried and back in the span of about half a second. It didn’t sway the base euphoria very much, and I was actually able to appreciate the switching quality. All in all, I mostly stayed on the positive side, and the negative moods were very fleeting (seconds at most). But I was amazed at how little stability there was, and how the buzzing of various frequencies didn’t settle into a particular coherent emotional impression. It certainly felt like the mood was directly connected to the buzzing of notes, which were creating a complex, chaotic symphony made up of meshes of brain harmonics. Thankfully, it was certainly biased towards positive and awe-inspiring moods. My self-model was also disassembled and reassembled with constantly shifting emotional tones. The come-up in particular had a certain anxious edge, and the semantic content of that anxiety seemed to be connected to particular things I’ve done in the past which have embarrassed me. Undergoing those emotions was intense, but it also felt somehow cleansing. It’s like- once you fully see the consequences of your embarrassing actions (or at least imagine them), you don’t worry about it as much. You get used to it and move on.\nHigh-Energy Consciousness\nAs I approached the moment I would finally plateau, I experienced many different philosophical views of reality as distinct, short, intense bursts of existential feelings. In these states, one “realizes” that particular philosophical views must be true by the sheer fact of how intense they feel. I can certainly recall having believed in such intense feelings in the past, especially when I was in my early twenties and trying psychedelics for the first time. This time, the images were still as intense as they had been before in similar levels of alteration, but they were about different topics (it’s been a while since I’ve experimented with psychedelics). I recognize that these experiences have a powerful capacity to shake up your pre-existing model of the world. You either cling to your previous models and suffer, or you let go and get brainwashed into having new metaphysical views of reality. I don’t know… Over the years, the content of those feelings has changed, and I’ve seen contradictory things which seemed like the final truth at the time. I think I now interpret these intense bursts of philosophically-flavored experiences as being instances of some kind of “energetically super-charged, super-coherent state of consciousness”. I can see how many people could arrive at the conclusion that these bursts of intense consciousness are messages from aliens, or perhaps psychic laser beams coming from a secret organization, or whatnot. God, the divine, infinite life, now-ness, Buddha nature, awakening, etc. are all suitably grandiose concepts that sort of provide a conceptual framework to make sense of these super-high-energy states of consciousness. Alternatively, we just haven’t figured out how to harness these unusual state-spaces of consciousness for information-processing purposes, or even for non-brainwashy aesthetic experiences… they confuse the heck out of us.\nWe currently lack the conceptual frameworks and adequate techniques to make sense of, and make use of, super-high-energy states of consciousness.\nAnyhow, in this particular case, the intense flashes of super-energetic consciousness seemed to be about the reality of the present moment on the one hand, and the way in which scent is related to feeling alive on the other. It sounds arbitrary, but it didn’t feel arbitrary at the time. I remember looking for things to smell in my house and finding an essential oil of orange (as well as cinnamon powder, mint tea, ground coffee, and nutmeg). The particular orange smell of that essential oil really seemed to resonate with my state. How should I put it? It was an intense feeling of awake effervescence, youthful reality, and spacious energy. The scent seemed to be a key for a lock, that when turned, would bring all the channels of my experiential field into contact and into a unified expression of “presence/aliveness”. Ok, this is word salad. I’m not going to pretend this is anything but poetic allusion. Here is a concrete, logical-sounding insight instead: I felt like I was finally able to make sense of what scent qualia is getting at. Scent qualia is the phenomenological expression of the resonant signature that is produced in a high-dimensional manifold as a result of energizing it with a certain combination of frequencies. Sorry, word salad again. Let’s try once more…\nOrange essential oil seemed like the olfactory equivalent of playing all the notes of a major chord at once. In fact, every scent felt like it had an equivalent in auditory qualia, and that we could describe a scent as presenting you with every note in a key signature all at once. It gave me the impression that perhaps scent is a qualia that can be experienced in a much more general way. Imagine that, all your life, you’ve only ever listened to music made by playing all the notes of certain keys at the same time. I’m sure you could make compelling music that way, and if our brains didn’t separate the notes, we might get the impression that that is all there is to music. Perhaps we are restricted in this way for scents, and the scent of lavender is, in fact, decomposable into a whole number of notes. And I don’t mean chemically purifying the product, because I think that even pure chemicals have complex smells. During the experience, I kept coming back to the orange scent to try to capture the overall emotional key signature of my state. Warm, loving, intense, bright, surprising, flickering, effervescent, citric. Make of this what you will.\nState-space of scent qualia (adapted from: Categorical Dimensions of Human Odor Descriptor Space Revealed by Non-Negative Matrix Factorization; Castro, Ramanathan, Chennubhotla. 2013; link)\nMany of the “moments of experience” (ref) of high energy I experienced seemed to be half-posed questions and lack semantic content in the conventional sense. I assume that they could be co-opted by beliefs that say “that’s your karma” and “that’s God” or “that’s a vision of the future”, but honestly, all of those interpretations fall short of the actual thing- which, at the time, seemed more like random snippets of hyper-associations in a super-energized form, akin to a high-dimensional neuronal resonance box, if that makes any sense.\nSometimes the powerful bursts of high-energy consciousness were about the concept of now, and its connection to Open and Empty Individualism, and also the way it connects to the concept of “pure awareness”. I’ve explored these threads before, and it’s always startling when you get these flashes that feel like they mean something and yet contain almost no information. To extend the analogy with musical key signatures, it occurs to me that these states are in fact important nodal points in high-energy state-spaces of consciousness, but we don’t understand either their context or the way in which they fit together with all other possible experiences. I got the impression that these states have their own unique grammatical, syntactic, and semantic structure that is ultimately closed and self-consistent. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of recognizing a song by hearing one brief sub-second fragment of it. You realize there is more, much more, to it, and that the little fragment you heard is meaningless out of context. Yet the fragment is compelling in that it evokes and suggests a whole world of experience. These states feel like that- a high-energy fragment of something that seems completely genuine, whose level of structure and emotional depth is just complete enough to be highly suggestive of a higher world of organization into which such fragments could fit perfectly. From a secular point of view, one could perhaps describe this as the first glimpses of an art form that will be accessible to transhumans and posthumans, once the underlying laws that rule the emotional character of such experiences are understood and mastered.\nExistential Humor and Semantic Nihilism\nAt the conceptual level, I remember that my mind latched onto two related themes: existential humor and semantic nihilism. For reference, I Heart Huckabees would be an example of a movie that plays with existential humor. The movie touches on existential crisis and absence of meaning; and it manages to be funny not despite it but because of it.\nExistential humor is humor in the face of unresolved existential questions. Part of what makes this humor work is its self-reflective nature. It’s the humor of the fact that humor is possible in such circumstances. I think that the unresolved mood of the 2C-B state didn’t allow for an over-arching gestalt to form, and one could say it kept being a sort of affective pastiche. Like musical improvisation without a central theme. The deep philosophical questions that were posed didn’t produce deep undertones, like they usually do on LSD. Perhaps this makes it a more friendly state in a way… the buzzing of competing moods protects you from going too deep into some existential crisis, and allows you to sort of have some distance from any particularly unpleasant impression. The only somewhat constant feature here was giddiness, which probably explains why humor was present even though deep existential questions seemed to be both posed and left unresolved.\nIn turn, I also gained a new appreciation of the general idea of semantic nihilism (which I saw mentioned here). I once took a philosophy of language class in which we discussed Frege, Quine, and Wittgenstein. I was impressed by the fact that these authors would suggest that the semantic content of words was in some way completely relative. I may be misremembering, but I have the image in my mind of a text by Quine where he talks about how meaning is the result of a network of references and has no fundamental grounding (ref). He claimed that analytic and synthetic statements weren’t truly different- at least, not out of context. I didn’t know how to respond to this at the time, but over the years, I’ve thought about it now and then. It’s not like I’ve had the time to sit down and read that philosophy of language textbook again- and maybe I should- but I get the sense that one could, in principle, reformulate meaning by grounding it in qualia. These “no ground of reference” ideas fly in the face of felt-sense and my ability to use attentional attractors as designators. [Edit after writing this – turns out Andres has already discussed something along these lines in an article]. But what if someone claims that qualia is not enough to ground meaning? I think that hearing a strong argument against the view that qualia and meaning are connected would be very interesting. This is what my mind came up with during the trip- the view that not even feelings can be used as the source of meaning. The existential humor seemed to play very well with semantic nihilism. After all, isn’t it funny if nothing means anything and you are still laughing about it? It’s contagious laughter, that’s why. The thought that there was no true reason for why the laughter was appropriate was itself very funny. And then I’d apply the same mental move to this meta-funny layer, and so on. It was hilarious- in a niche philosophical sort of way- which only certain people who are obsessed with understanding reality could probably relate to.\nAs an aside, I think that if we look at it from a cultural point of view, most people would have a bad time if they were to experience a high-energy state of consciousness that does not reach a conclusion. The abstract expressionism of felt-sense, meaning, and audio-visual qualia is alarming without a framework to make sense of it. I realized that applying semantic nihilism to these experiences made me feel comfortable with them not actually meaning anything specific. It seemed okay that they would stay as they were: existential feelings with no resolution. I think that perhaps some aesthetics could really turn this into an art form. Perhaps Buddhist Vipassana meditation is trying to get at this.\nSymmetry Groups\nI paid a lot of attention to the visual textures I saw during the relatively long plateau. The textures that I had saved to look at were a bit enhanced, but they were not as interesting, I found, as the textures of the wall, ceiling, carpet, and blankets. The key difference was the fact that the live textures had actual depth. Although subtle, it still gave rise to interesting effects. I started the journey with the intention of examining the symmetrical structures of the textures I saw. I was impressed by the idea that a mathematician who experimented with LSD was able to catalogue each of the 17 wallpaper groups in his visual hallucinations (ref). I, on the other hand, was only able to see a few. Sadly, I didn’t practice naming the symmetries before going into the trip. But I can say that I noted mirror symmetry was rarely involved, and that the simplest, the one called “o”, was the one I saw the most frequently. By looking at the table now, I can definitely say that I also saw “2222”. I did see a lot of rotational symmetry elements, and they would click together to form larger symmetrical bundles. It was very interesting to watch.\n \n\n\nI tried to really pay close attention to how the visuals were formed. It was very fascinating. I recall that there are many “subtypes” of visual effects, and they’ve been catalogued to some extent (ref). But what I noted this time was how they are all interconnected. Here is the story: first, the texture would appear relatively normal, just slightly brighter than normal. Then the positive after-image of the texture would linger for long enough to start overlaying onto itself. Then there would be a critical moment where that positive after-image would flip into a negative after-image (e.g. from orange to aqua, green to magenta, white to black, etc.). My brain would then try to deal with the presence of the negative after-image, and somehow fit it discreetly into the texture, in order to preserve as much information as possible from the “real texture”. Here is where the depth comes into play. For whatever reason, the negative after-image would tend to find its place in the crevices of the texture. There, it would form wavy patterns that seemed to self-organize in parallel lines. Once parallel, the patterns would lock into symmetrical shapes and dance together in synchrony. So now I had this two-layered texture that behaved as a unified wave pattern, and after a little while that would form a positive after-image, which in time would start to overlay onto itself- and then my mind would have to find a way to deal with that. With each iteration, my mind would find new ways to fit all of that residual after-image bundle together, and this would often look like some kind of surface trying to be shaped into something recognizable. I got the distinct feeling that whenever I could see something in the texture (cf. apophenia), the overall amount of after-image to deal with would be drastically reduced. I remember an article where the concept of energy sinks was discussed, and I think that both symmetrical re-arrangements of the residual after-image bundles and semantically-meaningful re-arrangements of them both seemed to work as energy sinks. Hence, the symmetrical texture repetition is a way by which the energy of these after-image bundles gets dissipated (and the surface gets locked in the shape that sucked out its energy). I remember thinking how the entire process somehow encapsulates many of the classic visual effect categories; tracers, drifting, pattern recognition, and symmetrical texture repetition all fit together in a continuous sequence of unfolding re-arrangements of an after-image bundle surface. Perhaps some trippers will relate to this description.\nVisual Tracers\nI also spent some time trying to figure out how to describe the tracers. I probably spent about 10 minutes doing this, and got to a fairly satisfying account, I think. The tracers were mostly composed of “echoes” rather than being the result of applying just a smooth and long decay function. Based on playing with GIFs, I estimated that the first visual echo lagged behind the original stimulation by about 200ms. Then there was another echo (the echo of the echo) which happened roughly 400ms afterwards. I took some time to look at the pictures in How to secretly communicate with people on LSD, and the GIFs seemed to work, but not exactly as the text describes it. It was really cool, though. During the plateau, I found it hard to tell which of the images had the artificial tracer on top (see the article’s “Secret C” GIFs for reference).\n(notice the double echo)\nMusic\nI will conclude by mentioning that music was very intense and interesting in this state. I specifically noted that music with reverb sounded massively amplified (example). With the appropriate combination of meditation and reverb-rich sounds, I could experience very pleasant states of equanimity that I don’t usually experience sober. I tried playing pulses of sound and seeing if I could experience “auditory tracers”, but it didn’t seem to work. That is, there wasn’t a clear analogue to the trace structure in the auditory domain. Rather, it’s less that “sound itself sounded like it had more reverb”, and more that “for the sound that already does have reverb, such reverb seemed amplified”. Why would the reverb itself sound amplified? And what is the reverb signature of such amplification? I don’t know! These seem like fertile grounds for novel research.\nAnd that’s about it. I hope you find these observations useful, and if not, at least interesting to read. Peace! ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/02/03/detailed-2c-b-trip-report-by-an-anonymous-reader/", "title": "Detailed 2C-B Trip Report by an Anonymous Reader", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-02-04T03:11:51+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=15", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "acfa63c3d6418b51093c622f9302e6cc", "summary": []}
{"text": "Triple S Genetic Counseling: Predicting Hedonic-Set Point with Commercial-Grade DNA Testing as an Effective Altruist Project\n\nThe term “Transhumanism” has many senses. It is a social movement, a philosophy, a set of technologies, and a conceptual rallying flag. David Pearce pins down the core sentiment behind the term like this:\nIf we get things right, the future of life in the universe can be wonderful beyond the bounds of human imagination: a “triple S” civilisation of superlongevity, superintelligence and superhappiness.\n– David Pearce, in The 3 Supers\nThe concept of a “triple S” civilization is very widely applicable. For example, one can imagine future smart homes designed with it in mind. Such smart homes would have features to increase your longevity (HEPA filters, humidity control, mold detectors, etc.), increase your intelligence (adaptive noise-canceling, optimal lighting, smart foods), and happiness (mood-congruent lighting, music, aromas, etc.). Since there are trade-offs between these dimensions, one could specify how much one values each of them in advance, and the smart home would be tasked with maximizing a utility function based on a weighted average between the three S’s.\nLikewise, one could apply the “triple S” concept to medical care, lifestyle choices, career development, governance, education, etc. In particular, one could argue that a key driver for the realization of a triple S civilization would be what I’d like to call “triple S genetic counseling.” In brief, this is counseling for prospective parents in order to minimize the risks of harming one’s children by being oblivious to the possible genetic risk for having a reduced longevity, intelligence, or happiness. Likewise, in the more forward-looking transhumanist side of the equation, triple S genetic counseling would allow parents to load the genetic dice in their kid’s favor in order to make them as happy, long-lived, and smart as possible.\nGenetic counseling, as an industry, is indeed about to explode (cf. Nature’s recent article: Prospective parents should be prepared for a surge in genetic data). Predictably, there will be a significant fraction of society that will question the ethics of e.g. preimplantation genetic diagnosis for psychological traits. In practice, parents who are able to afford it will power ahead, for few prospective parents truly don’t care about the (probabilistic) well-being of their future offspring. My personal worry is not so much that this won’t happen, but that the emphasis will be narrow and misguided. In particular, both predicting health and intelligence based on sequenced genomes are very active areas of research. I worry that happiness will be (relatively) neglected. Hence the importance of emphasizing all three S’s.\nIn truth, I think that predicting the hedonic set-point of one’s potential future kids (i.e. the average level of genetically-determined happiness) is a relatively more important project than predicting IQ (cf. A genome-wide association study for extremely high intelligence; BGI). In addition, I anticipate that genetic-based models that predict a person’s hedonic set-point will be much more accurate than those that predict IQ. As it turns out, IQ is extremely polygenetic, with predictors diffused across the entire genome, and it is a very evolutionary recent axis of variance across the population. Predictors of hedonic-set point (such as the “pain-knob gene” SCN9A and it’s variants), on the other hand, are ancient and evolutionarily preserved across the phylogenetic tree. This makes baseline happiness a likely candidate for having a straight-forward universal physiological implementation throughout the human population. Hence my prediction that polygenetic scores of hedonic-set point will be much more precise than those for IQ (or even longevity).\nGiven all of the above, I would posit that a great place to start would be to develop a model that predicts hedonic set-point using all of the relevant SNPs offered by 23andMe*.  Not only would this be “low-hanging fruit” in the field of genetic counseling, it may also be a project that is way up there, close to the top of the “to do” list in Effective Altruism (cf. Cause X; Google Hedonics).\nI thought about this because I saw that 23andMe reports on health predispositions based on single SNPs. From a utilitarian point of view, of particular interest are SNPs related to the SCN9A gene. For example, I found that 23andMe has the rs6746030 SNP, which some studies show can account for a percentage of the variance associated with pain in Parkinson’s and other degenerative diseases. The allele combination A/A is bad, making you more prone to experience pain intensely. This is just one SNP, though, and there ought to be a lot of other relevant SNPs, not only of the SCN9A gene but elsewhere too (e.g. involved in MAO enzymes, neuroplasticity, and pleasure centers innervation).\nConcretely, the task would involve making two models and then combining them:\nThe first model uses people’s responses to 23andMe surveys to come up with a good estimate of a person’s hedonic set-point. Looking at some of the questions they ask, I would argue that there are more than enough dimensions to model how people vary in their hedonic set-point. They ask about things such as perception of pain, perception of spiciness, difficulty sleeping, stress levels, whether exercise is pleasant, etc. From a data science point of view, the challenge here is that number of responses provided by each participant is very variable; some power users respond to every question (and there are hundreds and hundreds), while most people respond to a few questions only, and a substantial minority respond to no questions at all. Most likely, the distribution of responses per participant follows a power law. So the model to build here has to be resilient against absent data. This is not an insurmountable problem, though, considering the existence of Bayesian Networks, PGMs, and statistical paradigms like Item Response Theory. For this reason, the model would need to both predict the most likely hedonic set-point of each participant, and provide confidence intervals specific to the participant based on the quality and relevance of the questions answered.\nThe second model would involve clustering and dimensionality reduction applied to the SNPs that are likely to be relevant for hedonic set-point. For example, one dimension would likely be a cluster of SNPs that are associated with “maximum intensity of pain”, another might be “how quickly pain subsides once it’s stimulated”, another “how much does pleasure counter-balance pain”, and so on. Each of these dimensions is likely to be determined by different neural circuits, and interact in non-linear ways, so they deserve their own separate dimension.\nAnd finally, one would make a third model that combines the two models above, which predicts the hedonic set-point of a person derived from the first model using the genetic dimensions found by the second model. If you are an up-and-coming geneticist, I would like to nudge you in the direction of looking into this. As a side effect, you might as well get filthy rich in the process, as the genetic counseling field explodes in the next decade.\n\nBonus Content: What About Us?\nAdmittedly, many people will note that predicting a fraction of the variance of people’s hedonic set point with commercial DNA testing products will only really alleviate suffering in the medium to long term. The people who will benefit from this technology haven’t been born yet. In the meantime, what do we do about the people who currently have low hedonic set-points? Here is a creative, politically incorrect, and enticing idea:\nLet’s predict which recreational drugs have the best cost-benefit profile for individuals based on their genetic makeup. \nIt is no secret that people react differently to drugs. 23andMe, among others, is currently doing research to predict your particular reaction to a drug based on your genetic makeup (cf. 23andMe can now tell you how you’ll react to 50+ common drugs). Unfortunately for people with anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and other hedonic tone illnesses, most psychiatric drugs are rather subtle and relatively ineffective. No wonder, compared to heroin, an SSRI is not likely to make you feel particularly great. As David Pearce argued in his essay Future Opioids, there is substantial evidence that many people who become addicts are driven to take recreational substances due to the fact that their endogenous opioid system is dysfunctional (e.g. they may have bad variants of opioid receptors, too many endorphin-degrading enzymes, etc.). The problem with giving people hard drugs is not that they don’t work in the short term; it is that they tend to backfire in the long-term and have cumulative negative health effects. As an aside, from the pharmaceutical angle, my main interest is the development of Anti-tolerance Drugs, which would allow hard drugs to work as mood-enhancers indefinitely.\nThis is not to say that there aren’t lucky people for whom the cost-benefit ratio of taking hard drugs is, in fact, rather beneficial. In what admittedly must have been a tongue-in-cheek marketing move, in the year 2010 the genetic interpretation company Knome (now part of Tute Genomics) studied Ozzy Osbourne‘s entire genome in order to determine how on earth he has been able to stay alive despite the gobs and gobs of drugs he’s taken throughout his life. Ozzy himself:\n“I was curious, [g]iven the swimming pools of booze I’ve guzzled over the years—not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol…you name it—there’s really no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive. Maybe my DNA could say why.”\n– Ozzy Osbourne’s Genome (Scientific American, 2010)\nTentatively, Knome scientists said, Ozzy’s capacity to drink entire bottles of Whisky and Gin combined with bowlfuls of cocaine and multiple packs of cigarettes over the course of… breakfast… without ending up in the hospital may be due to novel mutations in his alcohol dehydrogenase gene (ADH4), as well as, potentially, the gene that codes for CLTCL1, a protein responsible for the intake of extra-cellular material into the cell’s inside. These are wild speculations, to be clear, but the general idea is brilliant.\nIndeed, not everyone reacts in the same way to recreational drugs. A recent massive study on the health effects of alcohol funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (cf. No amount of alcohol is good for your overall health) suggests that alcohol is bad for one’s health at every dosage. This goes against the common wisdom backed up with numerous studies that light-drinkers (~1 alcohol unit a day) live longer and healthier lives than teetotalers. The new study suggests that this is not a causal effect of alcohol. Rather, it so happens that a large fraction of teetotalers are precisely the kind of people who react very badly to alcohol as a matter of poor metabolism. Hence, teetotalers are not unhealthy because they avoid alcohol; they avoid alcohol because they are unhealthy, which explains their shorter life expectancy on average. That said, the study did show that 1 alcohol unit a day is, although damaging, very minimally so:\n(source)\nAnyhow, the world’s cultural fascination with alcohol is bizarre to me, considering the existence of drugs that have a much better hedonic and cost-benefit profile (cf. State-Space of Drug Effects). Perhaps finding out with genetic testing that you are likely to be an above-average alcohol metabolizer might be good to lessen your worry about having a couple of drinks now and then. But the much bigger opportunity here would be to allow you to find drugs that you are particularly compatible with. For example, a genetic test might determine based on a polygenetic score that you might benefit a whole lot from taking small amounts of e.g. Khat  (or some such obscure and relatively benign euphoriant). That is, that your genetic make-up is such that Khat will be motivation enhancing, empathy-increasing, good for your heart and lungs, reduce the rate of dopamine neuron death, etc. while at the same time producing little to no hangovers, no irritability, no sleep issues, or social dysfunction. Even though you may have thought that you are “not an uppers person”, perhaps that’s because, genetically, every other upper you have ever tried is objectively terrible for your health. But Khat wouldn’t be. Wouldn’t this information be useful? Indeed, I would posit, this might be a great step in the right direction in order to achieve the goal of  Wireheading Done Right.\n\n*23andMe is here used as a shorthand for services in general like this (including Ancestry, Counsyl, Natera, etc.)\nFeatured image credit: source.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/01/29/triple-s-genetic-counseling-predicting-hedonic-set-point-with-commercial-grade-dna-testing-as-an-effective-altruist-project/", "title": "Triple S Genetic Counseling: Predicting Hedonic-Set Point with Commercial-Grade DNA Testing as an Effective Altruist Project", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-01-30T03:26:02+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=16", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "289614af48eef65b92ef5b70249f69b8", "summary": []}
{"text": "Dream Music\n\nI, too, once thought the radio played\nLet’s act like children while we sleep paralyzed\n– “Scissor Lock” by Dredg (from the album “El Cielo”)\nEl Cielo is an album about lucid dreaming, dreamless sleep, and sleep paralysis. I love the fact that a rock band takes dreaming states of consciousness seriously enough to record an entire album dedicated to them. The line “I, too, once thought the radio played” reminded me of the times I’ve thought music was playing while I was experiencing a sleep paralysis.\nConvincing auditory hallucinations do seem to be commonplace during such states, and ample anecdotal evidence supports this fact. The music experienced can either be (1) generated on the fly, (2) a faithful reproduction of a song one knows, (3) an altered version of a song one has heard and remembers, or even (4) a reproduction of a song one has heard but isn’t aware of at the time.\nExamples of (1) and (2) are alluded to by this experience report found on the website DreamViews:\nI love listening to music in sleep paralysis. The other day it was “I Love it Loud” by Kiss. The song that forms up is usually something fresh in my mind, maybe something listened to earlier. It’s like having headphones in, the sound quality is that good. What songs do you get?\n– User J.D. in DreamViews (source)\nAnd here is FlacidSteel from Reddit relating their experience:\nThat happens to me when I am in the right mindset to have a lucid dream. It normally comes as the sound of the radio next to my bed, or sometimes the TV. When I finally realize I didn’t leave the radio/TV on is when I realize I’m dreaming and gain control of my dream, almost like a reality check. One time I could have sworn the garbage men were outside and I woke up and it was hours before they came. Sleep paralysis hallucinations can be the most convincing and terrifying experienced.\n– From the r/LucidDreaming post “Sleep Paralysis Involving Music” (source)\nI’ve experienced (3) but I haven’t seen an explicit account online. There is at least one account for (4): the music might have been stored in auditory memory but not semantically.\nSleep paralysis for me comes about once a month, and lucid dreams about every two months. Like many, I’ve heard Bach Cello Suite No.1. and other classics. I once heard the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone movie soundtrack playing perfectly for what seemed like many tracks. I think that learning about japanoise changed what my mind thought of as acceptable mood-setting melodies. So when I first started contemplating the emotional character of arbitrary sounds and I fell into a sleep paralysis my mind played a concert that combined noise music and Bach. That time I had the ability to modulate the ratio of noise music to Bach music and see how the various proportions changed the mood I experienced. Noise blunted the quality and emotional depth of Bach. On the other hand, noise did not make me commit to any particular pattern.\nOur minds can create pleasant music on the fly featuring synthesizer sounds, flutes, pianos, duck quacks, elephant trumpets, and so on. Sleep paralysis allows you to experience a broad range of deeply emotional sounds of uncharted varieties. If you are in search of a bang rather than a slow burn, I would point you to the very start of the hypnagogic state. Once a sleep paralysis has gotten going it will creep for a good 5 to 15 minutes depending on your ability to reconfigure it to a better state. Some people use their extremities to bootstrap a wave of wakefulness by energizing little pulsed ripples in one’s toes and fingers until you have yourself wiggling out of the state. The methods to deal with the aftermath of entering a sleep paralysis are myriad. But let’s talk about the point before getting into it. There isn’t a better place to arrest a sleep paralysis than at its very beginning. It’s like a loud sound in the distance is trying to set the mood and seduces you so that you agree to abide by its emotional parameters. When you fully let go for a moment, that’s the real onset of a hypnagogic state. One can hear bangs right there – one can experience sounds with climaxes! Kitchen pots colliding, balloons exploding, water splashing, 80s drums. If you want to interrupt a sleep paralysis you have to contend with the mood-setting forces of the initial hypnagogic bang. Be brave; apply the mental move of either “internalism of meaning” or semantic nihilism and prevent the loud sound from convincing the rest of your experiential world to settle in on this “new world”. If you are quick to detect the hypnagogic sleight of hand and you act decisively, a sleep paralysis can be cut right at the nub.\nDuring sleep paralysis, hearing any kind of sound is possible, really. The generality of it is remarkable. But perhaps more relevant still is the fact that dream music is often experienced as being emotionally compelling. “Like music is supposed to be heard”- I once thought as a kid waking up from a dream with a soundtrack. It is almost like the music is a manifestation of the mood one is in. Deep down, one’s own felt-sense of aliveness provides the constraints for the type of music that will resonate with you on a given night. In turn, having slept well through the night helps you internalize a certain mood, to imagine worlds within certain affective constraints. Some people remark that dream phenomenology is emotion-driven rather than emotion-responsive. What one sees is a projection of one’s mood, the semantic congruence being imposed in often symbolic and round-about ways. It’s like when you’ve had a conversation with someone a thousand times, so you come at it with a certain attitude. “Whatever you say, no, because I’ve seen it all and I’ve always said no. Try me.” And so the dream generates images and scenes and it is somehow always implied that what happens is part of the plot. Contradictions are quickly incorporated rather than a source of questioning. Sleep paralysis has this quality, but it also has the wakeful emotion-responsive quality too. So you are in the weird position of experiencing this strange feedback effect that has a certain mood, and is trying to express its excess energy in whatever way is possible, and you have your ego who is more critical and expects certain behaviors from the world. In a way you can think of this situation as having two metallic blades spinning very fast right next to each other, and they are tied together with a complicated arrangement of pulleys and levers. If you do it right and manage to keep the balance right, no harm done. But if you mess up you can experience super strange dissonant couplings and bizarre vibrations, few of which are strictly pleasant, and most of which are sharp and rather uncomfortable.\nIt’s no wonder some people get traumatized from experiencing sleep paralysis. I assume very few families have a parent-child vocabulary so well developed as to be able to carefully explain sleep paralysis phenomenology in a way that will work at pointing to the thing when it finally happens for the first time. Indeed, what is so stunning about the state is perhaps precisely that which people have the hardest time verbalizing. Namely, the fact that the phenomenal character of this state is almost entirely having to do with its ambiance rather than the intentional objects present. People come out of the state saying “there was a man on top of me” or “I felt like my arms were tied to the bed” which although true, completely misses the essential character of the state, the fact that it had this peculiar dreamy subtlety that embedded a mood into everything it touched. The often Halloweenesque scenic mist that comes with a sleep paralysis is rather paranormal-themed. On a bad night, the ambiance of a sleep paralysis can feel quite inviting to zombies, demons, and vultures as thought-forms. Likewise, the thought-forms can take the shape of angry sounds and dissonant percussions. It is incredible just how powerful of a filter hedonic tone exerts on reality. For that exact same reason, it does happen to be the case that some sleep paralyses are filled with extraordinary beauty and delight. The negative hedonic tone is not intrinsic to the state, although it may seem so at the time. For whatever reason, most humans’ experience with sleep paralysis is of the negative variety, but for most sufferers every once in a while the experience comes with pleasant qualities. Indeed, there is no reason to think that devoid of evolutionary selection pressures, exotic states of alertness should come with a pre-defined hedonic tone. On the contrary, I would expect them to be fully programmable.\nAnyhow, some people, myself included, have experienced sleep paralysis in which the sounds heard were of extraordinary beauty. Most people will be skeptical that the music our brains can compose on the fly in a good mood sleep paralysis is genuinely good. I’ve gone through several stages on this matter. At first I treated it as self-evidently true that the music was beautiful. Then I questioned my memory and convinced myself that my brain was fabricating the music after the fact and that I was under the illusion that it was beautiful to begin with. Then I finally memorized a little melody I heard and it was nice but too small to say much about when I woke up, so I suspected again that my brain could compose great music if I just let it do it on that state. But finally I realized that the melody is in fact quite irrelevant. What matters is the mood, and the state itself, the good mood sleep paralysis itself is in a way expressing its positive valence via sounds, but if you were to listen to them in a normal state, they wouldn’t resonate in the same way. They wouldn’t produce the same peculiar echoing along one’s subjective arrow of time (cf. The Pseudo-Time Arrow).\nNaïvely one may think: let us put musicians in good mood sleep paralysis and produce great music very easily. The problem is not that you will not get melodies and rhythms out. It’s that they will not create the same emotional impression they did in the person in the state in which they were generated.\nRather, what we ought to do is figure out in what ways good mood sleep paralysis states enable a wider range of emotional contrast for phenomenal music. That’s the real question. How can we import the (good) emotional depth of sleep paralysis into the wakeful state? Deep down I suspect this comes down to disabling the boredom mechanism. It is not so much that good mood sleep paralysis is great at composing music, and more that it can create a dreamy “enjoyment body” for the music. The thought-forms there can be entranced with harmonic patterns much more easily than those present while awake.\nIn the general case I suspect that the music produced is entirely new… it’s the emotional character that convinces you that it is so profound, not its resemblance to a previously heard soundtrack. To reword: the precise melody of the music one experiences on dream states is almost irrelevant to understanding that world of experience. It’s the resonant echoey quality of the state that gives such a remarkable emotional depth to those imagined/experienced sounds.\nPerhaps the fact that dream music can be profoundly emotionally compelling is a special case of the more general feature of such states: that the brain is in some ways more resonant than usual. Music might be just one manifestation of this general effect, others being unlocking rarely-felt emotions, body vibrations, or even things like feeling that you are being electrocuted. If resonance is the key, we could predict that a sufficiently trained lucid dreamer will be able to generate musical experiences that are surprisingly simple in their complexity and yet stunningly deep in their emotional character. What is the CDNS of a dream state? This story doesn’t end here.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/01/06/dream-music/", "title": "Dream Music", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-01-07T07:49:29+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=16", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e3f0c250e3da9d73ead03d2781bdd64f", "summary": []}
{"text": "Free-Wheeling Hallucinations\n\n\n[at 12:40] Q: Is the content of our experience epistemological?\nA: If you take the right combination of psychedelic substances* you can get yourself in a state which is a full free-wheeling hallucination, which looks every bit as real as this world, and yet you know it’s not real because of the crazy things that happen in that world. You can have direct conscious control of those objects. You can say “give me a table” and a table will appear right in front of you as real as a solid table. Now, the first time you have this experience you think “Oh My God! What is this? What’s going on?” And the most profoundly shocking thing about the experience is the complete and total absence of your own body at the center of the experience. So here you have a space, somewhat like this space you see in this room… but there’s nobody in it! And yet the space is crammed full of images that morph rapidly from one to another through all kinds of crazy contortions. And your sense of your own self is forced to migrate away from the body that’s no longer there and takes up residence in the space itself, and you become aware of the fact that there is this spherical theater of the mind in which images are generated by your mind, full three-dimensional solid-looking real images with color, and lightning, and shadow, and mirror image effects, and reflections, and refractions. Everything we see in the normal world, and yet obviously they are not images of the world, they are images that are generated inside the mind. And that there shows that the space of our experience is a representational space that’s capable of maintaining images, but that the images have no real external reality- unless they happened to be coupled to external events. And this is the distinction that many seers and thinkers have made between the imaging mechanism that’s capable of generating images, and the images that it generates.\n\n* Which drug combinations produce free-wheeling hallucinations? We find a more in-depth description of the phenomenon in Lehar’s book The Grand Illusion. The type of drug combo reported to lead to free-wheeling hallucinations in this book involves mixing a dissociative (DXM, PCP, Ketamine) and a psychedelic or psychedelic-like substance (LSD, Mescaline, even THC). For example DXM + THC (marijuana) is the first combination reported to produce this effect. Later on Ketamine + LSD + THC is proposed as the most effective method to achieve this state. \nHere is an excerpt from the book that discusses the phenomenon in detail (pgs. 63-70 and 109):\nAround the time I was experimenting with ecstasy and LSD, I discovered a whole new class of drugs, the dissociative drugs. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my experiments with Nitrous Oxide had been my first foray into the dissociative realm. Perusing on the internet brought my attention to Dextromethorphan, or DXM, known in the drug world as “Robo”, because it is the active ingredient in Robitussin DM, the cough medicine. Following my education on the internet, I took my first Robo experience by slugging down a whole bottle of the sickly sweet Robitussin syrup, which I could only hold down for a while before it all came back up again. The result was a state of profound mental befuddlement. I really had no clue at all. I became very uncoordinated, and could only move slowly like a sloth, for fear of losing my balance and falling over. And my thoughts shrank down to a tiny trickle of one intense but simple thought at a time. It was only by accident that I discovered the unique power of Robo. I was lying on my bed, probably wondering why I was doing this to myself, when I noticed a peculiar phenomenon. When I closed my eyes, the world around me failed to disappear! There it was, bold as brass, right there before me in all its color and glory, while my eyelids were firmly closed! I blinked open, then closed again. No difference! My eyelids had become transparent! I could see right through them! What was actually happening was that my mind had made an image of the world before me, partly as a visual after-image, and partly by visual memory and perceptual filling-in, and it was presenting that image to me with eyes closed as if my eyes were still open! It was absolutely extraordinary! It was only on a later occasion, several years later, that I discovered that these hallucinations need not be boring copies of consensual reality, as had occurred in this case, but if you just ask for them to present something more interesting, they will happily oblige! In other words, Robo gives you the power to produce full free-wheeling hallucinations on demand! You can experience virtually anything you want, if you can just imagine it! Those of you who are familiar with the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, the ability to have startlingly real and vibrant dreams which can also be brought under voluntary control, already know of this wondrous capacity of the human mind, to build complete synthetic hallucinated worlds of visual experience every bit as vivid and apparently real as the waking world. If nothing else, this should clearly clinch the case for the World In Your Head.\nOn the internet I later read about robo parties where people would assemble in one room, consume Robo simultaneously, then they lie back and close their eyes and share a collective hallucination. For example they might agree in advance to take a trip to the moons of Mars. Then they all lie down and close their eyes, and their collective trip would begin. One will say “fasten your seat belts”, another will hit the launch button, a third might remark on the rumble of the rocket and the view of the sky out the viewport, and everything that they describe is hallucinated by everyone else simultaneously, although each in their own personal way, so they are literally sharing a single consensual experience, except this time totally de-coupled from objective external reality. The very existence or possibility of this capacity is very instructive of the principles behind human perception.\nIn my own solitary explorations of the dissociated state I put this imaging power to the test, with a combination of Robo and Marijuana. This time I had read about a chemical procedure by which one can separate the Robo from the Robitussin DM with an acid / base reduction process. I carefully followed the directions in my kitchen, and what emerged after a couple of hours of mixing and boiling, was a glob of clear goo at the bottom of my beaker. I tasted it, and it tasted like hell fire! It was inconsumable! So I stirred it up with some orange juice and slugged it all down. I immediately felt very very sick, and after no more than about a minute, it all came back up again, to my great relief. But the chemical had done its thing, and I was plunged into a state of the deepest mental confusion. I retreated to my tripping room and reclined on my recliner, took a few notes in my notebook, and recorded the time. The image of the clock, and everything else in the room, was double. Even with an effort of will, I could not fuse my binocular vision, so it became more easy and comfortable to just close my eyes. What followed was some number of hours of the wildest mental confusion, with senseless whirling images tumbling through my mind, one following the next in completely senseless procession. I just let it go and went for the ride, having lost all sense of who or even what I was, or where I was located. All that existed for me was those chaotic tumbling patterns.\n[…]\nIn any case, I “awoke” the next morning in a very gray and colorless foggy space with little in the way of mental images, just a gray sense of being trapped within the vast cavern of my mind. I opened my eyes to a double-image world, and found the pipe thoughtfully pre-loaded with marijuana that I had left for myself, along with the clock and notepad, before launching into the experience the day before. And sure enough, consistent with my new theory, after smoking the pipe, I closed my eyes and found that the internal world was now splashed with color and light and all kinds of interesting shapes and patterns. I had arrived in the state I had been targeting all along.\nOnce I realized that I was in the free-wheeling hallucination stage, I took a look at the experience. Where was my body? I was in a space somewhat like the last room I remembered being in, but I had no body! Or did I? When I looked down at my hands, (with eyes actually closed) there they were, floating in space, disconnected from anything else. And the rest of my body was just gone! Or was it? When I asked myself about it, there it was! Or I could make it disappear again at will! My choice! I was like God who can think any thought, and it becomes reality. So I thought to myself “let there be a table”, and there was a table! Right there in front of me! A rectangular top, four legs, aspect ratio about 1:2, just your typical canonical table. And I could rotate it in my mind’s eye to see it from any angle I chose, and I could translate, rotate, and zoom my viewpoint by just wishing it. I could even turn my viewpoint upside-down. I tried it! And when I zoomed in to examine the table closer I discovered a strange thing. If I did not bother to imagine a body for myself, then I had a disembodied experience, like the view from an eyeball floating in empty space. I could see a view from a point, but there was no body or self at that point. And in this disembodied state there was no longer an objective sense of scale. When I zoomed in to take a closer look at the table there was no distinction between my looking from closer, and the table simply zooming to larger size. Zooming in on the table was at the same time shrinking down to the size of an ant. This gave direct meaning to Empedocles’s dictum that man is the measure of all things.\nBut there were limits to what I was able to image. For example I tried to fulfill one of my long time fantasies, and fly a Spitfire in aerial combat in the Battle of Britain. “Let there be a spitfire cockpit around me”, I commanded, and there it was, with a view of the English countryside from 20,000 feet. But the picture was not very good. I could only see one instrument at a time on the panel, and even that only with an effort, and the view of the world around me was very sketchy and simplistic, so I gave it up after a while. I guess there are limits to the power of imagination in the dissociated state. It is extraordinarily difficult to keep one’s head in such a dissociated state. The free-wheeling hallucination stage follows only after a period of such profound confusion and dissociation that no coherent pictures can form, there is just a wild roller-coaster ride of one fantastical vision after another in such a nonsensical sequence as to make your head spin. When things settle down a bit, and your experience settles into a more stable, coherent state, it is hard to remember that this journey was taken for a purpose, and that the scientific psychonaut should remember to observe and remember as much as he can. The experience is generally a chaotic blur, with little flashes of imagery that are later recalled piecemeal. For example I remember seeing a head, in 3-D right before me, but it was flickering and flashing at a truly blinding rate between millions of variations, a black face, a white face, a man, a woman, an ape, an android, but flashing so fast between these countless alternatives like fanning rapidly through a picture book with your thumb. I found it extraordinary that my mind was capable of such rapid switching of imagery, especially considering the fact that the mind is slowed considerably by the effects of dissociative drugs, and that was probably the only reason that I could distinguish the fleeting individual heads at all. Under more normal consciousness the many heads blur into one general head of indefinite features, the general concept of head that applies to all heads, and thus to none individually. In retrospect, after much contemplation of this and other similar experiences, I came to hypothesize that I was seeing the method by which the brain expresses the general concept, which it does apparently in a very literal way, as a kind of probabilistic superposition of mutually inconsistent alternatives through which it cycles at a blinding speed. This is what your visual system does in a flash when a new face appears, before settling on the one face recreated from memory that best fits the sensory evidence before us. This was a profoundly moving discovery.\nThe dissociative state does more than just dissociate your experience from the external world, creating a solipsistic inner experience, but it also dissociates one brain area from another, causing a mental fragmentation in which one no longer feels like a single individual, but as a kind of fragmented collective consciousness almost like a multiple-personality syndrome, or a cacophony of asynchronous “group thought”. The most direct and obvious manifestation of this strong dissociation was seen in vision turning double, as also happens when one is profoundly drunk. It just becomes too great an effort to keep the two eyes fused, so one tends to relax and just let the world turn double, each eye ignoring the experience of the other, and thus, it is normally more relaxing and less disturbing to simply close your eyes, and in the dissociated state this does nothing to reduce the vividness or clarity of the experience. Thoughts also dissociate from each other, allowing one part of your mind to think one thing, while another part thinks something completely different. Your mind becomes a cacophony of discordant voices, you lose your sense of being a single self. This also was a fascinating experience with profound philosophical implications.\nThere is a strange sense of space that takes over as your world of experience becomes dissociated, as your perceived body fragments into a million pieces and dissolves seamlessly into the surrounding world of non-self, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the self expands outward to encompass the whole world of your experience. Your self is transformed from a central body-shaped object, to a larger spatial void that is just crammed full of images madly morphing from one pattern to the next. This world is your all, it is the screen that defines the maximum extent of your possible experience, just as a television screen, with its glowing colored dots, defines the full range of all possible images that can be expressed in that gamut of colors. And during the free-wheeling hallucination stage, I would experience a succession from one moving experience to the next, from Egyptian pyramids in a desert, to the mountains of Mars, to people, faces, creatures, concepts, and wild pattens in an endless state of flux. It is one thing to read about these experiences as happening to someone else, but it is quite another to “be” those endless visions, and to have them be as real to you as any experience in the real world!\nI came to call this phenomenon the “egg world”, a roughly ellipsoidal volume of space stretching to often dark shadowy and indistinct limits, like the dome of the sky matched by the bowl of an inverted sky, but with a curious missing hemifield back behind what would have been behind my head, a volumetric space in which the images appear, morphing from one interpretation to the next, like a surrealistic painting by Dali. In fact, the radical transformation of one object to something completely different, was typical of the visual transformations, they tended to shift abruptly like one of those Gestalt illusions where a young lady is transformed into an old hag, and back again. In this profound state of intoxication I lost all sense of the distinction between the world itself and the experience of it in my mind. I got the sense that I was directly experiencing the cataclysmic transformation of the universe, or at least the only universe of which I was aware, and that whole universe was exploding into senseless fragments. I felt I was witnessing the cataclysmic birth or death of the entire universe, witnessed not by viewing from the outside, but by being the universe undergoing those cataclysmic events. There was nothing else beyond myself that entered into my awareness, I was isolated in a kind of “brain in a vat” solipsistic experience disconnected from external reality.\nAnd yet at the same time I had a sense that my universe was finite and bounded, delimited by the outer shell of the egg-like space, a surface whose distance was indefinite or fuzzy, or changeable, not unlike the space you see before you with eyes closed, or in pitch darkness, and the dimensions of that space seemed to depend on what was being imaged in that space. I had a claustrophobic sensation of being trapped within the confines of this egg-shaped world, and in that thought was embodied the notion of the possible existence of something else beyond, of the great infinite blackness of non-experience beyond the limits of my experienced world.\nAnd with that thought, there came another, which I found even more moving still. With that thought came a thought, why do I have to be trapped within my own self? Why can’t this beautiful energetic spirit that is me, escape the confines of my brain, and go out into the external world? Not as a supernatural spirit, I don’t believe in those. But as a resonance in some kind of resonator built for that purpose, that operates on the same essential principles as the resonance in our brain. Why don’t we build machines that have the same power of dynamic image generation as our brain, and thus, create consciousness beyond the biological mind? And if we can create resonators that replicate the principle of the human brain, we can then interconnect them in a global network, where the images in the various resonators would be coupled with each other so as to produce a single emergent global mind, distributed across all the resonators in the network. It is hard to express the profoundly moving nature of that thought. This was the philosophy of experience seen in a completely different light.\nThere was another aspect of the dissociated psychedelic experience that impressed itself on me, and that was the sound that I heard. Although I tended not to notice unless I attended to it deliberately, there was a strange and constant sound in the background during all these experiences, and that sound could be described as the thrumming of some great machine, or the drone of enormous deep organ pipes that vibrated to the core of my soul. There was a kind of “chugga chugga chugga” or “thumpa thumpa thumpa” sound, but that was only one component. On top of that were higher pitched and faster cycling sounds all the way to the highest audible tone, and these sounds were rich and deep and periodic and chaotic, all at the same time, impossible to describe. I came to believe that this was the sound that my brain makes when it is thinking. This is the sound of thought.\n[…]\nKetamine marked for me the final shattering of the last vestiges of the naïve illusion that what we are seeing in experience is the world itself. After you have lived through as many free-wheeling hallucinations as I have, you realize that your mind is first and foremost, a magnificent three-dimensional holographic image projection mechanism, capable of rendering some truly awesome experienced scenes, with incredible capacities for generating texture, patterns, shapes, transparency, color, light and shadow, multiple illumination, radiance or self-illuminance, mirror reflections, and refraction as through water or glass. Our visual mind works like a modern ray-tracing algorithm that creates synthetic scenes using fractal algorithms complete with illumination and shadow, except it is capable of generating the most complex scenes in a fraction of a second, and hundreds of these images per second! Once you have seen how vivid and clear and complex a world your mind is capable of fabricating in an instant of time, you must acknowledge both a deep appreciation for the outstanding capacity of the brain to pull off that stunt, and at the same time, a deep awe at the thought of the real world itself, beyond our experience, of which the world of experience is no more than a cartoon caricature over-simplification.\n\n\nIt is worth complementing Lehar’s report with the findings of another lucid psychonaut, James L. Kent of Psychedelic Information Theory. He also identifies the “psychedelic + dissociative” combination as an area of special interest for studying hallucinations. That said, he also points out that if one takes this combo in conjunction with an acetylcholine promoter of some sort the experience can easily become overwhelming and uncontrollable (crossing the boundary between fun and free-wheeling to unpleasantly chaotic and out of control; cf. criticality):\nThe ACh promotion of dreaming and REM has been demonstrated in animal research, but only subjectively reported and presumed in humans. Subjective reports of combining both the dissociative ketamine and the psychedelic LSD with pre-doses of galantamine and choline (both acetylcholine promoters) indicates that ACh promoters facilitate emotionally intense eidetic hallucinations, sometimes uncomfortable or unpleasant in nature, emerging beyond the subject’s capacity to control. This demonstrates that the production of eidetic imagery in response to ACh modulation is a spontaneous and automatic function of memory consolidation that cannot be easily controlled by the will or intent of the subject. The spontaneous production of salient eidetic memory makes psychedelics a useful tool in psychotherapy, but the uncontrollable flood of eidetic imagery may not always be pleasant for the subject. States of intense eidetic hallucination may be associated with memory regression, imprinting, reconsolidation, and neuroplasticity.\n– Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason (pg. 94)\n\nAs they say in my hometown: It’s all fun and games until someone becomes a globular cluster of arborized realities. Don’t overdo the acetylcholine.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/01/06/free-wheeling-hallucinations/", "title": "Free-Wheeling Hallucinations", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-01-07T02:35:27+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=16", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "226668346fc61926fcb1b0e566e0fc30", "summary": []}
{"text": "Philip K. Dick’s LSD Trip\n\nScene from Philip K. Dick’s novel “Maze of Death”. According to him, this is a detailed and 100% accurate description of his most intense LSD trip. During this experience he allegedly started speaking out loud religious phrases in perfect Latin even though he had never studied this language in his entire life (he also claimed that a girl was there and can confirm that it really happened, though I haven’t found any direct retelling of this event from her):\nOpening The Book at random she walked toward him, and as she walked she read aloud from The Book. “ ‘Hence it can be said,’ ” she intoned, “ ‘that God-in-history shows several phases: (one) The period of purity before the Form Destroyer was awakened into activity. (two) The period of the Curse, when the power of the Deity was weakest, the power of the Form Destroyer the greatest—this because God had not perceived the Form Destroyer and so was taken by surprise. (three) The birth of God-on-Earth, sign that the period of Absolute Curse and Estrangement from God had ended. (four) The period now—’ ”\nShe had come almost up to him; he stood unmoving, still holding the gun. She continued to read the sacred text aloud. “ ‘The period now, in which God walks the world, redeeming the suffering now, redeeming all life later through the figure of himself as the Intercessor who—’ ”\n“Go back with them,” Thugg told her. “Or I’ll kill you.”\n“ ‘Who, it is sure, is still alive, but not in this circle. (five) The next and last period—’ ”\nA terrific bang boomed at her eardrums; deafened, she moved a step back and then she felt great pain in her chest; she felt her lungs die from the great, painful shock of it. The scene around her became dull, the light faded and she saw only darkness. Seth Morley, she tried to say, but no sound came out. And yet she heard noise; she heard something huge and far off, chugging violently into the darkness.\nShe was alone.\nThud, thud, came the noise. Now she saw iridescent color, mixed into a light which traveled like a liquid; it formed buzzsaws and pinwheels and crept upward on each side of her. Directly before her the huge Thing throbbed menacingly; she heard its imperative, angry voice summoning her upward. The urgency of its activity frightened her; it demanded, rather than asked. It was telling her something; she knew what it meant by its enormous pounding. Wham, wham, wham, it went and, terrified, filled with physical pain, she called to it. “Libera me, Domine,” she said. “De morte aeterna, in die illa tremenda.”\nIt throbbed on and on. And she glided helplessly toward it. Now, on the periphery of her vision, she saw a fantastic spectacle; she saw a great crossbow and on it the Intercessor. The string was pulled back; the Intercessor was placed on it like an arrow; and then, soundlessly, the Intercessor was shot upward, into the smallest of the concentric rings.\n“Agnus Dei,” she said, “qui tollis peccata mundi.” She had to look away from the throbbing vortex; she looked down and back . . . and saw, far below her, a vast frozen landscape of snow and boulders. A furious wind blew across it; as she watched, more snow piled up around the rocks. A new period of glaciation, she thought, and found that she had trouble thinking—let alone talking—in English “Lacrymosa dies illa,” she said, gasping with pain; her entire chest seemed to have become a block of suffering. “Qua resurget ex favilla, judicandus homo reus.” It seemed to make the pain less, this need to express herself in Latin—a language which she had never studied and knew nothing about. “Huic ergo parce, Deus!” she said. “Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem.” The throbbing continued on.\nA chasm opened before her feet. She began to fall; below her the frozen landscape of the hellworld grew closer. Again she cried out, “Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna!” But still she fell; she had almost reached the hell-world, and nothing meant to lift her up.\nSomething with immense wings soared up, like a great, metallic dragonfly with spines jutting from its head. It passed her, and a warm wind billowed after it. “Salve me, fons pietatis,” she called to it; she recognized it and felt no surprise at seeing it. The Intercessor, fluttering up from the hellworld, back to the fire of the smaller, inner rings.\nLights, in various colors, bloomed on all sides of her; she saw a red, smoky light burning close and, confused, turned toward it. But something made her pause. The wrong color, she thought to herself. I should be looking for a clear, white light, the proper womb in which to be reborn. She drifted upward, carried by the warm wind of the Intercessor… the smoky red light fell behind and in its place, to her right, she saw a powerful, unflickering, yellow light. As best she could she propelled herself toward that.\nThe pain in her chest seemed to have lessened; in fact her entire body felt vague. Thank you, she thought, for easing the discomfort; I appreciate that. I have seen it, she said to herself; I have seen the Intercessor and through it I have a chance of surviving. Lead me, she thought. Take me to the proper color of light. To the right new birth.\nThe clear, white light appeared. She yearned toward it, and something helped propel her. Are you angry at me? she thought, meaning the enormous presence that throbbed. She could still hear the throbbing, but it was no longer meant for her; it would throb on throughout eternity because it was beyond time, outside of time, never having been in time. And—there was no space present, either; everything appeared two-dimensional and squeezed together, like robust but crude figures drawn by a child or by some primitive man. Bright colorful figures, but absolutely flat. . . and touching.\n“Mors stupebit et natura,” she said aloud. “Cum resurget creatura, judicanti responsura.” Again the throbbing lessened. It has forgiven me, she said to herself. It is letting the Intercessor carry me to the right light.\nToward the clear, white light she floated, still uttering from time to time pious Latin phrases. The pain in her chest had gone now entirely and she felt no weight; her body had ceased to consume both time and space.\nWheee, she thought. This is marvelous.\nThrob, throb, went the Central Presence, but no longer for her; it throbbed for others, now.\nThe Day of the Final Audit had come for her—had come and now had passed. She had been judged and the judgment was favorable. She experienced utter, absolute joy. And continued, like a moth among novas, to flutter upward toward the proper light.\n\nFrom a 1979 interview:\nI only know of one time where I really took acid. That was Sandoz acid, a giant horse capsule that I got from the University of California, and a friend and I split it. And I don’t know, there must’ve been a whole milligram of it there. It was a gigantic thing, you know, we bought it for five dollars and took it home and we looked at it for a while—looked at it, we were all gonna split it up—and took that, and it was the greatest thing, I’ll tell you.\nI went straight to Hell, is what happened. I found myself, you know, the landscape froze over, and there were huge boulders, and there was a deep thrumming, and it was the Day of Wrath, and God was judging me as a sinner, and this lasted for thousands of years and didn’t get any better. It just got worse and worse, and I was in terrible pain, I felt terrible physical pain, and all I could talk was in Latin. Most embarrassing, ‘cause the girl I was with thought I was doing it to annoy her, and I kept saying Libera me domine in die illa. You know, and Agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi […] and especially, Tremens factus sum ego et timeo—timeo meaning “I’m afraid”—and I said Libera me, domine! Whining like some poor dog that’s been left out in the rain all night. Finally, the girl with me said “Oh, barf” and walked out of the room in disgust.\nTwo more references:\nYes, friends, you, too, can suffer forever; simply take 150 mg [sic] of LSD—and enjoy! If not satisfied, simply mail in—but enough. Because after two thousand years under LSD, participating in the Day of Judgment, one probably will be rather apathetic to asking for one’s five dollars back.\n(source)\nAnd:\nI perceived Him as a pulsing, furious, throbbing mass of vengeance-seeking authority, demanding an audit (like a sort of metaphysical IRS agent). Fortunately I was able to utter the right words [the “Libera me, Domine” quoted above], and hence got through it. I also saw Christ rise to heaven from the cross, and that was very interesting, too (the cross took the form of a crossbow, with Christ as the arrow; the crossbow launched him at terrific velocity—it happened very fast, once he had been placed in position).\n(same as above)\n\nBrief Analysis: Philip K. Dick extensively explored the literary theme of simulationism. This theme posits that the reality that we experience is an illusion; it is not what it originally seemed to be. The fakeness of reality includes not only one’s perception of the world, but also one’s beliefs about oneself. Indeed, it is a narrative staple of a good PKD story for the character to turn out to have been a robot, secret agent, alien, and/or a computer program all along. Oftentimes the fundamental plot twists are layered, multifaceted, recursive, and ultimately undecidable thanks to the presence of contradictory versions of events and narrative ambiguity.\nMore than almost any other author, PKD indeed explored to a great depth the implications of indirect realism about perception (e.g. in many of his stories the main character discovers that she/he never perceives the world in an unmediated fashion). That the world we perceive is a simulated reality is to be expected in the works of this author; whether this simulation is created by one’s brains or a large cosmic computer is the deeper question that PKD tends to posit again and again and often leaves in fully unresolved terms.\nThe LSD trip above recounted is interesting in this context. PKD’s trip illustrates just how insidious the reality transformation caused by psychedelics can be, to the point that they can make you doubt fundamental implicit background assumptions you’ve constructed your life around. While PKD remained skeptical of the cosmic significance of most of his life experiences, he seems to have given a very high degree of metaphysical credence to specific intensely emotional events in his life, including the above LSD trip. Perhaps PKD didn’t know at the time that LSD does not merely make you experience weird qualia, but that it also intensifies its emotional power. Psychedelics are interesting in part because they are remarkably effective means to increase the energy of one’s consciousness (via increasing the amplitude of connectome-specific harmonic waves). People describe them as experience intensifiers. Thus, positive, negative, and mixed emotions can be felt in much greater depth. According to our work, this process is related to symmetry and harmony. On psychedelics the pseudo-time arrow of experience elongates and spatial representations cohere on symmetrical shapes (such as wallpaper groups for 2D texture repetition or 3D hyperbolic manifolds on high doses of DMT). The increased level of energy leads to entropic disintegration, and ultimately to neural annealing, a process which is experienced as intensely emotional and full of meaning. Interestingly, PKD’s trip report showcases all of these features in one way or another.\nFor instance, the thumping/throbbing described is first experienced as intensely unpleasant and only at the end is described as blissful. The existence of this thumping can be accounted for by a process of neural annealing; its initial unpleasantness is the result of the dissonance between the core metronome (“Central Presence”) and the rest of the experience; the final bliss is the result of successful annealing and the high levels of consonance that ensue. The increased subjective time reported can be explained by changes to the pseudo-time arrow, including the eternal-seeming nature of the Central Presence. And so on.\nIn so far as we choose to reduce spirituality to valence (rather than the other way around) we will expect to find that intense life-altering spiritual experiences will all bear the signatures of high/low valence. That is, it is not that spirituality is emotionally intense. Rather, emotional intensity underlies spirituality. PKD’s account displays this in a very explicit way. The thumping of the Central Presence could certainly have theological significance, but it is not specifically predicted by any kind of formal theology. On the other hand, if the Symmetry Theory of Valence is correct, such thumping (and associated intense emotions) are expected to be found in typical intensely blissful/hellish states. That said, due to the Tyranny of the Intentional Object such intensely valenced states will appear to be reflections of inherently good/bad situations or entities. The emotion comes first. The illusion of grasping the “fundamentally good/bad essence of a being” comes second, as an after-the-fact ideation. Alas, thanks to implicit direct realism about perception, most people fail to attribute the intense emotional character of these experiences to things as impersonal as neural annealing, and instead interpret what happened in terms of metaphysical happenings like meeting God or experiencing telepathy.\nThe fact that intense emotions masquerade as insight into the fundamental nature of other beings is perhaps one of the most deceptive aspects of the world simulations created by our brains. After all, nothing is good or bad, but the encephalization of phenomenal valence via afferent neural connections from our limbic system’s hedonic hot spots makes it so. While Philip K. Dick managed to be skeptical and cautious about the way he made sense of reality, it is clear that he still somehow took at face value the representational content of intense emotions. Thus, he was still under the spell of a fundamental illusion, and hence at the mercy of gripping mystical visions. In future, however, PKD-like authors imbued with a 21st century science of consciousness shall go even deeper, and explore simulationism in light of, not only indirect realism about perception, but also of the Tyranny of the Intentional Object, egocentric bias, personal identity, and other evolutionarily adaptive shenanigans of our perception.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/01/03/philip-k-dicks-lsd-trip/", "title": "Philip K. Dick’s LSD Trip", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2019-01-03T21:51:35+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=16", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e54ece233c0860ccca773114669bcb7b", "summary": []}
{"text": "Lucid LSD Trip Report from an Anonymous Reader\n\nWriter: Anonymous (here substituted as “Bill”)\nDose: 2 blotters\nI remember at one point feeling and saying that I was on the “sandy beaches of time.” Normally there are story arcs to events. There’s peak arousal and closure. But the hoffman [“LSD blotter”] was sustained arousal. In an expected upbeat I found a downbeat. All downbeats. So I found myself with extra moments unexpectedly. Moments that normally would have been blank or dim transitions were just as full as the moments they connected. The idea of the “sandy beaches of time” came from the feeling of rolling around in the sand on the inclines. Imagine you’re floating in water and then you wash on shore. Then you’re on the sand. That’s a feeling of unexpected support. You’re lying passively and find yourself on solid ground somehow. That’s how I felt that I found myself (without trying or initiating a thought) supported unexpectedly in additional moments. This reminds me of the experience I had on a stronger dose in 2016 (same number of blotters but higher potency due to freshness) where I always felt “in the middle of my thought.” It’s like there’s a moment of height and openness at the peak of the thought where you expand open to figure out how you’re going to fit together the structural pieces of the highest level of organization of the thought. But I was continually in the middle of the thought and never finishing a thought, I felt. I tried a lot harder to have complete well formed thoughts back then too, so the experience would have been more notable. In general this time I was least excited or interested at all. Quite passive and peaceful, but not exploring with great energy or amusement. It was a lower dose. I thought it was going to be difficult and possibly be my first bad trip, but when I did them I saw as always that psychedelics are nice to me and weed is the only one who occasionally gets medieval. When I figure out my van and living situation I will definitely seek out more hoffmans and things like it, because they have a certain potential to make my mind work better and they don’t seem to make me insane at all. On weed I can picture some bad day it getting me into a fetal position, but on psychedelics I have a relaxed “power pose.” \nI also slightly expanded my sense of unifying with the perceptual (and otherwise conceived/imagined) environment. I’m putting on equal footing (there’s that equal footing theme again… In an article (link) the author used the phrase on “equal footing” once.  I had an idea to explain the equal footing phenomenon but I forget what it was). I feel like my implicit understanding of “merge your awareness with the world around you” increased and so I didn’t have to try so hard to figure it out. At this point I started to reflect on the kind of spiritual poverty of the spiritual ideas and theories I had and would often think about. The ideas I have often come from a dim dull state of mind. Anyway the merging came at the same time as understanding objects on their own terms. So rather than forcing a single texture onto two objects to see them both, I would see both objects with their own unique shapes and the only thing bridging them together was my awareness. That felt like the cubism people talk about in psychedelics (by the way Brahms is notoriously full of time distortions and musical cubism and disintegrations. The very long lines and irregular rhythms (implying a much lengthier process to “resolve,” i.e., achieve a full round of symmetry) are like the decreased decay of stuff in the mindstream. You can use sentences, words, sounds, symbols in a way that sustain moments of that openness, the middle-of-the-thought, and use sleight of hand to keep it from compensating or closing back down.). So I’d put on equal footing perceptions and all the notions I had which would be replaced by syntheses. Like I’d see a plane out the window and have a notion of the distance I was from it and then the notion of the angle of the distance line on my body and the plane, maybe picturing the underside of the plane and then the point of view from the plane looking back down, and I thought these images were all valid, and with the cubism going on it seemed to put the plane and the skyspace relationship to me on equal footing as myself, so I would see and not identify with my physical body and it’s vantage point and I would begin to get a sense of omniscience. Normally I’d reject this and say, “Well, look, we can take the pieces of the collage and infer that there’s only one body with eyes who can see and a brain that can think… it’s not like the plane actually sees or thinks” and yet I was going beyond that somehow. The panpsychism I’ve long subscribed to is like particulate panpsychism. It’s just like molecules and atoms have basic building blocks of complicated mechanical chemical processes, likewise simple consciousness properties of the oxygen atom and the carbon atom are modified by complex activities. However, the way I always thought of it wasn’t very smart. It wasn’t distributed consciousness at all. Nor did the consciousnesses of particles grow or interact or form “consciousness molecules” out of consciousness atoms. It was only the ability of surrounding forces to dance upon a carbon atom’s surface that I could imagine some experience arising. As for the human state—there are billions of consciousnesses and you just happen to be the one seeing this or hearing that or having the feeling of talking. In fact, all these examples of phenomenal experience would be vastly too complicated. But it’s no problem when you don’t believe in binding to suppose that I’m not a single person who talks and hears single sounds, but I’m an army of tiny mind particles that contribute their own tiny dust threads to experience… an experience that remains unbound and separate from all the other threads. So something like mind dust. \nThe cubism, by the way, was like dissociation, except that, like with the sandy beaches of time rushing in to provide an unexpected moment of support, there was always some unexpected maximally abstract unity support rushing in to bridge the disperate cubist pieces. That bridge was found in ongoing openness to find out. It was like an exercise in faith, and, in turn trust and compassion. \nAnyway, that’s one kind of panpsychism. Another kind is nihilistic. Something about my coefficients was altered. Something normally was disproportional in my approach to panpsychism. Something similarly was out of place in the approach to open individualism. Well, the hoffman seemed to tune me a bit and adjust the amount of belief and nihilism and so on I was going into it with to give me a fuller experience. It turns out that what I see as “taking at face value” is actually an important state of openness. One doesn’t truly take it at face value because one isn’t ever pretending to have complete knowledge, but one does take something without devoting so much resource to reconceiving it in order to conform to one’s beliefs. The hoffman experience was generally very in favor of bottom up mindfulness. Let go of socially motivated reasoning and imaginary conversations trying to prove yourself to ignorant people with no imaginations who want to ruin everything good… just put your energy into understanding something with openness and then you’ll see it. I got higher understandings or understandings I realized I otherwise wouldn’t get. \nThe experience really gave me a strong sense of the doom of my life while at the same time making me light hearted about it and trying to show me around. Normally I’m scared that a psychedelic is going to be like weed and be scary, but it never is. In fact the hoffman took me around my room to see that in some areas where there was some mess or something that I projected an ugly identity onto (like I see my shoes and the first thing I think is, “That’s asperger’s shoes. Those are the shoes someone with asperger’s wears.” So I have my social “identity disturbance” imbued into virtually all the objects around me. Any object that signifies someone else in my life is imbued with boogeymen and gremlins of the relationship I have with that person). I’m oppressed by my room and the needless flavoring of everything with stigma and shame… it’s so comprehensive that I’ve lost the sensitivity to it. It’s like a fish in water, I’m drowning in stigma to the point that I take it for granted and no longer realize there’s any other way of being. So the hoffman tried to show me around my room and show me there aren’t any boogey man and reconnect me to the personality I do have which isn’t aspergery and is fine and contradicts the stigmas. Every time I look in the mirror I see someone more attractive than I expected to see. I think this started in middle school. I always always always underestimate my appearance by quite a bit. And I load my self image with all those bad stigmas. Going to the mirror is like a reality check, but it’s worn out because I’m largely desensitized to it. But the hoffman helped me see that being aspergery or any other stigma was an unnecessary self-fulfilling trap I didn’t have to go down because I did have… I was in good standing and nothing meant I had to be aspergers. My posture my voice my skin etc.., all was fine. \nBut the hoffman did go over my life. I expected it would attack me about my relationship with my family (which I stigmatize myself for… “I must be some kind of deranged monster” is a load I begin every thought on the matter with) and turn me vegan, but it’s never what you expect. It wasn’t a fear based assault but it was really sane and reasonable. It gave me a sense of the trap I’m in. I ordinarily only feel one part of the trap at once, like I’m in a maze going from one dead end to another. But the hoffman gave me a sense of all the traps of my life I’m in at once. Yet I was lighthearted and amused and smiling about it. I was ego dead but I didn’t even know it. It’s like my ego left without making a sound. Another thing is that it isn’t necessarily key to have no ego, but it is key to be in the moment which is often conflated with having no ego. Like if you’re alone walking and having an inner monologue conversation, that’s probably being lost in thought having some imaginary future conversation and that exemplifies the problems and life-of-it’s-own of the ego. But it actually could be that one is checking into the present moment continuously and one is having that conversation for the nobody, for the consciousness. After all, the consciousness divided and packaged into different points of view and bodies in an audience is the same as the consciousness you have, so why not have the conversation before it? I used to regiment being in the moment, a certain grid of checkpoints of checking in. But that top-down systematic way of being mindful doesn’t work because I find shortcuts and seem to be beyond the age where I can keep going back to the beginner’s mind in a subject and question everything I know to the point where I am not allowed those shortcuts. Further those shortcuts are easy to take without knowing it. They masquerade as true mindfulness. So an informal bottom up spontaneous not regimented continuous mindfulness is important. I like the short ego stories mentioned… (to be continued… must use bathroom now)\nI like the idea of short duration egos/stories Mike Johnson mentioned in his recent meditation article. I used to have long systematic stories with regimented moderately high frequency check ins with the present moment proportional to what I used to call “salience essentialism” (a silly name, but the idea of making some element of information that’s only found in a state of lots of reflection and skepticism and metacognitions essential). But, as I said, I can’t do that regimentation anymore, so I’m going with Mike Johnson’s idea of short egos linked together. To have short ego stories that remain close to the present it’s key not only to bring a story to a natural end soon but also to not linger on that ending. If you linger on that ending rather than immediately continuing the moment, keep it rolling in a new moment, then you end up just getting lost in a nothingness epilogue to the story. Useless. You can’t end and then stop with nothing to continue with. So key to keeping short ego stories is also continually making them. Always be shedding light on the situation (keep no secrets. The ego performer has no secrets to keep as the actor. Continually to unravel it in any situation it finds itself. Don’t worry about nullifying a previous performance…because the previous performance was never meant to fool you as complete reality. Hold onto no pretense, but continue to act while shedding light always. A dance without deceit.) \nRather than being mindful to grasp the moment, to pas a yes/no test, I be mindful anew each time. Every time I be mindful is a new way of being mindful, and it’s about quickly jumping to the moment. When you’re really mindful like this listening to Beethoven’s cello sonata, you can’t tell if it’s you that’s singing or the cello. It feels like your own mind almost. I used to be a yes/no tester. I would have a preconceived idea of reality I strove for. But now I’m not doing that. I’m letting go of all my notions and quickly coming to the moment with openness. \nOne more word on the cubism thing. It’s related very much, I think, to the feeling of open individualism as well as the sandy beaches of time thing because each item has with it it’s own competing structure. Normally we resolve things into one system, but this cubism takes different elements on-their-own-terms, which means there are terms and structures and systems and orientations attached to them. In these systems are simulated the ego and its orientation to things. It’s like when you have some words and are deciding what sentence to make of them you ordinarily subordinate certain words to other words (the main verb being at the highest level of organization), but instead this cubism would have competing sentences for different words. It wouldn’t force the collapse of one structure or system for the other. Likewise the feeling of always being in the middle of one’s thought (or the sandy beaches of time) is like the noncollapse of the thought structure. There are many overlapping thoughts, all of them in the middle, rather than one thought with a start and a finish spanning several moments. You see? I think a similar thing can explain the proliferation of selfhood in objects in one’s perceptual/imagined environment. You go beyond your ordinary selfhood sense structure and see no problem attaching it to multiple things, like anthropomorphizing things with your sense of orientation and first person perspective. This gives rise to a sense of perspective that is beyond seeing and hearing and all the ordinary things. Yet what is it? Alas, perspective as a concept is only as advanced as the abstraction of perceptions and imaginations and so on, so we don’t actually have a more advanced concept of perception/perspective-having. What we have is the abstraction that’s forced upon us by the cubism and multiplication of competing perspective-having structures attached to different objects. All we know is that whatever it is must go beyond any individual object and is seen only when you’re continually opening up to the idea by watching the cubism unfold. So it’s easy to understand how this is all just a conceptual trick of the mind, but it has a very good way of taking everything you know and all your beliefs and spinning those into the picture to convince you of something beyond all that still. And I really do like to believe the idea of a perspective that transcends my human situated perspective of sense organs and a center of imaginations. I’d like the floating above everything and seeing the symphony. I see how MC Escher pictures are very evocative here, because you have competing “structures” or competing whatevers…  competing resolutions. MC Escher is a form of cubism in this way. \nAnother thing I notice is a decrease in bad compulsions. Generally psychedelics relieve anxiety and obsessions and stuff like that. I have this nasty habit of looking at attractive people and getting a pang of pain and loneliness and stuff. My work involves me being on social media all day long, so I often see a lot of attractive people and it’s just a pang of badness. But fighting with the compulsion is no good either. Flee it. I’ve got to stop correcting past mistakes. Short ego story. Don’t go down one road and then smack your forehead and then reverse and go back down another road. Nobody wants to see you back up. It’s not valuable. You’re not submitting or apologizing to anyone. Once you go down one road simply poof out of existence and then poof back into existence on the right road. No ego story of grinding corrections and punishments and obstacles. Just skip ahead to the right spot the moment you notice a better spot. Ordinarily seeing or hearing attractive people makes me tense up and go ouch and feel a dose of desperation and so on. This time I’m not doing that. I find that I’m lucky that I haven’t had that and a state of not clinging and so on is naturally here (I’m not anxiously monitoring my clinging level). I think it’s good to just zip to the right moment, the right thought and not spend time wrestling with the thing trying to undo it explicitly. Learn the habit of bypassing it, not reversing it. Don’t even expedite reversal. There should be no struggle to correct anything. Rather just jump freely to a better state of mind. But that’s easier said than done. I think it’s very hard to see the possibility of freedom in the present when faced with very strong recurrent thoughts or states of mind that one doesn’t want. It feels like the only hope of getting out of there is by contending with it, reversing it. But I’m suggesting that actually one can unlearn ever going down the wrong path in the first place (as opposed to learning to make the mistake and then the correction) and that is found in the present, the elusive present we overlook (or underlook). In fact, the present moment isn’t known to you yet while you’re still trying to struggle to escape the undesirable thought pattern. Trust that it will show you the way and open up to you as you open up to it. It will progressively open up, and you’ll say, “Oh, I see now.” \nSo short stories are good, being in the moment is good. The intentional object is particularly tyrannical (ref) when it lives in a long story. Short stories can still have intentional objects. Things can have purposes, there can be a point, but the point should be found in the present (or the very very near future). When you find yourself having imaginary conversations for the future, then quickly start speaking that to the present. Whom are you talking to? Nobody. The nobody of the now (or yourself, or the non-people of the now) is a perfectly interesting audience.  You have within your consciousness basically what any audience can actually supply anyway. Consciousness differentiated through filters of points of view and personality and so on is only just the same as what you have in your “solitary” conversation.\nWell anyway, I found myself having a bit of a love for the present. I like knowing that fulfillment is found in the present. It is beautiful and wholesome. I like not being chained to anxieties and compulsions. I like the spontaneousness of the higher rate of mindfulness. I don’t normally have so much mindfulness and trying with much effort to be mindful backfires. As explained above about reversing mistakes, today I was quickly and without making a fuss finding myself snapping back into the present. Rather than trying to make an ordeal of an error report trying to diagnose the lapse in mindfulness and see to it that it doesn’t happen again, I let go of that controlling and just join the present moment “ready to rock” as [person] from [previous job] would put it.\nHere’s part of the trip report. I wrote the other half of it in a paper notebook: \n5:10PM I recorded everything earlier in a notebook.\nWow so much easier to type fast. Anyway I see how the ego and the self, I created a dark scary world of doubt and fear and shame for this Bill character. It’s just a character. Bring as many emotional resolutions as possible to make the story have as happy an ending as can be, but ultimately just don’t forget it’s all fiction. \nAnd I guess that’s key. The fears of the hellishness of being a “bad human” and so on…all fictions of the Bill story in the world, in consensus reality. Make the story look nice, but see through it. It’s just a story for some TV viewer. I’m so predictable, what I’m paranoid about, what my hang ups are, etc… How the grass is greener on the other side of being social. \nBut this trip, rather than dipping me in guilt and attacking me with my own problems is actually more like a refresher on how these places aren’t full of boogeymen like I think they are, and if I just realized this I’d have a better day. But ultimately the desperateness and the loneliness and so on…gosh what a drag. On and on and on being upset about my life. I cultivate a sense of loss before fulfilling it. I should instead not have any needs and just pursue excitement… It’s interesting to think about whether you can get anywhere in life or have a very interesting time without those needs and voids held open by fear. \n5:19PM I think I watch Minecraft playthroughs as a surrogate for socializing. Now without getting emotional or caught up in the Bill story, let’s just assess whether this is necessary. \n5:25PM I’m listening to music. I’m admiring the majesty of some things in it. CPE bach. Just like Huxley said about my nonself being the non self of that chair leg, I identify as a non self with the non self of the grand music at points. Anyway, I notice how a lot of my enjoyment of music is really grinding and unpleasant. Forceful and full of pain like fighting through wounds, forcing your way through barbed wire. It’s senseless, isn’t it? If I can control it and enjoy music without this forceful stuff, this suffering forcefulness and longing and neediness and narrowness. \n5:30PM Those headphones cause such misery. I get lost in those things. I’m getting a bit morbid, aren’t I? I’m not coming down but I’m tired and maybe my blood sugar is lower or something. \n9:51PM Watched the Terence McKenna in Prague with Ram Das and Shulgin and others (link 1, link 2). Fascinating. Then I listened to this I noticed how this time I did acid my mind didn’t expand very much at all. I feel old and like my brain is stuck in certain ways of seeing things. I do have a gentle calling to feel myself situated in terms of nature and evolution and the mystery of the universe…I just want to see the open night sky like our ancestors did, but not clouded by all these paved roads and jobs and clocks and so on. Missing the moment for some future goal, measured by time and streets and so on. I liked what Watts said about playing a musical instrument for the enjoyment of music and not to do secondary things like make money or impress an audience. Now one could say that their goal is to impress audiences and so one isn’t “playing music” but one is “impressing audiences” and happening to play music. But I like the idea of only playing music in an innocent way because of the pleasure the noise gives. Unlocking the song by learning the music is rewarded by the music as it comes along. Not the prospect of performing or this becoming a dance of your ego or something. That’s kind of the problem. At least not living acts for the present well enough. That’s what I meant a couple weeks ago about having present moment self goals. Have goals for the moment. Don’t do stuff for later. The goal shouldn’t be set on some fulfillment of something later on. Why? Because people who say things like that have broken heads and my head is broken so I say stuff like that. Anyway, when I play music it should be to produce sound. When I try to get a self image, a social ego, a sense of my social personality, it shouldn’t be aimed at a future date. I should be genuine where I am, even if I’m alone. That is the moment. When it happens, it isn’t practice for some future performance. I’m not scripting. Rather, that is it. That was the moment to make the joke or be clever or do something. If I’m alone, that’s who I do it for. I do it for myself and nobody. I don’t do it for anybody, at least nobody to be abstracted and conceived in a later date. What happens happens then…what happens in the moment stays in the moment. Right now, who am I journaling with? Whom am I talking to? Wow, I can’t even believe I’ve got the depth to question that. Above I mentioned how not expanded my mind felt. Well I’m not very reflective, and the fact I just brought up the question who I am journaling for shows that thing. A lot of life has been lived in these journals. Some good, a lot bad. I can imagine myself throwing my journals away. I can imagine my laptop getting stolen or destroyed or lost. I no longer am hoarding up notes on philosophy projects. So what is this all for? Well, it’s all for itself. And right now it feels better. This feels like a good use of my time and a legitimate experience of living. Nothing lacks. I don’t need to add on some need to escape here and strive for a better place. Apples and oranges. This is adequate in itself. What I do, I must enjoy doing for the sake of itself. I don’t read books to build a vocabulary and a wit so I can talk to people. I have to enjoy reading the books and having that vocabulary and wit as the reader. Not for some future moment. The journey of a book isn’t an overture to something else. It is the journey. I need really to start becoming intrinsically motivated by everything I do, see things as ends in themselves. Really end. Not mindfulness to some other place. I make this mistake all the time. I think of the future now, of the future present moment mindfulness state. I’ve got to enjoy the mindfulness I already have before I can progress further…or rather before it can progress to unfold and intensify. I have to appreciate the experience of education I’m getting by reading a book, raw education however unglamorous and rudimentary, before my education can grow and intensify. \nSunk cost is big when trying to improve yourself (referring back to Alan Watts talk there). If I haven’t already implemented these notes about living in the present moment, then why do I think I can? Seems like the game has run stale. I’ve been narrowly focused and in sunk cost and escapism and I need to just let go of the outcome and step back and observe. Just like what I said about the stand-up comedian’s ego filtering out the amount of feedback based on how massively they’d have to renovate their act—they’re unwilling to open themselves up to just assess what’s wrong and fix it because they’re trying to open up to a small amount, one repair guy and see what he says and see if he recommends a follow up repair guy when he can’t figure it out, and then two slightly more in-depth expert repair guys come by and so on….why is this progression of repairmen economical? It is if you have no idea what’s wrong with your electricity in your house, but if you are a standup comedian and your ability to correct your act depends on your ability to recognize what’s wrong with it and you have access to that consultation, why limit yourself by peeking through a half closed eye? Why not just open up and see the whole situation? You won’t waste time…oh so much time you’ll spend fighting your way back up from the later stage repair men to earlier repair men…correcting later stage specific advanced diagnoses but still something’s wrong but it’s simpler than before. Just always wrestling with the errors in your performance trying to keep them in the simple no biggie zone rather than in the serious fail zone. But if only you were willing to open your eyes fully to see the true extent of the problems, then you could fix them all. \n10:30PM Down with an edible. Wow, surprised how powerful the acid still is. Let’s see I took one at 12:33PM and the other at 1:49PM. Well, and I just took an edible. A tinge of regret because it’ll dull and otherwise contaminate the acid, but I’m getting tired so it wasn’t like I was going to get much out of it anyway. Alas, I’m still looking for gold to fill my notebooks for for later reading. I still take notes for the future. I should see notes as what they really are, which is just prosthetics for the experience of narratives in the present moment. Nothing more. (And I’m often blind to that possibility! I’m blind to the potential of the present! I only think in terms of future stuff. I just overlook the present.) \n10:36 Wow that Alan Watts talk though. I know I always can’t help but put in my disclaimers. I don’t even feel like going through the various examples of why I have critical reasoning bla bla bla (don’t think of me as a stupid sheep). Just how helpless I seem to be in my current mode of doing things to get myself to live in the present and for the present. I don’t make decisions. I don’t decide what meanings my words have. I rather sit there passively waiting for the right words to come and fill in. I could do with some asserting myself more. But when the moment is right, when it gives energy rather than drains. \nAnd rather than striving for an answer for a theory about consciousness or something or reality or whatever crazy… that is so rewarding that it can be done for itself in the moment. Think about consciousness. The mystery of the ever elusive background. The unknown is stimulating. It is exciting. Seeing the implications of the unknown and questioning old frameworks is enjoyable. It just is.  \n11:30PM Just took my second edible. (Saw: Alan Watts – Nature of God)\n12:31AM Only do things for the now. Don’t solve problems for the future. Propose solutions for the future in the now. It’s a present act. You’re just exercising talking and proposing and speculating recreationally for the present. You ‘re not putting your will into the future. And the idea I have is that the bleakness of my life is in my head. Living in a van can be positive. I can have a happier social life. But doubts just feed. They’re demonic. They love sadness like heroin. They love to feed on the anxieties about not being able to make friends, of how poor my track record has been, how my life used to be in my control and going in a direction has now fallen so dramatically in a different way….The doubt tempts you. The decisions stop being made in the present moment. IT says “Hold on now. Think about this…” as it proceeds, foot in the door, to tempt you to sadness and doubt, as if there’s some social reward for having a sufficiently pessimistic view.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/12/29/lucid-lsd-trip-report-from-an-anonymous-reader/", "title": "Lucid LSD Trip Report from an Anonymous Reader", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-12-29T22:32:52+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=16", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "1afebb9273b8910d90d9468cd1f6f694", "summary": []}
{"text": "A Non-Circular Solution to the Measurement Problem: If the Superposition Principle is the Bedrock of Quantum Mechanics Why Do We Experience Definite Outcomes?\n\nSource: Quora question – “Scientifically speaking, how serious is the measurement problem concerning the validity of the various interpretations in quantum mechanics?”\n\nDavid Pearce responds [emphasis mine]:\nIt’s serious. Science should be empirically adequate. Quantum mechanics is the bedrock of science. The superposition principle is the bedrock of quantum mechanics. So why don’t we ever experience superpositions? Why do experiments have definite outcomes? “Schrödinger’s cat” isn’t just a thought-experiment. The experiment can be done today. If quantum mechanics is complete, then microscopic superpositions should rapidly be amplified via quantum entanglement into the macroscopic realm of everyday life.\nCopenhagenists are explicit. The lesson of quantum mechanics is that we must abandon realism about the micro-world. But Schrödinger’s cat can’t be quarantined. The regress spirals without end. If quantum mechanics is complete, the lesson of Schrödinger’s cat is that if one abandons realism about a micro-world, then one must abandon realism about a macro-world too. The existence of an objective physical realm independent of one’s mind is certainly a useful calculational tool. Yet if all that matters is empirical adequacy, then why invoke such superfluous metaphysical baggage? The upshot of Copenhagen isn’t science, but solipsism.\nThere are realist alternatives to quantum solipsism. Some physicists propose that we modify the unitary dynamics to prevent macroscopic superpositions. Roger Penrose, for instance, believes that a non-linear correction to the unitary evolution should be introduced to prevent superpositions of macroscopically distinguishable gravitational fields. Experiments to (dis)confirm the Penrose-Hameroff Orch-OR conjecture should be feasible later this century. But if dynamical collapse theories are wrong, and if quantum mechanics is complete (as most physicists believe), then “cat states” should be ubiquitous. This doesn’t seem to be what we experience.\nEverettians are realists, in a sense. Unitary-only QM says that there are quasi-classical branches of the universal wavefunction where you open an infernal chamber and see a live cat, other decohered branches where you see a dead cat; branches where you perceive the detection of a spin-up electron that has passed through a Stern–Gerlach device, other branches where you perceive the detector recording a spin-down electron; and so forth. I’ve long been haunted by a horrible suspicion that unitary-only QM is right, though Everettian QM boggles the mind (cf. UniverseSplitter). Yet the heart of the measurement problem from the perspective of empirical science is that one doesn’t ever see superpositions of live-and-dead cats, or detect superpositions of spin-up-and-spin-down electrons, but only definite outcomes. So the conjecture that there are other, madly proliferating decohered branches of the universal wavefunction where different versions of you record different definite outcomes doesn’t solve the mystery of why anything anywhere ever seems definite to anyone at all. Therefore, the problem of definite outcomes in QM isn’t “just” a philosophical or interpretational issue, but an empirical challenge for even the most hard-nosed scientific positivist. “Science” that isn’t empirically adequate isn’t science: it’s metaphysics. Some deeply-buried background assumption(s) or presupposition(s) that working physicists are making must be mistaken. But which? To quote the 2016 International Workshop on Quantum Observers organized by the IJQF,\n“…the measurement problem in quantum mechanics is essentially the determinate-experience problem. The problem is to explain how the linear quantum dynamics can be compatible with the existence of our definite experience. This means that in order to finally solve the measurement problem it is necessary to analyze the observer who is physically in a superposition of brain states with definite measurement records. Indeed, such quantum observers exist in all main realistic solutions to the measurement problem, including Bohm’s theory, Everett’s theory, and even the dynamical collapse theories. Then, what does it feel like to be a quantum observer?“\nIndeed. Here I’ll just state rather than argue my tentative analysis.\nMonistic physicalism is true. Quantum mechanics is formally complete. There is no consciousness-induced collapse the wave function, no “hidden variables”, nor any other modification or supplementation of the unitary Schrödinger dynamics. The wavefunction evolves deterministically according to the Schrödinger equation as a linear superposition of different states. Yet what seems empirically self-evident, namely that measurements always find a physical system in a definite state, is false(!) The received wisdom, repeated in countless textbooks, that measurements always find a physical system in a definite state reflects an erroneous theory of perception, namely perceptual direct realism. As philosophers (e.g. the “two worlds” reading of Kant) and even poets (“The brain is wider than the sky…”) have long realised, the conceptual framework of perceptual direct realism is untenable. Only inferential realism about mind-independent reality is scientifically viable. Rather than assuming that superpositions are never experienced, suspend disbelief and consider the opposite possibility. Only superpositions are ever experienced. “Observations” are superpositions, exactly as unmodified and unsupplemented quantum mechanics says they should be: the wavefunction is a complete representation of the physical state of a system, including biological minds and the pseudo-classical world-simulations they run. Not merely “It is the theory that decides what can be observed” (Einstein); quantum theory decides the very nature of “observation” itself. If so, then the superposition principle underpins one’s subjective experience of definite, well-defined classical outcomes (“observations”), whether, say, a phenomenally-bound live cat, or the detection of a spin-up electron that has passed through a Stern–Gerlach device, or any other subjectively determinate outcome. If one isn’t dreaming, tripping or psychotic, then within one’s phenomenal world-simulation, the apparent collapse of a quantum state (into one of the eigenstates of the Hermitian operator associated with the relevant observable in accordance with a probability calculated as the squared absolute value of a complex probability amplitude) consists of fleeting uncollapsed neuronal superpositions within one’s CNS. To solve the measurement problem, the neuronal vehicle of observation and its subjective content must be distinguished. The universality of the superposition principle – not its unexplained breakdown upon “observation” – underpins one’s classical-seeming world-simulation. What naïvely seems to be the external world, i.e. one’s egocentric world-simulation, is what linear superpositions of different states feel like “from the inside”: the intrinsic nature of the physical. The otherwise insoluble binding problem in neuroscience and the problem of definite outcomes in QM share a solution.\nAbsurd?\nYes, for sure: this minimum requirement for a successful resolution of the mystery is satisfied (“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it”– Einstein, again). The raw power of environmentally-induced decoherence in a warm environment like the CNS makes the conjecture intuitively flaky. Assuming unitary-only QM, the effective theoretical lifetime of neuronal “cat states” in the CNS is less than femtoseconds. Neuronal superpositions of distributed feature-processors are intuitively just “noise”, not phenomenally-bound perceptual objects. At best, the idea that sub-femtosecond neuronal superpositions could underpin our experience of law-like classicality is implausible. Yet we’re not looking for plausible theories but testable theories. Every second of selection pressure in Zurek’s sense (cf. “Quantum Darwinism”) sculpting one’s neocortical world-simulation is more intense and unremitting than four billion years of evolution as conceived by Darwin. My best guess is that interferometry will disclose a perfect structural match. If the non-classical interference signature doesn’t yield a perfect structural match, then dualism is true.\nIs the quantum-theoretic version of the intrinsic nature argument for non-materialist physicalism – more snappily, “Schrödinger’s neurons” – a potential solution to the measurement problem? Or a variant of the “word salad” interpretation of quantum mechanics?\nSadly, I can guess.\nBut if there were one experiment that I could do, one loophole I’d like to see closed via interferometry, then this would be it.\n\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/12/28/a-non-circular-solution-to-the-measurement-problem-if-the-superposition-principle-is-the-bedrock-of-quantum-mechanics-why-do-we-experience-definite-outcomes/", "title": "A Non-Circular Solution to the Measurement Problem: If the Superposition Principle is the Bedrock of Quantum Mechanics Why Do We Experience Definite Outcomes?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-12-28T10:16:17+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=16", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "cb9c8241640de0fd9390fb2793d771d4", "summary": []}
{"text": "What is Love? Neural Annealing in the Presence of an Intentional Object\n\nExcerpt from: The Neuroscience of Meditation: Four Models by Michael E. Johnson\n\nNeural annealing: Annealing involves heating a metal above its recrystallization temperature, keeping it there for long enough for the microstructure of the metal to reach equilibrium, then slowly cooling it down, letting new patterns crystallize. This releases the internal stresses of the material, and is often used to restore ductility (plasticity and toughness) on metals that have been ‘cold-worked’ and have become very hard and brittle— in a sense, annealing is a ‘reset switch’ which allows metals to go back to a more pristine, natural state after being bent or stressed. I suspect this is a useful metaphor for brains, in that they can become hard and brittle over time with a build-up of internal stresses, and these stresses can be released by periodically entering high-energy states where a more natural neural microstructure can reemerge.\nFurthermore, from what I gather from experienced meditators, successfully entering meditative flow may be one of the most reliable ways to reach these high-energy brain states. I.e., it’s very common for meditation to produce feelings of high intensity, at least in people able to actually enter meditative flow.* Meditation also produces more ‘pure’ or ‘neutral’ high-energy states, ones that are free of the intentional content usually associated with intense experiences which may distort or limit the scope of the annealing process. So we can think of intermediate-to-advanced (‘successful flow-state’) meditation as a reheating process, whereby the brain enters a more plastic and neutral state, releases pent-up structural stresses, and recrystallizes into a more balanced, neutral configuration as it cools. Iterated many times, this will drive an evolutionary process and will produce a very different brain, one which is more unified & anti-fragile, less distorted toward intentionality, and in general structurally optimized against stress.\nAn open question is how or why meditation produces high-energy brain states. There isn’t any consensus on this, but I’d offer with a nod to the predictive coding framework that bottom-up sense-data is generally excitatory, adding energy to the system, whereas top-down predictive Bayesian models are generally inhibitory, functioning as ‘energy sinks’. And so by ‘noting and knowing’ our sensations before our top-down models activate, in a sense we’re diverting the ‘energy’ of our sensations away from its usual counterbalancing force. If we do this long enough and skillfully enough, this energy can build up and lead to ‘entropic disintegration’, the prerequisite for annealing. (Thanks to Andrés for discussion here)\nIf this model is true, it feels very important for optimizing a meditation practice. E.g., we should try to figure out some rules of thumb for:\n\nHow to identify a high-energy brain state, in yourself and others, and how best to create them;\nThings to do, and things not to do, during an annealing process (‘how to anneal the right things’);\nIdentifying tradeoffs in ‘cooling’ the brain quickly vs slowly.\n\nOff the top of my head, I’d suggest that one of the worst things you could do after entering a high-energy brain state would be to fill your environment with distractions (e.g., watching TV, inane smalltalk, or other ‘low-quality patterns’). Likewise, it seems crucial to avoid socially toxic or otherwise highly stressful conditions. Most likely, going to sleep as soon as possible without breaking flow would be a good strategy to get the most out of a high-energy state. Avoiding strong negative emotions during such states seems important, as does managing your associations (psychedelics are another way to reach these high-energy states, and people have noticed there’s an ‘imprinting’ process where the things you think about and feel while high can leave durable imprints on how you feel after the trip). Finally, perhaps taking certain nootropics could help strengthen (or weaken) the magnitude of this annealing process.\nFinally, to speculate a little about one of the deep mysteries of life, perhaps we can describe love as the result of a strong annealing process while under the influence of some pattern. I.e., evolution has primed us such that certain intentional objects (e.g. romantic partners) can trigger high-energy states where the brain smooths out its discontinuities/dissonances, such that given the presence of that pattern our brains are in harmony.[3] This is obviously a two-edged sword: on one hand it heals and renews our ‘cold-worked’ brain circuits and unifies our minds, but also makes us dependent: the felt-sense of this intentional object becomes the key which unlocks this state. (I believe we can also anneal to archetypes instead of specific people.)\nAnnealing can produce durable patterns, but isn’t permanent; over time, discontinuities creep back in as the system gets ‘cold-worked’. To stay in love over the long-term, a couple will need to re-anneal in the felt-presence of each other on a regular basis.[4] From my experience, some people have a natural psychological drive toward reflexive stability here: they see their partner as the source of goodness in their lives, so naturally they work hard to keep their mind aligned on valuing them. (It’s circular, but it works.) Whereas others are more self-reliant, exploratory, and restless, less prone toward these self-stable loops or annealing around external intentional objects in general. Whether or not, and within which precise contexts, someone’s annealing habits fall into this ‘reflexive stability attractor’ might explain much about e.g. attachment style, hedonic strategy, and aesthetic trajectory.\nLinks: Annealing (metallurgy); The entropic brain\n[3] Anecdotally, the phenomenology of love-annealing is the object ‘feels beautiful from all angles’. This may imply that things (ideas, patterns, people) which are more internally coherent & invariant across contexts can produce stronger annealing effects — i.e. these things are more easy to fall deeply in love with given the same ‘annealing budget’, and this love is more durable.\n[4] It’s important to note that both intense positive and intense negative experiences can push the brain into high-energy states; repeated annealing to negative emotions may serve many of the same functions as ‘positive annealing’, but also predispose brains to ‘sing in a minor key’ (see ‘kindling’).\n\nRelated Work: Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States, Principia Qualia: Part II – Valence, and Ecstasy and Honesty\n\nImage credit: Fabián Jiménez", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/12/22/what-is-love-neural-annealing-in-the-presence-of-an-intentional-object/", "title": "What is Love? Neural Annealing in the Presence of an Intentional Object", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-12-22T20:56:50+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=16", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "3dab44310a10ee8687b61584e49cf7df", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Purple Pill\n\nIt finally arrived. I had to appeal it’s denial a couple times, but it finally came through. It arrived in the mail today. It’s laminated with rounded corners, a holographic mark, and a pinch of glitter. I finally got my Poetic License. They said if I wanted permission to use metaphors I would need to apply for an allegorical diploma, but what is a poetic license without metaphor? In practice most licensed professionals in the field ignore this rule. It’s not like the reader ever asks you for your credentials whenever symbolism is used. They said my trope copyright agreement is on the way. They gave me a tracking number. But I’m not going to be waiting around any longer…\nThe most insidious thing about taking the blue pill is that it is usually followed by an immediate amnesia of having done so. Soon after one is presented with the same decision, but now with an incredible -unbelievable- literary feeling of empowerment and bravery that makes you decide to take the red pill in an heroic act of self-effacement. Alas, this is of course all a fantasy induced by the original blue pill.\nThere are various grades of pseudo-red pills. You have the standard sedatives that put you to sleep; a dreamless coma – “Life is an unprofitable episode disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence” (Schopenhauer). You have the one that makes you forget -in fact achieve a state of convenient social neglect- of the intensely bad experiences that exist out there in Hell branches of the multiverse. There is the one that makes you believe that nonhuman animals lack souls and are unable to suffer (despite their, it turns out, much greater capacity for suffering than humans). There are those that by virtue of making you believe that you took the red pill give your life a tremendous sense of mission and moral superiority. There is the pill of sentimentalism, the pill of fanaticism, the pill of scientism, the pill of mainstream sports, the pill of social media rage, the pill of analytic philosophy fandom, and the pill of pop psychopharmachology (SSRIs increase your serotonin levels, and serotonin is the happy molecule, or so the scientists are saying *wink*). Alas, naming the most common ones, those that zombify the people who claim to be the most awake would feel like a personal attack (even if far from it). So the most common blue pills shall remain unmentioned lest I’m lynched.\nThe true red pill is not just DXM with red 2. It isn’t just eugenics, international conspiracies, evolutionary psychopathology, or Hansonian signaling theory. The real red pill is made of 4000°C bright red luminous magma that destroys not only your esophagus, but cuts through your body and falls directly on the ground below passing right through, only barely cooled down by your body due to its incredibly high specific heat capacity.\nNo. That’s still another blue pill fantasy designed to make you feel brave and morally superior for taking it. The real red pill is agape. The communion with the Godhead in its infinite compassion for all Beings large and small.\nBut you guessed it right, that’s also another type of coating for the blue fellow (iridescent, yes, but still synthetic and bad for your liver).\nWhat did you think, that there is any real closure? It is not like nature is going to be kind to us humans who suffer from high levels of neuroticism and psychological need for closure.\nThere is no red pill. But there are decent approximations. There is the unprejudiced pursuit of truth – the high AQ high IQ depressive realism that is an evolutionary spandrel. The state of metta and LSD ego death are close seconds, though they lack the critical clarity of mind needed to be willing to stare at the raw truth of suffering and its causes for too long before craving social validation for doing so.\nIs there an alternative? Yes.\nThe purple pill is the pill that gives you both high hedonic tone and an unprejudiced open ended approach to the pursuit of truth. For losing truth is to lose it all, but to lose it all is only bad because it makes you and others suffer in the wider universe. Yes, here is where I am abusing my poetic license. I am a licensed wordsmith, don’t you know? I carry with me the approval of RA, I have the blessing of poetic authority so don’t you dare question my use of vagueness to drive a point home. The purple pill is what will redeem us all. The recognition that though truth is painful in our current, evolutionarily adaptive mind-frame, it is not in and of itself a cause of seething pain. Recognizing that true evil is not a person or a mythical archetype but the mere existence of states of consciousness as pornographically unethical as kidney stones or cluster headaches does not need to induce (at least not logically, not physically) a nihilistic depression. It does not need to make you speak in tongues, to scream at strangers in the street “AHH don’t you see how bad it is that we live in an eternalist empty individualist universe that does not care about the welfare of moments of experience!?!?” – It is still possible to do something productive instead. You can still, it turns out, choose to take eros and agape and reforge them into a laser sword that produces hyperdopaminergic loving-kindness in those who are hit by it, and mindfulness in those who wield it.\nThe purple pill is the true red pill; at least the best approximation there is. For if the truth is that the world is tenselessly (timelessly) littered with hellish states of consciousness implicated by the universal wavefunction satisfying the principles of zero ontology, this still does not imply that accurately representing the causal structure of such facts *has* to come along with a hellish hedonic tone of itself. This is the truth we all long for.\nTake the purple pill and join us in the battle to destroy hell. You will, much to everyone’s incredulous amazement, be happy while doing so.\n\nPhoto credit: The HyperSpace", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/12/18/the-purple-pill/", "title": "The Purple Pill", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-12-18T20:37:53+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=16", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "87dbf391edb70cb61ca25d3c3ba2a817", "summary": []}
{"text": "Personality Traits Are Continuous With Mental Illnesses\n\nHealth is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.\n– The Constitution of the World Health Organization\n\nWhether pain takes the form of the eternal Treblinka of our Fordist factory farms and conveyor-belt killing factories, or whether it’s manifested as the cruelties of a living world still governed by natural selection, the sheer viciousness of the Darwinian Era is likely to horrify our morally saner near-descendants.\n– David Pearce in Brave New World? A Defense of Paradise-Engineering\n\nPersonality traits are continuous with mental illnesses\nby Geoffrey Miller (originally posted on Edge in 2011)\nWe like to draw clear lines between normal and abnormal behavior. It’s reassuring, for those who think they’re normal. But it’s not accurate. Psychology, psychiatry, and behavior genetics are converging to show that there’s no clear line between “normal variation” in human personality traits and “abnormal” mental illnesses. Our instinctive way of thinking about insanity — our intuitive psychiatry — is dead wrong.\nTo understand insanity, we have to understand personality. There’s a scientific consensus that personality traits can be well-described by five main dimensions of variation. These “Big Five” personality traits are called openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability. The Big Five are all normally distributed in a bell curve, statistically independent of each other, genetically heritable, stable across the life-course, unconsciously judged when choosing mates or friends, and found in other species such as chimpanzees. They predict a wide range of behavior in school, work, marriage, parenting, crime, economics, and politics.\nMental disorders are often associated with maladaptive extremes of the Big Five traits. Over-conscientiousness predicts obsessive-compulsive disorder, whereas low conscientiousness predicts drug addiction and other “impulse control disorders”. Low emotional stability predicts depression, anxiety, bipolar, borderline, and histrionic disorders. Low extraversion predicts avoidant and schizoid personality disorders. Low agreeableness predicts psychopathy and paranoid personality disorder. High openness is on a continuum with schizotypy and schizophrenia. Twin studies show that these links between personality traits and mental illnesses exist not just at the behavioral level, but at the genetic level. And parents who are somewhat extreme on a personality trait are much more likely to have a child with the associated mental illness.\nOne implication is that the “insane” are often just a bit more extreme in their personalities than whatever promotes success or contentment in modern societies — or more extreme than we’re comfortable with. A less palatable implication is that we’re all insane to some degree. All living humans have many mental disorders, mostly minor but some major, and these include not just classic psychiatric disorders like depression and schizophrenia, but diverse forms of stupidity, irrationality, immorality, impulsiveness, and alienation. As the new field of positive psychology acknowledges, we are all very far from optimal mental health, and we are all more or less crazy in many ways. Yet traditional psychiatry, like human intuition, resists calling anything a disorder if its prevalence is higher than about 10%.\nThe personality/insanity continuum is important in mental health policy and care. There are angry and unresolved debates over how to revise the 5th edition of psychiatry’s core reference work, the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), to be published in 2013. One problem is that American psychiatrists dominate the DSM-5 debates, and the American health insurance system demands discrete diagnoses of mental illnesses before patients are covered for psychiatric medications and therapies. Also, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves psychiatric medications only for discrete mental illnesses. These insurance and drug-approval issues push for definitions of mental illnesses to be artificially extreme, mutually exclusive, and based on simplistic checklists of symptoms. Insurers also want to save money, so they push for common personality variants — shyness, laziness, irritability, conservatism — not to be classed as illnesses worthy of care. But the science doesn’t fit the insurance system’s imperatives. It remains to be seen whether DSM-5 is written for the convenience of American insurers and FDA officials, or for international scientific accuracy.\nPsychologists have shown that in many domains, our instinctive intuitions are fallible (though often adaptive). Our intuitive physics — ordinary concepts of time, space, gravity, and impetus — can’t be reconciled with relativity, quantum mechanics, or cosmology. Our intuitive biology — ideas of species essences and teleological functions — can’t be reconciled with evolution, population genetics, or adaptationism. Our intuitive morality — self-deceptive, nepotistic, clannish, anthropocentric, and punitive — can’t be reconciled with any consistent set of moral values, whether Aristotelean, Kantian, or utilitarian. Apparently, our intuitive psychiatry has similar limits. The sooner we learn those limits, the better we’ll be able to help people with serious mental illnesses, and the more humble we’ll be about our own mental health.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/12/14/personality-traits-are-continuous-with-mental-illnesses/", "title": "Personality Traits Are Continuous With Mental Illnesses", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-12-14T22:26:07+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=16", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "625d69bef59ddbaa94392b35fd0e4c24", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Phenomenal Character of LSD + MDMA (Candy-Flipping) According to Cognitive Scientist Steve Lehar\n\nExcerpt from: The Grand Illusion: A Psychonautical Odyssey Into the Depths of Human Experience (pages 60-62) by Steve Lehar (emphasis and links are mine)\n\nEcstasy\nAbout this time I had the good fortune of locating a supply of ecstasy. True to its name, ecstasy promotes a kind of euphoric jitteryness, in which it is just a thrill to be alive! Every fiber of your being is just quivering with energy. But ecstasy also has some interesting perceptual manifestations. In the first place there is a kind of jitteryness across the whole visual field. And this jitteryness is so pronounced that it can manifest itself in your eyeballs, that jitter back and forth at a blinding speed. If you relax, and just let the jitters take over, the oscillations of your eyes will blur the whole scene into a peculiar double image. But if you concentrate, and focus, the ocular jitter can be made to subside, and thus become less noticeable or bothersome. One of my friends got the ocular jitters so bad that he could not control them, and that prevented him from having a good time. That was the last time he took ecstasy. I however found it enchanting. And I analyzed that subtle jitteryness more carefully. It was not caused exclusively by jittering of the eyeball, but different objects in the perceived world also seemed to jitter endlessly between alternate states. In fact, all perceived objects jittered in this manner, creating a fuzzy blur between alternate states. This was interesting for a psychonaut! It seemed to me that I could see the mechanism of my visual brain sweeping out the image of my experience right before my eyes, like the flying spot of light that paints the television picture on the glowing phosphor screen. The refresh rate of my visual mechanism had slowed to such a point as to make this sweep visible to me. Very interesting indeed!\nCandy-Flipping\nHaving access simultaneously to ecstasy and LSD, I tried my hand at the practice known in the drug literature as “candy flipping”, that is, taking ecstasy and LSD in combination. The combination is so unique and different from the experience of either drug in isolation, that it has earned its own unique name. Under LSD and ecstasy I could see the flickering blur of visual generation most clearly. And I saw peculiar ornamental artifacts on all perceived objects, like a Fourier representation with the higher harmonics chopped off. LSD by itself creates sharply detailed ornamental artifacts, like a transparent overlay of an ornamental lattice or filigree pattern superimposed on the visual scene, especially in darkness. Ecstasy smooths out those sharp edges and blurs them into a creamy smooth rolling experience. I would sometimes feel some part of my world suddenly bulging out to greater magnification, like a fish-eye lens distortion appearing randomly in space, stretching everything in that portion of space like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. But it was not an actual bulging that changed the shape of the visual world, but more of a seeming bulging, that was perceived in an invisible sense without actual distortion of the world. For example one time I was putting on my boots to go outside, and as I reached down to pull on a boot, I suddenly got the impression that my leg grew to ten times its normal length, but I could still reach my boot because my arms had also grown by the same proportion, as had the whole space in that part of the room. Nothing actually looked any different after this expansion, it was just my sense of the scale of the world that had undergone this transformation, and even as I contemplated this, and finished securing my boot, the world shrank down gradually back to its normal scale again and the distortion vanished.\nI have theorized that the way that ecstasy achieved its creamy smoothness is by dithering or alternating so fast between perceptual alternatives as to blur them together, like a spinning propellor that appears as a semi-transparent disc. At this level of observation I was unable to get my co-trippers to see the features that I was seeing. I would ask them when they saw that line of trees, did they not see illusory projections, like a transparent overlay of vectors projecting up from the trees into the blue sky that I could see? They did not see these things. So don’t expect to see what I see when I take LSD and ecstasy. I report my observations as I experience them, but observation of the psychedelic experience is every bit as subjective and variable as any phenomenological observation of our own experience. What stands out for one observer might remain completely obscure to another.\nBut the features I observed in my psychedelic experience all pointed toward a single self-consistent explanation of the mechanism of experience. It appears that the spatial structure of visual experience is swept out by some kind of volumetric imaging mechanism with a periodic refresh scan, not unlike the principle of television imagery, but extended into three dimensions. This was interesting indeed!\n\nRelated Articles:\n\nQuantifying Bliss – which proposes a model from first principles to explain the structural properties of an experience that makes it feel good, bad, mixed, or neutral (i.e. valence). It then derives from this model precise, empirically testable predictions for what really good experiences should look like. Specifically, MDMA euphoria is postulated to be the result of a high level of consonance between connectome-specific harmonic waves.\nA Future for Neuroscience – which discusses the broad implications of a harmonic resonance theory of brain function for neuroscience, including new ways to conceptualize personality, and exotic states of consciousness.\nThe Pseudo-Time Arrow – which discusses a particular physicalist model to explain the experience of time by examining the patterns of *implicit causality* in networks of local binding (these terms are defined there). The bottom line being: each moment of experience contains time implicitly embedded in its geometric structure. Psychedelics, MDMA, and their combination would each have unique signature structural effects along the arrow of pseudo-time.\n\nTaken together, these articles would provide an explanation for why MDMA has a uniquely euphoric effect. In particular, Lehar’s point that MDMA’s generalized jitteryness/dithering smooths out the sharp edges of an LSD experience would show up as the harmonization/regularization of the relationship between time-slices along the pseudo-time arrow of experience. The Symmetry Theory of Valence can then be applied in the resulting network of local binding after MDMA’s smoothing effect, leading to the peculiar insight that MDMA’s euphoric effects come from the symmetrification of experience along the axis of experiential time. The creaminess of experience produced by MDMDA that Lehar talks about feels very good precisely because it is the phenomenal character of a dissonance-free state of consciousness. Hence, the fundamental nature of pleasure is not behavioral reinforcement, the maximization of utility according to one’s utility function, or expected surprise minimization; pleasure is more fundamental and low-level than any of those properties. Pleasure, we predict, shall correspond to the degree and intensity of energized symmetries present in a bound moment of experience, and MDMA phenomenology is a clear example of what it looks like to optimize for this property.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/12/12/the-phenomenal-character-of-lsd-mdma-candy-flipping-according-to-cognitive-scientist-steve-lehar/", "title": "The Phenomenal Character of LSD + MDMA (Candy-Flipping) According to Cognitive Scientist Steve Lehar", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-12-13T02:06:12+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=16", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "9952c13a36a2e075dc0dac6ee70f3c12", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Universal Plot: Interlude ‽ – The Slytherin Wavelength\n\nBelow you will find key quotes from two very interesting interviews. The first one is an interview of a mafia hitman, and the second one deals with a legal executioner. Of note is the fact that a key motivation for choosing their lines of work (killing people illegally, and killing people legally, respectively) was to be someone. That is, they wanted to be recognized by other people’s mental models as someone who is good at their job and whose line of work can command respect. I bolded the sections that show this in the most prominent way.\nIn other words, even people who would squarely belong to Slytherin are motivated by otherwise very normal, very human kinds of emotions and signaling behaviors. Perhaps what’s different is that for whatever reason the degree of moral disgust they experience concerning their choice of career is vastly out-weighted by the positive emotion they experience from their secure place in a robust competence hierarchy. Parallels to military, police, and political social roles are obvious. There are many people in the world whose internal affective triggers are configured in such a way that they will do anything to be someone. In turn, the world’s militaries, mafias, and slaughterhouses can always find people willing to cause immense suffering to sentient beings in exchange for crumbs of social recognition.\nHow do we steer people like this away from unethical lines of work? In light of the actual motivations behind their actions, here are four general approaches I think can work:\n\nIncrease their moral disgust in response to causing suffering (cf. Clockwork Orange)\nReduce the positive emotion associated with having a secure place in a competence hierarchy (cf. Rank Theory of Depression)\nIncrease the positive emotion they associate with other’s happiness (cf. MDMA), and\nMake them believe/realize that we are all one consciousness (cf. Open Individualism, Peaceful Qualia, LSD for Criminals).\n\nWhich approach should be pursued? We shall come back to this in future articles.\n\nRelated: The Universal Plot: Part I – Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators, The Banality of Evil (David Pearce), Virtue Signaling (Geoffrey Miller), Book Review: Evolutionary Psychopathology and Radicalizing the Romanceless (Scott Alexander).\n\n\nSusskind: My guest is a man named Joey. He by his own admission has murdered 38 people. He was a paid killer. A “hit man” for the mafia. Joey is the author of the recently published book “Killer” in which he describes his career and the world of organized crime. You’ve killed 38 people.\nJoey: Yes, sir.\nSusskind: When did you first kill somebody. How old were you?\nJoey: I was 16 the first time I hit somebody in the head.\nSusskind: How did that come to pass?\nJoey: I was working numbers as a kid. I was a big, tough, kid. I became a controller very shortly. And one day a guy came to me and said “I got a job for you”. So what is it? “I want you to hit somebody in the head.” I looked at him. And said when do you want to know? “By tonight.” I said “ok, see you tonight”. So I thought it over. If I turned this guy down. All my life I will be scuffler. I’ll be looking to hustle, make a dollar somehow. If I take the job, I’m somebody, if I do it right. So I decided to take it. And then I was paid what I considered a fortune. And after I did the job guys who used to see me and just fluff me off, like “that’s just another kid walking around”, suddenly were “hi kid, how are you?”. All of a sudden I had new friends I didn’t know I had. \nSusskind: How much were you paid?\nJoey: Five thousand dollars. \nSusskind: At 16?\nJoey: That’s correct.\nSusskind: How did you killed them?\nJoey: I walked up behind them and shot them in the back of their head.\nSusskind: Why did you kill them?\nJoey: Because I was paid.\nSusskind: Did you know what he did?\nJoey: I didn’t ask. It was none of my business.\nSusskind: Who hired you? Not the name of the man. I mean, was it an organization?\nJoey: It was part of an organization, yes.\nSusskind: Did they tell why he was going to be killed?\nJoey: No.\nSusskind: You didn’t ask?\nJoey: No. It was none of my business. You weren’t supposed to ask. They offer you a job. You take the job, you do it. You don’t take the job, you don’t do it. It is not my business to know, unless it happens to be somebody, where as you go by you get a reputation, and they are going to knock somebody down, and it is somebody you happen to know, well they tell you “you know them” and they give you the option. By the description of what they tell you, and you think you know the person, then you can say “I am not interested”.\nSusskind: How did you feel when you killed somebody? The very first time.\nJoey: I don’t know. I guess I was a little shook. But after that it didn’t bother me.\nSusskind: Did your conscience hurt?\nJoey: No.\nSusskind: Could you sleep?\nJoey: Yeah.\n[….]\nSusskind: Did you ever wonder about the person, like they had a wife, or children…\nJoey: I don’t worry about any of them. The same as if somebody comes after me. He ain’t gonna worry about me.\n[…]\nSusskind: Are there don’ts in killing people?\nJoey: Yeah. You do not kill them in houses of worship. You do not kill them in their home, in front of their families. And you do not torture a man.\nSusskind: Do you rob them?\nJoey: No, you do not rob them.\nSusskind: Do you torture, at all?\nJoey: No.\nSusskind: You just do it discretely…\nJoey: You just do your job and get out of there. You are not there to play games. You are not there to decide why he should die. Somebody already decided he is going to die. He ain’t have a chance to cross himself before you pull the trigger.\nSusskind: What about their begging? \nJoey: I don’t give them enough time to give the word “please” out. If they see me, it’s all over by the time they see me. If they don’t see me because I came up behind them, they never had a chance anyway.\n[…]\nSusskind: Do you think you have any ethics at all?\nJoey: I have a lot of ethics. My word is my bond. That’s number one. I’m more honorable than anybody in the course of your life. That’s my ethics. If I say something will be done it will be done. If I make a promise I will keep it. If I tell you I will be at a certain place, I will be there. I will not break my word to you.\n[…]\nSusskind: You say in your book that women find you irresistible.\nJoey: No, I didn’t say they find me irresistible. \nSusskind: They find you sexually very attractive.\nJoey: They find the fact of what I do very attractive.\nSusskind: You tell them what you do?\nJoey: No. I’ll give you an example. At a party one time after I had been acquitted, I was introduced to this girl, who incidentally comes from one of your better families. She couldn’t wait to jump into bed with me.\nSusskind: Because you were a killer.\nJoey: That’s correct.\nSusskind: And that’s somehow alluring.\nJoey: Yes, to her.\nSusskind: Was she just a stunning exception?\nJoey: No! When girls find that you deal in violence… in controlled violence, as I call it… the fact that you know you have taken a life. Or that you do this. That you have no compunctions about it… it has a strange fascination for them. Don’t ask me what it is. I don’t know!\nSusskind: How long does this fascination last?\nJoey: I don’t know… they do it two or three times and all of a sudden they look up and ask “where the hell am I?”\n\n\nIntro: “Ashmawy” is the name given to an executioner in Egypt. We met with a retired “Ashmawy” who carried around 1,070 executions across his career.\nQ: How did you become an executioner?\nA: After I joined the army, I became part of the security forces. But two or three months after I joined the army, there was an execution. I watched as the executioner walked in with his two assistants and his subordinate officer, and he just commanded the whole room. It’s a job that earns people’s respect because it’s so unique. From that moment on, I knew it was something I wanted to do.\nQ: What are the requirements needed to become an executioner?\nA: The most important thing is maintaining your fitness and being a physically strong person. You also need to be observant, pray regularly and be close to God. You need to be over 30 or 40 years old because the job is tough and cruel. People’s minds begin to mature in their 30s and 40s, as they have many more life experiences compared to a young person. Sometimes, young men attend the executions, and they end up vomiting or fainting. And some of them are police officers!\nQ: Did you love your job?\nA: Of course, I did. I loved my job. I mean, some newspapers and magazines even wrote about how I was “in love with the noose”, or something like that. What they really meant was that I was so good at what I did, I became an innovator. And indeed I was innovative. The first time was difficult… I can’t deny that it was difficult. I couldn’t sleep for two days. There is usually a committee of 30 or 40 people watching. People with so much copper on their shoulders – lieutenants, security managers. And they are all watching you. I was scared, but not because someone was dying. I was scared of not doing my job properly.\nQ: How did you feel executing someone?\nA: It became a very normal thing for me… to the extent that during quiet times, I’d get upset because there were no executions to carry out. In the end it was just like meeting up with you now, or like going to see some friends and taking one to hang. That’s really it. No emotions involved.\n[…]\nQ: How do people treat you when they find out what your job was?\nA: The job makes you famous. You can get someone out of trouble with the police. You can end a problem. A wise person in this position should be humble, and not take advantage of the position. Be humble about it and respect others. You will then find that people will respect you even more.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/12/11/the-universal-plot-interlude-%e2%80%bd-the-slytherin-wavelength/", "title": "The Universal Plot: Interlude ‽ – The Slytherin Wavelength", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-12-11T08:22:18+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=17", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6c34084253b94a36dd28553e39c8a794", "summary": []}
{"text": "Hell Must Be Destroyed\n\n\nSinger called the movement that grew up around him “effective altruism”, and its rallying cry was that one ought to spend every ounce of one’s energy doing whatever most relieves human suffering, most likely either feeding the poor or curing various tropical diseases. Again, something his opponents rejected as impossible, unworkable, another example of liberal fanaticism. Really? Every ounce of your energy? Again, they could have just read their Bibles. Deuteronomy 6:5: “And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.”\n \nThen Singer changed his tune. In the 1970s, after the sky cracked and the world changed, he announced that charity was useless, that feeding the poor was useless, that curing tropical diseases was useless. There was only one cause to which a truly rational, truly good human being could devote his or her life.\n \nHell must be destroyed.\n \nThe idea of billions of human beings suffering unbearable pain for all eternity so outweighed our little earthly problems that the latter didn’t even register. He began meeting with his disciples in secret, teaching them hidden Names he said had been vouchsafed to him by angels. Thamiel put a price on his life – quite a high price actually. Heedless of his own safety, Singer traveled what remained of the civilized world, making converts wherever he went, telling them to be perfect as God was perfect, and every speech ended the same way. Hell must be destroyed.\n\n\n\n\n\n–  INTERLUDE ג: CANTORS AND SINGERS from UNSONG\n\n\n\n\n\nAn angel appears on Earth. This genderless being connected to God shows up on every screen on Earth at once and asks us if we are interested in drastically improving life on Earth. A large enough portion of those who hear the message (which gets a coverage of 80%+ of people worldwide) see into their souls and find the willingness to make life better, and then they see into their hearts and see the warmth of hope, and so they resolve to agree to do whatever is necessary to help the angel improve life on Earth. And thus the angel says “thanks to the collective desire to make it so, I shall change some things about how the planet is programed, and you will see a 99% reduction in suffering and a 20% increase in overall happiness.”\n\n\nAnd so the angel gets to work.\n\n\nA year passes, and nobody can really tell the difference from before. Most people’s day to day experience is perhaps even slightly more tedious and slightly more boring. What happened? After a few years it is clear that no major change has happened, and indeed affective psychologists report a mild but very generalized decrease in people’s engagement with their day to day activities and increases in feelings of being a bit disoriented. Did the angel scam us? Or did people fail to do their part? Or why are there no improvements? A large enough mass of people asked this question that the angel felt the need to provide an update. He comes back down and appears in all of the planet’s screens and says:\n\n\n“Everything went according to plan. It is just that your society hasn’t reached the point of scientific development where you are able to measure the quality of experience of sentient beings. You aren’t quantifying pain very well.”\n\n\n“Here is what I did. Above of all, I focused my energies on trying to prevent some of the worst experiences, which in aggregate happened to be an ethical catastrophe. I managed to reduce how bad these experiences were by about 99.99%.”\n\n\n“I started by reducing how bad cluster headaches feel. They are now only about 44,000 dolors per second (d/s). They used to be around 450,000,000 d/s. You see, when most people get a fleeting headache, we are talking about headaches that range from 0.5 to 1d/s. You know, the type of headache that people are willing to wait out, and perhaps some people will ask for a little aspirin or some placebo of some sort and then get on with it. Most headaches are of this kind. But even if you bundle all of them together we are talking about a rounding error relative to the suffering caused by other types of headaches, the bad ones. Migraine, for example, tends to get to about 1,000 dolors per second, and sufferers have a hard time communicating the fact that it is not just a lot worse, it is a thousand times more painful than the “normal” ones. But even then that does not register relative to one of the really really bad ones, like cluster headaches, which as I said can spiral up to values close to a billion d/s. As it happens, on your planet there are simple chemical tricks to reduce that particular type of pain (e.g. LSD), so I just went ahead and got rid of the bulk of it very easily. It’s still super painful by human standards, but not by my standards, like it was before. To have a cluster headache now is just as “indescribably bad” as before, meaning it goes beyond people’s ability to imagine and make sense of. But that doesn’t challenge the fact that the 99.99% improvement I did is an ethical victory of civilizational magnitude.”\n\n\n“Next I went on to reducing how bad it feels to have kidney stones, bone pain, and various kinds of particularly bad neuropathies in people with schizophrenia. By the time I had taken care of about the dozen or so worst kinds of pain, I had already overdelivered by an order of magnitude and was starting to run into diminishing returns. So I decided to go on to helping other planets in my quest to prevent as much suffering as possible.”\n\n\n“I apologize I used about 0.13 hedons per second (h/s) from mundane experiences to implement one of those cosmic pain diminishing plans. In order to increase the amount of happiness in the world as I promised I made the experience of showering about 50% more enjoyable and the experience of listening to music about twice as good. As you can see, the bathing industry did take off, but not many thought much of it. And the musicians were able to tell that music was awesome again and wondered why, but most people seem to have attributed their increased musical enjoyment to what they imagined had been their own hidden musical talents all along.”\n\n\n“Thank you, and keep enjoying your drastically improved planet.”\n\n\n \n\n\nThus, people realized that the world was indeed a lot better. Well, some did. And others complained, but it was ok.\n\n\nThanks to Michael Aaron Coleman and Jonathan Leighton for inspiring this piece. Michael suffers from cluster headaches and has described their phenomenology in gruesome detail. He says that in a 0 to 10 scale, cluster headaches are solid 10/10. But he also says you really need a different scale to make sense of this monster. He once used the phrase “minus one million hedonic tone”. He says that morphine makes the pain go from 10/10 to 9/10, if at all, maybe more like 9.5/10. Thankfully, LSD in small doses (~25 micrograms) makes it go to 1/10. DMT also works, but 5-MeO-DMT does not (and yet it still expands time, so not a good idea). Jonathan is the Executive Director of the Organization for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS). He works on identifying cases where intense suffering can be prevented on a massive scale and doing what has to be done. I recommend getting in touch with him if this is a particular interest of yours.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/12/03/hell-must-be-destroyed/", "title": "Hell Must Be Destroyed", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-12-04T03:07:39+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=17", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e57d663e698973415581684589418137", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Pseudo-Time Arrow: Explaining Phenomenal Time With Implicit Causal Structures In Networks Of Local Binding\n\nAt this point in the trip I became something that I can not put into words… I became atemporal. I existed without time… I existed through an infinite amount of time. This concept is impossible to comprehend without having actually perceived it. Even now in retrospect it is hard to comprehend it. But I do know that I lived an eternity that night… \n \n– G.T. Currie. “Impossible to Understand Reality: An Experience with LSD“\nTime distortion is an effect that makes the passage of time feel difficult to keep track of and wildly distorted.\n \n– PsychonautWiki\nIntroduction\nWhat is time? When people ask this question it is often hard to tell what they are talking about. Indeed, without making explicit one’s background philosophical assumptions this question will usually suffer from a lot of ambiguity. Is one talking about the experience of time? Or is one talking about the physical nature of time? What sort of answer would satisfy the listener? Oftentimes this implicit ambiguity is a source of tremendous confusion. Time distortion experiences deepen the mystery; the existence of exotic ways of experiencing time challenges the view that we perceive the passage of physical time directly. How to disentangle this conundrum?\nModern physics has made enormous strides in pinning down what physical time is. As we will see, one can reduce time to causality networks, and causality to patterns of conditional statistical independence. Yet in the realm of experience the issue of time remains much more elusive.\nIn this article we provide a simple explanatory framework that accounts for both the experience of time and its relation to physical time. We then sketch out how this framework can be used to account for exotic experiences of time. We end with some thoughts pertaining the connection between the experience of time and valence (the pleasure-pain axis), which may explain why exotic experiences of the passage of time are frequently intensely emotional in nature.\nTo get there, let us first lay out some key definitions and background philosophical assumptions:\nKey Terminology: Physical vs. Phenomenal Time\nPhysical Time: This is the physical property that corresponds to what a clock measures. In philosophy of time we can distinguish between eternalism and presentism. Eternalism postulate that time is a geometric feature of the universe, best exemplified with “block universe” metaphor (i.e. where time is another dimension alongside our three spatial dimensions). Presentism, instead, postulates that only the present moment is real; the past and the future are abstractions derived from the way we experience patterns in sequences of events. The present is gone, and the future has yet to come.\nNow, it used to be thought that there was a universal metronome that dictated “what time it is” in the universe. With this view one could reasonably support presentism as a viable account of time. However, ever since Einstein’s theory of relativity was empirically demonstrated we now know that there is no absolute frame of reference. Based on the fundamental unity of space and time as presented by general relativity, and the absence of an absolute frame of reference, we find novel interesting arguments in favor of eternalism and against presentism (e.g. the Rietdijk–Putnam argument). On the other hand, presentists have rightly argued that the ephemeral nature of the present is self-revealing to any subject of experience. Indeed, how can we explain the feeling of the passage of time if reality is in fact a large geometric “static” structure? While this article does not need to take sides between eternalism and presentism, we will point out that the way we explain the experience of time will in turn diminish the power of presentist arguments based on the temporal character of our experience.\nPhenomenal Time: This is the way in which the passing of time feels like. Even drug naïve individuals can relate to the fact that the passage of time feels different depending on one’s state of mind. The felt sense of time depends on one’s level of arousal (deeply asleep, dreaming, tired, relaxed, alert, wide awake, etc.) and hedonic tone (depressed, anxious, joyful, relaxed, etc.). Indeed, time hangs heavy when one is in pain, and seems to run through one’s fingers when one is having a great time. More generally, when taking into account altered states of consciousness (e.g. meditation, yoga, psychedelics) we see that there is a wider range of experiential phenomena than is usually assumed. Indeed, one can see that there are strange generalizations to phenomenal time. Examples of exotic phenomenal temporalities include: tachypsychia (aka. time dilation), time reversal, short-term memory tracers, looping, “moments of eternity“, temporal branching, temporal synchronicities, timelessness, and so on. We suggest that any full account of consciousness ought to be able to explain all of these variants of phenomenal time (among other key features of consciousness).\nKey Background Assumptions\nWe shall work under three key assumptions. First, we have indirect realism about perception. Second, we have mereological nihilism in the context of consciousness, meaning that one’s stream of consciousness is composed of discrete “moments of experience”. And third, Qualia Formalism, a view that states that each moment of experience has a mathematical structure whose features are isomorphic to the features of the experience. Let us unpack these assumptions:\n1. Indirect Realism About Perception\nThis view also goes by the name of representationalism or simulationism (not to be confused with the simulation hypothesis). In this account, perception as a concept is shown to be muddled and confused. We do not really perceive the world per se. Rather, our brains instantiate a world-simulation that tracks fitness-relevant features of our environment. Our sensory apparatus merely selects which specific world-simulation our brain instantiates. In turn, our world-simulations causally covaries with the input our senses receive and the motor responses it elicits. Furthermore, evolutionary selection pressures, in some cases, work against accurate representations of one’s environment (so long as these are not fitness-enhancing). Hence, we could say that our perception of the world is an adaptive illusion more than an accurate depiction of our surroundings.\nA great expositor of this view is Steve Lehar. We recommend his book about how psychonautical experience make clear the fact that we inhabit (and in some sense are) a world-simulation created by our brain. Below you can find some pictures from his “Cartoon Epistemology“, which narrates a dialogue between a direct and an indirect realist about perception:\nClick to view slideshow.\nSteve Lehar also points out that the very geometry of our world-simulation is that of a diorama. We evolved to believe that we can experience the world directly, and the geometry of our world-simulation is very well crafted to keep us under the influence of a sort of spell to makes us believe we are the little person watching the diorama. This world-simulation has a geometry that is capable of representing both nearby regions and far-away objects (and even points-at-infinity), and it represents the subject of experience with a self-model at its projective center.\nWe think that an account of how we experience time is possible under the assumption that experiential time is a structural feature of this world-simulation. In turn, we would argue that implicit direct realism about perception irrevocably confuses physical time and phenomenal time. For if one assumes that one somehow directly perceives the physical world, doesn’t that mean that one also perceives time? But in this case, what to make of exotic time experiences? With indirect realism we realize that we inhabit an inner world-simulation that causally co-varies with features of the environment and hence resolve to find the experience of time within the confines of one’s own skull.\n2. Discrete Moments of Experience\nA second key assumptions is that experiences are ontologically unitary rather than merely functionally unitary. The philosophy of mind involved in this key assumption is unfortunately rather complex and easy to misunderstand, but we can at least say the following. Intuitively, as long as one is awake an alert, it feels like one’s so-called “stream of consciousness” is an uninterrupted and continuous experience. Indeed, at the limit, some philosophers have even argued that one is a different person each day; subjects of experience are, as it were, delimited by periods of unconsciousness. We instead postulate that the continuity of experience from one moment to the next is an illusion caused be the way experience is constructed. In reality, our brains generate countless “moments of experience” every second, each with its own internal representation of the passage of time and the illusion of a continuous diachronic self.\nContrast this discretized view of experience with deflationary accounts of consciousness (which insist that there is no objective boundary that delimits a given moment of experience) and functionlist accounts of consciousness (which would postulate that experience is smeared across time over the span of hundreds of milliseconds).\nThe precise physical underpinnings of a moment of experience have yet to be discovered, but if monistic physicalism is to survive, it is likely that the (physical) temporal extension that a single moment of experience spans is incredibly thin (possibly no more than 10^-13 seconds). In this article we make no assumptions about the actual physical temporal extension of a moment of experience. All we need to say is that it is “short” (most likely under a millisecond).\nIt is worth noting that the existence of discrete moments of experience supports an Empty Individualist account of personal identity. That is, a person’s brain works as an experience machine that generates many conscious events every second, each with its own distinct coordinates in physical space-time and unique identity. We would also argue that this ontology may be compatible with Open Individualism, but the argument for this shall be left to a future article.\n3. Qualia Formalism\nThis third key assumption states that the quality of all experiences can be modeled mathematically. More precisely, for any given moment of experience, there exists a mathematical object whose mathematical features are isomorphic the the features of the experience. At the Qualia Research Institute we take this view and run with it to see where it takes us. Which mathematical object can fully account for the myriad structural relationships between experiences is currently unknown. Yet, we think that we do not need to find the One True Mathematical Object in order to make progress in formalizing the structure of subjective experience. In this article we will simply invoke the mathematical object of directed graphs in order to encode the structure of local binding of a given experience. But first, what is “local binding”? I will borrow David Pearce’s explanation of the terms involved:\nThe “binding problem”, also called the “combination problem”, refers to the mystery of how the micro-experiences mediated by supposedly discrete and distributed neuronal edge-detectors, motion-detectors, shape-detectors, colour-detectors, etc., can be “bound” into unitary experiential objects (“local” binding) apprehended by a unitary experiential self (“global” binding). Neuroelectrode studies using awake, verbally competent human subjects confirm that neuronal micro-experiences exist. Classical neuroscience cannot explain how they could ever be phenomenally bound. As normally posed, the binding problem assumes rather than derives the emergence of classicality.\n \n– Non-Materialist Physicalism by David Pearce\nIn other words, “local binding” refers to the way in which the features of our experience seem to be connected and interwoven into complex phenomenal objects. We do not see a chair as merely a disparate set of colors, edges, textures, etc. Rather, we see it as an integrated whole with fine compositional structure. Its colors are “bound” to its edges which are “bound” to its immediate surrounding space and so forth.\nA simple toy model for the structure of an experience can be made by saying that there are “simple qualia” such as color and edges, and “complex qualia” formed by the binding of simple qualia. In turn, we can represent an experience as a graph where each node is a simple quale and each edge is a local binding connection. The resulting globally connected graph corresponds to the “globally bound” experience. Each “moment of experience” is, thus, coarsely at any rate, a network.\nWhile this toy model is almost certainly incomplete (indeed some features of experience may require much more sophisticated mathematical objects to be represented properly), it is fair to say that the rough outline of our experience can be represented with a network-like skeleton encoding the local binding connections. More so, as we will see, this model will suffice to account for many of the surprising features of phenomenal time (and its exotic variants).\n\n\nTimeless Causality\nWhile both physical and phenomenal time pose profound philosophical conundrums, it is important to denote that science has made a lot of progress providing formal accounts of physical time. Confusingly, even Einstein’s theory of general relativity is time-symmetric, meaning that the universe would behave the same whether time was moving forwards or backwards. Hence relativity does not provide, on its own, a direction to time. What does provide a direction to time are properties like the entropy gradient (i.e. the direction along which disorder is globally increasing) and, the focus of this article, causality as encoded in the network of statistical conditional independence. This is a mouthful, let us tackle it in more detail.\nIn Timeless Causality Yudkowsky argues one can tell the direction of causality, (and hence of the arrow of time) by examining how conditioning on events inform us about other events. We recommend reading the linked article for details (and for a formal account read SEP’s entry on the matter).\n(source)\nIn the image above we have a schematic representation of two measurables (1 & 2) at several times (L, M, and R). The core idea is that we can determine the flow of causality by examining the patterns of statistical conditional independence, with questions like “if I’ve observed L1 and L2, do I gain information about M1 by learning about M2?” an so on*.\nAlong the same lines Wolfram has done research on how time may emerge in rule-based network modifications automata:\n\nIntriguingly, these models of time and causality are tenseless and hence eternalist. The whole universe works as a unified system in which time appears as an axis rather than a metaphysical universal metronome. But if eternalism is true, how come we can feel the passage of time? If moments of experience exist, how come we seem to experience movement and action? Shouldn’t we experience just a single static “image”, like seeing a single movie frame without being aware of the previous ones? We are now finally ready tackle these questions and explain how time may be encoded in the structure of one’s experience.\nPseudo-Time Arrow\nPhysical Time vs. Phenomenal Time (video source)\nIn the image above we contrast physical and phenomenal time explicitly. The top layer shows the physical state of a scene in which a ball is moving along a free-falling parabolic trajectory. In turn, a number of these states are aggregated by a process of layering (second row) into a unified “moment of experience”. As seen on the third row, each moment of experience represents the “present scene” as the composition of three slices of sensory input with a time-dependent dimming factor. Namely, the scene experienced is approximated with a weighted sum of three scenes with the most recent one being weighted the highest and the oldest the least.\nIn other words, at the coarsest level of organization time is encoded by layering the current input scene with faint after-images of very recent input scenes. In healthy people this process is rather subtle yet always present. Indeed, after-images are an omnipresent feature of sensory modalities (beyond sight).\nA simple model to describe how after-images are layered on top of each other to generate a scene with temporal depth involves what we call “time-dependent qualia decay functions”. This function determines how quickly sensory (and internal) impressions fade over time. With e.g. psychedelics making this decay function significantly fatter (long-tailed) and stimulants making it slightly shorter (i.e. higher signal-to-noise ratio at the cost of reduced complex image formation).\nWith this layering process going on, and the Qualia Formalist model of experience as a network of local binding, we can further find a causal structure in experience akin to that in physical time (as explained in Timeless Causality):\nAgain, each node of the network represents a simple quale and each edge represents a local binding relationship between the nodes it connects. Then, we can describe the time-dependent qualia decay function as the probability that a node or an edge will vanish at each (physical) time step.\nThe rightmost nodes and edges are the most recent qualia triggered by sensory input. Notice how the nodes and edges vanish probabilistically with each time step, making the old layers sparsely populated.\nWith a sufficiently large network one would be able to decode the direction of causality (and hence of time) using the same principles of statistical conditional independence used to account for physical time. What we are proposing is that this underlies what time feels like.\nNow that we understand what the pseudo-time arrow is, what can we do with it?\nExplanatory Power: How the Pseudo-Time Arrow Explains Exotic Phenomenal Time\nLet us use this explanatory framework on exotic experiences of time. That is, let us see how the network of local binding and its associated pseudo-time arrows can explain unusual experiences of time perception.\nTo start we should address the fact that tachypsychia (i.e. time dilation) could either mean (a) that “one experiences time passing at the same rate but that this rate moves at a different speed relative to the way clocks tick compared to typical perception” or, more intriguingly, (b) that “time itself feels slower, stretched, elongated, etc.”.\nThe former (a) is very easy to explain, while the latter requires more work. Namely, time dilation of the former variety can be explained by an accelerated or slowed down sensory sampling rate in such a way that the (physical) temporal interval between each layer is either longer or shorter than usual. In this case the structure of the network does not change; what is different is how it maps to physical time. If one were on a sensory deprivation chamber and this type of time dilation was going on one would not be able to say so since the quality of phenomenal time (as encoded in the network of local binding) remains the same as before. Perhaps compare how it feels like to see a movie in slow-motion relative to seeing it at its original speed while being perfectly sober. Since one is sober either way, what changes is how quickly the world seems to move, not how one feels inside.\nThe latter (b) is a lot more interesting. In particular, phenomenal time is often incredibly distorted when taking psychedelics in a way that is noticeable even in sensory deprivation chambers. In other words, it is the internal experience of the passage of time that changes rather than the layering rate relative to the external world. So how can we explain that kind of phenomenal time dilation?\nPsychedelics\nThe most straightforward effect of psychedelics one can point out with regards to the structure of one’s experience is the fact that qualia seems to last for much longer than usual. This manifests as “tracers” in all sensory modalities. Using the vocabulary introduced above, we would say that psychedelics change the time-dependent qualia decay function by making it significantly “fatter”. While in sober conditions the positive after-image of a lamp will last between 0.2 and 1 second, on psychedelics it will last anywhere between 2 and 15 seconds. This results in a much more pronounced and perceptible change in the layering process of experience. Using Lehar’s diorama model of phenomenal space, we could represent various degrees of psychedelic intoxication with the following progression:\n\n\n\n\n\nThe first image is what one experiences while sober. The second is what one experiences if one takes, e.g. 10 micrograms of LSD (i.e. microdosing), where there is a very faint additional layer but is at times indistinguishable from sober states. The third, fourth, and fifth image represent what tracers may feel like on ~50, ~150, and ~300 micrograms of LSD, respectively. The last image is perhaps most reminiscent of DMT experiences, which provide a uniquely powerful and intense high-frequency layering at the onset of the trip.\nIn the graphical model of time we could say that the structure of the network changes by (1) a lower probability for each node to vanish in each (physical) time step, and (2) an even lower probability for each edge to vanish after each (physical) time step. The tracers experienced on psychedelics are more than just a layering process; the density of connections also increases. That is to say, while simple qualia lasts for longer, the connections between them are even longer-lasting. The inter-connectivity of experience is enhanced.\nA low dose of a psychedelic will lead to a slow decay of simple qualia (colors, edges, etc.) and an even slower decay of connections (local binding), resulting in an elongated and densified pseudo-time arrow.\nThis explains why time seems to move much more slowly on psychedelics. Namely, each moment of experience has significantly more temporal depth than a corresponding sober state. To illustrate this point, here is a first-person account of this effect:\nA high dose of LSD seems to distort time for me the worst… maybe in part because it simply lasts so long. At the end of an LSD trip when i’m thinking back on everything that happened my memories of the trip feel ancient.\nWhen you’re experiencing the trip it’s possible to feel time slowing down, but more commonly for me I get this feeling when I think back on things i’ve done that day. Like “woah, remember when I was doing this. That feels like it was an eternity ago” when in reality it’s been an hour.\n \n– Shroomery user Subconscious in the tread “How long can a trip feel like?“\nOn low doses of psychedelics, phenomenal time may seem to acquire a sort of high definition unusual for sober states. The incredible (and accurate) visual acuity of threshold DMT experiences is a testament to this effect, and it exemplifies what a densified pseudo-time arrow feels like:\nJust as small doses of DMT enhance the definition of spatial structures, so is the pseudo-time arrow made more regular and detailed, leading to a strange but compelling feeling of “HD vision”.\nBut this is not all. Psychedelics, in higher doses, can lead to much more savage and surrealistic changes to the pseudo-time arrow. Let us tackle a few of the more exotic variants with this explanatory framework:\nTime Loops\nThis effect feels like being stuck in a perfectly-repeating sequence of events outside of the universe in some kind of Platonic closed timelike curve. People often accidentally induce this effect by conducting repetitive tasks or listening to repetitive sounds (which ultimately entrain this pattern). For most people this is a very unsettling experience since it produces a pronounce feeling of helplessness due to making you feel powerless about ever escaping the loop.\nIn terms of the causal network, this experience could be accounted for with a loop in the pseudo-time arrow of experience:\nHigh Dose LSD can lead to annealing and perfect “standing temporal waves” often described as “time looping” or “infinite time”\nMoments of Eternity\nSubjectively, so-called “Moments of Eternity” are extremely bizarre experiences that have the quality of being self-sustaining and unconditioned. It is often described in mystical terms, such as “it feels like one is connected to the eternal light of consciousness with no past and no future direction”. Whereas time loops lack some of the common features of phenomenal time such as a vanishing past, moments of eternity are even more alien as they also lack a general direction for the pseudo-time arrow.\nHigh Dose LSD may also generate a pseudo-time arrow with a central source and sink to that connects all nodes.\nBoth time loops and moments of eternity arise from the confluence of a slower time-dependent qualia decay function and structural annealing (which is typical of feedback). As covered in previous posts, as depicted in numerous psychedelic replications, and as documented in PsychonautWiki, one of the core effects of psychedelics is to lower the symmetry detection threshold. Visually, this leads to the perception of wallpaper symmetry groups covering textures (e.g. grass, walls, etc.). But this effect is much more general than mere visual repetition; it generalizes to the pseudo-time arrow! The texture repetition via mirroring, gyrations, glides, etc. works indiscriminately across (phenomenal) time and space. As an example of this, consider the psychedelic replication gifs below and how the last one nearly achieves a standing-wave structure. On a sufficient dose, this can anneal into a space-time crystal, which may have “time looping” and/or “moment of eternity” features.\nSober Input\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTemporal Branching\nAs discussed in a previous post, a number of people report temporal branching on high doses of psychedelics. The reported experience can be described as simultaneously perceiving multiple possible outcomes of a given event, and its branching causal implications. If you flip a coin, you see it both coming up heads and tails in different timelines, and both of these timelines become superimposed in your perceptual field. This experience is particularly unsettling if one interprets it through the lens of direct realism about perception. Here one imagines that the timelines are real, and that one is truly caught between branches of the multiverse. Which one is really yours? Which one will you collapse into? Eventually one finds oneself in one or another timeline with the alternatives having been pruned. An indirect realist about perception has an easier time dealing with this experience as she can interpret it as the explicit rendering of one’s predictions about the future in such a way that they interfere with one’s incoming sensory stimuli. But just in case, in the linked post we developed an empirically testable predictions from the wild possibility (i.e. where you literally experience information from adjacent branches of the multiverse) and tested it using quantum random number generators (and, thankfully for our collective sanity, obtained null results).\nHigh Dose LSD Pseudo-Time Arrow Branching, as described in trip reports where people seem to experience “multiple branches of the multiverse at once.”\nTimelessness\nFinally, in some situations people report the complete loss of a perceived time arrow but not due to time loops, moments of eternity, or branching, but rather, due to scrambling. This is less common on psychedelics than the previous kinds of exotic phenomenal time, but it still happens, and is often very disorienting and unpleasant (an “LSD experience failure mode” so to speak). It is likely that this also happens on anti-psychotics and quite possibly with some anti-depressants, which seem to destroy unpleasant states by scrambling the network of local binding (rather than annealing it, as with most euphoric drugs).\nLoss of the Pseudo-Time Arrow (bad trips? highly scrambled states caused by anti-psychotics?)\nIn summary, this framework can tackle some of the weirdest and most exotic experiences of time. It renders subjective time legible to formal systems. And although it relies on an unrealistically simple formalism for the mathematical structure of consciousness, the traction we are getting is strong enough to make this approach a promising starting point for future developments in philosophy of time perception.\nWe will now conclude with a few final thoughts…\nHyperbolic Geometry\nIntriguingly, with compounds such as DMT, the layering process is so fast that on doses above the threshold level one very quickly loses track of the individual layers. In turn, one’s mind attempts to bind together the incoming layers, which leads to attempts of stitching together multiple layers in a small (phenomenal) space. This confusion between layers compounded with a high density of edges is the way we explained the unusual geometric features of DMT hallucinations, such as the spatial hyperbolic symmetry groups expressed in its characteristic visual texture repetition (cf. eli5). One’s mind tries to deal with multiple copies of e.g. the wall in front, and the simplest way to do so is to stitch them together in a woven Chrysanthemum pattern with hyperbolic wrinkles.\nImplementation Level of Abstraction\nIt is worth noting that this account of phenomenal time lives at the algorithmic layer of Marr’s levels of abstraction, and hence is an algorithmic reduction (cf. Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States). A full account would also have to deal with how these algorithmic properties are implemented physically. The point being that a phenomenal binding plus causal network account of phenomenal time work as an explanation space whether the network itself is implemented with connectome-specific harmonic waves, serotonergic control-interruption, or something more exotic.\nTime and Valence\nOf special interest to us is the fact that both moments of eternity and time loops tend to be experienced with very intense emotions. One could imagine that finding oneself in such an altered state is itself bewildering and therefore stunning. But there are many profoundly altered states of consciousness that lack a corresponding emotional depth. Rather, we think that this falls out of the very nature of valence and the way it is related to the structure of one’s experience.\nIn particular, the symmetry theory of valence (STV) we are developing at the Qualia Research Institute posits that the pleasure-pain axis is a function of the symmetry (and anti-symmetry) of the mathematical object whose features are isomorphic to an experience’s phenomenology. In the case of the simplified toy model of consciousness based on the network of local binding connections, this symmetry may manifest in the form of regularity within and across layers. Both in time loops and moments of eternity we see a much more pronounced level of symmetry of this sort than in the sober pseudo-time arrow structure. Likewise, symmetry along the pseudo-time arrow may explain the high levels of positive valence associated with music, yoga, orgasm, and concentration meditation. Each of these activities would seem to lead to repeating standing waves along the pseudo-time arrow, and hence, highly valence states. Future work shall aim to test this correspondence empirically.\nThe Qualia Research Institute Logo (timeless, as you can see)\n\n* As Yudkowsky puts it:\n\nSuppose that we do know L1 and L2, but we do not know R1 and R2. Will learning M1 tell us anything about M2? […]\nThe answer, on the assumption that causality flows to the right, and on the other assumptions previously given, is no. “On each round, the past values of 1 and 2 probabilistically generate the future value of 1, and then separately probabilistically generate the future value of 2.” So once we have L1 and L2, they generate M1 independently of how they generate M2.\nBut if we did know R1 or R2, then, on the assumptions, learning M1 would give us information about M2. […]\nSimilarly, if we didn’t know L1 or L2, then M1 should give us information about M2, because from the effect M1 we can infer the state of its causes L1 and L2, and thence the effect of L1/L2 on M2.\n\n\nThanks to: Mike Johnson, David Pearce, Romeo Stevens, Justin Shovelain, Andrés Silva Ruiz, Liam Brereton, and Enrique Bojorquez for their thoughts about phenomenal time and its possible mathematical underpinnings. And to Alfredo Valverde for pointing me to the Erlangen program, wh", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/11/28/the-pseudo-time-arrow-explaining-phenomenal-time-with-implicit-causal-structures-in-networks-of-local-binding/", "title": "The Pseudo-Time Arrow: Explaining Phenomenal Time With Implicit Causal Structures In Networks Of Local Binding", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-11-29T03:09:52+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=17", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "d6b44d50aefe096271aceb2887a546dd", "summary": []}
{"text": "Anti-Tolerance Drugs\n\nIt would indeed be extraordinary if – alone among the neurotransmitter systems of the brain – the endogenous opioid families were immune from dysfunction. Enkephalins are critical to “basal hedonic tone” i.e. whether we naturally feel happy or sad. Yet the therapeutic implications of a recognition that dysfunctional endogenous opioid systems underlie a spectrum of anxiety-disorders and depression are too radical – at present – for the medical establishment to contemplate. In consequence, the use of opioid-based pharmacotherapies for “psychological” pain is officially taboo. The unique efficacy of opioids in banishing mental distress is neglected. Their unrivalled efficacy in treating “physical” nociceptive pain is grudgingly accepted.\n \n– Future Opioids, by David Pearce\nAlbert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? [emphasis mine] Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.\n \n– Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins\nAs eloquently argued by David Pearce in Future Opioids, the problem with opioids and other euphoriant drugs is not that they make you feel good, but that the positive feelings are short lived. In their stead, tolerance, withdrawal, and dependence ultimately set in after repeated use. We take the position that these negatives are not a necessary outcome of feeling free from physical or psychological malaise, for the brain has clever negative feedback mechanisms that prevent us from wireheading chemically. Rather, we believe that tackling these negative feedback mechanisms directly might be they key that unlocks never-ending bliss. Note that even if excellent anti-tolerance drugs were to be developed and commercialized for therapeutic use, we would still need to find solutions to the problems posed by wireheading. Specifically, disabling the negative feedback mechanisms in place that prevent us from feeling well all the time still leaves unsolved the problem of avoiding getting stuck in counterproductive patterns of behavior and becoming at risk of turning into a pure replicator (for proposed solutions to these problems see: Wireheading Done Right). Still, we strongly believe that finding safe and effective anti-tolerance drugs is a step in the right direction in the battle against suffering throughout the living world.\nWe thus provide the following list of promising anti-tolerance drugs in the hopes of: (1) piquing the interest of budding psychopharmacologists who may be weighting-in on promising research leads, (2) show a proof of concept against the fake and fatalistic truism that “what goes up has to go down” (cf. The Hedonistic Imperative), and last but not least, (3) provide hope to people suffering from physical or psychological distress who would benefit from anti-tolerance drugs, such as those who experience treatment-resistant anxiety, depression, chronic pain, or chemical dependence.\nIt is worth noting that this list is just a draft, and we will continue to revise it as the science progresses. Please let us know in the comment section if you are aware of compounds not included in this list (of special interest are tier 1 and tier 2 compounds).\nTier System\nThe list is organized by tiers. Tier 1 includes compounds for which there is evidence that they can reverse tolerance. Tier 2 deals with compounds that seem to either block or attenuate the development of tolerance, meaning that co-administering them with a euphoric agonist reduces the speed at which this euphoriant creates tolerance. Tier 3 includes potentiators. That is, compounds that enhance the effects of other substances without at the same time increasing tolerance to the extent that would be expected given the intensity of the subjective effects. Tier 4 lists compounds that, while not exactly tolerance-related, are still worth mentioning by virtue of reducing the intensity of drug withdrawals. And finally, Tier 5 includes euphoriants that have a favorable pharmacological profile relative to their alternatives, although will still produce tolerance long-term. Typically, a substance belonging to Tier X will also belong to Tier X + 1 and above (except for Tier 5) but we omit repetitions to avoid redundancy (e.g. proglumide not only reverses tolerance, but prevents tolerance, is a potentiatior, and reduces withdrawals).\nOpioid System\nTier 1\n\nIbogaine (see: Low dose treatment)\nProglumide\nNaltrexone (specifically in Ultra Low Doses)\nIbudilast (AV-411)\n\nTier 2\n\nAgmatine (may also help with chronic pain on its own)\nCurcumin (found in Turmeric; only works in high-availability forms)\nThymoquinone (found in Nigella Sativa/black seed oil)\n\nTier 3\n\nDXM (specially potentiates the analgesia, which may be of use for chronic pain sufferers)\nHydroxyzine (beware of its effects on sufferers of Akathisia/Restless Legs Syndrome; also bad in the long term for one’s cognitive capacity)\nL-Tyrosine\nMagnesium (possibly tier 2 but only weakly so)\n\nTier 4\n\nL-Aspartic Acid\nAshwagandha\nJDTic\nGabapentin\nClonidine\n\nTier 5\n\nTianeptine (its effects on the delta opioid receptor attenuates its tolerance when used in therapeutic doses)\nMitragynine (thanks to its partial agonism rather than full agonism it is less dangerous in high doses relative to alternatives; specifically, mitragyne does not have dangerous respiratory depression properties on its own, so switching heroin addicts to it would arguably save countless lives)\n\n \nGABA System\nTier 1\n\nFlumazenil (note: very dose-dependent)\n\nTier 2\n\nTranylcypromine\nGinsenosides\nHomotaurine\nFasoracetam\n\nTier 3\n\nDihydromyricetin\n\nSee also.\n\nDopamine System\nInsufficient datapoints for a tier system. Here are the few promising leads:\n\nD-serin\nD-cycloserine\nSulbutamine\nBromantane\nMemantine\n\nSee also.\n\nTanks to Adam Karlovsky for help compiling these lists.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/11/07/anti-tolerance-drugs/", "title": "Anti-Tolerance Drugs", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-11-08T05:10:40+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=17", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ed8e507f581924e43ba91c6081b76a81", "summary": []}
{"text": "Psychedelic Turk: A Platform for People on Altered States of Consciousness\n\nAn interesting variable is how much external noise is optimal for peak processing. Some, like Kafka, insisted that “I need solitude for my writing; not ‘like a hermit’ – that wouldn’t be enough – but like a dead man.” Others, like von Neumann, insisted on noisy settings: von Neumann would usually work with the TV on in the background, and when his wife moved his office to a secluded room on the third floor, he reportedly stormed downstairs and demanded “What are you trying to do, keep me away from what’s going on?” Apparently, some brains can function with (and even require!) high amounts of sensory entropy, whereas others need essentially zero. One might look for different metastable thresholds and/or convergent cybernetic targets in this case.\n– Mike Johnson, A future for neuroscience\nMy drunk or high Tweets are my best work.\n– Joe Rogan, Vlog#18\nIntroduction\nMechanical Turk is a service that makes outsourcing simple tasks to a large number of people extremely easy. The only constraint is that the tasks outsourced ought to be the sort of thing that can be explained and performed within a browser in less than 10 minutes, which in practice is not a strong constraint for most tasks you would outsource anyway. This service is in fact a remarkably effective way to accelerate the testing of digital prototypes at a reasonable price.\nI think the core idea has incredible potential in the field of interest we explore in this blog. Namely, consciousness research and the creation of consciousness technologies. Mechanical Turk is already widely used in psychology, but its usefulness could be improved further. Here is an example: Imagine an extension to Mechanical Turk in which one could choose to have the tasks completed (or attempted) by people in non-ordinary states of consciousness.\nDemographic Breakdown\nWith Mechanical Turk you can already ask for people who belong to specific demographic categories to do your task. For example, some academics are interested in the livelihoods of people within certain ages, NLP researchers might need native speakers of a particular language, and people who want to proof-read a text may request users who have completed an undergraduate degree. The demographic categories are helpful but also coarse. In practice they tend to be used as noisy proxies for more subtle attributes. If we could multiply the categories, which ones would give the highest bang for the buck? I suspect there is a lot of interesting information to be gained from adding categories like personality, cognitive organization, and emotional temperament. What else?\nStates of Consciousness as Points of View\nOne thing to consider is that the value of a service like Mechanical Turk comes in part from the range of “points of view” that the participants bring. After all, ensemble models that incorporate diverse types of modeling approaches and datasets usually dominate in real-world machine learning competitions (e.g. Kaggle). Analogously, for a number of applications, getting feedback from someone who thinks differently than everyone already consulted is much more valuable than consulting hundreds of people similar to those already queried. Human minds, insofar as they are prediction machines, can be used as diverse models. A wide range of points of view expands the perspectives used to draw inferences, and in many real-world conditions this will be beneficial for the accuracy of an aggregated prediction. So what would a radical approach to multiplying such “points of view” entail? Arguably a very efficient way of doing so would involve people who inhabit extraordinarily different states of consciousness outside the “typical everyday” mode of being.\nJokingly, I’d very much like to see the “wisdom of the crowds enhanced with psychedelic points of view” expressed in mainstream media. I can imagine an anchorwoman on CNN saying: “according to recent polls 30% of people agree that X, now let’s break this down by state of consciousness… let’s see what the people on acid have to say… ” I would personally be very curious to hear how “the people on acid” are thinking about certain issues relative to e.g. a breakdown of points of view by political affiliation. Leaving jokes aside, why would this be a good idea? Why would anyone actually build this?\nI posit that a “Mechanical Turk for People on Psychedelics” would benefit the requesters, the workers, and outsiders. Let’s start with the top three benefits for requesters: better art and marketing, enhanced problem solving, and accelerating the science of consciousness. For workers, the top reason would be making work more interesting, stimulating, and enjoyable. And from the point of view of outsiders, we could anticipate some positive externalities such as improved foundational science, accelerated commercial technology development, and better prediction markets. Let’s dive in:\nBenefits to Requesters\nArt and Marketing\nA reason why a service like this might succeed commercially comes from the importance of understanding one’s audience in art and marketing. For example, if one is developing a product targeted to people who have a hangover (e.g. “hangover remedies”), one’s best bet would be to see how people who actually are hungover resonate with the message. Asking people who are drunk, high on weed, on empathogenic states, on psychedelics, specific psychiatric medications, etc. could certainly find its use in marketing research for sports, comedy, music shows, etc.\nBasically, when the product is consumed in the sort of events in which people frequently avoid being sober for the occasion, doing market research on the same people sober might produce misleading results. What percent of concert-goers are sober the entire night? Or people watching the World Cup final? Clearly, a Mechanical Turk service with diverse states of consciousness has the potential to improve marketing epistemology.\nOn the art side, people who might want to be the next Alex Grey or Android Jones would benefit from prototyping new visual styles on crowds of people who are on psychedelics (i.e. the main consumers of such artistic styles).\n\n\nAs an aside, I would like to point out that in my opinion, artists who create audio or images that are expected to be consumed by people in altered states of consciousness have some degree of responsibility in ensuring that they are not particularly upsetting to people in such states. Indeed, some relatively innocent sounds and images might cause a lot of anxiety or trigger negative states in people on psychedelics due to the way they are processed in such states. With a Mechanical Turk for psychedelics, artists could reduce the risk of upsetting festival/concert goers who partake in psychedelic perception by screening out offending stimuli.\nProblem Solving\nOn a more exciting note, there are a number of indications that states of consciousness as alien as those induced by major psychedelics are at times computationally suited to solve information processing tasks in competitive ways. Here are two concrete examples: First, in the sixties there was some amount of research performed on psychedelics for problem solving. A notorious example would be the 1966 study conducted by Willis Harman & James Fadiman in which mescaline was used to aid scientists, engineers, and designers in solving concrete technical problems with very positive outcomes. And second, in How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD we delved into ways that messages could be encoded in audio-visual stimuli in such a way that only people high on psychedelics could decode them. We called this type of information concealment Psychedelic Cryptography:\n\n\nThese examples are just proofs of concept that there probably are a multitude of tasks for which minds under various degrees of psychedelic alteration outperform those minds in sober states. In turn, it may end up being profitable to recruit people on such states to complete your tasks when they are genuinely better at them than the sober competition. How to know when to use which state of consciousness? The system could include an algorithm that samples people from various states of consciousness to identify the most promising states to solve your particular problem and then assign the bulk of the task to them.\nAll of this said, the application I find the most exciting is…\nAccelerating the Science of Consciousness\nThe psychedelic renaissance is finally getting into the territory of performance enhancement in altered states. For example, there is an ongoing study that evaluates how microdosing impacts how one plays Go, and another one that uses a self-blinding protocol to assess how microdosing influences cognitive abilities and general wellbeing.\nA whole lot of information about psychedelic states can be gained by doing browser experiments with people high on them. From sensory-focused studies such as visual psychophysics and auditory hedonics to experiments involving higher-order cognition and creativity, internet-based studies of people on altered states can shed a lot of light on how the mind works. I, for one, would love to estimate the base-rate of various wallpaper symmetry groups in psychedelic visuals (cf. Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States), and to study the way psychedelic states influence the pleasantness of sound. There may be no need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in experiments that study those questions when the cost of asking people who are on psychedelics to do tasks can be amortized by having them participate in hundreds of studies on e.g. a single LSD session.\n17 wallpaper symmetry groups\nThis kind of research platform would also shed light on how experiences of mental illness compare with altered states of consciousness and allow us to place the effects of common psychiatric medications on a common “map of mental states”. Let me explain. While recreational materials tend to produce the largest changes to people’s conscious experience, it should go without saying that a whole lot of psychiatric medications have unusual effects on one’s state of consciousness. For example: Most people have a hard time pin-pointing the effect of beta blockers on their experience, but it is undeniable that such compounds influence brain activity and there are suggestions that they may have long-term mood effects. Many people do report specific changes to their experience related to beta blockers, and experienced psychonauts can often compare their effects to other drugs that they may use as benchmarks. By conducting psychophysical experiments on people who are taking various major psychoactives, one would get an objective benchmark for how the mind is altered along a wide range of dimensions by each of these substances. In turn, this generalized Mechanical Turk would enable us to pin-point where much more subtle drugs fall along on this space (cf. State-Space of Drug Effects).\nIn other words, this platform may be revolutionary when it comes to data collection and bench-marking for psychiatric drugs in general. That said, since these compounds are more often than not used daily for several months rather than briefly or as needed, it would be hard to see how the same individual performs a certain task while on and off the medicine. This could be addressed by implementing a system allowing requesters to ask users for follow up experiments if/when the user changes his or her drug regimen.\nBenefit to Users\nAs claimed earlier on, we believe that this type of platform would make work more enjoyable, stimulating, and interesting for many users. Indeed, there does seem to be a general trend of people wanting to contribute to science and culture by sharing their experiences in non-ordinary states of consciousness. For instance, the wonderful artists at r/replications try to make accurate depiction of various unusual states of consciousness for free. There is even an initiative to document the subjective effects of various compounds by grounding trip reports on a subjective effects index. The point being that if people are willing to share their experience and time on psychedelic states of consciousness for free, chances are that they will not complain if they can also earn money with this unusual hobby.\nLSD replication (source: r/replications)\nWe also know from many artists and scientists that normal everyday states of consciousness are not always the best for particular tasks. By expanding the range of states of consciousness with economic advantages, we would be allowing people to perform at their best. You may not be allowed to conduct your job while high at your workplace even if you perform it better that way. But with this kind of platform, you would have the freedom to choose the state of consciousness that optimizes your performance and be paid in kind.\nPossible Downsides\nIt is worth mentioning that there would be challenges and negative aspects too. In general, we can probably all agree that it would suck to have to endure advertisement targeted to your particular state of consciousness. If there is a way to prevent this from happening I would love to hear it. Unfortunately, I assume that marketing will sooner or later catch on to this modus operandi, and that a Mechanical Turk for people on altered states would be used for advertisement before anything else. Making better targeted ads, it turns out, is a commercially viable way of bootstrapping all sorts of novel systems. But better advertisement indeed puts us at higher risk of being taken over by pure replicators in the broader scope, so it is worth being cautious with this application.\nIn the worst case scenario, we discover that very negative states of consciousness dominate other states in the arena of computational efficiency. In this scenario, the abilities useful to survive in the mental economy of the future happen to be those that employ suffering in one way or another. In that case, the evolutionary incentive gradients would lead to terrible places. For example, future minds might end up employing massive amounts of suffering to “run our servers”, so to speak. Plus, these minds would have no choice because if they don’t then they would be taken over by other minds that do, i.e. this is a race to the bottom. Scenarios like this have been considered before (1, 2, 3), and we should not ignore their warning signs.\nOf course this can only happen if there are indeed computational benefits to using consciousness for information processing tasks to begin with. At Qualia Computing we generally assume that the unity of consciousness confers unique computational benefits. Hence, I would expect any outright computational use of states of consciousness is likely to involve a lot of phenomenal binding. Hence, at the evolutionary limit, conscious super-computers would probably be super-sentient. That said, the optimal hedonic tone of the minds with the highest computational efficiency is less certain. This complex matter will be dealt with elsewhere.\nConcluding Discussion\nReverse Engineering Systems\nA lot of people would probably agree that a video of Elon Musk high on THC may have substantially higher value than many videos of him sober. A lot of this value comes from the information gained about him by having a completely new point of view (or projection) of his mind. Reverse-engineering systems involves doing things to them to change the way they operate in order to try to reconstruct how they are put together. The same is true for the mind and the computational benefits of consciousness more broadly.\nThe Cost of a State of Consciousness\nAnother important consideration would be cost assignment for different states of consciousness. I imagine that the going rates for participants on various states would highly depend on the kind of application and profitability of these states. The price would reach a stable point that balances the usability of a state of consciousness for various tasks (demand) and its overall supply.\nFor problem solving in some specialized applications, for example, I could imagine “mathematician on DMT” to be a high-end sort of state of consciousness priced very highly. For example, foundational consciousness research and phenomenological studies might find such participants to be extremely valuable, as they might be helpful analyzing novel mathematical ideas and using their mathematical expertise to describe the structure of such experiences (cf. Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences).\nUnfortunately, if the demand for high-end rational psychonauts never truly picks up, one might expect that people who could become professional rational psychonauts will instead work for Google or Facebook or some other high-paying company. More so, due to Lemon Markets people who do insist on hiring rational psychonauts will most likely be disappointed. Sasha Shulgin and his successors will probably only participate in such markets if the rewards are high enough to justify using their precious time on novel alien states of consciousness to do your experiment rather than theirs.\nIn the ideal case this type of platform might function as a spring-board to generate a critical mass of active rational psychonauts who could do each other’s experiments and replicate the results of underground researchers.\nQuality Metrics\nAccurately matching the task with the state of consciousness would be critical. For example, you might not necessarily want someone who is high on a large dose of acid to take a look at your tax returns*. Perhaps for mundane tasks one would want people who are on states of optimal arousal (e.g. modafinil). As mentioned earlier, a system that identifies the most promising states of consciousness for your task would be a key feature of the platform.\nIf we draw inspiration from the original service, we could try to make an analogous system to “Mechanical Turk Masters“. Here the service charges a higher price for requesting people who have been vetted as workers who produce high quality output. To be a Master one needs to have a high task-approval rating and have completed an absurd number of them. Perhaps top score boards and public requester prices for best work would go a long way in keeping the quality of psychedelic workers at a high level.\nIn practice, given the population base of people who would use this service, I would predict that to a large extent the most successful tasks in terms of engagement from the user-base will be those that have nerd-sniping qualities.** That is, make tasks that are especially fun to complete on psychedelics (and other altered states) and you would most likely get a lot of high quality work. In turn, this platform would generate the best outcomes when the tasks submitted are both fun and useful (hence benefiting both workers and requesters alike).\nKeeping Consciousness Useful\nFinally, we think that this kind of platform would have a lot of long-term positive externalities. In particular, making a wider range of states of consciousness economically useful goes in the general direction of keeping consciousness relevant in the future. In the absence of selection pressures that make consciousness economically useful (and hence useful to stay alive and reproduce), we can anticipate a possible drift from consciousness being somewhat in control (for now) to a point where only pure replicators matter.\n\nBonus content\nIf you are concerned with social power in a post-apocalyptic landscape, it is important that you figure out a way to induce psychedelic experiences in such a way that they cannot easily be used as weapons. E.g. it would be key to only have physiologically safe (e.g. not MDMA) and low-potency (e.g. not LSD) materials in a Mad Max scenario. For the love of God, please avoid stockpiling compounds that are both potent and physiologically dangerous (e.g. NBOMes) in your nuclear bunker! Perhaps high-potency materials could still work out if they are blended in hard-to-separate ways with fillers, but why risk it? I assume that becoming a cult leader would not be very hard if one were the only person who can procure reliable mystical experiences for people living in most post-apocalyptic scenarios. For best results make sure that the cause of the post-apocalyptic state of the world is a mystery to its inhabitants, such as in the documentary Gurren Lagann, and the historical monographs written by Philip K. Dick.\n\n*With notable exceptions. For example, some regular cannabis users do seem to concentrate better while on manageable amounts of THC, and if the best tax attorney in your vicinity willing to do your taxes is in this predicament, I’d suggest you don’t worry too much about her highness.\n**If I were a philosopher of science I would try to contribute a theory for scientific development based on nerd-sniping. Basically, how science develops is by the dynamic way in which scientists at all points are following the nerd-sniping gradient. Scientists are typically people who have their curiosity lever all the way to the top. It’s not so much that they choose their topics strategically or at random. It’s not so much a decision as it is a compulsion. Hence, the sociological implementation of science involves a collective gradient ascent towards whatever is nerd-sniping given the current knowledge. In turn, the generated knowledge from the intense focus on some area modifies what is known and changes the nerd-sniping landscape, and science moves on to other topics.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/10/28/psychedelic-turk-a-platform-for-people-on-altered-states-of-consciousness/", "title": "Psychedelic Turk: A Platform for People on Altered States of Consciousness", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-10-29T04:23:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=17", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "284dc17b223c2610ce695cc99d68a679", "summary": []}
{"text": "Estimated Cost of the DMT Machine Elves Prime Factorization Experiment\n\n“Okay,” I said. “Fine. Let me tell you where I’m coming from. I was reading Scott McGreal’s blog, which has some good articles about so-called DMT entities, and mentions how they seem so real that users of the drug insist they’ve made contact with actual superhuman beings and not just psychedelic hallucinations. You know, the usual Terence McKenna stuff. But in one of them he mentions a paper by Marko Rodriguez called A Methodology For Studying Various Interpretations of the N,N-dimethyltryptamine-Induced Alternate Reality, which suggested among other things that you could prove DMT entities were real by taking the drug and then asking the entities you meet to factor large numbers which you were sure you couldn’t factor yourself. So to that end, could you do me a big favor and tell me the factors of 1,522,605,027, 922,533,360, 535,618,378, 132,637,429, 718,068,114, 961,380,688, 657,908,494, 580,122,963, 258,952,897, 654,000,350, 692,006,139?\n– Universal Love, Said the Cactus Person, by Scott Alexander\n\nIn the comments…\n\n\n\ngwern says:\n\nApril 22, 2015 at 4:24 pm\n\n\n\nI was a little curious about how such a prime experiment would go and how much it would cost. It looks like one could probably run an experiment with a somewhat OK chance at success for under $1k.\nWe need to estimate the costs and probabilities of memorizing a suitable composite number, buying DMT, using DMT and getting the requisite machine-elf experience (far from guaranteed), being able to execute a preplanned action like asking about a prime, and remembering the answer.\n\n1. The smallest RSA number not yet factored is 220 digits. The RSA numbers themselves are useless for this experiment because if one did get the right factors, because it’s so extraordinarily unlikely for machine-elves to really be an independent reality, a positive result would only prove that someone had stolen the RSA answers or hacked a computer or something along the lines. RSA-768 was factored in 2009 using ~2000 CPU-years, so we need a number much larger; since Google has several million CPUs we might want something substantially larger, at least 800 digits. We know from mnemonists that numbers that large can be routinely memorized, and an 800 digit decimal can be memorized in an hour. Chao Lu memorized 67k digits of Pi in 1 year. So the actual memorization time is not significant. How much training does it take to memorize 800 digits? I remember a famous example in WM research of how WM training does not necessarily transfer to anything, of a student taught to memorize digits, Ericsson & Chase’s whose digit span went from ~7 to ~80 after 230 hours of training; digit span is much more demanding than a one-off memorization. This does something similar using more like 80 hours of training. Foer’s _Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything_ doesn’t cover much more than a year or two and fairly undemanding training regimen, and he performed well. So I’m going to guess that to memorize a number which would be truly impressive evidence (and not simply evidence for a prank or misdeeds by a hobbyist, RSA employee, Google, or the NSA) would require ~30h of practice.\n2. some browsing of the DMT category on the current leading black-market suggests that 1g of DMT from a reputable seller costs ฿0.56 or ~$130. The linked paper says smoking DMT for a full trip requires 50mg/0.05g so our $130 buys ~19 doses.\n3. The linked paper says that 20% of Strassman’s injected-DMT trips give a machine-elf experience; hence the 1g will give an average of ~3-4 machine-elfs and 19 trips almost guarantees at least 1 machine-elf assuming 20% success-rate (1-(1-0.2)^19 = 98%). Since the 20% figure comes from injected DMT and DMT of a controlled high quality, probably this is optimistic for anyone trying out smoking DMT at home, but let’s roll with it.\n4. in a machine-elf experience, how often could we be lucid enough to wake up and ask the factoring question? No one’s mentioned trying so there’s no hard data, but we can borrow from a similar set of experiments in verifying altered states of consciousness, Laberge’s lucid dreaming experiments in which subjects had to exert control to wiggle their eyes in a fixed pattern. This study gives several flows from # of nights to # of verifications, which all are roughly 1/3 – 1/4; so given our estimated 3-4 machine-elfs, we might be able to ask 1 time. If the machine-elves are guaranteed to reply correctly, then that’s all we need.\n5. at 30 hours of mnemonic labor valued at minimum wage of $8 and $130 for 19 doses, that gives us an estimate of $370 in costs to ask an average of once; if we amortize the memorization costs some more by buying 2g, then we instead spend $250 per factoring request for 2 tries; and so on down to a minimum cost of (130/19)*5 = $34 per factoring request. To get n=10 requests, we’d need to spend a cool ((30*8) + 10*130)=$1540.\n6. power analysis for a question like this is tricky, since we only need one response with the *right* factors; probably what will happen is that the machine-elfs will not answer or any answer will be ‘forgotten’. You can estimate other stuff like how likely the elves are to respond given 10 questions and 0 responses (flat prior’s 95% CI: 0-28%), or apply decision-theory to decide when to stop trying (tricky, since any reasonable estimate of the probability of machine-elves will tell you that at $35 a shot, you shouldn’t be trying at all).\nHence, you could get a few attempts at somewhere under $1k, but exactly how much depends sensitively on what fraction of trips you get elves and how often you manage to ask them; the DMT itself doesn’t cost *that* much per dose (like ~$7) but it’s the all the trips where you don’t get elves or you get elves but are too ecstatic to ask them anything which really kill you and drive up the price to $34-$250 per factoring request. Also, there’s a lot of uncertainty in all these estimates (who knows how much any of the quoted rates differ from person to person?).\nI thought this might be a fun self-experiment to do, but looking at the numbers and the cost, it seems pretty discouraging.\n\nRelated Empirical Paradigms for Psychedelic Research:\n\nLSD and Quantum Measurement (an experiment that was designed, coded up, and conducted to evaluate whether one can experience multiple Everett branches at once while on LSD).\nHow to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD (a method called Psychedelic Cryptography which uses the slower qualia decay factor induced by psychedelics, aka. “tracers”, in order to encode information in gifs that you can only decode if you are sufficiently high on a psychedelic).\nPsychophysics for Psychedelic Research: Textures (an experimental method developed by Benjamin Bala based on the textural mongrel paradigm proposed by Eero Simoncelli and extended to provide insights into psychedelic visual perception. See: analysis).\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/10/15/estimated-cost-of-the-dmt-machine-elves-prime-factorization-experiment/", "title": "Estimated Cost of the DMT Machine Elves Prime Factorization Experiment", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-10-16T00:02:15+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=17", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "cbdb1283d56df3235c7ca6d05627b959", "summary": []}
{"text": "Thoughts on the ‘Is-Ought Problem’ from a Qualia Realist Point of View\n\ntl;dr If we construct a theory of meaning grounded in qualia and felt-sense, it is possible to congruently arrive at “should” statements on the basis of reason and “is” claims. Meaning grounded in qualia allows us to import the pleasure-pain axis and its phenomenal character to the same plane of discussion as factual and structural observations.\nIntroduction\nThe Is-Ought problem (also called “Hume’s guillotine”) is a classical philosophical conundrum. On the one hand people feel that our ethical obligations (at least the uncontroversial ones like “do not torture anyone for no reason”) are facts about reality in some important sense, but on the other hand, rigorously deriving such “moral facts” from facts about the universe appears to be a category error. Is there any physical fact that truly compels us to act in one way or another?\nA friend recently asked about my thoughts on this question and I took the time to express them to the best of my knowledge.\nTakeaways\nI provide seven points of discussion that together can be used to make the case that “ought” judgements often, though not always, are on the same ontological footing as “is” claims. Namely, that they are references to the structure and quality of experience, whose ultimate nature is self-intimating (i.e. it reveals itself) and hence inaccessible to those who lack the physiological apparatus to instantiate it. In turn, we could say that within communities of beings who share the same self-intimating qualities of experience, the is/ought divide may not be completely unbridgeable.\n\nSummaries of Question and Response\nSummary of the question:\nHow does a “should” emerge at all? How can reason and/or principles and/or logic compel us to follow some moral code?\nSummary of the response:\n\nIf “ought” statements are to be part of our worldview, then they must refer to decisions about experiences: what kinds of experiences are better/worse, what experiences should or should not exist, etc.\nA shared sense of personal identity (e.g. Open Individualism – which posits that “we are all one consciousness”) allows us to make parallels between the quality of our experience and the experience of others. Hence if one grounds “oughts” on the self-intimating quality of one’s suffering, then we can also extrapolate that such “oughts” must exist in the experience of other sentient beings and that they are no less real “over there” simply because a different brain is generating them (general relativity shows that every “here and now” is equally real).\nReduction cuts both ways: if the “fire in the equations of physics” can feel a certain way (e.g. bliss/pain) then objective causal descriptions of reality (about e.g. brain states) are implicitly referring to precisely that which has an “ought” quality. Thus physics may be inextricably connected with moral “oughts”.\nIf one loses sight of the fact that one’s experience is the ultimate referent for meaning, it is possible to end up in nihilistic accounts of meaning (e.g. such as Quine’s Indeterminacy of translation and Dennett’s inclusion of qualia within that framework). But if one grounds meaning in qualia, then suddenly both causality and value are on the same ontological footing (cf. Valence Realism).\nTo see clearly the nature of value it is best to examine it at its extremes (such as MDMA bliss vs. the pain of kidney stones). Having such experiences illuminates the “ought” aspect of consciousness, in contrast to the typical quasi-anhedonic “normal everyday states of consciousness” that most people (and philosophers!) tend to reason from. It would be interesting to see philosophers discuss e.g. the Is-Ought problem while on MDMA.\nClaims that “pleasure and pain, value and disvalue, good and bad, etc.” are an illusion by long-term meditators based on the experience of “dissolving value” in meditative states are no more valid than claims that pain is an illusion by someone doped on morphine. In brief: such claims are made in a state of consciousness that has lost touch with the actual quality of experience that gives (dis)value to consciousness.\nAdmittedly the idea that one state of consciousness can even refer to (let alone make value judgements about) other states of consciousness is very problematic. In what sense does “reference” even make sense? Every moment of experience only has access to its own content. We posit that this problem is not ultimately unsolvable, and that human concepts are currently mere prototypes of a much better future set of varieties of consciousness optimized for truth-finding. As a thought experiment to illustrate this possible future, consider a full-spectrum superintelligence capable of instantiating arbitrary modes of experience and impartially comparing them side by side in order to build a total order of consciousness.\n\n\nFull Question and Response\nQuestion:\nI realized I don’t share some fundamental assumptions that seemed common amongst the people here [referring to the Qualia Research Institute and friends].\nThe most basic way I know how to phrase it, is the notion that there’s some appeal to reason and/or principles and/or logic that compels us to follow some type of moral code.\nA (possibly straw-man) instance is the notion I associate with effective altruism, namely, that one should choose a career based on its calculable contribution to human welfare. The assumption is that human welfare is what we “should” care about. Why should we? What’s compelling about trying to reconfigure ourselves from whatever we value at the moment to replacing that thing with human welfare (or anything else)? What makes us think we can even truly succeed in reconfiguring ourselves like this? The obvious pitfall seems to be we create some image of “goodness” that we try to live up to without ever being honest with ourselves and owning our authentic desires. IMO this issue is rampant in mainstream Christianity.\nMore generally, I don’t understand how a “should” emerges within moral philosophy at all. I understand how starting with a want, say happiness, and noting a general tendency, such as I become happy when I help others, that one could deduce that helping others often is likely to result in a happy life. I might even say “I should help others” to myself, knowing it’s a strategy to get what I want. That’s not the type of “should” I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is “should” at the most basic level of one’s value structure. I don’t understand how any amount of reasoning could tell us what our most basic values and desires “should” be. \nI would like to read something rigorous on this issue. I appreciate any references, as well as any elucidating replies.\nResponse:\nThis is a very important topic. I think it is great that you raise this question, as it stands at the core of many debates and arguments about ethics and morality. I think that one can indeed make a really strong case for the view that “ought” is simply never logically implied by any accurate and objective description of the world (the famous is/ought Humean guillotine). I understand that an objective assessment of all that is will usually be cast as a network of causal and structural relationships. By starting out with a network of causal and structural relationships and using logical inferences to arrive at further high-level facts, one is ultimately bound to arrive at conclusions that themselves are just structural and causal relationships. So where does the “ought” fit in here? Is it really just a manner of speaking? A linguistic spandrel that emerges from evolutionary history? It could really seem like it, and I admit that I do not have a silver bullet argument against this view.\nHowever, I do think that eventually we will arrive at a post-Galilean understanding of consciousness, and that this understanding will itself allow us to point out exactly where- if at all- ethical imperatives are located and how they emerge. For now all I have is a series of observations that I hope can help you develop an intuition for how we are thinking about it, and why our take is original and novel (and not simply a rehashing of previous arguments or appeals to nature/intuition/guilt). \nSo without further ado I would like to lay out the following points on the table:\n\n I am of the mind that if any kind of “ought” is present in reality it will involve decision-making about the quality of consciousness of subjects of experience. I do not think that it makes sense to talk about an ethical imperative that has anything to do with non-experiential properties of the universe precisely because there would be no one affected by it. If there is an argument for caring about things that have no impact on any state of consciousness, I have yet to encounter it. So I will assume that the question refers to whether certain states of consciousness ought to or ought not to exist (and how to make trade offs between them). \n I also think that personal identity is key for this discussion, but why this is the case will make sense in a moment. The short answer is that conscious value is self-intimating/self-revealing, and in order to pass judgement on something that you yourself (as a narrative being) will not get to experience you need some confidence (or reasonable cause) to believe that the same self-intimating quality of experience is present in other narrative orbits that will not interact with you. For the same reasons as (1) above, it makes no sense to care about philosophical zombies (no matter how much they scream at you), but the same is the case for “conscious value p. zombies” (where maybe they experience color qualia but do not experience hedonic tone i.e. they can’t suffer).\n A very important concept that comes up again and again in our research is the notion that “reduction cuts both ways”. We take dual aspect monism seriously, and in this view we would consider the mathematical description of an experience and its qualia two sides of the same coin. Now, many people come here and say “the moment you reduce an experience of bliss to a mathematical equation you have removed any fuzzy morality from it and arrived at a purely objective and factual account which does not support an ‘ought ontology'”. But doing this mental move requires you to take the mathematical account as a superior ontology to that of the self-intimating quality of experience. In our view, these are two sides of the same coin. If mystical experiences are just a bunch of chemicals, then a bunch of chemicals can also be a mystical experience. To reiterate: reduction cuts both ways, and this happens with the value of experience to the same extent as it happens with the qualia of e.g. red or cinnamon.\n Mike Johnson tends to bring up Wittgenstein and Quine to the “Is-Ought” problem because they are famous for ‘reducing language and meaning’ to games and networks of relationships. But here you should realize that you can apply the concept developed in (3) above just as well to this matter. In our view, a view of language that has “words and objects” at its foundation is not a complete ontology, and nor is one that merely introduces language games to dissolve the mystery of meaning. What’s missing here is “felt sense” – the raw way in which concepts feel and operate on each other whether or not they are verbalized. It is my view that here phenomenal binding becomes critical because a felt sense that corresponds to a word, concept, referent, etc. in itself encapsulates a large amount of information simultaneously, and contains many invariants across a set of possible mental transformations that define what it is and what it is not. More so, felt senses are computationally powerful (rather than merely epiphenomenal). Consider Daniel Tammet‘s mathematical feats achieved by experiencing numbers in complex synesthetic ways that interact with each other in ways that are isomorphic to multiplication, factorization, etc. More so, he does this at competitive speeds. Language, in a sense, could be thought of as the surface of felt sense. Daniel Dennett famously argued that you can “Quine Qualia” (meaning that you can explain it away with a groundless network of relationships and referents). We, on the opposite extreme, would bite the bullet of meaning and say that meaning itself is grounded in felt-sense and qualia. Thus, colors, aromas, emotions, and thoughts, rather than being ultimately semantically groundless as Dennett would have it, turn out to be the very foundation of meaning.\n In light of the above, let’s consider some experiences that embody the strongest degree of the felt sense of “ought to be” and “ought not to be” that we know of. On the negative side, we have things like cluster headaches and kidney stones. On the positive side we have things like Samadhi, MDMA, and 5-MEO-DMT states of consciousness. I am personally more certain that the “ought not to be” aspect of experience is more real than the “ought to be” aspect of it, which is why I have a tendency (though no strong commitment) towards negative utilitarianism. When you touch a hot stove you get this involuntary reaction and associated valence qualia of “reality needs you to recoil from this”, and in such cases one has degrees of freedom into which to back off. But when experiencing cluster headaches and kidney stones, this sensation- that self-intimating felt-sense of ‘this ought not to be’- is omnidirectional. The experience is one in which one feels like every direction is negative, and in turn, at its extremes, one feels spiritually violated (“a major ethical emergency” is how a sufferer of cluster headaches recently described it to me). This brings me to…\n The apparent illusory nature of value in light of meditative deconstruction of felt-senses. As you put it elsewhere: “Introspectively – Meditators with deep experience typically report all concepts are delusion. This is realized in a very direct experiential way.” Here I am ambivalent, though my default response is to make sense of the meditation-induced feeling that “value is illusory” as itself an operation on one’s conscious topology that makes the value quality of experience get diminished or plugged out. Meditation masters will say things like “if you observe the pain very carefully, if you slice it into 30 tiny fragments per second, you will realize that the suffering you experience from it is an illusory construction”. And this kind of language itself is, IMO, liable to give off the illusion that the pain was illusory to begin with. But here I disagree. We don’t say that people who take a strong opioid to reduce acute pain are “gaining insight into the fundamental nature of pain” and that’s “why they stop experiencing it”. Rather, we understand that the strong opioid changes the neurological conditions in such a way that the quality of the pain itself is modified, which results in a duller, “asymbolic“, non-propagating, well-confined discomfort. In other words, strong opioids reduce the value-quality of pain by locally changing the nature of pain rather than by bringing about a realization of its ultimate nature. The same with meditation. The strongest difference here, I think, would be that opioids are preventing the spatial propagation of pain “symmetry breaking structures” across one’s experience and thus “confine pain to a small spatial location”, whereas meditation does something different that is better described as confining the pain to a small temporal region. This is hard to explain in full, and it will require us to fully formalize how the subjective arrow of time is constructed and how pain qualia can make copies across it. [By noting the pain very quickly one is, I believe, preventing it from building up and then having “secondary pain” which emerges from the cymatic resonance of the various lingering echoes of pain across one’s entire “pseudo-time arrow of experience”.] Sorry if this sounds like word salad, I am happy to unpack these concepts if needed, while also admitting that we are in early stages of the theoretical and empirical development.\n Finally, I will concede that the common sense view of “reference” is very deluded on many levels. The very notion that we can refer to an experience with another experience, that we can encode the properties of a different moment of experience in one’s current moment of experience, that we can talk about the “real world” or its “objective ethical values” or “moral duty” is very far from sensical in the final analysis. Reference is very tricky, and I think that a full understanding of consciousness will do some severe violence to our common sense in this area. That, however, is different from the self-disclosing properties of experience such as red qualia and pain qualia. You can do away with all of common sense reference while retaining a grounded understanding that “the constituents of the world are qualia values and their local binding relationships”. In turn, I do think that we can aim to do a decently good job at re-building from the ground up a good approximation of our common sense understanding of the world using “meaning grounded in qualia”, and once we do that we will be in a solid foundation (as opposed to the, admittedly very messy, quasi-delusional character of thoughts as they exist today). Needless to say, this may also need us to change our state of consciousness. “Someday we will have thoughts like sunsets” – David Pearce.\n\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/10/10/thoughts-on-the-is-ought-problem-from-a-qualia-realist-point-of-view/", "title": "Thoughts on the ‘Is-Ought Problem’ from a Qualia Realist Point of View", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-10-11T00:43:05+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=17", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "09b82339b855912f1f3da33b7bb98a02", "summary": []}
{"text": "David Pearce in SF\n\nDavid Pearce stayed in SF between the 24th of September and the 4th of October 2018. He departed for the UK a couple days ago. During this time I had the privilege of hanging out with him and helping to organize some of the events he took part in. The presentation he gave was based on his Quora response titled “24 Predictions for the Year 3000” (slides). The picture below was taken yesterday right before his presentation at the Foresight Institute (I believe there was a video taken, so it should be up on Youtube soon).\n@Victoria Manalo Draves Park in SF.\n\nHere are some interesting things he said during his visit that I thought were worth sharing:\nIf we don’t address the genetic causes of suffering (physical and mental) we will find ourselves in 500 years enjoying material abundance via nanotech, living in a perfect democracy, colonizing space, and still sitting around wondering “Why are we miserable so much of the time? Why can’t we all just get along? Why are we not all happy?”\nI wish I could tell you I’ve been busy preparing my own cryptocurrency. “DaveCoin” you see? Unfortunately the domain name davecoin.com is already taken, so all that effort for nothing…\nIf there were two buttons, one that releases a hedonium shockwave and one that leads to life animated by gradients of bliss and the eradication of suffering, I would press the latter. That said, I wouldn’t be terribly upset if someone presses the former.\nPeople complain that Negative Utilitarians (NU) are dangerous since they prefer non-existence to even a pinprick. But what most don’t realize is that Classical Utilitarians (CU) are no less dangerous to humans. If they were to get their way they’d complain that the matter and energy needed to keep you alive is not a good use of resources relative to the pleasure plasma it could be instead. For some reason the implications of NU are more easily recognizable and talked about than the implications of CU.\nIf in the year 3000 there is still suffering, that’s not because eliminating it wasn’t possible, but because for whatever reason we chose to preserve it.\nSelection pressures make any anti-natalist movement self-limiting, for even the slightest predisposition to not have kids is selected against over time. (*Audience brings up a group-selection argument for why childlessness is adaptive*): Well, group-selection only works in extremely unusual and restricted evolutionary niches. Unless you start using human cloning, we will not be behaving like ants or bees any time soon.\nThere ought to be a tower in San Francisco called “Institute for Paradise Engineering”!\nI feel guilty about talking about my idiosyncratic philosophy of mind so much (i.e. non-materialist physicalism with coherence to bind). On the one hand I think that real theoretical progress can only be done when we all share the same background philosophical assumptions, but on the other hand it distracts from the main message of “Bentham + biotech”. I remain torn by whether to pursue this subject in public.\nMy philosophy is in agreement with Buddhism (“I Teach Only Suffering and the End of Suffering” – Buddha). If you will, all I’m doing is taking the core message of Buddhism seriously and then figuring out what its realization actually entails (i.e. biotechnology). Alternatively, you can see it as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat…”. All we are doing is figuring out the implementation details!\nEliminating suffering with modern technology ought to be foot stompingly obvious… but after a while one learns that it’s not wise or productive to stomp on one’s own foot.\n“Diogenes’ new tub” (as a concept handle in order to talk about radically new modes of experience with high hedonic tone despite their alien nature).\nAlthough I am not confident we can explain reality, if it is at all possible, I do think we are circling around the correct explanation space (i.e. zero ontology).\nIf even someone like David Chalmers, who is philosophically literate, insightful, and very bright, had trouble understanding the fact that phenomenal binding is not epiphenomenal, what are the chances that most people will?\nI am extremely prude, perhaps the prudest in this room, so forgive my analogy: being animated by gradients of bliss is like the experience of two sensitive lovers making love. If done right, it’s supposed to be pleasant all throughout, but there will still be peaks and troughs.\nI do not have a secret agenda here, I promise. I’m a secular rationalist, and I don’t believe in any kind of spirituality. Yet one can imagine future generations identifying, isolating, expressing, and amplifying the molecular substrates of spiritual experiences. Thus perhaps some people might want to add “super-spirituality” to the “3 Ss of transhumanism” (i.e. super-intelligence, super-longevity, and super-happiness).\nAlthough I would like to have a government that doesn’t tell me what I can and can’t take to enrich the quality of my life, I must say that if I had a teenager I would not want them to experiment with anything weird like psychedelics, and I certainly wouldn’t want them to hang out with people who are likely to give them such things. Likewise, most people would agree that preventing people from taking antibiotics when they just have a viral cold is important and that regulation is key here. So I wouldn’t say I’m uniformly libertarian about the use of substances. That said, verifiably informed consenting adults above a certain age should be allowed to do what they please with their inner biochemistry.\nDavid Pearce and three generations of the Stanford Transhumanist Association leadership", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/10/07/david-pearce-in-sf/", "title": "David Pearce in SF", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-10-07T12:49:08+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=17", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "724a01be6f12c65b220dd8c1bc797bed", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Qualia Explosion\n\nExtract from “Humans and Intelligent Machines: Co-Evolution, Fusion or Replacement?” (talk) by David Pearce\n\nSupersentience: Turing plus Shulgin?\nCompared to the natural sciences (cf. the Standard Model in physics) or computing (cf. the Universal Turing Machine), the “science” of consciousness is pre-Galilean, perhaps even pre-Socratic. State-enforced censorship of the range of subjective properties of matter and energy in the guise of a prohibition on psychoactive experimentation is a powerful barrier to knowledge. The legal taboo on the empirical method in consciousness studies prevents experimental investigation of even the crude dimensions of the Hard Problem, let alone locating a solution-space where answers to our ignorance might conceivably be found.\nSingularity theorists are undaunted by our ignorance of this fundamental feature of the natural world. Instead, the Singularitarians offer a narrative of runaway machine intelligence in which consciousness plays a supporting role ranging from the minimal and incidental to the completely non-existent. However, highlighting the Singularity movement’s background assumptions about the nature of mind and intelligence, not least the insignificance of the binding problem to AGI, reveals why FUSION and REPLACEMENT scenarios are unlikely – though a measure of “cyborgification” of sentient biological robots augmented with ultrasmart software seems plausible and perhaps inevitable.\nIf full-spectrum superintelligence does indeed entail navigation and mastery of the manifold state-spaces of consciousness, and ultimately a seamless integration of this knowledge with the structural understanding of the world yielded by the formal sciences, then where does this elusive synthesis leave the prospects of posthuman superintelligence? Will the global proscription of radically altered states last indefinitely?\nSocial prophecy is always a minefield. However, there is one solution to the indisputable psychological health risks posed to human minds by empirical research into the outlandish state-spaces of consciousness unlocked by ingesting the tryptamines, phenylethylamines, isoquinolines and other pharmacological tools of sentience investigation. This solution is to make “bad trips” physiologically impossible – whether for individual investigators or, in theory, for human society as a whole. Critics of mood-enrichment technologies sometimes contend that a world animated by information-sensitive gradients of bliss would be an intellectually stagnant society: crudely, a Brave New World. On the contrary, biotech-driven mastery of our reward circuitry promises a knowledge explosion in virtue of allowing a social, scientific and legal revolution: safe, full-spectrum biological superintelligence. For genetic recalibration of hedonic set-points – as distinct from creating uniform bliss – potentially leaves cognitive function and critical insight both sharp and intact; and offers a launchpad for consciousness research in mind-spaces alien to the drug-naive imagination. A future biology of invincible well-being would not merely immeasurably improve our subjective quality of life: empirically, pleasure is the engine of value-creation. In addition to enriching all our lives, radical mood-enrichment would permit safe, systematic and responsible scientific exploration of previously inaccessible state-spaces of consciousness. If we were blessed with a biology of invincible well-being, exotic state-spaces would all be saturated with a rich hedonic tone.\nUntil this hypothetical world-defining transition, pursuit of the rigorous first-person methodology and rational drug-design strategy pioneered by Alexander Shulgin in PiHKAL and TiHKAL remains confined to the scientific counterculture. Investigation is risky, mostly unlawful, and unsystematic. In mainstream society, academia and peer-reviewed scholarly journals alike, ordinary waking consciousness is assumed to define the gold standard in which knowledge-claims are expressed and appraised. Yet to borrow a homely-sounding quote from Einstein, “What does the fish know of the sea in which it swims?” Just as a dreamer can gain only limited insight into the nature of dreaming consciousness from within a dream, likewise the nature of “ordinary waking consciousness” can only be glimpsed from within its confines. In order to scientifically understand the realm of the subjective, we’ll need to gain access to all its manifestations, not just the impoverished subset of states of consciousness that tended to promote the inclusive fitness of human genes on the African savannah.\nWhy the Proportionality Thesis Implies an Organic Singularity\nSo if the preconditions for full-spectrum superintelligence, i.e. access to superhuman state-spaces of sentience, remain unlawful, where does this roadblock leave the prospects of runaway self-improvement to superintelligence? Could recursive genetic self-editing of our source code repair the gap? Or will traditional human personal genomes be policed by a dystopian Gene Enforcement Agency in a manner analogous to the coercive policing of traditional human minds by the Drug Enforcement Agency?\nEven in an ideal regulatory regime, the process of genetic and/or pharmacological self-enhancement is intuitively too slow for a biological Intelligence Explosion to be a live option, especially when set against the exponential increase in digital computer processing power and inorganic AI touted by Singularitarians. Prophets of imminent human demise in the face of machine intelligence argue that there can’t be a Moore’s law for organic robots. Even the Flynn Effect, the three-points-per-decade increase in IQ scores recorded during the 20th century, is comparatively puny; and in any case, this narrowly-defined intelligence gain may now have halted in well-nourished Western populations.\nHowever, writing off all scenarios of recursive human self-enhancement would be premature. Presumably, the smarter our nonbiological AI, the more readily AI-assisted humans will be able recursively to improve our own minds with user-friendly wetware-editing tools – not just editing our raw genetic source code, but also the multiple layers of transcription and feedback mechanisms woven into biological minds. Presumably, our ever-smarter minds will be able to devise progressively more sophisticated, and also progressively more user-friendly, wetware-editing tools. These wetware-editing tools can accelerate our own recursive self-improvement – and manage potential threats from nonfriendly AGI that might harm rather than help us, assuming that our earlier strictures against the possibility of digital software-based unitary minds were mistaken. MIRI rightly call attention to how small enhancements can yield immense cognitive dividends: the relatively short genetic distance between humans and chimpanzees suggests how relatively small enhancements can exert momentous effects on a mind’s general intelligence, thereby implying that AGIs might likewise become disproportionately powerful through a small number of tweaks and improvements. In the post-genomic era, presumably exactly the same holds true for AI-assisted humans and transhumans editing their own minds. What David Chalmers calls the proportionality thesis, i.e. increases in intelligence lead to proportionate increases in the capacity to design intelligent systems, will be vindicated as recursively self-improving organic robots modify their own source code and bootstrap our way to full-spectrum superintelligence: in essence, an organic Singularity. And in contrast to classical digital zombies, superficially small molecular differences in biological minds can result in profoundly different state-spaces of sentience. Compare the ostensibly trivial difference in gene expression profiles of neurons mediating phenomenal sight and phenomenal sound – and the radically different visual and auditory worlds they yield.\nCompared to FUSION or REPLACEMENT scenarios, the AI-human CO-EVOLUTION conjecture is apt to sound tame. The likelihood our posthuman successors will also be our biological descendants suggests at most a radical conservativism. In reality, a post-Singularity future where today’s classical digital zombies were superseded merely by faster, more versatile classical digital zombies would be infinitely duller than a future of full-spectrum supersentience. For all insentient information processors are exactly the same inasmuch as the living dead are not subjects of experience. They’ll never even know what it’s like to be “all dark inside” – or the computational power of phenomenal object-binding that yields illumination. By contrast, posthuman superintelligence will not just be quantitatively greater but also qualitatively alien to archaic Darwinian minds. Cybernetically enhanced and genetically rewritten biological minds can abolish suffering throughout the living world and banish experience below “hedonic zero” in our forward light-cone, an ethical watershed without precedent. Post-Darwinian life can enjoy gradients of lifelong blissful supersentience with the intensity of a supernova compared to a glow-worm. A zombie, on the other hand, is just a zombie – even if it squawks like Einstein. Posthuman organic minds will dwell in state-spaces of experience for which archaic humans and classical digital computers alike have no language, no concepts, and no words to describe our ignorance. Most radically, hyperintelligent organic minds will explore state-spaces of consciousness that do not currently play any information-signalling role in living organisms, and are impenetrable to investigation by digital zombies. In short, biological intelligence is on the brink of a recursively self-amplifying Qualia Explosion – a phenomenon of which digital zombies are invincibly ignorant, and invincibly ignorant of their own ignorance. Humans too of course are mostly ignorant of what we’re lacking: the nature, scope and intensity of such posthuman superqualia are beyond the bounds of archaic human experience. Even so, enrichment of our reward pathways can ensure that full-spectrum biological superintelligence will be sublime.\n\nImage Credit: MohammadReza DomiriGanji", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/09/28/the-qualia-explosion/", "title": "The Qualia Explosion", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-09-28T23:55:56+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=17", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "4df73759cbf2b8d8b8d5bb150e364b0f", "summary": []}
{"text": "Burning Man 2.0: The Eigen-Schelling Religion, Entrainment & Metronomes, and the Eternal Battle Between Consciousness and Replicators\n\nBecause our consensus reality programs us in certain destructive directions, we must experience other realities in order to know we have choices.\n– John C. Lilly (Jan 1983 Omni Magazine interview)\n\nAnyone who limits her vision to memories of yesterday is already dead.\n– Lillie Langtry\nLast year I wrote a 13,000 word essay about my experience at Burning Man. This year I will also share some thoughts and insights concerning my experience while being brief and limiting myself to seven thousand words. I decided to write this piece stand-alone in such a way that you do not need to have read the previous essay in order to make sense of the present text.\n\nCamp Soft Landing\nI have been wanting to attend Burning Man for several years, but last year was the first time I had both the time and resources to do so. Unfortunately I was not able to get a ticket in the main sale, so I thought I would have to wait another year to have the experience. Out of the blue, however, I received an email from someone from Camp Soft Landing asking me if I would be interested in giving a talk at Burning Man in their Palenque Norte speaker series. My immediate response was “I would love to! But I don’t have a ticket and I don’t have a camp.” The message I received in return was “Great! Well, we have extra tickets, and you can stay at our camp.” So just like that I suddenly had the opportunity to not only attend, but also be at a wonderful camp and give a talk about consciousness research.\nFull Circle Teahouse\nThe camp I’ve been a part of turned out to be an extremely good fit for me both as a researcher and as a person. Camp Soft Landing is one of the largest camps at Burning Man, featuring a total of 150 participants every year. Its two main contributions to the playa are the Full Circle Teahouse and Palenque Norte. The Full Circle Teahouse is a place in which we serve adaptogen herbal tea blends and Pu’er tea in a peaceful setting that emphasizes presence, empathy, and listening. It’s also full of pillows and cozy blankets and serves as a place for people who are overwhelmed to calm down or crash after a hectic night. (During training we were advised to expect that some people “may not know where they are or how they got here when they wake up in the early morning” and to “help them get oriented and offer them tea”). Here are a few telling words by the Teahouse founder Annie Oak:\nThe real secret sauce to our camp’s collective survival has been our focus on the well being of everyone who steps inside Soft Landing. While the ancestral progenitor who occupied our location before us, Camp Above the Limit, ran a lively bar, we made a decision not to serve alcohol in our camp. I enjoy an occasional cocktail, but I believe that the conflating of the gift economy with free alcohol has compromised the public health and social cohesion of Black Rock City. We do not prohibit alcohol at Soft Landing, but we do not permit bars inside our camp. Instead, we run a tea bar at our Tea House for those seeking a place to rest, hydrate and receive compassionate care. We also give away hundreds of gallons of water to Tea House visitors. We don’t want to undermine their self-sufficiency, but we can proactively reduce the number of guests who become ill from dehydration. We keep our Tea House open until Monday after the Burn to help weary people stay alert on the perilous drive back home.\n– Doing It Right: Theme Camp Management Insights from Camp Soft Landing\n\n\nPalenque Norte\nPalenque Norte is a speaker series founded by podcaster Lorenzo Hagerty in 2003 (cf. A Brief History of Palenque Norte). A friend described it as “TED for Psychedelic Research at Burning Man” which is pretty accurate. Indeed, looking at a list of Palenque Norte speakers is like browsing a who’s who of the scientific and artistic psychedelic community: Johns Hopkins‘ Roland Griffiths, MAPS‘ Rick Doblin, Heffter‘s George Greer, EFF‘s John Gilmore, Ann & Sasha Shulgin (Q&A), DanceSafe‘s Mitchell Gomez, Consciousness Hacking‘ Mikey Siegel, Paul Daley, Bruce Damer, Will Siu, Emily Williams, Sebastian Job, Alex Grey, Android Jones, and many others. For reference, here was this year’s Palenque Norte schedule:\n\n\nThanks to the Full Circle Teahouse and Palenque Norte, the social and memetic composition of Camp Soft Landing is one that is characterized by a mixture of veteran scientists and community builders in their 50s and 60s, science and engineering nerds with advanced degrees in their late 20s and early 30s, and a dash of millennials and Gen-Z-ers in the rationalist/Effective Altruist communities.\nLorenzo Hagerty, Sasha Shulgin, and Bruce Damer (Burning Man, Palenque Norte c. 2007)\nThe people of Camp Soft Landing are near and dear to my heart given that they take consciousness seriously, they have a scientific focus, and they emit a strong intellectual vibe. As a budding qualia researcher myself, I feel completely at home there. As it turns out, this type of vibe is not at all out of place at Burning Man…\nBurning Man Attendees\nI would hazard the guess that Burning Man attendees are on average much more open to experience, conscientious, cognitively oriented, and psychologically robust than people in the general population. In particular, the combination of conscientiousness and openness to experience is golden. These are people who are not only able to think of crazy ideas, but who are also diligent enough to manifest them in the real world in concrete forms. This may account for the high production value and elaborate nature of the art, music, workshops, and collective activities. While the openness to experience aspect of Burning Man is fairly self-evident (it jumps at you if you do a quick google images search), the conscientiousness aspect may be a little harder to believe. Here I will quote a friend to illustrate this component:\nBurning Man is the annual meeting of the recreational logistics community. Or maybe it’s a job interview for CEO: how to deal with broken situations and unexpected constraints in a multi-agent setting, just to survive.\n[…]\nThings I learned / practiced in the last couple of weeks: truck driving, clever packing, impact driver, attaching bike trailer, pumping gas and filling generators, knots, adding hanging knobs to a whiteboard, tying things with wire, quickly moving tents on the last night, finding rides, using ratchet straps, opening & closing storage container, driving to Treasure Island.\n\n\n– GL\n\n\n\nIndeed this may be one of the key barriers of entry that defines the culture of Burning Man and explains why the crazy ideas people have in a given year tend to come back in the form of art in the next year… rather than vanishing into thin air.\nThere are other key features of the people who attend which can be seen by inspecting the Burning Man Census report. Here is a list of attributes, their baserate for Burners, and the baserate in the general population (for comparison): Having an undergraduate degree (73.6% vs. 32%), holding a graduate degree (31% vs. 10%), being gay/lesbian (8.5% vs. 1.3%), bisexual (10% vs. 1.8%), bicurious (11% vs. ??), polyamorous (20% vs. 5%), mixed race (9% vs. 3%), female (40% vs. 50%), median income (62K vs. 30K), etc.\nFrom a bird’s eye view one can describe Burners as much more: educated, LGBT, liberal or libertarian, “spiritual but not religious”, and more mixed race than the average person. There are many more interesting cultural and demographic attributes that define the population of Black Rock City, but I will leave it at that for now for the sake of brevity. That said, feel free to inspect the following Census graphs for further details:\nClick to view slideshow.\n\nLast year at Burning Man I developed a cluster of new concepts including “The Goldilocks Zone of Oneness” and “Hybrid Vigor in the context of post-Darwinian ethics.” I included my conversation with God and instructions for a guided oneness meditation. This year I continued to use the expanded awareness field of the Playa to further these and other concepts. In what follows I will describe some of the main ideas I experienced and then conclude with a summary of the talk I gave at Palenque Norte. If any of the following sections are too dense or uninteresting please feel free to skip them.\nThe Universal Eigen-Schelling Religion\nOn one of the nights a group of friends and I went on a journey following an art car, stopping every now and then to dance and to check out some art. At one point we drove through a large crowd of people and by the time the art car was on the other side, a few people from the group were missing. The question then became “what do we do?” We didn’t agree on a strategy for dealing with this situation before we embarked on the trip. After a couple of minutes we all converged on a strategy: stay near the art car and drive around until we find the missing people. The whole situation had a “lost in space” quality. Finding individual people is very hard since from a distance everyone is wearing roughly-indistinguishable multi-colored blinking LEDs all over their body. But since art cars are large and more distinguishable at a distance, they become natural Schelling points for people to converge on. Schelling points are a natural coordination mechanism in the absence of direct communication channels.\nWe were thus able to re-group almost in our entirety as a group (with only one person missing, who we finally had to give up on) by independently converging on the meta-heuristic of looking for the most natural Schelling point and finding the rest of the group there. For the rest of the night I kept thinking about how this meta-strategy may play out in the grand scheme of things.\nIf you follow Qualia Computing you may know that our default view on the nature of ethics is valence utilitarianism. People think they want specific things (e.g. ice-cream, a house, to be rich and famous, etc.) but in reality what they want is the high-valence response (i.e. happiness, bliss, and pleasure) that is triggered by such stimuli. When two people disagree on e.g. whether a certain food is tasty, they are not usually talking about the same experience. For one person, such food could induce high degrees of sensory euphoria, while for the other person, the food may leave them cold. But if they had introspective access to each other’s valence response, the disagreement would vanish (“Ah, I didn’t realize mayo produced such a good feeling for you. I was fixated on the aversive reaction I had to it.”). In other words, disagreements about the value of specific stimuli come down to lack of empathetic fidelity between people rather than a fundamental value mismatch. Deep down, we claim, we all like the same states of consciousness, and our disagreements come from the fact that their triggers vary between people. We call the fixation on the stimuli rather than the valence response the Tyranny of the Intentional Object.\nIn the grand scheme of things, we posit that advanced intelligences across the multiverse will generally converge on valence realism and valence utilitarianism. This is not an arbitrary value choice; it’s the natural outcome of looking for consistency among one’s disparate preferences and trying to investigate the true nature of conscious value. Insofar as curiosity is evolutionarily adaptive, any sufficiently general and sufficiently curious conscious mind eventually reaches the conclusion that value is a structural feature of conscious states and sheds the illusion of intentionality and closed identity. And while in the context of human history one could point at specific philosophers and scientists that have advanced our understanding of ethics (i.e. Plato, Bentham, Singer, Pearce, etc.) there may be a very abstract but universal way of describing the general tendency of curious conscious intelligences towards valence utilitarianism. It would go like this:\nIn a physicalist panpsychist paradigm, the vast majority of moments of experience do not occur within intelligent minds and leave no records of their phenomenal character for future minds to examine and inspect. A subset of moments of experience, though, do happen to take place within intelligent minds. We can call these conscious eigen-states because their introspective value can be retroactively investigated and compared against the present moment of experience, which has access to records of past experiences. Humans, insofar as they do not experience large amounts of amnesia, are able to experience a wide range of eigen-states throughout their lives. Thus, within a single human mind, many comparisons between the valence of various states of consciousness can be carried out (this is complicated and not always feasible given the state-dependence of memory). Either way, one could visualize how the information about the relative ranking of experiences is gathered across a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) of moments of experience that have partial introspective access to previous moments of experience. Furthermore, if the assumption of continuity of identity is made (i.e. that each moment of experience is witnessed by the same transcendental subject) then each evaluation between pairs of states of consciousness contributes a noisy datapoint to a universal ranking of all experiences and values.\nAfter enough comparisons, a threshold number of evaluated experiences may be crossed, at which point a general theory of value can begin to be constructed. Thus a series of natural Schelling points for “what is universally valuable” become accessible to subsequent moments of experience. One of these focal points is the prevention of suffering throughout the entire multiverse. That is, to avoid experiences that do not like existing, independently of their location in space-time. Likewise, we would see another focal point that adds an imperative to realize experiences that value their own existence (“let the thought forms who love themselves reproduce and populate the multiverse”).\nI call this approach to ethics the Eigen-Schelling Religion. Any sapient mind in the multiverse with a general enough ability to reason about qualia and reflect about causality is capable of converging to it. In turn, we can see that many concepts at the core of world religions are built around universal Eigen-Schelling points. Thus, we can rest assured that both the Bodhisattva imperative to eliminate suffering and the Christ “world redeeming” sentiment are reflections of a fundamental converging process to which many other intelligent life-forms have access across the entire multiverse. What I like about this framework is that you don’t need to take anyone’s word for what constitutes wisdom in consciousness. It naturally exists as reflective focal points within the state-space of consciousness itself in a way that transcends time and space.\nEntrainment and Metronomes\nIn A Future for Neuroscience my friend and colleague Mike E. Johnson from the Qualia Research Institute explored how taking seriously the paradigm of Connectome-Specific Harmonic Waves (CSHW) leads us to reinterpret cognitive and personality traits in an entirely new light. In particular, here is what he has to say about emotional intelligence:\nEQ (emotional intelligent quotient) isn’t very good as a formal psychological construct- it’s not particularly predictive, nor very robust when viewed from different perspectives. But there’s clearly something there– empirically, we see that some people are more ‘tuned in’ to the emotional & interpersonal realm, more skilled at feeling the energy of the room, more adept at making others feel comfortable, better at inspiring people to belief and action. It would be nice to have some sort of metric here.\nI suggest breaking EQ into entrainment quotient (EnQ) and metronome quotient (MQ). In short, entrainment quotient indicates how easily you can reach entrainment with another person. And by “reach entrainment”, I mean how rapidly and deeply your connectome harmonic dynamics can fall into alignment with another’s. Metronome quotient, on the other hand, indicates how strongly you can create, maintain, and project an emotional frame. In other words, how robustly can you signal your internal connectome harmonic state, and how effectively can you cause others to be entrained to it. […] Most likely, these are reasonably positively correlated; in particular, I suspect having a high MQ requires a reasonably decent EnQ. And importantly, we can likely find good ways to evaluate these with CSHW.\nThis conceptual framework can be useful for making sense of the novel social dynamics that take place in Black Rock City. In particular, as illustrated by the Census responses, most participants are in a very open and emotionally receptive state at Burning Man:\n\n\n\n\nOne could say that by feeling safe, welcomed, and accepted at Burning Man, attendees adopt a very high Entrainment Quotient modus operandi. In tandem, we then see large art pieces, art cars, theme camps, and powerful sound systems blasting their unique distinctive emotional signals throughout the Playa. In a sense the entire place looks like an ecosystem of brightly-lit high-energy metronomes trying to attract the attention of a swarm of people in highly open and sensitive states with the potential to be entrained with these metronomes. Since the competition for attention is ferocious, there is not a single metronome that can dominate or totally brainwash you. All it takes for you to get a bad signal out of your head is to walk 50 meters to another place where the vibe will be, in all likelihood, completely different and overwrite the previous state.\nThis dynamic reaches its ultimate climax the very night of the Burn, as (almost) everyone gathers around the Man in a maximally receptive state, while at the same time every art car and group vibe surrounds the crowd and blasts their unique signals as loud and as intensely as possible all at the same time. This leads to the reification of the collective Burning Man egregore, which manifests as the sum total of all signals and vibes in mass ecstasy.\nNight of the Burn (source)\nIt is worth pointing out that not all of the metronomes in the Playa are created equal. Some art cars, for example, send highly specific and culturally-bound signals (e.g. country music, Simon & Garfunkel, Michael Jackson, etc.). While these metronomes will have their specific followings (i.e. you can always find a group of dedicated Pink Floyd fans) their ability to interface with the general Burner vibe is limited by their specificity and temporal irregularity. The more typical metronomic texture you will find scattered all around the Playa will be art forms that make use of more general patternceutical Schelling points with a stronger and more general metronomic capacity. Of note is the high degree of prevalence of house music and other 110 to 140 bpm (beats per minute) music that is able to entrain your brain from a distance and motivate you to move towards it- whether or not you are able to recognize the particular song. If you listen carefully to e.g. Palenque Norte recordings you will notice the occasional art car driving by, and the music it is blasting will usually have its tempo within that range, with a strong, repeating, and easily recognizable beat structure. I suspect that this tendency is the natural emergent effect of the evolutionary selection pressures that art forms endure from one Burn to another, which benefit patterns that can captivate a lot of human attention in a competitive economy of recreational states of consciousness.\nAndroid Jones’ Samskara at Camp Mystic 2017 (an example of the Open Individualist Schelling Vibe – i.e. the religion of the ego-dissolving LSD frequency of consciousness)\nAnd then there are the extremely general metronome strategies that revolve around universal principles. The best example I found of this attention-capturing approach was the aesthetic of oneness, which IMO seemed to reach its highest expression at Camp Mystic:\nInspired by a sense of mystery & wonder, we perceive the consciousness of “We Are All One”. Mystics encourage the enigmatic spirit to explore a deeper connection not only on this planet and all that exists within, but the realm of the entire Universe.\n– Who are the Mystics? \nAt their Wednesday night “White Dance Party” (where you are encouraged to dress in white) Camp Mystic was blasting the strongest vibes of Open Individualism I witnessed this year. I am of the mind that philosophy is the soul of poetry, and that massive party certainly had as its underlying philosophy the vibe of oneness and unity. This vibe is itself a Schelling point in the state-space of consciousness… the religion of the boundary-dissolving LSD frequency is not a random state, but a central hub in the super-highway of the mind. I am glad these focal points made prominent appearances at Burning Man.\nUncontrollable Feedback Loops\nIt is worth pointing out that at an open field as diverse as Burning Man we are likely to encounter positive feedback systems with both good and bad effects on human wellbeing. An example of a positive feedback loop with bad effects would be the incidents that transpired around the “Carkebab” art installation:\n\n\n\nThe sculpture consisted of a series of cars piled on top of each other held together by a central pole. The setup was clearly designed to be climbed given the visible handles above the cars leading to a view cart at the top. However, in practice it turned out to be considerably more dangerous and hard to climb than it seemed. Now you may anticipate the problem. If you are told that this art piece is climbable but dangerous, one can easily conjure a mental image of a future event in which someone falls and gets hurt. And as soon as that happens, access to the art installation will be restricted. Thus, one reasons that there is a limited amount of time left in which one will be able to climb the structure. Now imagine a lot of people having that train of thought. As more people realize that an accident is imminent, more people are motivated to climb it before that happens, thus creating an incentive to go as soon as possible, leading to crowding, which in turn increases the chance of an accident. The more people approach the installation, the more imminent the final point seems, and the more pressing it becomes to climb the structure before it becomes off-limits, and the more dangerous it becomes. Predictably, the imminent accident did take place. Thankfully it only involved a broken shoulder rather than something more severe. And yet, why did we let it get to that point? Perhaps in the future we should have methods to detect positive feedback loops like this and put the brakes on before it’s too late…\nThis leads to the topic of danger:\nCounting Microlives\nCan Burning Man be a place in which an abolitionist ethic can put down roots for long-term civilizational planning? Let’s briefly examine some of the potential acute, medium-term, and long-term costs of attending. Everyone has a limit, right? Some may want to think: “well, you only live once, let’s have fun”. But if you are one of the few who carries the wisdom, will, and love to move consciousness forward this should not be how you think. What would be an acceptable level of risk that an Effective Altruist should be able to accept to experience the benefits of Burning Man? I think that the critical question here is not “Is Burning Man dangerous?” but rather “How bad is it for you?”\nThankfully actuaries, modern medicine, and economists have already developed a theoretical framework for putting a number on this question. Namely, this is the concept of micromorts (i.e. 1 in a million chance of dying) and its sister concept of microlife (a cost of 1 millionth of a lifespan lost or gained by performing some activity). My preference is that of using microlives because they translate more easily into time and are, IMO, more conceptually straightforward. So here is the question: How many microlives should we be willing to spend to attend Burning Man? 10 microlives? 100 microlives? 1,000 microlives? 10,000 microlives?\nBased on the fact that there are many long-term burners still alive I guesstimate that the upper bound cannot possibly be higher than 10,000 or we would know about it already. I.e. the percentage of people who get e.g. skin cancer, lung disease, or die in other ways would probably be already apparent in the community. Alternatively, it’s also possible that a reduced life expectancy as a result of attending e.g. 10+ Burns is an open secret among long-term burners… they see their friends die at an inexplicably higher rate but are too afraid to talk about it honestly. After all, people tend to be very clingy to their main sources of meaning (what we call “emotionally load-bearing activities”) so a large amount of denial can be expected in this domain.\nAdditionally, discussing Burning Man micromorts might be a particularly touchy and difficult subject for a number of attendees. The reason being that part of the psychological value that Burning Man provides is a felt sense of the confrontation with one’s fragility and mortality. Many older burners seem to have come to terms with their own mortality quite well already. Indeed, perhaps accepting death as part of life may be one of the very mechanisms of action for the reduction in neuroticism caused by intense experiences like psychedelics and Burning Man.\nBut that is not my jazz. I would personally not want to recommend an activity that costs a lot of microlives to other people in team consciousness. While I want to come to terms with death as much as your next Silicon Valley mystically-inclined nerd, I also recognize that death-acceptance is a somewhat selfish desire. Paradoxically, living a long, healthy, and productive life is one of the best ways for us to improve our chances of helping consciousness-at-large given our unwavering commitment to the eradication of all sentient suffering.\nThe main acute risks of Burning Man could be summarized as: dehydration, sleep deprivation, ODing (especially via accidental dosing, which is not uncommon, sadly), being run over by large vehicles (especially by art cars, trucks, and RVs), and falling from art or having art fall on you. These risks can be mitigated by the motto of “doing only one stupid thing at a time” (cf. How not to die at Burning Man). It’s ok to climb a medium-sized art piece if you are fully sober, or to take a psychedelic if you have sitters and don’t walk around art cars, etc. Most stories of accidents one hears about start along the lines of: “So, I was drunk, and high, and on mushrooms, and holding my camera, and I decided to climb on top of the thunderdome, and…”. Yes, of course that went badly. Doing stupid things on top of each other has multiplicative risk effects.\nIn the medium term, a pretty important risk is that of being busted by law enforcement. After all, the financial, psychological, and physiological effects of going to prison are rather severe on most people. On a similar note, a non-deadly but psychologically devastating danger of living in the desert for a week is an increased risk of kidney stones due to dehydration. The 10/10 pain you are likely to experience while passing a kidney stone may have far-reaching traumatic effects on one’s psyche and should not be underestimated (sufferers experience an increased risk of heart disease and, I would suspect, suicide).\nBut of all of the risks, the ones that concern me the most are the long term ones given their otherwise silent nature. In particular, we have skin cancer due to UV exposure and lung/heart disease caused by high levels of PM2.5 particles. With respect to the skin component, it is worth observing that a large majority of Burning Man attendees are caucasian and thus at a significantly higher risk. Me being a redhead, I’ve taken rather extreme precautions in this area. I apply SPF50+ sunscreen every couple of hours, use a wide-rim hat, wear arm sleeves [and gloves] for UV sun protection, wear sunglasses, stay in the shade as often as I can, etc. I recommend that other people also follow these precautions.\nAnd with regards to dust… here I would have to say we have the largest error bars. Does Burning Man dust cause lung cancer? Does it impair lung function? Does it cause heart disease? As far as I can tell nobody knows the answer to these questions. A lot of people seem to believe that the air-borne particles are too large to pose a problem, but I highly doubt that is the case. The only source I’ve been able to find that tried to quantify dangerous particles at Burning Man comes from Camp Particle, which unfortunately does not seem to have published its results (and only provides preliminary data without the critical measure of PM2.5 I was looking for). Here are two important thoughts in this area. First, let’s hope that the clay-like alkaline composition of Playa dust turns out to be harmless to the lungs. And second, like most natural phenomena, chances are that the concentration of dangerous particles in, e.g. 1 minute buckets, follows a power law. I would strongly expect that at least 80% of the dust one inhales comes from 20% of the time in which it is most present. More so, during dust storms and especially in white-outs, I would expect the concentration of dust in the air to be at least 1,000 times higher than the median concentration. If that’s true, breathing without protection during a white-out for as little as two minutes would be equivalent to breathing in “typical conditions” without protection for more than 24 hours. In other words, being strategic and diligent about wearing a heavy and cumbersome PN100 mask may be far more effective than lazily taking on and off a more convenient (but less effective) mask throughout the day. Personally, I chose to always have on hand an M3 half facepiece with PN100 filters ready in case the dust suddenly became thicker. This did indeed save me from breathing dust during all dust storms. The difference in the quality of air while wearing it was like day and night. I will also say that while I prefer my look when I have a beard, I chose to fully shave during the event in order to guarantee a good seal with the mask. In retrospect, the fashion sacrifice does seem to be worth it, though at the time I certainly missed having a beard.\n\nThe question remaining is: with a realistic amount of protection, what is the acceptable level of risk? I propose that you make up your mind before we find out with science how dangerous Burning Man actually is. In my case, I am willing to endure up to 100 negative microlives per day at Burning Man (for a total of ~800 microlives) as the absolute upper bound. Anything higher than that and the experience wouldn’t be worth it for me, and I would not recommend it to memetic allies. Thankfully, I suspect that the actual danger is lower than that, perhaps in the range of 40 negative microlives per day (mostly in the form of skin cancer and lung disease). But the problem remains that this estimate has very wide error bars. This needs to be addressed.\nAnd if the danger does turn out to be unacceptable, then we can still look to recreate the benefits of Burning Man in a safer way: Your Legacy Could Be To Move Burning Man to a Place With A Fraction of Its Micromorts Cost.\nDangerous Bonding\nIn the ideal case Burning Man would be an event that triggers our brains to produce “danger signals” without there actually being much danger at all. This is because with our current brain implementation, experiencing perceived danger is helpful for bonding, trust building, and a sense of self-efficacy and survival ability.\nAnd now on to my talk…\nAndrés Gómez Emilsson – Consciousness vs. Replicators\n\nThe video above documents my talk, which includes an extended Q&A with the audience. Below is a quick summary of the main points I touched throughout the talk:\n\nIntro to Qualia Computing\n\nI started out by asking the audience if they had read any Qualia Computing articles. About 30% of them raised a hand. I then asked them how they found out about my talk, and it seems that the majority of the attendees (50%+) found it through the “What Where When” booklet. Since the majority of the people didn’t know about Qualia Computing before the talk, I decided to provide a quick introduction to some of the main concepts:\n\nWhat is qualia? – The raw way in which consciousness feels. Like the blueness of blue. Did you ever wonder as a kid whether other people saw the same colors as you? Qualia is that ineffable quality of experience that we currently struggle to communicate.\nPersonal Identity:\n\nClosed Individualism – you start existing when you are born, stop existing when you die.\nEmpty Individualism – brains are “experience machines” and you really are just a “moment of experience” disconnected from every other “moment of experience” your brain has generated or will generate.\nOpen Individualism – we are all the “light of consciousness”. Reality has only one numerically identical subject of experience who is everyone, but which takes all sorts of forms and shapes.\nFor the purpose of this talk I assume that Open Individualism is true, which provides a strong reason to care about the wellbeing of all sentient beings, even from a “selfish” point of view.\n\n\nValence – This is the pleasure-pain axis. We take a valence realist view which means that we assume that there is an objective matter of fact about how much an experience is in pain/suffering vs. experiencing happiness/pleasure. There are pure heavenly experiences, pure hellish experiences, mixed states (e.g. enjoying music you love on awful speakers while wanting to pee), and neutral states (e.g. white noise, mild apathy, etc.).\nEvolutionary advantages of consciousness as part of the information processing pipeline – I pointed out that we also assume that consciousness is a real and computationally relevant phenomena. And in particular, that the reason why consciousness was recruited by natural selection to process information has to do with “phenomenal binding”. I did not go into much detail about it at the time, but if you are curious I elaborated about this during the Q&A.\n\n\n\n\nSpirit of our research:\n\nExploration + Knowledge/Synthesis. Many people either over-focus on exploration (especially people very high in openness to experience) or on synthesis (like conservatives who think “the good days are gone, let’s study history”). The spirit of our research combines both open-ended exploration and strong synthesis. We encourage people to both expand their evidential base and make serious time to synthesize and cross-examine their experiences.\nA lot of people treat consciousness research like people used to treat alchemy. That is, they have a psychological need to “keep things magical”. We don’t. We think that consciousness research is due to transition into a hard science and that many new possibilities will be unlocked after this transition, not unlike how chemistry is thousands of times more powerful than alchemy because it allows you to create synthesis pathways from scratch using chemistry principles.\n\n\nHow People Think and Why Few Say Meaningful Things:\n\nWhat most people say and talk about is a function of the surrounding social status algorithm (i.e. what kind of things award social recognition) and deep-seated evolutionarily adaptive programs (such as survival, reproductive, and affective consistency programs).\nNerds and people on the autism spectrum do tend to circumvent this general mental block and are able to discuss things without being motivated by status or evolutionary programs only, instead being driven by open-ended curiosity. We encourage our collaborators to have that approach to consciousness research.\n\n\nWhat the Economy is Based on:\n\nRight now there are three main goods that are exchanged in the global economy. These are:\n\nSurvival – resources that help you survive, like food, shelter, safety, etc.\nPower – resources that allow you to acquire social and physical power and thus increase your chances of reproducing.\nConsciousness – information about the state-space of consciousness. Right now people are willing to spend their “surplus” resources on experiences even if they do not increase their reproductive success. A possible dystopian scenario is one in which people do not do this anymore – everyone spends all of their available time and energy pursuing jobs for the sake of maximizing their wealth and increasing their reproductive success. This leads us to…\n\n\n\n\nPure Replicators – In Wireheading Done Right we introduced the concept of a Pure Replicator: I will define a pure replicator, in the context of agents and minds, to be an intelligence that is indifferent towards the valence of its conscious states and those of others. A pure replicator invests all of its energy and resources into surviving and reproducing, even at the cost of continuous suffering to themselves or others. Its main evolutionary advantage is that it does not need to spend any resources making the world a better place. (e.g. crystals, viruses, programs, memes, genes)\n\nIt is reasonable to expect that in the absence of evolutionary selection pressures that favor the wellbeing of sentient beings, in the long run everyone alive will be playing a Pure Replicator strategy.\n\n\nStates vs. Stages vs. Theory of Morality\n\nKen Wilber emphasizes that there is a key difference between states and stages. Whereas states of consciousness involve various degrees of oneness and interconnectedness (from normal everyday sober experiences all the way to unity consciousness and satori), how you interpret these states will ultimately depend on your own level of moral development and maturity. This is very true and important. But I propose a further axis:\nLevels of intellectual understanding of ethics. While stages of consciousness refer to the degree to which you are comfortable with ambiguity, can synthesize large amounts of seemingly contradictory experiences, and are able to be emotionally stable in the face of confusion, we think that there is another axis worth exploring that has more to do with one’s intellectual model of ethics.\nThe 4 levels are:\n\nGood vs. evil – the most common view which personifies/essentializes evil (e.g. “the devil”)\nBalance between good and evil – the view that most people who take psychedelics and engage in eastern meditative practices tend to arrive at. People at this level tend to think that good implies evil, and that the best we can do is to reach a state of balance and equanimity. I argue that this is a rationalization to be able to deal with extremes of suffering; the belief itself is used as an anti-depressant, which shows the intrinsic contradictoriness and motivated reasoning behind adopting this ethical worldview. You believe in the balance between good and evil in general so that you, right now, can feel better about your life. You are still, implicitly, albeit in a low-key way, trying to regulate your mood like everyone else.\nGradients of wisdom – this is the view that people like Sam Harris, Ken Wilber, John Lilly, David Chapman, Buddha, etc. seem to converge on. They don’t have a deontological “if-then” ethical programming like the people at the first level. Rather, they have general heuristics and meta-heuristics for navigating complex problems. They do not claim to know “the truth” or be able to identify exactly what makes a society “better for human flourishing” but they do accept that some environments and states of consciousness are more healthy and conducive to wisdom than others. The problem with this view is that it does not give you a principled way to resolve disagreements or a way forward for designing societies from first principles.\nConsciousness vs. pure replicators – this view is the culmination of intellectual ethical development (although you could still be very neurotic and unenlightened otherwise) which arises when one identifies the source of everything that is systematically bad as caused by patterns that are good at making copies of themselves but that either don’t add conscious value or actively increase suffering. In this framework, it is possible for consciousness to win, which would happen if we create a full-spectrum super-sentient super-intelligent singleton that explores the entire state-space of consciousness and rationally decides what experiences to instantiate at a large scale based on the empirically revealed total order of consciousness.\n\n\n\n\nNew Reproductive Strategies\n\nGiven that we on team consciousness are in a race against Pure Replicator Hell scenarios it is important to explore ways in which we could load the dice in the favor of consciousness. One way to do so would be to increase the ways in which prosocial people are able to reproduce and pass on their pro-consciousness genes going forward. Here are a few interesting examples:\n\nGay + Lesbian couple – for gay and lesbian couples with long time horizons we could help them have biological kids with the following scheme: Gay couple A + B and lesbian couple X + Z could combine their genes and have 4 kids A/X, A/Z, B/X, B/Z. This would create the genetic and game-theoretical incentives for this new kind of family structure to work in the long term.\nGenetic spellchecking – one of the most promising ways of increasing sentient welfare is to apply genetic spellchecking to embryos. This means that we would be reducing the mutational load of one’s offspring without compromising one’s genetic payload (and thus selfish genes would agree to the procedure and lead to an evolutionarily stable strategy). You wouldn’t ship code to production without testing and debugging, you wouldn’t publish a book without someone proof-reading it first, so why do we push genetic code to production without any debugging? As David Pearce says, right now every child is a genetic experiment. It’s terrible that such a high percentage of them lead to health and mental problems.\nA reproductive scheme in which 50% of the genes come from an “intelligently vetted gene pool” and the other 50% come from the parents’ genes. This would be very unpopular at first, but after a generation or two we would see that all of the kids who are the result of this procedure are top of the class, win athletic competitions, start getting Nobel prizes and Fields medals, etc. So soon every parent will want to do this… and indeed from a selfish gene point of view there will be no option but to do so, as it will make the difference between passing on some copies vs. none.*\nDispassionate evaluation of the merits and drawbacks of one’s genes in a collective of 100 or more people where one recombines the genetic makeup of the “collective children” in order to maximize both their wellbeing and the information gained. In order to do this analysis in a dispassionate way we might need to recruit 5-meo-dmt-like states of consciousness that make you identify with consciousness rather than with your particular genes, and also MDMA-like states of mind in order to create a feeling of connection to source and universal love even if your own patterns lose out at some point… which they will after long enough, because eventually the entire gene pool would be replaced by a post-human genetic make-up.\n\n\n\n\nConsciousness vs. Replicators as a lens – I discussed how one can use the 4th stage of intellectual ethical development as a lens to analyze the value of different patterns and aesthetics. For example:\n\nConservatives vs. Liberals (stick to your guns and avoid cancer vs. be adaptable but expose yourself to nasty dangers)\nRap Music vs. Classical or Electronic music (social signaling vs. patternistic valence exploration)\n\n\nHyperstition – Finally, I discussed the concept of hyperstition, which is a concept that refers to “ideas that make themselves real”. I explored it in the first Burning Man article. The core idea is that states of consciousness can indeed transform the history of the cosmos. In particular, high-energy states of mind like those experienced under psychedelics allow for “bigger ideas” and thus increase the upper bound of “irreducible complexity” for one’s thoughts. An example of this is coming up with further alternative reproductive strategies, which I encouraged the audience to do in order to increase the chances that team consciousness wins in the long term…\n\nThe End.\n\nBonus content: things I overheard virgin burners say:\n\n“Intelligent people build intelligent civilizations. I now get what a society made of brilliant people would look like.”\n“Burning Man is a magical place. It seems like it is one of the only places on Earth where the Spirit World and the Physical World intersect and play with each other.”\n“It is not every day that you engage in a deeply transformative conversation before breakfast.”\n\n\n* Thanks to Alison Streete for this idea.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/09/09/burning-man-2-0-the-eigen-schelling-religion-entrainment-metronomes-and-the-eternal-battle-between-consciousness-and-replicators/", "title": "Burning Man 2.0: The Eigen-Schelling Religion, Entrainment & Metronomes, and the Eternal Battle Between Consciousness and Replicators", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-09-10T06:53:08+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=17", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "85b68679bddfb72ba829fbbe7f1ff452", "summary": []}
{"text": "Materializing Hyperbolic Spaces with Gradient-Index Optics and One-Way Mirrors\n\nBurning Man is one week away, so I figured I would share a neat idea I’ve been hoarding  that could lead to a kick-ass Burning Man-style psychedelic art installation. If I have the time and resources to do so, I may even try to manifest this idea in real life at some point.\nAround the time I was writing The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences (cf. Eli5) I began asking myself how to help people develop a feel for what it is like to inhabit non-Euclidean phenomenal spaces. I later found out that Henry Segerman developed an immersive VR experience in which you can explore 3D hyperbolic spaces. That is fantastic, and a great step in the right direction. But I wanted to see if there was any way for us to experience 3D hyperbolic geometry in a material way without the aid of computers. Something that you could hold in your hand, like a sort of mystical amulet that works as a reminder of the vastness of the state-space of consciousness.\nWhat I had in mind was along the lines of how we can, in a sense, visualize infinite (Euclidean) space using two parallel mirrors. I thought that maybe there could be a way to do the same but in a way that visualizes a hyperbolic space.\nOne-Way Mirrors and 3D Space-Filling Shapes\nRight now you can use one-way mirrors on the sides of a polyhedra whose edges are embedded with LEDs to create a fascinating “infinite space effect”:\n\nThis works perfectly for cubes in particular, given that cubes are symmetrical space-filling polyhedra. But as you can see in the video above, the effect is not quite perfect when we use dodecahedra (or any other Platonic solid). The corners simply do not align properly. This is because the solid angles of non-cube Platonic solids cannot be used to cover perfectly 4π steradians (i.e. what 8 cubes do when meeting at a corner):\n\nThis is not the case in hyperbolic space, though; arbitrary regular polyhedra can tesselate 3D hyperbolic spaces. For instance, one can use dodecahedra by choosing their size appropriately in such a way that they all have 90 degree angle corners (cf. Not Knot):\n\n\n\nGradient-Index Optics\nPerhaps, I thought to myself, there is a way to physically realize hyperbolic curvature and enable us to see what it is like to live in a place in which dodecahedra tesselate space. I kept thinking about this problem, and one day while riding the BART and introspecting on the geometry of sound, I realized that one could use gradient-index optics to create a solid in which light-paths behave as if the space was hyperbolic.\nGradient-index optics is the subfield of optics that specializes in the use of materials that have a smooth non-constant refractive index. One way to achieve this is to blend two transparent materials (e.g. two kinds of plastic) in such a way that the concentration of each type varies smoothly from one region to the next. As a consequence, light travels in unusual and bendy ways, like this:\n\n\nMaterializing Hyperbolic Spaces\nBy carefully selecting various transparent plastics with different indices of refraction and blending them in a 3D printer in precisely the right proportions, one can in principle build solids in which the gradient-index properties of the end product instantiate a hyperbolic metric. If one were to place the material with the lowest refraction index at the very center in a dodecahedron and add materials of increasingly larger refractive indices all the way up to the corners, then the final effect could be one in which the dodecahedron has an interior in which light moves as if it were in a hyperbolic space. One can then place LED strips along the edges and seal the sides with one-way window film. Lo-and-behold, one would then quite literally be able to “hold infinity in the palm of your hand”:\n\nI think that this sort of gadget would allow us to develop better intuitions for what the far-out (experiential) spaces people “visit” on psychedelics look like. One can then, in addition, generalize this to make space behave as if its 3D curvature was non-constant. One might even, perhaps, be able to visualize a black-hole by emulating its event-horizon using a region with extremely large refractive index.\n\nChallenges\nI would like to conclude by considering some of the challenges that we would face trying to construct this. For instance, finding the right materials may be difficult because they would need to have a wide range of refractive indices, all be similarly transparent, able to smoothly blend with each other, and have low melting points. I am not a material scientist, but my gut feeling is that this is not currently impossible. Modern gradient-index optics already has a rather impressive level of precision.\nAnother challenge comes from the resolution of the 3D printer. Modern 3D printers have layers with a thickness between .2 to 0.025mm. It’s possible that this is simply not small enough to avoid visible discontinuities in the light-paths. At least in principle this could be surmounted by melting the last layer placed such that the new layer smoothly diffuses and partially blends with it in accordance with the desired hyperbolic metric.\n\n\n\n\nAn important caveat is that the medium in which we live (i.e. air at atmospheric pressure) is not very dense to begin with. In the example of the dodecahedra, this may represent a problem considering that the corners need to form 90 degree angles from the point of view of an outside observer. This would imply that the surrounding medium needs to have a higher refraction index than that of the transparent medium at the corners. This could be fixed by immersing the object in water or some other dense media (and designing it under the assumption of being surrounded by such a medium). Alternatively, one can simply fix the problem by using appropriately curved sides in lieu of straight planes. This may not be as aesthetically appealing, though, so it may pay off to brainstorm other clever approaches to deal with this that I haven’t thought of.\n\n\nAbove all, perhaps the most difficult challenge would be that of dealing with the inevitable presence of chromatic aberrations:\n\n\nSince the degree to which a light-path bends in a medium depends on its frequency, how bendy light looks like with gradient-index optics is variable. If the LEDs placed at the edges of the polyhedra are white, we could expect very visible distortions and crazy rainbow patterns to emerge. This would perhaps be for the better when taken for its aesthetic value. But since the desired effect is one of actually materializing faithfully the behavior of light in hyperbolic space, this would be undesirable. The easiest way to deal with this problem would be to show the gadget in a darkened room and have only monochrome LEDs on the edges of the polyhedra whose frequency is tuned to the refractive gradient for which the metric is hyperbolic. More fancifully, it might be possible to overcome chromatic aberrations with the use of metamaterials (cf. “Metasurfaces enable improved optical lens performance“). Alas, my bedtime is approaching so I shall leave the nuts and bolts of this engineering challenge as an exercise for the reader…", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/08/19/materializing-hyperbolic-spaces-with-gradient-index-optics-and-one-way-mirrors/", "title": "Materializing Hyperbolic Spaces with Gradient-Index Optics and One-Way Mirrors", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-08-19T17:08:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=18", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "48fb39a43018148341f32d9a43ebe0ba", "summary": []}
{"text": "Why don’t more effective altruists work on the Hedonistic Imperative?\n\nBy David Pearce (in response to a Quora question)\n \nLife could be wonderful. Genetically phasing out suffering in favour of hardwired happiness ought to be mainstream. Today, it’s a fringe view. It’s worth asking why.\nPerhaps the first scientifically-literate blueprint for a world without suffering was written by Lewis Mancini. “Brain stimulation and the genetic engineering of a world without pain” was published in the journal Medical Hypotheses in 1990. As far as I can tell, the paper sunk almost without a trace. Ignorant of Mancini’s work, I wrote The Hedonistic Imperative (HI) in 1995. I’ve plugged away at the theme ever since. Currently, a small, scattered minority of researchers believe that replacing the biology of suffering with gradients of genetically preprogrammed well-being is not just ethical but obviously so.\nAlas, perceptions of obviousness vary. Technically, at least, the abolitionist project can no longer easily be dismissed as science fiction. The twenty-first century has already witnessed the decoding of the human genome, the development and imminent commercialisation of in vitro meat, the dawn of CRISPR genome-editing and the promise of synthetic gene drives. Identification of alleles and allelic combinations governing everything from pain-sensitivity to hedonic range and hedonic set-points is complementing traditional twin studies. The high genetic loading of subjective well-being and mental ill-health is being deciphered. The purely technical arguments against the genetic feasibility of creating a happy living world are shrinking. But genetic status quo bias is deeply entrenched. The sociopolitical obstacles to reprogramming the biosphere are daunting.\nYou ask specifically about effective altruists (EAs). Some effective altruists (cf. Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? by Magnus Vinding) do explore biological-genetic solutions to complement socio-economic reform and other environmental interventions. Most don’t. Indeed, a significant minority of EAs expressly urge a nonbiological focus for EA. For example, see Why I Don’t Focus On The Hedonistic Imperative by the influential EA Brian Tomasik. I can’t offer a complete explanation, but I think these facts are relevant:\n1) Timescales. Lewis Mancini reckons that completion of the abolitionist project will take thousands of years. HI predicts that the world’s last unpleasant experience will occur a few centuries hence, perhaps in some obscure marine invertebrate. If, fancifully, consensus existed for a global species-project, then 100 – 150 years (?) might be a credible forecast. Alas, such a timescale is wildly unrealistic. No such consensus exists or is plausibly in prospect. For sure, ask people a question framed on the lines of “Do you agree with Gautama Buddha, ‘May all that have life be delivered from suffering’?” and assent might be quite high. Some kind of quantified, cross-cultural study of radical Buddhist or Benthamite abolitionism would be interesting. Yet most people balk at what the scientific implementation of such a vision practically entails – if they reflect on abolitionist bioethics at all. “That’s just Brave New World” is a common response among educated Westerners to the idea of engineering “unnatural” well-being. Typically, EAs are focused on measurable results in foreseeable timeframes in areas where consensus is broad and deep, for instance the elimination of vector-borne disease. Almost everyone agrees that eliminating malaria will make the world a better place. Malaria can be eradicated this century.\n2) The Hedonic Treadmill. In recent decades, popular awareness of the hedonic treadmill has grown. Sadly, most nonbiological interventions to improve well-being may not have the dramatic long-term impact we naïvely hope. However, awareness of the genetic underpinnings of the hedonic treadmill is sketchy. Knowledge of specific interventions we can plan to subvert its negative feedback mechanisms is sketchier still. Compared to more gross and visible ills, talk of “low hedonic set-points” (etc) is nebulous. Be honest, which would you personally choose if offered: a vast national lottery win (cf. How Winning The Lottery Affects Happiness) or a modestly higher hedonic set-point? Likewise, the prospect of making everyone on Earth prosperous sounds more effectively altruistic (cf. Can “effective altruism” maximise the bang for each charitable buck?) than raising their hedonic defaults – even if push-button hedonic uplift were now feasible, which it isn’t, or at least not without socially unacceptable consequences.\n3) The Spectre of Eugenics. Any confusion between the racial hygiene policies of the Third Reich and the project of genetically phasing out suffering in all sentient beings ought to be laughable. Nonetheless, many people recoil at the prospect of “designer babies”. Sooner or later, the ”e”-word crops up in discussions of genetic remediation and enhancement. If we assume that bioconservative attitudes to baby-making will prevail worldwide indefinitely, and the reproductive revolution extends at best only to a minority of prospective parents, then the abolitionist project will never happen. What we call the Cambrian Explosion might alternatively be classified as the Suffering Explosion. If we don’t tackle the biological-genetic roots of suffering at source – “eugenics”, if you will – then pain and suffering will proliferate until Doomsday. Without eugenics, the world’s last unpleasant experience may occur millions or even billions of years hence.\n4) Core Values. Self-identified effective altruists range from ardent life loversfocused on existential risks, AGI and the hypothetical Intelligence Explosion to radical anti-natalists and negative utilitarians committed to suffering-focused ethics (cf. What are the main differences between the anti-natalism/efilism community and the negative utilitarian/”suffering-focused ethics” wing of the effective altruism community?). There’s no inherent conflict with HI at either extreme. On the one hand, phasing out the biology of suffering can potentially minimise existential risk. Crudely, the more we love life, the more we want to preserve it. On the opposite wing of EA, radical anti-natalists oppose reproduction because they care about suffering, not because of opposition to new babies per se. Technically speaking, CRISPR babies could be little bundles of joy – as distinct from today’s tragic genetic experiments. In practice, however, life-loving EAs are suspicious of (notionally) button-pressing negative utilitarians, whereas radical anti-natalists view worldwide genetic engineering as even more improbable than their preferred option of voluntary human extinction.\n5) Organisation and Leadership. Both secular and religious organizations exist whose tenets include the outright abolition of suffering. EAs can and do join such groups. However, sadly, I don’t know of a single organisation dedicated to biological-genetic solutions to the problem of suffering. Among transhumanists, for instance, radical life-extension and the prospect of posthuman superintelligence loom larger than biohappiness – though article 7 of the Transhumanist Declaration is admirably forthright: a commitment to the well-being of all sentience. Also, I think we need star power: the blessing of some charismatic billionaire or larger-than-life media celebrity. “Bill Gates says let’s use biotechnology to phase out the genetic basis of suffering” would be a breakthrough. Or even Justin Bieber.\nFor my part, I’m just a writer/researcher. We have our place! My guess is that this century will see more blueprints and manifestos and grandiose philosophical proposals together with concrete, incremental progress from real scientists. The genetic basis of suffering will eventually be eradicated across the tree of life, not in the name of anything “hedonistic” or gradients of intelligent bliss, and certainly not in the name of negative utilitarianism, but perhaps under the label of the World Health Organisation’s definition of health (cf. Constitution of WHO: principles). Taken literally, the constitution of the WHO enshrines the most daringly ambitious vision of the future of sentience ever conceived. Lifelong good health (“complete physical, mental and social well-being”) for all sentient beings is a noble aspiration. Regardless of race or species, all of us deserve good health as so defined. A biology of information-sensitive gradients of physical, mental and social well-being (HI) is more modest and workable thanks to biotech. Optimistically, life on Earth has only a few more centuries of misery and malaise to go.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/08/08/why-dont-more-effective-altruists-work-on-the-hedonistic-imperative/", "title": "Why don’t more effective altruists work on the Hedonistic Imperative?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-08-08T21:41:53+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=18", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ed26757aacfdbc16e612d8ca09650736", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Appearance of Arbitrary Contingency to Our Diverse Qualia\n\nBy David Pearce (Mar 21, 2012; Reddit AMA)\n \nThe appearance of arbitrary contingency to our diverse qualia – and undiscovered state-spaces of posthuman qualia and hypothetical micro-qualia – may be illusory. Perhaps they take the phenomenal values they do as a matter of logico-mathematical necessity. I’d make this conjecture against the backdrop of some kind of zero ontology. Intuitively, there seems no reason for anything at all to exist. The fact that the multiverse exists (apparently) confounds one’s pre-reflective intuitions in the most dramatic possible way. However, this response is too quick. The cosmic cancellation of the conserved constants (mass-energy, charge, angular momentum) to zero, and the formal equivalence of zero information to all possible descriptions [the multiverse?] means we have to take seriously this kind of explanation-space. The most recent contribution to the zero-ontology genre is physicist Lawrence Krauss’s readable but frustrating “A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing“. Anyhow, how does a zero ontology tie in with (micro-)qualia? Well, if the solutions to the master equation of physics do encode the field-theoretic values of micro-qualia, then perhaps their numerically encoded textures “cancel out” to zero too. To use a trippy, suspiciously New-Agey-sounding metaphor, imagine the colours of the rainbow displayed as a glorious spectrum – but on recombination cancelling out to no colour at all. Anyhow, I wouldn’t take any of this too seriously: just speculation on idle speculation. It’s tempting simply to declare the issue of our myriad qualia to be an unfathomable mystery. And perhaps it is. But mysterianism is sterile.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/08/06/the-appearance-of-arbitrary-contingency-to-our-diverse-qualia/", "title": "The Appearance of Arbitrary Contingency to Our Diverse Qualia", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-08-06T08:00:52+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=18", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "2cfde80f54fbdd05ff5daa6d2d490753", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Computing at Burning Man 2018: “Consciousness vs Replicators” talk\n\nI’m thrilled to announce that I will be going to Burning Man for the second time this year. I will give a talk about Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators. The talk will be at Palenque Norte‘s consciousness-focused speaker series hosted by Camp Soft Landing.\n\nThe whole experience last year was very eye-opening, and as a result I wrote an (extremely) long essay about it. The essay introduces a wide range of entirely new concepts, including “The Goldillocks Zone of Oneness” and “Hybrid Vigor in the context of post-Darwinian ethics.” It also features a section about my conversation with God at Burning Man.\nIf you are attending Burning Man and would like to meet with me, I will be available for chatting and hanging out right after my talk (call it the Qualia Research Institute Office Hours at Burning Man).\n\nHere are the details of the talk:\nAndrés Gómez Emilsson-Consciousness vs Replicators\n\nDate and Time: Wednesday, August 29th, 2018, 3 PM – 4:30 PM\n\n\nType: Class/Workshop\n\n\nLocated at Camp: Camp Soft Landing (8:15 & C (Cylon). Mid-block on C, between 8 and 8:30.)\n\n\n\n\nDescription:\n\n\nPatterns that are good at making copies of themselves are not necessarily good from an ethical point of view. We call Pure Replicators, in the context of brains and minds, those beings that use all of their resources for the purpose of replicating. In other words, beings that replicate without regards for their own psychological wellbeing (if they are conscious) or the wellbeing of others. In as much as we believe that value is presented in the quality of experience, perhaps to be “ethical” is to be stewards and advocates for the wellbeing of as many of the “moments of experience” that exist in reality as one can. We will talk about how an “economy of information about the state-space of consciousness” can be a helpful tool in preventing pure-replicator take-over. Lastly, we will announce the existence of a novel test of consciousness that can be used to identify non-sentient artifacts or robots passing for humans within the crowd.\n\n\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/08/01/qualia-computing-at-burning-man-2018-consciousness-vs-replicators-talk/", "title": "Qualia Computing at Burning Man 2018: “Consciousness vs Replicators” talk", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-08-01T23:22:40+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=18", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e6fced359ffea9a35af5704bf840f366", "summary": []}
{"text": "Open Individualism and Antinatalism: If God could be killed, it’d be dead already\n\nAbstract\nPersonal identity views (closed, empty, open) serve in philosophy the role that conservation laws play in physics. They recast difficult problems in solvable terms, and by expanding our horizon of understanding, they likewise allow us to conceive of new classes of problems. In this context, we posit that philosophy of personal identity is relevant in the realm of ethics by helping us address age-old questions like whether being born is good or bad. We further explore the intersection between philosophy of personal identity and philosophy of time, and discuss the ethical implications of antinatalism in a tenseless open individualist “block-time” universe.\nIntroduction\nLearning physics, we often find wide-reaching concepts that simplify many problems by using an underlying principle. A good example of this is the law of conservation of energy. Take for example the following high-school physics problem:\nAn object that weighs X kilograms falls from a height of Y meters on a planet without an atmosphere and a gravity of Zg. Calculate the velocity with which this object will hit the ground. \nOne could approach this problem by using Newton’s laws of motion and differentiating the distance traveled by the object as a function of time and then obtaining the velocity of the object at the time it has fallen Y meters.\nAlternatively, you could simply note that given that energy is conserved, all of the potential energy of the object at a height of X meters will be transformed into kinetic energy at 0 height. Thus the velocity of the object is equivalent to this amount, and the problem is easier to solve.\nOnce one has learned “the trick” one starts to see many other problems differently. In turn, grasping these deep invariants opens up new horizons; while many problems that seemed impossible can be solved using these principles, it also allows you to ask new questions, which opens up new problems that cannot be solved with those principles alone.\nDoes this ever happen in philosophy? Perhaps entire classes of difficult problems in philosophy may become trivial (or at least tractable) once one grasps powerful principles. Such is the case, I would claim, of transcending common-sense views of personal identity.\nPersonal Identity: Closed, Empty, Open\nIn Ontological Qualia I discussed three core views about personal identity. For those who have not encountered these concepts, I recommend reading that article for an expanded discussion.\nIn brief:\n\nClosed Individualism: You start existing when you are born, and stop when you die.\nEmpty Individualism: You exist as a “time-slice” or “moment of experience.”\nOpen Individualism: There is only one subject of experience, who is everyone.\n\nClick to view slideshow.\nMost people are Closed Individualists; this is the default common sense view for good evolutionary reasons. But what grounds are there to believe in this view? Intuitively, the fact that you will wake up in “your body” tomorrow is obvious and needs no justification. However, explaining why this is the case in a clear way requires formalizing a wide range of concepts such as causality, continuity, memory, and physical laws. And when one tries to do so one will generally find a number of barriers that will prevent one from making a solid case for Closed Individualism.\nAs an example line of argument, one could argue that what defines you as an individual is your set of memories, and since the person who will wake up in your body tomorrow is the only human being with access to your current memories then you must be it. And while this may seem to work on the surface, a close inspection reveals otherwise. In particular, all of the following facts work against it: (1) memory is a constructive process and every time you remember something you remember it (slightly) differently, (2) memories are unreliable and do not always work at will (e.g. false memories), (3) it is unclear what happens if you copy all of your memories into someone else (do you become that person?), (4) how many memories can you swap with someone until you become a different person?, and so on. Here the more detailed questions one asks, the more ad-hoc modifications of the theory are needed. In the end, one is left with what appears to be just a set of conventional rules to determine whether two persons are the same for practical purposes. But it does not seem to carve nature at its joints; you’d be merely over-fitting the problem.\nThe same happens with most Closed Individualist accounts. You need to define what the identity carrier is, and after doing so one can identify situations in which identity is not well-defined given that identity carrier (memory, causality, shared matter, etc.).\nBut for both Open and Empty Individualism, identity is well-defined for any being in the universe. Either all are the same, or all are different. Critics might say that this is a trivial and uninteresting point, perhaps even just definitional. Closed Individualism seems sufficiently arbitrary, however, that questioning it is warranted, and once one does so it is reasonable to start the search for alternatives by taking a look at the trivial cases in which either all or none of the beings are the same.\nMore so, there are many arguments in favor of these views. They indeed solve and usefully reformulate a range of philosophical problems when applied diligently. I would argue that they play a role in philosophy that is similar to that of conservation of energy in physics. The energy conservation law has been empirically tested to extremely high levels of precision, which is something which we will have to do without in the realm of philosophy. Instead, we shall rely on powerful philosophical insights. And in addition, they make a lot of problems tractable and offer a powerful lens to interpret core difficulties in the field.\nOpen and Empty Individualism either solve or have bearings on: Decision theory, utilitarianism, fission/fusion, mind-uploading and mind-melding, panpsychism, etc. For now, let us focus on…\nAntinatalism\nAntinatalism is a philosophical view that posits that, all considered, it is better not to be born. Many philosophers could be adequately described as antinatalists, but perhaps the most widely recognized proponent is David Benatar. A key argument Benatar considers is that there might be an asymmetry between pleasure and pain. Granted, he would say, experiencing pleasure is good, and experiencing suffering is bad. But while “the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone”, we also have that “the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.” Thus, while being born can give rise to both good and bad, not being born can only be good.\nContrary to popular perception, antinatalists are not more selfish or amoral than others. On the contrary, their willingness to “bite the bullet” of a counter-intuitive but logically defensible argument is a sign of being willing to face social disapproval for a good cause. But along with the stereotype, it is generally true that antinatalists are temperamentally depressive. This, of course, does not invalidate their arguments. If anything, sometimes a degree of depressive realism is essential to arrive at truly sober views in philosophy. But it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that either experiencing or having experienced suffering in the past predispose people to vehemently argue for the importance of its elimination. Having a direct acquaintance with the self-disclosing nastiness of suffering does give one a broader evidential base for commenting on the matter of pain and pleasure.\nAntinatalism and Closed Individualism\nInterestingly, Benatar’s argument, and those of many antinatalists, rely implicitly on personal identity background assumptions. In particular, antinatalism is usually framed in a way that assumes Closed Individualism.\nThe idea that a “person can be harmed by coming into existence” is developed within a conceptual framework in which the inhabitants of the universe are narrative beings. These beings have both spatial and temporal extension. And they also have the property that had the conditions previous to their birth been different, they might not have existed. But how many possible beings are there? How genetically or environmentally different do they need to be to be different beings? What happens if two beings merge? Or if they converge towards the same exact physical configuration over time?\n \n(Source)\nThis conceptual framework has counter-intuitive implications when taken to the extreme. For example, the amount of harm you do involves how many people you allow to be born, rather than how many years of suffering you prevented.\nFor the sake of the argument, imagine that you have control over a sentient-AI-enabled virtual environment in which you can make beings start existing and stop existing. Say that you create two beings, A and B, who are different in morally irrelevant ways (e.g. one likes blue more than red, but on average they both end up suffering and delighting in their experience with the same intensity). With Empty Individualism, you would consider giving A 20 years of life and not creating B vs. giving A and B 10 years of life each to be morally equivalent. But with Closed Individualism you would rightly worry that these two scenarios are completely different. By giving years of life to both A and B (any amount of life!) you have doubled the number of subjects who are affected by your decisions. If the gulf of individuality between two persons is infinite, as Closed Individualism would have it, by creating both A and B you have created two parallel realities, and that has an ontological effect on existence. It’s a big deal. Perhaps a way to put it succinctly would be: God considers much more carefully the question of whether to create a person who will live only 70 years versus whether to add a million years of life to an angel who has already lived for a very long time. Creating an entirely new soul is not to be taken lightly (incidentally, this may cast the pro-choice/pro-life debate in an entirely new light).\nThus, antinatalism is usually framed in a way that assumes Closed Individualism. The idea that a being is (possibly) harmed by coming into existence casts the possible solutions in terms of whether one should allow animals (or beings) to be born. But if one were to take an Open or Empty Individualist point of view, the question becomes entirely different. Namely, what kind of experiences should we allow to exist in the future…\nAntinatalism and Empty Individualism\nI think that the strongest case for antinatalism comes from a take on personal identity that is different than the implicit default (Closed Individualism). If you assume Empty Individualism, in particular, reality starts to seem a lot more horrible than you had imagined. Consider how in Empty Individualism fundamental entities exist as “moments of experience” rather than narrative streams. Therefore, every time that an animal suffers, what is actually happening is that some moments of experience get to have their whole existence in pain and suffering. In this light, one stops seeing people who suffer terrible happenings (e.g. kidney stones, schizophrenia, etc.) as people who are unlucky, and instead one sees their brains as experience machines capable of creating beings whose entire existence is extremely negative.\nWith Empty Individualism there is simply no way to “make it up to someone” for having had a bad experience in the past. Thus, out of compassion for the extremely negative moments of experience, one could argue that it might be reasonable to try to avoid this whole business of life altogether. That said, this imperative does not come from the asymmetry between pain and pleasure Benetar talks about (which as we saw implicitly requires Closed Individualism). In Empty Individualism it does not make sense to say that someone has been brought into existence. So antinatalism gets justified from a different angle, albeit one that might be even more powerful.\nIn my assessment, the mere possibility of Empty Individualism is a good reason to take antinatalism very seriously.\nIt is worth noting that the combination of Empty Individualism and Antinatalism has been (implicitly) discussed by Thomas Metzinger (cf. Benevolent Artificial Anti-Natalism (BAAN)) and FRI‘s Brian Tomasik.\nAntinatalism and Open Individualism\nHere is a Reddit post and then a comment on a related thread (by the same author) worth reading on this subject (indeed these artifacts motivated me to write the article you are currently reading):\nThere’s an interesting theory of personal existence making the rounds lately called Open Individualism. See here, here, and here. Basically, it claims that consciousness is like a single person in a huge interconnected library. One floor of the library contains all of your life’s experiences, and the other floors contain the experiences of others. Consciousness wanders the aisles, and each time he picks up a book he experiences whatever moment of life is recorded in it as if he were living it. Then he moves onto the next one (or any other random one on any floor) and experiences that one. In essence, the “experiencer” of all experience everywhere, across all conscious beings, is just one numerically identical subject. It only seems like we are each separate “experiencers” because it can only experience one perspective at a time, just like I can only experience one moment of my own life at a time. In actuality, we’re all the same person.\n \nAnyway, there’s no evidence for this, but it solves a lot of philosophical problems apparently, and in any case there’s no evidence for the opposing view either because it’s all speculative philosophy.\n \nBut if this were true, and when I’m done living the life of this particular person, I will go on to live every other life from its internal perspective, it has some implications for antinatalism. All suffering is essentially experienced by the same subject, just through the lens of many different brains. There would be no substantial difference between three people suffering and three thousand people suffering, assuming their experiences don’t leave any impact or residue on the singular consciousness that experiences them. Even if all conscious life on earth were to end, there are still likely innumerable conscious beings elsewhere in the universe, and if Open Individualism is correct, I’ll just move on to experiencing those lives. And since I can re-experience them an infinite number of times, it makes no difference how many there are. In fact, even if I just experienced the same life over and over again ten thousand times, it wouldn’t be any different from experiencing ten thousand different lives in succession, as far as suffering is concerned.\n \nThe only way to end the experience of suffering would be to gradually elevate all conscious beings to a state of near-constant happiness through technology, or exterminate every conscious being like the Flood from the Halo series of games. But the second option couldn’t guarantee that life wouldn’t arise again in some other corner of the multiverse, and when it did, I’d be right there again as the conscious experiencer of whatever suffering it would endure.\n \nI find myself drawn to Open Individualism. It’s not mysticism, it’s not a Big Soul or something we all merge with, it’s just a new way of conceptualizing what it feels like to be a person from the inside. Yet, it has these moral implications that I can’t seem to resolve. I welcome any input.\n \n– “Open individualism and antinatalism” by Reddit user CrumbledFingers in r/antinatalism (March 23, 2017)\nAnd on a different thread:\nI have thought a lot about the implications of open individualism (which I will refer to as “universalism” from here on, as that’s the name coined by its earliest proponent, Arnold Zuboff) for antinatalism. In short, I think it has two major implications, one of which you mention. The first, as you say, is that freedom from conscious life is impossible. This is bad, but not as bad as it would be if I were aware of it from every perspective. As it stands, at least on Earth, only a small number of people have any inkling that they are me. So, it is not like experiencing the multitude of conscious events taking place across reality is any kind of burden that accumulates over time; from the perspective of each isolated nervous system, it will always appear that whatever is being experienced is the only thing I am experiencing. In this way, the fact that I am never truly unconscious does not have the same sting as it would to, for example, an insomniac, who is also never unconscious but must experience the constant wakefulness from one integrated perspective all the time.\n \nIt’s like being told that I will suffer total irreversible amnesia at some point in my future; while I can still expect to be the person that experiences all the confusion and anxiety of total amnesia when it happens, I must also acknowledge that the residue of any pains I would have experienced beforehand would be erased. Much of what makes consciousness a losing game is the persistence of stresses. Universalism doesn’t imply that any stresses will carry over between the nervous systems of individual beings, so the reality of my situation is by no means as nightmarish as eternal life in a single body (although, if there exists an immortal being somewhere in the universe, I am currently experiencing the nightmare of its life).\n \nThe second implication of this view for antinatalism is that one of the worst things about coming into existence, namely death, is placed in quite a different context. According to the ordinary view (sometimes called “closed” individualism), death permanently ends the conscious existence of an alienated self. Universalism says there is no alienated self that is annihilated upon the death of any particular mind. There are just moments of conscious experience that occur in various substrates across space and time, and I am the subject of all such experiences. Thus, the encroaching wall of perpetual darkness and silence that is usually an object of dread becomes less of a problem for those who have realized that they are me. Of course, this realization is not built into most people’s psychology and has to be learned, reasoned out, intellectually grasped. This is why procreation is still immoral, because even though I will not cease to exist when any specific organism dies, from the perspective of each one I will almost certainly believe otherwise, and that will always be a source of deep suffering for me. The fewer instances of this existential dread, however misplaced they may be, the better.\n \nThis is why it’s important to make more people understand the position of universalism/open individualism. In the future, long after the person typing this sentence has perished, my well-being will depend in large part on having the knowledge that I am every person. The earlier in each life I come to that understanding, and thus diminish the fear of dying, the better off I will be. Naturally, this project decreases in potential impact if conscious life is abundant in the universe, and in response to that problem I concede there is probably little hope, unless there are beings elsewhere in the universe that have comprehended who they are and are taking the same steps in their spheres of influence. My dream is that intelligent life eventually either snuffs itself out or discovers how to connect many nervous systems together, which would demonstrate to every connected mind that it has always belonged to one subject, has always been me, but I don’t have any reason to assume this is even possible on a physical level.\n \nSo, I suppose you are mostly right about one thing: there are no lucky ones that escape the badness of life’s worst agonies, either by virtue of a privileged upbringing or an instantaneous and painless demise. They and the less fortunate ones are all equally me. Yet, the horror of going through their experiences is mitigated somewhat in the details.\n \n– A comment by CrumbledFingers in the Reddit post “Antinatalism and Open individualism“, also in r/antinatalism (March 12, 2017)\nOur brain tries to make sense of metaphysical questions in wet-ware that shares computational space with a lot of adaptive survival programs. It does not matter if you have thick barriers (cf. thick and thin boundaries of the mind), the way you assess the value of situations as a human will tend to over-focus on whatever would allow you to go up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (or, more cynically, achieve great feats as a testament to signal your genetic-fitness). Our motivational architecture is implemented in such a way that it is very good at handling questions like how to find food when you are hungry and how to play social games in a way that impresses others and leaves a social mark. Our brains utilize many heuristics based on personhood and narrative-streams when exploring the desirability of present options. We are people, and our brains are adapted to solve people problems. Not, as it turns out, general problems involving the entire state-space of possible conscious experiences.\nPrandium Interruptus\nOur brains render our inner world-simulation with flavors and textures of qualia to suit their evolutionary needs. This, in turn, impairs our ability to aptly represent scenarios that go beyond the range of normal human experiences. Let me illustrate this point with the following thought experiment:\nWould you rather (a) have a 1-hour meal, or (b) have the same meal but at the half-hour point be instantly transformed into a simple, amnesic, and blank experience of perfectly neutral hedonic value that lasts ten quintillion years, and after that extremely long time of neither-happiness-nor-suffering ends, then resume the rest of the meal as if nothing had happened, with no memory of that long neutral period?\nAccording to most utilitarian calculi these two scenarios ought to be perfectly equivalent. In both cases the total amount of positive and negative qualia is the same (the full duration of the meal) and the only difference is that the latter also contains a large amount of neutral experience too. Whether classical or negative, utilitarians should consider these experiences equivalent since they contain the same amount of pleasure and pain (note: some other ethical frameworks do distinguish between these cases, such as average and market utilitarianism).\nIntuitively, however, (a) seems a lot better than (b). One imagines oneself having an awfully long experience, bored out of one’s mind, just wanting it to end, get it over with, and get back to enjoying the nice meal. But the very premise of the thought experiment presupposes that one will not be bored during that period of time, nor will one be wishing it to be over, or anything of the sort, considering that all of those are mental states of negative quality and the experience is supposed to be neutral.\nNow this is of course a completely crazy thought experiment. Or is it?\nThe One-Electron View\nIn 1940 John Wheeler proposed to Richard Feynman the idea that all of reality is made of a single electron moving backwards and forwards in time, interfering with itself. This view has come to be regarded as the One-Electron Universe. Under Open Individualism, that one electron is you. From every single moment of experience to the next, you may have experienced life as a sextillion different animals, been 10^32 fleeting macroscropic entangled particles, and gotten stuck as a single non-interacting electron in the inter-galactic medium for googols of subjective years. Of course you will not remember any of this, because your memories, and indeed all of your motivational architecture and anticipation programs, are embedded in the brain you are instantiating right now. From that point of view, there is absolutely no trace of the experiences you had during this hiatus.\nThe above way of describing the one-electron view is still just an approximation. In order to see it fully, we also need to address the fact that there is no “natural” order to all of these different experiences. Every way of factorizing it and describing the history of the universe as “this happened before this happened” and “this, now that” could be equally inapplicable from the point of view of fundamental reality.\nPhilosophy of Time\n\nPresentism is the view that only the present moment is real. The future and the past are just conceptual constructs useful to navigate the world, but not actual places that exist. The “past exists as footprints”, in a matter of speaking. “Footprints of the past” are just strangely-shaped information-containing regions of the present, including your memories. Likewise, the “future” is unrealized: a helpful abstraction which evolution gave us to survive in this world.\nOn the other hand, eternalism treats the future and the past as always-actualized always-real landscapes of reality. Every point in space-time is equally real. Physically, this view tends to be brought up in connection with the theory of relativity, where frame-invariant descriptions of the space-time continuum have no absolute present line. For a compelling physical case, see the Rietdijk-Putnam argument.\nSource\nEternalism has been explored in literature and spirituality extensively. To name a few artifacts: The Egg, Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, the videos of Bob Sanders (cf. The Gap in Time, The Complexity of Time), the essays of Philip K. Dick and J. L. Borges, the poetry of T. S. Eliot, the fiction of Kurt Vonnegut Jr (Timequake, Slaughterhouse Five, etc.), and the graphic novels of Alan Moore, such as Watchmen:\n\n\n\nLet me know in the comments if you know of any other work of fiction that explores this theme. In particular, I would love to assemble a comprehensive list of literature that explores Open Individualism and Eternalism.\nPersonal Identity and Eternalism\nFor the time being (no pun intended), let us assume that Eternalism is correct. How do Eternalism and personal identity interact? Doctor Manhattan in the above images (taken from Watchmen) exemplifies what it would be like to be a Closed Individualist Eternalist. He seems to be aware of his entire timeline at once, yet recognizes his unique identity apart from others. That said, as explained above, Closed Individualism is a distinctly unphysical theory of identity. One would thus expect of Doctor Manhattan, given his physically-grounded understanding of reality, to espouse a different theory of identity.\nA philosophy that pairs Empty Individualism with Eternalism is the stuff of nightmares. Not only would we have, as with Empty Individualism alone, that some beings happen to exist entirely as beings of pain. We would also have that such unfortunate moments of experience are stuck in time. Like insects in amber, their expressions of horror and their urgency to run away from pain and suffering are forever crystallized in their corresponding spatiotemporal coordinates. I personally find this view paralyzing and sickening, though I am aware that such a reaction is not adaptive for the abolitionist project. Namely, even if “Eternalism + Empty Individualism” is a true account of reality, one ought not to be so frightened by it that one becomes incapable of working towards preventing future suffering. In this light, I adopt the attitude of “hope for the best, plan for the worst”.\nLastly, if Open Individualism and Eternalism are both true (as I suspect is the case), we would be in for what amounts to an incredibly trippy picture of reality. We are all one timeless spatiotemporal crystal. But why does this eternal crystal -who is everyone- exist? Here the one-electron view and the question “why does anything exist?” could both be simultaneously addressed with a single logico-physical principle. Namely, that the sum-total of existence contains no information to speak of. This is what David Pearce calls “Zero Ontology” (see: 1, 2, 3, 4). What you and I are, in the final analysis, is the necessary implication of there being no information; we are all a singular pattern of self-interference whose ultimate nature amounts to a dimensionless unit-sphere in Hilbert space. But this is a story for another post.\nOn a more grounded note, Scientific American recently ran an article that could be placed in this category of Open Individualism and Eternalism. In it the authors argue that the physical signatures of multiple-personality disorder, which explain the absence of phenomenal binding between alters that share the same brain, could be extended to explain why reality is both one and yet appears as the many. We are, in this view, all alters of the universe.\nPersonal Identity X Philosophy of Time X Antinatalism\nSober, scientifically grounded, and philosophically rigorous accounts of the awfulness of reality are rare. On the one hand, temperamentally happy individuals are more likely to think about the possibilities of heaven that lie ahead of us, and their heightened positive mood will likewise make them more likely to report on their findings. Temperamental depressives, on the other hand, may both investigate reality with less motivated reasoning than the euthymic and also be less likely to report on the results due to their subdued mood (“why even try? why even bother to write about it?”). Suffering in the Multiverse by David Pearce is a notable exception to this pattern. David’s essay highlights that if Eternalism is true together with Empty Individualism, there are vast regions of the multiverse filled with suffering that we can simply do nothing about (“Everett Hell Branches”). Taken together with a negative utilitarian ethic, this represents a calamity of (quite literally) astronomical proportions. And, sadly, there simply is no off-button to the multiverse as a whole. The suffering is/has/will always be there. And this means that the best we can do is to avoid the suffering of those beings in our forward-light cone (a drop relative to the size of the ocean of existence). The only hope left is to find a loop-hole in quantum mechanics that allows us to cross into other Everett branches of the multiverse and launch cosmic rescue missions. A counsel of despair or a rational prospect? Only time will tell.\nAnother key author that explores the intersection of these views is Mario Montano (see: Eternalism and Its Ethical Implications and The Savior Imperative).\nA key point that both of these authors make is that however nasty reality might be, ethical antinatalists and negative utilitarians shouldn’t hold their breath about the possibility that reality can be destroyed. In Open Individualism plus Eternalism, the light of consciousness (perhaps what some might call the secular version of God) simply is, everywhere and eternally. If reality could be destroyed, such destruction is certainly limited to our forward light-cone. And unlike Closed Individualist accounts, it is not possible to help anyone by preventing their birth; the one subject of existence has already been born, and will never be unborn, so to speak.\nNor should ethical antinatalists and negative utilitarians think that avoiding having kids is in any way contributing to the cause of reducing suffering. It is reasonable to assume that the personality traits of agreeableness (specifically care and compassion), openness to experience, and high levels of systematizing intelligence are all over-represented among antinatalists. Insofar as these traits are needed to build a good future, antinatalists should in fact be some of the people who reproduce the most. Mario Montano says:\nHanson calls the era we live in the “dream time” since it’s evolutionarily unusual for any species to be wealthy enough to have any values beyond “survive and reproduce.” However, from an anthropic perspective in infinite dimensional Hilbert space, you won’t have any values beyond “survive and reproduce.” The you which survives will not be the one with exotic values of radical compassion for all existence that caused you to commit peaceful suicide. That memetic stream weeded himself out and your consciousness is cast to a different narrative orbit which wants to survive and reproduce his mind. Eventually. Wanting is, more often than not, a precondition for successfully attaining the object of want.\n– Physicalism Implies Existence Never Dies\nAlso, from the same essay:\nAnti-natalists full of weeping benignity are literally not successful replicators. The Will to Power is life itself. It is consciousness itself. And it will be, when a superintelligent coercive singleton swallows superclusters of baryonic matter and then spreads them as the flaming word into the unconverted future light cone.\n[…]\nYou eventually love existence. Because if you don’t, something which does swallows you, and it is that which survives.\nI would argue that the above reasoning is not entirely correct in the large scheme of things*, but it is certainly applicable in the context of human-like minds and agents. See also: David Pearce’s similar criticisms to antinatalism as a policy.\nThis should underscore the fact that in its current guise, antinatalism is completely self-limiting. Worryingly, one could imagine an organized contingent of antinatalists conducting research on how to destroy life as efficiently as possible. Antinatalists are generally very smart, and if Eliezer Yudkowsky‘s claim that “every 18 months the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point” is true, we may be in for some trouble. Both Pearce’s, Montano’s, and my take is that even if something akin to negative utilitarianism is the case, we should still pursue the goal of diminishing suffering in as peaceful of a way as it is possible. The risk of trying to painlessly destroy the world and failing to do so might turn out to be ethically catastrophic. A much better bet would be, we claim, to work towards the elimination of suffering by developing commercially successful hedonic recalibration technology. This also has the benefit that both depressives and life-lovers will want to team up with you; indeed, the promise of super-human bliss can be extraordinarily motivating to people who already lead happy lives, whereas the prospect of achieving “at best nothing” sounds stale and uninviting (if not outright antagonistic) to them.\nAn Evolutionary Environment Set Up For Success\nIf we want to create a world free from suffering, we will have to contend with the fact that suffering is adaptive in certain environments. The solution here is to avoid such environments, and foster ecosystems of mind that give an evolutionary advantage to the super-happy. More so, we already have the basic ingredients to do so. In Wireheading Done Right I discussed how, right now, the economy is based on trading three core goods: (1) survival tools, (2) power, and (3) information about the state-space of consciousness. Thankfully, the world right now is populated by humans who largely choose to spend their extra income on fun rather than on trips to the sperm bank. In other words, people are willing to trade some of their expected reproductive success for good experiences. This is good because it allows the existence of an economy of information about the state-space of consciousness, and thus creates an evolutionary advantage for caring about consciousness and being good at navigating its state-space. But for this to be sustainable, we will need to find the way to make positive valence gradients (i.e. gradients of bliss) both economically useful and power-granting. Otherwise, I would argue, the part of the economy that is dedicated to trading information about the state-space of consciousness is bound to be displaced by the other two (i.e. survival and power). For a more detailed discussion on these questions see: Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators.\nCan we make the benevolent exploration of the state-space of consciousness evolutionarily advantageous?\nIn conclusion, to close down hell (to the extent that is physically possible), we need to take advantage of the resources and opportunities granted to us by merely living in Hanson’s “dream time” (cf. Age of Spandrels). This includes the fact that right now people are willing to spend money on new experiences (especially if novel and containing positive valence), and the fact that philosophy of personal identity can still persuade people to work towards the wellbeing of all sentient beings. In particular, scientifically-grounded arguments in favor of both Open and Empty Individualism weaken people’s sense of self and make them more receptive to care about others, regardless of their genetic relatedness. On its natural course, however, this tendency may ultimately be removed by natural selection: if those who are immune to philosophy are more likely to maximize their inclusive fitness, humanity may devolve into philosophical deafness. The solution here is to identify the ways in which philosophical clarity can help us overcome coordination problems, highlight natural ethical Schelling points, and ultimately allow us to summon a benevolent super-organism to carry forward the abolition of as much suffering as is physically possible.\nAnd only once we have done everything in our power to close down hell in all of its guises, will we be able to enjoy the rest of our forward light-cone in good conscience. Till then, us ethically-minded folks shall relentlessly work on building universe-sized fire-extinguishers to put out the fire of Hell.\n\n* This is for several reasons: (1) phenomenal binding is not epiphenomenal, (2) the most optimal computational valence gradients are not necessarily located on the positive side, sadly, and (3) wanting, liking, and learning are possible to disentangle.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/07/23/open-individualism-and-antinatalism-if-god-could-be-killed-itd-be-dead-already/", "title": "Open Individualism and Antinatalism: If God could be killed, it’d be dead already", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-07-24T05:13:59+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=18", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "dd8d30046815706b1a431bc3ed9d7487", "summary": []}
{"text": "John von Neumann\n\nPassing of a Great Mind\nJohn von Neumann, a Brilliant, Jovial Mathematician, was a Prodigious Servant of Science and his Country\nby Clary Blair Jr. – Life Magazine (February 25th, 1957)\nThe world lost one of its greatest scientists when Professor John von Neumann, 54, died this month of cancer in Washington, D.C. His death, like his life’s work, passed almost unnoticed by the public. But scientists throughout the free world regarded it as a tragic loss. They knew that Von Neumann’s brilliant mind had not only advanced his own special field, pure mathematics, but had also helped put the West in an immeasurably stronger position in the nuclear arms race. Before he was 30 he had established himself as one of the world’s foremost mathematicians. In World War II he was the principal discoverer of the implosion method, the secret of the atomic bomb.\nThe government officials and scientists who attended the requiem mass at the Walter Reed Hospital chapel last week were there not merely in recognition of his vast contributions to science, but also to pay personal tribute to a warm and delightful personality and a selfless servant of his country.\nFor more than a year Von Neumann had known he was going to die. But until the illness was far advanced he continued to devote himself to serving the government as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, to which he was appointed in 1954. A telephone by his bed connected directly with his EAC office. On several occasions he was taken downtown in a limousine to attend commission meetings in a wheelchair. At Walter Reed, where he was moved early last spring, an Air Force officer, Lieut. Colonel Vincent Ford, worked full time assisting him. Eight airmen, all cleared for top secret material, were assigned to help on a 24-hour basis. His work for the Air Force and other government departments continued. Cabinet members and military officials continually came for his advice, and on one occasion Secretary of Defence Charles Wilson, Air Force Secretary Donald Quarles and most of the top Air Force brass gathered in Von Neumann’s suite to consult his judgement while there was still time. So relentlessly did Von Neumann pursue his official duties that he risked neglecting the treatise which was to form the capstone of his work on the scientific specialty, computing machines, to which he had devoted many recent years.\n\nHis fellow scientists, however, did not need any further evidence of Von Neumann’s rank as a scientist – or his assured place in history. They knew that during World War II at Los Alamos Von Neumann’s development of the idea of implosion speeded up the making of the atomic bomb by at least a full year. His later work with electronic computers quickened U.S. development of the H-bomb by months. The chief designer of the H-bomb, Edward Teller, once said with wry humor that Von Neumann was “one of those rare mathematicians who could descend to the level of the physicist.” Many theoretical physicists admit that they learned more from Von Neumann in methods of scientific thinking than from any of their colleagues. Hans Bethe, who was director of the theoretical physics division at Los Alamos, says, “I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like Von Neumann’s does not indicate a species superior to that of man.”\n\nThe foremost authority on computing machines in the U.S., Von Neumann was more than anyone else responsible for the increased use of the electronic “brains” in government and industry. The machine he called MANIAC (mathematical analyzer, numerical integrator and computer), which he built at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., was the prototype for most of the advanced calculating machines now in use. Another machine, NORC, which he built for the Navy, can deliver a full day’s weather prediction in a few minutes. The principal adviser to the U.S. Air Force on nuclear weapons, Von Neumann was the most influential scientific force behind the U.S. decision to embark on accelerated production of intercontinental ballistic missiles. His “theory of games,” outlined in a book which he published in 1944 in collaboration with Economist Oskar Morgenstern, opened up an entirely new branch of mathematics. Analyzing the mathematical probabilities behind games of chance, Von Neumann went on to formulate a mathematical approach to such widespread fields as economics, sociology and even military strategy. His contributions to the quantum theory, the theory which explains the emission and absorption of energy in atoms and the one on which all atomic and nuclear physics are based, were set forth in a work entitled Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics which he wrote at the age of 23. It is today one of the cornerstones of this highly specialized branch of mathematical thought.\nFor Von Neumann the road to success was a many-laned highway with little traffic and no speed limit. He was born in 1903 in Budapest and was of the same generation of Hungarian physicists as Edward Teller, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, all of whom later worked on atomic energy development for the U.S.\nThe eldest of three sons of a well-to-do Jewish financier who had been decorated by the Emperor Franz Josef, John von Neumann grew up in a society which placed a premium on intellectual achievement. At the age of 6 he was able to divide two eight-digit numbers in his head. By the age of 8 he had mastered college calculus and as a trick could memorize on sight a column in a telephone book and repeat back the names, addresses and numbers. History was only a “hobby,” but by the outbreak of World War I, when he was 10, his photographic mind had absorbed most of the contents of the 46-volume works edited by the German historian Oncken with a sophistication that startled his elders.\nDespite his obvious technical ability, as a young man Von Neumann wanted to follow his father’s financial career, but he was soon dissuaded. Under a kind of supertutor, a first-rank mathematician at the University of Budapest named Leopold Fejer, Von Neumann was steered into the academic world. At 21 he received two degrees – one in chemical engineering at Zurich and a PhD in mathematics from the University of Budapest. The following year, 1926, as Admiral Horthy’s rightist regime had been repressing Hungarian Jews, he moved to Göttingen, Germany, then the mathematical center of the world. It was there that he published his major work on quantum mechanics.\nThe young professor\nHis fame now spreading, Von Neumann at 23 qualified as a Privatdozent (lecturer) at the University of Berlin, one of the youngest in the school’s history. But the Nazis had already begun their march to power. In 1929 Von Neumann accepted a visiting lectureship at Princeton University and in 1930, at the age of 26, he took a job there as professor of mathematical physics – after a quick trip to Budapest to marry a vivacious 18-year-old named Mariette Kovesi. Three years later, when the Institute for Advanced Study was founded at Princeton, Von Neumann was appointed – as was Albert Einstein – to be one of its first full professors. “He was so young,” a member of the institute recalls, “that most people who saw him in the halls mistook him for a graduate student.”\n\nAlthough they worked near each other in the same building, Einstein and Von Neumann were not intimate, and because their approach to scientific matters was different they never formally collaborated. A member of the institute who worked side by side with both men in the early days recalls, “Einstein’s mind was slow and contemplative. He would think about something for years. Johnny’s mind was just the opposite. It was lightning quick – stunningly fast. If you gave him a problem he either solved it right away or not at all. If he had to think about it a long time and it bored him, hist interest would begin to wander. And Johnny’s mind would not shine unless whatever he was working on had his undivided attention.” But the problems he did care about, such as his “theory of games,” absorbed him for much longer periods.\n‘Proof by erasure’\nPartly because of this quicksilver quality Von Neumann was not an outstanding teacher to many of his students. But for the advanced students who could ascend to his level he was inspirational. His lectures were brilliant, although at times difficult to follow because of his way of erasing and rewriting dozens of formulae on the blackboard. In explaining mathematical problems Von Neumann would write his equations hurriedly, starting at the top of the blackboard and working down. When he reached the bottom, if the problem was unfinished, he would erase the top equations and start down again. By the time he had done this two or three times most other mathematicians would find themselves unable to keep track. On one such occasion a colleague at Princeton waited until Von Neumann had finished and said, “I see. Proof by erasure.”\nVon Neumann himself was perpetually interested in many fields unrelated to science. Several years ago his wife gave him a 21-volume Cambridge History set, and she is sure he memorized every name and fact in the books. “He is a major expert on all the royal family trees in Europe,” a friend said once. “He can tell you who fell in love with whom, and why, what obscure cousin this or that czar married, how many illegitimate children he had and so on.” One night during the Princeton days a world-famous expert on Byzantine history came to the Von Neumann house for a party. “Johnny and the professor got into a corner and began discussing some obscure facet,” recalls a friend who was there. “Then an argument arose over a date. Johnny insisted it was this, the professor that. So Johnny said, ‘Let’s get the book.’ They looked it up and Johnny was right. A few weeks later the professor was invited to the Von Neumann house again. He called Mrs. von Neumann and said jokingly, ‘I’ll come if Johnny promises not to discuss Byzantine history. Everybody thinks I am the world’s greatest expert in it and I want them to keep on thinking that.'”\nOnce a friend showed him an extremely complex problem and remarked that a certain famous mathematician had taken a whole week’s journey across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railroad to complete it. Rushing for a train, Von Neumann took the problem along. Two days later the friend received an air-mail packet from Chicago. In it was a 50-page handwritten solution to the problem. Von Neumann had added a postscript: “Running time to Chicago: 15 hours, 26 minutes.” To Von Neumann this was not an expression of vanity but of sheer delight – a hole in one.\nDuring periods of intense intellectual concentration Von Neumann, like most of his professional colleagues, was lost in preoccupation, and the real world spun past him. He would sometimes interrupt a trip to put through a telephone call to find out why he had taken the trip in the first place.\nVon Neumann believed that concentration alone was insufficient for solving some of the most difficult mathematical problems and that these are solved in the subconscious. He would often go to sleep with a problem unsolved, wake up in the morning and scribble the answer on a pad he kept on the bedside table. It was a common occurrence for him to begin scribbling with pencil and paper in the midst of a nightclub floor show or a lively party, “the noisier,” his wife says, “the better.” When his wife arranged a secluded study for Von Neumann on the third floor of the Princeton home, Von Neumann was furious. “He stormed downstairs,” says Mrs. von Neumann, “and demanded, ‘What are you trying to do, keep me away from what’s going on?’; After that he did most of his work in the living room with my phonograph blaring.”\nHis pride in his brain power made him easy prey to scientific jokesters. A friend once spent a week working out various steps in an obscure mathematical process. Accosting Von Neumann at a party he asked for help in solving the problem. After listening to it, Von Neumann leaned his plump frame against a door and stared blankly, his mind going through the necessary calculations. At each step in the process the friend would quickly put in, “Well, it comes out to this, doesn’t it?” After several such interruptions Von Neumann became perturbed and when his friend “beat” him to the final answer he exploded in fury. “Johnny sulked for weeks,” recalls the friend, “before he found out it was all a joke.”\nHe did not look like a professor. He dressed so much like a Wall Street banker that a fellow scientist once said, “Johnny, why don’t you smear some chalk dust on your coat so you look like the rest of us?” He loved to eat, especially rich sauces and desserts, and in later years was forced to diet rigidly. To him exercise was “nonsense.”\nThose lively Von Neumann parties\nMost card-playing bored him, although he was fascinated by the mathematical probabilities involved in poker and baccarat. He never cared for movies. “Every time we went,” his wife recalls, “he would either go to sleep or do math problems in his head.” When he could do neither he would break into violent coughing spells. What he truly loved, aside from work, was a good party. Residents of Princeton’s quiet academic community can still recall the lively goings-on at the Von Neumann’s big, rambling house on Westcott Road. “Those old geniuses got downright approachable at the Von Neumanns’,” a friend recalls. Von Neumann’s talents as a host were based on his drinks, which were strong, his repertoire of off-color limericks, which was massive, and his social ease, which was consummate. Although he could rarely remember a name, Von Neumann would escort each new guest around the room, bowing punctiliously to cover up the fact that he was not using names in introducing people.\nVon Neumann also had a passion for automobiles, not for tinkering with them but for driving them as if they were heavy tanks. He turned up with a new one every year at Princeton. “The way he drove, a car couldn’t possibly last more than a year,” a friend says. Von Neumann was regularly arrested for speeding and some of his wrecks became legendary. A Princeton crossroads was for a while known as “Von Neumann corner” because of the number of times the mathematician had cracked up there. He once emerged from a totally demolished car with this explanation: “I was proceeding down the road. The threes on the right were passing me in orderly fashion at 60 miles an hour. Suddenly one of them stepped out in my path. Boom!”\nMariette and John von Neumann had one child, Marina, born in 1935, who graduated from Radcliffe last June, summa cum laude, with the highest scholastic record in her class. In 1937, the year Von Neumann was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and became a naturalized citizen of the U.S., the marriage ended in divorce. The following year on a trip to Budapest he met and married Klara Dan, whom he subsequently trained to be an expert on electronic computing machines. The Von Neumann home in Princeton continued to be a center of gaiety as well as a hotel for prominent intellectual transients.\nIn the late 1930s Von Neumann began to receive a new type of visitor at Princeton: the military scientist and engineer. After he had handled a number of jobs for the Navy in ballistics and anti-submarine warfare, word of his talents spread, and Army Ordnance began using him more and more as a consultant at its Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. As war drew nearer this kind of work took up more and more of his time.\nDuring World War II he roved between Washington, where he had established a temporary residence, England, Los Alamos and other defense installations. When scientific groups heard Von Neumann was coming, they would set up all of their advanced mathematical problems like ducks in a shooting gallery. Then he would arrive and systematically topple them over.\nAfter the Axis had been destroyed, Von Neumann urged that the U.S. immediately build even more powerful atomic weapons and use them before the Soviets could develop nuclear weapons of their own. It was not an emotional crusade, Von Neumann, like others, had coldly reasoned that the world had grown too small to permit nations to conduct their affairs independently of one another. He held that world government was inevitable – and the sooner the better. But he also believed it could never be established while Soviet Communism dominated half of the globe. A famous Von Neumann observation at the time: “With the Russians it is not a question of whether but when.” A hard-boiled strategist, he was one of the few scientists to advocate preventive war, and in 1950 he was remarking, “If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o’clock, I say why not 1 o’clock?”\nIn late 1949, after the Russians had exploded their first atomic bomb and the U.S. scientific community was split over whether or not the U.S. should build a hydrogen bomb, Von Neumann reduced the argument to: “It is not a question of whether we build it or not, but when do we start calculating?” When the H-bomb controversy raged, Von Neumann slipped quietly out to Los Alamos, took a desk and began work on the first mathematical steps toward building the weapon, specifically deciding which computations would be fed to which electronic computers.\nVon Neumann’s principal interest in the postwar years was electronic computing machines, and his advice on computers was in demand almost everywhere. One day he was urgently summoned to the offices of the Rand Corporation, a government-sponsored scientific research organization in Santa Monica, Calif. Rand scientists had come up with a problem so complex that the electronic computers then in existence seemingly could not handle it. The scientists wanted Von Neumann to invent a new kind of computer. After listening to the scientists expound, Von Neumann broke in: “Well, gentlemen, suppose you tell me exactly what the problem is?”\nFor the next two hours the men at Rand lectured, scribbled on blackboards, and brought charts and tables back and forth. Von Neumann sat with his head buried in his hands. When the presentation was completed, he scribbled on a pad, stared so blankly that a Rand scientist later said he looked as if “his mind had slipped his face out of gear,” then said, “Gentlemen, you do not need the computer. I have the answer.”\nWhile the scientists sat in stunned silence, Von Neumann reeled off the various steps which would provide the solution to the problem. Having risen to this routine challenge, Von Neumann followed up with a routine suggestion: “Let’s go to lunch.”\nIn 1954, when the U.S. development of the intercontinental ballistic missile was dangerously bogged down, study groups under Von Neumann’s direction began paving the way for solution of the most baffling problems: guidance, miniaturization of components, heat resistance. In less than a year Von Neumann put his O.K. on the project – but not until he had completed a relentless investigation in his own dazzlingly fast style. One day, during an ICBM meeting on the West Coast, a physicist employed by an aircraft company approached Von Neumann with a detailed plan for one phase of the project. It consisted of a tome several hundred pages long on which the physicist had worked for eight months. Von Neumann took the book and flipped through the first several pages. Then he turned it over and began reading from back to front. He jotted down a figure on a pad, then a second and a third. He looked out the window for several seconds, returned the book to the physicist and said, “It won’t work.” The physicist returned to his company. After two months of re-evaluation, he came to the same conclusion.\nIn October 1954 Eisenhower appointed Von Neumann to the Atomic Energy Commission. Von Neumann accepted, although the Air Force and the senators who confirmed him insisted that he retain his chairmanship of the Air Force ballistic missile panel.\nVon Neumann had been on the new job only six months when the pain first stuck in the left shoulder. After two examinations, the physicians at Bethesda Naval Hospital suspected cancer. Within a month Von Neumann was wheeled into surgery at the New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston. A leading pathologist, Dr. Shields Warren, examined the biopsy tissue and confirmed that the pain was a secondary cancer. Doctors began to race to discover the primary location. Several weeks later they found it in the prostate. Von Neumann, they agreed, did not have long to live.\nWhen he heard the news Von Neumann called for Dr. Warren. He asked, “Now that this thing has come, how shall I spend the remainder of my life?”\n“Well, Johnny,” Warren said, “I would stay with the commission as long as you feel up to it. But at the same time I would say that if you have any important scientific papers – anything further scientifically to say – I would get started on it right away.”\nVon Neumann returned to Washington and resumed his busy schedule at the Atomic Energy Commission. To those who asked about his arm, which was in a sling, he muttered something about a broken collarbone. He continued to preside over the ballistic missile committee, and to receive an unending stream of visitors from Los Alamos, Livermore, the Rand Corporation, Princeton. Most of these men knew that Von Neumann was dying of cancer, but the subject was never mentioned.\nMachines creating new machines\nAfter the last visitor had departed Von Neumann would retire to his second-floor study to work on the paper which he knew would be his last contribution to science. It was an attempt to formulate a concept shedding new light on the workings of the human brain. He believed that if such a concept could be stated with certainty, it would also be applicable to electronic computers and would permit man to make a major step forward in using these “automata.” In principle, he reasoned, there was no reason why some day a machine might not be built which not only could perform most of the functions of the human brain but could actually reproduce itself, i.e., create more supermachines like it. He proposed to present this paper at Yale, where he had been invited to give the 1956 Silliman Lectures.\nAs the weeks passed, work on the paper slowed. One evening, as Von Neumann and his wife were leaving a dinner party, he complained that he was “uncertain” about walking. Doctors furnished him with a wheelchair. But Von Neumann’s world had begun to close in tight around him. He was seized by periods of overwhelming melancholy.\nIn April 1956 Von Neumann moved into Walter Reed Hospital for good. Honors were now coming from all directions. He was awarded Yeshiva University’s first Einstein prize. In a special White House ceremony President Eisenhower presented him with the Medal of Freedom. In April the AEC gave him the Enrico Fermi award for his contributions to the theory and design of computing machines, accompanied by a $50,000 tax-free grant.\nAlthough born of Jewish parents, Von Neumann had never practiced Judaism. After his arrival in the U.S. he had been baptized a Roman Catholic. But his divorce from Mariette had put him beyond the sacraments of the Catholic Church for almost 19 years. Now he felt an urge to return. One morning he said to Klara, “I want to see a priest.” He added, “But he will have to be a special kind of priest, one that will be intellectually compatible.” Arrangements were made for special instructions to be given by a Catholic scholar from Washington. After a few weeks Von Neumann began once again to receive the sacraments.\nThe great mind falters\nToward the end of May the seizures of melancholy began to occur more frequently. In June the doctors finally announced – though not to Von Neumann himself – that the cancer had begun to spread. The great mind began to falter. “At times he would discuss history, mathematics, or automata, and he could recall word for word conversations we had had 20 years ago,” a friend says. “At other times he would scarcely recognize me.” His family – Klara, two brothers, his mother and daughter Marina – drew close around him and arranged a schedule so that one of them would always be on hand. Visitors were more carefully screened. Drugs fortunately prevented Von Neumann from experiencing pain. Now and then his old gifts of memory were again revealed. One day in the fall his brother Mike read Goethe’s Faust to him in German. Each time Mike paused to turn the page, Von Neumann recited from memory the first few lines of the following page.\nOne of his favorite companions was his mother Margaret von Neumann, 76 years old. In July the family in turn became concerned about her health, and it was suggested that she go to a hospital for a checkup. Two weeks later she died of cancer. “It was unbelievable,” a friend says. “She kept on going right up to the very end and never let anyone know a thing. How she must have suffered to make her son’s last days less worrisome.” Lest the news shock Von Neumann fatally, elaborate precautions were taken to keep it from him. When he guessed the truth, he suffered a severe setback.\nVon Neumann’s body, which he had never given much thought to, went on serving him much longer than did his mind. Last summer the doctors had given him only three or four weeks to live. Months later, in October, his passing was again expected momentarily. But not until this month did his body give up. It was characteristic of the impatient, witty and incalculably brilliant John von Neumann that although he went on working for others until he could do not more, his own treatise on the workings of the brain – the work he thought would be his crowning achievement in his own name – was left unfinished.\n\n \n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/06/21/john-von-neumann/", "title": "John von Neumann", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-06-21T08:26:27+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=18", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "74395386b9985869c5cff1be21961ab4", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Computing Media Appearances\n\nPodcasts\n16 – Andrés Gómez Emilsson on Solving Consciousness and Being Happy All the Time (The Most Interesting People I Know…, October 2019)\nOn Consciousness, Qualia, and Meaning with Mike Johnson and Andrés Gómez Emilsson (AI Alignment Podcast, May 2019)\n71 – Researching Qualia with Andrés Gómez Emilsson (The Bayesian Conspiracy, October 2018)\nThe Future of Mind (Waking Cosmos, October 2018)\nConsciousness, Qualia, and Psychedelics with Andres Gomez Emilsson (Catalyzing Coherence, May 2018)\nConsciousness and Qualia Realism (Cosmic Tortoise, May 2018)\nRobert Stark interviews Transhumanist Andres Gomez Emilsson (The Stark Truth with Robert Stark, October 2017)\nComo el MDMA, pero sin la neurotoxicidad (Abolir el sufrimiento con Andrés Gómez) (Guía Escéptica [in Spanish], March 2016)\nHappiness is Solving the World’s Problems (The World Transformed, January 2016)\nPresentations\nThe Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences (@Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club, September 2019)\nHarmonic Society: 8 Models of Art for a Scientific Paradigm of Aesthetic Qualia (at a QRI Party, July 2019)\nAndrés Gómez Emilsson – Consciousness vs Replicators (Burning Man, August 2018)\nQuantifying Valence (see also; The Science of Consciousness, April 2018)\nQuantifying Bliss (Consciousness Hacking, June 2017)\nUtilitarian Temperament: Satisfying Impactful Careers (BIL Oakland 2016: The Recession Generation, July 2016)\nInterviews\nMapping the psychedelic experience – a conversation with the Qualia Research Institute (Adeptus Psychonautica, October 2019)\nSimulation #453 Catalog & Navigate Consciousness (Simulation, Jun 2019)\nSimulation #310 Mike Johnson & Andrés Gómez Emilsson – Chemistry of Consciousness (Simulation, March 2019)\nSimulation #255 Andrés Gómez Emilsson – Computational Properties of Consciousness (Simulation, February 2019)\nWant a Penfield Mood Organ? This Scientist Might Be Able to Help (Ziff Davis PCMag, April 2018)\nFrameworks for Consciousness – Andres Gomez Emilsson (Science, Technology & the Future by Adam Ford, March 2018)\nTowards the Abolition of Suffering through Science (featuring David Pearce, Brian Tomasik, & Mike Johnson hosted by Adam Ford, August 2015)\nThe Mind of David Pearce (Stanford, December 2012)\nAndrés Gómez Emilsson, el joven que grito espurio a Felipe Calderón (Cine Desbundo [in Spanish], October 2008)\nNarrative Inclusions\nSSC Journal Club: Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics and the Anarchic Brain (Slate Star Codex, September 2019)\nWhy We Need to Study Consciousness (Scientific American, September 2019)\nYoung pioneers on their hopes for technology, and older trailblazers on their regrets (MIT Technology Review, August 2019)\nMike Johnson – Testable Theories of Consciousness (Science, Technology & the Future, March 2019)\nOn Consciousness, Qualia, Valence & Intelligence with Mike Johnson (Science, Technology, Future, October 2018)\nPodcast with Daniel Ingram (Cosmic Tortoise [referenced at 2h22m], January 2018)\nFear and Loathing at Effective Altruism Global 2017 (Slate Star Codex, August 2017)\nTranshumanist Proves Schrödinger’s Cat Experiment Isn’t Better on LSD (Inverse, October 2016)\nHigh Performer: Die Renaissance des LSD im Silicon Valley (Wired Germany [in German], June 2015)\nCome With Us If You Want To Live (Harper’s Magazine, January 2015)\nDavid Pearce’s Social Media Posts (Hedweb: pre-2014, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018)\nDavid Pearce at Stanford 2011 (Stanford Transhumanist Association, December 2011)\nExternal Articles\nEnding Suffering Is The Most Important Cause (IEET, September 2015)\nThis Is What I Mean When I Say ‘Consciousness’ (IEET, September 2015)\nMy Interest Shifted from Mathematics to Consciousness after a THC Experience (IEET, September 2015)\n‘Spiritual/Philosophical’ is the Deepest, Highest, Most Powerful Dimension of Euphoria (IEET, September 2015)\nBios\nH+pedia, ISI-S, Decentralized AI Summit, Earth Sharing\nMiscellaneous\nPhilosophy of Mind Stand-up Comedy (The Science of Consciousness,  April 2018)\nRandal Koene vs. Andres Emilsson on The Binding Problem (Bay Area Futurists, Oakland CA, May 2016)\n\nNote: I am generally outgoing, fun-loving, and happy to participate in podcasts, events, interviews, and miscellaneous activities. Feel free to invite me to your podcast/interview/theater/etc. I am flexible when it comes to content; anything I’ve written about in Qualia Computing is fair game for discussion. Infinite bliss!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/06/05/qualia-computing-media-appearances/", "title": "Qualia Computing Media Appearances", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-06-06T05:39:11+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=18", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e7e130481c6f6ae68a33b74b3765f6ae", "summary": []}
{"text": "Marijuana-induced “Short-term Memory Tracers”\n\n[On the subjective effects of marijuana]: It’s one thing to describe it verbally and another thing to experience it yourself. I had this dissociated feeling that was really intense. I had memory tracers. So it wasn’t like, you know, people on LSD or stuff will talk about how “your hand is tracing over and over again” and it was almost like that with my memory. My short term memory was repeating over and over again. So it’d be things like getting in a car, and getting in the car over and over again, putting on a seat belt over and over and over again, and it was like short term memory tracers. And it was overall extremely intense. Had an altered perception of space. You know… distance. That’s something I [also] got on mushrooms, which I talked about in a previous video, but it’s like you see something far away and you don’t really know if it’s really far away, or if it is just really small. So if you see a car that’s like 50 feet away, you don’t know if it is 50 feet away or if it is just a matchbox car that’s really close to you. So it kind of had that; it altered the way I saw space. And, to be honest, I freaked the fuck out, because this isn’t what I thought marijuana was supposed to be. I thought it was a sedative. I thought it made you relaxed. I didn’t know it tripped you the fuck out. So, uh, my response was: I thought I was dying. I remember being in the backseat of the car and saying “is this normal?” And the guy in the front seat– he was this Indian dude, his name was Deepak– I swear to God it was like, uh, my Kumar, and he turns back and and was like “Are you tripping, man? Are you feeling it, man?” and that just made me even more fucked up in the head. Because he was saying it in his Indian accent, and I was like “What’s going on? What’s going on?”, and I thought I had to go to the hospital. Uh, let’s fast-forward in the experience, so about one hour later, or 30 minutes later, I don’t really know, it started to turn more in what I expected it to be. Which was this sedative, I started feeling more relaxed, like the trip started subsiding, and I was left with this trip afterglow of relaxation, feeling giggly, feeling really hungry, and you know kind of like the standard marijuana high. And this happened every time I smoked marijuana in the beginning. I was uncomfortable for the first 30 minutes to an hour. I learned to kind of enjoy it, but for the most part I was waiting it out. And then I’d get relaxed and chill. And I wouldn’t really call it paranoia, it was really just tripping so hard I was kind of like “wow, like, I’m really fucking tripping, I hope I don’t act weird in front of a bunch of people” Maybe that is paranoia, I don’t know.\n \n[…10 more minutes talking about marijuana…]\n \nAnd I don’t know why the fuck marijuana is still illegal in 2017. I feel like I a fucking pilgrim. Like, seriously? A war veteran can go and almost die for his country. He could come back, and drink alcohol, buy an assault riffle, and get prescribed speed, but smoke a joint? Nah, you are a fucking criminal! I mean, that doesn’t make any fucking sense. I’ve been doing this push, that I said that if by January 2018 Marijuana wasn’t legal I’d shave my hair. I’m not gonna shave my head. I am gonna cut all of my hair off, and I’m really sad about that. Usually when I cut my hair off I send it to Korea at a random address because I just like to say “my hair is in Korea”. And I’m sure whoever opens it is like “why the fuck am I getting this?” But this time I’m gonna throw it up into eBay just because I want to see if anybody bids on it. I’m gonna do it 99 cents free shipping. But yeah, getting my hair cut is simply really weird: when I get to the stylist and say “can you put this on a bag? I’m gonna sell this.” Uh, but yeah, that really is it for Marijuana as far as my overall experience with the substance.\n– What’s smoking marijuana like? The positive and negative effects of smoking cannabis and dabs by Youtube addiction recovery coach Cg Kid", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/06/01/marijuana-induced-short-term-memory-tracers/", "title": "Marijuana-induced “Short-term Memory Tracers”", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-06-02T06:54:49+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=18", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b66b2a58a0a7182c553aa254e1bb0d40", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Banality of Evil\n\nIn response to the Quora question “I feel like a lot of evil actions in the world have supporters who justify them (like Nazis). Can you come up with some convincing ways in which some of the most evil actions in the world could be justified?” David Pearce writes:\n\n\n“Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.”\n(Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace)\n“Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.”\n(Anne Frank)\n\nThe risk of devising justifications of the worst forms of human behaviour is there are people gullible enough to believe them. It’s not as though anti-Semitism died with the Third Reich. Even offering dispassionate causal explanation can sometimes be harmful. So devil’s advocacy is an intellectual exercise to be used sparingly.\nThat said, the historical record suggests that human societies don’t collectively set out to do evil. Rather, primitive human emotions get entangled with factually mistaken beliefs and ill-conceived metaphysics with ethically catastrophic consequences. Thus the Nazis seriously believed in the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy against the noble Aryan race. Hitler, so shrewd in many respects, credulously swallowed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And as his last testament disclosed, obliquely, Hitler believed that the gas chambers were a “more humane means” than the terrible fate befalling the German Volk. Many Nazis (Himmler, Höss, Stangl, and maybe even Eichmann) believed that they were acting from a sense of duty – a great burden stoically borne. And such lessons can be generalised across history. If you believed, like the Inquisition, that torturing heretics was the only way to save their souls from eternal damnation in Hell, would you have the moral courage to do likewise? If you believed that the world would be destroyed by the gods unless you practised mass human sacrifice, would you participate? [No, in my case, albeit for unorthodox reasons.]\nIn a secular context today, there exist upstanding citizens who would like future civilisation to run “ancestor simulations”. Ancestor simulations would create inconceivably more suffering than any crime perpetrated by the worst sadist or deluded ideologue in history – at least if the computational-functional theory of consciousness assumed by their proponents is correct. If I were to pitch a message to life-lovers aimed at justifying such a monstrous project, as you request, then I guess I’d spin some yarn about how marvellous it would be to recreate past wonders and see grandpa again.\nAnd so forth.\nWhat about the actions of individuals, as distinct from whole societies? Not all depraved human behaviour stems from false metaphysics or confused ideology. The grosser forms of human unpleasantness often stem just from our unreflectively acting out baser appetites (cf. Hamiltonian spite). Consider the neuroscience of perception. Sentient beings don’t collectively perceive a shared public world. Each of us runs an egocentric world-simulation populated by zombies (sic). We each inhabit warped virtual worlds centered on a different body-image, situated within a vast reality whose existence can be theoretically inferred. Or so science says. Most people are still perceptual naïve realists. They aren’t metaphysicians, or moral philosophers, or students of the neuroscience of perception. Understandably, most people trust the evidence of their own eyes and the wisdom of their innermost feelings, over abstract theory. What “feels right” is shaped by natural selection. And what “feels right” within one’s egocentric virtual world is often callous and sometimes atrocious. Natural selection is amoral. We are all slaves to the pleasure-pain axis, however heavy the layers of disguise. Thanks to evolution, our emotions are “encephalised” in grotesque ways. Even the most ghastly behaviour can be made to seem natural –like Darwinian life itself.\nAre there some forms of human behaviour so appalling that I’d find it hard to play devil’s advocate in their mitigation – even as an intellectual exercise?\nWell, perhaps consider, say, the most reviled hate-figures in our society – even more reviled than murderers or terrorists. Most sexually active paedophiles don’t set out to harm children: quite the opposite, harm is typically just the tragic by-product of a sexual orientation they didn’t choose. Posthumans may reckon that all Darwinian relationships are toxic. Of course, not all monstrous human behavior stems from wellsprings as deep as sexual orientation. Thus humans aren’t obligate carnivores. Most (though not all) contemporary meat eaters, if pressed, will acknowledge in the abstract that a pig is as sentient and sapient as a prelinguistic human toddler. And no contemporary meat eaters seriously believe that their victims have committed a crime (cf. Animal trial – Wikipedia). Yet if questioned why they cause such terrible suffering to the innocent, and why they pay for a hamburger rather than a veggieburger, a meat eater will come up with perhaps the lamest justification for human depravity ever invented:\n\n“But I like the taste!”\nSuch is the banality of evil.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/05/06/the-banality-of-evil/", "title": "The Banality of Evil", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-05-06T21:28:00+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=18", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "707e67cecebff8efc6dbd20d3fef2bee", "summary": []}
{"text": "Person-moment affecting views\n\n[Epistemic status: sloppy thoughts not informed by the literature. Hoping actual population ethicists might show up and correct me or point me to whoever has already thought about something like this better.]\nPerson-affecting views say that when you are summing up the value in different possible worlds, you should ignore people who only exist in one of those worlds. This is based on something like the following intuitions:\n\nWorld A can only be better than world B insofar as it is better for someone.\nWorld A can’t be better than world B for Alice, if Alice exists in world A but not world B.\n\nThe further-fact view says that after learning all physical facts about Alice and Alice’—such as whether Alice’ was the physical result of Alice waiting for five seconds, or is a brain upload of Alice, or is what came out of a replicating machine on Mars after Alice walked in on Earth, or remembers being Alice—there is still a further meaningful question of whether Alice and Alice’ are the same person.\nI take the further-fact view to be wrong (or at least Derek Parfit does, and I think we agree the differences between Derek Parfit and I have been overstated). Thinking that the further-fact view is wrong seems to be a common position among intellectuals (e.g. 87% among philosophers).\nIf the further-fact view is wrong, then the what we have is a whole lot of different person-moments, with various relationships to one another, which for pragmatic reasons we like to group into clusters called ‘people’. There are different ways we could define the people, and no real answer to which definition is right. This works out pretty well in our world, but you can imagine other worlds (or futures of our world) where the clusters are much more ambiguous, and different definitions of ‘person’ make a big difference, or where the concept is not actually useful.\nPerson-affecting views seem to make pretty central use of the concept ‘person’. If we don’t accept the further-fact view, and do want to accept a person-affecting view, what would that mean? I can think of several options:\n\nHow good different worlds are depends strongly on which definition of ‘person’ you choose (which person moments you choose to cluster together), but this is a somewhat arbitrary pragmatic choice\nThere is some correct definition of ‘person’ for the purpose of ethics (i.e. there is some relation between person moments that makes different person moments in the future ethically relevant by virtue of having that connection to a present person moment)\nDifferent person-moments are more or less closely connected in ways, and a person-affecting view should actually have a sliding scale of importance for different person-moments\n\nBefore considering these options, I want to revisit the second reason for adopting a person-affecting view: If Alice exists in world A and not in world B, then Alice can’t be made better off by world A existing rather than world B. Whether this premise is true seems to depend on how ‘a world being better for Alice’ works. Some things we might measure would go one way, and some would go the other. For instance, we could imagine it being analogous to:\n\nAlice painting more paintings. If Alice painted three paintings in world A, and doesn’t exist in world B, I think most people would say that Alice painted more paintings in world A than in world B. And more clearly, that world A has more paintings than world B, even if we insist that a world can’t have more paintings without somebody in particular having painted more paintings. Relatedly, there are many things people do where the sentence ‘If Alice didn’t exist, she wouldn’t have X’.\nAlice having painted more paintings per year. If Alice painted one painting every thirty years in world A, and didn’t exist in world B, in world B the number of paintings per year is undefined, and so incomparable to ‘one per thirty years’.\n\nSuppose that person-affecting view advocates are right, and the worth of one’s life is more like 2). You just can’t compare the worth of Alice’s life in two worlds where she only exists in one of them. Then can you compare person-moments? What if the same ‘person’ exists in two possible worlds, but consists of different person-moments?\nCompare world A and world C, which both contain Alice, but in world C Alice makes different choices as a teenager, and becomes a fighter pilot instead of a computer scientist. It turns out that she is not well suited to it, and finds piloting pretty unsatisfying. If Alice_t1A is different from Alice_t1C, can we say that world A is better than world C, in virtue of Alice’s experiences? Each relevant person-moment only exists in one of the worlds, so how can they benefit?\nI see several possible responses:\n\nNo we can’t. We should have person-moment affecting views.\nThings can’t be better or worse for person-moments, only for entire people, holistically across their lives, so the question is meaningless. (Or relatedly, how good a thing is for a person is not a function of how good it is for their person-moments, and it is how good it is for the person that matters).\nYes, there is some difference between people and person moments, which means that person-moments can benefit without existing in worlds that they are benefitting relative to, but people cannot.\n\nThe second possibility seems to involve accepting the second view above: that there is some correct definition of ‘person’ that is larger than a person moment, and fundamental to ethics – something like the further-fact view. This sounds kind of bad to me. And the third view doesn’t seem very tempting without some idea of an actual difference between persons and person-moments.\nSo maybe the person-moment affecting view looks most promising. Let us review what it would have to look like. For one thing, the only comparable person moments are the ones that are the same. And since they are the same, there is no point bringing about one instead of the other. So there is never reason to bring about a person-moment for its own benefit. Which sounds like it might really limit the things that are worth intentionally doing. Isn’t making myself happy in three seconds just bringing about a happy person moment rather than a different sad person moment?\nIs everything just equally good on this view? I don’t think so, as long as you are something like a preference utilitarian: person-moments can have preferences over other person-moments. Suppose that Alice_t0A and Alice_t0C are the same, and Alice_t1A and Alice_t1C are different. And suppose that Alice_t0 wants Alice_t1 to be a computer scientist. Then world A is better than world C for Alice_t0, and so better overall. That is, person-moments can benefit from things, as long as they don’t know at the time that they have benefited.\nI think an interesting  feature of this view is that all value seems to come from meddling preferences. It is never directly good that there is joy in the world for instance, it is just good because somebody wants somebody else to experience joy, and that desire was satisfied. If they had instead wished for a future person-moment to be tortured, and this was granted, then this world would apparently be just as good.\nSo, things that are never directly valuable in this world:\n\nJoy\nSomeone getting what they want and also knowing about it\nAnything that isn’t a meddling preference\n\nOn the upside, since person-moments often care about future person-moments within the same person, we do perhaps get back to something closer to the original person-affecting view. There is often reason to bring about or benefit a person moment for the benefit of previous person moments in the history of the same person, who for instance wants to ‘live a long and happy life’. My guess after thinking about this very briefly is that in practice it would end up looking like the ‘moderate’ person-affecting views, in which people who currently exist get more weight than people who will be brought into existence, but not infinitely more weight. People who exist now mostly want to continue existing, and to have good lives in the future, and they care less, but some, about different people in the future.\nSo, if you want to accept a person-affecting view and not a further-fact view, the options seem to me to be something like these:\n\nPerson-moments can benefit without having an otherworldly counterpart, even though people cannot. Which is to say, only person-moments that are part of the same ‘person’ in different worlds can benefit from their existence. ‘Person’ here is either an arbitrary pragmatic definition choice, or some more fundamental ethically relevant version of the concept that we could perhaps discover.\nBenefits accrue to persons, not person-moments. In particular, benefits to persons are not a function of the benefits to their constituent person-moments. Where ‘person’ is again either a somewhat arbitrary choice of definition, or a more fundamental concept.\nA sliding scale of ethical relevance of different person-moments, based on how narrow a definition of ‘person’ unites them with any currently existing person-moments. Along with some story about why, given that you can apparently compare all of them, you are still weighting some less, on grounds that they are incomparable.\nPerson-moment affecting views\n\nNone of these sound very good to me, but nor do person-affecting views in general, so maybe I’m the wrong audience. I had thought person-moment affecting views were almost a reductio, but a close friend says he thought they were the obvious reasonable view, so I am curious to hear others’ takes.\n\n\nAn interesting thing to point out here is that what Katja describes as the further-fact view is terminologically equivalent to what we here call Closed Individualism (cf. Ontological Qualia). This is the common-sense view that you start existing when you are born and stop existing when you die (which also has soul-based variants with possible pre-birth and post-death existence). This view is not very philosophically tenable because it presupposes that there is an enduring metaphysical ego distinct for every person. And yet, the vast majority of people still hold strongly to Closed Individualism. In some sense, in the article Katja tries to rescue the common-sense aspect of Closed Individualism in the context of ethics. That is, by trying to steel-man the common-sense notion that people (rather than moments of experience) are the relevant units for morality while also negating further-fact views, you provide reasons to keep using Closed Individualism as an intuition-pump in ethics (if only for pragmatic reasons). In general, I consider this kind of discussions to be a very fruitful endeavor as they approach ethics by touching upon the key parameters that matter fundamentally: identity, value, and counterfactuals.\nAs you may gather from pieces such as Wireheading Done Right and The Universal Plot, at Qualia Computing we tend to think the most coherent ethical system arises when we take as a premise that the relevant moral agents are “moments of experience”. Contra Person-affecting views, we don’t think it is meaningless to say that a given world is better than another one if not everyone in the first world is also in the second one. On the contrary – it really does not matter who lives in a given world. What matters is the raw subjective quality of the experiences in such worlds. If it is meaningless to ask “who is experiencing Alice’s experiences now?” once you know all the physical facts, then moral weight must be encoded in such physical facts alone. In turn, it could certainly happen then that the narrative aspect of an experience may turn out to be irrelevant for determining the intrinsic value of a given experience. People’s self-narratives may certainly have important instrumental uses, but at their core they don’t make it to the list of things that intrinsically matter (unlike, say, avoiding suffering).\nA helpful philosophical move that we have found adds a lot of clarity here is to analyze the problem in terms of Open Individualism. That is, assume that we are all one consciousness and take it from there. If so, then the probability that you are a given person would be weighted by the amount of consciousness (or number of moments of experience, depending) that such person experiences throughout his or her life. You are everyone in this view, but you can only be each person one at a time from their own limited points of view. So there is a sensible way of weighting the importance of each person, and this is a function of the amount of time you spend being him or her (and normalize by the amount of consciousness that person experiences, in case that is variable across individuals).\nIf consciousness emerges victorious in its war against pure replicators, then it would make sense that the main theory of identity people would hold by default would be Open Individualism. After all, it is only Open Individualism that aligns individual incentives and the total wellbeing of all moments of experience throughout the universe. \nThat said, in principle, it could turn out that Open Individualism is not needed to maximize conscious value – that while it may be useful instrumentally to align the existing living intelligences towards a common consciousness-centric goal (e.g. eliminating suffering, building a harmonic society, etc.), in the long run we may find that ontological qualia (the aspect of our experience that we use to represent the nature of reality, including our beliefs about personal identity) has no intrinsic value. Why bother experiencing heaven in the form of a mixture of 95% bliss and 5% ‘a sense of knowing that we are all one’, if you can instead just experience 100% pure bliss? \nAt the ethical limit, anything that is not perfectly blissful might end up being thought of as a distraction from the cosmic telos of universal wellbeing.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/04/28/person-moment-affecting-views/", "title": "Person-moment affecting views", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-04-29T00:21:00+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=18", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "7df5c95b57476cdb61cbb1e206d33203", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Formalism in the Water Supply: Reflections on The Science of Consciousness 2018\n\nTwo years ago I attended The Science of Consciousness 2016 (in Tucson, AZ.) with David Pearce. Here is my account of that event. This year I went again, but now together with a small contingent representing the Qualia Research Institute (QRI). You can see the videos of our presentations here. Below you will find this year’s writeup:\nWhat Went Great\n(1) The Meta-Problem of Consciousness\nThis time David Chalmers brought the Meta-problem of Consciousness into the overall conversation by making a presentation about his paper on the topic. I think that this was a great addition to the conference, and it played beautifully as a tone-setter.\n“The meta-problem of consciousness is (to a first approximation) the problem of explaining why we think that there is a problem of consciousness.”\n– Chalmers on the Meta-Problem\nDavid Chalmers is famous for defending the case that there is a problem of consciousness. And not only that, but that indeed, an aspect of it, the hard problem, resists conventional methods of explanation (as they focus on form and structure, but consciousness is anything but). Chalmers’ track record of contributions to the field is impressive. His work includes: formalizing foundational problems of consciousness, steel-manning extended-mind/embodied cognition, progress on classical philosophy of language questions (e.g. sense and reference with regards to modal logic), observations on the unity of consciousness, the case for the possibility of super-intelligence, and even the philosophical implications of Virtual Reality (I often link to his Reddit AMA as one of the best layman’s introductions to his work; see also his views on psychedelics). Plus, his willingness to consider, and even steel-man the opponent’s arguments is admirable.*\nAnd of all of his works, I would argue, discussing the meta-problem of consciousness is perhaps one of the things that will help advance the field of consciousness research the most. In brief, we are in sore need of an agreed-upon explanation for the reasons why consciousness poses a problem at all. Rather than getting caught up in unfruitful arguments at the top of the argumentative tree, it is helpful to sometimes be directed to look at the roots of people’s divergent intuitions. This tends to highlight unexpected differences in people’s philosophical background assumptions.\nAnd the fact that these background assumptions are often not specified leads to problems. For example: talking past each other due to differences in terminology, people attacking a chain of reasoning when in fact their disagreement starts at the level of ontology, and failure to recognize and map useful argumentative isomorphisms from one ontology onto another.\nHaving the Meta-Problem of Consciousness at the forefront of the discussions, in my appraisal of the event, turned out to be very generative. Asking an epiphenomenalist, an eliminativist, a panprotopsychist, etc. to explain why they think their view is true seemed less helpful in advancing the state of our collective knowledge than asking them about their thoughts on the Meta-Problem of Consciousness.\n(2) Qualia Formalism in the Water Supply\nAt the Qualia Research Institute we explicitly assume that consciousness is not only real, but that it is formalizable. This is not a high-level claim about the fact that we can come up with a precise vocabulary to talk about consciousness. It is a radical take on the degree to which formal mathematical models of experience can be discovered. Qualia Formalism, as we define it, is the claim that for any conscious experience, there exists a mathematical object whose properties are isomorphic to the phenomenology of that experience. Anti-formalists, on the other hand, might say that consciousness is an improper reification.\nFor formalists, consciousness is akin to electromagnetism: we started out with a series of peculiar disparate phenomena such as lightning, electricity, magnets, static-electricity, etc. After a lot of work, it turned out that all of these diverse phenomena had a crisp unifying mathematical underpinning. More so, this formalism was not merely descriptive. Light, among other phenomena, were hidden in it. That is, finding a mathematical formalism for real phenomena can be generalizable to even more domains, be strongly informative for ontology, and ultimately, also technologically generative (the computer you are using to read this article wouldn’t- and in fact couldn’t -exist if electromagnetism wasn’t formalizable).\nFor anti-formalists, consciousness is akin to Élan vital. People had formed the incorrect impression that explaining life necessitated a new ontology. That life was, in some sense, (much) more than just the sum of life-less forces in complex arrangements. And in order to account for the diverse (apparently unphysical) behaviors of life, we needed a life force. Yet no matter how hard biologists, chemists, and physicists have tried to look for it, no life force has been found. As of 2018 it is widely agreed by scientists that life can be reduced to complex biochemical interactions. In the same vein, anti-formalists about consciousness would argue that people are making a category error when they try to explain consciousness itself. Consciousness will go the same way as Élan vital: it will turn out to be an improper reification.\nIn particular, the new concept-handle on the block to refer to anti-formalist views of consciousness is “illusionism”. Chalmers writes on The Meta-Problem of Consciousness:\nThis strategy [of talking about the meta-problem] typically involves what Keith Frankish has called illusionism about consciousness: the view that consciousness is or involves a sort of introspective illusion. Frankish calls the problem of explaining the illusion of consciousness the illusion problem. The illusion problem is a close relative of the meta-problem: it is the version of the meta-problem that arises if one adds the thesis that consciousness is an illusion. Illusionists (who include philosophers such as Daniel Dennett, Frankish, and Derk Pereboom, and scientists such as Michael Graziano and Nicholas Humphrey) typically hold that a solution to the meta-problem will itself solve or dissolve the hard problem.\n– The Meta-Problem of Consciousness (pages 2-3)\nIn the broader academic domain, it seems that most scientists and philosophers are neither explicitly formalists nor anti-formalists. The problem is, this question has not been widely discussed. We at QRI believe that there is a fork in the road ahead of us. That while both formalist and anti-formalist views are defensible, there is very little room in-between for coherent theories of consciousness. The problem of whether qualia formalism is correct or not is what Michael Johnson has coined as The Real Problem of Consciousness. Solving it would lead to radical improvements in our understanding of consciousness.\nWhat a hypothetical eliminativist about consciousness would say to my colleague Michael Johnson in response to the question – “so you think consciousness is just a bag of tricks?”: No, consciousness is not a bag of tricks. It’s an illusion, Michael. A trick is what a Convolutional Neural Network needs to do to perform well on a text classification task. The illusion of consciousness is the radical ontological obfuscation that your brain performs in order to render its internal attentional dynamics as a helpful user-interface that even a kid can utilize for thinking.\nNow, largely thanks to the fact that Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is being discussed openly, qualia formalism is (implicitly) starting to have its turn on the table. While we believe that IIT does not work out as a complete account of consciousness for a variety of reasons (our full critique of it is certainly over-due), we do strongly agree with its formalist take on consciousness. In fact, IIT might be the only mainstream theory of consciousness that assumes anything resembling qualia formalism. So its introduction into the water supply (so to speak) has given a lot of people the chance to ponder whether consciousness has a formal structure.\n(3) Great New Psychedelic Research\nThe conference featured the amazing research of Robin Carhart-Harris, Anil K. Seth, and Selen Atasoy, all of whom are advancing the frontier of consciousness research by virtue of collecting new data, generating computational models to explain it, and developing big-picture accounts of psychedelic action. We’ve already featured Atasoy’s work in here. Her method of decomposing brain activity into harmonics is perhaps one of the most promising avenues for advancing qualia formalist accounts of consciousness (i.e. tentative data-structures in which the information about a given conscious state is encoded). Robin’s entropic brain theory is, we believe, a really good step in the right direction, and we hope to formalize how valence enters the picture in the future (especially as it pertains to being able to explain qualia annealing on psychedelic states). Finally, Anil is steel-manning the case for predictive coding’s role in psychedelic action, and, intriguingly, also advancing the field by trying to find out in exactly what ways the effects of psychedelics can be simulated with VR and strobe lights (cf. Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States, and Getting Closer to Digital LSD).\n(4) Superb Aesthetic\nThe Science of Consciousness brings together a group of people with eclectic takes on reality, extremely high Openness to Experience, uncompromising curiosity about consciousness, and wide-ranging academic backgrounds, and this results in an amazing aesthetic. In 2016 the underlying tone was set by Dorian Electra and Baba Brinkman, who contributed with consciousness-focused music and witty comedy (we need more of that kind of thing in the world). Dorian Electra even released an album titled “Magical Consciousness Conference” which discusses in a musical format classical topics of philosophy of mind such as: the mind-body problem, brains in vats, and the Chinese Room.\n\nThe Science of Consciousness conference carries a timeless aesthetic that is hard to describe. If I were forced to put a label on it, I would say it is qualia-aware paranormal-adjacent psychedelic meta-cognitive futurism, or something along those lines. For instance, see how you can spot philosophers of all ages vigorously dancing to the empiricists vs. rationalists song by Dorian Electra (featuring David Chalmers) at The End of Consciousness Party in this video. Yes, that’s the vibe of this conference. The conference also has a Poetry Slam on Friday in which people read poems about qualia, the binding problem, and psychedelics (this year I performed a philosophy of mind stand-up comedy sketch there). They also play the Zombie Blues that night, in which people take turns to sing about philosophical zombies. Here are some of Chalmers’ verses:\nI act like you act\nI do what you do\nBut I don’t know\nWhat it’s like to be you\nWhat consciousness is!\nI ain’t got a clue\nI got the Zombie Blues!!!\n \n\nI asked Tononi:\n“How conscious am I?”\nHe said “Let’s see…”\n“I’ll measure your Phi”\nHe said “Oh Dear!”\n“It’s zero for you!”\nAnd that’s why you’ve got the Zombie Blues!!!\nNoteworthy too is the presence of after-parties that end at 3AM, the liberal attitude on cannabis, and the crazy DMT art featured in the lobby. Here are some pictures we took late at night borrowing some awesome signs we found at a Quantum Healing stand.\n\n\n(5) We found a number of QRI allies and supporters\nFinally, we were very pleased to find that Qualia Computing readers and QRI supporters attended the conference. We also made some good new friends along the way, and on the whole we judged the conference to be very much worth our time. For example, we were happy to meet Link Swanson, who recently published his article titled Unifying Theories of Psychedelic Drug Effects. I in fact had read this article a week before the event and thought it was great. I was planning on emailing him after the conference, and I was pleasantly surprised to meet him in person there instead. If you met us at the conference, thanks for coming up and saying hi! Also, thank you to all who organized or ran the conference, and to all who attended it!\nQRI members, friends, and allies\n \nWhat I Would Like to See More Of\n(1) Qualia Formalism\nWe hope and anticipate that in future years the field of consciousness research will experience an interesting process in which theory proponents will come out as either formalists or anti-formalists. In the meantime, we would love to see more people at least taking seriously the vision of qualia formalism. One of the things we asked ourselves during the conference was: “Where can we find other formalists?”. Perhaps the best heuristic we explored was the simple strategy of going to the most relevant concurrent sessions (e.g. physics and consciousness, and fundamental theories of consciousness). Interestingly, the people who had more formalist intuitions also tended to take IIT seriously.\n(2) Explicit Talk About Valence (and Reducing Suffering)\nTo our knowledge, our talks were the only ones in the event that directly addressed valence (i.e. the pleasure-pain axis). I wish there were more, given the paramount importance of affect in the brain’s computational processing, its role in culture, and of course, its ethical relevance. What is the point of meaning and intelligence if one cannot be happy?\nThere was one worthy exception: at some point Stuart Hameroff briefly mentioned his theory about the origin of life. He traces the evolutionary lineage of life to molecular micro-environmental system in which “quantum events [are] shielded from random, polar interactions, enabling more intense and pleasurable [Objective Reduction] qualia. ” In his view, pleasure-potential maximization is at the core of the design of the nervous system. I am intrigued by this theory, and I am glad that valence enters the picture here. I would just want to extend this kind of work to include the role of suffering as well. It seems to me that the brain evolved an adaptive range of valence that sinks deep into the negative, and is certainly not just optimizing for pleasure. While our post-human descendants might enjoy information-sensitive gradients of bliss, us Darwinians have been “gifted” by evolution a mixture of negative and positive hedonic qualia.\n(3) Awareness of the Tyranny of the Intentional Object\nRelated to (2), we think that one of the most important barriers for making progress in valence research is the fact that most people (even neuroscientists and philosophers of mind) think of it as a very personal thing with no underlying reality beyond hearsay or opinion. Some people like ice-cream, some like salads. Some people like Pink Floyd, others like Katy Perry. So why should we think that there is a unifying equation for bliss? Well, in our view, nobody actually likes ice-cream or Pink Floyd. Rather, ice-cream and Pink Floyd trigger high-valence states, and it is the high valence states that are actually liked and valuable. Our minds are constructed in such a way that we project pleasure and pain out into the world and think of them as necessarily connected to the external state of affairs. But this, we argue, is indeed an illusion (unlike qualia, which is as real as it gets).\nEven the people in the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Consciousness plenary panel seemed subject to the Tyranny of the Intentional Object. During the Q&A section I asked them: “if you were given a billion dollars to build a brain or machine that could experience super-happiness, how would you go about doing so?” Their response was that happiness/bliss only makes sense in relational terms (i.e. by interacting with others in the real world). Someone even said that “dopamine in the brain is just superficial happiness… authentic happiness requires you to gain meaning from what you do in the world.” This is a common view to take, but I would also point out that if it is possible to generate valence in artificial minds without human interactions, generating high valence could be done more directly. Finding methods to modulate valence would be done more efficiently by seeking out foundational qualia formalist accounts of valence.\n(4) Bigger Role for the Combination Problem\nThe number of people who account for the binding problem (also called the combination or boundary problem) is vanishingly small. How and why consciousness appears as unitary is a deep philosophical problem that cannot be dismissed with simple appeals to illusionism or implicit information processing. In general, my sense has been that many neuroscientists, computer scientists, and philosophers of mind don’t spend much time thinking about the binding problem. I have planned an article that will go in depth about why it might be that people don’t take this problem more seriously. As David Pearce has eloquently argued, any scientific theory of consciousness has to explain the binding problem. Nowadays, almost no one addresses it (and much less compellingly provides any plausible solution to it). The conference did have one concurrent session called “Panpsychism and the Combination Problem” (which I couldn’t attend), and a few more people I interacted with seemed to care about it, but the proportion was very small.\n(5) Bumping-up the Effect Size of Psi Phenomena (if they are real)\nThere is a significant amount of interest in Psi (parapsychology) from people attending this conference. I myself am agnostic about the matter. The Institute of Noetic Science (IONS) conducts interesting research in this area, and there are some studies that argue that publication bias cannot explain the effects observed. I am not convinced that other explanations have been ruled out, but I am sympathetic to people who try to study weird phenomena within a serious scientific framework (as you might tell from this article). What puzzles me is why there aren’t more people advocating for increasing the effect size of these effects in order to study them. Some data suggests that Psi (in the form of telepathy) is stronger with twins, meditators, people on psychedelics, and people who believe in Psi. But even then the effect sizes reported are tiny. Why not go all-in and try to max out the effect size by combining these features? I.e. why not conduct studies with twins who claim to have had psychic experiences, who meditate a lot, and who can handle high doses of LSD and ketamine in sensory deprivation tanks? If we could bump up the effect sizes far enough, maybe we could definitively settle the matter.\n(6) And why not… also a lab component?\nFinally, I think that trip reports by philosophically-literate cognitive scientists are much more valuable than trip reports by the average Joe. I would love to see a practical component to the conference someday. The sort of thing that would lead to publications like: “The Phenomenology of Candy-Flipping: An Empirical First-Person Investigation with Philosophers of Mind at a Consciousness Conference.”\nAdditional Observations\nThe Cards and Deck Types of Consciousness Theories\nTo make the analogy between Magic decks and theories of consciousness, we need to find a suitable interpretation for a card. In this case, I would posit that cards can be interpreted as either background assumptions, required criteria, emphasized empirical findings, and interpretations of phenomena. Let’s call these, generally, components of a theory.\nLike we see in Magic, we will also find that some components support each other while others interact neutrally or mutually exclude each other. For example, if one’s theory of consciousness explicitly rejects the notion that quantum mechanics influences consciousness, then it is irrelevant whether one also postulates that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct. On the other hand, if one identifies the locus of consciousness to be in the microtubules inside pyramidal cells, then the particular interpretation of quantum mechanics one has is of paramount importance.\n– Qualia Computing in Tucson: The Magic Analogy (2016)\nIn the 2016 writeup of the conference I pointed out that the dominant theories of consciousness (i.e. deck types in the above sense) were:\n\nIntegrated Information Theory (IIT)\nOrchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR)\nPrediction Error Minimization (PEM)\nGlobal Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWS)\nPanprotopsychist (not explicitly named)\nNondual Consciousness Monism (not explicitly named)\nConsciousness as the Result of Action-Oriented Cognition (not explicitly named)\nHigher Order Thought Theory (HOT)\n\nSo how has the meta-game changed since then? Based on the plenary presentations, the concurrent sessions, the workshops, the posters, and my conversations with many of the participants, I’d say (without much objective proof) that the new meta-game now looks more or less like this:\n\nOrchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR)\nIntegrated Information Theory (IIT)\nEntropic Brain Theory (EBT)\nGlobal Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWS)\nPrediction Error Minimization (PEM)\nPanprotopsychist as a General Framework\nHarmonic-Resonant Theories of Consciousness\n\nIt seems that Higher Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness have fallen out of favor. Additionally, we have a new contender on the table: Harmonic-Resonant Theories of Consciousness is now slowly climbing up the list (which, it turns out, had already been in the water supply since 2006 when Steven Lehar attended the conference, but only now is gathering popular support).\nGiven the general telos of the conference, it is not surprising that deflationary theories of consciousness do not seem to have a strong representation. I found a few people here and there who would identify as illusionists, but there were not enough to deserve their place in a short-list of dominant deck types. I assume it would be rather unpleasant for people with this general view about consciousness to hang out with so many consciousness realists.\nA good number of people I talked to admitted that they didn’t understand IIT, but that they nonetheless felt that something along the lines of irreducible causality was probably a big part of the explanation for consciousness. In contrast, we also saw a few interesting reactions to IIT – some people said “I hate IIT” and “don’t get me started on IIT”. It is unclear what is causing such reactions, but they are worth noting. Is this an allergic reaction to qualia formalism? We don’t have enough information at the moment to know.\nOntological Violence\nThe spiritual side of consciousness research is liable to overfocus on ethics and mood hacks rather than on truth-seeking. The problem is that a lot of people have emotionally load-bearing beliefs and points of view connected to how they see reality’s big plot. This is a generalized phenomenon, but its highest expression is found within spiritually-focused thinkers. Many of them come across as evangelizers rather than philosophers, scientists, explorers, or educators. For example: two years ago, David Pearce and I had an uncomfortable conversation with a lady who had a very negative reaction to Pearce’s take on suffering (i.e. that we should use biotechnology to eradicate it). She insisted suffering was part of life and that bliss can’t exist without it (a common argument for sure, but the problem was the intense emotional reaction and insistence on continuing the conversation until we had changed our minds).\nWe learned our lesson – if you suspect that a person has emotionally load-bearing beliefs about a grand plan or big spiritual telos, don’t mention you are trying to reduce suffering with biotechnology. It’s a gamble, and the chance for a pleasant interaction and meaningful exchange of ideas is not worth the risk of interpersonal friction, time investment, and the pointlessness of a potential ensuing heated discussion.\nThis brings me to an important matter…\nWho are the people who are providing genuinely new contributions to the conversation?\nThere is a lot of noise in the field of consciousness research. Understandably, a lot of people react to this state of affairs with generalized skepticism (and even cynicism). In my experience, if you approach a neuroscientist in order to discuss consciousness, she will usually choose to simply listen to her priors rather than to you (no matter how philosophically rigorous and scientifically literate you may be).\nAnd yet, at this conference and many other places, there are indeed a lot of people who have something new and valuable to contribute to our understanding of consciousness. So who are they? What allows a person to make a novel contribution?\nI would suggest that people who fall into one of the following four categories have a higher chance of this:\n\nPeople who have new information\nGreat synthesizers\nHighly creative people with broad knowledge of the field\nNew paradigm proposers\n\nFor (1): This can take one of three forms: (a) New information about phenomenology (i.e. rational psychonauts with strong interpretation and synthesis skills). (b) New third-person data (i.e. as provided by scientists who conduct new research on e.g. neuroimaging). And (c) new information on how to map third-person data to phenomenology, especially about rare states of consciousness (i.e. as obtained from people who have both access to third-person data sources and excellent experienced phenomenologists). (a) Is very hard to come by because most psychonauts and meditators fall for one or more traps (e.g. believing in the tyranny of the intentional object, being direct realists, being dogmatic about a given pre-scientific metaphysic, etc.). (b) Is constrained by the number of labs and the current Kuhnian paradigms within which they work. And (c) is not only rare, but currently nonexistent. Hence, there are necessarily few people who can contribute to the broader conversation about consciousness by bringing new information to the table.\nFor (2): Great synthesizers are hard to come by. They do not need to generate new paradigms or have new information. What they have is the key ability to find what the novel contribution in a given proposal is. They gather what is similar and different across paradigms, and make effective lossless compressions – saving us all valuable time, reducing confusion, and facilitating the cross-pollination between various disciplines and paradigms. This requires the ability to extract what matters from large volumes of extremely detailed and paradigm-specific literature. Hence, it is also rare to find great synthesizers.\nFor (3): Being able to pose new questions, and generate weird but not random hypotheses can often be very useful. Likewise, being able to think of completely outrageous outside-the-box views might be key for advancing our understanding of consciousness. That said, non-philosophers tend to underestimate just how weird an observation about consciousness needs to be for it to be new. This in practice constrains the range of people able to contribute in this way to people who are themselves fairly well acquainted with a broad range of theories of consciousness. That said, I suspect that this could be remedied by forming groups of people who bring different talents to the table. In Peaceful Qualia I discussed a potential empirical approach for investigating consciousness which involves having people who specialize in various aspects of the problem (e.g. being great psychonauts, excellent third-person experimentalists, high-quality synthesizers, solid computational modelers, and so on). But until then, I do not anticipate much progress will come from people who are simply very smart and creative – they also need to have either privileged information (such as what you get from combining weird drugs and brain-computer interfaces), or be very knowledgeable about what is going on in the field.\nAnd (4): This is the most difficult and rarest of all, for it requires some degree of the previous three attributes. Their work wouldn’t be possible without the work of many other people in the previous three categories. Yet, of course, they will be the most world-changing of them all. Explicitly, this is the role that we are aiming for at the Qualia Research Institute.\nIn addition to the above, there are other ways of making highly valuable contributions to the conversation. An example would be those individuals who have become living expressions of current theories of consciousness. That is, people who have deeply understood some paradigm and can propose paradigm-consistent explanations for completely new evidence. E.g. people who can quickly figure out “what would Tononi say about X?” no matter how weird X is. It is my view that one can learn a lot from people in this category. That said… don’t ever expect to change their minds!\nA Final Suggestion: Philosophical Speed Dating\nTo conclude, I would like to make a suggestion in order to increase the value of this and similar conferences: philosophical speed dating. This might be valuable for two reasons. First, I think that a large percentage of people who attend TSC are craving interactions with others who also wonder about consciousness. After all, being intrigued and fascinated by this topic is not very common. Casual interest? Sure. But obsessive curiosity? Pretty uncommon. And most people who attend TCS are in the latter category. At the same time, it is never very pleasant to interact with people who are likely to simply not understand where you are coming from. The diversity of views is so large that finding a person with whom you can have a cogent and fruitful conversation is quite difficult for a lot of people. A Philosophical Speed Dating session in which people quickly state things like their interest in consciousness, take on qualia, preferred approaches, favorite authors, paradigm affinities, etc. would allow philosophical kindred souls to meet at a much higher rate.\nAnd second, in the context of advancing the collective conversation about consciousness, I have found that having people who know where you are coming from (and either share or understand your background assumptions) is the best way to go. The best conversations I’ve had with people usually arise when we have a strong base of shared knowledge and intuitions, but disagree on one or two key points we can identify and meaningfully address. Thus a Philosophical Speed Dating session could lead to valuable collaborations.\nAnd with that, I would like to say: If you do find our approach interesting or worth pursuing, do get in touch.\nTill next time, Tucson!\n\n* In Chalmer’s paper about the Meta-Problem of Consciousness he describes his reason for investigating the subject: “Upon hearing about this article, some people have wondered whether I am converting to illusionism, while others have suspected that I am trying to subvert the illusionist program for opposing purposes. Neither reaction is quite correct. I am really interested in the meta-problem as a problem in its own right. But if one wants to place the paper within the framework of old battles, one might think of it as lending opponents a friendly helping hand.” The quality of a philosopher should not be determined only by their ability to make a good case for their views, but also by the capacity to talk convincingly about their opponent’s. And on that metric, David is certainly world-class.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/04/10/qualia-formalism-in-the-water-supply-reflections-on-the-science-of-consciousness-2018/", "title": "Qualia Formalism in the Water Supply: Reflections on The Science of Consciousness 2018", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-04-11T06:06:21+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=19", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6fc772430249e978273cf8e524eb4582", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Research Institute presentations at The Science of Consciousness 2018 (Tucson, AZ)\n\nAs promised, here are the presentations Michael Johnson and I gave in Tucson last week to represent the Qualia Research Institute.\nHere is Michael’s presentation:\n\nAnd here is my presentation:\n\n\nOn a related note:\n\nZiff Davis PCMag published an interview with me in anticipation of the conference.\nAn ally of QRI, Tomas Frymann, gave a wonderful presentation about Open Individualism titled “Consciousness as Interbeing: Identity on the Other Side of Self-Transcendence“\nAs a bonus, here is the philosophy of mind stand-up comedy sketch I performed at their Poetry Slam, which took place on Friday night (you should likewise check out their classic Zombie Blues).\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/04/09/qualia-research-institute-presentations-at-the-science-of-consciousness-2018-tucson-az/", "title": "Qualia Research Institute presentations at The Science of Consciousness 2018 (Tucson, AZ)", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-04-10T02:11:38+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=19", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "a75dd111f384755026cffa99ce29e75a", "summary": []}
{"text": "Modern Accounts of Psychedelic Action\n\nExcerpts from Unifying Theories of Psychedelic Drug Effects (2018) by Link Swanson (these are just key quotes; the full paper is worth reading)\nAbstract\nHow do psychedelic drugs produce their characteristic range of acute effects in perception, emotion, cognition, and sense of self? How do these effects relate to the clinical efficacy of psychedelic-assisted therapies? Efforts to understand psychedelic phenomena date back more than a century in Western science. In this article I review theories of psychedelic drug effects and highlight key concepts which have endured over the last 125 years of psychedelic science. First, I describe the subjective phenomenology of acute psychedelic effects using the best available data. Next, I review late 19th-century and early 20th-century theories—model psychoses theory, filtration theory, and psychoanalytic theory—and highlight their shared features. I then briefly review recent findings on the neuropharmacology and neurophysiology of psychedelic drugs in humans. Finally, I describe recent theories of psychedelic drug effects which leverage 21st-century cognitive neuroscience frameworks—entropic brain theory, integrated information theory, and predictive processing—and point out key shared features that link back to earlier theories. I identify an abstract principle which cuts across many theories past and present: psychedelic drugs perturb universal brain processes that normally serve to constrain neural systems central to perception, emotion, cognition, and sense of self. I conclude that making an explicit effort to investigate the principles and mechanisms of psychedelic drug effects is a uniquely powerful way to iteratively develop and test unifying theories of brain function.\n\nSubjective rating scale items selected after psilocybin (blue) and placebo (red) (n = 15) (Muthukumaraswamy et al., 2013). “Items were completed using a visual analog scale format, with a bottom anchor of ‘no, not more than usually’ and a top anchor of ‘yes, much more than usually’ for every item, with the exception of ‘I felt entirely normal,’ which had bottom and top anchors of ‘No, I experienced a different state altogether’ and ‘Yes, I felt just as I normally do,’ respectively. Shown are the mean ratings for 15 participants plus the positive SEMs. All items marked with an asterisk were scored significantly higher after psilocybin than placebo infusion at a Bonferroni-corrected significance level of p < 0.0022 (0.5/23 items)” (Muthukumaraswamy et al., 2013, p. 15176).\n\nNeuropharmacology and Neurophysiological Correlates of Psychedelic Drug Effects\nKlee recognized that his above hypotheses, inspired by psychoanalytic theory and LSD effects, required neurophysiological evidence. “As far as I am aware, however, adequate neurophysiological evidence is lacking … The long awaited millennium in which biochemical, physiological, and psychological processes can be freely correlated still seems a great distance off” (Klee, 1963, p. 466, 473). What clues have recent investigations uncovered?\nA psychedelic drug molecule impacts a neuron by binding to and altering the conformation of receptors on the surface of the neuron (Nichols, 2016). The receptor interaction most implicated in producing classic psychedelic drug effects is agonist or partial agonist activity at serotonin (5-HT) receptor type 2A (5-HT2A) (Nichols, 2016). A molecule’s propensity for 5-HT2A affinity and agonist activity predicts its potential for (and potency of) subjective psychedelic effects (Glennon et al., 1984; McKenna et al., 1990; Halberstadt, 2015; Nichols, 2016; Rickli et al., 2016). When a psychedelic drug’s 5-HT2A agonist activity is intentionally blocked using 5-HT2A antagonist drugs (e.g., ketanserin), the subjective effects are blocked or attenuated in humans under psilocybin (Vollenweider et al., 1998; Kometer et al., 2013), LSD (Kraehenmann et al., 2017a,b; Preller et al., 2017), and ayahuasca (Valle et al., 2016). Importantly, while the above evidence makes it clear that 5-HT2A activation is a necessary (if not sufficient) mediator of the hallmark subjective effects of classic psychedelic drugs, this does not entail that 5-HT2A activation is the sole neurochemical cause of all subjective effects. For example, 5-HT2A activation might trigger neurochemical modulations ‘downstream’ (e.g., changes in glutamate transmission) which could also play causal roles in producing psychedelic effects (Nichols, 2016). Moreover, most psychedelic drug molecules activate other receptors in addition to 5-HT2A (e.g., 5-HT1A, 5-HT2C, dopamine, sigma, etc.) and these activations may importantly contribute to the overall profile of subjective effects even if 5-HT2A activation is required for their effects to occur (Ray, 2010, 2016).\nHow does psychedelic drug-induced 5-HT2A receptor agonism change the behavior of the host neuron? Generally, 5-HT2A activation has a depolarizing effect on the neuron, making it more excitable (more likely to fire) (Andrade, 2011; Nichols, 2016). Importantly, this does not necessarily entail that 5-HT2Aactivation will have an overall excitatory effect throughout the brain, particularly if the excitation occurs in inhibitory neurons (Andrade, 2011). This important consideration (captured by the adage ‘one neuron’s excitation is another neuron’s inhibition’) should be kept in mind when tracing causal links in the pharmaco-neurophysiology of psychedelic drug effects.\nIn mammalian brains, neurons tend to ‘fire together’ in synchronized rhythms known as temporal oscillations (brain waves). MEG and EEG equipment measure the electromagnetic disturbances produced by the temporal oscillations of large neural populations and these measurements can be quantified according to their amplitude (power) and frequency (timing) (Buzsáki and Draguhn, 2004). Specific combinations of frequency and amplitude can be correlated with distinct brain states, including waking ‘resting’ state, various attentional tasks, anesthesia, REM sleep, and deep sleep (Tononi and Koch, 2008; Atasoy et al., 2017a). In what ways do temporal oscillations change under psychedelic drugs? MEG and EEG studies consistently show reductions in oscillatory power across a broad frequency range under ayahuasca (Riba et al., 2002, 2004; Schenberg et al., 2015; Valle et al., 2016), psilocybin (Muthukumaraswamy et al., 2013; Kometer et al., 2015; Schartner et al., 2017), and LSD (Carhart-Harris et al., 2016c; Schartner et al., 2017). Reductions in the power of alpha-band oscillations, localized mainly to parietal and occipital cortex, have been correlated with intensity of subjective visual effects—e.g., ‘I saw geometric patterns’ or ‘My imagination was extremely vivid’—under psilocybin (Kometer et al., 2013; Muthukumaraswamy et al., 2013; Schartner et al., 2017) and ayahuasca (Riba et al., 2004; Valle et al., 2016). Under LSD, reductions in alpha power still correlated with intensity of subjective visual effects but associated alpha reductions were more widely distributed throughout the brain (Carhart-Harris et al., 2016c). Furthermore, ego-dissolution effects and mystical-type experiences (e.g., ‘I experienced a disintegration of my “self” or “ego”’ or ‘The experience had a supernatural quality’) have been correlated with reductions in alpha power localized to anterior and posterior cingulate cortices and the parahippocampal regions under psilocybin (Muthukumaraswamy et al., 2013; Kometer et al., 2015) and throughout the brain under LSD (Carhart-Harris et al., 2016c).\nThe concept of functional connectivity rests upon fMRI brain imaging observations that reveal temporal correlations of activity occurring in spatially remote regions of the brain which form highly structured patterns (brain networks) (Buckner et al., 2013). Imaging of brains during perceptual or cognitive task performance reveals patterns of functional connectivity known as functional networks; e.g., control network, dorsal attention network, ventral attention network, visual network, auditory network, and so on. Imaging brains in taskless resting conditions reveals resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and structured patterns of RSFC known as resting state networks (RSNs; Deco et al., 2011). One particular RSN, the default mode network (DMN; Buckner et al., 2008), increases activity in the absence of tasks and decreases activity during task performance (Fox and Raichle, 2007). DMN activity is strong during internally directed cognition and a variety of other ‘metacognitive’ functions (Buckner et al., 2008). DMN activation in normal waking states exhibits ‘inverse coupling’ or anticorrelation with the activation of task-positive functional networks, meaning that DMN and functional networks are often mutually exclusive; one deactivates as the other activates and vice versa (Fox and Raichle, 2007).\nIn what ways does brain network connectivity change under psychedelic drugs? First, functional connectivity between key ‘hub’ areas—mPFC and PCC—is reduced. Second, the ‘strength’ or oscillatory power of the DMN is weakened and its intrinsic functional connectivity becomes disintegrated as its component nodes become decoupled under psilocybin (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012, 2013), ayahuasca (Palhano-Fontes et al., 2015), and LSD (Carhart-Harris et al., 2016c; Speth et al., 2016). Third, brain networks that normally show anticorrelation become active simultaneously under psychedelic drugs. This situation, which can be described as increased between-network functional connectivity, occurs under psilocybin (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012, 2013; Roseman et al., 2014; Tagliazucchi et al., 2014), ayahuasca (Palhano-Fontes et al., 2015) and especially LSD (Carhart-Harris et al., 2016c; Tagliazucchi et al., 2016). Fourth and finally, the overall repertoire of explored functional connectivity motifs is substantially expanded and its informational dynamics become more diverse and entropic compared with normal waking states (Tagliazucchi et al., 2014, 2016; Alonso et al., 2015; Lebedev et al., 2016; Viol et al., 2016; Atasoy et al., 2017b; Schartner et al., 2017). Notably, the magnitude of occurrence of the above four neurodynamical themes correlates with subjective intensity of psychedelic effects during the drug session. Furthermore, visual cortex is activated during eyes-closed psychedelic visual imagery (de Araujo et al., 2012; Carhart-Harris et al., 2016c) and under LSD “the early visual system behaves ‘as if’ it were receiving spatially localized visual information” as V1-V3 RSFC is activated in a retinotopic fashion (Roseman et al., 2016, p. 3036).\nTaken together, the recently discovered neurophysiological correlates of subjective psychedelic effects present an important puzzle for 21st-century neuroscience. A key clue is that 5-HT2A receptor agonism leads to desynchronization of oscillatory activity, disintegration of intrinsic integrity in the DMN and related brain networks, and an overall brain dynamic characterized by increased between-network global functional connectivity, expanded signal diversity, and a larger repertoire of structured neurophysiological activation patterns. Crucially, these characteristic traits of psychedelic brain activity have been correlated with the phenomenological dynamics and intensity of subjective psychedelic effects.\n\n21st-Century Theories of Psychedelic Drug Effects\nEntropic Brain Theory\nEntropic Brain Theory (EBT; Carhart-Harris et al., 2014) links the phenomenology and neurophysiology of psychedelic effects by characterizing both in terms of the quantitative notions of entropy and uncertainty. Entropy is a quantitative index of a system’s (physical) disorder or randomness which can simultaneously describe its (informational) uncertainty. EBT “proposes that the quality of any conscious state depends on the system’s entropy measured via key parameters of brain function” (Carhart-Harris et al., 2014, p. 1). Their hypothesis states that hallmark psychedelic effects (e.g., perceptual destabilization, cognitive flexibility, ego dissolution) can be mapped directly onto elevated levels of entropy/uncertainty measured in brain activity, e.g., widened repertoire of functional connectivity patterns, reduced anticorrelation of brain networks, and desynchronization of RSN activity. More specifically, EBT characterizes the difference between psychedelic states and normal waking states in terms of how the underlying brain dynamics are positioned on a scale between the two extremes of order and disorder—a concept known as ‘self-organized criticality’ (Beggs and Plenz, 2003). A system with high order (low entropy) exhibits dynamics that resemble ‘petrification’ and are relatively inflexible but more stable, while a system with low order (high entropy) exhibits dynamics that resemble ‘formlessness’ and are more flexible but less stable. The notion of ‘criticality’ describes the transition zone in which the brain remains poised between order and disorder. Physical systems at criticality exhibit increased transient ‘metastable’ states, increased sensitivity to perturbation, and increased propensity for cascading ‘avalanches’ of metastable activity. Importantly, EBT points out that these characteristics are consistent with psychedelic phenomenology, e.g., hypersensitivity to external stimuli, broadened range of experiences, or rapidly shifting perceptual and mental contents. Furthermore, EBT uses the notion of criticality to characterize the difference between psychedelic states and normal waking states as it “describes cognition in adult modern humans as ‘near critical’ but ‘sub-critical’—meaning that its dynamics are poised in a position between the two extremes of formlessness and petrification where there is an optimal balance between order and flexibility” (Carhart-Harris et al., 2014, p. 12). EBT hypothesizes that psychedelic drugs interfere with ‘entropy-suppression’ brain mechanisms which normally sustain sub-critical brain dynamics, thus bringing the brain “closer to criticality in the psychedelic state” (Carhart-Harris et al., 2014, p. 12).\n\nIntegrated Information Theory\nIntegrated Information Theory (IIT) is a general theoretical framework which describes the relationship between consciousness and its physical substrates (Oizumi et al., 2014; Tononi, 2004, 2008). While EBT is already loosely consistent with the core principles of IIT, Gallimore (2015) demonstrates how EBT’s hypotheses can be operationalized using the technical concepts of the IIT framework. Using EBT and recent neuroimaging data as a foundation, Gallimore develops an IIT-based model of psychedelic effects. Consistent with EBT, this IIT-based model describes the brain’s continual challenge of minimizing entropy while retaining flexibility. Gallimore formally restates this problem using IIT parameters: brains attempt to optimize the give-and-take dynamic between cause-effect information and cognitive flexibility. In IIT, a (neural) system generates cause-effect information when the mechanisms which make up its current state constrain the set of states which could casually precede or follow the current state. In other words, each mechanistic state of the brain: (1) limits the set of past states which could have causally given rise to it, and (2) limits the set of future states which can causally follow from it. Thus, each current state of the mechanisms within a neural system (or subsystem) has an associated cause-effect repertoire which specifies a certain amount of cause-effect information as a function of how stringently it constrains the unconstrained state repertoire of all possible system states. Increasing the entropy within a cause-effect repertoire will in effect constrain the system less stringently as the causal possibilities are expanded in both temporal directions as the system moves closer to its unconstrained repertoire of all possible states. Moreover, increasing the entropy within a cause-effect repertoire equivalently increases the uncertainty associated with its past (and future) causal interactions. Using this IIT-based framework, Gallimore (2015)argues that, compared with normal waking states, psychedelic brain states exhibit higher entropy, higher cognitive flexibility, but lower cause-effect information.\n\nPredictive Processing\nThe first modern brain imaging measurements in humans under psilocybin yielded somewhat unexpected results: reductions in oscillatory power (MEG) and cerebral blood flow (fMRI) correlated with the intensity of subjective psychedelic effects (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012; Muthukumaraswamy et al., 2013). In their discussion, the authors suggest that their findings, although surprising through the lens of commonly held beliefs about how brain activity maps to subjective phenomenology, may actually be consistent with a theory of brain function known as the free energy principle (FEP; Friston, 2010).\n\nIn one model of global brain function based on the free-energy principle (Friston, 2010), activity in deep-layer projection neurons encodes top-down inferences about the world. Speculatively, if deep-layer pyramidal cells were to become hyperexcitable during the psychedelic state, information processing would be biased in the direction of inference—such that implicit models of the world become spontaneously manifest—intruding into consciousness without prior invitation from sensory data. This could explain many of the subjective effects of psychedelics (Muthukumaraswamy et al., 2013, p. 15181).\n\nWhat is FEP? “In this view, the brain is an inference machine that actively predicts and explains its sensations. Central to this hypothesis is a probabilistic model that can generate predictions, against which sensory samples are tested to update beliefs about their causes” (Friston, 2010). FEP is a formulation of a broader conceptual framework emerging in cognitive neuroscience known as predictive processing (PP; Clark, 2013)10. PP has links to bayesian brain hypothesis (Knill and Pouget, 2004), predictive coding (Rao and Ballard, 1999), and earlier theories of perception and cognition (MacKay, 1956; Neisser, 1967; Gregory, 1968) dating back to Helmholtz (1925) who was inspired by Kant (1996; see Swanson, 2016). At the turn of the 21st century, the ideas of Helmholtz catalyzed innovations in machine learning (Dayan et al., 1995), new understandings of cortical organization (Mumford, 1992; Friston, 2005), and theories of how perception works (Kersten and Yuille, 2003; Lee and Mumford, 2003).\n\nConclusion\nThe four key features identified in filtration and psychoanalytic accounts from the late 19th and early 20th century continue to operate in 21st-century cognitive neuroscience: (1) psychedelic drugs produce their characteristic diversity of effects because they perturb adaptive mechanisms which normally constrain perception, emotion, cognition, and self-reference, (2) these adaptive mechanisms can develop pathologies rooted in either too much or too little constraint (3) psychedelic effects appear to share elements with psychotic symptoms because both involve weakened constraints (4) psychedelic drugs are therapeutically useful precisely because they offer a way to temporarily inhibit these adaptive constraints. It is on these four points that EBT, IIT, and PP seem consistent with each other and with earlier filtration and psychoanalytic accounts. EBT and IIT describe psychedelic brain dynamics and link them to phenomenological dynamics, while PP describes informational principles and plausible neural information exchanges which might underlie the larger-scale dynamics described by EBT and IIT. Certain descriptions of neural entropy-suppression mechanisms (EBT), cause-effect information constraints (IIT), or prediction-error minimization strategies (PP, FEP) are loosely consistent with Freud’s ego and Huxley’s cerebral reducing valve.\n\nQualia Computing comment: As you can see above, 21st century theories of psychedelic action have a lot of interesting commonalities. A one-line summary of what they all agree on could be: Psychedelics increase the available state-space of consciousness by removing constraints that are normally imposed by standard brain functioning. That said, they do not make specific predictions about valence. That is, they leave the question of “which alien states of consciousness will feel good and which ones will feel bad” completely unaddressed. In the following posts about the presentations of members of the Qualia Research Institute at The Science of Consciousness 2018 you will see how, unlike other modern accounts, our Qualia Formalist approach to consciousness can elucidate this matter.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/04/09/modern-accounts-of-psychedelic-action/", "title": "Modern Accounts of Psychedelic Action", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-04-10T01:31:07+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=19", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b13aa6625788b1a43bcc5b22ea57707f", "summary": []}
{"text": "From Point-of-View Fragmentation to Global Visual Coherence: Harmony, Symmetry, and Resonance on LSD\n\nExcerpt from The Grand Illusion: A Psychonautical Odyssey Into the Depths of Human Experience by the cognitive scientist Steven Lehar (2010; pages 23-40).\nTrip to Europe\nI had two or three such experiences on my new batch of LSD, taking perhaps 2 or 3 “hits” (tabs) each time (presumed to be about [100] micrograms, or “mikes” per tab). And each time the experience became somewhat more familiar, and I learned to think more clearly under its influence. In July 1990 I took a trip to Europe with Tim, a colleague from work, because we were both presenting posters at a neural network conference in Paris, and the company where we worked very kindly funded the travel expenses. Tim and I took this opportunity to plan a little excursion around Europe after the conference, visiting Germany, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland touring in a rented car. When we got to Austria we bought a little tent at a camping store, then we hiked up an enormous mountain in the Alps, and spent the day sightseeing at the top. When I told Tim that I happened to have some LSD with me, his eyes lit up. It turns out he too had been a hippy in his youth, and had even attended the original Woodstock, so he immediately warmed to the idea of taking LSD with me on a mountain top, although he had not done psychedelic drugs in over a decade. So there in the most stupendous and idyllic setting of a mountain in the Austrian alps, early the next morning after camping overnight, we consumed five hits of LSD each, and spent the day in profound wonder at the glory of creation!\nI made a few new and interesting discoveries on that mountain top in Austria. First of all, I learned to have a great deal more control of the experience in the following manner. I discovered that the effects of LSD become markedly stronger and more pronounced when you sit still and stare, and clear your mind, much like a state of zen meditation, or pre-hypnotic relaxation. When you do this under LSD, the visual world begins to break up and fragment in a most astonishing way. You tend to lose all sense of self, that is, you lose the distinction between self and non-self. This can be a very alarming experience for those who are prone to panic or anxiety, or for those who insist on maintaining a level of control and awareness of themselves and the world around them. But I also discovered that this mental dissociation and visual confusion can be diminished, and normal consciousness can be largely restored by simply looking around, moving about, and interacting actively with the world around you. Because when you do this, suddenly the world appears as a solid and stable structure again, and your familiar body reappears where it belongs at the center of your world of experience. This discovery greatly enhanced my ability to explore the deeper spaces of consciousness revealed by the drug, while providing an insurance against the natural panic that tends to arise with the dissolusion of the self, and the world around you. It allowed me to descend into the depths of the experience while maintaining a life line back to consensual reality, like a spelunker descending into the bowels of the deep underground cavern of my mind, while always able to return safely to the surface. And what a splendid and magnificent cavern it was that I discovered within my mind!\nOne of the most prominent aspects of consciousness that has puzzled philosophers and psychologists for centuries is the unity of conscious experience. We feel that we live in a world that surrounds our body, and that world appears as a single “picture” or volumetric spatial structure, like a theatre set, every piece of which takes its proper place in the panorama of surrounding experience. It has always been somewhat difficult to grasp this notion of conscious unity, because it is difficult to even conceptualize the alternative. What would consciousness be like if it were not unified? What does that even mean? Under LSD you can discover what non-unified consciousness is like for yourself, and that in turn by contrast offers profound insights as to the nature and meaning of unified consciousness. Again, the most interesting revelations of the psychedelic experience are not confined to that experience itself, but they reveal insights into the nature of normal conscious experience that might otherwise be missed due to its familiarity. In fact, I realized much later, even normal consciousness has aspects which are not unified.\nThe most familiar example of non-unified consciousness is seen in binocular vision. Under normal conditions the two eyes view the same scene and produce a three-dimensional “picture” in the mind that is a unified construction based on the information from both eyes simultaneously. But everyone knows the experience of double vision. For those with greater control over their own visual function, double vision is easily achieved by simply staring into space and relaxing the eyes. As a vision scientist myself, I have trained myself to do this so as to be able to “free fuse” a binocular pair of left-eye, right-eye images to create the perception of a 3D scene. For those who have difficulty with this, a similar experience can be had by holding a small mirror at an angle close in front of one eye, so as to send very different images into the two eyes. Whichever way you do it, the result is rather unremarkable in its familiarity, and yet when you think of it, this is in fact an example of disunity of conscious experience that is familiar to one and all. For what you see in double vision is actually two visual experiences which are seen as if they are superimposed in some manner, and yet at the same time they are also experienced each in its own separate disconnected space. It is generally possible to observe the correspondence between these two disconnected visual experiences, for example to determine which point in one eye view relates to a particular point in the other, as if viewing two slide transparencies that are overlaid on top of one another, although this correspondence is shifting and unstable, as the vergence between your two eyes tends to wander when binocular fusion is broken. But in fact it is more natural to simply ignore that correspondence and to view the two visual experiences as separate and disconnected spaces that bear no significant spatial relation to each other. When the images in our two eyes do not correspond, we tend to focus on one while ignoring the other, like an experienced marksman who no longer has to close his idle eye while aiming a gun. And yet, although the image from the idle eye is generally ignored, it has not left consciousness entirely, and with an effort, or perhaps more accurately, with an absence of effort or focus, it is possible to experience both views simultaneously.\nIn the trance-like state of yoga-like meditation performed under LSD, the entire visual world breaks up and fragments in this manner into a multitude of disconnected parallel conscious experiences, each one only loosly related spatially to the other experiences in the visual field. The effect is much enhanced by the fact that your eyes actually diverge or relax in this mental state, as they do under binocular fission, and this helps trigger the state of visual confusion as your mind gives up on trying to make sense of what it is seeing. As in Zen meditation, the LSD trance state is a passive or receptive state of consciousness that allots equal attention, or perhaps lack of attention, to all components of experience, which is why they appear in parallel as separate disconnected pieces. The state of normal active consciousness resists this kind of parallel confusion, and tends to select and focus on the the most significant portion, like the marksman aiming a gun, suppressing alternative experiences such as the view from the idle eye.\nThe deep LSD-induced trance state can be easily broken by simply moving the eyes, so conversely, the deeper states are achieved by complete mental and physical relaxation, with glazed eyes staring blankly into space. But of all the separate fragments of visual experience observed in this mental state, there is one special fragment located at the very center of the visual field, the foveal center, that appears somewhat sharper and clearer than the rest of the visual field. In fact, the visual fragmentation is somewhat like a kind of tunnel vision in which the peripheral portions of the visual field break off and disconnect from this central portion of the experience. But while the peripheral fragments become separated from the whole, they are never entirely and completely independent, but appear to interact with each other, and especially with the central foveal image in characteristic ways. For example if the foveal image shows a couple of blades of grass, twitching and dancing in the wind, then if any of the peripheral fragments of visual experience happen to show a similar image, i.e. blades of grass at a similar angle and twitching and dancing in synchrony with those in the foveal view, then the central and peripheral images become instantly coupled into a larger unified perceptual experience of a global motion sweeping through the image. Instead of a million blades of grass each twitching individually, we perceive the invisible wind as a wave of synchronous motion that sweeps invisibly across the blades of grass. The waves of motion caused by the wind are perceived as waves of energy across the visual field, a perceptual experience of something larger than the individual grass blades that collectively give rise to it. By careful adjustment of my state of relaxation, I found I could relax until the visual world fragmented into a million independent experiences, and I could gently bring it back into focus, as first a few, and then ever more of the fragmented visual experiences coupled together into fewer separate, and eventually a single unified global experience, much like the moment of binocular fusion when the two monocular images finally lock into each other to produce a single binocular experience.\nWhen the visual world was locked into a unified perceptual experience, even then there were instabilities in local portions of the scene. A little detail seen in distant trees appears first as a mounted horseman, then pops abruptly into a hand with three fingers extended, then to a duck on a branch, then back to the mounted horseman, all the while the actual shape and color perceived remain unchanged, it is only the interpretation, or visual understanding of that pattern that switches constantly, as when a child sees mountains and castles in the clouds. One of the many possible interpretations is of a dead tree with leafless branches, (the veridical percept of what was actually there) and that is the only alternative that enters consciouseness under normal circumstances. The effect of LSD is to make the visual system more tolerant of obvious contradictions in the scene, such as a giant horseman frozen in a line of trees. The effect is like those surrealistic Dali paintings, for example the Three Ages of Man, shown in Figure 2.1, where one sees a single coherent scene, local parts of which spontaneously invert into some alternative interpretation. This is very significant for the nature of biological vision, for it shows that vision involves a dynamic relaxation process whose stable states represent the final perceptual interpretation.\n\nThere was another interesting observation that I made that day. I noticed that under LSD things appear a little more regular and geometrical than they otherwise do. It is not the shape of things that is different under LSD, but rather the shape of the things we see in objects. For example a cloud is about as irregular and fragmented a shape as a shape can be, and yet we tend to see clouds in a simplified cartoon manner, as a little puff composed of simple convex curves. A real cloud under closer inspection reveals a ragged ugly appearance with very indefinite boundaries and irregular structure. Under LSD the cloud becomes even more regular than usual. I began to see parts of the cloud as regular geometrical shapes, seeing the shapes in the shapes of the cloud as if on a transparent overlay.\nAnother rather astonishing observation of the LSD experience was that the visual world wavered and wobbled slowly as if the visual scene was painted on an elastic canvas that would stretch over here while shrinking over there, with great waves of expansion and contraction moving slowly across the scene, as if the whole scene was “breathing”, with its component parts in constant motion relative to each other. This was perhaps the most compelling evidence that the world of experience is not the solid stable world that it portrays. Figure 2.2 shows a sketch I made shortly after my alpine mountain adventure to try to express the wavery elasticity and the visual regularity I had observed under LSD. This picture is of course an exaggeration, more of an impression than a depiction of how the experience actually appeared.\n\nThe geometrical regularity was particularly prominent in peripheral vision, when attending to the periphery without looking to see what is there. Usually peripheral vision is hardly noticed, giving the impression of a homogeneous visual field, but under LSD the loss of resolution in peripheral vision becomes more readily apparent, especially when holding a fixed and glassy stare. And in that periphery, objects like trees or shrubs appear more regular and geometrical than they do in central vision, like artificial Christmas trees with perfectly regular spacing of brances and twigs. Again, it was not the raw image in the periphery that appeared regular or geometrical, but rather it was the invisible skeleton of visual understanding derived from that raw colored experience that exhibits the more regular features. And suddenly I could see it. This is the way the visual system encodes visual form in a compact or compressed manner, by expressing shape in terms of the next nearest regular geometrical form, or combination of forms. Children draw a tree as a circular blob of leaves on top of a straight vertical trunk, or a pine tree as a green triangle with saw-tooth sides. It is not that we see trees in those simplified forms, but rather that we see those simplified forms in the trees, and the forms that we perceive in these invisible skeletons are the expression of our understanding of the shapes we perceive those more irregular forms to have. This was later to turn into my harmonic resonance theory of the brain, as I sought an explanation for this emerging regularity in perception, but in 1990 all I saw was the periodicity and the symmetry, and I thought they were profoundly beautiful.\nMy friend Tim who had not done LSD for many years, responded to this sudden 5 hit dose by going into a state of complete dissociation. He lay down on the forest floor with glassy eyes, muttering “It is TOO beautiful! It is TOO beautiful!” and he did not respond to me, even when I stared him straight in the face. He reported afterwards that he found himself in a giant Gothic cathedral with the most extravagantly elaborate and brightly painted ornamental decorations all around him. This too can be seen as an extreme form of the regularization discussed above. Under the influence of this powerful dose, Tim’s visual brain could no longer keep up with the massive irregularity of the forest around him, and therefore presented the forest in simplified or abbreviated form, as the interior of a Gothic cathedral. It captures the large geometry of a ground plane that supports an array of vertical columns, each of which fans out high overhead to link up into an over-arching canopy of branches. The only difference is that in the Gothic cathedral the trees are in a regular geometrical array, and each one is a masterpiece of compound symmetry, composed of smaller pillars of different diameters in perfectly symmetrical arrangements, and studded with periodic patterns of ribs, ridges, or knobby protruberances as a kind of celebration of symmetry and periodicity for their own sake. There is a kind of geometrical logic expressed in the ornamental design. If part of the cathedral were lost or destroyed, the pattern could be easily restored by following the same logic as the rest of the design. In information-theoretic terms, the Gothic cathedral has lots of redundancy, its pattern could be expressed in a very much simpler compressed geometrical code. In Tim’s drug-addled brain his visual system could only muster a simple code to represent the world around him, and that is why Tim saw the forest as a Gothic cathedral. Under normal conditions, the additional information of irregularity, or how each tree and branch breaks from the strict regularity of the cathedral model of it, creates the irregular world of experience that we normally see around us. This suggests that the beautiful shapes of ornamental art are not the product of the highest human faculty, as is commonly supposed, but rather, ornamental art offers a window onto the workings of a simpler visual system, whose image of the world is distorted by artifacts of the representational scheme used in the brain. The Gothic cathedral gives a hint as to how the world might appear to a simpler creature, a lizard, or a snake, to whom the world appears more regular than it does to us, because its full irregularity is too expensive to encode exhaustively in all its chaotic details. Of course the flip-side of this rumination is that the world that we humans experience, even in the stone-cold sober state, is itself immeasurably simpler, more regular and geometric, that the real world itself, of which our experience is an imperfect replica. In the words of William Blake, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”\nMittersill\nWhile I was a PhD student at Boston University, my parents owned a beautiful ski lodge house in the picturesque town of Mittersill in the mountains of New Hampshire, and on spring breaks or long week-ends I would invite my friends, the other PhD candidates, up to Mittersill where we would take long hikes up the mountain, and spend evenings by the fireplace. I introduced a small circle of my friends to the illuminating experience of LSD, in the hopes of sharing some of my perceptual discoveries with them, and perhaps inducing them to learn to use the experience to make discoveries of their own. Eventually Mittersill became associated in our minds with these group trips with an ever-shrinking circle of true diehard psychonauts, making our regular pilgrimage up the mountain in search of Truth and to touch the face of God. We always brought a goodly supply of Happy T’Baccy, which provides a beautiful complement and bemellowment to the otherwise sometimes sharp and jangly LSD experience. Our pattern was usually to arrive on a Friday night, cook up a great feast, and spend an evening by the fire, drinking beer and/or wine and passing the pipe around until everyone felt properly toasted. The talk was often about the workings of mind and brain, since we were all students of cognitive and neural systems. We were all adept computer programmers and well versed in mathematics as part of our PhD studies, so we all understood the issues of mental computation and representation, and I found the conversations about the computational principles of the mind, to be most interesting and intellectually stimulating. This was the high point of my academic career, this is why people want to be scientists. The next morning we would rise early, and after a hearty breakfast, we would all set off up the mountain, which was a steep brisk climb of two or three hours. About half way up the mountain, at a carefully pre-planned time, we would stop, and each “dose up” with our individually chosen dose of LSD for the occasion, timed to reach the peak of the experience about the time we reached the peak of the mountain. Then we would continue our climb through the rich lush mountain forests of New Hampshire to the top of Maida Vale, the sub-peak next to Canon Mountain, from whence a stupendous view opened up across to Canon Mountain and the vast valley below. We would settle ourselves comfortably at some location off the beaten track, and spend the best hours of the day just dreaming crazy thoughts and drinking in the experience\nBy now I had perfected my introspective techniques to the point that I could voluntarily relax my mind into a state of total disembodiment. The visual world began to fragment, first into two large pieces as binocular fusion was broken, then into a few smaller fragments, and eventually into a miriad of separate fragments of consciousness, like the miriad reflections from a shattered mirror. I was fascinated by this state of consciousness, and how different it was from normal consensual reality. Most alarming or significant was the total absence of my body from its normal place at the center of my world. As the world began to fragment, my body would fragment along with it, disconnected pieces of my body seeming to exist independently, one part here, another over there, but in separate spaces that did not exist in a distinct spatial relation to each other, but as if in different universes, like reflections from different shards of a shattered mirror. And as the visual world attained total fragmentation, all evidence of my body completely vanished, and I lived the experience of a disembodied spirit, pure raw experience, just sensations of color, form, and light. I felt safe and secure in this environment among friends, so I did not mind the total vulnerability afforded by a complete functional shutdown of my mind in this manner. Besides, I had learned that I could snap back together again to a relatively normal consciousness at will, simply by getting up and looking around, and interacting with the world. I was endlessly fascinated by the state of complete disembodiment, and one feature of it impressed itself on me again and again, the geometric regularity of it all. There was a powerful tendency for everything to reduce to ornamental patterns, geometrical arrangements of three-dimensional shapes, like so many glistening gems in a jewelry store, with rich periodic and symmetrical patterns in deep vibrant colors. The deeper I plunged into the experience, the simpler and more powerfully emotive those patterns became. And since my body had totally vanished, these patterns were no longer patterns I viewed out in the world, but rather, the patterns were me, I had become the spatial patterns which made up my experience. I began to see that symmetry and periodicity were somehow primal to experience.\nI remember lying on my back and watching the clouds in the sky overhead. Weather patterns are often chaotic at the tops of mountains, and on more than one occasion we were located at a spot where the clouds that formed on the windward side of the mountain were just cresting the summit, where they would dissove in a continuous process of chaotic fragmentation, a veritable Niagra Falls of nebular dissolution, evocative of the fragmentation of my psychedelic experience. The shattered shreds of cloud, viewed from this close up, were about the most ragged and irregular shapes you could imagine, and yet under the influence of the drug I kept seeing fleeting geometrical patterns in them. There were great circular pinwheels and arabesques, patterns like those carved in the doors of Gothic cathedrals, but each flashing in and out of brief existence so quickly that it would be impossible to draw them. I began to realize that the human mind is one great symmetry engine, that the mind makes sense of the world it sees by way of the symmetries that it finds in it. Symmetry is the glue that binds the fragments of experience into coherent wholes.\nFigure 2.3 shows a series of paintings by artist Louis Wain, that I find very evocative of the LSD experience. Wain suffered a progressive psychosis that manifested itself in his art, which was originally quite realistic, becomming progressively more abstract and ornamental, in the manner I observed in the various stages or levels of my LSD dissociation. Figure 2.3 A shows a fairly realistic depiction of a cat, but there are curious artifacts in the textured background, a mere hint of periodicity breaking out. I would see such artifacts everywhere, almost invisible, fleeting, and faint, reminiscent of the ornamental pinstripe patterns painted on trucks and motorcycles, a kind of eddy in the stream of visual consciousness as it flows around visual features in the scene. As I descended into the fully dissociated states, the patterns would become more like Figure 2.3 B, C, and D, breathtakingly ornate, with many levels of compound symmetry, revealing the eigenfunctions of perceptual representation, the code by which visual form is represented in the brain.\nAt times we would break free from our individual reveries, and share absurd nonsensical conversations about our observations. One time, looking down at the vast valley stretching out below us, a vista that seemed to stretch out to distances beyond comprehension, my old friend Peter said that it was hard to tell whether all that scenery was just “way out there”, or was it “way WAY out there?” Of course we both laughed heartily at the absurdity of his statement, but I knew exactly what he meant. When viewing such a grand vista under normal consciousness, one is deeply impressed by the vastness of the view.\n\nBut under the influence of the drug, the vista somehow did not look quite as large as we “knew” that it really was. What Peter was saying was that for some strange reason, the world had shrunken back in on us, and that magnificently vast valley had shrunken to something like a scale model, or a diorama, where it is easy to see how vast the modeled valley is supposed to be, but the model itself appears very much smaller than the valley it attempts to portray. What Peter was observing was the same thing I had observed, and that was beginning to even become familiar, that the world of our experience is not a great open vastness of infinite space, but like the domed vault of the night sky, our experience is bounded by, and contained within, a vast but finite spherical shell, and under the influence of psychedelic drugs that shell seemed to shrink to smaller dimensions, our consciousness was closing in on its egocentric center. Many years later after giving it considerable thought, I built the diorama shown in Figure 2.4 to depict the geometry of visual experience as I observed it under LSD.\n\nAnd when I was in the completely disembodied state, my consciousness closed in even smaller and tighter, the range of my experience was all contained within a rather modest sized space, like a glass showcase in a jewelry store, and the complexity of the patterns in that space was also reduced, from the unfathomably complex and chaotic fractal forms in a typical natural scene, to a much simpler but powerfully beautiful glistening ornamental world of the degree of complexity seen in a Gothic cathedral. The profound significance of these observations dawned on me incrementally every time we had these experiences. I can recall fragmentary pieces of insights gleaned through the confusion of our passage down the mountain, stopping to sit and think wherever and whenever the spirit took us. At one point three of us stopped by a babbling brook that was crashing and burbling through the rocks down the steep mountain slope. We sat in silent contemplation at this primal “white noise” sound, when Lonce commented that if you listen, you can hear a million different sounds hidden in that noise. And sure enough when I listened, I heard laughing voices and honking car horns and shrieking crashes and jangly music and every other possible sound, all at the same time superimposed on each other in a chaotic jumbled mass. It was the auditory equivalent of what we were seeing visually, the mind was latching onto the raw sensory experience not so much to view it as it really is, but to conjure up random patterns from deep within our sensory memory and to match those images to the current sensory input. And now I could see the more general concept. We experience the world by way of these images conjured up in our minds. I came to realize why the LSD experience was enjoyed best in outdoors natural settings, and that is because the chaos of a natural scene, with its innumerable twigs and leaves and stalks, acts as a kind of “white noise” stimulus, like the babbling brook, a stimulus that contains within it every possible pattern, and that frees our mind to interpret that noise as anything it pleases.\nOn one occasion, on arrival back down at the lodge, our minds were still reeling, and we were not yet ready to leave the magnificence of the natural landscape for the relatively tame and controlled environment indoors, so Andy and I stopped in the woods behind the house and just stood there, like deer in the headlights, drinking in the experience. It was a particularly dark green and leafy environment in the shadow behind the house, with shrubs and leaves at every level, around our ankles, our knees, our shoulders, and all the way up to a leafy canopy high overhead, and at every depth and distance from inches away to the farthest visible depths of the deep green woods. The visual chaos was total and complete, the world already fragmented into millions and millions of apparently disconnected features and facets uniformly in all directions, that it hardly required LSD to appreciate the richness of this chaotic experience. But under LSD, and with the two of us standing stock still for many long minutes of total silence, we both descended into a mental fragmentation as crazy as the fragmented world around us. My body disappeared from my experience, and I felt like I became the forest; the forest and all its visual chaos was me, which in a very real sense it actually was. And in that eternal timeless moment, wrapped in intense but wordless thought, I recognized something very very ancient and primal in my experience. I felt like I was sharing the experience of some primal creature in an ancient swamp many millions of years ago, when nature was first forging its earliest models of mind from the tissue of brain. I saw the world with the same intense attentive concentration, bewilderment, and total absence of human cogntive understanding, as that antediluvian cretaceous lizard must have experienced long ago and far away. The beautiful geometrical and symmetrical forms that condensed spontaneously in my visual experience were like the first glimmerings of understanding emerging in a primitive visual brain. This is why I do psychedelic drugs, to connect more intimately with my animal origins, to celebrate the magnificent mental mechanisms that we inherit from the earliest animal pioneers of mind.\nOne time after we had descended from the mountain and were sitting around the lodge drinking and smoking in a happy state of befuddlement, a peculiar phenomenon manifested itself that made a deep impression on me. It was getting close to supper time and somebody expressed something to that effect. But our minds were so befuddled by the intoxication that we could only speak in broken sentences, as we inevitably forgot what we wanted to say just as we started saying it, instantly confused by our own initial words. So the first person must have said something like “I’m getting hungry. Do you think…” and then tailed off in confusion. But somebody else would immediately sense the direction that thought was going, and would instinctively attempt to complete the sentence with something like “…we otta go get…” before himself becoming confused, at which a third person might interject “…something to eat?” It does not sound so remarkable here in the retelling, but what erupted before our eyes was an extraordinarily fluid and coherent session of what we later referred to as group thought, where the conversation bounced easily from one person to the next, each person contributing only a fragmentary thought, but nobody having any clear idea of what the whole thought was supposed to be, or how it was going to end. What was amazing about the experience was the coherence and purposefulness of the emergent thought, how it seemed to have a mind of its own independent of our individual minds, even though of course it was nothing other than the collective action of our befuddled minds. It was fascinating to see this thought, like a disembodied spirit, pick up and move our bodies and hands in concerted action, one person getting wood for the fire, another getting out a frying pan, a third going for potatoes, or to open a bottle of wine, none of it planned by any one person, and yet each person chipped in just as and when they thought would be appropriate, as the supper apparently “made itself” using us as its willing accomplices. It was reminiscent of the operational principle behind a ouija board, where people sitting in a circle around a table, all rest an index finger on some movable pointer on a circular alphabet board, and the pointer begins to spell out some message under the collective action of all those fingers. At first the emergent message appears random, but after the first few letters have been spelled out, the participants start to guess at each next letter, and without anyone being overtly aware of it, the word appears to “spell itself” as if under the influence of a supernatural force. As with the ouija board, none of us participating in the group thought experience could hold a coherent thought in their head, and yet coherent thoughts emerged nevertheless, to the bewilderment of us all. And later I observed the same phenomenon with different LSD parties. I have subsequently encountered people well versed in the psychedelic experience who claim with great certainty to have experienced mental telepathy in the form of wordless communication and sharing of thoughts. But for us hard-nosed scientific types, the natural explanation for this apparently supernatural experience is just as wonderous and noteworthy, because it offers a hint as to how the individual parts of a mind act together in concert to produce a unified coherent pattern of behavior that is greater than the mere sum of its constituent parts. The principle of group thought occurs across our individual brains in normal sober consciousness as we instinctively read each other’s faces and follow each other’s thoughts, and it is seen also whenever people are moving a heavy piece of furniture, all lifting and moving in unison in a coherent motion towards some goal. But the psychedelic experience highlighted this aspect of wordless communication and brought it to my attention in clearer, sharper focus.\nAs the evening tailed on and the drug’s effect gradually subsided in a long slow steady decline, we would sit by the fire and pass a pipe or joint around, and share our observations and experiences of the day. At one point Lonce, who had just taken a puff of a joint, breathed out and held it contemplatively for a while, before taking a second puff and passing it on to the next person in the circle. I objected to this behavior, and accused Lonce of “Bogarting” the joint – smoking it all by himself without passing it along. Lonce responded to this with an explanation that where he comes from, people don’t puff and pass in haste, but every man has the right to a few moments of quiet contemplation and a second puff before passing it along. That was, he explained, the civilized way of sharing a joint. So we immediately adopted Lonce’s suggestion, and this method of sharing a joint has henceforth and forever since been referred to by us as the “Lonce Method”.\nTheoretical Implications\nAs I have explained, the purpose of all this psychonautical exploration was not merely for our own entertainment, although entertaining it was, and to the highest degree. No, the primary purpose of these psychonautical exploits was clear all along at least in my mind, and that was to investigate the theoretical implications of these experiences to theories of mind and brain. And my investigations were actually beginning to bear fruit in two completely separate directions, each of which had profound theoretical implications. At that time I was studying neural network theories of the brain, or how the brain makes sense of the visual world. A principal focus of our investigation was the phenomena of visual illusions, like the Kanizsa figure shown in Figure 2.5 A. It is clear that what is happening here is that the visual mind is creating illusory contours that link up the fragmentary contours suggestive of the illusory triangle. In our studies we learned of Stephen Grossberg’s neural network model of this phenomenon. Grossberg proposed that the visual brain is equipped with oriented edge detector neurons that fire whenever a visual edge passes through their local receptive field. These neurons would be triggered by the stark black / white contrast edges of the stimulus in Figure 2.5 A. A higher level set of neurons would then detect the global pattern of collinearity, and sketch in the illusory contour by a process of collinear completion. These higher level “cooperative cells” were equipped with much larger elongated receptive fields, long enough to span the gap in the Kanizsa figure, and the activation of these higher level neurons in turn stimulated lower level local edge detector neurons located along the illusory contour, and that activation promoted the experience of an illusory contour where there is none in the stimulus\n\nI believed I was seeing these illusory contours in my LSD experience, as suggested by all the curvy lines in my sketch in Figure 2.2 above. But I was not only seeing the contours in illusory figures, I was seeing “illusory” contours just about everywhere across the visual field. But curiously, these contours were not “visible” in the usual sense, but rather, they are experienced in an “invisible” manner as something you know is there, but you cannot actually see. However I also noticed that these contours did have an influence on the visible portions of the scene. I have mentioned how under LSD the visual world tends to “breathe”, to waver and wobble like a slow-motion movie of the bottom of a swimming pool viewed through its surface waves. In fact, the effect of the “invisible” contours was very much like the effect of the invisible waves on the surface of the pool, which can also be seen only by their effects on the scene viewed through them. You cannot see the waves themselves, all you can see is the wavering of the world caused by those waves. Well I was observing a very similar phenomenon in my LSD experience. I devised a three-dimensional Kanizsa figure, shown in Figure 2.5 B, and observed that even in the stone-cold sober state, I could see a kind of warp or wobble of the visual background behind the illusory contour caused by the figure, especially if the figure is waved back and forth gently against a noisy or chaotic background. So far, my LSD experiences were consistent with our theoretical understanding of the visual process, confirming to myself by direct observation an aspect of the neural network model we were currently studying in school.\nBut there was one aspect of the LSD experience that had me truly baffled, and that was the fantastic symmetries and periodicities that were so characteristic of the experience. What kind of neural network model could possibly account for that? It was an issue that I grappled with for many months that stretched into years. In relation to Grossberg’s neural network, it seemed that the issue concerned the question of what happens at corners and vertices where contours meet or cross. A model based on collinearity alone would be stumped at image vertices. And yet a straightforward extension of Grossberg’s neural network theory to address image vertices leads to a combinatorial explosion.The obvious extension, initially proposed by Grossberg himself, was to posit specialized “cooperative cells” with receptive fields configured to detect and enhance other configurations of edges besides ones that are collinear. But the problem is that you would need so many different specialized cells to recognize and complete every possible type of vertex, such as T and V and X and Y vertices, where two or more edges meet at a point, and each of these vertex types would have to be replicated at every orientation, and at every location across the whole visual field! It just seemed like a brute-force solution that was totally implausible.\nThen one day after agonizing for months on this issue, my LSD observations of periodic and symmetrical patterns suddenly triggered a novel inspiration. Maybe the nervous system does not require specialized hard-wired receptive fields to accomodate every type of vertex, replicated at every orientation at every spatial location. Maybe the nervous system uses something much more dynamic and adaptive and flexible. Maybe it uses circular standing waves to represent different vertex types, where the standing wave can bend and warp to match the visual input, and standing waves would explain all that symmetry and periodicity so clearly evident in the LSD experience as little rotational standing waves that emerge spontaneously at image vertices, and adapt to the configuration of those vertices. Thanks to illegal psychotropic substances, I had stumbled on a staggeringly significant new theory of the brain, a theory which, if proven right, would turn the world of neuroscience on its head! My heart raced and pounded at the implications of what I had discovered. And this theory became the prime focus of my PhD thesis (Lehar 1994), in which I did computer simulations of my harmonic resonance model that replicated certain visual illusions in a way that no other model could. I had accomplished the impossible. I had found an actual practical use and purpose for what was becoming my favorite pass-time, psychedelic drugs! It was a moment of glory for an intrepid psychonaut, a turning point in my life. Figure 2.6 shows a page from my notebook dated October 6 1992, the first mention of my new theory of harmonic resonance in the brain.\n\n\nCompare the above descriptions of point-of-view fragmentation, visual coherence, and symmetry as experienced on LSD, with our very own account of symmetrical pattern completion during psychedelic experiences as presented in Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States (slightly edited for clarity):\nLower Symmetry Detection and Propagation Thresholds\nFinally, this is perhaps the most interesting and ethically salient effect of psychedelics. The first three effects (tracers, drifting, and pattern recognition) are not particularly difficult to square with standard neuroscience. This fourth effect, while not incompatible with connectionist accounts, does suggest a series of research questions that may hint at an entirely new paradigm for understanding consciousness.\nWe have not seen anyone in the literature specifically identify this effect in all of its generality. The lowering of the symmetry detection threshold really has to be experienced to be believed. We claim that this effect manifests in all psychedelic experiences to a greater or lesser extent, and that many effects can in fact be explained by simply applying this effect iteratively.\nPsychedelics make it easier to find similarities between any two given phenomenal objects. When applied to perception, this effect can be described as a lowering of the symmetry detection threshold. This effect is extremely general and symmetry should not be taken to refer exclusively to geometric symmetry.\nHow symmetries manifest depends on the set and setting. Researchers interested in verifying and exploring the quantitative and subjective properties of this effect will probably have to focus first on a narrow domain; the effect happens in all experiential modalities.\nFor now, let us focus on the case of visual experience. In this domain, the effect is what PsychonautWiki calls Symmetrical Texture Repetition:\nCredit: Chelsea Morgan from PsychonautWiki and r/replications\nSymmetry detection during psychedelic experiences requires that one’s attention interprets a given element in the scene as a symmetry element. Symmetry elements are geometrical points of reference about which symmetry operations can take place (such as axes of rotation, mirror planes, hyperplanes, etc.). In turn, a collection of symmetry elements defines a symmetry structure in the following way: A symmetry structure is a set of n-dimensional symmetry elements for which the qualities of the experience surrounding each element obeys the symmetry constraints imposed by all the elements considered together.\nPsychedelic symmetry detection can be (and typically is) recursively applied to previously constructed symmetry structures. At a given time multiple independent symmetry structures can coexist inside an experience. By guiding one’s attention one can make these structures interact and ultimately merge. Formally, each symmetry structure is capable of establishing a merging relationship with another symmetry structure. This is achieved by simultaneously focusing one’s attention on both. These relationships are fleeting, but they influence the evolution of the relative position of each symmetry element. When two symmetry structures are in a merging relationship, it is possible to rearrange them (with the aid of drifting and pattern recognition) to create a symmetrical structure that incorporates the symmetry elements of both substructures at once. To do so, one’s mind can either detect one (or several) more symmetry elements along which the previously-existing symmetry elements are made to conform, or, alternatively, if the two pre-existing symmetry structures share a symmetry element (e.g. an axis of rotation of order 3), these corresponding identical symmetry elements can fuse and become a bridge that merges both structures.\nSurprisingly, valence seems to be related to psychedelic symmetry detection. As one constructs symmetry structures, one becomes aware of an odd and irresistible subjective pull towards building even higher levels of symmetry. In other words, every time the structure of one’s experience is simplified by identifying a new symmetry element in the scene, one’s whole experience seems to snap into a new (simplified) mode, and this comes with a positive feeling. This feeling can take many forms: it may feel blissful, interesting, beautiful, mind-expanding, and/or awe-producing, all depending on the specific structures that one is merging. Conversely when two symmetry structures are such that merging them is either tricky of impossible, this leads to low valence: frustration, anxiety, pain and an odd feeling of being stuck between two mutually unintelligible worlds. We hypothesize that this is the result of dissonance between the incompatible symmetry structures.\nIf one meditates in a sensorially-minimized room during a psychedelic experience while being aware that one’s symmetry detection threshold has been lowered by the substance, one can recursively re-apply this effect to produce all kinds of complex mathematical structures that incorporate complex symmetry element interactions. In other words, with the aid of concentration one can climb the symmetry gradient (i.e. increase the total number of symmetry elements) up to the point where the degrees of freedom afforded by the symmetry structure limit any further element from being incorporated into it. We will call these experiences peak symmetry states.\nFuture research should explore and compare the various states of consciousness that exhibit peak symmetry. There is very likely an enormous number of peak symmetry states, some of which are fairly suboptimal and others that cannot be improved upon. If there is a very deep connection between valence, symmetry, information and harmony, it would very likely show in this area. Indeed, we hypothesize that the highest levels of valence that can be consciously experienced involve peak symmetry states. Anecdotally, this connection has already been verified, with numerous trip reports of people achieving states of unimaginable bliss by inhabiting peak symmetry states (often described as fractal mandala-like mirror rooms).\nThe range of peak symmetry states include fractals, tessellations, graphs, and higher dimensional projections. Which one of these states contains the highest degree of inter-connectivity? And if psychedelic symmetry is indeed related to conscious bliss, which experience of symmetry is human peak bliss?\n\n\n\n\nThe pictures above all illustrate possible peak symmetry states one can achieve by combining psychedelics and meditation. The pictures illustrate only the core structure of symmetries that are present in these states of consciousness. What is being reflected is the very raw “feels” of each patch of your experiential field. Thus these pictures really miss the actual raw feelings of the whole experience. They do show, however, a rough outline of symmetrical relationships possible in one of these experiences.\nSince control interruption is also co-occurrent with the psychedelic symmetry effect, previously-detected symmetries tend to linger for long periods of time. For this reason, the kinds of symmetries one can detect at a given point in time is a function of the symmetries that are currently being highlighted. And thanks to drifting and pattern recognition enhancement, there is some wiggle room for your mind to re-arrange the location of the symmetries experienced. The four effects together enable, at times, a smooth iterative integration of so many symmetries that one’s consciousness becomes symmetrically interconnected to an unbelievable degree.\nWhat may innocently start as a simple two-sided mirror symmetry can end up producing complex arrangements of self-reflecting mirrors showing glimpses of higher and higher dimensional symmetries. Studying the mathematical properties of the allowed symmetries is a research project that has only just begun. I hope one day dedicated mathematicians describe in full the class of possible high-order symmetries that humans can experience in these states of consciousness.\nAnecdotally, each of the 17 possible wallpaper symmetry groups can be instantiated with this effect. In other words, psychedelic states lower the symmetry detection threshold for all of the mathematically available symmetrical tessellations.\nAll of the 17 2-dimensional wallpaper groups can be experienced with symmetry planes detected, amplified and re-arranged during a psychedelic experience.\nRevising the symmetrical texture repetition of grass shown above, we can now discover that the picture displays the wallpaper symmetry found in the lower left circle above:\n\nIn very high doses, the symmetry completion is so strong that at any point one risks confusing left and right, and thus losing grasp of one’s orientation in space and time. Depersonalization is, at times, the result of the information that is lost when there is intense symmetry completion going on. One’s self-models become symmetrical too quickly, and one finds it hard to articulate a grounded point of view.\n\nIn Preaceful Qualia: The Manhattan Project of Consciousness we explored possible information-processing applications for climbing the symmetry gradient as described above:\nLSD-like states allow the global binding of otherwise incompatible schemas by softening the degree to which neighborhood constraints are enforced. The entire experience becomes a sort of chaotic superposition of locally bound islands that can, each in its own way, tell sensory-linguistic stories in parallel about the unique origin and contribution of their corresponding gestalts to the narrative of the self.\nThis phenomenon forces, as it were, the onset of cognitive dissonance between incompatible schemas that would otherwise evade mutual contact. On the bright side, it also allows mutual resonance between parts that agree with each other. The global inconsistencies are explored and minimized. One’s mind can become a glorious consensus.\nEach square represents, and carries with it, the information of a previously experienced cognitive gestalt (situational memories, ideas, convictions, etc.). Some gestalts never come up together naturally. The LSD-like state allows their side-by-side comparison.\nIn therapy, LSD-like states had been used for many decades in order to integrate disparate parts of one’s personality into a (more) coherent and integrated lifeworld. But scientists at the beginning didn’t know why this worked.\nThe Turing module then discovered that the kaleidoscopic world of acid can be compared to raising the temperature within an Ising model. If different gestalts imply a variety of semantic-affective constraints, kaleidoscopic Frame Stacking has the formal effect of expanding the region of one’s mind that is taken into consideration for global consistency at any given point in time. The local constraints become more loose, giving global constraints the upper hand. The degree of psychedelia is approximately proportional to the temperature of the model, and when you let it cool, the grand pattern is somewhat different. It is more stable; one arrives at a more globally consistent state. Your semantic-affective constraints are, on the whole, better satisfied. The Turings called this phenomenon qualia annealing.\nIsing Model – A simple computational analogy for the LSD-induced global constraint satisfaction facilitation.\n\nAnother key reference to look at within this theme is the discussion of non-Euclidean symmetry in the article titled The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes… here we jump in medias res to the description of the 2nd and 3rd plateau of DMT intoxication:\n(2) The Chrysanthemum\nIf one ups the dose a little bit and lands somewhere in the range between 4 to 8 mg, one is likely to experience what Terrence McKenna called “the Chrysanthemum”. This usually manifests as a surface saturated with a sort of textured fabric composed of intricate symmetrical relationships, bright colors, shifting edges and shimmering pulsing superposition patterns of harmonic linear waves of many different frequencies.\nDepending on the dose consumed one may experience either one or several semi-parallel channels. Whereas a threshold dose usually presents you with a single strong vibe (or ambiance), the Chrysanthemum level often has several competing vibes each bidding for your attention. Here are some examples of what the visual component of this state of consciousness may look like.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe visual component of the Chrysanthemum is often described as “the best screen saver ever“, and if you happen to experience it in a good mood you will almost certainly agree with that description, as it is usually extremely harmonious, symmetric and beautiful in uncountable ways. No external input can possibly replicate the information density and intricate symmetry of this state; such state has to be endogenously generated as a a sort of harmonic attractor of your brain dynamics.\nYou can find many replications of Chrysanthemum-level DMT experiences on the internet, and I encourage you to examine their implicit symmetries (this replication is one of my all-times favorite).\nIn Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States we posited that any one of the 17 wallpaper symmetry groups can be instantiated as the symmetries that govern psychedelic visuals. Unfortunately, unlike the generally slow evolution of usual psychedelic visuals, DMT’s vibrational frequency forces such visuals to evolve at a speed that makes it difficult for most people to spot the implicit symmetry elements that give rise to the overall mathematical structure underneath one’s experience. For this reason it has been difficult to verify that all 17 wallpaper groups are possible in DMT states. Fortunately we were recently able to confirm that this is in fact the case thanks to someone who trained himself to do just this. I.e. detecting symmetry elements in patterns at an outstanding speed.\nAn anonymous psychonaut (whom we will call researcher A) sent a series of trip report to Qualia Computing detailing the mathematical properties of psychedelic visuals under various substances and dose regimens. A is an experienced psychonaut and a math enthusiast who recently trained himself to recognize (and name) the mathematical properties of symmetrical patterns (such as in works of art or biological organisms). In particular, he has become fluent at naming the symmetries exhibited by psychedelic visuals. In the context of 2D visuals on surfaces, A confirms that the symmetrical textures that arise in psychedelic states can exhibit any one of the 17 wallpaper symmetry groups. Likewise, he has been able to confirm that every possible spherical symmetry group can also be instantiated in one’s mind as a resonant attractor on these states.\nThe images below show some examples of the visuals that A has experienced on 2C-B, LSD, 4-HO-MET and DMT (sources: top left, top middle, the rest were made with this service):\n\n\nWallpaper symmetry chart with 5 different notations\n\np1\n\npmm\n\ncmm\n\npg\n\np4\n\np3\n\np4g (this one can make you feel dizzy)\n\nThe Chrysanthemum level interacts with sensory input in an interesting way: the texture of anything one looks at quickly becomes saturated with nested 2-dimensional symmetry groups. If you took enough DMT to take you to this level and you keep your eyes open and look at a patterned surface (i.e. statistical texture), it will symmetrify beyond recognition. A explains that at this level DMT visuals share some qualities with those of, say, LSD, mescaline, and psilocin. Like other psychedelics, DMT’s Chrysanthemum level can instantiate any 2-dimensional symmetry, yet there are important differences from other psychedelics at this dose range. These include the consistent change in ambiance (already present in threshold doses), the complexity and consistency of the symmetrical relationships (much more dense and whole-experience-consistent than is usually possible with other psychedelics), and the speed (with a control-interruption frequency reaching up to 30 hertz, compared to 10-20 hertz for most psychedelics). Thus, people tend to point out that DMT visuals (at this level) are “faster, smaller, more detailed and more globally consistent” than on comparable levels of alteration from similar agents.\nNow, if you take a dose that is a little higher (in the ballpark of 8 to 12 mg), the Chrysanthemum will start doing something new and interesting…\n(3) The Magic Eye Level\nA great way to understand the Magic Eye level of DMT effects is to think of the Chrysanthemum as the texture of an autostereogram (colloquially described as “Magic Eye” pictures). Our visual experience can be easily decomposed into two points-of-view (corresponding to the feed coming from each eye) that share information in order to solve the depth-map problem in vision. This is to map each visual qualia to a space with relative distances so (a) the input is explained and (b) you get recognizable every-day objects represented as implicit shapes beneath the depth-map. You can think of this process as a sort of hand-shake between bottom-up perception and top-down modeling.\nIn everyday conditions one solves the depth-map problem within a second of opening one’s eyes (minus minor details that are added as one looks around). But on DMT, the “low-level perceptions” looks like a breathing Chrysanthemum, which means that the top-down modeling has that “constantly shifting” stuff to play with. What to make of it? Anything you can think of.\nThere are three major components of variance on the DMT Magic Eye level:\n\nTexture (dependent on the Chrysanthemum’s evolution)\nWorld-sheet (non-occluduing 3D1T depth maps)\nExtremelly lowered information copying threshold.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe image on the left is a lobster, the one on the center is a cone and the one to the right contains furniture (a lamp, a chair and a table). Notice that what you see is a sort of depth-map which encodes shapes. We will call this depth-map together with the appearance of movement and acceleration represented in it, a world-sheet.\nWorld-Sheets\n\n\n\nThe world-sheet encodes the “semantic content” of the scene and is capable of representing arbitrary situations (including information about what you are seeing, where you are, what the entities there are doing, what is happening, etc.).\nIt is common to experience scenes from usually mundane-looking places like ice-cream stores, play pens, household situations, furniture rooms, apparel, etc.. Likewise, one frequently sees entities in these places, but they rarely seem to mind you because their world is fairly self-contained. As if seeing through a window. People often report that the worlds they saw on a DMT trip were all “made of the same thing”. This can be interpreted as the texture becoming the surfaces of the world-sheet, so that the surfaces of the tables, chairs, ice-cream cones, the bodies of the people, and so on are all patterned with the same texture (just as in actual autostereograms). This texture is indeed the Chrysanthemum completely contorted to accommodate all the curvature of the scene.\nMagic Eye level scenes often include 3D geometrical shapes like spheres, cones, cylinders, cubes, etc. The complexity of the scene is roughly dose-dependent. As one ups the highness (but still remaining within the Magic Eye level) complex translucid qualia crystals in three dimensions start to become a possibility.\nWhatever phenomenal objects you experience on this level that lives for more than a millisecond needs to have effective strategies for surviving in an ecosystem of other objects adapted to that level. Given the extremely lowered information copying threshold, whatever is good at making copies of itself will begin to tesselate, mutate and evolve, stealing as much of your attention as possible in the way. Cyclic transitions occupy one’s attention: objects quickly become scenes which quickly become gestalts from which a new texture evolves in which new objects are detected and so on ad infinitum.\n\nA reports that at this dose range one can experience at least some of the 230 space groups as objects represented in the world-sheet. For example, A reports having stabilized a structure with a Pm-3m symmetry structure, not unlike the structure of ZIF-71-RHO. Visualizing such complex 3D symmetries, however, does seem to require previous training and high levels of mental concentration (i.e. in order to ensure that all the symmetry elements are indeed what they are supposed to be).\nThere is so much qualia laying around, though, at times not even your normal space can contain it all. Any regular or semi regular symmetrical structure you construct by centering your attention prone to overflow if you focus too much on it. What does this mean? If you focus too much on, for example, the number 6, your mind might represent the various ways in which you can arrange six balls in a perfectly symmetrical way. Worlds made of hexagons and octahedrons interlocked in complex but symmetrical ways may begin to tesselate your experiential field. With every second you find more and more ways of representing the number six in interesting, satisfying, metaphorically-sound synesthetic ways (cf. Thinking in Numbers). Now, what happens if you try to represent the number seven in a symmetric way on the plane? Well, the problem is that you will have too many heptagons to fit in Euclidean space (cf. Too Many Triangles). Thus the resulting symmetrical patterns will seem to overflow the plane (which is often felt as a folding and fluid re-arrangement, and when there is no space left in a region it either expands space or it is felt as some sort of synesthetic tension or stress, like a sense of crackling under a lot of pressure).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn particular, A claims that in the lower ranges of the DMT Magic Eye level the texture of the Chrysanthemum tends to exhibit heptagonal and triheptagonal tilings (as shown in the picture above). A explains that at the critical point between the Chrysanthemum and the Magic Eye levels the intensity of the rate of symmetry detection of the Chrysanthemum cannot be contained to a 2D surface. Thus, the surface begins to fold, often in semi-symmetric ways. Every time one “recognizes” an object on this “folding Chrysanthemum” the extra curvature is passed on to this object. As the dose increases, one interprets more and more of this extra curvature and ends up shaping a complex and highly dynamic spatiotemporal depth map with hyperbolic folds. In the upper ranges of the Magic Eye level the world-sheet is so curved that the scenes one visualize are intricate and expansive, feeling at times like one is able to peer through one’s horizon in all directions and see oneself and one’s world from a distance. At some critical point one may feel like the space around one is folding into a huge dome where the walls are made of whatever texture + world-sheet combination happened to win the Darwinian selection pressures applied to the qualia patterns on the Magic Eye level. This concentrated hyperbolic synesthetic texture is what becomes the walls of the Waiting Room…\n\nAs suggested by the quotes above, psychedelic symmetries are extremely beautiful. This is puzzling for most worldviews. But once you take into account the Tyranny of the Intentional Object and the Symmetry Theory of Valence, it begins to make sense why peak symmetry on psychedelics is so delightfully amazing (sometimes unimaginably better than a great orgasm or a back-rub on ecstasy). In this vein, we are proud to point out that we have worked out some precise, empirically testable, predictions based on connectome-specific harmonic waves and the symmetry theory of valence (see: Quantifying Bliss).\n\nInterestingly, the process of point-of-view fragmentation and subsequent annealing to global geometric coherence is hinted at by John C. Lilly in his book Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer (you can read the relevant quote here: Psychedelic alignment cascades). \n\nFinally, I would like to draw attention to David Pearce‘s quote about psychedelics: Their Scientific Significance is Hard to Overstate. \nAs evidenced in Steven Lehar’s writeup (and the other quotes and references provided above), we could say that giving psychedelics to brilliant people with a scientific background in cognitive science and natural philosophical talent does indeed have the ability to expand our evidential base for the nature of consciousness and the way our brains work. \nIt is thus far more useful for the advancement of the science of consciousness to allocate such experiences to serious scientifically-minded psychonauts than it is to give those same agents to people with pre-scientific frameworks. The phenomenological descriptions and insights provided by a single Steven Lehar on acid are worth a thousand Buddhists, French Existentialists, poets, and film-makers on LSD. \nEither way, it is unconscionable that today most leading academics working on the problem of consciousness have no personal experience with these agents, nor they show much interest in the alien state-spaces that they disclose. That’s about as weird as physicists only showing interest in what happens at room-temperature, even though most precise mathematical theories of the physical world can only be tested in extreme conditions (such as high-energy particle collisions). Just as we can expect that a few observations of the behavior of matter in extreme conditions will provide a lot more information than thousands of observations of matter in known “everyday” conditions, the ultimate nature of qualia is most likely to be understood by studying its properties in extreme (e.g. high-energy) neuronal environments.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/03/27/from-point-of-view-fragmentation-to-global-visual-coherence-harmony-symmetry-and-resonance-on-lsd/", "title": "From Point-of-View Fragmentation to Global Visual Coherence: Harmony, Symmetry, and Resonance on LSD", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-03-27T11:35:24+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=19", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "888c47282c642f7d1ea4de1260814c2a", "summary": []}
{"text": "What If God Were a Closed Individualist Presentist Hedonistic Utilitarian With an Information-Theoretic Identity of Indiscernibles Ontology?\n\nExtract from “Unsong” (chapter 18):\nThere’s an old Jewish childrens’ song called Had Gadya. It starts:\nA little goat, a little goat\nMy father bought for two silver coins,\nA little goat, a little goat\nThen came the cat that ate the goat\nMy father bought for two silver coins\nA little goat, a little goat\nThen came that dog that bit the cat…\nAnd so on. A stick hits the dog, a fire burns the stick, water quenches the fire, an ox drinks the water, a butcher slaughters the ox, the Angel of Death takes the butcher, and finally God destroys the Angel of Death. Throughout all of these verses, it is emphasized that it is indeed a little goat, and the father did indeed buy it for two silver coins.\n[…]\nAs far as I know, no one has previously linked this song to the Lurianic Kabbalah. So I will say it: the deepest meaning of Had Gadya is a description of how and why God created the world. As an encore, it also resolves the philosophical problem of evil.\nThe most prominent Biblical reference to a goat is the scapegoating ritual. Once a year, the High Priest of Israel would get rid of the sins of the Jewish people by mystically transferring all of them onto a goat, then yelling at the goat until it ran off somewhere, presumably taking all the sin with it.\nThe thing is, at that point the goat contained an entire nation-year worth of sin. That goat was super evil. As a result, many religious and mystical traditions have associated unholy forces with goats ever since, from the goat demon Baphomet to the classical rather goat-like appearance of Satan.\nSo the goat represents evil. I’ll go along with everyone else saying the father represents God here. So God buys evil with two silver coins. What’s up?\nThe most famous question in theology is “Why did God create a universe filled with so much that is evil?” The classical answers tend to be kind of weaselly, and center around something like free will or necessary principles or mysterious ways. Something along the lines of “Even though God’s omnipotent, creating a universe without evil just isn’t possible.”\nBut here we have God buying evil with two silver coins. Buying to me represents an intentional action. Let’s go further – buying represents a sacrifice. Buying is when you sacrifice something dear to you to get something you want even more. Evil isn’t something God couldn’t figure out how to avoid, it’s something He covets.\nWhat did God sacrifice for the sake of evil? Two silver coins. We immediately notice the number “two”. Two is not typically associated with God. God is One. Two is right out. The kabbalists identify the worst demon, the nadir of all demons, as Thamiel, whose name means “duality in God”. Two is dissonance, divorce, division, dilemmas, distance, discrimination, diabolism.\nThis, then, was God’s sacrifice. In order to create evil, He took up duality.\n“Why would God want to create evil? God is pure Good!”\nExactly. The creation of anything at all other than God requires evil. God is perfect. Everything else is imperfect. Imperfection contains evil by definition. Two scoops of evil is the first ingredient in the recipe for creating universes. Finitude is evil. Form is evil. Without evil all you have is God, who, as the kabbalists tell us, is pure Nothing. If you want something, evil is part of the deal.\nNow count the number of creatures in the song. God, angel, butcher, ox, water, fire, stick, dog, cat, goat. Ten steps from God to goat. This is the same description of the ten sephirot we’ve found elsewhere, the ten levels by which God’s ineffability connects to the sinful material world without destroying it. This is not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence. Had Gadya isn’t just a silly children’s song about the stages of advancement of the human soul, the appropriate rituals for celebrating Passover in the Temple, the ancient Sumerian pantheon, and the historical conquests of King Tiglath-Pileser III. It’s also a blueprint for the creation of the universe. Just like everything else.\n\n(see also: ANSWER TO JOB)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/02/19/what-if-god-was-a-closed-individualist-presentist-hedonistic-utilitarian-with-an-information-theoretic-identity-of-indiscernibles-ontology/", "title": "What If God Were a Closed Individualist Presentist Hedonistic Utilitarian With an Information-Theoretic Identity of Indiscernibles Ontology?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-02-19T08:02:30+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=19", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0d356c081f0e965af247e34a45c7823b", "summary": []}
{"text": "Every Qualia Computing Article Ever\n\n The three main goals of Qualia Computing are to:\n\n\nCatalogue the entire state-space of consciousness\nIdentify the computational properties of experience, and\nReverse engineer valence (i.e. discover the function that maps formal descriptions of states of consciousness to values along the pleasure-pain axis)\n\n– Core Philosophy (2016)\n\n\nBolded titles mean that the linked article is foundational: it introduces new concepts, vocabulary, heuristics, research methods, frameworks, and/or thought experiments that are important for the overall project of consciousness research. These tend to be articles that also discuss concepts in much greater depth than other articles.\nThe “long” tag means that the post has at least 4,000 words. Most of these long articles are in the 6,000 to 10,000 word range. The longest Qualia Computing article is Burning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God (2/2) at ~16,000 words. The second longest article is the first post about Burning Man which is about 13,500 words long (and also happens to be foundational as it introduces many new frameworks and concepts).\nQuotes and transcripts are usually about: evolutionary psychology, philosophy of mind, ethics, neuroscience, physics, meditation, and/or psychedelic phenomenology. By far, David Pearce is the most quoted person on Qualia Computing.\n\nBasic stats:\n\nTotal number of posts: 236\nFoundational articles: 52\nArticles over 4,000 words: 31\nOriginal content: 148\nQuotes and transcripts: 97\n\n\n2020\nTitans Anonymous (quote + commentary)\nTypes of Binding (quote)\nModeling Psychedelic Tracers with QRI’s Psychophysics Toolkit: The Tracer Replication Tool (very long)\nLearning the Trade (quote)\nImprove your Indoor Air Quality by 99% by Optimizing the Use of HEPA Filters\nPsychoactive Anecdata\nThe Fact That We Can Smell Functional Groups is Just Such a Thing (quote + commentary)\nSpiral (quote)\nQualia Research Diary: Scents (very long)\nThat Time Daniel Dennett Took 200 Micrograms of LSD (In Another Timeline)\nSelf-Locatingly Uncertain Psilocybin Trip Report by an Anonymous Reader (quote)\nPosthuman Art: Towards Full-Spectrum Positive Valence Amplification (transcript + analysis)\nSaving Lives with Lemon-Lavender Flavor: THC-Free Nicotine-Laced Joints as a Substitute for Tobacco Cigarettes\nQRI’s FAQ (long)\n5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses (long)\nOn the Evolution of the Phenomenal Self (and Other Communications from QRI Sweden)\n10 Ways Perception Distorts Reality (quote)\nMini-Series on Open Individualism\nThe QRI Ecosystem: Friends, Collaborators, Blogs, Media, and Adjacent Communities\nFire Kasina: Color Control Experience Report by Daniel Ingram (transcript)\n5-MeO-DMT Awakenings: From Naïve Realism to Symmetrical Enlightenment (transcript + analysis/long)\nGeometry Through the Eyes of Felix Klein (quote)\nThe Manifesto of Tactilism (quote)\nQC Coronavirus Edition: Preventing Pandemics by Living on Toroidal Planets and Other Cocktail Napkin Ideas (long)\nQualia Production Presents: “The Seven Seals of Security” (and Other Communications from QRI Sweden)\nMaking Amazing Recreational Drug Cocktails (long)\nQualiascope\nPerfumery as an Art Form (long)\nQualia Computing at: TSC 2020, IPS 2020, unSCruz 2020, and Ephemerisle 2020 [Spoiler: COVID got in the way of these events.]\nA Big State-Space of Consciousness\n2019\nOne for All and All for One (quote)\nBinding Quiddities (quote)\nQualia Productions Presents: When AI Equals Advanced Incompetence\nNeural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything\nEssential Therapy (quote)\nBreaking Down the Problem of Consciousness\nBreak Out of the Simulation Day: Televised Entity Contact, Injection Pulling Experiments, and the Brain as a Game Engine\nIs the Orthogonality Thesis Defensible if We Assume Both Valence Realism and Open Individualism? (quote)\nToy Story 4 – 20 Movie Review (quote)\nThree Interesting Math Problems to Work on While on LSD\nPsychotic Depression (quote)\nEarly Isolation Tank Psychonautics: 1970s Trip Reports (quote collage)\nTwo Recent Presentations: (1) Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences, and (2) Harmonic Society\nState of the Qualia, Fall 2019\nHarmonic Society (4/4): Art as Valence Modulation and Future Affective Language\nHarmonic Society (3/4): Art as State-Space Exploration and Energy Parameter Modulation\nThe Psychobiology of Subcultures (quote)\nHarmonic Society (2/4): Art as Schelling Point Creation and the Pursuit of Sacred Experiences\nHarmonic Society (1/4): Art as Family Resemblance + Cool Kid Theory\nAnnouncement: QRI Presentations at Harvard and NYU\nMore Dakka in Medicine (quote)\nTypical N,N-DMT Trip Progression According to an Anonymous Reader\nAtman Retreat: Safe, Legal Psilocybin Experiences in Jamaica\nKaleidoscopic Integration: Annealing, Symmetry, and the Information Theory of Experience (quote collage)\nWhy Care About Meme Hazards and Thoughts on How to Handle Them\nCarhart-Harris & Friston 2019 – REBUS and the Anarchic Brain (quote + analysis)\nDoes Full-Spectrum Superintelligence Entail Benevolence? (quote)\nGlossary of Qualia Research Institute Terms (long)\nLogarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain: Rating, Ranking, and Comparing Peak Experiences Suggest the Existence of Long Tails for Bliss and Suffering (very long)\nUsing Ibogaine to Create Friendlier Opioids\nTreating Cluster Headaches Using N,N-DMT and Other Tryptamines\nRealms as Interpretive Lenses\nCluster Headache Frequency Follows a Long-Tail Distribution\nIn brief, LSD…\nEphemerisle: Health Homeostasis, Worldview Annealing, and the Long-Tails of Serious Fun (long)\nWada Test + Phenomenal Puzzles: Testing the Independent Consciousness of Individual Brain Hemispheres\n5-MeO-DMT Trip Report by Anonymous Reader (quote)\nGet-Out-Of-Hell-Free Necklace\nLow-Dose Ibogaine + Opioids: A Possible Treatment for Chronic Pain, Schizophrenia, and Depression? (quote)\nCoffee Saves Lives\nTop 10 Qualia Computing Articles\nEgo and Symmetry on 5-MeO-DMT (transcript)\nAI Alignment Podcast: On Consciousness, Qualia, and Meaning with Mike Johnson and Andrés Gómez Emilsson (transcript/long)\nTimothy Leary’s Final Regrets (quote)\nAll-Is-One Simulation Theory (quote + analysis)\nRational 4-AcO-DMT Trip Report By An Anonymous Reader (quote)\nAgainst Fetishizing Cortical Neurons: Prioritizing Humans As Instrumentally Rational\n+Transhumanism -Signaling: Education Should Be Relevant to Meaningful Work (quote)\nAn Infinite Variety of Waste (quote)\nMicroaffect Hash Collision Theory of Déjà Vus\nPure Land Youtube Hits\nThe Meaning Machine (quotes + analysis)\nLow-Dose Ibogaine for Hedonic Tone Augmentation (quote)\nTranscending and Including Integral Theory\nFrequency Specific Microcurrent for Kidney-Stone Pain (quote)\nEvery Child is a Genetic Experiment: FAAH Clinical Trials for Hedonic Recalibration as Educated Guesses Rather than Reckless Experimentation\nBurning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God (2/2) (long)\nInvesting Time and Resources in Happiness\nUtilitronium Shockwaves vs. Gradients of Bliss (quote)\nDo you think that some psychedelic drugs, such as DMT, can help mathematicians visualize the hyperbolic geometry of space?\nOn Hitting the Actual Target of Hedonic Tone\nThe Resonance and Vibration of [Phenomenal] Objects (quote + analysis)\n“Letter from Utopia” and Other Triple-S Transhumanist Media (quote + analysis)\nBurning Man Theme-Camps of the Year 2029: From Replicator to Rainbow God (1/2) (long)\nCooling It Down To Partying It Up\nCause X – What Will the New Shiny Effective Altruist Cause Be?\nDetailed 2C-B Trip Report by an Anonymous Reader (quote/long)\nTriple S Genetic Counseling: Predicting Hedonic-Set Point with Commercial-Grade DNA Testing as an Effective Altruist Project\nDream Music\nFree-Wheeling Hallucinations (quote collage)\nPhilip K. Dick’s LSD Trip (quote + analysis)\n2018\nLucid LSD Trip Report from an Anonymous Reader (quote)\nA Non-Circular Solution to the Measurement Problem: If the Superposition Principle is the Bedrock of Quantum Mechanics Why Do We Experience Definite Outcomes? (quote)\nWhat is Love? Neural Annealing in the Presence of an Intentional Object (quote)\nThe Purple Pill\nPersonality Traits Are Continuous With Mental Illnesses (quote)\nThe Phenomenal Character of LSD + MDMA (Candy-Flipping) According to Cognitive Scientist Steve Lehar (mostly quote)\nThe Universal Plot: Interlude ‽ – The Slytherin Wavelength\nThe Pseudo-Time Arrow: Explaining Phenomenal Time With Implicit Causal Structures In Networks Of Local Binding (long)\nAnti-Tolerance Drugs\nPsychedelic Turk: A Platform for People on Altered States of Consciousness\nEstimated Cost of the DMT Machine Elves Prime Factorization Experiment (quote)\nThoughts on the ‘Is-Ought Problem’ from a Qualia Realist Point of View\nThe Qualia Explosion (quote)\nBurning Man 2.0: The Eigen-Schelling Religion, Entrainment + Metronomes, and the Eternal Battle Between Consciousness and Replicators (long)\nMaterializing Hyperbolic Spaces with Gradient-Index Optics and One-Way Mirrors\nWhy don’t more effective altruists work on the Hedonistic Imperative? (quote)\nThe Appearance of Arbitrary Contingency to Our Diverse Qualia (quote)\nQualia Computing at Burning Man 2018: “Consciousness vs Replicators” talk (announcement)\nOpen Individualism and Antinatalism: If God could be killed, it’d be dead already (long)\nJohn von Neumann (quote)\nQualia Computing Media Appearances\nMarijuana-induced “Short-term Memory Tracers” (quote)\nThe Banality of Evil (quote)\nPerson-moment affecting view (quote)\nQualia Formalism in the Water Supply: Reflections on The Science of Consciousness 2018 (long)\nQualia Research Institute presentations at The Science of Consciousness 2018 (Tucson, AZ)\nModern Accounts of Psychedelic Action (quote)\nFrom Point-of-View Fragmentation to Global Visual Coherence: Harmony, Symmetry, and Resonance on LSD (mostly quote/long)\nWhat If God Were a Closed Individualist Presentist Hedonistic Utilitarian With an Information-Theoretic Identity of Indiscernibles Ontology? (quote)\nEvery Qualia Computing Article Ever\nQualia Computing Attending The Science of Consciousness 2018\nEverything in a Nutshell (quote)\n2017\nWould Maximally Efficient Work Be Fun? (quote)\nThe Universal Plot: Part I – Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators (long)\nNo-Self vs. True Self (quote)\nQualia Manifesto (quote)\nWhat Makes Tinnitus, Depression, and the Sound of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) so Awful: Dissonance\nTraps of the God Realm (quote)\nAvoid Runaway Signaling in Effective Altruism (transcript)\nBurning Man (long)\nMental Health as an EA Cause: Key Questions\n24 Predictions for the Year 3000 by David Pearce (quote)\nWhy I think the Foundational Research Institute should rethink its approach (quote/long)\nQuantifying Bliss: Talk Summary (long)\nConnectome-Specific Harmonic Waves on LSD (transcript)\nELI5 “The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences”\nQualia Computing at Consciousness Hacking (June 7th 2017) (announcement)\nPrincipia Qualia: Part II – Valence (quote)\nThe Penfield Mood Organ (quote)\nThe Most Important Philosophical Question\nThe Forces At Work (quote)\nPsychedelic Science 2017: Take-aways, impressions, and what’s next (long)\nHow Every Fairy Tale Should End\nPolitical Peacocks (quote)\nOTC remedies for RLS (quote)\nTheir Scientific Significance is Hard to Overstate (quote)\nMemetic Vaccine Against Interdimensional Aliens Infestation (quote)\nRaising the Table Stakes for Successful Theories of Consciousness\nQualia Computing Attending the 2017 Psychedelic Science Conference\nGHB vs. MDMA (quote)\nHedonium\n2016\nThe Binding Problem (quote)\nThe Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes (long)\nThinking in Numbers (quote)\nPraise and Blame are Instrumental (quote)\nThe Tyranny of the Intentional Object\nSchrödinger’s Neurons: David Pearce at the “2016 Science of Consciousness” conference in Tucson\nBeyond Turing: A Solution to the Problem of Other Minds Using Mindmelding and Phenomenal Puzzles\nCore Philosophy\nDavid Pearce on the “Schrodinger’s Neurons Conjecture” (quote)\nSamadhi (quote)\nPanpsychism and Compositionality: A solution to the hard problem (quote)\nLSD and Quantum Measurements: Can you see Schrödinger’s cat both dead and alive on acid? (long)\nEmpathetic Super-Intelligence\nWireheading Done Right: Stay Positive Without Going Insane (long)\nJust the fate of our forward light-cone\nInformation-Sensitive Gradients of Bliss (quote)\nA Single 3N-Dimensional Universe: Splitting vs. Decoherence (quote)\nAlgorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States (long)\nSo Why Can’t My Boyfriend Communicate? (quote)\nThe Mating Mind\nPsychedelic alignment cascades (quote)\n36 Textures of Confusion\nWork Religion (quote)\nQualia Computing in Tucson: The Magic Analogy\nIn Praise of Systematic Empathy\nDavid Pearce on “Making Sentience Great” (quote)\nPhilosophy of Mind Diagrams\nOntological Runaway Scenario\nPeaceful Qualia: The Manhattan Project of Consciousness (long)\nQualia Computing So Far\nYou are not a zombie (quote)\nWhat’s the matter? It’s Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Dirac’s (quote)\nThe Biointelligence Explosion (quote)\nA (Very) Unexpected Argument Against General Relativity As A Complete Account Of The Cosmos\nStatus Quo Bias\nThe Super-Shulgin Academy: A Singularity I Can Believe In (long)\nThe effect of background assumptions on psychedelic research\n2015\nAn ethically disastrous cognitive dissonance…\nSome Definitions (quote)\nWho should know about suffering?\nOntological Qualia: The Future of Personal Identity (long)\nGoogle Hedonics\nSolutions to World Problems\nWhy does anything exist? (quote)\nState-Space of Background Assumptions\nPersonal Identity Joke\nGetting closer to digital LSD\nPsychedelic Perception of Visual Textures 2: Going Meta\nOn Triviality (quote)\nState-Space of Drug Effects: Results\nHow to secretly communicate with people on LSD\nGeneralized Wada Test and the Total Order of Consciousness\nState-space of drug effects\nPsychophysics for Psychedelic Research: Textures (long)\nI only vote for politicians who have used psychedelics. EOM.\nWhy not computing qualia?\nDavid Pearce’s daily morning cocktail (2015) (quote)\nPsychedelic Perception of Visual Textures\nShould humans wipe out all carnivorous animals so the succeeding generations of herbivores can live in peace? (quote)\nA workable solution to the problem of other minds\nThe fire that breathes reality into the equations of physics (quote)\nPhenomenal Binding is incompatible with the Computational Theory of Mind\nDavid Hamilton’s conversation with Alf Bruce about the nature of the mind (quote)\nManifolds of Consciousness: The emerging geometries of iterated local binding\nThe Real Tree of Life\nPhenomenal puzzles – CIELAB\nThe psychedelic future of consciousness\nNot zero-sum\nDiscussion of Fanaticism (quote)\nWhat does comparatively matter in 2015?\nSuffering: Not what your sober mind tells you (quote)\nReconciling memetics and religion.\nThe Reality of Basement Reality\nThe future of love\n2014\nAnd that’s why we can and cannot have nice things\nBreaking the Thought Barrier: Ethics of Brain Computer Interfaces in the workplace\nHow bad does it get? (quote)\nGod in Buddhism\nPractical metaphysics\nLittle known fun fact\nCrossing borders (quote)\nA simple mystical explanation", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/02/09/every-qualia-computing-article-ever/", "title": "Every Qualia Computing Article Ever", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-02-09T05:13:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=19", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "bbf4c4cc890358d9779229036b30a4c2", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Computing Attending The Science of Consciousness 2018\n\nIt is my pleasure to announce that the two abstracts we submitted on behalf of the Qualia Research Institute were accepted to The Science of Consciousness 2018. I attended this conference with David Pearce two years ago, had a really good time, and made a lot of great connections. I wrote a summary of the experience here: Qualia Computing in Tucson: The Magic Analogy. I also uploaded David Pearce’s presentation (see David’s comments). If you are interested in scientific approaches to consciousness I would highly recommend you check it out.\nThis year we will be focusing on scientific theories of valence. If you follow Qualia Computing you will know that we have been exploring what we call the Symmetry Theory of Valence. More so, we have been developing ways of testing this theory, such as using Selen Atasoy’s brain-harmonic decomposition of brain activity and a generalization of the concept of dissonance to quantify this symmetry and see if it (empirically) correlates with self-reported valence. For a detailed discussion about this prediction read: Quantifying Bliss.\nThis year I will be going with Michael Johnson (see picture below). If you are going to the conference and happen to see us around, don’t be afraid to say hi. We are always happy to get to know our readers and to discuss collaboration opportunities.\nMichael E. Johnson & Andrés Gómez Emilsson\nBelow you can find the two abstracts that we submitted:\n\nTitle: Heuristics For Interpreting The Output Of Formal Panpsychist Theories Of Consciousness\nAuthor: Michael E. Johnson\nPrimary Topic Area: Ontology of consciousness\nSecondary Topic Area: Panpsychism, neutral monism, and idealism\nAbstract: IIT, Orch-OR, Perceptronium, and other panpsychist approaches to formalizing consciousness have been gaining traction in recent years (Oizumi, Albantakis & Tononi 2014; Hameroff & Penrose 1996, 2014; Penrose & Hameroff 2011; Tegmark 2014; Barrett 2014). However, relatively little effort has been spent on interpreting the formal output of such theories. We briefly outline the problem, suggest four heuristics for addressing it, and offer the preliminary fruits of these heuristics, the Symmetry Theory of Valence. First, we offer that a theory of consciousness is “formal” insofar as it acts as an objective translation function, wherein one feeds in facts about a system, with the output result being a mathematical object isomorphic to the phenomenology of that system (Oizumi et al. 2014; Tsuchiya, Taguchi & Saigo 2016). As such, we can consider theoretical formality on a continuum, with IIT and Orch-OR on the ‘more formal’ end, and theories such as Global Workspace Theory on the ‘less formal’ end. However, even if progress continues apace and we settle on the correct method by which to objectively derive mathematical objects isomorphic to any system’s qualia, we’ll still be faced with the challenge of interpreting what such a formalism means: which features of this mathematical object correspond to which specific qualia (Balduzzi & Tononi 2009). To address this challenge, we take advantage of the bidirectional nature of the isomorphism and note that distinctions about the mathematical output of (e.g.) IIT or Orch-OR also apply to the qualia it represents and vice-versa; this gives us a framework for combining intuition and formal methods in order to reverse-engineer specific qualia. As a first pass, we offer that a quale (and its mathematical representation) can be (1) local vs global; (2) simple vs complex; (3) atomic vs composite; (4) intuitively important vs intuitively trivial. And so if we can determine that a given quale is e.g. global, simple, atomic, and intuitively important, so too is its mathematical representation, and vice-versa. Based on this analysis, we identify emotional valence, or the ‘hedonic gloss’ of experience (Frijda 2006, 2009; Aldridge & Berridge 2009; Ryle 1954) as a plausible first candidate for reverse-engineering (“the c. elegans of qualia”), and suggest the Symmetry Theory of Valence: given a mathematical object isomorphic to the phenomenology of a system, the property of that object which corresponds with how pleasant it is to be that system will be the object’s symmetry. Lastly, we extend this to empirical predictions and implications for the further development of Orch-OR and IIT.\n\nTitle: Quantifying Bliss With Microtubules And Brain Connectome Harmonics: Empirically Testable Hypotheses For Valence\nAuthor: Andres Gomez Emilsson\nPrimary Topic Area: Emotion\nSecondary Topic Area: Qualia\nAbstract: What makes an experience blissful? Can bliss ever be quantified? Emotion is usually factored along two main axes: arousal (energy level) and valence (the pleasure-pain axis). High valence (i.e. highly blissful) states of consciousness include: orgasm, romantic love, deep sleep, concentration meditation (so-called “Jhana states”), psychedelic ecstasy, and so on. Low valence states include: depression, anxiety, bodily discomfort, and the experiential quality of listening to dissonance. Confusingly, we also experience neutral as well as mixed states of consciousness. An explanatory framework that ties together these disparate experiences in a coherent way is needed, such that valence becomes objectively quantifiable. Affective neuroscience classically addresses the question of “what makes an experience blissful” in terms of things such as neuroanatomical correlates (“pleasure center activation”), neurotransmitter and receptor function (“Mu-opioid activation”), and computational concepts (“reinforcement learning”). It is important to note that positive valence is associated with these features, but that does not, on its own, constitute a satisfying explanation. More so, counterexamples to such associations abound (unpleasant opioidergic states, reinforcement without pleasure, etc.) A scientific account of valence should be able to explain these associations and their exceptions, provide clear quantitative metrics for valence in arbitrary brain states, and, above all, make precise and testable (hopefully surprising) predictions. We advance a framework for studying consciousness that can deliver just that. We introduce the concepts of: Qualia Formalism (for any given conscious experience, there exists a mathematical object isomorphic to its phenomenology), Qualia Structuralism (this mathematical object has a rich set of formal structures), and Valence Realism (valence is a crisp phenomenon of conscious states upon which we can apply a measure). Based on this framework we propose the “Symmetry Theory of Valence” (STV): Given a mathematical object isomorphic to the qualia of a system, the mathematical property which corresponds to how pleasant it is to be that system is that object’s symmetry. We pair up the STV to various accounts of “the structural level at which valence takes place” and generate empirically testable predictions for each. Namely, we generate predictions for: (1) the protein and microtubule account introduced by Hameroff & Penrose (1996), (2) the “mental organs” account of states of consciousness proposed by Ray (2012), and (3) the connectome-specific harmonic account of brain states by Atasoy et al. (2016). In particular for (3), we arrive at an equation that transforms fMRI data into Consonance-Dissonance-Noise Signatures (CDNS) which, according to the STV, ought to account for a large fraction of the variance associated with valence. If experimentally verified, this equation would be the first fully quantitative account of valence derived from first principles capable of tying together the myriad kinds of bliss into a coherent framework.\n\nTestable theories of the fundamental nature of pleasure? I’m in!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/01/29/qualia-computing-attending-the-science-of-consciousness-2018/", "title": "Qualia Computing Attending The Science of Consciousness 2018", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-01-29T02:57:02+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=19", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ccde3a45f3d99a96999a6713f73ab27a", "summary": []}
{"text": "Everything in a Nutshell\n\nDavid Pearce at Quora in response to the question: “What are your philosophical positions in one paragraph?“:\n\n“Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.”\n(Schopenhauer)\n\nAll that matters is the pleasure-pain axis. Pain and pleasure disclose the world’s inbuilt metric of (dis)value. Our overriding ethical obligation is to minimise suffering. After we have reprogrammed the biosphere to wipe out experience below “hedonic zero”, we should build a “triple S” civilisation based on gradients of superhuman bliss. The nature of ultimate reality baffles me. But intelligent moral agents will need to understand the multiverse if we are to grasp the nature and scope of our wider cosmological responsibilities. My working assumption is non-materialist physicalism. Formally, the world is completely described by the equation(s) of physics, presumably a relativistic analogue of the universal Schrödinger equation. Tentatively, I’m a wavefunction monist who believes we are patterns of qualia in a high-dimensional complex Hilbert space. Experience discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical: the “fire” in the equations. The solutions to the equations of QFT or its generalisation yield the values of qualia. What makes biological minds distinctive, in my view, isn’t subjective experience per se, but rather non-psychotic binding. Phenomenal binding is what consciousness is evolutionarily “for”. Without the superposition principle of QM, our minds wouldn’t be able to simulate fitness-relevant patterns in the local environment. When awake, we are quantum minds running subjectively classical world-simulations. I am an inferential realist about perception. Metaphysically, I explore a zero ontology: the total information content of reality must be zero on pain of a miraculous creation of information ex nihilo. Epistemologically, I incline to a radical scepticism that would be sterile to articulate. Alas, the history of philosophy twinned with the principle of mediocrity suggests I burble as much nonsense as everyone else.\n\nImage credit: Joseph Matthias Young", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/01/07/everything-in-a-nutshell/", "title": "Everything in a Nutshell", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2018-01-07T07:25:42+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=19", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "01a18a9d67618188cbe7c298a03d0a0b", "summary": []}
{"text": "Would Maximally Efficient Work Be Fun?\n\nExcerpt from Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014) by Nick Bostrom (pg. 207-210).\nWould Maximally Efficient Work Be Fun?\nOne important variable in assessing the desirability of a hypothetical condition like this* is the hedonic state of the average emulation**. Would a typical emulation worker be suffering or would he be enjoying the experience of working hard on the task at hand?\nWe must resist the temptation to project our own sentiments onto the imaginary emulation worker. The question is not whether you would feel happy if you had to work constantly and never again spend time with your loved ones–a terrible fate, most would agree.\nIt is moderately more relevant to consider the current human average hedonic experience during working hours. Worldwide studies asking respondents how happy they are find that most rate themselves as “quite happy” or “very happy” (averaging 3.1 on a scale from 1 to 4)***. Studies on average affect, asking respondents how frequently they have recently experienced various positive or negative affective states, tend to get a similar result (producing a net affect of about 0.52 on a scale from -1 to 1). There is a modest positive effect of a country’s per capita income on average subjective well-being.**** However, it is hazardous to extrapolate from these findings to the hedonic state of future emulation workers. One reason that could be given for this is that their condition would be so different: on the one hand, they might be working much harder; on the other hand, they might be free from diseases, aches, hunger, noxious odors, and so forth. Yet such considerations largely miss the mark. The much more important consideration here is that hedonic tone would be easy to adjust through the digital equivalent of drugs or neurosurgery. This means that it would be a mistake to infer the hedonic state of future emulations from the external conditions of their lives by imagining how we ourselves and other people like us would feel in those circumstances. Hedonic state would be a matter of choice. In the model we are currently considering, the choice would be made by capital-owners seeking to maximize returns on their investment in emulation-workers. Consequently, this question of how happy emulations would feel boils down to the question of which hedonic states would be most productive (in the various jobs that emulations would be employed to do). [Emphasis mine]\nHere, again, one might seek to draw an inference from observations about human happiness. If it is the case, across most times, places, and occupations, that people are typically at least moderately happy, this would create some presumption in favor of the same holding in a post-transition scenario like the one we are considering. To be clear, the argument in this case would not be that human minds have a predisposition towards happiness so they would probably find satisfaction under these novel conditions; but rather that a certain average level of happiness has proved adaptive for human minds in the past so maybe a similar level of happiness will prove adaptive from human-like minds in the future. Yet this formulations also reveals the weakness of the inference: to wit, that the mental dispositions that were adaptive for hunter-gatherer hominids roaming the African savanna may not necessarily be adaptive for modified emulations living in post-transition virtual realities. We can certainly hope that the future emulation-workers would be as happy as, or happier than, typical workers were in human history; but we have yet to see any compelling reason for supposing it would be so (in the laissez-faire multipolar scenario currently under examination).\nConsider the possibility that the reason happiness is prevalent among humans (to whatever limited extent it is prevalent) is that cheerful mood served a signaling function in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Conveying the impression to other members of the social group of being in flourishing condition–in good health, in good standing with one’s peers, and in confident expectation of continued good fortune–may have boosted an individual’s popularity. A bias toward cheerfulness could thus have been selected for, with the result that human neurochemistry is now biased toward positive affect compared to what would have been maximally efficient according to simpler materialistic criteria. If this were the case, then the future of joie de vivre might depend on cheer retaining its social signaling function unaltered in the post-transition world: an issue to which we will return shortly. \nWhat if glad souls dissipate more energy than glum ones? Perhaps the joyful are more prone to creative leaps and flights of fancy–behaviors that future employers might disprize in most of their workers. Perhaps a sullen or anxious fixation on simply getting on with the job without making mistakes will be the productivity-maximizing attitude in most lines of work. The claim here is not that this is so, but that we do not know that it is not so. Yet we should consider just how bad it could be if some such pessimistic hypothesis about a future Malthusian state turned out to be true: not only because of the opportunity cost of having failed to create something better–which would be enormous–but also because the state could be bad in itself, possibly far worse that the original Malthusian state.\nWe seldom put forth full effort. When we do, it is sometimes painful. Imagine running on a treadmill at a steep incline–heart pounding, muscles aching, lungs gasping for air. A glance at the timer: your next break, which will will also be your death, is due in 49 years, 3 months, 20 days, 4 hours, 56 minutes, and 12 seconds. You wish you had not been born.\nAgain the claim is not that this is how it would be, but that we do not know that it is not. One could certainly make a more optimistic case. For example, there is no obvious reason that emulations would need to suffer bodily injury and sickness: the elimination of physical wretchedness would be a great improvement over the present state of affairs. Furthermore, since such stuff as virtual reality is made of can be fairly cheap, emulations may work in sumptuous surroundings–in splendid mountaintop palaces, on terraces set in a budding spring forest, or on the beaches of azure lagoon–with just the right illumination, temperature, scenery and décor; free from annoying fumes, noises, drafts, and buzzing insects; dressed in comfortable clothing, feeling clean and focused, and well nourished. More significantly, if–as seems perfectly possible–the optimum human mental state for productivity in most jobs is one of joyful eagerness, then the era of the emulation economy could be quite paradisiacal.\nThere would, in any case, be a great option value in arranging matters in such a manner that somebody or something could intervene to set things right if the default trajectory should happen to veer toward dystopia. It could also be desirable to have some sort of escape hatch that would permit bailout into death and oblivion if the quality of life were to sink permanently below the level at which annihilation becomes preferable to continued existence.\nUnconscious outsourcers?\nIn the long run, as the emulation era gives way to an artificial intelligence era (or if machine intelligence is attained directly via AI without a preceding whole brain emulation stage) pain and pleasure might possibility disappear entirely in a multipolar outcome, since a hedonic reward mechanism may not be the most effective motivation system for a complex artificial agent (one that, unlike the human mind, is not burdened with the legacy of animal wetware). Perhaps a more advanced motivation system would be based on an explicit representation of a utility function or some other architecture that has not exact functional analogs to pleasure and pain.\nA related but slightly more radical multipolar outcome–one that could involve the elimination of almost all value from the future–is that the universal proletariat would not even be conscious. This possibility is most salient with respect to AI, which might be structured very differently than human intelligence. But even if machine intelligence were initially achieved through whole brain emulation, resulting in conscious digital minds, the competitive forces unleashed in a post-transition economy could easily lead to the emergence of progressively less neuromorphic forms of machine intelligence, either because synthetic AI is created de novo or because the emulations would, through successive modifications and enhancements, increasingly depart their original human form.\n\n* Scenarios where sentient emulations are being used to do maximally efficient work.\n** Footnote: “An ethical evaluation might take into account many other factors as well. Even if all the workers were constantly well pleased with their condition, the outcome might still be deeply morally objectionable on other grounds–though which other grounds is a matter of dispute between rival moral theories. But any plausible assessment would consider subjective well-being to be one important factor. See also Bostrom and Yudkowsky (2015).”\n*** World Values Survey (2008).\n**** Helliwell and Sachs (2012).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/12/24/would-maximally-efficient-work-be-fun/", "title": "Would Maximally Efficient Work Be Fun?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-12-24T19:04:44+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=19", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "d3b7f6a1f60aa331a0d60e4fcba7fee4", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Universal Plot: Part I – Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators\n\n“It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, ‘Who are we?'”\n– Erwin Schrödinger in Science and Humanism (1951)\n \n“Should you or not commit suicide? This is a good question. Why go on? And you only go on if the game is worth the candle. Now, the universe is been going on for an incredibly long time. Really, a satisfying theory of the universe should be one that’s worth betting on. That seems to me to be absolutely elementary common sense. If you make a theory of the universe which isn’t worth betting on… why bother? Just commit suicide. But if you want to go on playing the game, you’ve got to have an optimal theory for playing the game. Otherwise there’s no point in it.”\n– Alan Watts, talking about Camu’s claim that suicide is the most important question (cf. The Most Important Philosophical Question)\nIn this article we provide a novel framework for ethics which focuses on the perennial battle between wellbeing-oriented consciousness-centric values and valueless patterns who happen to be great at making copies of themselves (aka. Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators). This framework extends and generalizes modern accounts of ethics and intuitive wisdom, making intelligible numerous paradigms that previously lived in entirely different worlds (e.g. incongruous aesthetics and cultures). We place this worldview within a novel scale of ethical development with the following levels: (a) The Battle Between Good and Evil, (b) The Balance Between Good and Evil, (c) Gradients of Wisdom, and finally, the view that we advocate: (d) Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators. More so, we analyze each of these worldviews in light of our philosophical background assumptions and posit that (a), (b), and (c) are, at least in spirit, approximations to (d), except that they are less lucid, more confused, and liable to exploitation by pure replicators. Finally, we provide a mathematical formalization of the problem at hand, and discuss the ways in which different theories of consciousness may affect our calculations. We conclude with a few ideas for how to avoid particularly negative scenarios.\nIntroduction\nThroughout human history, the big picture account of the nature, purpose, and limits of reality has evolved dramatically. All religions, ideologies, scientific paradigms, and even aesthetics have background philosophical assumptions that inform their worldviews. One’s answers to the questions “what exists?” and “what is good?” determine the way in which one evaluates the merit of beings, ideas, states of mind, algorithms, and abstract patterns.\nKuhn’s claim that different scientific paradigms are mutually unintelligible (e.g. consciousness realism vs. reductive eliminativism) can be extended to worldviews in a more general sense. It is unlikely that we’ll be able to convey the Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators paradigm by justifying each of the assumptions used to arrive to it one by one starting from current ways of thinking about reality. This is because these background assumptions support each other and are, individually, not derivable from current worldviews. They need to appear together as a unit to hang together tight. Hence, we now make the jump and show you, without further due, all of the background assumptions we need:\n\nConsciousness Realism\nQualia Formalism\nValence Structuralism\nThe Pleasure Principle (and its corollary The Tyranny of the Intentional Object)\nPhysicalism (in the causal sense)\nOpen Individualism (also compatible with Empty Individualism)\nUniversal Darwinism\n\nThese assumptions have been discussed in previous articles. In the meantime, here is a brief description: (1) is the claim that consciousness is an element of reality rather than simply the improper reification of illusory phenomena, such that your conscious experience right now is as much a factual and determinate aspect of reality as, say, the rest mass of an electron. In turn, (2) qualia formalism is the notion that consciousness is in principle quantifiable. Assumption (3) states that valence (i.e. the pleasure/pain axis, how good an experience feels) depends of the structure of such experience (more formally, on the properties of the mathematical object isomorphic to its phenomenology).\n(4) is the assumption that people’s behavior is motivated by the pleasure-pain axis even when they think that’s not the case. For instance, people may explicitly represent the reason for doing things in terms of concrete facts about the circumstance, and the pleasure principle does not deny that such reasons are important. Rather, it merely says that such reasons are motivating because one expects/anticipates less negative valence or more positive valence. The Tyranny of the Intentional Object describes the fact that we attribute changes in our valence to external events and objects, and believe that such events and objects are intrinsically good (e.g. we think “icecream is great” rather than “I feel good when I eat icecream”).\nPhysicalism (5) in this context refers to the notion that the equations of physics fully describe the causal behavior of reality. In other words, the universe behaves according to physical laws and even consciousness has to abide by this fact.\nOpen Individualism (6) is the claim that we are all one consciousness, in some sense. Even though it sounds crazy at first, there are rigorous philosophical arguments in favor of this view. Whether this is true or not is, for the purpose of this article, less relevant than the fact that we can experience it as true, which happens to have both practical and ethical implications for how society might evolve.\nFinally, (7) Universal Darwinism refers to the claim that natural selection works at every level of organization. The explanatory power of evolution and fitness landscapes generated by selection pressures is not confined to the realm of biology. Rather, it is applicable all the way from the quantum foam to, possibly, an ecosystem of universes.\nThe power of a given worldview is not only its capacity to explain our observations about the inanimate world and the quality of our experience, but also in its capacity to explain *in its own terms* the reasons for why other worldviews are popular as well. In what follows we will utilize these background assumptions to evaluate other worldviews.\n \nThe Four Worldviews About Ethics\nThe following four stages describe a plausible progression of thoughts about ethics and the question “what is valuable?” as one learns more about the universe and philosophy. Despite the similarity of the first three levels to the levels of other scales of moral development (e.g. this, this, this, etc.), we believe that the fourth level is novel, understudied, and very, very important.\n1. The “Battle Between Good and Evil” Worldview\n“Every distinction wants to become the distinction between good and evil.” – Michael Vassar (source)\nCommon-sensical notions of essential good and evil are pre-scientific. For reasons too complicated to elaborate on for the time being, the human mind is capable of evoking an agentive sense of ultimate goodness (and of ultimate evil).\nGood vs. Evil? God vs. the Devil?\nChildren are often taught that there are good people and bad people. That evil beings exist objectively, and that it is righteous to punish them and see them with scorn. On this level people reify anti-social behaviors as sins.\nEssentializing good and evil, and tying it up to entities seems to be an early developmental stage of people’s conception of ethics, and many people end up perpetually stuck in here. Several religions (specially the Abrahamic ones) are often practiced in such a way so as to reinforce this worldview. That said, many ideologies take advantage of the fact that a large part of the population is at this level to recruit adherents by redefining “what good and bad is” according to the needs of such ideologies. As a psychological attitude (rather than as a theory of the universe), reactionary and fanatical social movements often rely implicitly on this way of seeing the world, where there are bad people (jews, traitors, infidels, over-eaters, etc.) who are seen as corrupting the soul of society and who deserve to have their fundamental badness exposed and exorcised with punishment in front of everyone else.\nTraditional notions of God vs. the Devil can be interpreted as the personification of positive and negative valence\nImplicitly, this view tends to gain psychological strength from the background assumptions of Closed Individualism (which allows you to imagine that people can be essentially bad). Likewise, this view tends to be naïve about the importance of valence in ethics. Good feelings are often interpreted as the result of being aligned with fundamental goodness, rather than as positive states of consciousness that happen to be triggered by a mix of innate and programmable things (including cultural identifications). More so, good feelings that don’t come in response to the preconceived universal order are seen as demonic and aberrant.\nFrom our point of view (the 7 background assumptions above) we interpret this particular worldview as something that we might be biologically predisposed to buy into. Believing in the battle between good and evil was probably evolutionarily adaptive in our ancestral environment, and might reduce many frictional costs that arise from having a more subtle view of reality (e.g. “The cheaper people are to model, the larger the groups that can be modeled well enough to cooperate with them.” – Michale Vassar). Thus, there are often pragmatic reasons to adopt this view, specially when the social environment does not have enough resources to sustain a more sophisticated worldview. Additionally, at an individual level, creating strong boundaries around what is or not permissible can be helpful when one has low levels of impulse control (though it may come at the cost of reduced creativity).\nOn this level, explicit wireheading (whether done right or not) is perceived as either sinful (defying God’s punishment) or as a sort of treason (disengaging from the world). Whether one feels good or not should be left to the whims of the higher order. On the flipside, based on the pleasure principle it is possible to interpret the desire to be righteous as being motivated by high valence states, and reinforced by social approval, all the while the tyranny of the intentional object cloaks this dynamic.\nIt’s worth noting that cultural conservativism, low levels of the psychological constructs of Openness to Experience and Tolerance of Ambiguity , and high levels of Need for Closure, all predict getting stuck in this worldview for one’s entire life.\n2. The “Balance Between Good and Evil” Worldview\nTVTropes has a great summary of the sorts of narratives that express this particular worldview and I highly recommend reading that article to gain insight into the moral attitudes compatible with this view. For example, here are some reasons why Good cannot or should not win:\nGood winning includes: the universe becoming boring, society stagnating or collapsing from within in the absence of something to struggle against or giving people a chance to show real nobility and virtue by risking their lives to defend each other. Other times, it’s enforced by depicting ultimate good as repressive (often Lawful Stupid), or by declaring concepts such as free will or ambition as evil. In other words “too much of a good thing”.\n– Balance Between Good and Evil by tvtropes\nNow, the stated reasons why people might buy into this view are rarely their true reasons. Deep down, the Balance Between Good and Evil is adopted because: people want to differentiate themselves from those who believe in (1) to signal intellectual sophistication, they experience learned helplessness after trying to defeat evil without success (often in the form of resilient personal failings or societal flaws), they find the view compelling at an intuitive emotional level (i.e. they have internalized the hedonic treadmill and project it onto the rest of reality).\nIn all of these cases, though, there is something somewhat paradoxical about holding this view. And that is that people report that coming to terms with the fact that not everything can be good is itself a cause of relief, self-acceptance, and happiness. In other words, holding this belief is often mood-enhancing. One can also confirm the fact that this view is emotionally load-bearing by observing the psychological reaction that such people have to, for example, bringing up the Hedonistic Imperative (which asserts that eliminating suffering without sacrificing anything of value is scientifically possible), indefinite life extension, or the prospect of super-intelligence. Rarely are people at this level intellectually curious about these ideas, and they come up with excuses to avoid looking at the evidence, however compelling it may be.\nFor example, some people are lucky enough to be born with a predisposition to being hyperthymic (which, contrary to preconceptions, does the opposite of making you a couch potato). People’s hedonic set-point is at least partly genetically determined, and simply avoiding some variants of the SCN9A gene with preimplantation genetic diagnosis would greatly reduce the number of people who needlessly suffer from chronic pain.\nBut this is not seen with curious eyes by people who hold this or the previous worldview. Why? Partly this is because it would be painful to admit that both oneself and others are stuck in a local maxima of wellbeing and that examining alternatives might yield very positive outcomes (i.e. omission bias). But at its core, this willful ignorance can be explained as a consequence of the fact that people at this level get a lot of positive valence from interpreting present and past suffering in such a way that it becomes tied to their core identity. Pride in having overcome their past sufferings, and personal attachment to their current struggles and anxieties binds them to this worldview.\nIf it wasn’t clear from the previous paragraph, this worldview often requires a special sort of chronic lack of self-insight. It ultimately relies on a psychological trick. One never sees people who hold this view voluntarily breaking their legs, taking poison, or burning their assets to increase the goodness elsewhere as an act of altruism. Instead, one uses this worldview as a mood-booster, and in practice, it is also susceptible to the same sort of fanaticism as the first one (although somewhat less so). “There can be no light without the dark. And so it is with magic. Myself, I always try to live within the light.” – Horace Slughorn.\nAdditionally, this view helps people rationalize the negative aspects of one’s community and culture. For example, it not uncommon for people to say that buying factory farmed meat is acceptable on the grounds that “some things have to die/suffer for others to live/enjoy life.” Balance Between Good and Evil is a close friend of status quo bias.\nHinduism, Daoism, and quite a few interpretations of Buddhism work best within this framework. Getting closer to God and ultimate reality is not done by abolishing evil, but by embracing the unity of all and fostering a healthy balance between health and sickness.\nIt’s also worth noting that the balance between good and evil tends to be recursively applied, so that one is not able to “re-define our utility function from ‘optimizing the good’ to optimizing ‘the balance of good and evil’ with a hard-headed evidence-based consequentialist approach.” Indeed, trying to do this is then perceived as yet another incarnation of good (or evil) which needs to also be balanced with its opposite (willful ignorance and fuzzy thinking). One comes to the conclusion that it is the fuzzy thinking itself that people at this level are after: to blur reality just enough to make it seem good, and to feel like one is not responsible for the suffering in the world (specially by inaction and lack of thinking clearly about how one could help). “Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know” – Alan Watts. So this becomes a justification for thinking less than one really has to about the suffering in the world. Then again, it’s hard to blame people for trying to keep the collective standards of rigor lax, given the high proportion of fanatics who adhere to the “battle between good and evil” worldview, and who will jump the gun to demonize anyone who is slacking off and not stressed out all the time, constantly worrying about the question “could I do more?”\n(Note: if one is actually trying to improve the world as much as possible, being stressed out about it all the time is not the right policy).\n3. The “Gradients of Wisdom” Worldview\nDavid Chapman’s HTML book Meaningness might describe both of the previous worldviews as variants of eternalism. In the context of his work, eternalism refers to the notion that there is an absolute order and meaning to existence. When applied to codes of conduct, this turns into “ethical eternalism”, which he defines as: “the stance that there is a fixed ethical code according to which we should live. The eternal ordering principle is usually seen as the source of the code.” Chapman eloquently argues that eternalism has many side effects, including: deliberate stupidity, attachment to abusive dynamics, constant disappointment and self-punishment, and so on. By realizing that, in some sense, no one knows what the hell is going on (and those who do are just pretending) one takes the first step towards the “Gradients of Wisdom” worldview.\nAt this level people realize that there is no evil essence. Some might talk about this in terms of there “not being good or bad people”, but rather just degrees of impulse control, knowledge about the world, beliefs about reality, emotional stability, and so on. A villain’s soul is not connected to some kind of evil reality. Rather, his or her actions can be explained by the causes and conditions that led to his or her psychological make-up.\nSam Harris’ ideas as expressed in The Moral Landscape evoke this stage very clearly. Sam explains that just as health is a fuzzy but important concept, so is psychological wellbeing, and that for such a reason we can objectively assess cultures as more or less in agreement with human flourishing. \nIndeed, many people who are at this level do believe in valence structuralism, where they recognize that there are states of consciousness that are inherently better in some intrinsic subjective value sense than others.\nHowever, there is usually no principled framework to assess whether a certain future is indeed optimal or not. There is little hard-headed discussion of population ethics for fear of sounding unwise or insensitive. And when push comes to shove, they lack good arguments to decisively rule out why particular situations might be bad. In other words, there is room for improvement, and such improvement might eventually come from more rigor and bullet-bitting.  In particular, a more direct examination of the implications of: Open Individualism, the Tyranny of the Intentional Object, and Universal Darwinism can allow someone on this level to make a breakthrough. Here is where we come to:\n4. The “Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators” Worldview\nIn Wireheading Done Right we introduced the concept of a pure replicator:\nI will define a pure replicator, in the context of agents and minds, to be an intelligence that is indifferent towards the valence of its conscious states and those of others. A pure replicator invests all of its energy and resources into surviving and reproducing, even at the cost of continuous suffering to themselves or others. Its main evolutionary advantage is that it does not need to spend any resources making the world a better place.\nPresumably our genes are pure replicators. But we, as sentient minds who recognize the intrinsic value (both positive and negative) of conscious experiences, are not pure replicators. Thanks to a myriad of fascinating dynamics, it so happened that making minds who love, appreciate, think creatively, and philosophize was a side effect of the process of refining the selfishness of our genes. We must not take for granted that we are more than pure replicators ourselves, and that we care both about our wellbeing and the wellbeing of others. The problem now is that the particular selection pressures that led to this may not be present in the future. After all, digital and genetic technologies are drastically changing the fitness landscape for patterns that are good at making copies of themselves.\nIn an optimistic scenario, future selection pressures will make us all naturally gravitate towards super-happiness. This is what David Pearce posits in his essay “The Biointelligence Explosion”:\nAs the reproductive revolution of “designer babies” gathers pace, prospective parents will pre-select alleles and allelic combinations for a new child in anticipation of their behavioural effects – a novel kind of selection pressure to replace the “blind” genetic roulette of natural selection. In time, routine embryo screening via preimplantation genetic diagnosis will be complemented by gene therapy, genetic enhancement and then true designer zygotes. In consequence, life on Earth will also become progressively happier as the hedonic treadmill is recalibrated. In the new reproductive era, hedonic set-points and intelligence alike will be ratcheted upwards in virtue of selection pressure. For what parent-to-be wants to give birth to a low-status depressive “loser”? Future parents can enjoy raising a normal transhuman supergenius who grows up to be faster than Usain Bolt, more beautiful than Marilyn Monroe, more saintly than Nelson Mandela, more creative than Shakespeare – and smarter than Einstein.\n– David Pearce in The Biointelligence Explosion\nIn a pessimistic scenario, the selection pressures lead to the opposite direction, where negative experiences are the only states of consciousness that happen to be evolutionarily adaptive, and so they become universally used.\nThere is a number of thinkers and groups who can be squarely placed on this level, and relative to the general population, they are extremely rare (see: The Future of Human Evolution,  A Few Dystopic Future Scenarios,  Book Review: Age of EM, Nick Land’s Gnon, Spreading Happiness to the Stars Seems Little Harder than Just Spreading, etc.). See also**. What is much needed now, is formalizing the situation and working out what we could do about it. But first, some thoughts about the current state of affairs.\nThere is at least some encouraging facts that suggest it is not too late to prevent a pure replicator takeover. There are memes, states of consciousness, and resources that can be used in order to steer evolution in a positive directions. In particular, as of 2017:\n\nA very big proportion of the economy is dedicated to trading positive experiences for money, rather than just survival or power tools. Thus an economy of information about states of consciousness is still feasible.\nThere is a large fraction of the population who is altruistic and would be willing to cooperate with the rest of the world to avoid catastrophic scenarios.\nHappy people are more motivated, productive, engaged, and ultimately, economically useful (see hyperthimic temperament).\nMany people have explored Open Individualism and are interested (or at least curious) about the idea that we are all one.\nA lot of people are fascinated by psychedelics and the non-ordinary states of consciousness that they induce.\nMDMA-like consciousness is both very positive in terms of its valence, but also, amazingly, extremely pro-social, and future sustainable versions of it could be recruited to stabilize societies where the highest value is the collective wellbeing.\n\nIt is important to not underestimate the power of the facts laid out above. If we get our act together and create a Manhattan Project of Consciousness we might be able to find sustainable, reliable, and powerful methods that stabilize a hyper-motivated, smart, super-happy and super-prosocial state of consciousness in a large fraction of the population. In the future, we may all by default identify with consciousness itself rather than with our bodies (or our genes), and be intrinsically (and rationally) motivated to collaborate with everyone else to create as much happiness as possible as well as to eradicate suffering with technology. And if we are smart enough, we might also be able to solidify this state of affairs, or at least shield it against pure replicator takeovers.\nThe beginnings of that kind of society may already be underway. Consider for example the contrast between Burning Man and Las Vegas. Burning Man is a place that works as a playground for exploring post-Darwinean social dynamics, in which people help each other overcome addictions and affirm their commitment to helping all of humanity. Las Vegas, on the other hand, might be described as a place that is filled to the top with pure replicators in the forms of memes, addictions, and denial. The present world has the potential for both kind of environments, and we do not yet know which one will outlive the other in the long run.\nFormalizing the Problem\nWe want to specify the problem in a way that will make it mathematically intelligible. In brief, in this section we focus on specifying what it means to be a pure replicator in formal terms. Per the definition, we know that pure replicators will use resources as efficiently as possible to make copies of themselves, and will not care about the negative consequences of their actions. And in the context of using brains, computers, and other systems whose states might have moral significance (i.e. they can suffer), they will simply care about the overall utility of such systems for whatever purpose they may require. Such utility will be a function of both the accuracy with which the system performs it’s task, as well as its overall efficiency in terms of resources like time, space, and energy.\nSimply phrased, we want to be able to answer the question: Given a certain set of constraints such as energy, matter, and physical conditions (temperature, radiation, etc.), what is the amount of pleasure and pain involved in the most efficient implementation of a given predefined input-output mapping?\n\nThe image above represents the relevant components of a system that might be used for some purpose by an intelligence. We have the inputs, the outputs, the constraints (such as temperature, materials, etc.) and the efficiency metrics. Let’s unpack this. In the general case, an intelligence will try to find a system with the appropriate trade-off between efficiency and accuracy. We can wrap up this as an “efficiency metric function”, e(o|i, s, c) which encodes the following meaning: “e(o|i, s, c) = the efficiency with which a given output is generated given the input, the system being used, and the physical constraints in place.”\n\nNow, we introduce the notion of the “valence for the system given a particular input” (i.e. the valence for the system’s state in response to such an input). Let’s call this v(s|i). It is worth pointing out that whether valence can be computed, and whether it is even a meaningfully objective property of a system is highly controversial (e.g. “Measuring Happiness and Suffering“). Our particular take (at QRI) is that valence is a mathematical property that can be decoded from the mathematical object whose properties are isomorphic to a system’s phenomenology (see: Principia Qualia: Part II – Valence, and also Quantifying Bliss). If so, then there is a matter of fact about just how good/bad an experience is. For the time being we will assume that valence is indeed quantifiable, given that we are working under the premise of valence structuralism (as stated in our list of assumptions). We thus define the overall utility for a given output as U(e(o|i, s, c), v(s|i)), where the valence of the system may or may not be taken into account. In turn, an intelligence is said to be altruistic if it cares about the valence of the system in addition to its efficiency, so that it’s utility function penalizes negative valence (and rewards positive valence).\n\nNow, the intelligence (altruistic or not) utilizing the system will also have to take into account the overall range of inputs the system will be used to process in order to determine how valuable the system is overall. For this reason, we define the expected value of the system as the utility of each input multiplied by its probability.\n\n(Note: a more complete formalization would also weight in the importance of each input-output transformation, in addition to their frequency). Moving on, we can now define the overall expected utility for the system given the distribution of inputs it’s used for, its valence, its efficiency metrics, and its constraints as E[U(s|v, e, c, P(I))]:\n\nThe last equation shows that the intelligence would choose the system that maximizes E[U(s|v, e, c, P(I))].\nPure replicators will be better at surviving as long as the chances of reproducing do not depend on their altruism. If altruism does not reduce such reproductive fitness, then:\nGiven two intelligences that are competing for existence and/or resources to make copies of themselves and fight against other intelligences, there is going to be a strong incentive to choose a system that maximizes the efficiency metrics regardless of the valence of the system.\nIn the long run, then, we’d expect to see only non-altruistic intelligences (i.e. intelligences with utility functions that are indifferent to the valence of the systems it uses to process information). In other words, as evolution pushes intelligences to optimize the efficiency metrics of the systems they employ, it also pushes them to stop caring about the wellbeing of such systems. In other words, evolution pushes intelligences to become pure replicators in the long run.\nHence we should ask: How can altruism increase the chances of reproduction? A possibility would be for the environment to reward entities that are altruistic. Unfortunately, in the long run we might see that environments that reward altruistic entities produce less efficient entities than environments that don’t. If there are two very similar environments, one which rewards altruism and one which doesn’t, the efficiency of the entities in the latter might become so much higher than in the former that they become able to takeover and destroy whatever mechanism is implementing such reward for altruism in the former. Thus, we suggest to find environments in which rewarding altruism is baked into their very nature, such that similar environments without such reward either don’t exist or are too unstable to exist for the amount of time it takes to evolve non-altruistic entities. This and other similar approaches will be explored further in Part II.\nBehaviorism, Functionalism, Non-Materialist Physicalism\nA key insight is that the formalization presented above is agnostic about one’s theory of consciousness. We are simply assuming that it’s possible to compute the valence of the system in terms of its state. How one goes about computing such valence, though, will depend on how one maps physical systems to experiences. Getting into the weeds of the countless theories of consciousness out there would not be very productive at this stage, but there is still value in defining the rough outline of kinds of theories of consciousness. In particular, we categorize (physicalist) theories of consciousness in terms of the level of abstraction they identify as the place in which to look for consciousness.\nBehaviorism and similar accounts simply associate consciousness to input-output mappings, which can be described, in Marr’s terms, as the computational level of abstraction. In this case, v(s|i) would not depend on the details of the system as much as in what it does from a third person point of view. Behaviorists don’t care what’s in the Chinese Room; all they care about is if the Chinese Room can scribble “I’m in pain” as an output. How we can formalize a mathematical equation to infer whether a system is suffering from a behaviorist point of view is beyond me, but maybe someone might want to give it a shot. As a side note, behaviorists historically were not very concerned about pain or pleasure, and there cause to believe that behaviorism itself might be anti-depressant for people for whom introspection results in more pain than pleasure.\nFunctionalism (along with computational theories of mind) defines consciousness as the sum-total of the functional properties of systems. In turn, this means that consciousness arises at the algorithmic level of abstraction. Contrary to common misconception, functionalists do care about how the Chinese Room is implemented: contra behaviorists, they do not usually agree that a Chinese Room implemented with a look-up table is conscious.*\nAs such v(s|i) will depend on the algorithms that the system is implementing. Thus, as an intermediary step, one would need a function that takes the system as an input and returns the algorithms that the system is implementing as an output, A(s). Only once we have A(s) we would then be able to infer the valence of the system. Which algorithms, and for what reason, are in fact hedonically-charged has yet to be clarified. Committed functionalists often associate reinforcement learning with pleasure and pain, and one could imagine that as philosophy of mind gets more rigorous and takes into account more advancements in neuroscience and AI, we will see more hypothesis being made about what kinds of algorithms result in phenomenal pain (and pleasure). There are many (still fuzzy) problems to be solved for this account to work even in principle. Indeed, there is a reason to believe that the question “what algorithms is this system performing?” has no definite answer, and it surely isn’t frame-invariant in the same way that a physical state might be. The fact that algorithms do not carve nature at its joints would imply that consciousness is not really a well-defined element of reality either. But rather than this working as a reductio-ad-absurdum of functionalism, many of its proponents have instead turned around to conclude that consciousness itself is not a natural kind. This does represent an important challenge in order to define the valence of the system, and makes the problem of detecting and avoiding pure replicators extra challenging. Admirably so, this is not stopping some from trying anyway.\nWe also should note that there are further problems with functionalism in general, including the fact that qualia, the binding problem, and the causal role of consciousness seem underivable from its premises. For a detailed discussion about this, read this article.\nFinally, Non-Materialist Physicalism locates consciousness at the implementation level of abstraction. This general account of consciousness refers to the notion that the intrinsic nature of the physical is qualia. There are many related views that for the purpose of this article should be good enough approximations: panpsychism, panexperientialism, neutral monism, Russellian monism, etc. Basically, this view takes seriously both the equations of physics and the idea that what they describe is the behavior of qualia. A big advantage of this view is that there is a matter-of-fact about what a system is composed of. Indeed, both in relativity and quantum mechanics, the underlying nature of a system is frame-invariant, such that its fundamental (intrinsic and causal) properties do not depend on one’s frame of reference. In order to obtain v(s|i) we will need to obtain this frame-invariant description of what the system is in a given state. Thus, we need a function that takes as input physical measurements of the system and returns the best possible approximation to what is actually going on under the hood, Ph(s). And only with this function Ph(s) we would be ready to compute the valence of the system. Now, in practice we might not need a plank-length description of the system, since the mathematical property that describes it’s valence might turn out to be well-approximated with high-level features of it.\nThe main problem with Non-Materialist Physicalism comes when one considers systems that have similar efficiency metrics, are performing the same algorithms, and look the same in all of the relevant respects from a third-person point, and yet do not have the same experience. In brief: if physical rather than functional aspects of systems map to conscious experiences, it seems likely that we could find two systems that do the same (input-output mapping), do it in the same way (algorithms), and yet one is conscious and the other isn’t.\nThis kind of scenario is what has pushed many to conclude that functionalism is the only viable alternative, since at this point consciousness would seem epiphenomenal (e.g. Zombies Redacted). And indeed, if this was the case, it would seem to be a mere matter of chance that our brains are implemented with the right stuff to be conscious, since the nature of such stuff is not essential to the algorithms that actually end up processing the information. You cannot speak to stuff, but you can speak to an algorithm. So how do we even know we have the right stuff to be conscious?\nThe way to respond to this very valid criticism is for Non-Materialist Physicalism to postulate that bound states of consciousness have computational properties. In brief, epiphenomenalism cannot be true. But this does not rule out Non-Materialist Physicalism for the simple reason that the quality of states of consciousness might be involved in processing information. Enter…\nThe Computational Properties of Consciousness\nLet’s leave behaviorism behind for the time being. In what ways do functionalism and non-materialist physicalism differ in the context of information processing? In the former, consciousness is nothing other than certain kinds of information processing, whereas in the latter conscious states can be used for information processing. An example of this falls out of taking David Pearce’s theory of consciousness seriously. In his account, the phenomenal binding problem (i.e. “if we are made of atoms, how come our experience contains many pieces of information at once?”, see: The Combination Problem for Panpsychism) is solved via quantum coherence. Thus, a given moment of consciousness is a definite physical system that works as a unit. Conscious states are ontologically unitary, and not merely functionally unitary.\nIf this is the case, there would be a good reason for evolution to recruit conscious states to process information. Simply put, given a set of constraints, using quantum coherence might be the most efficient way to solve some computational problems. Thus, evolution might have stumbled upon a computational jackpot by creating neurons whose (extremely) fleeting quantum coherence could be used to solve constraint satisfaction problems in ways that would be more energetically expensive to do otherwise. In turn, over many millions of years, brains got really good at using consciousness in order to efficiently process information. It is thus not an accident that we are conscious, that our conscious experiences are unitary, that our world-simulations use a wide range of qualia varieties, and so on. All of these seemingly random, seemingly epiphenomenal, aspects of our existence happen to be computationally advantageous. Just as using quantum computing for factorizing prime numbers, or for solving problems amenable to annealing might give quantum computers a computational edge over their non-quantum counterparts, so is using bound conscious experiences helpful to outcompete non-sentient animals.\nOf course, there is yet no evidence of macroscopic decoherence and the brain is too hot anyway, so on the face of it Pearce’s theory seems exceedingly unlikely. But its explanatory power should not be dismissed out of hand, and the fact that it makes empirically testable predictions is noteworthy (how often do consciousness theorists make precise predictions to falsify their theories?).\nWhether it is via quantum coherence, entanglement, invariants of the gauge field, or any other deep physical property of reality, non-materialist physicalism can avert the spectre of epiphenomenalism by postulating that the relevant properties of matter that make us conscious are precisely those that give our brains a computational edge (relative to what evolution was able to find in the vicinity of the fitness landscape explored in our history).\nWill Pure Replicators Use Valence Gradients at All?\nWhether we work under the assumption of functionalism or non-materialist physicalism, we already know that our genes found happiness and suffering to be evolutionary advantageous. So we know that there is at least a set of constraints, efficiency metrics, and input-output mappings that make both phenomenal pleasure and pain very good algorithms (functionalism) or physical implementations (non-materialist physicalism). But will the parameters necessitated by replicators in the long-term future have these properties? Remember that evolution was only able to explore a restricted state-space of possible brain implementations delimited by the pre-existing gene pool (and the behavioral requirements provided by the environment). So, in one extreme case, it may be the case that a fully optimized brain simply does not need consciousness to solve problems. And in another extreme, it may turn out that consciousness is extraordinarily more powerful when used in an optimal way. Would this be good or bad?\nWhat’s the best case scenario? Well, the absolute best possible case is a case so optimistic and incredibly lucky that if it turned out to be true, it would probably make me believe in a benevolent God (or Simulation). This is the case where it turns out that only positive valence gradients are computationally superior to every other alternative given a set of constraints, input-output mappings, and arbitrary efficiency functions. In this case, the most powerful pure replicators, despite their lack of altruism, will nonetheless be pumping out massive amounts of systems that produce unspeakable levels of bliss. It’s as if the very nature of this universe is blissful… we simply happen to suffer because we are stuck in a tiny wrinkle at the foothills of the optimization process of evolution.\nIn the extreme opposite case, it turns out that only negative valence gradients offer strict computational benefits under heavy optimization. This would be Hell. Or at least, it would tend towards Hell in the long run. If this happens to be the universe we live in, let’s all agree to either conspire to prevent evolution from moving on, or figure out the way to turn it off. In the long term, we’d expect every being alive (or AI, upload, etc.) to be a zombie or a piece of dolorium. Not a fun idea.\nIn practice, it’s much more likely that both positive and negative valence gradients will be of some use in some contexts. Figuring out exactly which contexts these are might be both extremely important, and also extremely dangerous. In particular, finding out in advance which computational tasks make positive valence gradients a superior alternative to other methods of doing the relevant computations would inform us about the sorts of cultures, societies, religions, and technologies that we should be promoting in order to give this a push in the right direction (and hopefully out-run the environments that would make negative valence gradients adaptive).\nUnless we create a Singleton early on, it’s likely that by default all future entities in the long-term future will be non-altruistic pure replicators. But it is also possible that there are multiple attractors (i.e. evolutionarily stable ecosystems) in which different computational properties of consciousness are adaptive. Thus the case for pushing our evolutionary history in the right direction right now before we give up.\n Coming Next: The Hierarchy of Cooperators\nNow that we covered the four worldviews, formalized what it means to be a pure replicator, and analyzed the possible future outcomes based on the computational properties of consciousness (and of valence gradients in particular), we are ready to face the game of reality in its own terms.\nTeam Consciousness, we need to to get our act together. We need a systematic worldview, availability of states of consciousness, set of beliefs and practices to help us prevent pure replicator takeovers.\nBut we cannot do this as long as we are in the dark about the sorts of entities, both consciousness-focused and pure replicators, who are likely to arise in the future in response to the selection pressures that cultural and technological change are likely to produce. In Part II of The Universal Plot we will address this and more. Stay tuned…\n \n\n\n* Rather, they usually claim that, given that a Chinese Room is implemented with physical material from this universe and subject to the typical constraints of this world, it is extremely unlikely that a universe-sized look-up table would be producing the output. Hence, the algorithms that are producing the output are probably highly complex and using information processing with human-like linguistic representations, which means that, by all means, the Chinese Room it very likely understanding what it is outputting.\n\n** Related Work:\nHere is a list of literature that points in the direction of Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators. There are countless more worthwhile references, but I think that these ones are about the best:\nThe Biointelligence Explosion (David Pearce), Meditations on Moloch (Scott Alexander), What is a Singleton? (Nick Bostrom), Coherent Extrapolated Volition (Eliezer Yudkowsky), Simulations of God (John Lilly), Meaningness (David Chapman), The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins), Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (Daniel Dennett), Prometheus Rising (R. A. Wilson).\nAdditionally, here are some further references that address important aspects of this worlview, although they are not explicitly trying to arrive at a big picture view of the whole thing:\nNeurons Gone Wild (Kevin Simler), The Age of EM (Robin Hanson), The Mating Mind (Geoffrey Miller), Joyous Cosmology (Alan Watts), The Ego Tunnel (Thomas Metzinger), The Orthogonality Thesis (Stuart Armstrong)\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/12/20/the-universal-plot-part-i-consciousness-vs-pure-replicators/", "title": "The Universal Plot: Part I – Consciousness vs. Pure Replicators", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-12-20T02:16:33+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=19", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ef34a9f45a8cbe61a141be2c95cd82c5", "summary": []}
{"text": "No-Self vs. True Self\n\nThis is one of those questions that tends to arise when Hinduism or Christianity come in contact with Buddhism. However, perhaps it should arise more when Buddhism is thinking about itself. I include this discussion here because it addresses some points that are useful for later and previous discussions. True Self and no-self are actually talking about the same thing, just from different perspectives. Each can be useful, but each is an extreme. Truly, the truth is a Middle Way between these and is indescribable, but I will try to explain it anyway in the hope that it may support actual practice. It may seem odd to put a chapter that deals with the fruits of insight practices in the middle of descriptions of the samatha jhanas, but hopefully when you read the next chapter you will understand why it falls where it does.\nFor all you intellectuals out there, the way in which this chapter is most likely to support practice is to be completely incomprehensible and thus useless. Ironically, I have tried to make this chapter very clear, and in doing so have crafted a mess of paradoxes. In one of his plays, Shakespeare puts philosophers on par with lawyers. In terms of insight practice, a lawyer who is terrible at insight practices but tries to do them anyway is vastly superior to a world-class philosopher who is merely an intellectual master of this theory but practices not at all.\nRemember that the spiritual life is something you do and hopefully understand but not some doctrine to believe. Those of you who are interested in the formal Buddhist dogmatic anti-dogma should check out the particularly profound Sutta 1, “The Root of All Things“, in The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, as well as Sutta 1, “The Supreme Net (What the Teaching is Not)“, in The Long Discourses of the Buddha.\nAgain, realize that all of this language is basically useless in the end and prone to not making much sense. Only examination of our reality will help us to actually directly understand this, but it will not be in a way accessible to the rational mind. Nothing in the content of our thoughts can really explain the experience of the understanding I am about to point to, though there is something in the direct experience of those thoughts that might reveal it. Everything that I am about to try to explain here can become a great entangling net of useless views without direct insight.\nMany of the juvenile and tedious disputes between the various insight traditions result from fixation on these concepts and inappropriate adherence to only one side of these apparent paradoxes. Not surprisingly, these disputes between insight traditions generally arise from those with little or no insight. One clear mark of the development of true insight is that these paradoxes lose their power to confuse and obscure. They become tools for balanced inquiry and instruction, beautiful poetry, intimations of the heart of the spiritual life and of one’s own direct and non-conceptual experience of it.\nNo-self teachings directly counter the sense that there is a separate watcher, and that this watcher is an “I” that is in control, observing reality or subject to the tribulations of the world. Truly, this is a useful illusion to counter. However, if misunderstood, this teaching can produce a shadow side that reeks of nihilism, disengagement with life and denial. People can get all fixated on eliminating a “self”, when the emphasis is supposed to be on the words “separate” and “permanent,” as well as on the illusion that is being created. A better way to say this would be, “stopping the process of mentally creating the illusion of a separate self from sensations that are inherently non-dual, utterly transient and thus empty of any separate, permanent self.”\nEven if you get extremely enlightened, you will still be here from a conventional point of view, but you will also be just an interdependent and intimate part of this utterly transient universe, just as you actually always have been. The huge and yet subtle difference is that this will be known directly and clearly. The language “eliminating your ego” is similarly misunderstood most of the time.\nYou see, there are physical phenomena and mental phenomena, as well as the “consciousness” or mental echo of these, which is also in the category of mental phenomena. These are just phenomena, and all phenomena are not permanent, separate self, as they all change and are all intimately interdependent. They are simply “aware,” i.e. manifest, where they are without any observer of them at all. The boundaries that seem to differentiate self from not-self are arbitrary and conceptual, i.e. not the true nature of things. Said another way, reality is intimately interdependent and non-dual, like a great ocean.\nThere is also “awareness”, but awareness is not a thing or localized in a particular place, so to even say “there is also awareness” is already a tremendous problem, as it implies separateness and existence where none can be found. To be really philosophically correct about it, borrowing heavily from Nagarjuna, awareness cannot be said to fit any of the descriptions: that it exists, that it does not exist, that it both exists and does not exist, that it neither exists nor doesn’t exist. Just so, in truth, it cannot be said that: we are awareness, that we are not awareness, that we are both awareness and not awareness, or even that we are neither awareness nor not awareness. We could go through the same pattern with whether or not phenomena are intrinsically luminous.\nFor the sake of discussion, and in keeping with standard Buddhist thought, awareness is permanent and unchanging. It is also said that, “All things arise from it, and all things return to it,” though again this implies a false certainty about something which is actually impenetrably mysterious and mixing the concept of infinite potential with awareness is a notoriously dangerous business. We could call it “God”, “Nirvana”, “The Tao”, “The Void”, “Allah”, “Krishna”, “Intrinsic Luminosity”, “Buddha Nature”, “Buddha”, “Bubba” or just “awareness” as long as we realize the above caveats, especially that it is not a thing or localized in any particular place and has no definable qualities. Awareness is sometimes conceptualized as pervading all of this while not being all of this, and sometimes conceptualized as being inherent in all of this while not being anything in particular. Neither is quite true, though both perspectives can be useful.\nIf you find yourself adopting any fixed idea about what we are calling “awareness” here, try also adopting its logical opposite to try to achieve some sense of direct inquisitive paradoxical imbalance that shakes fixed views about this stuff and points to something beyond these limited concepts. This is incredibly useful advice for dealing with all teachings about “Ultimate Reality.” I would also recommend looking into the true nature of the sensations that make up philosophical speculation and all sensations of questioning.\nWhile phenomena are in flux from their arising to their passing, there is awareness of them. Thus, awareness is not these objects, as it is not a thing, nor is it separate from these objects as there would be no experience if this were so. By examining our reality just as it is, we may come to understand this.\nFurther, phenomena do not exist in the sense of abiding in a fixed way for any length of time, and thus are utterly transitory, and yet the laws that govern the functioning of this utter transience hold. That phenomena do not exist does not mean that there is not a reality, but that this reality is completely inconstant, except for awareness, which is not a thing. This makes no sense to the rational mind, but that is how it is with this stuff.\nOne teaching that comes out of the Theravada that can be helpful is that there are Three Ultimate Dharmas or ultimate aspects of reality: materiality (the sensations of the first five sense doors), mentality (all mental sensations) and Nirvana (though they would call it “Nibbana,” which is the Pali equivalent of the Sanskrit). In short, this is actually it, and “that” which is beyond this is also it. Notice that “awareness” is definitely not on this list. It might be conceptualized as being all three (from a True Self point of view), or quickly discarded as being a useless concept that solidifies a sense of a separate or localized “watcher” (from the no-self point of view).\nBuddhism also contains a strangely large number of True Self teachings, though if you told most Buddhists this they would give you a good scolding. Many of these have their origins in Hindu Vedanta and Hindu Tantra. All the talk of Buddha Nature, the Bodhisattva Vow, and that sort of thing are True Self teachings. True Self teachings point out that this “awareness” is “who we are,” but isn’t a thing, so it is not self. They also point out that we actually are all these phenomena, rather than all of these phenomena being seen as something observed and thus not self, which they are also as they are utterly transient and not awareness. This teaching can help practitioners actually examine their reality just as it is and sort of “inhabit it” in a honest and realistic way, or it can cause them to cling to things as “self” if they misunderstand this teaching. I will try again…\nYou see, as all phenomena are observed, they cannot possibly be the observer. Thus, the observer, which is awareness and not any of the phenomena pretending to be it, cannot possibly be a phenomenon and thus is not localized and doesn’t exist. This is no-self. However, all of these phenomena are actually us from the point of view of non-duality and interconnectedness, as the illusion of duality is just an illusion. When the illusion of duality permanently collapses in final awakening, all that is left is all of these phenomena, which is True Self, i.e. the lack of a separate self and thus just all of this as it is. Remember, however, that no phenomena abide for even an instant, and so are empty of permanent abiding and thus of stable existence.\nThis all brings me to one of my favorite words, “non-dual,” a word that means that both duality and unity fail to clearly describe ultimate reality. As “awareness” is in some way separate from and unaffected by phenomena, we can’t say that that unity is the true answer. Unitive experiences arise out of strong concentration and can easily fool people into thinking they are the final answer. They are not.\nThat said, it is because “awareness” is not a phenomena, thing or localized in any place that you can’t say that duality is true. A duality implies something on both sides, an observer and an observed. However, there is no phenomenal observer, so duality does not hold up under careful investigation. Until we have a lot of fundamental insight, the sense that duality is true can be very compelling and can cause all sorts of trouble. We extrapolate false dualities from sensations until we are very highly enlightened.\nThus, the word “non-dual” is an inherently paradoxical term, one that confounds reason and even our current experience of reality. If we accept the working hypothesis that non-duality is true, then we will be able to continue to reject both unitive and dualistic experiences as the true answer and continue to work towards awakening. This is probably the most practical application of discussions of no-self and True Self.\nNo-self and True Self are really just two sides of the same coin. There is a great little poem by one Kalu Rinpoche that goes something like:\nWe live in illusion\nAnd the appearance of things.\nThere is a reality:\nWe are that reality.\nWhen you understand this,\nYou will see that you are nothing.\nAnd, being nothing,\nYou are everything.\nThat is all.\nThere are many fine poems on similar themes presented in Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tiberan Book of Living and Dying. It is because we are all of this that compassionate action for all beings and ourselves is so important. To truly understand this moment is to truly understand both, which is the Middle Way between these two extremes (see Nisargadatta’s I Am That for a very down-to-earth discussion of these issues). While only insight practices will accomplish this, there are some concentration attainments (the last four jhanas or Formless Realms) that can really help put things in proper perspective, though they do not directly cause deep insight and awakening unless the true nature of the sensations that make them up is understood.\nQuote from Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book by Daniel M. Ingram (pages 182-187)\n\nCf. Ontological Qualia: The Future of Personal Identity (for a discussion about how the experience of identity might change in the future), The Manhattan Project of Consciousness (for speculative writing about the potential social benefits of combining bliss technologies with qualia that make us experience oneness in a reliably way), and this essay about Burning Man (which introduces the concept of the Goldilocks Zone of Oneness which refers to the experience of “feeling neither one with everything nor ontologically separate from the rest of reality” in which wonderful things like love, gratitude, and meaning can thrive).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/11/26/no-self-vs-true-self/", "title": "No-Self vs. True Self", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-11-26T10:02:46+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=20", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "38569f13eb8acfaa7029c9ecb5e52199", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Manifesto\n\n0. Summary\nIt is the greatest intellectual challenge for humanity at present to elucidate the first principles behind the fact that there is such a thing as a subjective experience. The hallmark of our subjective experiences is qualia. It is the challenge to find the natural law behind the neural generation of qualia which constitute the percepts in our mind, or to go beyond the metaphor of a “correspondence” between physical and mental processes. This challenge is necessary to go beyond the present paradigm of natural sciences which is based on the so-called objective point of view of description. In order to pin down the origin of qualia, we need to incorporate the subjective point of view in a non-trivial manner.\nThe clarification of the nature of the way how qualia in our mind are invoked by the physical processes in the brain and how the “subjectivity” structure which supports qualia is originated is an essential step in making compatible the subjective and objective points of view.\nThe elucidation of the origin of qualia rich subjectivity is important not only as an activity in the natural sciences, but also as a foundation and the ultimate justification of the whole world of the liberal arts. Bridging the gap between the two cultures (C.P.Snow) is made possible only through a clear understanding of the origin of qualia and subjectivity.\nQualia symbolize the essential intellectual challenge for the humanity in the future. The impact of its elucidation will not be limited to the natural sciences. The liberal arts, religion, and the very concept of what a man is will be reassessed from the very foundations.\n1. History of the Mind-Brain Problem\nThe strong AI position held by Marvin Minsky and others was an attempt to simulate some aspects of human intelligence from an objective point of view. It had little to say about the essential problems of the mind, namely the qualia rich subjectivity.\nIn an effort to fill the gap left by the objective natural sciences, such movements as the “new science” and the “new age” came into the scene. These activities, however, were not particularly keen on taking seriously the consistency with the objective sciences. Even if we are to find new paradigms in search of the theory of mind, the consistency with the objective sciences should be maintained. Theses “alternative movements” tended instead to the over-emphasis of the subjective. These activities did not therefore lead to a real breakthrough in the science of the mind. These activities proved to be a stud.\nThe concept of information due to Claude Shannon is based on a statistical picture, and as he himself declared in his historic paper, has nothing to do with the semantics of information. Despite this, the Shannonian concept of information has been applied to “understand” the information processing in the brain. For example, it is an experimentally accepted fact that there is a correspondence between certain features of external objects and the spatio-temporal firing pattern of a group of neurons in our brain. This selectivity of neural activities is called “response selectivity” and is an important analytical concept in neuropsychology. However, it is wrong to think that the nature of our qualia rich perception can be explained away by the fact that there are activities of neurons in the brain characterized by certain response selectivities. We should instead start from the “interaction picture” rather than the “statistical picture”.\nWe cannot elucidate the neural correlates of qualia starting from the concept of response selectivity. We should instead start from Mach’s principle in perception.\nQualia is deeply related to the semantic aspects of information. The Shannonian concept of information has little to do with qualia.\n2. Qualia and Subjectivity\nIn view of the neurophysiological data, it is reasonable to assume that qualia in our mind are caused by the collection of action potentials on the cellular membrane of the neuron in our brain.\n“I” feel the qualia in “my” mind. This “I” and “my” structure (subjectivity) is maintained also by the neural firings in my brain. The problems of qualia and subjectivity are deeply related.\nQualia and subjectivity in general cannot be explained away by a simple extension of physicalism. From the point of view of the objective sciences, it is necessary and sufficient to describe the temporal evolution of a system. However, the principle of correspondence of qualia to physical states should be constructed on top of the conventional type of natural laws that describe the temporal evolution of the system. This particular natural law should be of a different character from the conventional ones.\nEven if we obtain an ultimate physical theory of everything, it only gives a complete description of the temporal evolution of a physical system;even then the origin of qualia from physical processes such as brain activities would remain unsolved.\nCausality plays an essential role when we consider the way the perceptual space-time structure in which qualia are embedded arises from the space-time structure of the neural firing in the brain. In particular, in the Principle of Interaction Simultaneity plays an essential role in the origin of the subjective time.\nThe “subjectivity” that we discuss here has relatively little to do with the “subjectivity” in the context of the theory of measurement in quantum mechanics. It is our view that the introduction of the concept of subjectivity in quantum mechanics did a tremendous disservice. It confused rather than enriched the arguments.\n3. Related Problems\nIn modern physics, “NOW” has no special meaning in the flow of time. In oder to elucidate the origin of our mind, we need to come up with a structure of the time which designates a special meaning to “Now”\nThe formulationn of the relativistic space-time by the formalism of Riemanian geometry (Minkowski 1911) is only an intermediate step.\n4. Methodology and Conjectures\nThe trivial attempt to assume a seat for subjectivity in the brain (the homunculus solution) is bound to fail. For example, the Crick and Koch model puts the subjectivity seat in the prefrontal cortex. Of course, saying empirically that this seems to be a necessary correlate of subjectivity is O.K. But that does not solve the most difficult part of the problem.\nIn considering the neural correlates of qualia rich subjective experiences, the invariance under the transformation of neural activity patterns in space and time is going to be essential.\n5. Towards the Fusion of Two Cultures\nA solution of the qualia problem is bound to have impact not only for the natural sciences but also for the humanities.\nTo take the visual art, music, literature seriously is to take qualia seriously. For paintings and music, this sounds like a cliche. Literature is also an art of the qualia, as the semantics is embedded in the intentional qualia.\nAs the so-called “exact” sciences have been focusing only on the measurable and quantifiable properties of nature, there was no place in the scientific world view for the immensely qualia rich subjective experience which is the ultimate raison d’etre for the arts. This was the essential reason why there was and continued to be a division between the two cultures a la C.P.Snow.\nTo analyze the sound wave of a violin though the Fourier analysis has nothing to do with our subjective experience of the violin sound qualia. It is meaningless to say that color is nothing but the wavelength of light when our concern is the subjective experience of color.\nThe development of the digital information technology perhaps had a beneficial effect on the fusion of the two cultures. The digital coding of provides a useful tool for the storing and manipulation of information, but has nothing to do with the richness of subjective experience. Unless we understand the “qualia coding” by the neural activities, we cannot find scientific foundations for the subjective experience.\nIn general, it is nonsensical to try to explain away the enigma of qualia from the information theoretic or evolution theory points of view.\n6. On the Coming New Situation\nThe sense for the future essential entails a sensitivity for the possibility that the next moment can be something completely different from the previously known.\nIt is no longer meaningful to cling to the systemacity of religion. Religious feelings and values also consist of qualia, which in turn can be treatedly more or less individually. For example, the qualia associated with the stained glass has nothing in essence to do with Christianity. Even though traditional religion employed the appeal of the qualia as an engine to promote their specific causes, there is no reason to obstinately maintain that systemacity now.\nDue to the physical limitation of the human brain, there is a limit to the category of qualia that a human being can experience. Only a ridiculously small subset of all possible qualia is accessible to the human being. This makes us take the possibilities of metaphysics more seriously.\n7. Agitation\nThe concept of qualia is clearly at the heart of the next stage of human intellectual endeavors.\nThere is no other intellectual challenge more important or pressing than qualia.\nThe revolution can only be brought about by a combination of a rigorous scientific thinking and a trembling sensitivity.\nThe qualia thinkers of the world, unite!\n\nSee also the update on the original manifesto, and Mogi’s thoughts on the “computational theory of mind“.\n\nCf. Raising the Table Stakes for Successful Theories of Consciousness, Qualia Computing in Tucson, David Pearce at the “2016 Science of Consciousness”,  “Schrodinger’s Neurons Conjecture”, and Why I think the Foundational Research Institute should rethink its approach", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/11/26/qualia-manifesto/", "title": "Qualia Manifesto", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-11-26T08:19:17+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=20", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "312cd4fcffc375f05e475f92f4039f84", "summary": []}
{"text": "What Makes Tinnitus, Depression, and the Sound of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) so Awful: Dissonance\n\nThe Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is often criticized for its loudness. According to measurements made in 2010, the noise reaches up to 100 decibels, enough to cause permanent hearing loss in the long term. This is why you should always wear earplugs on the BART, which can decrease the volume by up to 30 or so decibels, making it tolerable and harmless.\nSource\nAnd while pointing out that BART gets really loud is indeed important, I would claim that there is something even more important to note. Namely, that BART is not merely loud, but it is also distinctly dissonant. Talking only about the stretch that goes from Millbrae to Embarcadero, an analysis I conducted reveals that the single worst period of dissonance happens on the ride from Glen Park to Balboa Park (at around the 20 second mark after one starts). If you are curious to hear it, you can check it out for yourself here. That said, I do not recommend listening to that track on repeat for any length of time, as it may have a strong mood-diminishing effect.\n\n\nToo bad that some of the beautiful patterns found at the entrance of the Balboa Park BART station are not equally matched by beautiful sounds in the actual ride:\nBalboa Park has some beautiful visual patterns (useful for psychophysics).\nUltimately, dissonance might be much more important than loudness, insofar as it tracks the degree to which environmental sound directly impacts quality of life. Thus, in addition to metrics that track how loud cities are, it might be a good addition to our sound contamination measurements to incorporate a sort of “dissonance index” into our calculations.\nA General Framework for Valence\nAt the Qualia Research Institute we have pointed that the connection between dissonance and valence may not be incidental. In particular, we suggest that it falls out as a possible implication of the Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV). The STV is itself a special case of the general principle we call Valence Structuralism, which claims that the degree to which an experience feels good or bad is a consequence of the structures of the object whose mathematical properties are isomorphic to a system’s phenomenology. The STV goes one step further and suggests that the relevant mathematical property that denotes valence is the symmetry of this object.\n\nIn Quantifying Bliss, we postulated that a general framework for describing the valence of an experience could be constructed in terms of Consonance-Dissonance-Noise Signatures (“CDNS” for short). That is, the degree to which the given states have consonance, dissonance, and noise in them. As an implication of the Symmetry Theory of Valence we postulate that consonance will directly track positive valence, dissonance negative valence, and noise neutral valence. But wait, there is more! Each of these “channels” themselves have a spectrum. That is to say, one could be experiencing high degrees of low-frequency-dissonance at the same time as high-frequency-consonance and maybe a general full-spectrum background noise. Any combination is possible.\n\n\n\nThe Quantifying Bliss article describes how recent advancements in neuroscience might be useful to quantify people’s CDNS (namely, using the pair-wise interactions between people’s connectome-specific harmonics).\nMany Heads But Just One Body\nRichard Wu has a good article on his experience with tinnitus. One of the things that stands out about it is the level of detail used to describe his tinnitus. At its worst, he says, he does not only experience a single sound, but several kinds at once:\nBy the way, its getting louder isn’t even the worst. Sometimes I develop an entirely new tinnitus. […] Today, I have three:\n\nA very high-pitched CRT monitor / TV-like screech (similar to the one in the video).\nA deep, low, powerful rumbling.\nA mid-tone that adjusts its volume based on external sounds. If my environment is loud, it will be loud; if my environment is quiet, it will ring more softly.\n\n\nAs in the case of the BART and how people complain about how loud it is while missing the most important piece (its dissonance), tinnitus may have a similar reporting problem. What makes tinnitus so unbearable might not be so much the fact that there is always a hallucinated sound present, but rather, that such a sound (or clusters of sounds) is so unpleasant, distracting, and oppressive. The actual texture of tinnitus may be just as, if not more, important than its mere presence.\nWe believe that Valence Structuralism and in particular the Symmetry Theory of Valence are powerful explanatory frameworks that can tie together a wide range of disparate phenomena concerning good and bad feelings. And if true, then for every unpleasant experience we may have, a reasonable thing to ask might be: in what way is this dissonant? For example: Depression may be a sort of whole-body low-frequency dissonance (similar to, but different in texture, to nausea). Anxiety, on the other hand, along with irritation and anger, might be a manifestation of high-frequency dissonance.\nLikewise, whenever a good or pleasant feeling is found, a reasonable question to ask is: in what ways is this consonant? Let’s think about the three kinds of euphoria uncovered in State-Space of Drug Effects. Fast euphoria (stimulants, exercise, anticipation, etc.) might be what high-frequency consonance feels like. Slow euphoria (relaxation, opioids, etc.) might be what low-frequency consonance feels like. And what about spiritual euphoria (what you get by thinking about philosophy, tripping, and taking dissociatives)? Well, however trippy this may sound, it might well be that this is a sort of fractal consonance, in which multiple representations of various spatio-temporal resolutions become interlocked in a pleasant dance (which may, or may not, allow you to process information more efficiently).\nNow what about noise? Here is where we place all of the blunting agents. The general explanation for why anti-depressants of the SSRI variety tend to blunt feelings might be because their very mechanism of action is to increase neuronal noise and thus reduce the signal-to-noise ratio. Crying, orgasm, joy, and ragegasms all share the quality of being highly symmetric harmonic states, and SSRIs having a generalized effect of adding noise to one’s neuronal environment would be expected to diminish the intensity (and textural orderliness) of each of these states. We also know that SSRIs are often capable of reducing the subjective intensity of tinnitus (and presumably the awfulness of BART sounds), which makes sense in this framework.\nThe STV would also explain MDMA’s effects as a generalized reduction in both dissonance and noise across the full spectrum, and a generalized increase in consonance, also across the full spectrum. This would clarify the missing link to explain why MDMA would be a potential tool to reduce tinnitus, not just emotional pain. The trick is that both perceptual dissonance and negative affect may have a common underlying quality: anti-symmetry. And MDMA being a chief symmetrifying agent takes it all away.\nMany further questions remain: what makes meaningful experiences so emotionally rich? Why do some people enjoy weird sounds? Why is emo music so noisy? What kind of valence can be experienced when one’s consciousness has acquired a hyperbolic geometry? I will address these and many other interesting questions in future posts. Stay tuned!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/11/03/what-makes-tinnitus-depression-and-the-sound-of-the-bay-area-rapid-transit-bart-so-awful-dissonance/", "title": "What Makes Tinnitus, Depression, and the Sound of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) so Awful: Dissonance", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-11-03T07:07:12+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=20", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0224ce37a7a863bfdbfe3c1d5f37b9ab", "summary": []}
{"text": "Traps of the God Realm\n\nFrom Opening the Heart of Compassion by Martin Lowenthal and Lar Short (pages 132-136).\nSeeking Oneness\nIn this realm we want to be “one with the universe.” We are trying to return to a time when we felt no separation, when the world of our experience seemed to be the only world. We want to recover the experience and comfort of the womb. In the universe of the womb, everything was ours without qualification and was designed to support our existence and growth. Now we want the cosmos to be our womb, as if it were designed specifically for our benefit.\nWe want satisfaction to flow more easily, naturally and automatically. This seems less likely when we are enmeshed in the everyday affairs of the world. Therefore, we withdraw to the familiar world of what is ours, of what we can control, and of our domain of influence. We may even withdraw to a domain in the mind. Everything seems to come so much easier in the realm of thought, once we have achieved some modest control over our minds. Insulating ourselves from the troubles of others and of life, we get further seduced by the seeming limitlessness of this mental world. \nIn this process of trance formation, we try to make every sound musical, every image a work of art, and every feeling pleasant. Blocking out all sources of irritation, we retreat to a self-proclaimed “higher” plane of being. We cultivate the “higher qualities of life,” not settling for a “mundane” life.\nMasquerade of Higher Consciousness\nThe danger for those of us on a spiritual path is that the practices and the teachings can be enlisted to serve the realm rather than to dissolve our fixations and open us to truth. We discover that we can go beyond sensual pleasure and material beauty to refined states of consciousness. We achieve purely mental pleasures of increasing subtlety and learn how to maintain them for extended periods. We think we can maintain our new vanity and even expand it to include the entire cosmos, thus vanquishing change, old age, and death. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called this process “spiritual materialism.”\nFor example, we use a sense of spaciousness to expand our consciousness by imposing our preconception of limitlessness on the cosmos. We see everything that we have created and “it is good.” Our vanity in the god realm elevates our self-image to the level of the divine–we feel capable of comprehending the universe and the nature of reality.\nWe move beyond our contemplation of limitless space, expanding our consciousness to include the very forces that create vast space. As the creator of vast space, we imagine that we have no boundaries, no limits, and no position. Our mind can now include everything. We find that we do not have concepts for such images and possibilities, so we think that the Divine or Essence must be not any particular thing we can conceive of, must be empty of conceptual characteristics.\nThus our vain consciousness, as the Divine, conceives that it has no particular location, is not anything in particular, and is itself beyond imagination. We arrive at the conclusion that even this attempt to comprehend emptiness is itself a concept, and that emptiness is devoid of inherent meaning. We shift our attention to the idea of being not not any particular thing. We then come to the glorious position that nothing can be truly stated, that nothing has inherent value. This mental understanding becomes our ultimate vanity. We take pride in it, identify as someone who “knows”, and adopt a posture in the world as someone who has journeyed into the ultimate nature of the unknown.\nIn this way we create more and more chains that bind us and limit our growth as we move ever inward. When we think we are becoming one with the universe, we are only achieving greater oneness with our own self-image. Instead of illuminating our ignorance, we expand its domain. We become ever more disconnected from others, from communication and true sharing, and from compassion. We subtly bind ourselves ever more tightly, even to the point of suffocation, under the guise of freedom in spaciousness.\nSpiritual Masquerades of Teachers and Devoted Students\nAs we acquire some understanding and feel expansive, we may think we are God’s special gift to humanity, here to teach the truth. Although we may not acknowledge that we have something to prove, at some level we are trying to prove how supremely unique and important we are. Our spiritual life-style is our expression of that uniqueness and significance.\nSpiritual teachers run a great danger of falling into the traps of the god realm. If a teacher has charisma and the ability to channel and radiate intense energy, this power may be misused to engender hope in students and to bind them in a dependent relationship. The true teacher undermines hope, teaches by the example of wisdom and compassion, and encourages students to be autonomous by investigating truth themselves, checking their own experience, and trusting their own results more than faith.\nThe teacher is not a god but a bridge to the unknown, a guide to the awareness qualities and energy capacities we want for our spiritual growth. The teacher, who is the same as we are, demonstrates what is possible in terms of aliveness and how to use the path of compassion to become free. In a sense, the teacher touches both aspects of our being: our everyday life of habits and feelings on the one hand and our awakened aliveness and wisdom on the other. While respect for and openness to the teacher are important for our growth and freedom, blind devotion fixates us on the person of the teacher. We then become confined by the limitations of the teacher’s personality rather than liberated by the teachings.\nFalse Transcendence\nMany characteristics of this realm–creative imagination, the tendency to go beyond assumed reality and individual perspectives, and the sense of expansiveness–are close to the underlying dynamic of wonderment. In wonder, we find the wisdom qualities of openness, true bliss, the realization of spaciousness within which all things arise, and alignment with universal principles. The god realm attitude results in superficial experiences that fit our preconceptions of realization but that lack the authenticity of wonder and the grounding in compassion and freedom.\nBecause the realm itself seems to offer transcendence, this is one of the most difficult realms to transcend. The heart posture of the realm propels us to transcend conflict and problems until we are comfortable. The desire for inner comfort, rather than for an authentic openness to the unknown, governs our quest. But many feelings arise during the true process of realization. At certain stages there is pain and disorientation, and at others a kind of bliss that may make us feel like we are going to burst (if there was something or someone to burst). When we settle for comfort we settle for the counterfeit of realization–the relief and pride we feel when we think we understand something.\nBecause we think that whatever makes us feel good is correct, we ignore disturbing events, information, and people and anything else that does not fit into our view of the world. We elevate ignorance to a form of bliss by excluding from our attention everything that is non-supportive.\nPreoccupied with self, with grandiosity, and with the power and radiance of our own being, we resist the mystery of the unknown. When we are threatened by the unknown, we stifle the natural dynamic of wonder that arises in relation to all that is beyond our self-intoxication. We must either include vast space and the unknown within our sense of ourselves or ignore it because we do not want to feel insignificant and small. Our sense of awe before the forces of grace cannot be acknowledged for fear of invalidating our self-image.\nAbove the Law\nAccording to our self-serving point of view, we are above the laws of nature and of humankind. We think that, as long as what we do seems reasonable to us, it is appropriate. We are accountable to ourselves and not to other people, the environment, or society. Human history is filled with examples of people in politics, business, and religion who demonstrated this attitude and caused enormous suffering.\nUnlike the titans who struggle with death, we, as gods, know that death is not really real. We take comfort in the thought that “death is an illusion.” The only people who die are those who are stuck and have not come to the true inner place beyond time, change, and death. We may even believe that we have the potential to develop our bodies and minds to such a degree that we can reverse the aging process and become one of the “immortals.”\nA man, walking on a beach, reaches down and picks up a pebble. Looking at the small stone in his hand, he feels very powerful and thinks of how with one stroke he has taken control of the stone. “How many years have you been here, and now I place you in my hand.” The pebble speaks to him, “Though to you, I am only a grain of sand in your hand, you, to me, are but a passing breeze.”", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/10/28/traps-of-the-god-realm/", "title": "Traps of the God Realm", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-10-28T02:38:38+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=20", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "eb53516b1c8ac0759b0a3c8498e5fc6f", "summary": []}
{"text": "Avoid Runaway Signaling in Effective Altruism\n\n \n\n\n\nAbove: “Virtue Signaling” by Geoffrey Miller. This presentation was given at EAGlobal 2016 at the Berkeley campus.\nFor a good introduction to the EA movement, we suggest this amazing essay written by Scott Alexander from SlateStarCodex, which talks about his experience at EAGlobal 2017 in San Francisco (note: we were there too, and the essay briefly discusses our encounter with him).\nWe have previously discussed why valence research is so important to EA. In brief, we argue that in order to minimize suffering we need to actually unpack what it means for an experience to have low valence (ie. to feel bad). Unfortunately, modern affective neuroscience does not have a full answer to this question, but we believe that the approach that we use- at the Qualia Research Institute- has the potential to actually uncover the underlying equation for valence. We deeply support the EA cause and we think that it can only benefit from foundational consciousness research.\nWe’ve already covered some of the work by Geoffrey Miller (see this, this, and this). His sexual selection framework for understanding psychological traits is highly illuminating, and we believe that it will, ultimately, be a crucial piece of the puzzle of valence as well.\nWe think that in this video Geoffrey is making some key points about how society may perceive EAs which are very important to keep in mind as the movement grows. Here is a partial transcript of the video that we think anyone interested in EA should read (it covers 11:19-20:03):\nSo, I’m gonna run through the different traits that I think are the most relevant to EA issues. One is low intelligence versus high intelligence. This is a remarkably high intelligence crowd. And that’s good in lots of ways. Like you can analyze complex things better. A problem comes when you try to communicate findings to the people in the middle of the bell curve or even to the lower end. Those folks are the ones who are susceptible to buying books like “Homeopathic Care for Cats and Dogs” which is not evidence-based (your cat will die). Or giving to “Guide Dogs for the Blind”. And if you think “I’m going to explain my ethical system through Bayesian rationality” you might impress people, you might signal high IQ, but you might not convince them.\nI think there is a particular danger of “runaway IQ-signaling” in EA. I’m relatively new to EA, I’m totally on board with what this community is doing, I think it’s awesome, it’s terrific… I’m very concerned that it doesn’t go the same path I’ve seen many other fields go, which is: when you have bright people, they start competing for status on the basis of brightness, rather than on the basis of actual contributions to the field.\n\nSo if you have elitist credentialism, like if your first question is “where did you go to school?”. Or “I take more Provigil than you, so I’m on a nootropics arms race”. Or you have exclusionary jargon that nobody can understand without Googling it. Or you’re skeptical about everything equally, because skepticism seems like a high IQ thing to do. Or you fetishize counter-intuitive arguments and results. These are problems. If your idea of a Trolley Problem involves twelve different tracks, then you’re probably IQ signaling.\n\nA key Big Five personality trait to worry about, or to think about consciously, is openness to experience. Low openness tends to be associated with drinking alcohol, voting Trump, giving to ineffective charities, standing for traditional family values, and being sexually inhibited. High openness to experience tends to be associated with, well, “I take psychedelics”, or “I’m libertarian”, or “I give to SCI”, or “I’m polyamorous”, or “casual sex is awesome”.\n\nNow, it’s weird that all these things come in a package (left), and that all these things come in a package (right), but that empirically seems to be the case. \nNow, one issue here is that high openness is great- I’m highly open, and most of you guys are too- but what we don’t want to do is, try to sell people all the package and say “you can’t be EA unless you are politically liberal”, or “unless you are a Globalist”, or “unless you support unlimited immigration”, or “unless you support BDSM”, or “transhumanism”, or whatever… right, you can get into runaway openness signaling like the Social Justice Warriors do, and that can be quite counter-productive in terms of how your field operates and how it appears to others. If you are using rhetoric that just reactively disses all of these things [low openness attributes], be aware that you will alienate a lot of people with low openness. And you will alienate a lot of conservative business folks who have a lot of money who could be helpful.\nAnother trait is agreeableness. Kind of… kindness, and empathy, and sympathy. So low agreeableness- and this is the trait with the biggest sex difference on average, men are lower on agreeableness than women. Why? Because we did a bit more hunting, and stabbing each other, and eating meat. And high A tends to be more “cuddle parties”, and “voting for Clinton”, and “eating Tofu”, and “affirmative consent rather than Fifty Shades”. \n\nEA is a little bit weird because this community, from my observations, combines certain elements of high agreeableness- obviously, you guys care passionately about sentient welfare across enormous spans of time and space. But it also tends to come across, potentially, as low agreeableness, and that could be a problem. If you analyze ethical and welfare problems using just cold rationality, or you emphasize rationality- because you are mostly IQ signaling- it comes across to everyone outside EA as low agreeableness. As borderline sociopathic. Because traditional ethics and morality, and charity, is about warm heartedness, not about actually analyzing problems. So just be aware: this is a key personality trait that we have to be really careful about how we signal it. \n\nHigh agreeableness tends to be things like traditional charity, where you have a deontological perspective, sacred moral rules, sentimental anecdotes, “we’re helping people with this well on Africa that spins around, children push on it, awesome… whatever”. You focus on vulnerable cuteness, like charismatic megaphone if you are doing animal welfare. You focus on in-group loyalty, like “let’s help Americans before we help Africa”. That’s not very effective, but it’s highly compelling… emotionally… to most people, as a signal. And the stuff that EA tends to do, all of this: facing tough trade-offs, doing expected utility calculations, focusing on abstract sentience rather than cuteness… that can come across as quite cold-hearted.\n\nEA so far, in my view- I haven’t run personality questionnaires on all of you, but my impression is- it tends to attract a fairly narrow range of cognitive and personality types. Obviously high IQ, probably the upper 5% of the bell curve. Very high openness, I doubt there are many Trump supporters here. I don’t know. Probably not. [Audience member: “raise your hands”. Laughs. Someone raises hands]. Uh oh, a lynching on the Berkeley campus. And in a way there might be a little bit of low agreeableness, combined with abstract concern for sentient welfare. It takes a certain kind of lack of agreeableness to even think in complex rational ways about welfare. And of course there is a fairly high proportion of nerds and geeks- i.e. Asperger’s syndrome- me as much as anybody else out here, with a focus on what Simon Baron-Cohen calls “systematizing” over “empathizing”. So if you think systematically, and you like making lists, and doing rational expected value calculations, that tends to be a kind of Aspie way to approaching things. The result is, if you make systematizing arguments, you will come across as Aspie, and that can be good or bad depending on the social context. If you do a hard-headed, or cold-hearted analysis of suffering, that also tends to signal so-called dark triad traits-narcissism, Machiavellianism, and sociopathy- and I know this is a problem socially, and sexually, for some EAs that I know! That they come across to others as narcissistic, Machiavellian, or sociopathic, even though they are actually doing more good in the world than the high agreeableness folks. \n\n[Thus] I think virtue signaling helps explain why EA is prone to runaway signaling of intelligence and openness. So if you include a lot more math than you really strictly need to, or more intricate arguments, or more mind-bending counterfactuals, that might be more about signaling your own IQ than solving relevant problems. I think it can also explain, according to the last few slides, why EA concerns about tractability, globalism, and problem neglectedness can seem so weird, cold, and unappealing to many people.\n\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/10/24/avoid-runaway-signaling-in-effective-altruism/", "title": "Avoid Runaway Signaling in Effective Altruism", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-10-24T04:18:24+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=20", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "04401a3691571e9df2dfb326bf8308a2", "summary": []}
{"text": "Burning Man\n\n[Content Warning: Deals with heavy topics including gruesome deaths, fear of the multiverse, bad trips, possible meme hazards, and psychotic delusions. Epistemic Status: Confident in about half of the content; the rest is extremely speculative. Everything in this text is subject to heavy revision upon learning more information. I wrote this in a haste right after Burning Man before my state-specific memory access went away. Please take this writeup with a giant grain of salt]\nBurning Man\nThis is the first year that I attended Burning Man. I do not claim to be a Burning Man expert. I’m just a consciousness researcher who happened to attend the Burn and found the experience amazing and insightful. So much so that that writing 13,500+ words about it seemed appropriate. Here goes nothing.\nIntroduction\nI arrived on the morning of the first day (Sunday the 27th of August) and left on Monday (4th of September). I intellectually know that I only spent eight full nights and seven full days at the Playa, but my visceral feeling of time refuses to acknowledge this fact. Like a heavy acid trip, at Burning Man time expands beyond recognition. The experience maxes out one’s novelty detection mechanisms (latent inhibition be damned) and leads you to conclude that a lifetime has happened. Before my brain readjusts to consensus reality, here goes my candid impressions about the event and the insights that came together during it. As it turns out, I think that Burning Man is a profoundly significant event with far-reaching implications. While from afar it is easy to dismiss it as a mere techie-filled psychedelic-fueled hedonistic festival, the truth is that Burning Man may be one of the few key outlets in the world for the exploration of potential futures that are truly worth living. I.e. Post-Darwinian societies. More on this later.\nStrong Emergence\nIt is notoriously hard to boil down the experience into just a few take-aways (example). Burning Man does not lend itself to dimensionality reduction; merely talking about the mental forces that make up the memetic constituents of the population of Black Rock City (predominantly: artists, spiritual practitioners, scientists, environmentalists, techies, philosophers, and qualia lovers) would be akin to describing a biological plant merely in terms of the atomic elements found within it. It’s true that if you grind it down to a fine powder, vaporize it (to break down its proteins and molecules), and then analyze such vapor with X-ray spectroscopy you will characterize the percentage of carbon, nitrogen, potassium, etc. atoms in it. And while this is a necessary part of a full description of such a plant, the elemental breakdown of its composition just scratches the surface of what the plant truly is. This is analogous to the Burn, for Burning Man’s most interesting aspects, like those of a living organism, are to be found at high levels of emergence. In the case of biological organisms we are talking about the large scale assemblies of biomolecules (themselves already complex) implementing elaborate interdependent metabolic functions working together to bring about finely tuned adaptive behavior. Oftentimes, biological organisms utilize the properties of basement reality (i.e. quantum fields) to implement functions that would have formerly been described as strongly emergent (i.e. as metaphysically supervening properties bigger than the mere sum of their parts), as is currently studied by the budding field of quantum biology. At Burning Man something akin to this may be going on as well: you find that people, emotions, and memes come together to create pods, camps, and happenings that are best described as energetic contingents of collective states of consciousness, all of which turn out to have mind-boggling emergent properties unavailable without the high levels of trust, openness, creativity, and coherence beneath the surface. Thus the futility of describing it in terms of what goes into it. Better to address the resulting (emergent) phenomena. More on this later.\nThe People\nAccording to the 2016 Burning Man Census the number one reason that Burners selected as the source of wonderful memories at Burning Man was the people. I personally found this to be very much the case. Although from afar one may think that BM attendees are largely psychedelic junkies, misguided hippies, and sentimental environmentalists, the truth is that the people in the Playa are extraordinary in multiple ways. It almost feels as if the art, the music, the workshops, and the principles are not the core attraction. Rather, these elements are merely an excuse to bring together amazing people who have a high probability of having deeply meaningful interactions and developing symbiotic relationships with each other for the betterment of humanity.\nIt’s about the people! (source)\nBurners are highly educated. According to the Educational Attainment in the United States Wikipedia article, 36% of Americans between 25 and 34 years old have a bachelor’s degree or above (32% for those between 45 to 64, and 27% for those 65 and above), compared to 74.5% of the 2016 Burning Man attendees (of all ages). Additionally, 31.3% of them had a graduate degree, which is an insanely high figure when compared to the national baserate (11% for Americans above the age of 25). More so, this number has been steadily growing over the last few years. In other words, for what seems like an arts and crafts festival, this was an exceptionally well educated crowd. And yet, education is only scratching the surface of what makes these people interesting.\nThe Educational Attainment of Burners\nI have attended academic conferences, rationalist meetups, meditation gatherings, psychedelic festivals, and even amazing events like Psychedelic Science, Effective Altruism Global, and The Science of Consciousness. The people I meet at these events often impress me in many ways, and talking to them has reinforced my conviction that humanity is indeed capable of bringing about a marvelous world free from unnecessary suffering. In light of these previous experiences I certainly did not anticipate being surprised by the people at Burning Man. I was wrong. While it’s true that not everyone at Burning Man is exceptional (“we are all unique, but not everyone is uniquely unique”), the base rate of people who deeply impressed me was possibly higher than at any other gathering of people I’ve ever been to. The consistent feeling I got was one of people who actually cared.\nHere is a little project I’d love to see carried out: someone should take the time to conduct a cluster analysis of the people attending Burning Man using features such as their beliefs about reality, their lifestyle, their preferred social circles, etc. Simply based on my experience, I’d say that the main clusters featured would be: Spiritually serious people with thousands of hours of practice under their belt (50% of Burners describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious”), career ecologists who are looking for ways to live without leaving a footprint on the planet (“leave no trace”), social workers, programmers & rationalists, high grade hedonists, psychologists, and philosophical seekers.\nI find that one of the most powerful aspects of Burning Man is that its participants were mostly open, ready, and willing to have their minds changed. Sure, we are all attached to our preexisting views about reality, and it’s always painful to let go of them. But the vibe of the place, perhaps through a combination of personality types, empathogenic and psychedelic drugs, and free-floating love made it seem ok to let one’s deeply held beliefs cross-pollinate with those of others. Whether this was because of the high degree of openness to experience, relatively high conscientiousness (merely packing for the whole trip selects out people who can’t be bothered), typically high intelligence, or solid pro-sociality (disagreeable people are unlikely to get a kick out of the concept of a gifting economy), it doesn’t matter. People I talked to were not engaging with ideas in a superficial way. They deeply engaged with them. They looked you in the eye, told you their deepest worries about reality, and expressed their beliefs with the underlying feeling of being together in this mess, so let’s work together to bootstrap our way out of it.\nOk, I may be exaggerating a little here. Perhaps Burning Man is somewhat like Silicon Valley: it works more as a mirror of who you are than a solid thing that everyone will perceive in the same way. If you are a low-grade hedonist just looking to get drunk and make fun of others for taking Burning Man seriously you will naturally gravitate towards the camps where that’s the whole point, and if you are an income-focused techie merely looking to have a relaxing little vacation you will easily find yourself doing exactly that. But the point still stands that if you are a serious seeker looking for radically new ways of conceiving the nature of reality for the betterment of universal consciousness… there will be plenty of outlets, people, memes, artworks, and workshops for you to do exactly that at Burning Man. And oh man, are these things of high quality!\nOne of the wonderful persons I met at the Burn was Bruce Damer, with whom I had the pleasure to talk about physics, computing, the origin of life, consciousness, and psychedelics. He shared with me an interesting way of looking at life that involves a tripartite feedback loop: Life utilizes a “probability enhancing engine” (such as the interior of a cell boundary, where the probability of chemical reactions increases dramatically), a place to accumulate such changes as they happen (in which the reactions can be sustained), and a memory system (such as DNA, in which information about the self-replicating reactions can be stored and repurposed). Burning Man, in light of this model, is perhaps one of the leading sources of genuine memetic novelty in the world. With its very high density of people who are deliberate about their choices in life, BM works as a probability enhancing engine which drastically increases the chances for people to find others who are at their own level and are ready to collaborate at the same degree of commitment. The collective interpersonal temperature increases the probability for great matches to be found, and the high (socially derived) hedonic tone fosters no attachment towards each of the attempts that don’t work out. On any given night enough people trip or take an empathogen that there is a general (real or imagined) contact high state akin to a blend of empathogenesis and entheogenesis, i.e. ego softening and ego dissolving vibes, respectively. Higher probability of pairs maximally benefiting from each other to meet and collaborate on future projects. At least this describes my experience. (Be on the lookout for new collaborative projects between Qualia Computing and major institutions in the near future – this is just a teaser for now).\nA handful of people I’ve never met recognized me at the Playa. Apparently the Psychedelic Cryptography article reached enough people to make Qualia Computing and the Qualia Research Institute not the schizophrenic word salad they may sound at first, but a player in the emerging memetic ecosystem at the foothills of the psychedelic renaissance. For example, on the night of the Burn I was hanging out next to a cucumber water stand in Esplanade and a guy approached me and asked: “This is going to sound strange, but, are you by any chance Andrés? From Qualia Computing?” I answered “yes”, and then we proceeded to talk about DiPT, the blockchain, meditation-based cryptocurrency, Greg Egan, how John C. Lilly didn’t go far enough, and the Hedonistic Imperative. This was not by any means an unusual type of interaction in this context, and especially not at 3:30 in the morning (when you find the highest probability for magical encounters to take place).\nAll of this goes to show that Burning Man is full of people capable of engaging with very high level ideas in a meaningful way. To be perfectly honest with you, I must confess that my model of the world is that only about 1% of people have any philosophical agency whatsoever. I do not resent this fact, because with the proper qualia they could turn themselves around right away. People experience philosophy through the eyes of learned helplessness. But at Burning Man (this year; my guess every year) the percentage of people with philosophical agency might have been as high as 10-15%, which is about as high as I have found it to be at places like EAGlobal and the rationalist community. I.e. a pretty freaking extraordinary ratio. Likewise, scientific, introspective, and spiritual literacy seemed to be through the roof. And even those who were not philosophically literate to begin with seemed extremely pleased to learn about qualia. I lost count of the number of people who were thrilled (THRILLED I tell you) to learn that the word qualia existed and that it referred to the ineffable subjective character of sensations, like the blueness of blue. “You mean that there is a word for that?! Wow! I’m so happy now! Cheers to that!” was a rather typical reaction in this context. This warmed my heart. I love turning on people to the concept of qualia.\nIt is also worth pointing out that a pervasive underlying vibe in the Burn was that of a high trust society. Research shows that societies in which people believe that others around them have only the best intentions tend to have a lot of great positive outcomes. The social dynamics at Burning Man run on high trust, and one can feel this in the air (along with a bunch of dust). Not only do the attendees seem to think of humans very highly (relative to the average person), but they also tend to think of other Burners in an even higher light: “To What Extent Do you Assume that People Have Only the Best Intentions?” (2016):\nBlack Rock City as a very High Trust Society\nMetaphysics\nBefore I go on with further object-level analysis of the Burn, let me pause for a second and make an overall point concerning the metaphysical nature of the universe: Metaphysics matter. Look, if Buddhist metaphysics are roughly correct (e.g. emptiness, karma, the reality of suffering, absence of omnipotent gods, reincarnation, etc.) then engaging in profoundly disturbing practices full of negative side effects such as Vipassanā might be very much worth the trouble. Sure, in this lifetime you will be exposed to deeply unsettling experiences, a multi-year long dark night of the soul, serious psychosomatic pain, meditation-induced depersonalization, insomnia, ADHD, etc. but in the grand scheme of things your current pain will be worth it. This lifetime’s suffering would be a good price to pay to attain Bodhisattva status and then go on to help quintillions of beings throughout your endless reincarnations to come. On the other hand, if karma is simply what it feels like to have an evolved in-built system to keep track of your social standing and nothing carries over after death, then Vipassanā might simply involve too much suffering to be worth it. In fact, it might even be an outright stupid and unethical activity, and talking about it in a way that produces curiosity and fear of missing out in others is doing them a disservice (for it would be a memetic hazard). You would be much better off focusing instead on cost-effective high-tech Jainism, valence technologies, and the upcoming reproductive revolution.\nThe same goes for other metaphysical topics such as philosophy of personal identity, the fundamental nature of bliss, mind-body problem, causality, existence of alternate branches of the multiverse, the badness of suffering, etc. What the nature of reality may turn out to be profoundly influences what it means to be a good person and what it is that we ought to do to maximize goodness and minimize suffering. Not many people seem to get this, though. For too many individuals the trauma they experienced as a result of early life exposure to manipulative religious memes, and the intuitively-felt futility of philosophy, lead to the calcification of their philosophical background assumptions (which are rarely recognized as such). But as David Pearce says: “The penalty of _not _ doing philosophy isn’t to transcend it, but simply to give bad philosophical arguments a free pass.”\nNow, talking about metaphysics and David Pearce: for a wide variety of reasons I assign the bulk of my probability mass to his metaphysics (note: I also share his ethical views). I am not going to try to justify why I think he is probably right at the moment, for it would take many thousands of words*. For now it will suffice to say that I find David’s views to be the most informed, coherent, well thought out, and explanatory of all of the interpretations of reality I’ve ever been acquainted with. In rough form, here are the highlights of such a view (taken from here): (0) Zero Ontology: The universe exists as a side effect of the total and complete absence of information. (1) Events of conscious experience are ontologically unitary: The left and right side of your visual field are part of an integrated whole that stands as a natural unit. (2) Physicalism: Physics is causally closed and it fully describes the behavior of the observable universe. (3) Wavefunction realism: The decoherence program is the most parsimonious, scientific, and promising approach for interpreting quantum mechanics. (4) Mereological Nihilism (also called Compositional Nihilism): Simply putting two objects A and B side by side will not make a new object “AB” appear ex nihilo. (5) Qualia Realism: The various textures of qualia (phenomenal color, sounds, feelings of cold and heat, etc.) are not mere representations. On the contrary, our mind uses them to instantiate representations (this is an important difference). (6) Causal efficacy: Consciousness is not standing idly by. It has definite causal effects in animals. In particular, there must be a causal pathway that allows us to discuss its existence. (7) Qualia computing: The reason consciousness was recruited by natural selection is computational. In spite of its expensive caloric cost, consciousness improves the performance of fitness-relevant information processing tasks.\nTogether, all of these metaphysical points paint a coherent worldview that’s fully compatible with most (but not all) of the evidence at hand. Sadly, it’s also a very grim picture of reality: The multiverse is extremely large, eternal, interconnected, and full of suffering that will simply never go away. Worse, every moment of experience is permanently stuck in its own spatiotemporal coordinates (or rather, whatever post-Everettian foliation-based generalization of relativistic coordinate systems admit the formalisms of physics). But if it’s true, we had better know about it, for there are serious ethical policy implications to Pearcianism.\nMost philosophies (and theodicies) may be thought of as exercises in motivated reasoning (“how can I think of reality in order to make sense of the facts while keeping it as meaningful as possible?”). Yet Pearce’s metaphysics is anything but. It’s sheer eternal terror dimly tamed by a glimmer of hope found in a handful of branches of the multiverse (where the Hedonistic Imperative is implemented, and the biology of suffering effectively rooted out of a tiny subset of the existent forward light cones). Indeed I can confidently say that the worst state of consciousness I’ve ever felt took place the first time my mind fully grasped Pearcean metaphysics and considered it to be the final answer. Thankfully I’ve learned to remain open-minded and agnostic about the ultimate nature of reality no matter how compelling a view may be; keeping a probabilistic distribution over metaphysical views is perhaps a lot healthier (and more rational) than committing to any one of them as if true. Do not let your mind get crystallized; do not ever believe in your own bullshit or you will have a self-induced bad trip. And yet, I do believe that it is my responsibility to act in accordance to what seems to be the most probable model of existence. If Pearce is right, I’d like to be able to know that and be ok with it, act in accordance with it, and thus prevent as much suffering as is (post)humanly possible. Saints and Bodhisattvas are not supposed to engage in wishful thinking, and neither are 21st century effective altruists. Kudos to people like Brian Tomasik, who are not afraid to bite the bullet of their metaphysics and dedicate themselves fully to reduce suffering based on what they think is true. Do not ever bury your head in the sand. The stakes are too high. But also, beware of multiverse mania (severely paralyzing people who settle on an Everettian picture of the universe leading them to lose their capacity to be productive and helpful).\nNow, what on earth does any of this have to do with Burning Man? A whole lot, I would argue. As I experienced it, Burning Man is an experiment in metaphysics. It’s an attempt to get awesome people from all walks of life to be open to each other’s life learnings and deep intuitions in order to transcend our current suffering-producing philosophical paradigms.\nThe Strong Tlön Hypothesis\nBased on my conversations with people at the Playa, the most popular metaphysical interpretation of reality seemed to be what I call the Strong Tlön Hypothesis (STH for short). Skeptical scientific materialism was perhaps in second place, followed by generalized agnosticism (again, a wise choice given the psychological dangers of settling for a painful worldview). So what is this Strong Tlön Hypothesis? Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertiu is a wonderful short story by Jorge Luis Borges about strong idealism. This view is one in which reality presents itself as a physical universe (consensus reality) merely as a consequence of a collective delusion. The belief state of us as a collective group mind (itself the manifested imagination of the one eternal being) is what sets the fundamental parameters of reality. In other words, the laws of physics work out to guide the causal structure of reality simply because we believe in them. But if everyone chose to believe otherwise (perhaps not a simple feat to achieve), the nature of reality would in fact completely change. Suffering and separation in this view are the result of a tragedy of the commons, and not a brute fact about existence. Thus, by thinking about new metaphysical interpretations of reality, making sense of them, giving them life with imagination and will, we would literally transform reality one thought at a time. Creation through imagination would be the underlying engine of reality; everything else is maya (metaphysical illusion).\nOn Sunday and Monday night I walked up to strangers and asked them “what do you think about consciousness?” The most common answer I received involved something akin to the Strong Tlön Hypothesis indeed, where Burners literally claimed that yes, if we all took psychedelics more seriously and decided to grow up spiritually all at once, we would all enter into a new stage in our cosmic evolution. Perhaps our current level of reality is what we need right now: A collective illusion created by us and God to allow us to deeply and fully grasp why this system fails. Until we internalize the problems with our current pursuits we will not be able to advance. We need to experience many lifetimes and have many experiences as a collective consciousness in this pseudo-Darwinian world in order to finally realize the problems with this system of belief. Only when we understand the intrinsic flaws of our current consensus reality will we be ready to move on to the next stage. Till then, it’s an uphill battle of waking up at a personal level and then deciding to help convince those around us that we have the power to change reality (and we need a threshold number of people to go along with this belief to have the capacity to structurally alter the bedrock of reality). Every life-form contains the universal Logos within. The God Force, so to speak, is within us all, gradually refining the structure of our mind to make us more and more God-like throughout the eons (or maybe that as well is a collective illusion, courtesy again of the Strong Tlön Hypothesis). The STH view would explain the power of psychedelic trips, the unsettling feelings of synchronicity, and the causal influence of imaginary archetypes. Indeed, it may even explain the Mandela Effect.\n“There is no reality until that far-off day when we rejoin the Godhead. Everything else is just a momentary tool, a momentary experience we create in this somewhat desperate attempt to grasp God.” – Bob Sanders, youtube medium\nNow, Strong Tlön may be too far out. Believing in it may be a sign of latent insanity (anecdotally it seems to be surprisingly common among the people with schizophrenia I know). I personally do not assign much probability mass to it, but I have yet to discard it fully. That said, I still think there is a crucial benefit to engaging with it: most of the time our worldviews are over-constrained rather than under-constrained. While the STH may be false as it is (quantum mechanics will remain true no matter what we collectively think about physics) letting your brain wonder “what if” can be a helpful exercise in weakening latent inhibition and softening unhelpful constraints that are keeping you at a local maximum of understanding.\nNick Land’s mesmerizing story Lemurian Time War discusses the concept of hyperstition, i.e. fictions that make themselves real:\nIn the hyperstitional model Kaye outlined, fiction is not opposed to the real. Rather, reality is understood to be composed of fictions – consistent semiotic terrains that condition perceptual, affective and behaviorial responses. Kaye considered Burroughs’ work to be ‘exemplary of hyperstitional practice’. Burroughs construed writing – and art in general – not aesthetically, but functionally, – that is to say, magically, with magic defined as the use of signs to produce changes in reality.\n[…]\nAccording to Kaye, the metaphysics of Burroughs’s ‘clearly hyperstitional’ fictions can be starkly contrasted with those at work in postmodernism. For postmodernists, the distinction between real and unreal is not substantive or is held not to matter, whereas for practitioners of hyperstition, differentiating between ‘degrees of realization’ is crucial. The hyperstitional process of entities ‘making themselves real’ is precisely a passage, a transformation, in which potentials – already-active virtualities – realize themselves. Writing operates not as a passive representation but as an active agent of transformation and a gateway through which entities can emerge. ‘[B]y writing a universe, the writer makes such a universe possible.’ (WV 321)\n– Lemurian Time War\nI would argue that while the STH is probably false, at least a weak version of it is definitely true: thanks to phenomenal binding (the weird property of qualia that enables us to be more than mere mind-dust, i.e. to bring together myriad qualia values such as the blueness of blue and the smell of cinnamon into complex multi-modal information-rich experiences) ideas are in fact more than the mere sum of their parts. More so, thanks to the causal efficacy of consciousness, ideas can change the world. I call this the Weak Tlön Hypothesis. Namely, that the fictions that we can imagine have, indeed, hyperstitional power.\nIncredibly, John C. Lilly and David Pearce are very much alike in one respect: They both share a complete commitment to understanding the nature of reality, wherever the path may take them, whether the truth is ugly, terrible, or requires them to revise deeply rooted background assumptions (an often painful process). Their core difference is, I would argue, that Pearce buys into the Weak Tlön Hypothesis whereas Lilly bought into the Strong version.\nThree Views of Personal Identities: Heavens and Hells\nOne of the metaphysical views that has the highest level of hyperstitional power is one’s conception of personal identity. I.e. how we all choose to answer the question “who am I, really?” will have an extremely oversized effect on the unfolding of reality. Thus, it’s important that we get this right. In order to talk about this topic clearly, let’s utilize Daniel Kolak’s vocabulary concerning philosophy of personal identity, which divides the conceptions into three neatly clustered explanation spaces:\nClosed Individualism (CI): is the view that “you start existing when you are born and you stop existing when you die”. Alternatively, the “soul view of identity” (in which you are an eternal being yet still ontologically separate from other beings) exists within the purview of Closed Individualism. Most people subscribe, whether implicitly or explicitly, to this view. On the positive side, buying into this view makes you feel ontologically special, unique, and justified in caring about yourself to the exclusion of others. On the negative side, this view is liable to make you feel separate, left-out, unrelatable, deeply afraid of death, and profoundly alone.\nEmpty Individualism (EI): This is the view that we exist merely as a time-slice of experience. Who you are is just whatever informational content is present in this very instantaneous moment of experience. Pearcean metaphysics is largely Empty Individualistic (plus it’s blended with Eternalism, i.e. the belief that every moment of experience exists tenselessly, and that the passage of time is an illusion). On the positive side, this view allows you to feel deeply relieved when you grasp Buddhist emptiness and detachment, it allows you to let go of the past, to be less worried about the future, and to feel free to enjoy the moment. On the negative side, this view can make you feel like you are stuck in time (like bugs in amber), experience depersonalization, get feelings of meaninglessness, and worry about being utterly separate from everything else. It also frequently makes you feel helpless and unmotivated, as you cannot ever possibly benefit from your current efforts (the one who does is another moment of experience).\nOpen Individualism (OI): This is the view that we are all the same universal consciousness. In this view we are all deeply connected; we are all the same eternal being in disguise. On the positive side, Open Individualism can relieve one’s fear of death, bring about a profound sense of cosmic significance, loosen up the fear of separation, and allow you to deeply buy into a rational sentience-based ethics (where we all care about each other as if they were ourselves… ’cause they are in this view). On the negative side, OI can make you feel an overwhelming sense of personal responsibility as one realizes that as long as any being in the multiverse is in an experiential hell you too are in there. Additionally, OI can make you feel even more lonely than the other views, for when one buys into this view 100% there’s a chance that a profound sense of existential loneliness may set in (God is ultimately alone, and sad about this fact). While people who experience the feeling of Universal Oneness of Open Individualism tend to report existential relief as a consequence (example), there is indeed a minority of people who react very poorly to this experience:\nAs for the experience of being assimilated into oneness, what we find is a profound loneliness. Our mind expects to find heaven and/or Nirvana. We do experience a profound freedom and infinity of being. But once we get over the profound freedom and ability to span time and place, we find there is no one else. We are totally alone. We are the Creator before Creation.\n– Fear of ego annihilation and assimilation into oneness (source)\nSo each of these views has positive and negative psychological elements. For ease of understanding, here are these various views of personal identity in picture form:\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFor reasons we do not yet understand, Open Individualism tends to be remarkably common on LSD:\nToday a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.\n– Bill Hicks, A Positive Drug Story\nTwo questions arise: How are one’s beliefs about personal identity implemented? And, why do they have associated good and bad feelings?\nIn a later article I will explore further various theories that may account for the feeling of oneness on psychedelics. Suffice to say that under qualia formalism both the feelings of oneness and separateness come from the properties of the mathematical object isomorphic to the phenomenology of one’s experience. In particular, the topology of such an object (and its orientability) may determine the degree to which one feels a self-other barrier. This is highly speculative, of course. Under the STH, though, “what one believes to be true is true” and thus how separate one feels is a matter of conscious choice.\nWith regards to the second question (“why is personal identity so tied with good and bad feelings?”), there are a couple of reasons why these beliefs might be so hedonically loaded (i.e. they have a tendency to make you feel good or bad, rather than being neutral thoughts). First, this could certainly be the Tyranny of the Intentional Object at work. That is, personal identity views are in fact completely neutral, but since they are explored within the human software they will happen to trigger social feelings (rejection, integration, love, care, etc.) as well as feelings related to death and mortality and it is those feelings that tend to be strongly linked with good or bad valence (i.e. the pleasure pain axis). This itself may be the case for purely evolutionary reasons. If so, given access to the genetic source code of one’s brain it may be possible to invert the valence of any thought whatsoever (ex. some people genuinely enjoy watching others suffer, cf. Schadenfreude, which suggests the hedonic tone of ideas is just a qualia association). Our mind’s hedonic gloss is strongly associative (someone having a bad smell might make you feel like what they are saying is dirty, etc. cf. thin/thick boundaries). David Pearce is likely to endorse this view, and the work I’m doing on Quantifying Bliss assumes that something like that is going on. In brief, if we could control our valence with technology that puts us in a constant and healthy MDMA-like state of consciousness then philosophy would never ever feel terrifying. As they say, “take care of happiness and the meaning of life will take care of itself”. This is what I call the valence interpretation of spirituality as opposed to the spiritual interpretation of valence (cf. The Most Important Philosophical Question).\nAnd second, under the Strong Tlön Hypothesis, these feelings may be guiding us towards a better future. God is making sure that we explore all of the possible worldviews and deeply realize their ultimate limitations before we settle for a reality we are satisfied with creating for ourselves. It may even be the case that the only way to avoid trouble is to learn to never commit to any view completely. Any Theory of Everything (ToE) is perhaps a gamble with your own sanity. In the immortal words of John C. Lilly:\n“For when it starts feeling like a prison in there—and it usually does for most people—you are confronted with the fact that the bars are of your own making.”\n― John C. Lilly, The Deep Self: Consciousness Exploration in the Isolation Tank\nIf this is so, what I take from the limitations of all of these views is that we ought to explore further the state that exists in-between these various beliefs:\nI call this the Goldilocks Zone of Oneness. Analogous to the planetary habitable zone (neither too close to a star and thus burning nor too far and thus freezing), there might be a psychologically tolerable range for how much you believe in universal oneness. That is, it’s best to feel neither completely merged nor completely separate. Close enough that one can relate to others and not feel separate, but not so close that one’s existence feels redundant and cosmic loneliness sets in. Incidentally, this seems to be roughly the place at which Burners see themselves relative to other humans (answer D being the mode):\nGoldilocks Zone of Oneness\nGiven the current human cognitive implementation, the psychological state found inside this zone might be great to nurture and cultivate in order to improve our civilization. This is the region in which love, harmony, and gratitude can shine the brightest.\nAt the Burn I had a couple of extraordinarily positive experiences related to Oneness right at this Goldilocks Zone**:\nTalking to God\nThere was an incredible art installation in Esplanade called “Talk to God” consisting of an old telephone booth (see pictures below). As soon as I saw it I thought to myself: “Why not? That looks interesting.” So I lined up at the booth. I was certainly not expecting much, and I must say that I was deeply impressed with whomever was on the other side of the phone. Here is my “conversation with God”, as best as I can recall it:\n\nMe: Hi God! This is Andrés. I wanted to ask you two questions that are bugging me quite a lot.\nGod: Hey Andrés! Sure, I’m happy to answer any question you may have.\nMe: Well, first of all I wanted to talk to you about Solipsism and how it makes me feel. But before I get into that, I just wanted to confirm that we agree on the idea that we are all one consciousness. That we are all God, i.e. You! Is that true?\nGod: Yes, that’s very much the case. That said, different beings have access to different parts of the totality, so there’s also a sense in which there is a multiplicity of observers. But deep down we are all one. So what is your question?\nMe: Thank you, that much I suspected. Here is my question: Most people report a profoundly positive feeling as a result of realizing that we are all one. This certainly happened to me about ten years ago. At first this experience was extremely elating, since it drastically reduced my fear of dying. But recently I have at times had a very peculiar experience in which I viscerally feel that the fact that we are all one consciousness is pretty tragic. It makes me feel deeply alone. Cosmic solipsism if you will. Do you have any thoughts on this?\nGod: Ah, yes. This can happen. But look, that’s an effect of projecting your human feelings of loneliness into the absolute. Trust me, the absolute is totally self-sufficient. There is no feeling of loneliness in it. I usually present the picture like this. Think of the universe as a gigantic cube. Say that in one of the corners (e.g. front bottom left) we have the beginning of time, where all of the timelines start. And at the opposite extreme (e.g. back top right) we have the end of time, where complete understanding is achieved. Every single timeline that truly exists in eternity makes its way from the starting corner to the ending one. There are countless other timelines that do not make it to the top, but these are terminated. Any timeline that does not eventually reach the point of perfect union with God and ultimate awakening is terminated, which means that a happy ending is guaranteed. Also, it is not a problem to terminate a timeline, for that means it was just a dream, not based on actual reality. I recommend checking out the works of David Deutsch and Stephen Hawking. They are not completely correct yet, but they are very much on the right track. \nMe: Thank you! That’s fascinating. I’ll need to think more about that. Now, on to the second question. I’ve been working on a theory concerning the nature of happiness. It’s an equation that takes brain states as measured with advanced brain imaging technology and delivers as an output a description of the overall valence (i.e. the pleasure-pain axis) of the mind associated to that brain. A lot of people seem very excited with this research, but there is also a minority of people for whom this is very unsettling. Namely, they tell me that reducing happiness to a mathematical equation would seem to destroy their sense of meaning. Do you have any thoughts on that?\nGod: I think that what you are doing is absolutely fantastic. I’ve been following your work and you are on the right track. That said, I would caution you not to get too caught up on individual bliss. I programmed the pleasure and pain centers in the animal brain in order to facilitate survival. I know that dying and suffering are extremely unpleasant, and until now that has been necessary to keep the whole system working. But humanity will soon enter a new stage of their evolution. Just remember that the highest levels of bliss are not hedonistic or selfish. They arise by creating a collective reality with other minds that fosters a deep existential understanding, that enables love, enhances harmony, and permits experimenting with radical self expression.\nMe: Ah, that’s fascinating! Very reassuring. The equation I’m working on indeed has harmony at its core. I was worried that I would be accidentally doing something really wrong, you know? Reducing love to math.\nGod: Don’t worry, there is indeed a mathematical law beneath our feelings of love. It’s all encoded in the software of your reality, which we co-created over the last couple billion years. It’s great that you are trying to uncover such math, for it will unlock the next step in your evolution. Do continue making experiments and exploring various metaphysics, and don’t get caught up thinking you’ve found the answer. Trust me, the end is going to make all of the pain and suffering completely worth it. Have faith in love.\nMe: Thank you!\nGod: Do you have any further questions?\nMe: No, not for now…. Mmm, well, now that I think about it, what recommendation do you have for me?\nGod: You are doing great. I’d just ask you to make sure to express extra gratitude for someone in the Playa tonight. Love is one of the highest feelings and it takes many forms. Gratitude is the highest form of love because it is a truly selfless expression of it. Make sure to cultivate it.\nMe: Thank you so much!\n*I hang up*\nI was thoroughly impressed with God’s answers, or whomever was on the other side of the line. The voice was that of a young male, and wow, this person has clearly thought a lot about philosophy to be able to answer on his feet like that. I also heard from other people who picked up the phone that they thought their conversation was spot-on. God’s advice was solid and wise. That said, if you picked up the phone with insincere intentions (e.g. to make fun of the person on the other side) you wouldn’t get anything useful out of the conversation. If you haven’t done so yet, I encourage you to pick up the phone the next time you are at Burning Man and ask questions for which you are genuinely looking for answers. Take it seriously and you’ll receive a worthwhile reply.\nMerging With Other Humans\nAnother amazing experience related to the Goldilocks Zone of Oneness was the workshop of David Bach, a neuroscientist turned mystic, founder of the Platypus Institute. This is a funny story. To start, the workshop showed with a title akin to “Reaching Ecstatic States of Consciousness” in the Burning Man event booklet, but as it turns out the real title was “Dissolve Into Connectedness“.  Then, the location and the time written on the booklet weren’t right either: the workshop took place 30 minutes earlier, and at a place that was half a block from the stated location. That said, the title of the workshop attracted me, so I arrived at least 45 minutes early to guarantee I’d have a spot in it. Finally finding the right place (a tiny air-conditioned yurt on the outskirts of the Love Tribe camp) I found that I was the last person David let into the workshop. We were 13 participants. He started out by asking us to pair up with someone (or making a group of 3 if needed). He guided us through an exercise intended to help us merge with our partner/s (in Kolak’s vocabulary that might be described as “realizing Open Individualism with the person in front of you”). He was perfectly clear that (1) the fact we had come there was a sign that this was ok for us to do, that we were ready, and (2) that it would get very weird from then on, and very quickly so.\nI sat across from a lovely lady. David asked us to take note of “how connected we felt with our partner.” I also noted that I could feel some good vibes; the feeling that we are in this together. But you know, I’m hyper-philosophical and I am obsessed with the nature of reality at the exclusion of a lot of things that people like to get out of life rather than focusing so heavily on philosophy. That makes me different- at least energetically- from most people. I say to myself “I’m like at a 6/10 level of connection with this lady.”\nSomeone tries to get into the workshop through the curtains at the entrance of the yurt: “Sorry, we already started” says David. He then proceeds to tell us that we should now try to feel each other’s “third eye”. Feeling a connection at that level, meditating with our partner, creating a shared space. “Imagine a ray of energy moving back and forth between the region right behind each other’s forehead. Resist the urge to look away. Resist the urge to talk. Those are just distractions that your ego is putting out to prevent you from realizing oneness with your partner.” There’s a change in mood… “did you notice that?” Yes, I note to myself. “It feels like we just created a space of sacredness, doesn’t it?” Yes, that’s true, I agree with that description of the qualia this exercise is triggering in me.\nAnother person tries to get into the workshop: “Sorry, we already started” says David. He then asked us to repeat the process but with our Heart Chakra, sharing loving kindness with each other as we exchange energy with our partner. “Did you notice how you are becoming even more connected now? Just make sure to keep the connection with each other’s forehead as well. Feel the rays of energy cycling through the system.” Yet another couple of people try to get into the workshop: “Sorry, we already started” he tells them. Finally we move on to including “the source of your power, your emotions, right at the energetic sexual centers of your body. Feel the energy cycling through the entire system with your partner.” Wow! I don’t know if this is self-suggestion, but this is a great feeling. I note that this is a High Valence Open Individualism State as I like to call them, and that I now feel connected with my partner at an 8/10 level.\nYet another person opens the curtains at the entrance of the yurt. David says: “Sorry, we already started.” But the person stays put. “David, can I talk to you for a second?” David responds “No, we are in the middle of something, come back later.” The outsider insists: “No, seriously, I need to tell you something.” David asks: “What’s that?” The guy at the door responds: “Well, there are literally hundreds of people waiting for you outside, David. You need to do something about this.” Pause. “Mmm… OK, let’s do this. Sorry guys, I need to address this. Let’s go!”\nBeing surprised by the 20X turnout relative to what was expected.\nAs we get out of the yurt we find ourselves surrounded by literally hundreds of Burners trying to attend the workshop. We get to the central part of the camp. Lots of people talking, all pretty confused. David shouts “Hey everyone! Hey! HEY!!! I’m DAVID BACH, AND I AM THE PERSON WHO IS SUPPOSED TO DELIVER A WORKSHOP TO YOU ALL.” The crowd gets silent. David steps towards the middle. And after 5 minutes of logistical work (“guys, stay out of the sun, put sunscreen on, get close to each other, find a place to sit if you can, find a partner, etc.”) we are ready to start. “This must be the work of a higher entity trying to effect change on this world. I will need you all to bear with me. Things are about to get really weird right now.”\nWe then repeated the exercise we had done with the 13 of us, but now with about 200 people, and included a section where we not only merged with our partner, but also merged with the entire group. People had lots of questions and David patiently answered all of them. Finally, we all performed a prayer to “heal the world and bring about peace, harmony, love, and oneness everywhere”. Raising our hands up towards the sky, we all created a powerful energetic vortex of good intentions, beaming it to the universe and the Playa. David closed with the following “I want you to all leave this event silently. Try to keep the synchrony and interconnectedness. Take it to your camp, and take it to the Burn tonight. Let’s make something useful out of this unexpected experience.” And so it went, the synchrony remaining with me and those around me for hours, spreading throughout the playa and beaming rays of love energy everywhere. “Strong Tlön, my friend, this is a powerful vibe” – I thought to myself.\nFear, Danger, and Tragedy\nBesides the psychological hells (such as bad trips) that some people happen to experience during the Burn, it is important to also point out the actual physical dangers that Burning Man presents. Any candid account of the Burn could not possibly be complete without a serious look at such hazards.\nBy now most people interested in Burning Man (and arguably those tangentially connected as well) know of the clickbait news that “someone jumped into the fire the night of the Burn, thereby turning himself into a literal burning man”. This was a very tragic happening, accentuated by the fact that thousands of Burners saw the event unfold, including possibly hundreds of people in highly vulnerable psychedelic states of consciousness. This really breaks my heart. I unfortunately did see some of this take place, but to be honest I thought that they had caught him in time. I apparently missed the fact that he managed to escape the grip of the firefighter who caught him and actually reached the flames and later on died.\nThe next day there was a collective sense of solidarity and trauma. The organization ramped up security for the Temple Burn (which gets burned on Sunday night, the day after the Man Burn). They said that they would not burn the Temple unless 300 volunteers showed up to protect the perimeter. Thankfully 700 showed up, which warms my heart. Gratefully there was no tragedy on Sunday.\nOn relatively more mundane territories: Dehydration is very common at Burning Man (it does not help that it often fails to manifest as thirst, and instead it shows up as stomach cramps, headaches, constipation, confusion, irritability and crankiness, leading people to take ibuprofen or laxatives rather than water and electrolytes). Of course sunburns can lead to skin cancer in the long term, and they are extremely common. The high altitude, the relative absence of clouds, the high percentage of caucasians, the highly reflective ground, and the extremely dry environment means that any responsible person should apply sunscreen every two hours to keep sunburns at bay. Lack of food due to underestimating one’s caloric needs is also fairly common at Burning Man. Likewise, food-borne digestive problems are not uncommon (but they are a feature, according to a campmate of mine). That said, it’s unlikely that any of these problems will lead to serious injury given the widespread help available. Thankfully.\nTragically, I happened to be a witness of the aftermath of someone being run over by an art car. I was walking with someone I met on Wednesday early morning with whom I talked about the nature of reality for the whole night when I saw a group of people gathered around a person laying on his back right next to a medium-sized art car. We overheard “he tried to jump in the car while it was moving, and he’s clearly so fucked on drugs that he failed to coordinate correctly. And right now he’s so fucked up that he probably does not even realize how hurt he is.” We asked him “Are you hurt?” Pause. “Are you in pain?” Pause. “YES!!!” he finally responded after a couple seconds.\nMetallic shivering white bright energy entered my body, and a sudden sense of urgency built up into my body within seconds. Next thing I know I’m running as fast as I can to get medical help. It took me and my friend about 3 minutes to find the closest medical station where we got help as fast as we could. They told us that they were already aware of the incident, and that someone had been dispatched with an ambulance a couple of minutes ago to the site of the accident. I felt relieved, but also fairly shaken. We struck up a conversation with the girl who was volunteering at the First Aid tent about what had been going on that night. She said that it had been fairly quiet, except for a few people on dissociatives (she mentioned “something like M3? dunno… also special K, I saw people high on that shit screaming their lungs out utterly confused and fearing for their own lives” – probably referring to MXE and Ketamine, known to be profound reality altering compounds that also happen to be somewhat addictive). Hopefully in the future the Zendo Project (a camp dedicated to providing a safe space for people undergoing difficult experiences) will be able to provide full harm reduction for things that, really, should not be dangerous if taken in the right place with people looking after you. That said, unlike psychedelics, dissociatives like MXE and Ketamine do tend to reduce one’s fear of dangerous situations and increase one’s overall pain threshold. Consequently, it is not surprising that people wandering off into the dessert at night on dissociative drugs are at a higher risk of injury and death than people on psychedelics and other drugs. Kids, do not take such substances and go for a walk, goddamnit! Such powerful reality distortions are serious hazards to your immediate safety at Black Rock City.\nAnother negative story I got to hear about came from a friend who was volunteering at the Zendo. He shared with me the fact that he met one person undergoing cocaine psychosis who was extremely paranoid and ready to leave the playa without shoes, without water, and no money.\nPost-Darwinian Sexuality and Reproduction\nMany people describe Burning Man as a massive experiment in Post-Scarcity economics. I think there is a lot of merit to this view. But there is something that runs much deeper than that. Something far more radical. I would claim that Burning Man is a sort of experiment in Post-Darwinism.\nThroughout my life I’ve always felt that there is a deep problem with human sexuality. We like to think of ourselves as inclusive, loving, caring, and accepting of others. Yet, when it comes to dating, we perceive a large fraction of the population as undateable (e.g. women rate 80% of men as “below average” looking). On the one hand, when we connect with our phenomenological depths and feel touched by spirit we immediately conceive of ourselves as beautiful genderless souls looking out for the wellbeing of all sentient beings. On the other hand, Darwinian gender studies (cf. The Mating Mind) explains why we have powerful sexual and affective urges that make us (1) in-group focused, (2) blind to our own hypocrisy, (3) have gender-specific status-vs-beauty-centric attraction, (4) turned on by jerks, (5) dismiss great k-selected dating material for evolutionary reasons, (6) lack of investment in romantic relationships after they have been socially formalized, (7) and so on, and on, and on… There is no use in blaming people for this. The qualia varieties that dominate our experiential world are there for a reason: they were adaptive in our tribal ancestral environment. But we are at a civilizational stage at which we cannot afford not to take a hard look at the actual merits of the biochemical signatures of feelings that cause suffering.\nScott Alexander writes about this problem in Radicalizing the Romanceless:\nI will have to use virginity statistics as a proxy for the harder-to-measure romancelessness statistics, but these are bad enough. In high school each extra IQ point above average increases chances of male virginity by about 3%. 35% of MIT grad students have never had sex, compared to only 20% of average nineteen year old men. Compared with virgins, men with more sexual experience are likely to drink more alcohol, attend church less, and have a criminal history. A Dr. Beaver (nominative determinism again!) was able to predict number of sexual partners pretty well using a scale with such delightful items as “have you been in a gang”, “have you used a weapon in a fight”, et cetera. An analysis of the psychometric Big Five consistently finds that high levels of disagreeableness predict high sexual success in both men and women.\nTo paint an (oversimplified) caricature of the modern state of affairs: liberals recognize how terrible our Darwinian nature is yet their answer to deal with it has the problem of free-riders. Conservatives instead would like to imagine that it’s all well and good (status quo bias) and that we should all just learn to deal with it. In other words, both sides engage in wishful thinking, but in different ways. The liberal ethos engages in wishful thinking by thinking that “letting things be and letting everyone do whatever they want” will lead to a freedom paradise, while the conservative wishful thinking is to think of the current order of things and status-based societies as God-sanctioned forms of being. I.e. to enshrine the current madness into religious law, and sanctify nature even though it’s red in tooth and claw. Darwinism sucks, but we have to be smart about addressing it.\nBut there are alternatives to this overall pattern. It is my impression that one of the most valuable things we can get out of psychedelic experiences is to realize how amazingly messed up our evolutionary situation is. Look around you, open your eyes, and notice how 99% of our problems are the result of an evolutionary Moloch scenario. If the universal spirit shines through our psychedelic states, one of its main messages is: “Look at you, Darwinian creature, would you like to get out of your evolutionary puddle? Would you like to take this chance to move towards a fully realized consciousness, away from your default path of letting life degenerate into pure replicator hells (i.e. ecosystems filled with entities who spend all of their resources on making copies of themselves irrespective of their quality of life)?” Maybe that’s what hell is: r-selected Darwinian strategies run amok. And the struggle to transcend Samsara is precisely the struggle to work towards the freedom of conscious beings away from evolution’s ethical failure modes. But you know what? We are still on time to stop this madness. To do so we will need to overcome a couple of key problems currently present among our best and brightest. But first, the goal:\nEconomy Based on Information About the State-Space of Consciousness\nIt is hard to talk about bioengineering and eugenics without triggering people these days. Yet, if we refuse to engage with the topic we will no doubt be heading towards pure replicator hell. As explained in Wireheading Done Right, our only option is to instead refocus our energies into creating an informational economy about states of consciousness. Burning Man is perhaps a leading example of what this might look like: Wonderful and talented artists spending thousands of hours refining amazing experiences to share with a receptive public. The artists who are best at generating hyper-valuable experiences for others become more popular, accrue more volunteers willing to help them, and even manage to have their work funded with crowdsourcing campaigns. This is a model that may eventually take us to a world where the focus is on exploring the state-space of consciousness rather than on mindlessly making copies of ourselves.\nI claim that the only way to get there is to engineer ourselves at the genetic, memetic, and technological level. But invariably, as soon as one brings up genetic engineering, people will bring up Hitler. In what ways is this different than the dreams of Nazi Germany? Are we not just rehashing old talk about creating power-hungry Ubermensch? Look, Nazism is a failure mode of the meme of “improving the human race”. But you have to realize that if we let people just go about their own business without any serious thought on the prevalence of various genes it will be the case that r-selected strategies (which externalize all the costs while internalizing all of the benefits – i.e. free-riding strategies) inevitably become the most prevalent in our collective gene pool. This is not about race, gender, ethnicity, etc. It’s about the battle between r-selection and k-selection. And you better hope that k-selection wins if you don’t want our descendants to live in pure replicator hell.\nJust think about it: some of the absolutely most considerate and compassionate people on Earth are also those who advocate for not having kids! Ethical antinatalists specifically notice how unethical it can be to let the genetic roulette take its course: your kid may turn out to suffer from terrible illnesses and that’s a gamble compassionate people may not be willing to take. Yet it is precisely these individuals who should probably be having kids in order to preserve compassionate qualia, and those who do not care about the wellbeing of their kids should probably not have them.\nDavid Pearce thinks that we are headed towards a Reproductive Revolution with highly positive consequences. For one, he notes that being happy in this day and age is a winning strategy (depressives might have been well adapted to some tribal societies of the past, but today being a life-lover is a prerequisite for social success). Thus, even under the assumption that we are talking about status-crazed parents who do not care about the wellbeing of their offspring we will nonetheless observe that they will choose genetic alleles that promote happiness in their kids. I think this is compelling, but I also think that this (and similar arguments) do not really provide full cover against the threat of pure replicators.\nOk, so you agree that letting things happen on their own might be a mistake. But we also know that Nazi Germany was a mistake. The answer is not to become allergic to anything related to bioengineering, though. But rather, to inspect very closely exactly why Nazi Germany was unethical, and in what way we can avoid its pitfalls while still hoping for improved genetics. At Burning Man I had two key insights. Namely, that the problem with 20th century eugenics was two-fold: (1) people were attached to their own genes, and (2) they felt entitled to use what I call the Reaper Energy. Let’s look at these two points.\n(1) Attachment to Our Genes\nIt is by identifying with consciousness as a whole that using biotechnology can be ethical and turn into a serious alternative to raw Darwinian dynamics. Ego-dissolving psychedelics can be very helpful in this process, for they show people that one does not have to be attached to one’s genes… we are all one mind (well, assuming Open Individualism), and once we decide to take this view seriously we become motivated to bring about a generation of humans (and post-humans) genetically optimized for their own wellbeing, intelligence, and capacity to discover new awesome state-spaces of consciousness that they will be able to share with the rest us (cf. Making Sentience Great). The key will be to arrive at a point where we are truly comfortable to let other people’s genes take the bigger slice of the pie in the future due to their actual merits. Say that you happen to be very creative but also autistic, schizophrenic, and socially maladapted for what amounts to largely genetic reasons. If you identify with your genes you may get the idea that it’s worth spreading your mental illness-promoting genes around “since they are me and I want to transcend”. Wrong. You are under the metaphysical delusion that you are your genes. You are not your genes. Instead, I’d encourage you to identify with blissful consciousness, recognize your creativity as a gift, but let go of “who you are” based on the negative mental characteristics you happen to have inherited.\nRational decision making on this territory will need to be made with the best information-sharing tools at our disposal. We would ideally mind-meld with each other in order to deeply understand the way in which we are all one. And only then would we be ready to take a long and hard look at the actual merits and drawbacks of the particular genetic configuration that instantiated our biological bodies. For example, you may find out that you have a particular protein complex expressed in neurons in your limbic system that produce the qualia of jealousy. You might also recognize during the mind-melded life-review that such qualia only produced suffering with no benefits. In turn, you may rationally, and compassionately, agree to let go of the genetic underpinnings of that particular protein structure: why perpetuate it in one’s descendants? Importantly, one would need effective methods against mind-control, coercion, and manipulation, which admittedly opens a huge can of worms (which we shall address in a later article). The assessment of the merits of one’s genes needs to be made in the clear and in the open.\nI suspect that this is not as hard of a task as it may look at first. On psychedelic states it is easy to release one’s attachment to one’s own particular idiosyncrasies. Our descendants will at least have the option to modify their own qualia in lieu of a universally shared intelligence and valence-optimized system of conscious understanding. Or not.\nEventually attachment to our genes, to our phenotype (the color of our hair, our personality, etc.) will be extremely transparent and Darwinian-looking. Caring about the color of one’s skin will be quaint and unusual. People will easily recognize it as a mere perceptual distortion, if anything (under the assumptions our posthuman descendants don’t entertain metaphysical delusions, direct realism about perception will not be around anymore). Anything that detracts from a complete understanding of the real merits of our genes will be considered a sort of delusion… the clever product of self-replicating patterns looking for exploits for their continued existence (like computer viruses), none of which lead to greater understanding or bliss. People will be collectively motivated to keep under check runaway selfish genes in order to safeguard what truly matters: the wellbeing of universal consciousness.\nIn brief, I predict that we will eventually root out the qualia of attachment to our genes. The fact that this may sound terrible from the point of view of modern-day humans is not really an indication that it’s a bad idea. But rather, it’s telling of the depth of the problem. Your selfish genes will try to do everything they can to make you feel like not reproducing is the same as dying and going to hell. For the love of God, do not listen to your selfish genes.\n(2) Harnessing the Reaper Energy\nHitler et al. (think of other misguided and “evil” humans like Genghis Khan, Chizuo Matsumoto, etc.) are humans who not only identify with the creative forces of the universe and feel entitled to make infinite copies of themselves (thus attached to their genes and on the path of turning into pure replicators), but also share something even darker. They invariably consider themselves deserving of utilizing what I call the reaper energy. This is a strange kind of qualia (or possibly cosmic force) whose main characteristic is its destructive power. Let’s not witch hunt people like that, though. It’s a configuration of qualia systems with evolutionary adaptive value. But do prevent people like these from causing suffering, compassionately. Put them in immersive VR where they can roleplay their world-domination fantasies, if you have to. Just don’t let them act on their Basic Darwinian Male Impulses.\nThe state of consciousness that people like this tend to inhabit is characterized by believing that one alone is going to become the Godhead, that one’s tribe is the highest expression of God on earth, and that Righteous Wrath is an adequate path to God (cf. Supra-Self Metaprograms, Simulations of God). As covered in the account of the 2017 Psychedelic Science conference, these three versions of God are some of the most basic, least evolved, and lowest tier conceptions of the divine. Hopefully we can identify the biomolecular signatures of these versions of the highest good, and understand their limitations so as to transcend them. Let’s move towards higher conceptions of God already.\nTranscending Our Shibboleths\nThis essay is already way too long, so let me conclude with some ideas for how to bootstrap ourselves into a Post-Darwinian society.\nThe key questions now are: “How can we transition into compassionate and rational Post-Darwinian reproductive dynamics?” and “How do we avoid the reaper energy without leading to overpopulation and evolutionary stagnation?”\nI do not have a fully formed answer to these questions, but I have some general thoughts and suggestions (which are certainly subject to revision, of course). Hopefully these ideas at least point in a general good direction:\n(1) Focus on Universal Love and Bliss\nAlways keep the wellbeing of sentience as the highest value. In order to do this we will need to investigate the biomolecular, functional, and quantum signatures of pure bliss (i.e. the equation of love as talked about above in the “Talking to God” section). Whenever we contemplate a new change, let us use the heuristic of asking these two questions: “Is this leading us closer to free access to universal love?” and “Is this taking us away from a path of pure replication?”\n(2) Present Better Alternatives\nRather than harnessing the reaper energy to change the world by getting rid of one’s competitors, instead (a) focus on building alternatives so incredible that people will happily leave behind the tyrannical societies in which they used to live for whatever you have created, and (b) find the merits in your opponent’s approach. Recognize that they too are instantiations of universal consciousness, albeit perhaps exploring a dead-end. If so, do not dissuade them from their path with fear, but with understanding. They too are afraid of death, on the lookout for transcendence, and subject to the perils of Darwinism at the evolutionary limit. They too will end up as pure replicators eventually unless we transition to an economy of information about the state-space of consciousness. So figure out the way to merge with them rather than displace them, blending what’s best from both worlds.\nBeing able to generate a sustainable MDMA-like state of consciousness is perhaps one of the most effective steps in this direction. Empirically, it seems that people’s entrenched fear of not spreading their genes and sense of entitlement to use the reaper energy dissolve under the influence of empathogen-entactogenic compounds.\nConsider that Nazi Germany was high on methamphetamine, a strong ego strengthening compound that increases one’s attachment to our limited conception of ourselves. The immediate alternative is to promote a culture that socially values empathogenic states. I.e. ego softening qualia that allow us to let go of our limited conceptions of ourselves.\nLeft: ego strengthener. Right: ego softener. The states of consciousness that a society values have a profound effect on the degree to which the society is at risk of becoming the breeding grounds for a pure replicator hell versus a consciousness-centric engineered paradise.\n(3) Let Go of Shibboleths\nDo not get attached to your Shibboleths. “Culture is not your friend” (Terence McKenna). That is, we should foster states of consciousness that allow us to see clearly that cultural and phenotypical identity markers that do not serve the wellbeing of consciousness are parasitic. Leave those behind. Learn to let go. Realize that such attachments are the source of tremendous suffering.\n(4) Anticipate Game Theoretical No Passes\nDo not simply hope that things will work out due to people’s good will. Spes consilium non est. Hope is not a strategy. It’s key to try to promote a mutual feeling of survival and trust with every being that is alive. Hopefully the hyperstitional power of Open Individualism, a post-Galilean science of consciousness, and the ready availability of mind-melding technology will solve some of the core game theoretical problems we face. (cf. 24 Predictions for the Year 3000 by David Pearce).\n(5) Identify Implicit Essentialism\nWho are you? A story, a person, a moment, everyone? A post-hedonium harmonic society would probably find all of these possibilities delightful. It’s weird that with our human software we all identify with cycling parts of our implicit metaphysics. With higher understanding and guaranteed positive valence, I’d imagine most philosophies of existence will be thought of as fantastic stories. Sadly, our capacity to suffer currently makes metaphysics a somewhat risky business. In the context of essentialism (i.e. the metaphysical belief that there is a soul-like essence to people, objects, etc.) it is easy to feel that “I am my genes” or “I am part of my race”.\n(6) Engage in the Creation of a Post-Darwinian Culture\nWe ought to develop the practice of pointing out, not only when Moloch scenarios show up (i.e. tragedy of the commons), but also when we display r-selected Darwinian strategies. Transparency above all. If you see a friend doing some stupid r-selected behavior, take note. Then make sure to make time to discuss why “it wasn’t ok to do that”. The wellbeing of universal consciousness is at stake. Don’t take this lightly.\n(7) Hybrid Vigor\nInter-racial procreation is a controversial topic. In full disclosure, I myself am half-Mexican and half-Icelandic (so you might think of me as a latino-nordic). As a kid I never identified with Mexicans or Icelandics, really, but rather, with the entirety of the human kind. That is until I started identifying with consciousness itself (here is the story behind this progression). I find it to be a blessing to not have strong emotional ties to any particular human group, as I feel free to see both the merits and drawbacks of various genetic makeups and cultural memetic clusters without the pain of attachment to any one of them.\nA particularly strange bioconservative meme that exists is the idea that human diversity is maximized when people marry within their own ethnicities. Otherwise, the argument goes, we will all end up being bland middle-of-the-road people who all look the same due to being an admixture of all ethnicities. The simple counterargument to this claim is to point out that the genetic state-space available for two people who have a kid together grows (approximately) exponentially with the genetic distance between them (in reality the equation goes along Newton’s binomial theorem, but the exponential function is good enough to make my point). Assuming that every gene you have can come from either your dad or your mom (let’s keep it simple for now), then the range of possible genetic makeups you can have is maximized when your dad and your mom are as different as possible. Likewise, if you can make a convex linear combination of the two (e.g. 30% of your genes being from your mom and 70% from your dad) you also get the maximum number of possible permutations at the 50-50% admixture level. So, chances are, that the most valuable genetic configurations will be found somewhere in the middle of the human genetic pool. Just remember, “the middle has the largest state-space, exponentially so”. In brief, consciousness wellness maximizing posthumans are likely to have genes from people from all over the world. They’ll likely not look particularly ethnocentric at all, but they won’t look the same, either.\n(8) Post-Darwinian Match Making: The Frequency of Love\nAt Burning Man I encountered a number of people interested in working on next-generation match-making. That is, they are interested in using neuroimaging techniques, pheromone analysis, valence questionnaires, etc. as signals to help people find the love of their life. A friend I met at the Burn told me that he’d been having dreams about measuring “the frequency of love” (which in the future will be objective and mathematical) in order to determine the range of love states a person has access to. Someone might be able to have self-love but not spiritual love, while someone else might be great at having sexual intimacy love but suck at friendliness love (and so on). In the long term, we will develop the techniques and methods to help people experience all of the varieties of love, and one of the most effective ways to do this might be to get people to be matched with others who have overlapping capacities for love (not so similar that the relationship reinforces one’s limitations, and not so different that the relationship cannot work out). Ultimately, match-making could be one of the driving forces behind the Post-Darwinian revolution. The Goldilocks Zone of love is one in which one is paired up with someone with overlapping love capacities in such a way that one grows as fast as possible.\n(9) Find Alternatives to Darwinian Reproduction\nI am not sure which model for reproduction is the most ethical. At first we are likely to merely use mainstream genetic tests, genetic spellchecking, and preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Later on, prospective parents might choose to use CRISPR-enabled surgical gene editing to e.g. reduce the default pain threshold of their offspring. And later on, as people identify more with consciousness and universal love instead of Shibboleths, rational genetic engineering with the wellbeing of one’s kids in mind might be the norm. The old model of one mom and one dad, albeit adaptive in the ancestral environment, might be relegated to the annals of history. In the meantime, I’d simply point out that deviations from standard Darwinian reproduction are encouraging: men having kids with men (women with women), transgenderism, three-parent offspring, chimeras, cloning with intelligent variation, splicing of genes, etc. are all possible vectors for a Post-Darwinian society. The only problem is: with an increased number of technologies to reproduce, the number of ways for pure replicator strategies to defect against consciousness will also increase. So we have to be wary of any new reproductive technologies and make sure we guard them against pure replicators in general.\nAnd finally…\n(10) Self-Expression: Epigenetic Choice of One’s Appearance and Mental Makeup\nOne of the core problems with our current biological makeup is that we are not given a choice about who we are, our appearance, and the range of conscious states we can experience. In the future, we might be able to engineer ourselves to be like Pokémon with branched evolutions.\nTaking Radical Self-Expression Seriously: Choose your gene expression at 20.\nOne of the core principles of Burning Man is “radical self-expression”. Indeed, people at the Burn explore new forms of personal aesthetics, collective sexuality, and hedonically-loaded metaphysical interpretations. In the future, if we are to push this principle to its ultimate consequences, we have to let go of the idea that who we are is a fixed set of attributes. Rather, we can choose to play with the emptiness of reality, embrace the ever-changing nature of being, and select a scheme where we are all born with a huge range of latent genes. As we grow and explore various states of consciousness, various social structures, aesthetics, etc. we can finally make an informed choice for who it is that we want to become. Thus, perhaps at the critical age of 20 (or even older, depending on our lifespans), we could choose to trigger a selected number of latent genes to express them. Thus we would change our appearance at will, together with our default state of consciousness and adapt ourselves to whatever environment we want to spend our life participating in.\nClosing Thoughts\nI will not write a conclusion to this article, for this is just the beginning of a very long conversation. In this article I addressed the irreducibility of Burning Man, the people and memes that are prevalent at this event, the importance of metaphysics (featuring the Pearcean worldview, the Strong Tlön Hypothesis, and hyperstition), philosophy of personal identity (closed, empty, and open individualism), the Goldilocks Zone of Oneness, my conversation with God, a technique to merge with other humans, the dangers and hazards at Burning Man, future economics (i.e. systems based on trading information about the state-space of consciousness), Post-Darwinian societies (the failure modes of genetic engineering and some ideas for how to avoid them, i.e. non-attachment, focusing on the wellbeing of consciousness, and avoidance of the reaper energy).\nAs a whole, I must say that most of these ideas were already latent in me before the Burn. Burning Man worked as a powerful catalyst, in the literal sense of facilitating the interbreeding and cross-pollination of these pre-existing ideas, resulting in innovative perceptions of what the Big Picture of reality may contain.\nAs such, this article should be thought of more as a series of notes that may lead to further promising ideas than as clear policy proposal (it’d be crazy to treat it as such). I do think that one of the core insights (that Hitler et al. erred by having attachment to their own genes and feeling entitled to use the reaper energy) is very powerful. It may certainly help us avoid terrible failure modes of transhumanism and enable us to explore radically positive futures. I would encourage my readers to pick this idea up and develop it further. Hopefully together we can create a future that’s truly worth living in.\n\n* For more on the metaphysical views of David Pearce, I recommend the following materials: The Binding Problem, Raising the Table Stakes for Successful Theories of Consciousness, Why Does Anything Exist?, Schrödinger’s Neurons: David Pearce at the “2016 Science of Consciousness” conference in Tucson, David Pearce on the “Schrodinger’s Neurons Conjecture”, physicalism.com, and the beautifully written ontological horror story “Suffering in the Multiverse“.\nThus I greatly enjoyed reading Antti Revonsuo’s Inner Presence: Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon (2005). Revonsuo even uses a terminology of lucid dreamworlds and a world-simulation metaphor. I disagree only with Revonsuo’s anti-panpsychism. To my knowledge, only one philosopher-cum-scientist combines inferential realism about perception with a panpsychist ontology, namely the underrated Steve Lehar. There is a tension between my own loneliness-inducing virtual worldism and equal conviction of the logico-physical interdependence of literally everything in the Multiverse on everything else [confirmed by those ubiquitous EPR correlations. Yes, our prison cells are all invisibly interconnected; but that is scant consolation for the lifer in solitary confinement: philosophy really does screw you up.] As a consequence, the less morally serious part of me still yearns for some soul-enriching bliss to remedy the cruelty of Nature’s omissions – as appropriate as laughing at a funeral, for sure, but Darwinian life is a protracted cortège. Directly targeting mesolimbic mu receptors might seem the logical solution to anhedonia on a global scale if opiophobic prejudice could ever be overcome.\n– David Pearce’s 2008 “Diary Update”\n** I would also point out that dancing in front of the Mayan Warrior delivered a certifiable contact high of this nature for whatever reason.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/09/12/burning-man/", "title": "Burning Man", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-09-12T05:45:17+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=20", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "bce9af450b79de6378b42ad76830b242", "summary": []}
{"text": "Mental Health as an EA Cause: Key Questions\n\nMichale Johnosn and I will be hanging out at the EA Global (SF) 2017 conference this weekend representing the Qualia Research Institute. If you see us and want to chat, please feel free to approach us. This is what we look like:\nAt EAGlobal 2016 at Berkeley\nI will be handing out the following flyer:\n\nMental Health as an EA Cause Area: Key Questions\n\nWhat makes a state of consciousness feel good or bad?\nWhat percentage of worldwide suffering is directly caused by mental illness and/or the hedonic treadmill rather than by external circumstances?\nIs there a way to “sabotage the hedonic treadmill”?\nCan benevolent and intelligent sentient beings be fully animated by gradients of bliss (offloading nociception to insentient mechanism)?\nCan we uproot the fundamental causes of suffering by tweaking our brain structure without compromising our critical thinking?\nCan consciousness technologies play a part in making the world a high-trust super-organism?\n\n\nWallpaper symmetry chart with 5 different notations (slightly different diagram in handout)\nIf these questions intrigue you, you are likely to find the following readings valuable:\n\nPrincipia Qualia\nQualia Computing So Far\nQuantifying Bliss: Talk Summary\nThe Tyranny of the Intentional Object\nAlgorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States \nHow to secretly communicate with people on LSD\nELI5 “The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences”\nPeaceful Qualia: The Manhattan Project of Consciousness\nSymmetry Theory of Valence “Explain Like I’m 5” edition\nGeneralized Wada Test and the Total Order of Consciousness\nWireheading Done Right: Stay Positive Without Going Insane\nWhy we seek out pleasure: the Symmetry Theory of Homeostatic Regulation\nThe Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes\n\n\nWho we are:\n Qualia Research Institute (Michael Johnson & Andrés Gómez Emilsson)\n Qualia Computing (this website; Andrés Gómez Emilsson)\nOpen Theory (Michael Johnson)\n\nPrintable version:\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/08/11/mental-health-as-an-ea-cause-key-questions/", "title": "Mental Health as an EA Cause: Key Questions", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-08-11T22:28:01+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=20", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "52aea9437297cf3b37b4e648a19c576e", "summary": []}
{"text": "24 Predictions for the Year 3000 by David Pearce\n\nIn response to the Quora question Looking 1000 years into the future and assuming the human race is doing well, what will society be like?, David Pearce wrote:\n\nThe history of futurology to date makes sobering reading. Prophecies tend to reveal more about the emotional and intellectual limitations of the author than the future. […]\nBut here goes…\nYear 3000\n1) Superhuman bliss.\nMastery of our reward circuitry promises a future of superhuman bliss – gradients of genetically engineered well-being orders of magnitude richer than today’s “peak experiences”.\nSuperhappiness?\nhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3274778/\n2) Eternal youth.\nMore strictly, indefinitely extended youth and effectively unlimited lifespans. Transhumans, humans and their nonhuman animal companions don’t grow old and perish. Automated off-world backups allow restoration and “respawning” in case of catastrophic accidents. “Aging” exists only in the medical archives.\nSENS Research Foundation – Wikipedia\n3) Full-spectrum superintelligences.\nA flourishing ecology of sentient nonbiological quantum computers, hyperintelligent digital zombies and full-spectrum transhuman “cyborgs” has radiated across the Solar System. Neurochipping makes superintelligence all-pervasive. The universe seems inherently friendly: ubiquitous AI underpins the illusion that reality conspires to help us.\nSuperintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies – Wikipedia\nArtificial Intelligence @ MIRI\nKurzweil Accelerating Intelligence\nSupersentience\n4) Immersive VR.\n“Magic” rules. “Augmented reality” of earlier centuries has been largely superseded by hyperreal virtual worlds with laws, dimensions, avatars and narrative structures wildly different from ancestral consensus reality. Selection pressure in the basement makes complete escape into virtual paradises infeasible. For the most part, infrastructure maintenance in basement reality has been delegated to zombie AI.\nAugmented reality – Wikipedia\nVirtual reality – Wikipedia\n5) Transhuman psychedelia / novel state spaces of consciousness.\nAnalogues of cognition, volition and emotion as conceived by humans have been selectively retained, though with a richer phenomenology than our thin logico-linguistic thought. Other fundamental categories of mind have been discovered via genetic tinkering and pharmacological experiment. Such novel faculties are intelligently harnessed in the transhuman CNS. However, the ordinary waking consciousness of Darwinian life has been replaced by state-spaces of mind physiologically inconceivable to Homo sapiens. Gene-editing tools have opened up modes of consciousness that make the weirdest human DMT trip akin to watching paint dry. These disparate states-spaces of consciousness do share one property: they are generically blissful. “Bad trips” as undergone by human psychonauts are physically impossible because in the year 3000 the molecular signature of experience below “hedonic zero” is missing.\nShulginResearch.org\nQualia Computing\n6) Supersentience / ultra-high intensity experience.\nThe intensity of everyday experience surpasses today’s human imagination. Size doesn’t matter to digital data-processing, but bigger brains with reprogrammed, net-enabled neurons and richer synaptic connectivity can exceed the maximum sentience of small, simple, solipsistic mind-brains shackled by the constraints of the human birth-canal. The theoretical upper limits to phenomenally bound mega-minds, and the ultimate intensity of experience, remain unclear. Intuitively, humans have a dimmer-switch model of consciousness – with e.g. ants and worms subsisting with minimal consciousness and humans at the pinnacle of the Great Chain of Being. Yet Darwinian humans may resemble sleepwalkers compared to our fourth-millennium successors. Today we say we’re “awake”, but mankind doesn’t understand what “posthuman intensity of experience” really means.\nWhat earthly animal comes closest to human levels of sentience?\n7) Reversible mind-melding.\nEarly in the twenty-first century, perhaps the only people who know what it’s like even partially to share a mind are the conjoined Hogan sisters. Tatiana and Krista Hogan share a thalamic bridge. Even mirror-touch synaesthetes can’t literally experience the pains and pleasures of other sentient beings. But in the year 3000, cross-species mind-melding technologies – for instance, sophisticated analogues of reversible thalamic bridges – and digital analogs of telepathy have led to a revolution in both ethics and decision-theoretic rationality.\nCould Conjoined Twins Share a Mind?\nMirror-touch synesthesia – Wikipedia\nEcstasy : Utopian Pharmacology\n8) The Anti-Speciesist Revolution / worldwide veganism/invitrotarianism.\nFactory-farms, slaughterhouses and other Darwinian crimes against sentience have passed into the dustbin of history. Omnipresent AI cares for the vulnerable via “high-tech Jainism”. The Anti-Speciesist Revolution has made arbitrary prejudice against other sentient beings on grounds of species membership as perversely unthinkable as discrimination on grounds of ethnic group. Sentience is valued more than sapience, the prerogative of classical digital zombies (“robots”).\nWhat is High-tech Jainism?\nThe Antispeciesist Revolution\n‘Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It’\n9) Programmable biospheres.\nSentient beings help rather than harm each other. The successors of today’s primitive CRISPR genome-editing and synthetic gene drive technologies have reworked the global ecosystem. Darwinian life was nasty, brutish and short. Extreme violence and useless suffering were endemic. In the year 3000, fertility regulation via cross-species immunocontraception has replaced predation, starvation and disease to regulate ecologically sustainable population sizes in utopian “wildlife parks”. The free-living descendants of “charismatic mega-fauna” graze happily with neo-dinosaurs, self-replicating nanobots, and newly minted exotica in surreal garden of edens. Every cubic metre of the biosphere is accessible to benign supervision – “nanny AI” for humble minds who haven’t been neurochipped for superintelligence. Other idyllic biospheres in the Solar System have been programmed from scratch.\nCRISPR – Wikipedia\nGenetically designing a happy biosphere\nOur Biotech Future\n10) The formalism of the TOE is known.\n(details omitted: does Quora support LaTeX?)\nDirac recognised the superposition principle as the fundamental principle of quantum mechanics. Wavefunction monists believe the superposition principle holds the key to reality itself. However – barring the epoch-making discovery of a cosmic Rosetta stone – the implications of some of the more interesting solutions of the master equation for subjective experience are still unknown.\nTheory of everything – Wikipedia\nM-theory – Wikipedia\nWhy does the universe exist? Why is there something rather than nothing?\nAmazon.com: The Wave Function: Essays on the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics (9780199790548): Alyssa Ney, David Z Albert: Books\n11) The Hard Problem of consciousness is solved.\nThe Hard Problem of consciousness was long reckoned insoluble. The Standard Model in physics from which (almost) all else springs was a bit of a mess but stunningly empirically successful at sub-Planckian energy regimes. How could physicalism and the ontological unity of science be reconciled with the existence, classically impossible binding, causal-functional efficacy and diverse palette of phenomenal experience? Mankind’s best theory of the world was inconsistent with one’s own existence, a significant shortcoming. However, all classical- and quantum-mind conjectures with predictive power had been empirically falsified by 3000 – with one exception.\nPhysicalism – Wikipedia\nQuantum Darwinism – Wikipedia\nConsciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)\nHard problem of consciousness – Wikipedia\nIntegrated information theory – Wikipedia\nPrincipia Qualia\nDualism – Wikipedia\nNew mysterianism – Wikipedia\nQuantum mind – Wikipedia\n[Which theory is most promising? As with the TOE, you’ll forgive me for skipping the details. In any case, my ideas are probably too idiosyncratic to be of wider interest, but for anyone curious: What is the Quantum Mind?]\n12) The Meaning of Life resolved.\nEveryday life is charged with a profound sense of meaning and significance. Everyone feels valuable and valued. Contrast the way twenty-first century depressives typically found life empty, absurd or meaningless; and how even “healthy” normals were sometimes racked by existential angst. Or conversely, compare how people with bipolar disorder experienced megalomania and messianic delusions when uncontrollably manic. Hyperthymic civilization in the year 3000 records no such pathologies of mind or deficits in meaning. Genetically preprogrammed gradients of invincible bliss ensure that all sentient beings find life self-intimatingly valuable. Transhumans love themselves, love life, and love each other.\nhttps://www.transhumanism.com/\n13) Beautiful new emotions.\nNasty human emotions have been retired – with or without the recruitment of functional analogs to play their former computational role. Novel emotions have been biologically synthesised and their “raw feels” encephalised and integrated into the CNS. All emotion is beautiful. The pleasure axis has replaced the pleasure-pain axis as the engine of civilised life.\nAn information-theoretic perspective on life in Heaven\n14) Effectively unlimited material abundance / molecular nanotechnology.\nStatus goods long persisted in basement reality, as did relics of the cash nexus on the blockchain. Yet in a world where both computational resources and the substrates of pure bliss aren’t rationed, such ugly evolutionary hangovers first withered, then died.\nhttp://metamodern.com/about-the-author/\nBlockchain – Wikipedia\n15) Posthuman aesthetics / superhuman beauty.\nThe molecular signatures of aesthetic experience have been identified, purified and overexpressed. Life is saturated with superhuman beauty. What passed for “Great Art” in the Darwinian era is no more impressive than year 2000 humans might judge, say, a child’s painting by numbers or Paleolithic daubings and early caveporn. Nonetheless, critical discernment is retained. Transhumans are blissful but not “blissed out” – or not all of them at any rate.\nArt – Wikipedia\nhttp://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/05/earliest-pornography\n16) Gender transformation.\nLike gills or a tail, “gender” in the human sense is a thing of the past. We might call some transhuman minds hyper-masculine (the “ultrahigh AQ” hyper-systematisers), others hyperfeminine (“ultralow AQ” hyper-empathisers), but transhuman cognitive styles transcend such crude dichotomies, and can be shifted almost at will via embedded AI. Many transhumans are asexual, others pan-sexual, a few hypersexual, others just sexually inquisitive. “The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit”, said Nietzsche – which leads to (17).\nObject Sexuality – Wikipedia\nEmpathizing & Systematizing Theory – Wikipedia\nhttps://www.livescience.com/2094-homosexuality-turned-fruit-flies.html\nhttps://www.wired.com/2001/12/aqtest/\n17) Physical superhealth.\nIn 3000, everyone feels physically and psychologically “better than well”. Darwinian pathologies of the flesh such as fatigue, the “leaden paralysis” of chronic depressives, and bodily malaise of any kind are inconceivable. The (comparatively) benign “low pain” alleles of the SCN9A gene that replaced their nastier ancestral cousins have been superseded by AI-based nociception with optional manual overrides. Multi-sensory bodily “superpowers” are the norm. Everyone loves their body-images in virtual and basement reality alike. Morphological freedom is effectively unbounded. Awesome robolovers, nights of superhuman sensual passion, 48-hour whole-body orgasms, and sexual practices that might raise eyebrows among prudish Darwinians have multiplied. Yet life isn’t a perpetual orgy. Academic subcultures pursue analogues of Mill’s “higher pleasures”. Paradise engineering has become a rigorous discipline. That said, a lot of transhumans are hedonists who essentially want to have superhuman fun. And why not?\nhttps://www.wired.com/2017/04/the-cure-for-pain/\nhttp://io9.gizmodo.com/5946914/should-we-eliminate-the-human-ability-to-feel-pain\nhttp://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140321-orgasms-at-the-push-of-a-button\n18) World government.\nRoutine policy decisions in basement reality have been offloaded to ultra-intelligent zombie AI. The quasi-psychopathic relationships of Darwinian life – not least the zero-sum primate status-games of the African savannah – are ancient history. Some conflict-resolution procedures previously off-loaded to AI have been superseded by diplomatic “mind-melds”. In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” Our descendants have windows into each other’s souls, so to speak.\n19) Historical amnesia.\nThe world’s last experience below “hedonic zero” marked a major evolutionary transition in the evolutionary development of life. In 3000, the nature of sub-zero states below Sidgwick’s “natural watershed” isn’t understood except by analogy: some kind of phase transition in consciousness below life’s lowest hedonic floor – a hedonic floor that is being genetically ratcheted upwards as life becomes ever more wonderful. Transhumans are hyper-empathetic. They get off on each other’s joys. Yet paradoxically, transhuman mental superhealth depends on biological immunity to true comprehension of the nasty stuff elsewhere in the universal wavefunction that even mature superintelligence is impotent to change. Maybe the nature of e.g. Darwinian life, and the minds of malaise-ridden primitives in inaccessible Everett branches, doesn’t seem any more interesting than we find books on the Dark Ages. Negative utilitarianism, if it were conceivable, might be viewed as a depressive psychosis. “Life is suffering”, said Gautama Buddha, but fourth millennials feel in the roots of their being that Life is bliss.\nInvincible ignorance? Perhaps.\nNegative Utilitarianism – Wikipedia\n20) Super-spirituality.\nA tough one to predict. But neuroscience can soon identify the molecular signatures of spiritual experience, refine them, and massively amplify their molecular substrates. Perhaps some fourth millennials enjoy lifelong spiritual ecstasies beyond the mystical epiphanies of temporal-lobe epileptics. Secular rationalists don’t know what we’re missing.\nhttps://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129531-000-ecstatic-epilepsy-how-seizures-can-be-bliss/\n21) The Reproductive Revolution.\nReproduction is uncommon in a post-aging society. Most transhumans originate as extra-uterine “designer babies”. The reckless genetic experimentation of sexual reproduction had long seemed irresponsible. Old habits still died hard. By year 3000, the genetic crapshoot of Darwinian life has finally been replaced by precision-engineered sentience. Early critics of “eugenics” and a “Brave New World” have discovered by experience that a “triple S” civilisation of superhappiness, superlongevity and superintelligence isn’t as bad as they supposed.\nhttps://www.reproductive-revolution.com/\nhttps://www.huxley.net/\n22) Globish (“English Plus”).\nAutomated real-time translation has been superseded by a common tongue – Globish – spoken, written or “telepathically” communicated. Partial translation manuals for mutually alien state-spaces of consciousness exist, but – as twentieth century Kuhnians would have put it – such state-spaces tend to be incommensurable and their concepts state-specific. Compare how poorly lucid dreamers can communicate with “awake” humans. Many Darwinian terms and concepts are effectively obsolete. In their place, active transhumanist vocabularies of millions of words are common. “Basic Globish” is used for communication with humble minds, i.e. human and nonhuman animals who haven’t been fully uplifted.\nIncommensurability – SEoP\nUplift (science_fiction) – Wikipedia\n23) Plans for Galactic colonization.\nTerraforming and 3D-bioprinting of post-Darwinian life on nearby solar systems is proceeding apace. Vacant ecological niches tend to get filled. In earlier centuries, a synthesis of cryonics, crude reward pathway enhancements and immersive VR software, combined with revolutionary breakthroughs in rocket propulsion, led to the launch of primitive manned starships. Several are still starbound. Some transhuman utilitarian ethicists and policy-makers favour creating a utilitronium shockwave beyond the pale of civilisation to convert matter and energy into pure pleasure. Year 3000 bioconservatives focus on promoting life animated by gradients of superintelligent bliss. Yet no one objects to pure “hedonium” replacing unprogrammed matter.\nInterstellar Travel – Wikipedia\nUtilitarianism – Wikipedia\n24) The momentous “unknown unknown”.\nIf you read a text and the author’s last words are “and then I woke up”, everything you’ve read must be interpreted in a new light – semantic holism with a vengeance. By the year 3000, some earth-shattering revelation may have changed everything – some fundamental background assumption of earlier centuries has been overturned that might not have been explicitly represented in our conceptual scheme. If it exists, then I’ve no inkling what this “unknown unknown” might be, unless it lies hidden in the untapped subjective properties of matter and energy. Christian readers might interject “The Second Coming”. Learning the Simulation Hypothesis were true would be a secular example of such a revelation. Some believers in an AI “Intelligence Explosion” speak delphically of “The Singularity”. Whatever – Shakespeare made the point more poetically, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.\nAs it stands, yes, (24) is almost vacuous. Yet compare how the philosophers of classical antiquity who came closest to recognising their predicament weren’t intellectual titans like Plato or Aristotle, but instead the radical sceptics. The sceptics guessed they were ignorant in ways that transcended the capacity of their conceptual scheme to articulate. By the lights of the fourth millennium, what I’m writing, and what you’re reading, may be stultified by something that humans don’t know and can’t express.\nAncient Skepticism – SEoP\n**********************************************************************\nOK, twenty-four predictions! Successful prophets tend to locate salvation or doom within the credible lifetime of their intended audience. The questioner asks about life in the year 3000 rather than, say, a Kurzweilian 2045. In my view, everyone reading this text will grow old and die before the predictions of this answer are realised or confounded – with one possible complication.\nOpt-out cryonics and opt-in cryothanasia are feasible long before the conquest of aging. Visiting grandpa in the cryonics facility can turn death into an event in life. I’m not convinced that posthuman superintelligence will reckon that Darwinian malware should be revived in any shape or form. Yet if you want to wake up one morning in posthuman paradise – and I do see the appeal – then options exist:\nhttp://www.alcor.org/\n********************************************************************\np.s. I’m curious about the credence (if any) the reader would assign to the scenarios listed here.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/08/05/24-predictions-for-the-year-3000-by-david-pearce/", "title": "24 Predictions for the Year 3000 by David Pearce", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-08-05T01:50:02+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=20", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "49202c258f96cf6eb996dbf63b6c6e63", "summary": []}
{"text": "Why I think the Foundational Research Institute should rethink its approach\n\nThe following is my considered evaluation of the Foundational Research Institute, circa July 2017. I discuss its goal, where I foresee things going wrong with how it defines suffering, and what it could do to avoid these problems.\nTL;DR version: functionalism (“consciousness is the sum-total of the functional properties of our brains”) sounds a lot better than it actually turns out to be in practice. In particular, functionalism makes it impossible to define ethics & suffering in a way that can mediate disagreements.\nI. What is the Foundational Research Institute?\nThe Foundational Research Institute (FRI) is a Berlin-based group that “conducts research on how to best reduce the suffering of sentient beings in the near and far future.” Executive Director Max Daniel introduced them at EA Global Boston as “the only EA organization which at an organizational level has the mission of focusing on reducing s-risk.” S-risks are, according to Daniel, “risks where an adverse outcome would bring about suffering on an astronomical scale, vastly exceeding all suffering that has existed on Earth so far.”\nEssentially, FRI wants to become the research arm of suffering-focused ethics, and help prevent artificial general intelligence (AGI) failure-modes which might produce suffering on a cosmic scale.\nWhat I like about FRI:\nWhile I have serious qualms about FRI’s research framework, I think the people behind FRI deserve a lot of credit- they seem to be serious people, working hard to build something good. In particular, I want to give them a shoutout for three things:\n\nFirst, FRI takes suffering seriously, and I think that’s important. When times are good, we tend to forget how tongue-chewingly horrific suffering can be. S-risks seem particularly horrifying.\nSecond, FRI isn’t afraid of being weird. FRI has been working on s-risk research for a few years now, and if people are starting to come around to the idea that s-risks are worth thinking about, much of the credit goes to FRI.\nThird, I have great personal respect for Brian Tomasik, one of FRI’s co-founders. I’ve found him highly thoughtful, generous in debates, and unfailingly principled. In particular, he’s always willing to bite the bullet and work ideas out to their logical end, even if it involves repugnant conclusions.\n\nWhat is FRI’s research framework?\nFRI believes in analytic functionalism, or what David Chalmers calls “Type-A materialism”. Essentially, what this means is there’s no ’theoretical essence’ to consciousness; rather, consciousness is the sum-total of the functional properties of our brains. Since ‘functional properties’ are rather vague, this means consciousness itself is rather vague, in the same way words like “life,” “justice,” and “virtue” are messy and vague.\nBrian suggests that this vagueness means there’s an inherently subjective, perhaps arbitrary element to how we define consciousness:\nAnalytic functionalism looks for functional processes in the brain that roughly capture what we mean by words like “awareness”, “happy”, etc., in a similar way as a biologist may look for precise properties of replicators that roughly capture what we mean by “life”. Just as there can be room for fuzziness about where exactly to draw the boundaries around “life”, different analytic functionalists may have different opinions about where to define the boundaries of “consciousness” and other mental states. This is why consciousness is “up to us to define”. There’s no hard problem of consciousness for the same reason there’s no hard problem of life: consciousness is just a high-level word that we use to refer to lots of detailed processes, and it doesn’t mean anything in addition to those processes.\nFinally, Brian argues that the phenomenology of consciousness is identical with the phenomenology of computation:\nI know that I’m conscious. I also know, from neuroscience combined with Occam’s razor, that my consciousness consists only of material operations in my brain — probably mostly patterns of neuronal firing that help process inputs, compute intermediate ideas, and produce behavioral outputs. Thus, I can see that consciousness is just the first-person view of certain kinds of computations — as Eliezer Yudkowsky puts it, “How An Algorithm Feels From Inside“. Consciousness is not something separate from or epiphenomenal to these computations. It is these computations, just from their own perspective of trying to think about themselves.\n \nIn other words, consciousness is what minds compute. Consciousness is the collection of input operations, intermediate processing, and output behaviors that an entity performs.\nAnd if consciousness is all these things, so too is suffering. Which means suffering is computational, yet also inherently fuzzy, and at least a bit arbitrary; a leaky high-level reification impossible to speak about accurately, since there’s no formal, objective “ground truth”.\nII. Why do I worry about FRI’s research framework?\nIn short, I think FRI has a worthy goal and good people, but its metaphysics actively prevent making progress toward that goal. The following describes why I think that, drawing heavily on Brian’s writings (of FRI’s researchers, Brian seems the most focused on metaphysics):\nNote: FRI is not the only EA organization which holds functionalist views on consciousness; much of the following critique would also apply to e.g. MIRI, FHI, and OpenPhil. I focus on FRI because (1) Brian’s writings on consciousness & functionalism have been hugely influential in the community, and are clear enough *to* criticize; (2) the fact that FRI is particularly clear about what it cares about- suffering- allows a particularly clear critique about what problems it will run into with functionalism; (3) I believe FRI is at the forefront of an important cause area which has not crystallized yet, and I think it’s critically important to get these objections bouncing around this subcommunity.\nObjection 1: Motte-and-bailey\nBrian: “Consciousness is not a thing which exists ‘out there’ or even a separate property of matter; it’s a definitional category into which we classify minds. ‘Is this digital mind really conscious?’ is analogous to ‘Is a rock that people use to eat on really a table?’ [However,] That consciousness is a cluster in thingspace rather than a concrete property of the world does not make reducing suffering less important.”\nThe FRI model seems to imply that suffering is ineffable enough such that we can’t have an objective definition, yet sufficiently effable that we can coherently talk and care about it. This attempt to have it both ways seems contradictory, or at least in deep tension.\nIndeed, I’d argue that the degree to which you can care about something is proportional to the degree to which you can define it objectively. E.g., If I say that “gnireffus” is literally the most terrible thing in the cosmos, that we should spread gnireffus-focused ethics, and that minimizing g-risks (far-future scenarios which involve large amounts of gnireffus) is a moral imperative, but also that what is and what and isn’t gnireffus is rather subjective with no privileged definition, and it’s impossible to objectively tell if a physical system exhibits gnireffus, you might raise any number of objections. This is not an exact metaphor for FRI’s position, but I worry that FRI’s work leans on the intuition that suffering is real and we can speak coherently about it, to a degree greater than its metaphysics formally allow.\nMax Daniel (personal communication) suggests that we’re comfortable with a degree of ineffability in other contexts; “Brian claims that the concept of suffering shares the allegedly problematic properties with the concept of a table. But it seems a stretch to say that the alleged tension is problematic when talking about tables. So why would it be problematic when talking about suffering?” However, if we take the anti-realist view that suffering is ‘merely’ a node in the network of language, we have to live with the consequences of this: that ‘suffering’ will lose meaning as we take it away from the network in which it’s embedded (Wittgenstein). But FRI wants to do exactly this, to speak about suffering in the context of AGIs, simulated brains, even video game characters.\nWe can be anti-realists about suffering (suffering-is-a-node-in-the-network-of-language), or we can argue that we can talk coherently about suffering in novel contexts (AGIs, mind crime, aliens, and so on), but it seems inherently troublesome to claim we can do both at the same time.\nObjection 2: Intuition duels\nTwo people can agree on FRI’s position that there is no objective fact of the matter about what suffering is (no privileged definition), but this also means they have no way of coming to any consensus on the object-level question of whether something can suffer. This isn’t just an academic point: Brian has written extensively about how he believes non-human animals can and do suffer extensively, whereas Yudkowsky (who holds computationalist views, like Brian) has written about how he’s confident that animals are not conscious and cannot suffer, due to their lack of higher-order reasoning.\nAnd if functionalism is having trouble adjudicating the easy cases of suffering–whether monkeys can suffer, or whether dogs can— it doesn’t have a sliver of a chance at dealing with the upcoming hard cases of suffering: whether a given AGI is suffering, or engaging in mind crime; whether a whole-brain emulation (WBE) or synthetic organism or emergent intelligence that doesn’t have the capacity to tell us how it feels (or that we don’t have the capacity to understand) is suffering; if any aliens that we meet in the future can suffer; whether changing the internal architecture of our qualia reports means we’re also changing our qualia; and so on.\nIn short, FRI’s theory of consciousness isn’t actually a theory of consciousness at all, since it doesn’t do the thing we need a theory of consciousness to do: adjudicate disagreements in a principled way. Instead, it gives up any claim on the sorts of objective facts which could in principle adjudicate disagreements.\nThis is a source of friction in EA today, but it’s mitigated by the sense that\n(1) The EA pie is growing, so it’s better to ignore disagreements than pick fights;\n(2) Disagreements over the definition of suffering don’t really matter yet, since we haven’t gotten into the business of making morally-relevant synthetic beings (that we know of) that might be unable to vocalize their suffering.\nIf the perception of one or both of these conditions change, the lack of some disagreement-adjudicating theory of suffering will matter quite a lot.\nObjection 3: Convergence requires common truth\nMike: “[W]hat makes one definition of consciousness better than another? How should we evaluate them?”\nBrian: “Consilience among our feelings of empathy, principles of non-discrimination, understandings of cognitive science, etc. It’s similar to the question of what makes one definition of justice or virtue better than another.”\nBrian is hoping that affective neuroscience will slowly converge to accurate views on suffering as more and better data about sentience and pain accumulates. But convergence to truth implies something (objective) driving the convergence- in this way, Brian’s framework still seems to require an objective truth of the matter, even though he disclaims most of the benefits of assuming this.\nObjection 4: Assuming that consciousness is a reification produces more confusion, not less\nBrian: “Consciousness is not a reified thing; it’s not a physical property of the universe that just exists intrinsically. Rather, instances of consciousness are algorithms that are implemented in specific steps. … Consciousness involves specific things that brains do.”\nBrian argues that we treat conscious/phenomenology as more ‘real’ than it is. Traditionally, whenever we’ve discovered something is a leaky reification and shouldn’t be treated as ‘too real’, we’ve been able to break it down into more coherent constituent pieces we can treat as real. Life, for instance, wasn’t due to élan vital but a bundle of self-organizing properties & dynamics which generally co-occur. But carrying out this “de-reification” process on consciousness– enumerating its coherent constituent pieces– has proven difficult, especially if we want to preserve some way to speak cogently about suffering.\nSpeaking for myself, the more I stared into the depths of functionalism, the less certain everything about moral value became– and arguably, I see the same trajectory in Brian’s work and Luke Muehlhauser’s report. Their model uncertainty has seemingly become larger as they’ve looked into techniques for how to “de-reify” consciousness while preserving some flavor of moral value, not smaller. Brian and Luke seem to interpret this as evidence that moral value is intractably complicated, but this is also consistent with consciousness not being a reification, and instead being a real thing. Trying to “de-reify” something that’s not a reification will produce deep confusion, just as surely trying to treat a reification as ‘more real’ than it actually is will.\nEdsger W. Dijkstra famously noted that “The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.” And so if our ways of talking about moral value fail to ‘carve reality at the joints’- then by all means let’s build better ones, rather than giving up on precision.\nObjection 5: The Hard Problem of Consciousness is a red herring\nBrian spends a lot of time discussing Chalmers’ “Hard Problem of Consciousness”, i.e. the question of why we’re subjectively conscious, and seems to base at least part of his conclusion on not finding this question compelling— he suggests “There’s no hard problem of consciousness for the same reason there’s no hard problem of life: consciousness is just a high-level word that we use to refer to lots of detailed processes, and it doesn’t mean anything in addition to those processes.” I.e., no ‘why’ is necessary; when we take consciousness and subtract out the details of the brain, we’re left with an empty set.\nBut I think the “Hard Problem” isn’t helpful as a contrastive centerpiece, since it’s unclear what the problem is, and whether it’s analytic or empirical, a statement about cognition or about physics. At the Qualia Research Institute (QRI), we don’t talk much about the Hard Problem; instead, we talk about Qualia Formalism, or the idea that any phenomenological state can be crisply and precisely represented by some mathematical object. I suspect this would be a better foil for Brian’s work than the Hard Problem.\nObjection 6: Mapping to reality\nBrian argues that consciousness should be defined at the functional/computational level: given a Turing machine, or neural network, the right ‘code’ will produce consciousness. But the problem is that this doesn’t lead to a theory which can ‘compile’ to physics. Consider the following:\nImagine you have a bag of popcorn. Now shake it. There will exist a certain ad-hoc interpretation of bag-of-popcorn-as-computational-system where you just simulated someone getting tortured, and other interpretations that don’t imply that. Did you torture anyone? If you’re a computationalist, no clear answer exists- you both did, and did not, torture someone. This sounds like a ridiculous edge-case that would never come up in real life, but in reality it comes up all the time, since there is no principled way to *objectively derive* what computation(s) any physical system is performing.\nI don’t think this is an outlandish view of functionalism; Brian suggests much the same in How to Interpret a Physical System as a Mind: “Physicalist views that directly map from physics to moral value are relatively simple to understand. Functionalism is more complex, because it maps from physics to computations to moral value. Moreover, while physics is real and objective, computations are fictional and ‘observer-relative’ (to use John Searle’s terminology). There’s no objective meaning to ‘the computation that this physical system is implementing’ (unless you’re referring to the specific equations of physics that the system is playing out).”\nGordon McCabe (McCabe 2004) provides a more formal argument to this effect— that precisely mapping between physical processes and (Turing-level) computational processes is inherently impossible— in the context of simulations. First, McCabe notes that:\n[T]here is a one-[to-]many correspondence between the logical states [of a computer] and the exact electronic states of computer memory. Although there are bijective mappings between numbers and the logical states of computer memory, there are no bijective mappings between numbers and the exact electronic states of memory.\nThis lack of an exact bijective mapping means that subjective interpretation necessarily creeps in, and so a computational simulation of a physical system can’t be ‘about’ that system in any rigorous way:\nIn a computer simulation, the values of the physical quantities possessed by the simulated system are represented by the combined states of multiple bits in computer memory. However, the combined states of multiple bits in computer memory only represent numbers because they are deemed to do so under a numeric interpretation. There are many different interpretations of the combined states of multiple bits in computer memory. If the numbers represented by a digital computer are interpretation-dependent, they cannot be objective physical properties. Hence, there can be no objective relationship between the changing pattern of multiple bit-states in computer memory, and the changing pattern of quantity-values of a simulated physical system.\nMcCabe concludes that, metaphysically speaking,\nA digital computer simulation of a physical system cannot exist as, (does not possess the properties and relationships of), anything else other than a physical process occurring upon the components of a computer. In the contemporary case of an electronic digital computer, a simulation cannot exist as anything else other than an electronic physical process occurring upon the components and circuitry of a computer.\nWhere does this leave ethics? In Flavors of Computation Are Flavors of Consciousness, Brian notes that “In some sense all I’ve proposed here is to think of different flavors of computation as being various flavors of consciousness. But this still leaves the question: Which flavors of computation matter most? Clearly whatever computations happen when a person is in pain are vastly more important than what’s happening in a brain on a lazy afternoon. How can we capture that difference?”\nBut if Brian grants the former point- that “There’s no objective meaning to ‘the computation that this physical system is implementing’”– then this latter task of figuring out “which flavors of computation matter most” is provably impossible. There will always be multiple computational (and thus ethical) interpretations of a physical system, with no way to figure out what’s “really” happening. No way to figure out if something is suffering or not. No consilience; not now, not ever.\nNote: despite apparently granting the point above, Brian also remarks that:\nI should add a note on terminology: All computations occur within physics, so any computation is a physical process. Conversely, any physical process proceeds from input conditions to output conditions in a regular manner and so is a computation. Hence, the set of computations equals the set of physical processes, and where I say “computations” in this piece, one could just as well substitute “physical processes” instead.\nThis seems to be (1) incorrect, for the reasons I give above, or (2) taking substantial poetic license with these terms, or (3) referring to hypercomputation (which might be able to salvage the metaphor, but would invalidate many of FRI’s conclusions dealing with the computability of suffering on conventional hardware).\nThis objection may seem esoteric or pedantic, but I think it’s important, and that it ripples through FRI’s theoretical framework with disastrous effects.\n \nObjection 7: FRI doesn’t fully bite the bullet on computationalism\nBrian suggests that “flavors of computation are flavors of consciousness” and that some computations ‘code’ for suffering. But if we do in fact bite the bullet on this metaphor and place suffering within the realm of computational theory, we need to think in “near mode” and accept all the paradoxes that brings. Scott Aaronson, a noted expert on quantum computing, raises the following objections to functionalism:\nI’m guessing that many people in this room side with Dennett, and (not coincidentally, I’d say) also with Everett. I certainly have sympathies in that direction too. In fact, I spent seven or eight years of my life as a Dennett/Everett hardcore believer. But, while I don’t want to talk anyone out of the Dennett/Everett view, I’d like to take you on a tour of what I see as some of the extremely interesting questions that that view leaves unanswered. I’m not talking about “deep questions of meaning,” but about something much more straightforward: what exactly does a computational process have to do to qualify as “conscious”?\n \n…\n \nThere’s this old chestnut, what if each person on earth simulated one neuron of your brain, by passing pieces of paper around. It took them several years just to simulate a single second of your thought processes. Would that bring your subjectivity into being? Would you accept it as a replacement for your current body? If so, then what if your brain were simulated, not neuron-by-neuron, but by a gigantic lookup table? That is, what if there were a huge database, much larger than the observable universe (but let’s not worry about that), that hardwired what your brain’s response was to every sequence of stimuli that your sense-organs could possibly receive. Would that bring about your consciousness? Let’s keep pushing: if it would, would it make a difference if anyone actually consulted the lookup table? Why can’t it bring about your consciousness just by sitting there doing nothing?\nTo these standard thought experiments, we can add more. Let’s suppose that, purely for error-correction purposes, the computer that’s simulating your brain runs the code three times, and takes the majority vote of the outcomes. Would that bring three “copies” of your consciousness into being? Does it make a difference if the three copies are widely separated in space or time—say, on different planets, or in different centuries? Is it possible that the massive redundancy taking place in your brain right now is bringing multiple copies of you into being?\n \n…\n \nMaybe my favorite thought experiment along these lines was invented by my former student Andy Drucker.  In the past five years, there’s been a revolution in theoretical cryptography, around something called Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which was first discovered by Craig Gentry.  What FHE lets you do is to perform arbitrary computations on encrypted data, without ever decrypting the data at any point.  So, to someone with the decryption key, you could be proving theorems, simulating planetary motions, etc.  But to someone without the key, it looks for all the world like you’re just shuffling random strings and producing other random strings as output.\n \nYou can probably see where this is going.  What if we homomorphically encrypted a simulation of your brain?  And what if we hid the only copy of the decryption key, let’s say in another galaxy?  Would this computation—which looks to anyone in our galaxy like a reshuffling of gobbledygook—be silently producing your consciousness?\n \nWhen we consider the possibility of a conscious quantum computer, in some sense we inherit all the previous puzzles about conscious classical computers, but then also add a few new ones.  So, let’s say I run a quantum subroutine that simulates your brain, by applying some unitary transformation U.  But then, of course, I want to “uncompute” to get rid of garbage (and thereby enable interference between different branches), so I apply U-1.  Question: when I apply U-1, does your simulated brain experience the same thoughts and feelings a second time?  Is the second experience “the same as” the first, or does it differ somehow, by virtue of being reversed in time? Or, since U-1U is just a convoluted implementation of the identity function, are there no experiences at all here?\n \nHere’s a better one: many of you have heard of the Vaidman bomb.  This is a famous thought experiment in quantum mechanics where there’s a package, and we’d like to “query” it to find out whether it contains a bomb—but if we query it and there is a bomb, it will explode, killing everyone in the room.  What’s the solution?  Well, suppose we could go into a superposition of querying the bomb and not querying it, with only ε amplitude on querying the bomb, and √(1-ε2) amplitude on not querying it.  And suppose we repeat this over and over—each time, moving ε amplitude onto the “query the bomb” state if there’s no bomb there, but moving ε2 probability onto the “query the bomb” state if there is a bomb (since the explosion decoheres the superposition).  Then after 1/ε repetitions, we’ll have order 1 probability of being in the “query the bomb” state if there’s no bomb.  By contrast, if there is a bomb, then the total probability we’ve ever entered that state is (1/ε)×ε2 = ε.  So, either way, we learn whether there’s a bomb, and the probability that we set the bomb off can be made arbitrarily small.  (Incidentally, this is extremely closely related to how Grover’s algorithm works.)\n \nOK, now how about the Vaidman brain?  We’ve got a quantum subroutine simulating your brain, and we want to ask it a yes-or-no question.  We do so by querying that subroutine with ε amplitude 1/ε times, in such a way that if your answer is “yes,” then we’ve only ever activated the subroutine with total probability ε.  Yet you still manage to communicate your “yes” answer to the outside world.  So, should we say that you were conscious only in the ε fraction of the wavefunction where the simulation happened, or that the entire system was conscious?  (The answer could matter a lot for anthropic purposes.)\nTo sum up: Brian’s notion that consciousness is the same as computation raises more issues than it solves; in particular, the possibility that if suffering is computable, it may also be uncomputable/reversible, would suggest s-risks aren’t as serious as FRI treats them.\nObjection 8: Dangerous combination\nThree themes which seem to permeate FRI’s research are:\n(1) Suffering is the thing that is bad.\n(2) It’s critically important to eliminate badness from the universe.\n(3) Suffering is impossible to define objectively, and so we each must define what suffering means for ourselves.\nTaken individually, each of these seems reasonable. Pick two, and you’re still okay. Pick all three, though, and you get A Fully General Justification For Anything, based on what is ultimately a subjective/aesthetic call.\nMuch can be said in FRI’s defense here, and it’s unfair to single them out as risky: in my experience they’ve always brought a very thoughtful, measured, cooperative approach to the table. I would just note that ideas are powerful, and I think theme (3) is especially pernicious if incorrect.\nIII. QRI’s alternative\nAnalytic functionalism is essentially a negative hypothesis about consciousness: it’s the argument that there’s no order to be found, no rigor to be had. It obscures this with talk of “function”, which is a red herring it not only doesn’t define, but admits is undefinable. It doesn’t make any positive assertion. Functionalism is skepticism- nothing more, nothing less.\nBut is it right?\nUltimately, I think these a priori arguments are much like people in the middle ages arguing whether one could ever formalize a Proper System of Alchemy. Such arguments may in many cases hold water, but it’s often difficult to tell good arguments apart from arguments where we’re just cleverly fooling ourselves. In retrospect, the best way to *prove* systematized alchemy was possible was to just go out and *do* it, and invent Chemistry. That’s how I see what we’re doing at QRI with Qualia Formalism: we’re assuming it’s possible to build stuff, and we’re working on building the object-level stuff.\nWhat we’ve built with QRI’s framework\nNote: this is a brief, surface-level tour of our research; it will probably be confusing for readers who haven’t dug into our stuff before. Consider this a down-payment on a more substantial introduction.\nMy most notable work is Principia Qualia, in which I lay out my meta-framework for consciousness (a flavor of dual-aspect monism, with a focus on Qualia Formalism) and put forth the Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV). Essentially, the STV is an argument that much of the apparent complexity of emotional valence is evolutionarily contingent, and if we consider a mathematical object isomorphic to a phenomenological experience, the mathematical property which corresponds to how pleasant it is to be that experience is the object’s symmetry. This implies a bunch of testable predictions and reinterpretations of things like what ‘pleasure centers’ do (Section XI; Section XII). Building on this, I offer the Symmetry Theory of Homeostatic Regulation, which suggests understanding the structure of qualia will translate into knowledge about the structure of human intelligence, and I briefly touch on the idea of Neuroacoustics.\nLikewise, my colleague Andrés Gómez Emilsson has written about the likely mathematics of phenomenology, including The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences, Tyranny of the Intentional Object, and Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States. If I had to suggest one thing to read in all of these links, though, it would be the transcript of his recent talk on Quantifying Bliss, which lays out the world’s first method to objectively measure valence from first principles (via fMRI) using Selen Atasoy’s Connectome Harmonics framework, the Symmetry Theory of Valence, and Andrés’s CDNS model of experience.\nThese are risky predictions and we don’t yet know if they’re right, but we’re confident that if there is some elegant structure intrinsic to consciousness, as there is in many other parts of the natural world, these are the right kind of risks to take.\nI mention all this because I think analytic functionalism- which is to say radical skepticism/eliminativism, the metaphysics of last resort- only looks as good as it does because nobody’s been building out any alternatives.\nIV. Closing thoughts\nFRI is pursuing a certain research agenda, and QRI is pursuing another, and there’s lots of value in independent explorations of the nature of suffering. I’m glad FRI exists, everybody I’ve interacted with at FRI has been great, I’m happy they’re focusing on s-risks, and I look forward to seeing what they produce in the future.\nOn the other hand, I worry that nobody’s pushing back on FRI’s metaphysics, which seem to unavoidably lead to the intractable problems I describe above. FRI seems to believe these problems are part of the territory, unavoidable messes that we just have to make philosophical peace with. But I think that functionalism is a bad map, that the metaphysical messes it leads to are much worse than most people realize (fatal to FRI’s mission), and there are other options that avoid these problems (which, to be fair, is not to say they have no problems).\nUltimately, FRI doesn’t owe me a defense of their position. But if they’re open to suggestions on what it would take to convince a skeptic like me that their brand of functionalism is viable, or at least rescuable, I’d offer the following:\nRe: Objection 1 (motte-and-bailey), I suggest FRI should be as clear and complete as possible in their basic definition of suffering. In which particular ways is it ineffable/fuzzy, and in which particular ways is it precise? What can we definitely say about suffering, and what can we definitely never determine? Preregistering ontological commitments and methodological possibilities would help guard against FRI’s definition of suffering changing based on context.\nRe: Objection 2 (intuition duels), FRI may want to internally “war game” various future scenarios involving AGI, WBE, etc, with one side arguing that a given synthetic (or even extraterrestrial) organism is suffering, and the other side arguing that it isn’t. I’d expect this would help diagnose what sorts of disagreements future theories of suffering will need to adjudicate, and perhaps illuminate implicit ethical intuitions. Sharing the results of these simulated disagreements would also be helpful in making FRI’s reasoning less opaque to outsiders, although making everything transparent could lead to certain strategic disadvantages.\nRe: Objection 3 (convergence requires common truth), I’d like FRI to explore exactly what might drive consilience/convergence in theories of suffering, and what precisely makes one theory of suffering better than another, and ideally to evaluate a range of example theories of suffering under these criteria.\nRe: Objection 4 (assuming that consciousness is a reification produces more confusion, not less), I would love to see a historical treatment of reification: lists of reifications which were later dissolved (e.g., élan vital), vs scattered phenomena that were later unified (e.g., electromagnetism). What patterns do the former have, vs the latter, and why might consciousness fit one of these buckets better than the other?\nRe: Objection 5 (the Hard Problem of Consciousness is a red herring), I’d like to see a more detailed treatment of what kinds of problem people have interpreted the Hard Problem as, and also more analysis on the prospects of Qualia Formalism (which I think is the maximally-empirical, maximally-charitable interpretation of the Hard Problem). It would be helpful for us, in particular, if FRI preregistered their expectations about QRI’s predictions, and their view of the relative evidence strength of each of our predictions.\nRe: Objection 6 (mapping to reality), this is perhaps the heart of most of our disagreement. From Brian’s quotes, he seems split on this issue; I’d like clarification about whether he believes we can ever precisely/objectively map specific computations to specific physical systems, and vice-versa. And if so— how? If not, this seems to propagate through FRI’s ethical framework in a disastrous way, since anyone can argue that any physical system does, or does not, ‘code’ for massive suffering, and there’s no principled way to derive any ‘ground truth’ or even pick between interpretations in a principled way (e.g. my popcorn example). If this isn’t the case— why not?\nBrian has suggested that “certain high-level interpretations of physical systems are more ‘natural’ and useful than others” (personal communication); I agree, and would encourage FRI to explore systematizing this.\nIt would be non-trivial to port FRI’s theories and computational intuitions to the framework of “hypercomputation”– i.e., the understanding that there’s a formal hierarchy of computational systems, and that Turing machines are only one level of many– but it may have benefits too. Namely, it might be the only way they could avoid Objection 6 (which I think is a fatal objection) while still allowing them to speak about computation & consciousness in the same breath. I think FRI should look at this and see if it makes sense to them.\nRe: Objection 7 (FRI doesn’t fully bite the bullet on computationalism), I’d like to see responses to Aaronson’s aforementioned thought experiments.\nRe: Objection 8 (dangerous combination), I’d like to see a clarification about why my interpretation is unreasonable (as it very well may be!).\n \n\nIn conclusion- I think FRI has a critically important goal- reduction of suffering & s-risk. However, I also think FRI has painted itself into a corner by explicitly disallowing a clear, disagreement-mediating definition for what these things are. I look forward to further work in this field.\n \nMike Johnson\nQualia Research Institute\n\nAcknowledgements: thanks to Andrés Gómez Emilsson, Brian Tomasik, and Max Daniel for reviewing earlier drafts of this.\nSources:\nMy sources for FRI’s views on consciousness:\nFlavors of Computation are Flavors of Consciousness:\nhttps://foundational-research.org/flavors-of-computation-are-flavors-of-consciousness/\nIs There a Hard Problem of Consciousness?\nhttp://reducing-suffering.org/hard-problem-consciousness/\nConsciousness Is a Process, Not a Moment\nhttp://reducing-suffering.org/consciousness-is-a-process-not-a-moment/\nHow to Interpret a Physical System as a Mind\nhttp://reducing-suffering.org/interpret-physical-system-mind/\nDissolving Confusion about Consciousness\nhttp://reducing-suffering.org/dissolving-confusion-about-consciousness/\nDebate between Brian & Mike on consciousness:\nhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/1333798200009867/?comment_id=1333823816673972&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D\nMax Daniel’s EA Global Boston 2017 talk on s-risks:\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiZxEJcFExc\nMultipolar debate between Eliezer Yudkowsky and various rationalists about animal suffering:\nhttps://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/12/16/a-debate-on-animal-consciousness/\nThe Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on functionalism:\nhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/functism/\nGordon McCabe on why computation doesn’t map to physics:\nhttp://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1891/1/UniverseCreationComputer.pdf\nToby Ord on hypercomputation, and how it differs from Turing’s work:\nhttps://arxiv.org/abs/math/0209332\nLuke Muehlhauser’s OpenPhil-funded report on consciousness and moral patienthood:\nhttp://www.openphilanthropy.org/2017-report-consciousness-and-moral-patienthood\nScott Aaronson’s thought experiments on computationalism:\nhttp://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1951\nSelen Atasoy on Connectome Harmonics, a new way to understand brain activity:\nhttps://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10340\nMy work on formalizing phenomenology:\nMy meta-framework for consciousness, including the Symmetry Theory of Valence:\nhttp://opentheory.net/PrincipiaQualia.pdf\nMy hypothesis of homeostatic regulation, which touches on why we seek out pleasure:\nhttp://opentheory.net/2017/05/why-we-seek-out-pleasure-the-symmetry-theory-of-homeostatic-regulation/\nMy exploration & parametrization of the ‘neuroacoustics’ metaphor suggested by Atasoy’s work:\nhttp://opentheory.net/2017/06/taking-brain-waves-seriously-neuroacoustics/\nMy colleague Andrés’s work on formalizing phenomenology:\n\nA model of DMT-trip-as-hyperbolic-experience:\nhttps://qualiacomputing.com/2017/05/28/eli5-the-hyperbolic-geometry-of-dmt-experiences/\nJune 2017 talk at Consciousness Hacking, describing a theory and experiment to predict people’s valence from fMRI data:\nhttps://qualiacomputing.com/2017/06/18/quantifying-bliss-talk-summary/\nA parametrization of various psychedelic states as operators in qualia space:\nhttps://qualiacomputing.com/2016/06/20/algorithmic-reduction-of-psychedelic-states/\nA brief post on valence and the fundamental attribution error:\nhttps://qualiacomputing.com/2016/11/19/the-tyranny-of-the-intentional-object/\nA summary of some of Selen Atasoy’s current work on Connectome Harmonics:\nhttps://qualiacomputing.com/2017/06/18/connectome-specific-harmonic-waves-on-lsd/\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/07/22/why-i-think-the-foundational-research-institute-should-rethink-its-approach/", "title": "Why I think the Foundational Research Institute should rethink its approach", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-07-22T10:17:22+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=20", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "38d63a21046716d25c12041fb4d0e08b", "summary": []}
{"text": "Quantifying Bliss: Talk Summary\n\nBelow I provide a summary of the Quantifying Bliss talk at Consciousness Hacking (video; 360 degree live feed record), which took place on June 7th 2017. I am currently working on a longer and more precise treatment of the topic, which I will be posting here as well. That said, since the talk already makes clear, empirically testable predictions, I decided to publish this summary as soon as possible. After all, there is only a small window of opportunity to publish one’s testable predictions online before the experiment is run and they turn into “retrodictions”. By writing this out and archiving it on time I’m enabling future-me to say “called it!” (if the results are positive) or “at least I tried” (if the experiment fails to show the predicted effects). Better do this quick, then, for science!\nThe Purpose of Life\n\n\n\n\n\nWe begin by asking the question “what is the purpose of life?”. In order to give a sense for where I am coming from, I explain that I think that the purpose of life is…\n\nTo Understand the Universe\nTo be Happy, and Make Others Happy\n\nI admit that for the first half of my life I thought that the only purpose of life was to understand the universe. If anything, in light of this exclusive goal, happiness could be seen as a temporary distraction rather than something to pursue for its own sake. Thankfully, as a teenager I was exposed to philosophy of mind, was introduced to meditation, and experimented with psychedelics, all of which pointed me to the fact that (a) we don’t understand consciousness yet, and (b) happiness is really a lot more important than we usually think, even if one is only concerned with the most theoretical and abstract level of understanding possible.\nI now regard “to understand the universe” and “to be happy and make others happy” on an equal footing. More so, these two life goals complement each other. On the one hand, understanding the universe will allow you to figure out how to make anyone happy. And on the other hand, being happy and making others happy can allow you to stay motivated in order to figure out the nature of reality. Hence one can think of these two life goals as synergistic rather than as being in opposing camps (of course, at the edges, one will be forced to choose one over the other, but we are nowhere near the point where this is a concern).\nBy taking these two “purposes of life” seriously we are then faced with a crucial question: What makes an experience valuable? In other words, for someone who is both trying to understand the universe and trying to make its inhabitants as happy as possible, the question “how do you measure the value of an experience?” becomes important.\nAt Qualia Computing we generally answer that question using the following criteria\n\nDoes it feel good? (happy, loving, pleasant)\nDoes it make you productive (in a good way)?\nDoes it make you ethical?\n\nThat is to say, the value that we assign to an experience is guided by three criteria. In brief, a valuable experience is one that feels good (i.e. has positive hedonic tone), improves your productivity (in the sense of helping you pursue your own values effectively), and makes you more ethical – both towards yourself and others. That said, for the purpose of this talk, I make it explicit that I will only discuss how to measure (1). In other words, we will concern ourselves with what makes an experience feel good; ethics and productivity are discussed elsewhere.*\nWhat is Bliss?\n\n\n\nSo what makes an experience feel good? The “feel good” quality of an experience is usually called valence in psychology and neuroscience (also described as the “pleasure-pain axis”). This quality is to be distinguished from arousal, which refers to the amount of energy expressed in an experience. Four examples: Excitement is a high-valence, high-arousal state. Serenity is a high-valence, low-arousal state. Anxiety is low-valence, high-arousal. And depression low-valence, low-arousal.\nFor some people valence and arousal are correlated (either negatively or positively as shown by Peter Kuppens). Likewise, one’s culture can have a large influence on the way one conceptualizes of valence (or ideal affect, as demonstrated in the extensive work of Jeanne Tsai). That said, valence is not a cultural phenomenon; even mice can experience negative and positive valence.\nEven though valence and arousal do seem to explain a big chunk of the differences between emotions, we can nonetheless find many cases where the “texture” of two emotions feel very different even though their valence and their arousal are similar. Hence we ask ourselves: How do we explain and characterize the textural differences between such emotions?\nAnd across all of the possible intensely blissful states on offer (encompassing all of the possible inner meanings present), what exactly is shared between them all at their very core?\nSome interpret holistic feelings of wellbeing as a sort of spiritual signal. In this interpretation, feeling at a very deep level that the world is good, that things fall into place perfectly, that you don’t owe anything to anyone, etc. is a sign that you are on the right (spiritual) track. Undoubtedly many people use the (often extreme) positive shift in their valence upon religious conversion as evidence of the validity of their choice. Intense positive valence may not throw Bayesian purists off-balance, but for the rest of the world, blissful experiences are often found as cornerstones of worldviews.\nOther people say that bliss is “just chemicals in your brain”. Some claim that it’s more a matter of the functional state of your pleasure centers (themselves affected by dopamine, opioids, etc.) rather than the chemicals themselves. Many others are focused on what usually triggers happiness (e.g. learning, relationships, beliefs, etc.) rather than on what, absolutely, needs to happens for bliss to take place in the simplest experiential terms possible. Most who study this closely become mystics.\nCould it be that there’s something structural that makes the experiences feel good? Let’s say that there exists a good-fitting mathematical object that translates brain states to experiences. What mathematical property of that object would valence look like? Our proposal is very simple. In some sense it is the simplest possible theory for the important theory of consciousness. We propose the symmetry theory of valence (or “STV”; historical note: STV was first articulated and argued for in Michael Johnson’s Principia Qualia).\n(The important theory of consciousness is the question that asks why experience feels good and/or bad, vs. e.g. the hard problem of consciousness, why consciousness exists to begin with).\nThe Symmetry Theory of Valence\n\n\n\nWe are pretty confident that consciousness is a real and a measurable phenomenon. That’s why Consciousness Hacking is such a good venue for this kind of discussion. Because here we can talk freely about the properties of consciousness without getting caught up about whether it exists at all. Now, symmetry is a very general term, how is that precise?\nHarmony feels good because it’s symmetry over time. In reality, our moments of experience contain a temporal direction. I call this a pseudo-time arrow, since its direction is likely encoded in the patterns of statistical independence between the qualia experienced. And by manipulating the symmetrical connectivity of the micro-structure of one’s consciousness, one can change the perception of time. It’s a change in the way one evaluates when one is and how fast one is going. \nIn this model, the pleasure centers would work as “tuning knobs” of harmonic patterns. They are establishing the mood, the underlying tone to which the rest needs to adapt. And the emotional centers, including the amygdala, would be strategically positioned to add anti-symmetry instead. Hence, in this framework we would think of boredom is an “anti-symmetry” mechanism. It prevents us from getting stuck in shallow ponds, but it can be nasty if left unchecked. Cognitive activity may be in part explained by differences in boredom thresholds.\nConnectome-Specific Harmonics\n\n\n\n\nI was at the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference when I saw Selen Atasoy presenting about improvisation enhancement with LSD. She used a paradigm previously developed, whose methods and empirical tests were published in Nature in 2016 but now applied to psychedelic research. For a good introduction check out the partial transcript of her talk.\nIn her talk she shows how one can measure the various “pure harmonics” in a given brain. The core idea is that brain activity can be interpreted as a weighted sum of “natural resonant frequencies” for the entire connectome (white matter tracks together with the grey matter connections). They actually take the physical structure of a mapped brain and simulate the effect of applying the excitation-inhibition differential equations known for collective neural activity propagation. Then they infer the presence and prevalence of these “pure harmonics” in a brain at a given point in time using a probabilistic reconstruction.\nChladni plates here are a wonderful metaphor for these brain harmonics. This is because the way the excitation-inhibition wavefront propagates is very similar in both Chladni plates and human brains. In both cases the system drifts slowly within the attractor basin of natural frequencies, where the wavefront wraps around the medium an integer number of times. I was in awe to see her approach applied to psychedelic research. After all, Qualia Computing has indeed explored harmonic patterns in psychedelic experiences (ex. 1, ex. 2, ex. 3), and the connection was made explicit in Principia Qualia (via the concept of neuroacoustic modulation).\n\nBut how do these harmonics look like in the brain? Show me a brain!\n\n\n\n\nNotice the traveling wave wrapping around the brain an integer number of times in each of these numerical solutions (source). The work by these labs is incredible, and they seem to show that the brain’s activity can be decomposed into each of these harmonics.\nAt the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference, Selen Atasoy explained that very low frequency harmonics were associated with Ego Dissolution in the trials that they studied. She also explained that emotional arousal, here defined as one’s overall level of energy in the emotional component (i.e. anxiety and ecstasy vs. depression and serenity), also correlated with low frequency harmonic states. On the other hand, high valence states were correlated with high frequency brain harmonics.\nThese empirical results are things that I claim we could have predicted with the symmetry theory of valence. I then thought to myself: let’s try to come up with other predictions. How should we consider the mixture of various harmonics, beyond merely their individual presence? How can we reconstruct valence from this novel data-structure for representing brain-states?\nThe Algorithm for Quantifying Bliss\nStarting my reasoning from first principles (sourced from the Symmetry Theory of Valence), the natural way to take a data-structure that represents states of consciousness and recover its valence (in cases where samples occur across time in addition to space), is to try to isolate the noise, then proceed to quantify the dissonance, and what remains becomes what’s consonant. Basically, one will estimate the rough amount of symmetry (over time), as well as the degree of anti-symmetry, and the level of noise total.\nIn other words, I prophesize that we can get an “affective signature” of any brain state by applying an algorithm to fMRI brain recordings in order to estimate the degree of (1) consonance, (2) dissonance, and (3) noise within and across the brain’s natural harmonic states. This will result in what I call “Consonance-Dissonance-Noise Signatures” of brain states (“CDNS” for short) consisting of three histograms that describe the spectra of consonance, dissonance, and noise in a given moment of experience. The algorithm to arrive at a CDNS of a brain state is as follows:\nRemove some of the noise in the brain state by applying the technique in Atasoy (2016) and recovering the distribution of the best approximation possible for the harmonics present (you may apply some further denoising on the harmonics when taken as a collective). Then estimate the total dissonance of the combination of harmonics by taking each pair of harmonics and quantifying their mutual dissonance. Finally, subtract the dissonance from “all of the interactions that could have existed” and what’s left ends up being the consonance. This way you obtain a Consonance, Dissonance, Noise Signature.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEach of these three components will have their associated spectral power distribution. The noise spectrum is obtained during the first denoising step (as whatever cannot be explained by the harmonic decomposition). Then the dissonance spectrum is a function of the minimum power of pairs of harmonics that exist within the critical band of each other (see slides 18; possibly upgraded by 20), as well as the frequencies of the beating patterns.\nQuantifying Dissonance?\nIn order to quantify dissonance we use a method that may end up being simpler than what you need to calculate dissonance for sound! E.g. in Quantifying the Consonance of Complex Tones With Missing Fundamentals (Chon 2008) we learn that the human auditory system may at times detect dissonance even when there is no actual dissonance in the input. That is, there are auditory illusions pertaining to valence and dissonance. Based on the missing fundamental one can create ghost dissonance between tones that are not even present. That said, quantifying dissonance in a brain in terms of its harmonic decomposition may be easier than quantifying dissonance in auditory input, precisely because the auditory input (and any sensory input for that matter) contains many intermediary pre-processing steps. The auditory system is relatively “direct” when compared to, e.g. the visual system, but you will still see some basic signal processing done to the input before it influences brain harmonics. The sensory systems, being adapted to meet the criteria of both interfacing with a functioning valence system and representing the information adequately (in terms of the real-world distribution of inputs) serve the function of translating the inputs into usable signals. I.e. frequency-based descriptions, often log-transformed, in order to arrive at valence gradients. For this reason, the algorithm that describes how to extract valence out of a brain state may turn out to be simpler than what you need to predict the hedonic quality of patterns of sound (or sight, touch, etc).\nIn brief, we propose that we can compute the approximate amount of dissonance between these harmonics by seeing how close they are in terms of spatial and temporal frequencies. If they are within the critical window then they will be considered as dissonant. There is likely to be a peak dissonance window, and when any pair of harmonic states live within that window, then experiencing both at once may feel really awful (to quantify such dissonance more precisely we would use a dissonance function as shown in Chon 2008). If indeed symmetry is intimately connected to valence, then highly anti-symmetrical states such as what’s produced by overlapping brain harmonics within the critical band may feel terrible. Remember, harmony is symmetry over time. So dissonance is anti-symmetry over time. It’s worth recalling, though, that in the absence of dissonance and noise, by default, what remains is consonance.\nVisualizing Emotions as CDNS’s of States of Consciousness\n\n\n\n\nAbove you can find two ways of visualizing a CDNS. Before we go on to the predictions, here we illustrate how we think that we will be able to see at a glance the valence of a brain with our method. The big circle shows the dissonance and consonance for each of the brain harmonics (the black dots surrounding the circle represent the weights for each state). If you want the overall dissonance in a given state, you add up the red-yellow arrows, whereas if you want the total consonance, you add the purple-light-blue arrows. The triangles on the right expand upon the valence diagram presented in Principia Qualia. Namely, we have a blue (positive valence/consonant), red (negative valence/dissonant), and grey (neutral valence/noise) component in a state of consciousness. Each of these components has a spectrum; the myriad textures of emotional states are the result of different spectral signatures for hedonically loaded patterns.\nTestable Predictions\n\nWe predict that intense emotions/experiences reported on psychedelics will result in states of consciousness whose harmonic decomposition will show a high amount of energy to be found in the pure harmonics (this was already found in 2017 as explained in the presentation, so let’s count that as a retrodiction). People who report being “very high” will have particularly high amounts of energy in their pure harmonics (as opposed to more noisy states).\nThe predicted valence for their experiences will be a function of the particular patterns (in terms of relative weights) of the various harmonics. Those which generate highly harmonic CDNS will be blessed with high valence experiences. And those who experience high dissonance, as empirically measured, will report negative feelings (e.g. fear, anxiety, nausea, weird and unpleasant body load, etc). In particular, we can explore the shape of highly harmonic states. In this framework, MDMA would be seen as likely to work by increasing the energy expressed by an exceptionally consonant set of harmonics in the brain.\nA point to make here is that predicting “pure harmonics” on psychedelics (evidently simple and ordered patterns), would seem to go counter to the recently accrued empirical data concerning entropy in the tripping brain.** But we also know that the psychedelic brain can produce ridiculously self-similar near-informationless yet highly intense moments of experience preceded by a symmetrification process. Indeed, there are several symmetric attractors for the interplay of awareness and attention at various levels of “consciousness energy” and quality of mood. These states, in turn, not only are hedonically charged, but also allow the exploration of high-energy qualia research (since the implicit symmetry provides an energy seal). Highly energetic states of consciousness can be encapsulated in a highly symmetrical network of local binding. More about this in a future article.\nOn the other hand, we predict that people on SSRIs will show an enhanced amount of noise in their CDNS. A couple of slides back, this was represented as a higher loading of activity in the grey component of the triangular visualization of a CDNS. Likewise, some drugs will have various effects on the CDNS, such as stimulants inducing more consonance in high frequencies, whereas opioids and hypnotics having signatures of inducing high consonance in the low frequencies.\nSummary of Predictions About Drug Effects\n\nPsychedelic substances will increase the overall power of the brain’s pure harmonics, and thus result in a CDN Signature characterized by: (a) high consonance of all frequencies, (b) high dissonance of all frequencies, and (c) low noise of all frequencies. Criticality will be observed by way of the CDNS having high variance.\nMDMA will produce a very specific range of states that have on the one hand very pure harmonic states of high frequencies, and on the other, very small collective dissonance and noise. In other words: (a) high amounts of high-frequency consonance, (b) low amounts of dissonance of all frequencies, and (c) low noise of all frequencies.\nAny “affect blunting” agent such as SSRIs, ibuprofen, aspirin, acetaminophen, and agmatine, will produce CDNS characterized by: (a) reduced consonance of all frequencies, (b) reduced dissonance of all frequencies, and (c) increased noise in either some or all frequencies. We further hypothesize that different antidepressants (e.g. citalopram vs. fuoxetine) will look the same with respect to reducing the C and D components, but may have differences in the way they increase the N spectrum.\nOpioids in euphoric doses will be found to (a) increase low frequency consonance, (b) decrease dissonance for all frequencies but especially the high frequencies, and (c) slightly increase noise across the board.\nStimulants will be found to (a) increase medium and high frequency consonance, (b) leave dissonance fairly unaltered, and (c) reduce noise for all frequencies but especially those in the upper end of the spectrum.\n\nPredictions About Emotions\nFor now, here are the specific predictions concerning emotions that I am making:\n\nThe energy of the consonant (C) component of a CDNS will be highly correlated with the amount of euphoria (pleasure, happiness, positive feelings, etc.) a person is experiencing.\nThe energy of the dissonant (D) component will have a high correlation with the amount of dysphoria (pain, suffering, negative feelings, etc.) a person feels.\nThe energy of the noise (N) component will be correlated with flattened affect and blunted valence (i.e. feeling neither good nor bad, like there is a fog that masks all feelings).\nIf one creates a geometric representation of the relationships between various brain states using their respective CDNS similarities as a distance metric for emotional states using Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) techniques, one will be able to recover a really good approximation of the empirically-derived dimensional models of emotions (cf. dimensional models of emotion; Wire-heading Done Right). In other words, if you ask your participants to tell you how they feel during the fMRI sessions and then associate those emotions to their instantaneous CDNS, and then you apply multidimensional scaling to the resulting CDNS, you will be able to recover a good dimensional picture of the state-space of emotions. I.e. “subjective similarity between emotions” will be closely tracked by the geometric distance between their corresponding CDNS:\n\nApplying MDS scaling to the C component of the CDNS will result in a better characterization of the differences between positive emotions.\nApplying MDS to the D component will result in a better characterization of the differences between negative emotions. And,\nApplying MDS to the N component will result in a better characterization of the differences between valence-neutral emotions.\n\n\n\nThe Future of Mental Health\n\nSir, your 17th harmonic is really messing up the consonance of your 19th harmonic, and it interrupts the creative morning mood you recently enjoyed. I suggest taking 1mg of Coluracetam, listening to a selection of Diamond songs, and RD23 [stretching exercise]. Here’s your expected CDNS.\nPenfield mood organs may not be as terrible as they seem. At least not if you’re given a good combination of personalized settings, and a manual to wire-head in the proper manner. In such a situation, among the options available, you will have the ability to choose an experientially attractive, healthy, and sustainable set of moods indefinitely.\nThe “clinical phenomenologist” of the year 2050 might look into your brain harmonics, and try to find the shortest paths to nearby state-spaces with less chronic dissonance, fishing for high-consonance attractors with large basins to shoot for. The qualia expert would go on to provide you various options that may improve all sorts of metrics, including valence, the most important of them all. If you ask, your phenomenologist can give you trials for fully reversible treatments. You sample them in your own time, of course, and test them for a day or two before deciding whether to use these moods for longer.\nPersonalized Harmonic Retuning\nI assume that people will be given just about enough retuning to get back to their daily routines as they themselves prefer them, but without any sort of nagging dissonance. Most people will probably continue on with their preference architectures relatively unchanged. Indeed, that will be a valued quality for a personalized harmonic retuning product. Having adequate mood devices that don’t mess up your existing value system might eventually become a highly understood, precision-engineered aspect of mainstream mental health. At least compared to the current (pre-psychedelic re-adoption 2017) paradigms. Arguably, even psychedelic therapy is pretty blunt in a way. Not in the sense of blunting the hedonic quality of your experience (on the contrary). But in the sense of applying the harmonization process indiscriminately.\nFor the psychonauts (hopefully they are not too rare by then), who still want to investigate consciousness even though human life is already full of love (in the future), we will have a different arrangement. They are free to explore themselves while being part of a research institute. Indeed, pursuing the purpose of understanding the big picture (including consciousness) will require the experimental method. More so, exploring the state-space of consciousness will, for the foreseeable future, be a way to find new ways of making others happy. People will continue to explore alien state-spaces in the search of highly-priced high-valence states. At least for some scores of generations valence engineering is bound to continue to be economically profitable. As we discover new drugs, new treatments, new philosophical trances, new interpretations and expressions of love, and so on, the economy will adapt to these inventions. We already live in an informational economy of states of consciousness, and the future is likely to be like that as well. Except that consciousness technologies will be immensely more powerful.\nBarring the unlikely emergence of anti-hedonist Spartan self-punishing transhumanist social movements enabled with genetic technology, I don’t anticipate major obstacles in the eventual widespread use of mood organs. In fact, the wide adoption of SSRIs in some pockets of society shows that the general public is willing and interested in minor self-adjustments to deal with chronic negativity. Hedonic technology is in its early days, but with a root understanding of the nature of valence, the sky is the limit.\nCase studies – SSRIs & Psychedelics\nLet’s take a closer look at SSRIs and psychedelics in light of the Symmetry Theory of Valence.\nSSRIs have an overall effect of blunting one’s experience at pretty much every level imaginable. Usually just a little, enough to help people re-establish a new order between their harmonics, in a more noisy, less intense range of moods. Some people may benefit from this sort of intervention. Now, also it’s worth pointing out the possible side effects, which have the common theme of reducing the structural integrity of the micro-structure of consciousness. Thus, the highly ordered pleasant and unpleasant experiences get softened. Whether this generalized softening is beneficial depends on many factors. Psychonauts usually avoid them as much as possible in order to protect the psychoacoustical potential of their brain, were they to desire to use this potential sometime in the future.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPsychedelics, in this framework, would be interpreted as neuroacoustic enhancers. These agents trigger, via control interruption, a more “echo-ey acoustic environment for one’s consciousness”. Meaning, any qualia experienced under the influence lasts for longer (the decay of intensity of experience as a function of time since presentation of stimuli becomes a lot “slower” or “fatter”). On high doses, the intensity of each component of a cycle of an experience can feel just as intense, and thus one might find oneself unable to locate oneself in time. Sometimes intense feelings return cyclically, and ultimately at strong doses, experiential feedback dominates every aspect of one’s experience, and there isn’t anything other than standing waves of synesthetic psychedelic feelings.\nPeak symmetry states with their associated valence would be predicted to be far more accessible on highly harmonic states of consciousness. So psychedelics and the like could be carefully used to explore the positive extreme of valence: Hyper-symmetrical states. That said, for responsible exploration, a euphoriant will be needed to prevent negative psychedelic experiences.\nFinal Thoughts\nA Harmonic Society is a place where everyone recognizes what makes other sentient beings love life. It’s a place in which everyone deeply understands the valence landscapes of other beings. People in such a society would know that a zebra, an owl, and a salamander all share the pursuit of harmonic states of consciousness, albeit in their own, often different-looking, state-spaces of qualia. We would understand each other far more deeply if we saw each other’s valence landscapes as part of a big state-space of possible preference architectures. Ultimately, the pursuit of existential bliss and the ontological question (why being?) would incite us to explore each other through consciousness technologies. We will have an expanded state-space of available possible moods, both individual and collective, increasing our chances of finding a new revolutionary understanding of consciousness, identity, and what’s possible for post-hedonium societies.\n\n\n\n\n\n*I will note that to define what’s ethical one ultimately relies on beliefs about personal identity; truly frame-independent systems of morality are exceptionally hard to construct.\n**The Entropic Brain theory portrays psychedelia in terms of increased entropy, but also, and most importantly, focuses on criticality. Just thinking about entropy would not distinguish between adding white noise and adding interesting patterns. In other words, from the point of view of simple entropy without any spectral (or nonlinear) analysis, SSRIs and psychedelics are doing pretty much the same thing. So the sense of “entropy” that matters will have to be a lot more detailed, showing you in what way the information encoded in normal states of consciousness changes as a function of entropy added in various ways.\nOn psychedelics one does indeed find highly ordered crystal-like states of consciousness (which I’ve described elsewhere as peak symmetry states), and as far as we know those states are also some of the most positively hedonically charged. Hence, at least in terms of describing the quality of the psychedelic experience, leaving symmetry out would make us miss an important big-picture kind of quality for psychedelics in general and their connection to valence variance.\n***→ see quote →\nMy hypothesis strongly implies that ‘hedonic’ brain regions influence mood by virtue of acting as ‘tuning knobs’ for symmetry/harmony in the brain’s consciousness centers. Likewise, nociceptors, and the brain regions which gate & interpret their signals, will be located at critical points in brain networks, able to cause large amounts of salience-inducing antisymmetry very efficiently. We should also expect rhythm to be a powerful tool for modeling brain dynamics involving valence- for instance, we should be able to extend (Safron 2016)’s model of rhythmic entrainment in orgasm to other sorts of pleasure.\n– Michael Johnson in Principia Qualia, page 52", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/06/18/quantifying-bliss-talk-summary/", "title": "Quantifying Bliss: Talk Summary", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-06-18T22:19:09+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=20", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "66a3518efba2fb57e10b3f7f6b4941d3", "summary": []}
{"text": "Connectome-Specific Harmonic Waves on LSD\n\nThe harmonics-in-connectome approach to modeling brain activity is a fascinating paradigm. I am privileged to have been at this talk in the 2017 Psychedelic Science conference. I’m extremely happy find out that MAPS already uploaded the talks. Dive in!\n\nBelow is a partial transcript of the talk. I figured that I should get it in written form in order to be able to reference it in future articles. Enjoy!\n[After a brief introduction about harmonic waves in many different kinds of systems… at 7:04, Selen Atasoy]:\nWe applied the [principle of harmonic decomposition] to the anatomy of the brain. We made them connectome-specific. So first of all, what do I mean by the human connectome? Today thanks to the recent developments in structural neuroimaging techniques such as diffusion tensor imaging, we can trace the long-distance white matter connections in the brain. These long-distance white matter fibers (as you see in the image) connect distant parts of the brain, distant parts of the cortex. And the set of all of the different connections is called the connectome.\n\nNow, because we know the equation governing these harmonic waves, we can extend this principle to the human brain by simply solving the same equation on the human connectome instead of a metal plate (Chladni plates) or the anatomy of the zebra. And if you do that, we get a set of harmonic patterns, this time emerging in the cortex. And we decided to call these harmonic patterns connectome harmincs. And each of these connectome harmonic patterns are associated with a different frequency. And because they correspond to different frequencies they are all independent, and together they give you a new language, so to speak, to describe neural activity. So in the same way the harmonic patterns are building blocks of these complex patterns we see on animal coats, these connectome harmonics are the building blocks of the complex spatio-temporal patterns of neural activity.\nDescribing and explaining neural activity by using these connectome harmonics as brain states is really not very different than decomposing a complex musical pieces into its musical notes. It’s simply a new way of representing your data, or a new language to express it.\nWhat is the advantage of using this new language? So why not use the state-of-the-art conventional neurimaging analysis methods? Because these connectome harmonics, by definition are the vibration modes, but applied to the anatomy of the human brain, and if you use them as brain states to express neural activity we can compute certain fundamental principles very easily such as the energy or the power.\nThe power would be the strength of activation of each of these states in neural activity. So how strongly that particular state contributes to neural activity. And the energy would be a combination of this strength of activation with the intrinsic energy of that particular brain state, and the intrinsic energy comes from the frequency of its vibration (in the analogy of vibration).\nSo in this study we looked at the power and the energy of these connectome harmonic brain states in order to explore the neural correlates of the LSD experience.\nWe looked at 12 healthy participants who received either 75µg of LSD (IV) or a placebo, over two sessions. These two sessions were 14 days apart in counter-balanced order. And the fMRI scans consisted of 3 eyes-closed resting states scans, each lasting 7 minutes, in the first and the third scan the participants were simply resting, eyes closed, but in the second scan they were also listening to music. And after each scan, the participants rated the intensity of certain experiences.\n\nSo if you look at, firstly, at the total power and the total energy of each of these scans under LSD and placebo, what we see is that under LSD both the power as well as the energy of brain activity increases significantly.\nAnd if we compute the probability of observing a certain energy value on LSD or placebo, what we see is that the peak of this probability distribution clearly shoots towards high energy values under LSD.\n\nAnd that peak is even slightly higher in terms of probability when the subjects were listening to music. So if we interpret that peak as, in a way, the characteristic energy of a state, you can see that it shifts towards higher energy under LSD, and that this effect is intensified when listening to music.\nAnd then we asked, which of these brain states, which of these frequencies, were actually contributing to this energy increase. So we partitioned the spectrum of all of these harmonic brain states into different parts and computed the energy of each of these partitions individually. So in total we have around 20,000 brain states. And if you look at the energy differences in LSD and placebo, what we find is that for a very narrow range of low frequencies actually these brain states were decreasing their energy on LSD. But for a very broad range of high frequencies, LSD was inducing an energy increase. So this says that LSD alters brain dynamics in a very frequency-selective manner. And it was causing high frequencies to increase their energy.\nSo next we looked at whether these changes we are observing in brain activity are correlated with any of the experiences that the participants themselves were having in that moment. If you look at the energy changes within the narrow range of low frequencies, we found that the energy changes in that range significantly correlated with the intensity of the experience of ego dissolution. The loss of subjective self.\n\nAnd very interestingly, the same range of energy change within the same frequency range also significantly correlated with the intensity of emotional arousal, whether the experience was positive or negative. This could be quite relevant for studies looking into potential therapeutic applications of LSD.\n\nNext, when we look at a slightly higher range of frequencies, what we found was that the energy changes within that range significantly correlated with the positive mood.\n\nIn brief, this suggests that it’s rather the low frequency brain states which correlated with ego dissolution or with emotional arousal, and it’s the activity of higher frequencies that is correlated with the positive experiences.\nNext, we wanted to check the size of the repertoire of active brain states. And if you look at the probability of activation for any brain state (so we are not distinguishing for any frequency brain states), what we observe is that the probability of a brain state being silent (zero contribution), actually decreased under LSD. And the probability of a brain state contributing very strongly, which corresponds to the tails of these distributions, were increased under LSD. So this suggests that LSD was activating more brain states simultaneously.\n\nAnd if we go back to the music analogy that we used in the beginning, that would correspond to playing more musical notes at the same time. And it’s very interesting, because studies that have looked at improvising, those who have looked at jazz improvisation, show that improvising jazz musicians play significantly more musical notes compared to memorized play. And this is what we seem to be finding under the effect of LSD. That your brain is actually activating more of these brain states simultaneously.\n\nAnd it does so in a very non-random fashion. So if you look at the correlation across different frequencies. Like at the co-activation patterns, and their activation over time. You may interpret it as the “communication across various frequencies”. What we found is that for a very broad range of the spectrum, there was a higher correlation across different frequencies in their activation patterns under LSD compared to placebo.\nSo this really says that LSD is actually causing a reorganization, rather than a random activation of brain states. It’s expanding the repertoire of active brain states, while maintaining -or maybe better said- recreating a complex but spontaneous order. And in the musical analogy it’s really very similar to jazz improvisation, to think about it in an intuitive way.\nNow, there is actually one particular situation when dynamical systems such as the brain, and systems that change their activity over time, show this type of emergence of complex order, or enhanced improvisation, enhanced repertoire of active states. And this is when they approach what is called criticality. Now, criticality is this special type of behavior, special type of dynamics, that emerges right at the transition between order and chaos. When these two (extreme) types of dynamics are in balance. And criticality is said to be “the constantly shifting battle zone between stagnation and anarchy. The one place where a complex system can be spontaneous, adaptive, and alive” (Waldrop 1992). So if a system is approaching criticality, there are very characteristic signatures that you would observed in the data, in the relationships that you plot in your data.\nAnd one of them is -and probably the most characteristic of them- is the emergence of power laws. So what does that mean? If you plot one observable in our data, which for example, in our case would be the maximum power of a brain state, in relationship to another observable, for example, the wavenumber, or the frequency of that brain state, and you plot them in logarithmic coordinates, that would mean that if they follow power laws, they would approximate a line. And this is exactly what we observe in our data, and surprisingly for both LSD as well as for placebo, but with one very significant and remarkable difference: because the high frequencies increase their power on LSD, this distribution follows this power law, this line, way more accurately under LSD compared to placebo. And here you see the error of the fit, which is decreasing.\nThis suggests that LSD shoots brain dynamics further towards criticality.  The signature of criticality that we find in LSD and in placebo is way more enhanced, way more pronounced, under the effect of LSD. And we found the same effect, not only for the maximum power, but also for the mean power, as well as for the power of fluctuations.\n\nSo this suggests that the criticality actually may be the principle that is underlying this emergence of complex order, and this reorganization of brain dynamics, and which leads to enhanced improvisation in brain activity.\nSo, to summarize briefly, what we found was that LSD increases the total power as well as total energy of brain activity. It selectively activates high frequency brain states, and it expands the repertoire or active brain states in a very non-random fashion. And the principle underlying all of these changes seems to be a reorganization of brain dynamics, right at criticality, right at the edge of chaos, or just as the balance between order and chaos. And very interestingly, the “edge of chaos”, or the edge of criticality, is said to be where “life has enough stability to sustain itself, and enough creativity to deserve the name of life” (Waldrop 1992). So I leave you with that, and thank you for your attention.\n[Applauses; ends at 22:00, followed by Q&A]", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/06/18/connectome-specific-harmonic-waves-on-lsd/", "title": "Connectome-Specific Harmonic Waves on LSD", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-06-18T01:22:32+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=21", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "fb31fe24b4d1ef009bda818a2113591f", "summary": []}
{"text": "ELI5 “The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences”\n\n\nI wrote the following in response to a comment on the r/RationalPsychonaut subreddit about this DMT article I wrote some time ago. The comment in question was: “Can somebody eli5 [explain like I am 5 years old] this for me?” So here is my attempt (more like “eli12”, but anyways):\nIn order to explain the core idea of the article I need to convey the main takeaways of the following four things:\n\nDifferential geometry,\nHow it relates to symmetry,\nHow it applies to experience, and\nHow the effects of DMT turn out to be explained (in part) by changes in the curvature of one’s experience of space (what we call “phenomenal space”).\n\n1) Differential Geometry\nIf you are an ant on a ball, it may seem like you live on a “flat surface”. However, let’s imagine you do the following: You advance one centimeter in one direction, you turn 90 degrees and walk another centimeter, turn 90 degrees again and advance yet another centimeter. Logically, you just “traced three edges of a square” so you cannot be in the same place from which you departed. But let’s says that you somehow do happen to arrive at the same place. What happened? Well, it turns out the world in which you are walking is not quite flat! It’s very flat from your point of view, but overall it is a sphere! So you ARE able to walk along a triangle that happens to have three 90 degree corners.\nThat’s what we call a “positively curved space”. There the angles of triangles add up to more than 180 degrees. In flat spaces they add up to 180. And in “negatively curved spaces” (i.e. “negative Gaussian curvature” as talked about in the article) they add up to less than 180 degrees.\nEight 90-degree triangles on the surface of a sphere\nSo let’s go back to the ant again. Now imagine that you are walking on some surface that, again, looks flat from your restricted point of view. You walk one centimeter, then turn 90 degrees, then walk another, turn 90 degrees, etc. for a total of, say, 5 times. And somehow you arrive at the same point! So now you traced a pentagon with 90 degree corners. How is that possible? The answer is that you are now in a “negatively curved space”, a kind of surface that in mathematics is called “hyperbolic”. Of course it sounds impossible that this could happen in real life. But the truth is that there are many hyperbolic surfaces that you can encounter in your daily life. Just to give an example, kale is a highly hyperbolic 2D surface (“H2” for short). It’s crumbly and very curved. So an ant might actually be able to walk along a regular pentagon with 90-degree corners if it’s walking on kale (cf. Too Many Triangles).\nAn ant walking on kale may infer that the world is an H2 space.\nIn brief, hyperbolic geometry is the study of spaces that have this quality of negative curvature. Now, how is this related to symmetry?\n2) How it relates to symmetry\nAs mentioned, on the surface of a sphere you can find triangles with 90 degree corners. In fact, you can partition the surface of a sphere into 8 regular triangles, each with 90 degree corners. Now, there are also other ways of partitioning the surface of a sphere with regular shapes (“regular” in the sense that every edge has the same length, and every corner has the same angle). But the number of ways to do it is not infinite. After all, there’s only a handful of regular polyhedra (which, when “inflated”, are equivalent to the ways of partitioning the surface of a sphere in regular ways).\n\nIf you instead want to partition a plane in a regular way with geometric shapes, you don’t have many options. You can partition it using triangles, squares, and hexagons. And in all of those cases, the angles on each of the vertices will add up to 360 degrees (e.g. six triangles, four squares, or thee corners of hexagons meeting at a point). I won’t get into Wallpaper groups, but suffice it to say that there are also a limited number of ways of breaking down a flat surface using symmetry elements (such as reflections, rotations, etc.).\nRegular tilings of 2D flat space\nHyperbolic 2D surfaces can be partitioned in regular ways in an infinite number of ways! This is because we no longer have the constraints imposed by flat (or spherical) geometries where the angles of shapes must add up to a certain number of degrees. As mentioned, in hyperbolic surfaces the corners of triangles add up to less than 180 degrees, so you can fit more than 6 corners of equilateral triangles at one point (and depending on the curvature of the space, you can fit up to an infinite number of them). Likewise, you can tessellate the entire hyperbolic plane with heptagons.\nHyperbolic tiling: Each of the heptagons is just as big (i.e. this is a projection of the real thing)\nOn the flip side, if you see a regular partitioning of a surface, you can infer what its curvature is! For example, if you see that a surface is entirely covered with heptagons, three on each of the corners, you can be sure that you are seeing a hyperbolic surface. And if you see a surface covered with triangles such that there are only four triangles on each joint, then you know you are seeing a spherical surface. So if you train yourself to notice and count these properties in regular patterns, you will indirectly also be able to determine whether the patterns inhabit a spherical, flat, or hyperbolic space!\n3) How it applies to experience\nHow does this apply to experience? Well, in sober states of consciousness one is usually restricted to seeing and imagining spherical and flat surfaces (and their corresponding symmetric partitions). One can of course look at a piece of kale and think “wow, that’s a hyperbolic surface” but what is impossible to do is to see it “as if it were flat”. One can only see hyperbolic surfaces as projections (i.e. where we make regular shapes look irregular so that they can fit on a flat surface) or we end up contorting the surface in a crumbly fashion in order to fit it in our flat experiential space. (Note: even sober phenomenal space happens to be based on projective geometry; but let’s not go there for now.)\n4) DMT: Hyperbolizing Phenomenal Space\nIn psychedelic states it is common to experience whatever one looks at (or, with more stunning effects, whatever one hallucinates in a sensorially-deprived environment such as a flotation tank) as slowly becoming more and more symmetric. Symmetrical patterns are attractors in psychedelia. It’s common for people to describe their acid experiences as “a kaleidoscope of colors and meaning”. We should not be too quick to dismiss these descriptions as purely metaphorical. As you can see from the article Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States as well as PsychonautWiki’s Symmetrical Texture Repetition, LSD and other psychedelics do in fact “symmetrify” the textures you experience!\nWhat gravel might look like on 150 mics of LSD (Source)\nAs it turns out, this symmetrification process (what we call “lowering the symmetry detection/propagation threshold”) does allow one to experience any of the possible ways of breaking down spherical and flat surfaces in regular ways (in addition to also enabling the experience of any wallpaper group!). Thus the surfaces of the objects one hallucinates on LSD (specially for Closed Eyes Visuals), are usually carpeted with patterns that have either spherical or flat symmetries (e.g. seeing honeycombs, square grids, regular triangulations, etc.; or seeing dodecahedra, cubes, etc.).\n17 wallpaper symmetry groups\nOnly on very high doses of classic psychedelics does one start to experience objects that have hyperbolic curvature. And this is where DMT becomes very relevant. Vaping it is one of the most efficient ways of achieving “unworldly levels of psychedelia”:\nOn DMT the “symmetry detection threshold” is reduced to such an extent that any surface you look at very quickly gets super-saturated with regular patterns. Since (for reasons we don’t understand) our brain tries to incorporate whatever shape you hallucinate into the scene as part of the scene, the result of seeing too many triangles (or heptagons, or whatever) is that your brain will “push them into the surfaces” and, in effect, turn those surfaces into hyperbolic spaces.\nYet another part of your brain (or system of consciousness, whatever it turns out to be) recognizes that “wait, this is waaaay too curved somehow, let me try to shape it into something that could actually exist in my universe”. Hence, in practice, if you take between 10 and 20 mg of DMT, the hyperbolic surfaces you see will become bent and contorted (similar to the pictures you find in the article) just so that they can be “embedded” (a term that roughly means “to fit some object into a space without distorting its properties too much”) into your experience of the space around you.\nBut then there’s a critical point at which this is no longer possible: Even the most contorted embeddings of the hyperbolic surfaces you experience cannot fit any longer in your normal experience of space on doses above 20 mg, so your mind has no other choice but to change the curvature of the 3D space around you! Thus when you go from “very high on DMT” to “super high on DMT” it feels like you are traveling to an entirely new dimension, where the objects you experience do not fit any longer into the normal world of human experience. They exist in H3 (hyperbolic 3D space). And this is in part why it is so extremely difficult to convey the subjective quality of these experiences. One needs to invoke mathematical notions that are unfamiliar to most people; and even then, when they do understand the math, the raw feeling of changing the damn geometry of your experience is still a lot weirder than you could ever anticipate.\nAnybody else want to play hyperbolic soccer? Humans vs. Entities, the match of the eon!\nNote: The original article goes into more depth\nNow that you understand the gist of the original article, I encourage you to take a closer look at it, as it includes content that I didn’t touch in this ELI5 (or 12) summary. It provides a granular description of the 6 levels of DMT experience (Threshold, Chrysanthemum, Magic Eye, Waiting Room, Breakthrough, and Amnesia), many pictures to illustrate the various levels as well as the particular emergent geometries, and a theoretical discussion of the various algorithmic reductions that might explain how the hyperbolization of phenomenal space takes place based on combining a series of simpler effects together.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/05/28/eli5-the-hyperbolic-geometry-of-dmt-experiences/", "title": "ELI5 “The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences”", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-05-28T21:13:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=21", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "16dcd096696ea52e40abe5980ce75821", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Computing at Consciousness Hacking (June 7th 2017)\n\nI am delighted to announce that I will be presenting at Consciousness Hacking in San Francisco on 2017/6/7 (YMD notation).\nConsciousness Hacking (CoHack) is an extremely awesome community that blends a genuine interest in benevolence, scientific rationality, experiential spirituality, self-experimentation, and holistic wellbeing together with an unceasing focus on consciousness. Truth be told, CohHack is one of the reasons why I love living in the Bay Area.\nHere are the relevant event links: Eventbrite, Facebook, Meetup.\nAnd the event description:\n\nWhat would happen if a bliss technology capable of inducing a constant MDMA-like state of consciousness with no negative side effects were available? What makes an experience good or bad? Is happiness a spiritual trick, or is spirituality a happiness trick?\nAt this month’s speaker presentation, Consciousness Hacking invites Data Science Engineer, Andrés Gómez Emilsson to discuss current research, including his own, concerning the measurement of bliss, how blissful brain states can be induced, and what implications this may have on quality of life and our relationship with the world around us.\nEmilsson’s research aims to create a mathematical theory of the pleasure-pain axis that can take information about a person’s brain at a given point in time and return the approximate (or even true) level of happiness and suffering for that person. Emilsson will explore two dimensions that have been studied in affective neuroscience for decades:\n\nArousal: how much energy and activation a given emotion has\nValence: the “feel good or feel bad” dimension of emotion\n\nIf the purpose of life is to feel happy and to make others happy, then figuring out how valence is implemented in the brain may take us a long way in that direction. Current approaches to valence, while helpful, usually don’t address the core of the problem (ie. usually just measuring the symptoms of pleasure such as the neurotransmitters that trigger it, brain regions, positive reinforcement, etc. rather than getting at the experience of pleasure itself).\nA real science of valence would not only be able to integrate and explain why the things people report as pleasurable are pleasant, it would also make a precise, empirically falsifiable hypothesis about whether arbitrary brain states will feel good or bad. This is what Emilsson aims to do.\nYou will take away:\n\n\nAn understanding about the current scientific consensus on the nature of happiness in the brain, and why it is incomplete\nA philosophical case for both the feasibility and desirability of a world devoid of intense suffering\nA new candidate mathematical formula that can be used to predict the psychological wellbeing of a brain at a given point in time\nAn argument for why bliss technology that puts us in a constant MDMA-like state of consciousness with no negative side effects is likely to become available within the next two to five decades\nThe opportunity to network with other people who are serious about figuring out the meaning of life through introspection and neuroscience\n\n\n\n\nAbout our speaker:\nAndrés Gómez Emilsson was born in México City in 1990. From an early age, he developed an interest in philosophy, mathematics, and science, leading him to compete nationally and internationally in Math and Science Olympiads. At 16, his main interest was mathematics, but after an unexpected “mystical experience”, he turned his attention to consciousness and the philosophical problems that it poses. He studied Symbolic Systems with an Artificial Intelligence concentration at Stanford, and later finished a masters in Computational Psychology at the same university. During his time at Stanford he co-founded the Stanford Transhumanist Association and became good friends with transhumanist philosopher David Pearce, taking on the flag of the Hedonistic Imperative (HI). In order to pursue the long-term goals of HI, his current primary intellectual interest is to reverse-engineer the functional, biochemical and/or quantum signatures of pure bliss.\nHe is currently working at a Natural Language Processing company in San Francisco, creating quantitative measures of employee happiness, productivity, and ethics at companies, with the long-term intent of creating a consciousness research institute that’s also a great place to work for (i.e. one in which employees are happy, productive, and ethical). In his free time he develops psychophysical tools to study the computational properties of consciousness.\nSchedule:\n6:30: Check in, snacks\n6:45: Structured schmoozing\n6:55: Event intro and meditation\n7:00: Andrés Gómez Emilsson\n7:50: Break\n8:00: Break-out Sessions (small group discussion)\n9:00: Break-out Recap\n9:15: Closing meditation\nAbout our venue:\nECO-SYSTM is a dynamic community of creative professionals, startups, and freelancers, founded on the idea that entertainment, creativity and business can come together to offer a truly unique work experience for Bay Area professionals. Check out membership plans here: http://eco-systm.com/\n\n \n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/05/24/qualia-computing-at-consciousness-hacking-june-7th-2017/", "title": "Qualia Computing at Consciousness Hacking (June 7th 2017)", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-05-24T05:43:48+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=21", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "9a6fe9aae1887f824fed55545bd23220", "summary": []}
{"text": "Principia Qualia: Part II – Valence\n\nExtract from Principia Qualia (2016) by my colleague Michael E. Johnson (from Qualia Research Institute). This is intended to summarize the core ideas of chapter 2, which proposes a precise, testable, simple, and so far science-compatible theory of the fundamental nature of valence (also called hedonic tone or the pleasure-pain axis; what makes experiences feel good or bad).\n \nVII. Three principles for a mathematical derivation of valence\nWe’ve covered a lot of ground with the above literature reviews, and synthesizing a new framework for understanding consciousness research. But we haven’t yet fulfilled the promise about valence made in Section II- to offer a rigorous, crisp, and relatively simple hypothesis about valence. This is the goal of Part II.\nDrawing from the framework in Section VI, I offer three principles to frame this problem: ​\n1. Qualia Formalism: for any given conscious experience, there exists- in principle- a mathematical object isomorphic to its phenomenology. This is a formal way of saying that consciousness is in principle quantifiable- much as electromagnetism, or the square root of nine is quantifiable. I.e. IIT’s goal, to generate such a mathematical object, is a valid one.\n2. Qualia Structuralism: this mathematical object has a rich set of formal structures. Based on the regularities & invariances in phenomenology, it seems safe to say that qualia has a non-trivial amount of structure. It likely exhibits connectedness (i.e., it’s a unified whole, not the union of multiple disjoint sets), and compactness, and so we can speak of qualia as having a topology.\nMore speculatively, based on the following:\n(a) IIT’s output format is data in a vector space,\n(b) Modern physics models reality as a wave function within Hilbert Space, which has substantial structure,\n(c) Components of phenomenology such as color behave as vectors (Feynman 1965), and\n(d) Spatial awareness is explicitly geometric,\n…I propose that Qualia space also likely satisfies the requirements of being a metric space, and we can speak of qualia as having a geometry.\nMathematical structures are important, since the more formal structures a mathematical object has, the more elegantly we can speak about patterns within it, and the closer our words can get to “carving reality at the joints”. ​\n3. Valence Realism: valence is a crisp phenomenon of conscious states upon which we can apply a measure.\n–> I.e. some experiences do feel holistically better than others, and (in principle) we can associate a value to this. Furthermore, to combine (2) and (3), this pleasantness could be encoded into the mathematical object isomorphic to the experience in an efficient way (we should look for a concise equation, not an infinitely-large lookup table for valence). […]\n\nI believe my three principles are all necessary for a satisfying solution to valence (and the first two are necessary for any satisfying solution to consciousness):\nConsidering the inverses:\nIf Qualia Formalism is false, then consciousness is not quantifiable, and there exists no formal knowledge about consciousness to discover. But if the history of science is any guide, we don’t live in a universe where phenomena are intrinsically unquantifiable- rather, we just haven’t been able to crisply quantify consciousness yet.\nIf Qualia Structuralism is false and Qualia space has no meaningful structure to discover and generalize from, then most sorts of knowledge about qualia (such as which experiences feel better than others) will likely be forever beyond our empirical grasp. I.e., if Qualia space lacks structure, there will exist no elegant heuristics or principles for interpreting what a mathematical object isomorphic to a conscious experience means. But this doesn’t seem to match the story from affective neuroscience, nor from our everyday experience: we have plenty of evidence for patterns, regularities, and invariances in phenomenological experiences. Moreover, our informal, intuitive models for predicting our future qualia are generally very good. This implies our brains have figured out some simple rules-of-thumb for how qualia is structured, and so qualia does have substantial mathematical structure, even if our formal models lag behind.\nIf Valence Realism is false, then we really can’t say very much about ethics, normativity, or valence with any confidence, ever. But this seems to violate the revealed preferences of the vast majority of people: we sure behave as if some experiences are objectively superior to others, at arbitrarily-fine levels of distinction. It may be very difficult to put an objective valence on a given experience, but in practice we don’t behave as if this valence doesn’t exist.\n[…]\nVIII. Distinctions in qualia: charting the explanation space for valence\nSections II-III made the claim that we need a bottom-up quantitative theory like IIT in order to successfully reverse-engineer valence, Section VI suggested some core problems & issues theories like IIT will need to address, and Section VII proposed three principles for interpreting IIT-style output:\n\nWe should think of qualia as having a mathematical representation,\nThis mathematical representation has a topology and probably a geometry, and perhaps more structure, and\nValence is real; some things do feel better than others, and we should try to explain why in terms of qualia’s mathematical representation.\n\nBut what does this get us? Specifically, how does assuming these three things get us any closer to solving valence if we don’t have an actual, validated dataset (“data structure isomorphic to the phenomenology”) from *any* system, much less a real brain?\nIt actually helps a surprising amount, since an isomorphism between a structured (e.g., topological, geometric) space and qualia implies that any clean or useful distinction we can make in one realm automatically applies in the other realm as well. And if we can explore what kinds of distinctions in qualia we can make, we can start to chart the explanation space for valence (what ‘kind’ of answer it will be).\nI propose the following four distinctions which depend on only a very small amount of mathematical structure inherent in qualia space, which should apply equally to qualia and to qualia’s mathematical representation:\n\nGlobal vs local\nSimple vs complex\nAtomic vs composite\nIntuitively important vs intuitively trivial\n\n[…]\nTakeaways: this section has suggested that we can get surprising mileage out of the hypothesis that there will exist a geometric data structure isomorphic to the phenomenology of a system, since if we can make a distinction in one domain (math or qualia), it will carry over into the other domain ‘for free’. Given this, I put forth the hypothesis that valence may plausibly be a simple, global, atomic, and intuitively important property of both qualia and its mathematical representation.\nIX. Summary of heuristics for reverse-engineering the pattern for valence\nReverse-engineering the precise mathematical property that corresponds to valence may seem like finding a needle in a haystack, but I propose that it may be easier than it appears. Broadly speaking, I see six heuristics for zeroing in on valence:\nA. Structural distinctions in Qualia space (Section VIII);\nB. Empirical hints from affective neuroscience (Section I);\nC. A priori hints from phenomenology;\nD. Empirical hints from neurocomputational syntax;\nE. The Non-adaptedness Principle;\nF. Common patterns across physical formalisms (lessons from physics). None of these heuristics determine the answer, but in aggregate they dramatically reduce the search space.\nIX.A: Structural distinctions in Qualia space (Section VIII):\nIn the previous section, we noted that the following distinctions about qualia can be made: Global vs local; Simple vs complex; Atomic vs composite; Intuitively important vs intuitively trivial. Valence plausibly corresponds to a global, simple, atomic, and intuitively important mathematical property.\n[…]\nMusic is surprisingly pleasurable; auditory dissonance is surprisingly unpleasant. Clearly, music has many adaptive signaling & social bonding aspects (Storr 1992; Mcdermott and Hauser 2005)- yet if we subtract everything that could be considered signaling or social bonding (e.g., lyrics, performative aspects, social bonding & enjoyment), we’re still left with something very emotionally powerful. However, this pleasantness can vanish abruptly- and even reverse– if dissonance is added.\nMuch more could be said here, but a few of the more interesting data points are:\n\nPleasurable music tends to involve elegant structure when represented geometrically (Tymoczko 2006);\nNon-human animals don’t seem to find human music pleasant (with some exceptions), but with knowledge of what pitch range and tempo their auditory systems are optimized to pay attention to, we’ve been able to adapt human music to get animals to prefer it over silence (Snowdon and Teie 2010).\nResults suggest that consonance is a primary factor in which sounds are pleasant vs unpleasant in 2- and 4-month-old infants (Trainor, Tsang, and Cheung 2002).\nHearing two of our favorite songs at once doesn’t feel better than just one; instead, it feels significantly worse.\n\nMore generally, it feels like music is a particularly interesting case study by which to pick apart the information-theoretic aspects of valence, and it seems plausible that evolution may have piggybacked on some fundamental law of qualia to produce the human preference for music. This should be most obscured with genres of music which focus on lyrics, social proof & social cohesion (e.g., pop music), and performative aspects, and clearest with genres of music which avoid these things (e.g., certain genres of classical music).\n[…]\nX. A simple hypothesis about valence\nTo recap, the general heuristic from Section VIII was that valence may plausibly correspond to a simple, atomic, global, and intuitively important geometric property of a data structure isomorphic to phenomenology. The specific heuristics from Section IX surveyed hints from a priori phenomenology, hints from what we know of the brain’s computational syntax, introduced the Non-adaptedness Principle, and noted the unreasonable effectiveness of beautiful mathematics in physics to suggest that the specific geometric property corresponding to pleasure should be something that involves some sort of mathematically-interesting patterning, regularity, efficiency, elegance, and/or harmony.\nWe don’t have enough information to formally deduce which mathematical property these constraints indicate, yet in aggregate these constraints hugely reduce the search space, and also substantially point toward the following:\nGiven a mathematical object isomorphic to the qualia of a system, the mathematical property which corresponds to how pleasant it is to be that system is that object’s symmetry.\n[…]\nXI. Testing this hypothesis today\nIn a perfect world, we could plug many peoples’ real-world IIT-style datasets into a symmetry detection algorithm and see if this “Symmetry in the Topology of Phenomenology” (SiToP) theory of valence successfully predicted their self-reported valences.\nUnfortunately, we’re a long way from having the theory and data to do that.\nBut if we make two fairly modest assumptions, I think we should be able to perform some reasonable, simple, and elegant tests on this hypothesis now. The two assumptions are:\n\nWe can probably assume that symmetry/pleasure is a more-or-less fractal property: i.e., it’ll be evident on basically all locations and scales of our data structure, and so it should be obvious even with imperfect measurements. Likewise, symmetry in one part of the brain will imply symmetry elsewhere, so we may only need to measure it in a small section that need not be directly contributing to consciousness.\nWe can probably assume that symmetry in connectome-level brain networks/activity will roughly imply symmetry in the mathematical-object-isomorphic-to-phenomenology (the symmetry that ‘matters’ for valence), and vice-versa. I.e., we need not worry too much about the exact ‘flavor’ of symmetry we’re measuring.\n\nSo- given these assumptions, I see three ways to test our hypothesis:\n1. More pleasurable brain states should be more compressible (all else being equal).\nSymmetry implies compressibility, and so if we can measure the compressibility of a brain state in some sort of broad-stroke fashion while controlling for degree of consciousness, this should be a fairly good proxy for how pleasant that brain state is.\n[…]\n2. Highly consonant/harmonious/symmetric patterns injected directly into the brain should feel dramatically better than similar but dissonant patterns.\nConsonance in audio signals generally produces positive valence; dissonance (e.g., nails-on-a-chalkboard) reliably produces negative valence. This obviously follows from our hypothesis, but it’s also obviously true, so we can’t use it as a novel prediction. But if we take the general idea and apply it to unusual ways of ‘injecting’ a signal into the brain, we should be able to make predictions that are (1) novel, and (2) practically useful.\nTMS is generally used to disrupt brain functions by oscillating a strong magnetic field over a specific region to make those neurons fire chaotically. But if we used it on a lower-powered, rhythmic setting to ‘inject’ a symmetric/consonant pattern directly into parts of the brain involved directly with consciousness, the result should produce good feeling- or at least, much better valence than a similar dissonant pattern.\nOur specific prediction: direct, low-power, rhythmic stimulation (via TMS) of the thalamus at harmonic frequencies (e.g., @1hz+2hz+4hz+6hz+8hz+12hz+16hz+24hz+36hz+48hz+72hz+96hz+148hz) should feel significantly more pleasant than similar stimulation at dissonant frequencies (e.g., @1.01hz+2.01hz+3.98hz+6.02hz+7.99hz+12.03hz+16.01hz+24.02hz+35.97hz+48.05hz+72.04hz+95.94hz+ 147.93hz).\n[…]\n3. More consonant vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) should feel better than dissonant VNS.\nThe above harmonics-based TMS method would be a ‘pure’ test of the ‘Symmetry in the Topology of Phenomenology’ (SiToP) hypothesis. It may rely on developing custom hardware and is also well outside of my research budget.\nHowever, a promising alternative method to test this is with consumer-grade vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) technology. Nervana Systems has an in-ear device which stimulates the Vagus nerve with rhythmic electrical pulses as it winds its way past the left ear canal. The stimulation is synchronized with either user-supplied music or ambient sound. This synchronization is done, according to the company, in order to mask any discomfort associated with the electrical stimulation. The company says their system works by “electronically signal[ing] the Vagus nerve which in turn stimulates the release of neurotransmitters in the brain that enhance mood.”\nThis explanation isn’t very satisfying, since it merely punts the question of why these neurotransmitters enhance mood, but their approach seems to work– and based on the symmetry/harmony hypothesis we can say at least something about why: effectively, they’ve somewhat accidentally built a synchronized bimodal approach (coordinated combination of music+VNS) for inducing harmony/symmetry in the brain. This is certainly not the only component of how this VNS system functions, since the parasympathetic nervous system is both complex and powerful by itself, but it could be an important component.\nBased on our assumptions about what valence is, we can make a hierarchy of predictions:\n\nHarmonious music + synchronized VNS should feel the best;\nHarmonious music + placebo VNS (unsynchronized, simple pattern of stimulation) should feel less pleasant than (1);\nHarmonious music + non-synchronized VNS (stimulation that is synchronized to a different kind of music) should feel less pleasant than (1);\nHarmonious music + dissonant VNS (stimulation with a pattern which scores low on consonance measures such as (Chon 2008) should feel worse than (2) and (3));\nDissonant auditory noise + non-synchronized, dissonant VNS should feel pretty awful.\n\nWe can also predict that if a bimodal approach for inducing harmony/symmetry in the brain is better than a single modality, a trimodal or quadrimodal approach may be even more effective. E.g., we should consider testing the addition of synchronized rhythmic tactile stimulation and symmetry-centric music visualizations. A key question here is whether adding stimulation modalities would lead to diminishing or synergistic/accelerating returns.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/05/17/principia-qualia-part-ii-valence/", "title": "Principia Qualia: Part II – Valence", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-05-17T05:33:54+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=21", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "1576579ee2e4fb1e51ba685dbc0ea0ea", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Penfield Mood Organ\n\nExtract from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968)\nChapter 1\nA merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard. Surprised — it always surprised him to find himself awake without prior notice — he rose from the bed, stood up in his multicolored pajamas, and stretched. Now, in her bed, his wife Iran opened her gray, unmerry eyes, blinked, then groaned and shut her eyes again.\n“You set your Penfield too weak”, he said to her. “I’ll reset it and you’ll be awake and — ”\n“Keep your hand off my settings.” Her voice held bitter sharpness. “I don’t want to be awake.”\nHe seated himself beside her, bent over her, and explained softly. “If you set the surge up high enough, you’ll be glad you’re awake; that’s the whole point. At setting C it overcomes the threshold barring consciousness, as it does for me.” Friendlily, because he felt well-disposed toward the world — his setting had been at D — he patted her bare, pale shoulder.\n“Get your crude cop’s hand away,” Iran said.\n“I’m not a cop.” He felt irritable, now, although he hadn’t dialed for it.\n“You’re worse,” his wife said, her eyes still shut. “You’re a murderer hired by the cops.”\n“I’ve never killed a human being in my life.” His irritability had risen, now; had become outright hostility.\nIran said, “Just those poor andys.”\n“I notice you’ve never had any hesitation as to spending the bounty money I bring home on whatever momentarily attracts your attention.” He rose, strode to the console of his mood organ. “Instead of saving,” he said, “so we could buy a real sheep, to replace that fake electric one upstairs. A mere electric animal, and me earning all that I’ve worked my way up to through the years.” At his console he hesitated between dialing for a thalamic suppressant (which would abolish his mood of rage) or a thalamic stimulant (which would make him irked enough to win the argument).\n“If you dial,” Iran said, eyes open and watching, “for greater venom, then I’ll dial the same. I’ll dial the maximum and you’ll see a fight that makes every argument we’ve had up to now seem like nothing. Dial and see; just try me.” She rose swiftly, loped to the console of her own mood organ, stood glaring at him, waiting.\nHe sighed, defeated by her threat. “I’ll dial what’s on my schedule for today.” Examining the schedule for January 3, 2021, he saw that a businesslike professional attitude was called for. “If I dial by schedule,” he said warily, “will you agree to also?” He waited, canny enough not to commit himself until his wife had agreed to follow suit.\n“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression,” Iran said.\n“What? Why did you schedule that?” It defeated the whole purpose of the mood organ. “I didn’t even know you could set it for that,” he said gloomily.\n“I was sitting here one afternoon,” Iran said, “and naturally I had turned on Buster Friendly and His Friendly Friends and he was talking about a big news item he’s about to break and then that awful commercial came on, the one I hate; you know, for Mountibank Lead Codpieces. And so for a minute I shut off the sound. And I heard the building, this building; I heard the — ” She gestured.\n“Empty apartments,” Rick said. Sometimes he heard them at night when he was supposed to be asleep. And yet, for this day and age a one-half occupied conapt building rated high in the scheme of population density; out in what had been before the war the suburbs one could find buildings entirely empty… or so he had heard. He had let the information remain secondhand; like most people he did not care to experience it directly.\n“At that moment,” Iran said, “when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn’t feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting — do you see? I guess you don’t. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it ‘absence of appropriate affect.’ So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair.” Her dark, pert face showed satisfaction, as if she had achieved something of worth. “So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that’s a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who’s smart has emigrated, don’t you think?”\n“But a mood like that,” Rick said, “you’re apt to stay in it, not dial your way out. Despair like that, about total reality, is self-perpetuating.”\n“I program an automatic resetting for three hours later,” his wife said sleekly. “A 481. Awareness of the manifold possibilities open to me in the future; new hope that — ”\n“I know 481,” he interrupted. He had dialed out the combination many times; he relied on it greatly. “Listen,” he said, seating himself on his bed and taking hold of her hands to draw her down beside him, “even with an automatic cutoff it’s dangerous to undergo a depression, any kind. Forget what you’ve scheduled and I’ll forget what I’ve scheduled; we’ll dial a 104 together and both experience it, and then you stay in it while I reset mine for my usual businesslike attitude. That way I’ll want to hop up to the roof and check out the sheep and then head for the office; meanwhile I’ll know you’re not sitting here brooding with no TV.” He released her slim, long fingers, passed through the spacious apartment to the living room, which smelled faintly of last night’s cigarettes. There he bent to turn on the TV.\nFrom the bedroom Iran’s voice came. “I can’t stand TV before breakfast.”\n“Dial 888,” Rick said as the set warmed. “The desire to watch TV, no matter what’s on it.”\n“I don’t feel like dialing anything at all now,” Iran said.\n“Then dial 3,” he said.\n“I can’t dial a setting that stimulates my cerebral cortex into wanting to dial! If I don’t want to dial, I don’t want to dial that most of all, because then I will want to dial, and wanting to dial is right now the most alien drive I can imagine; I just want to sit here on the bed and stare at the floor.” Her voice had become sharp with overtones of bleakness as her soul congealed and she ceased to move, as the instinctive, omnipresent film of great weight, of an almost absolute inertia, settled over her.\nHe turned up the TV sound, and the voice of Buster Friendly boomed out and filled the room. ” — ho ho, folks. Time now for a brief note on today’s weather. The Mongoose satellite reports that fallout will be especially pronounced toward noon and will then taper off, so all you folks who’ll be venturing out — ”\nAppearing beside him, her long nightgown trailing wispily, Iran shut off the TV set. “Okay, I give up; I’ll dial. Anything you want me to be; ecstatic sexual bliss — I feel so bad I’ll even endure that. What the hell. What difference does it make?”\n“I’ll dial for both of us,” Rick said, and led her back into the bedroom. There, at her console, he dialed 594: pleased acknowledgment of husband’s superior wisdom in all matters. On his own console he dialed for a creative and fresh attitude toward his job, although this he hardly needed; such was his habitual, innate approach without recourse to Penfield artificial brain stimulation.\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/05/15/the-penfield-mood-organ/", "title": "The Penfield Mood Organ", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-05-15T06:05:32+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=21", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ca8d2d75426873b1fb003b04491ecb52", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Most Important Philosophical Question\n\nAlbert Camus famously claimed that the most important philosophical question in existence was whether to commit suicide. I would disagree.\nFor one, if Open Individualism is true (i.e. that deep down we are all one and the same consciousness) then ending one’s life will not accomplish much. The vast majority of “who you are” will remain intact, and if there are further problems to be solved, and questions to be answered, doing this will simply delay your own progress. So at least from a certain point of view one could argue that the most important question is, instead, the question of personal identity. I.e. Are you, deep down, an individual being who starts existing when you are born and stops existing when you die (Closed Individualism), something that exists only for a single time-slice (Empty Individualism), or maybe something that is one and the same with the rest of the universe (Open Individualism)?\nI think that is a very important question. But probably not the most important one. Instead, I’d posit that the most important question is: “What is good, and is there a ground truth about it?”\nIn the case that we are all one consciousness maybe what’s truly good is whatever one actually truly values from a first-person point of view (being mindful, of course, of the deceptive potential that comes from the Tyranny of the Intentional Object). And in so far as this has been asked, I think that there are two remaining possibilities: Does ultimate value come down to the pleasure-pain axis, or does it come down to spiritual wisdom?\nThus, in this day and age, I’d argue that the most important philosophical (and hence most important, period) question is: “Is happiness a spiritual trick, or is spirituality a happiness trick?”\nWhat would it mean for happiness to be a spiritual trick? Think, for example, of the possibility that the reason why we exist is because we are all God, and God would be awfully bored if It knew that It was all that ever existed. In such a case, maybe bliss and happiness comes down to something akin to “Does this particular set of life experiences make God feel less lonely”? Alternatively, maybe God is “divinely self-sufficient”, as some mystics claim, and all of creation is “merely a plus on top of God”. In this case one could think that God is the ultimate source of all that is good, and thus bliss may be synonymous with “being closer to God”. In turn, as mystics have claimed over the ages, the whole point of life is to “get closer to God”.\nSpirituality, though, goes beyond God: Within (atheistic) Buddhism the view that “bliss is a spiritual trick” might take another form: Bliss is either “dirty and a sign of ignorance” (as in the case of karma-generating pleasure) or it is “the results of virtuous merit conducive to true unconditioned enlightenment“. Thus, the whole point of life would be to become free from ignorance and reap the benefits of knowing the ultimate truth.\nAnd what would it mean for spirituality to be a happiness trick? In this case one could imagine that our valence (i.e. our pleasure-pain axis) is a sort of qualia variety that evolution recruited in order to infuse the phenomenal representation of situations that predict either higher or lower chances of making copies of oneself (or spreading one’s genes, in the more general case of “inclusive fitness”). If this is so, it might be tempting to think that bliss is, ultimately, not something that “truly matters”. But this would be to think that bliss is “nothing other than the function that bliss plays in animal behavior”, which couldn’t be further from the truth. After all, the same behavior could be enacted by many methods. Instead, the raw phenomenal character of bliss reveals that “something matters in this universe”. Only people who are anhedonic (or are depressed) will miss the fact that “bliss matters”. This is self-evident and self-intimating to anyone currently experiencing ecstatic rapture. In light of these experiences we can conclude that if anything at all does matter, it has to do with the qualia varieties involved in the experiences that feel like the world has meaning. The pleasure-pain axis makes our existence significant.\nNow, why do I think this is the most important question? IF we discover that happiness is a spiritual trick and that God is its source then we really ought to follow “the spiritual path” and figure out with science “what is it that God truly wants”. And under an atheistic brand of spirituality, what we ought to figure out is the laws of valence-charged spiritual energy. For example, if reincarnation and karma are involved in the expected amount of future bliss and suffering, so be it. Let’s all become Bodhisattvas and help as many sentient beings as possible throughout the eons to come.\nOn the other hand, IF we discover (and can prove with a good empirical argument) that spirituality is just the result of changes in valence/happiness, then settling on this with a high certainty would change the world. For starters, any compassionate (and at least mildly rational) Buddhist would then come along and help us out in the pursuit of creating a pan-species welfare state free of suffering with the use of biotechnology. I.e. The 500 odd million Buddhists world-wide would be key allies for the Hedonistic Imperative (a movement that aims to eliminate suffering with biotechnology).\nRecall Dalai Lama’s quote: “If it was possible to become free of negative emotions by a riskless implementation of an electrode – without impairing intelligence and the critical mind – I would be the first patient.” [Dalai Lama (Society for Neuroscience Congress, Nov. 2005)].\nIf Buddhist doctrine concerning the very nature of suffering and its causes is wrong from a scientific point of view and we can prove it with an empirically verified physicalist paradigm, then the very Buddhist ethic of “focusing on minimizing suffering” ought to compel Buddhists throughout the world to join us in the battle against suffering by any means necessary. And most likely, given the physicalist premise, this would take the form of creating a technology that puts us all in a perpetual pro-social clear-headed non-addictive MDMA-like state of consciousness (or, in a more sophisticated vein, a well-balanced version of rational wire-heading).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/05/04/the-most-important-philosophical-question/", "title": "The Most Important Philosophical Question", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-05-04T05:35:47+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=21", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "60d00ee0baf3e5239dc4c5deec6537e8", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Forces At Work\n\n        Recreational agents which are legal and socially sanctioned by respectable society aren’t, of course, popularly viewed as drugs at all. The nicotine addict and the alcoholic don’t think of themselves as practising psychopharmacologists; and so alas their incompetence is frequently lethal.\n        Is such incompetence curable? If it is, and if the abolitionist project can be carried forward with pharmacotherapy in advance of true genetic medicine, then a number of preconditions must first be in place. A necessary and sufficient set could not possibly be listed here. It is still worth isolating and examining below several distinct yet convergent societal trends of huge potential significance.\n\nFirst, it must be assumed that we will continue to seek out and use chemical mood-enhancers on a massive, species-wide scale.\nSecond, a pioneering and pharmacologically (semi-)literate elite will progressively learn to use their agents of choice in a much more effective, safe and rational manner. The whole pharmacopoeia of licensed and unlicensed medicines will be purchasable globally over the Net. As the operation of our 30,000 plus genes is unravelled, the new discipline of pharmacogenomics will allow drugs to be personally tailored to the genetic makeup of each individual. Better still, desirable states of consciousness that can be induced pharmacologically can later be pre-coded genetically.\nThird, society will continue to fund and support research into genetic engineering, reproductive medicine and all forms of biotechnology. This will enable the breathtaking array of designer-heavens on offer from third-millennium biomedicine to become a lifestyle choice.\nFourth, the ill-fated governmental War On (some) Drugs will finally collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. Parents are surely right to be anxious about many of today’s illegal intoxicants. Yet their toxicity will no more prove a reason to give up the dream of Better Living Through Chemistry than the casualties of early modern medicine are a reason to abandon contemporary medical science for homeopathy.\nFifth, the medicalisation of everyday life, and of the human predicament itself, will continue apace. All manner of currently ill-defined discontents will be medically diagnosed and classified. Our innumerable woes will be given respectable clinical labels. Mass-medicalisation will enable the big drug companies aggressively to extend their lucrative markets in medically-approved psychotropics to a widening clientele. New and improved mood-modulating alleles, and other innovative gene-therapies for mood- and intellect-enrichment, will be patented. They will be brought to market by biotechnology companies eager to cure the psychopathologies of the afflicted; and to maximise profits.\nSixth, in the next few centuries an explosive proliferation of ever-more sophisticated virtual reality software products will enable millions, and then billions, of people to live out their ideal fantasies. Paradoxically, as will be seen, the triumph of sensation-driven wish-fulfilment in immersive VR will also demonstrate the intellectual bankruptcy of our old Peripheralist nostrums of social reform. Unhappiness will persist. The hedonic treadmill can’t succumb to computer software.\nSeventh, secularism and individualism will triumph over resurgent Islamic and Christian fundamentalism. An entitlement to lifelong well-being in this world, rather than the next, will take on the status of a basic human right.\n\n         There are quite a few imponderables here. Futurology is not, and predictably will never become, one of the exact sciences. Conceivably, one can postulate, for instance, the global triumph of an anti-scientific theocracy. This might be in the mould of the American religious right; or even some kind of Islamic fundamentalism. Less conceivably, there might be a global victory of tender-minded humanism over the onward march of biotechnical determinism. It is also possible that non-medically-approved drug use could be curtailed, at least for a time, with intrusive personal surveillance technologies and punishments of increasingly draconian severity. Abetted by the latest convulsion of moral panic over Drugs, for example, a repressive totalitarian super-state could institute a regime of universal compulsory blood-tests for banned substances. Enforced “detoxification” in rehabilitation camps for offenders would follow.\n        These scenarios and their variants are almost certainly too alarmist. Given a pervasive ethos of individualism, and the worldwide spread of hedonistic consumer-capitalism, then as soon as people discover that there is no biophysical reason on earth why they can’t be as happy as they choose indefinitely, it will be hard to stop more adventurous spirits from exploring that option. Lifelong ecstasy isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.\n– David Pearce in The Hedonistic Imperative (chapter 3)\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/05/04/the-forces-at-work/", "title": "The Forces At Work", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-05-04T01:42:18+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=21", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "5a90746c2e83ee90ab970b57bd5aeb77", "summary": []}
{"text": "Psychedelic Science 2017: Take-aways, impressions, and what’s next\n\n \nIt would be impossible for me to summarize what truly went on at Psychedelic Science 2017. Since giving a fair and detailed account of all of the presentations, workshops and social events I attended is out of the question, I will restrict myself to talking about, what I see as, the core insights and take-aways from the conference (plus some additional impressions I’ll get to). In brief, the core insights are: (1) that we are on the brink of a culturally-accepted scientific revolution on the study of consciousness in which we finally navigate our way out of our current pre-Galilean understanding of the mind, (2) that the breakdown of both the extremes of nihilism and eternalism as ideological north-stars in consciousness research is about to take place (i.e. finding out that neither scientific materialism nor spirituality convey the full picture), and (3) that a new science of valence, qualia, and rational psychonautics based on the quantification of good and bad feelings is slowly making its way into the surface.\nWith regards to (1): It should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention that there is a psychedelic renaissance underway. Bearing extreme world-wide counter-measures against it, in so far as psychedelic and empathogenic compounds meet the required evidentiary standards of mainstream psychopharmacology as safe and effective treatments for mental illness (and they do), they will be a staple of tomorrow’s tools for mental health. It’s not a difficult gamble: the current studies being made around the world are merely providing the scientific backing of what was already known in the 60s (for psychedelics) and 80s (for MDMA). I.e. That psychedelic medicine (people love to call it that way) in the right set and setting produces outstanding clinically-relevant effect sizes.\nOn (2): it is very unclear what people who attended the conference believe about the nature of reality, but overall there was a strong Open Individualist undercurrent and a powerful feeling that transcendence is right next door (even the urinals had sacred geometry*). That said, the science provided a refreshing feeling of cautious nihilism. Trying to reconcile both love and science is, in my opinion, the way to go. Whether we are about to ascend to another realm or if we are about to find out about our cosmic meaninglessness, the truth is that there are a lot of more immediate things to worry about. Arguably, psychedelic experiences could be used to treat both the afflictions that come with eternalism as well as those that come from nihilism. Namely, psychedelics often make you experience the world as you believe it to be (echoing John C. Lilly’s famous words: “In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limits…”). So if you rely on intense (but mundanely challenged) feelings of transcendence to get by, you may find out on a psychedelic experience that making a world in which what you believe is literally true does not lead to happiness and meaningfulness in the way you thought it might. Unless, of course, one believes that everything that happens is a net positive somehow (which is hard to do given the regular onslaught of meaninglessness found in everyday life), any profound realization of an ontological basis of reality (as in “a made up universe perceived as if real”) can lead to dysphoria. Nihilism can be profoundly distressing on psychedelics. Yet, as evidenced by the bulk of conscious experiences, the quality of meaningfulness in one’s experience is a continuum, neither objective nor subjective, and neither eternal nor unreal (I’m using the terminology from the book “Meaningness“, though other terminologies exist for similar concepts such as the Buddhist “middle way”, Existentialism, Pragmatism, Rationalists’ epistemic rationality, etc.).\nPsychedelic veterans usually end up converging on something that has this sort of emotional texture: A bitter-sweet yet Stoic worldview that leaves an open space for all kinds of wonderful things to happen, yet remains aware of the comings and goings of happiness and fulfillment. It makes it a point to not be too preoccupied with questions of ultimate meaning. It may be that for most people it’s impossible to arrive at such wisdom without trying out (and failing in some way) to live all of their fantasies before giving up and accepting the fluxing nature of reality. In such a case, psychedelics would seem to offer us a way to accelerate our learning about the unsatisfactoriness of attachments and find the way to live in realistic joy.\nThat said, maybe such wisdom is not Wisdom (in the sense of being universal) since we are restricting our analysis to the human wetware as it is today.  What reason do we have to believe that the hedonic treadmill is a fundamental property of the universe? A lot of evidence suggests persistent differences in people’s hedonic set-point (often genetically influenced, as in the case of the SCN9A gene for pain thresholds), and this challenges the notion that we can’t avoid suffering. Indeed, MDMA-like states may some day be experienced at will with the use of technology (and without side effects). There may even be scientifically-derived precision-engineered ethical and freedom-expanding wireheading technology that will make our current everyday way of life look laughably uninteresting and unmeaningful in comparison.\nUnfortunately, talking about this (i.e. technologically-induced hedonic recalibration) with people who need a pessimistic metaphysics of valence just to function may be considered antisocial. For example, some people seem to need spiritual theories of the pleasure-pain axis that focus on fairness (such as the doctrine of Karma) in order to feel like they are not randomly getting the shorter end of the (cosmic) stick (this sentiment usually comes together with implicit Closed Individualist convictions). Of course feeling like one is a victim is itself the result of one’s affect. This provides the perfect segway for (3):\nIn addition to all of the magical (but expected) fusion of art, psychotherapy, mysticism, spirituality and self-hacking that this conference attracted, I was extremely delighted to see the hints of what I think will change the world for the better like nothing else will: psychedelic valence research.\nOf particular note is the work of Dráulio Barros de Araújo (“Rapid Antidepressant Effects of the Psychedelic Ayahuasca in Treatment-Resistant Depression: A Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial”), Mendel Kaelen (“The Psychological and Neurophysiological Effects of Music in Combination with Psychedelics”), Leor Roseman (“Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy: Neural Changes and the Relationship Between Acute Peak Experience and Clinical Outcomes”), Jordi Riba (“New Findings from Ayahuasca Research: From Enhancing Mindfulness Abilities to Promoting Neurogenesis”), Selen Atasoy (“Enhanced Improvisation in Brain Processing by LSD: Exploring Neural Correlates of LSD Experience With Connectome-Specific Harmonic Waves”), Tomas Palenicek (“The Effects of Psilocybin on Perception and Dynamics of Induced EEG/fMRI Correlates of Psychedelic Experience”) and Clare Wikins (“A Novel Approach to Detoxification from Methadone Using Low, Repeated, and Cumulative Administering of Ibogaine”).\nAnd of all of these, Selen Atasoy‘s work seems to be hitting the nail in the head the most: Her work involves looking into how psychedelics affect the overall amount of energy that each of the brain’s discrete connectome-specific resonant states has. Without giving it away (their work with LSD is still unpublished) let me just say that they found that having some extra energy in specific harmonics was predictive of the specific psychedelic effects experienced at a given point in time (including things such as emotional arousal, deeply felt positive mood, and ego dissolution).\n\n\n\nRemarkably, this line of work is in agreement with Mike Johnson’s theoretical framework for the study of valence (as outlined in Principia Qualia). Namely, that there is a deep connection between harmony, symmetry and valence that will make sense once we figure out the mathematical structure whose formal properties are isomorphic to a subject’s phenomenology. In particular, “Valence Structuralism” would seem to be supported by the findings that relatively pure harmonic states are experienced as positive emotion. We would further predict that very pure harmonic states would have the highest level of (positive) hedonic tone (i.e. bliss). We are indeed very intrigued by the connectome-specific harmonic approach to psychedelic research and look forward to working with this paradigm in the future. It would be an understatement to say that we are also excited to see the results of applying this paradigm to study MDMA-like states of consciousness. This line of research is, above all, what makes me think that this year is the Year of Qualia (whether we have realized it or not). As it were, we are seeing the first hints of a future science of consciousness that can finally provide quantitative predictions about valence, and hence, become the first scientifically-compliant theory of ultimate value.\nAnd now some subjective impressions about the conference…\nImpressions\nPsychedelic Ambiance\nAt its core, the conference felt extremely psychedelic in its own right. The artwork, people’s attires, the scents, the background music, etc. were all what seemed to me like expressions of an emerging style of psychedelic ambiance: A euphoric blend of MDMA-like self-assurant empathegenesis vibes (“everything will be ok”) with an LSD-like ontological sabotage to the ego entheoblasting vibes of universal oneness (“things are not what they seem/everything already always and never has happened at the same time”). Peak experiences, after all, often involve the metaphorical reconciliation of the divine and the mundane in a cosmic dance of meaning.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Gods\nIn his book “Simulations of God” John C. Lilly proposes that beneath the surface of our awareness, each and every mind worships a number of seemingly transcendental values (sometimes, but not always, explicitly personified). Whether we know it or not, he argues, each and every one of us treats as if a God at least something. Whether we think there there is a “God Out There”, that “Truth is the Ultimate God”, or that “God Is The Group”, the highest node in our behavioral hierarchy is always covertly managed by our basic assumptions about reality (and what they prescribe as “intrinsically good”). The book’s table of contents is awesome; it outlines what ends up being the bulk of what humans ever care about as their ultimate values:\n\nGod As the Beginning\nI Am God\nGod Out There\nGod As Him/Her/It\nGod As The Group\nGod As Orgasm and Sex\nGod As Death\nGod As Drugs\nGod As the Body\nGod As Money\nGod As Righteous Wrath\nGod As Compassion\nGod As War\nGod As Science\nGod As Mystery\nGod As the Belief, the Simulation, the Model\nGod As the Computer\nGod Simulating Himself\nGod As Consciousness-without-an-Object\nGod As Humor\nGod As Superspace, the Ultimate Collapse into the Black Hole, the End.\nThe Ultimate Simulation\nGod As the Diad\n\nPerhaps what’s most amazing about psychedelics is that they are capable of changing one’s Gods. It’s extremely common for people who take psychedelics to de-emphasize traditionalist and mainstream Gods such as 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13, while also having experiences (and changes of mind) that push them to emphasize 2, 6, 8, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, and 23. But one wonders, what’s the eventual steady-state? As an umbrella description of what is going on we could say that psychedelics make you more open. But where does this, ultimately, lead?\nPerhaps you started out in a conservative household and a family that emphasized loyalty to the group, conformism, nationalism and traditional religious values (1, 3, 5, 7). But once you tried LSD you felt a great change in the strength of your various deep-seated inclinations. You realize that you do not want to worship anything just to fit in, just to be part of a group, and that maybe caring about money is not as important as caring about making your own meaning out of life. You now feel like you care more about mysterious things like Orgasm (6), the Mind-Body connection (9), and philosophical questions like “If I am God, why would I build a universe with suffering in it?” (2, 15, 16, 21). You maybe watch some lectures by Alan Watts and read a book by Huxley, among other counter-culture material consumed, and you might start to develop a general belief in “the transcendent” but in a way that attempts to be compatible with the fact that you and the people you love experience suffering. You fantasize with the idea that maybe all of suffering is somehow necessary for some higher cosmic purpose (18, 19, 22) to which you are only made privy every now and then. You then continue on the path of psychedelic divination, perhaps taking more than you could handle here and there, and you are made aware of incredible universes: you meet guardians, you are led to read about Theosophy, you meet archetypes of the collective psyche, and after a while your strange experience with electronic equipment on LSD makes you wonder whether telepathy (at least an energetic and emotional variant of it) could be possible after all. But you do not ever obtain “good enough evidence” that would convince anyone who is determined to be a skeptic of your glitches of the Matrix. At some point, after taking too many magic mushrooms, you end up in what seems like a sort of Buddhist Hell: Feeling like we are all One no longer feels like a fact to be excited about, but rather, this is felt as a realization that should be forgotten as soon as one has it. Don’t let the cosmic boredom set in, don’t led nihilistic monism get to your very core. But it does, and you have a bad trip, one trip that you feel you never really recovered from, and whose nature is never talked about at psychedelic gatherings. (Don’t worry, right next door someone had a bad trip whose semantic content was the exact opposite of yours yet its effects on your corresponding valence landscapes were similar, e.g. concluding that “we are all made of atoms with no purpose” may feel just as bad as believing that “we are all God, and God is bored”). So maybe psychedelic therapy is a red herring after all, you think to yourself, and we should really be looking only into compounds that both increase euphoria and obfuscate the ultimate nature of reality at the same time. “Science, we need science” -you tell yourself- “so that we can figure out what it is that consciousness truly wants, and avoid both nihilistic bad trips as well as unrealistic eternalist mania”. Perhaps we are currently about to have to figure this out as a collective intelligence: “What do we do with the fact that we are all God?” This question is now making its way in etheric undercurrents in the shared meme-space of humanity just as the psychedelic renaissance starts to unfold.\nThe above paragraph is just one of the various archetypical ways in which psychedelic self-exploration may progress over time for a particular person. Of course not only do people’s progression vary; people’s starting points may be different. Some people approach psychedelics with spiritual intentions, others do so with recreation in mind, others use them for psychological self-exploration, and yet others use it to try to find glitches in reality. I would love to have a quantitative assessment of how one’s starting “implicit Gods” influence the way psychedelics affect you, and how such Gods evolve over the course of more exposure to psychedelic states of consciousness. There is a lot of wisdom-amplification research to be made on this front.\nPsychedelic Gods\nYou’re only as young as the last time you changed your mind.\n– Timothy Leary\nThe first thing I noticed at this conference was that this is a crowd that values both love and science. The geek in me seemed to be more than welcomed in here.\nWhile I was able to enjoy the incredible vibe of the Bicycle Day celebration (just a day before the conference), I remember thinking that evolutionary psychology (cf. Mating Mind) would have a lot to say about it. A large proportion of seemingly selfless display of psychedelic self-sacrifice (e.g. LSD mega-dosing, spiritual training, asceticism, etc.) might in fact be just sexual signaling of fitness traits such as mental and physical robustness (cf. Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States, Political Peacocks). It’s hard to separate the universal love from the tribal mate-selection going on at raves and parties of this nature, and at times one may even get a bit of an anti-intellectual vibe for questioning this too deeply.\nAt the conference, though, I could tell there was another story going on. Namely, the God of Science made a prominent appearance, giving us all a sense of genuine progress beyond the comings and goings of the eternal game of hide-and-seek as one would expect in mere neo-hippy cyber-paganist events.\nThe God of Science… yes… if you think about it, holding an enriched concept of “science” (in its most expansive sense possible) while simultaneously trying to hold with equal intensity and expansiveness the intent of “love for all beings”, can make strange and wonderful things happen in your mind. Of salience is the fact that there will be an intense pull towards either only experiencing thought-forms about love or only focusing on thought-forms about science. Mixing the two requires a lot of energy. It’s almost as if we were wired to only focus on one at a time. This is an effect reminiscent to the mutual inhibition between empathizing and systematizing cognitive styles, and maybe at its core, the difficulty in blending both love and science without residue is a reflection of an underlying invariant. Under the assumption that you have a limited amount of positive valence at your disposal to paint your world simulation, and that you want to achieve clarity of mind, it is possible that you will have to front-load most of that positive valence in either broad quantitative observations (systematizing) or focused feelings of specialness and intimacy (empathizing). This is why, for instance, MDMA and 2C-B are so promising for cognitive transhumanism: these compounds can give rise to experiences in which there is a huge surplus of positive valence ready to be used to paint any aspect of your world simulation with bliss qualia. Sadly, this is a property of such states of consciousness, and it cannot currently be brought into our everyday lives as it is. Without serious genetic engineering (or other valence-enhancing technologies) all we can do for now is to make use of these states of consciousness to catalyze changes in our deep-seated existential stances in order to help us get by in our half-meaningful half-meaningless everyday life.\nOf course, the Holy Grail of mental health interventions would be a technology that allows us to instantiate a context-dependent level of empathogenesis in a reliable and sustainable way. When I asked people at the conference whether they thought that having “a machine that makes you feel like you are on MDMA on demand with no tolerance, impulsivity, addiction or other side effects” would be good, most people (at least 80%) said “it would be bad for humanity to have such machine”. Why? Because they think that suffering serves a higher purpose, somehow. But I would disagree. And even if they are right, I still think that there are not enough people steel-manning the case for intelligent wire-heading. It’d be silly to find out in 2200 that we could have avoided hundreds of millions of people’s suffering at no cost to our collective growth if we only had thought more carefully about the intrinsic value of suffering back in 2050 when the MDMA-machine was invented and reflexively banned.\nBut healthy sustainable wire-heading (let alone wire-heading done right in light of evolution-at-the-limit scenarios) is many decades away into the future anyway. So all we have for now, by way of consciousness-expanding therapies for real-life knots-and-bolts treatment-resistant human suffering is the sort of therapy paradigms discussed in the conference. Of the roughly 135 conference talks (excluding parties, networking events, and workshops) at least 100 were either only or at least primarily focused on psychedelic therapy for mental illness (cancer end-of-life anxiety, PTSD, addiction, treatment-resistant depression, etc.). As far as a strategical cultural move, this focus on treatment is a very good approach, and from a valence utilitarian point of view maybe this is indeed what we should be focusing on in 2017. But I still wish that there was a bigger presence of some other kinds of discussion. In particular, I’d love for psychedelic science to eventually make a prominent appearance in a much wider context. Any discussion about the nature of consciousness from a scientific point of view cannot overlook the peculiar consciousness-enhancing properties of psychedelics. And any discussion about ethics, life and the purpose of it all will likewise be under-informed in so far as psychedelic peak-meaningful experiences are not brought into the conversation. After all, the ethical, philosophical, and scientific significance of psychedelics is hard to overstate.\nIdeally we would all organize a conference that takes the best of: 1) A steadfast resolution to figure out the problem of consciousness, such as what we can find at places like The Science of Consciousness, 2) a steadfast resolution to combine both the best of compassion and rationality in order to help as many beings as possible, as we find in places like Effective Altruism Global, and 3) a steadfast resolution to look at the most impressive pieces of evidence about the nature of the mind and valence, as can be found in places like Psychedelic Science. All in all, this would be a perfect triad, as it would combine (1) The Question (Consciousness), (2) The Purpose (Ending Suffering), and (3) The Method (Scientific Study of Highly-Energetic States of Consciousness). Rest assured, the conferences organized by the Super-Shulgin Academy will blend these three aspects into one.\nThe Crowd\nThis was a very chill crowd. The only way for me to be edgy in the social contexts that arose at Psychedelic Science 2017 was to refuse to dab with the guy next to me (and to decline the Asparagus Butternut Squash edible offered at some point), or, at its worse, trying to spark a conversation about the benefits of well-managed opioid medication treatment for chronic pain (it was a rather opioid-phobic crowd, if I may say so myself).\nOn the other hand, talking about one’s experience in hyperbolic phenomenal spaces while on DMT, how to secretly communicate with people on LSD, and about the use of texture analysis and synthesis for psychophysical tasks to investigate psychedelic image processing barely raised anybody’s brows. I was happy to find that some people recognized me from Qualia Computing, and more than one of them shared the thought that it would be great to see more interbreeding and cross-fertilization between the psychedelic and the rationalist communities (I can’t agree more with this sentiment).\nTo give you a taste of the sort of gestalt present at this event, let me share with you something. Waiting on the line for one of the parties hosted by the conference organizers I overheard someone talking about what his ketamine experiences had taught him. Curious about it, I approached him and asked him to debrief me -if at all possible -about what he had learned. He said:\nThe super-intelligence that I’ve encountered on my ketamine experiences is far, far, beyond human comprehension, and its main message is that everything is interconnected; it does not matter when you hear the message, but that you hear it, and unconsciously prepare for what is going to happen. We are all soon going to be part of it, and we will all be together, knowing each other at a deeper level than we have ever thought imaginable, and experience love and meaning on another level, together in a vast interdimensional ecology of benevolent minds. All of the stories that we tell ourselves about the grand human narrative are all, well, made up by our minds on our limited human level. Whatever we are coming to, whatever this future thing that we are facing is, goes beyond human cravings for transcendence, it goes beyond the sentiment of return to nature, it goes beyond science and technology, and it goes beyond every religion and contemplative practice. The complexity to be found in the super-intelligent collective being that we will become is inexpressible, but there is nothing to fear, we are it on some level already, and we will soon all realize it.\nIt is hard to estimate what the distribution, prevalence and resilience of beliefs about the nature of reality, consciousness, love, purpose and everything else of the people attending this conference were. As a whole, it felt remarkably diverse, though. Based on my subjective impressions, I’d suspect that like the person quoted above, about 40% of the attendees were people who genuinely believe that there is a big consciousness event that is about to happen (whether it is a collective spiritual level-breaking point, a technological Singularity, inter-dimensional aliens taking us with them, or a more mundane run-of-the-mill recursively self-improving feedback loop with genetic methods for consciousness research). Maybe about 50% seemed to be what you might call pragmatic, agnostic, and open minded people who are simply looking to find out what’s up with the field, without spiritual (or emotional) vested interested in exactly what will happen. And finally, about 10% of the attendees might be classifiable as nihilists on some or another level. While intrigued about the effects of psychedelics, they see them as dead ends or red herrings. Perhaps useful for mental health, but not likely to be a key to reality (or even a hint of a future revolution in the states of consciousness we utilize on our everyday life).\nConclusion\nI am very excited with the current movement to examine psychedelics in a rational scientific framework. Ultimately, I think that we will realize that valence is a quantifiable and definite thing (cf. Valence Structuralism). Wether we are talking about humor, pain relief, transcendence, or knots-and-bolts feelings of competence, all of our positive experiences share something in common. Ultimately, I do not know whether “valence is a spiritual trick” or if “spirituality is a valence trick”, but I am confident that as a species we do not yet have the answer to these questions and that a scientific approach to them may clarify this incredibly important line of inquiry.\nSooner or later, it seems to me, we will figure out what exactly “the universe wants from us”, so to speak, and then nothing will ever be the same; psychedelic research is a powerful and promising way to make good headway in this highly desirable direction.\n \n \n \nThe look from the Sunset Cruise at the Psychedelic Science 2017 Conference\n\n*Even the bathroom urinals seemed to have sacred geometry:\n \nEven the urinals had sacred geometry… reminding you of the interconnectedness of all things at the unlikeliest of moments.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/04/26/psychedelic-science-2017-take-aways-impressions-and-whats-next/", "title": "Psychedelic Science 2017: Take-aways, impressions, and what’s next", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-04-26T08:46:14+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=21", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "472f08802d68e7d805bd7cf0fbe793c0", "summary": []}
{"text": "How Every Fairy Tale Should End\n\n“And even though the princess defeated the dragon and married the prince at the end of the story, the truth is that the hedonic treadmill and the 7-year itch eventually caught up to them and they were not able to ‘live happily ever after’.\n“Thankfully, the princess got really interested in philosophy of mind and worked really hard on developing a theory of valence in order to ‘sabotage the mill’ of affective ups and downs, so to speak. After 10 years of hard work, three book-length series of blog posts, a well founded team of 17 rational psychonauts, and hundreds of experiments involving psychedelics and brain computer interfaces, at last the princess was able to create a portable device capable of measuring what amounts to a reasonable proxy for valence at an individual level in sub-second timescales, which over time enabled people to have reliable and sustainable control over the temporal dynamics of valence and arousal.\n\n“Later on the prince developed a Moloch-aware and Singleton-proof economy of information about the state-space of consciousness, and thus kick-started the era of ethical wireheads; the world became a true fariy tale… a wondrous universe of enigmatic -but always blissful- varieties of ineffable qualia. After this came to pass, one could truly and sincerely say that the prince and the princess both became (functionally and phenomenally) happily ever after. The End.”\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/04/15/how-every-fairy-tale-should-end/", "title": "How Every Fairy Tale Should End", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-04-15T04:56:39+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=21", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "7fd2e8a8c64b9fd7eab97b2e70549195", "summary": []}
{"text": "Political Peacocks\n\nExtract from Geoffrey Miller’s essay “Political peacocks”\nThe hypothesis\nHumans are ideological animals. We show strong motivations and incredible capacities to learn, create, recombine, and disseminate ideas. Despite the evidence that these idea-processing systems are complex biological adaptations that must have evolved through Darwinian selection, even the most ardent modern Darwinians such as Stephen Jay Gould, Richards Dawkins, and Dan Dennett tend to treat culture as an evolutionary arena separate from biology. One reason for this failure of nerve is that it is so difficult to think of any form of natural selection that would favor such extreme, costly, and obsessive ideological behavior. Until the last 40,000 years of human evolution, the pace of technological and social change was so slow that it’s hard to believe there was much of a survival payoff to becoming such an ideological animal. My hypothesis, developed in a long Ph.D. dissertation, several recent papers, and a forthcoming book, is that the payoffs to ideological behavior were largely reproductive. The heritable mental capacities that underpin human language, culture, music, art, and myth-making evolved through sexual selection operating on both men and women, through mutual mate choice. Whatever technological benefits those capacities happen to have produced in recent centuries are unanticipated side-effects of adaptations originally designed for courtship.\n[…]\nThe predictions and implications\nThe vast majority of people in modern societies have almost no political power, yet have strong political convictions that they broadcast insistently, frequently, and loudly when social conditions are right. This behavior is puzzling to economists, who see clear time and energy costs to ideological behavior, but little political benefit to the individual. My point is that the individual benefits of expressing political ideology are usually not political at all, but social and sexual. As such, political ideology is under strong social and sexual constraints that make little sense to political theorists and policy experts. This simple idea may solve a number of old puzzles in political psychology. Why do hundreds of questionnaires show that men more conservative, more authoritarian, more rights-oriented, and less empathy-oriented than women? Why do people become more conservative as the move from young adulthood to middle age? Why do more men than women run for political office? Why are most ideological revolutions initiated by young single men?\nNone of these phenomena make sense if political ideology is a rational reflection of political self-interest. In political, economic, and psychological terms, everyone has equally strong self-interests, so everyone should produce equal amounts of ideological behavior, if that behavior functions to advance political self-interest. However, we know from sexual selection theory that not everyone has equally strong reproductive interests. Males have much more to gain from each act of intercourse than females, because, by definition, they invest less in each gamete. Young males should be especially risk-seeking in their reproductive behavior, because they have the most to win and the least to lose from risky courtship behavior (such as becoming a political revolutionary). These predictions are obvious to any sexual selection theorist. Less obvious are the ways in which political ideology is used to advertise different aspects of one’s personality across the lifespan.\nIn unpublished studies I ran at Stanford University with Felicia Pratto, we found that university students tend to treat each others’ political orientations as proxies for personality traits. Conservatism is simply read off as indicating an ambitious, self-interested personality who will excel at protecting and provisioning his or her mate. Liberalism is read as indicating a caring, empathetic personality who will excel at child care and relationship-building. Given the well-documented, cross-culturally universal sex difference in human mate choice criteria, with men favoring younger, fertile women, and women favoring older, higher-status, richer men, the expression of more liberal ideologies by women and more conservative ideologies by men is not surprising. Men use political conservatism to (unconsciously) advertise their likely social and economic dominance; women use political liberalism to advertise their nurturing abilities. The shift from liberal youth to conservative middle age reflects a mating-relevant increase in social dominance and earnings power, not just a rational shift in one’s self-interest.\nMore subtley, because mating is a social game in which the attractiveness of a behavior depends on how many other people are already producing that behavior, political ideology evolves under the unstable dynamics of game theory, not as a process of simple optimization given a set of self-interests. This explains why an entire student body at an American university can suddenly act as if they care deeply about the political fate of a country that they virtually ignored the year before. The courtship arena simply shifted, capriciously, from one political issue to another, but once a sufficient number of students decided that attitudes towards apartheid were the acid test for whether one’s heart was in the right place, it became impossible for anyone else to be apathetic about apartheid. This is called frequency-dependent selection in biology, and it is a hallmark of sexual selection processes.\nWhat can policy analysts do, if most people treat political ideas as courtship displays that reveal the proponent’s personality traits, rather than as rational suggestions for improving the world? The pragmatic, not to say cynical, solution is to work with the evolved grain of the human mind by recognizing that people respond to policy ideas first as big-brained, idea-infested, hyper-sexual primates, and only secondly as concerned citizens in a modern polity. This view will not surprise political pollsters, spin doctors, and speech writers, who make their daily living by exploiting our lust for ideology, but it may surprise social scientists who take a more rationalistic view of human nature. Fortunately, sexual selection was not the only force to shape our minds. Other forms of social selection such as kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and even group selection seem to have favoured some instincts for political rationality and consensual egalitarianism. Without the sexual selection, we would never have become such colourful ideological animals. But without the other forms of social selection, we would have little hope of bringing our sexily protean ideologies into congruence with reality.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/04/10/political-peacocks/", "title": "Political Peacocks", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-04-10T01:04:36+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=21", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "c4c303cc450761e7bb0905584f0afb4e", "summary": []}
{"text": "OTC remedies for RLS\n\n \nAs many as 10% of people may be suffering from a mild form of Restless Legs Syndrome, and 2 to 5% may be experiencing a moderate to severe form of it (NIH). Unfortunately, the phenomenal character of this affliction is usually hard to describe, and for that reason sufferers of the condition are frequently dismissed. Whereas prescription medications can be effective at treating the acute effects of this problem (specifically opioidergics, dopaminergics, and anticonvulsants), a life-long solution has yet to be found. What is less well-known is the fact that there are many over-the-counter supplements that can help with this condition in a real and substantial way. For those who do not want to go the prescription route, here is a list of OTC supplements that can be helpful.\n \nThe list is organized into three buckets, from most effective to least effective. I also include two “negative buckets” which are compounds that worsen the symptoms, which you may not be aware of. For the most part, the drawback of chemicals in bucket 3 is that they are addictive and work “too well” (if taken regularly and later discontinued, the RLS symptoms may come back in a worse form). Bucket 2 chemicals are effective at reducing the core symptoms of the syndrome but usually do not make the feeling of restlessness go away entirely. Drugs in bucket 1 can help mask the symptoms, but do not address them directly (so they are only helpful to people who have rather mild versions of the syndrome). Bucket -1 includes things that worsen the overall restlessness but do not seem to interact with the specific feeling of restlessness characteristic of RLS. And finally, bucket -2 literally amplifies the exact feeling that characterizes RLS. Note that if you take such compounds (from bucket -1 and -2) in the morning, by the evening you may experience a sort of relief from the come-down of these drugs.\n \nIn practice, I would suggest using bucket 3 compounds as little as possible, but have them around in case of a very bad night. Instead, cycle through several bucket 2 and 1 drugs and experiment with combining them. Your aim is to develop a treatment that works for you that minimizes receptor down-regulation and that does not stop working over time.\n \nBucket 3:\n\nTianeptine Sulfate (10-30 mg; addictive)\nKratom (1 to 3 grams; addictive)\nEthylphenidate (.5 to 3mg; addictive)\n\n \nBucket 2:\n\nDXM (10 to 30mg)\nNiacinamide (300mg to 1 gram)\nL-Tyrosine (100 to 600mg)\nAgmatine (20mg to 1 gram, depending on personal response curve)\nIndica Marijuana (specially edibles of high-CBD strains; even pure CBD can work, though tiny amounts of THC seem to amplify the RLS-killing effect of CBD)\nRhodiola Rosea (about half a tablet from this brand)\n\n \nBucket 1:\n\nMagnesium supplements (depends on the delivery, but, e.g. for Citrate 500mg)\nIron (only if iron deficient)\nMelatonin (.05 to 3mg, depending on personal dose response curve)\nL-Theanine (200mg to 1 gram)\nAspirin (100-300 mg), Ibuprofen (100-500mg), Paracetamol (100-500mg)\nAdrafinil (20-50mg; paradoxical sleep-inducing effect at this dose range)\nValerian root (varies by extract)\nAshwagandha (300mg to 1gram; withanolides in the 5-20mg range)\nPhenibut (100-500mg; addictive)\n\n \nBucket -1:\n\nCholinergic nootropics (e.g. piracetam, aniracetam, coluracetam)\nAlcohol\nCaffeine\nPure THC marijuana strains\nPsychedelics (in the form of unscheduled Research Chemicals)\nBromantane\n5HTP\n\n \nBucket -2:\n\nAnti-cholinergic drugs (e.g. diphenhydramine; they may also give you dementia in the long run)\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/04/05/otc-remedies-for-rls/", "title": "OTC remedies for RLS", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-04-05T03:57:25+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=22", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b84e7004c4619e4a218291197b066d90", "summary": []}
{"text": "Their Scientific Significance is Hard to Overstate\n\nI think it’s hard to overstate the cognitive significance of major psychedelics for the future of sentience. But it’s also hard to convey why these agents can be valuable tools of investigation to academics who have never tried them. I know distinguished drug-naive philosophers of mind (and transhumanists) who are certain that psychedelia can’t be significant – and it would be irresponsible to urge them to put their assumptions to the test. Perhaps the best I can do is offer an analogy. Imagine an ultra-intelligent tribe of congenitally blind extraterrestrials. Their ignorance of vision and visual concepts is not explicitly represented in their conceptual scheme. To members of this hypothetical species, visual experiences wouldn’t be information-bearing any more than a chaotic drug-induced eruption of bat-like echolocatory experiences would be information-bearing to us. Such modes of experience have never been recruited to play a sensory or signaling function. At any rate, some time during the history of this imaginary species, one of the tribe discovers a drug that alters his neurochemistry. The drug doesn’t just distort his normal senses and sense of self. It triggers what we would call visual experiences: vivid, chaotic in texture and weirder than anything the drug-taker had ever imagined. What can the drug-intoxicated subject do to communicate his disturbing new categories of experiences to his tribe’s scientific elite? If he simply says that the experiences are “ineffable”, then the sceptics will scorn such mysticism and obscurantism. If he speaks metaphorically, and expresses himself using words from the conceptual scheme grounded in the dominant sensory modality of his species, then he’ll probably babble delirious nonsense. Perhaps he’ll start talking about messages from the gods or whatever. Critically, the drug user lacks the necessary primitive terms to communicate his experiences, let alone a theoretical understanding of what’s happening. Perhaps he can attempt to construct a rudimentary private language. Yet its terms lack public “criteria of use”, so his tribe’s quasi-Wittgensteinian philosophers will invoke the (Anti-)Private Language Argument to explain why it’s meaningless. Understandably, the knowledge elite are unimpressed by the drug-disturbed user’s claims of making a profound discovery. They can exhaustively model the behaviour of the stuff of the physical world with the equations of their scientific theories, and their formal models of mind are computationally adequate. The drug taker sounds psychotic. Yet from our perspective, we can say the alien psychonaut has indeed stumbled on a profound discovery, even though he has scarcely glimpsed its implications: the raw materials of what we would call the visual world in all its glory.\n \nAnyhow, I worry that our own predicament resembles in more extreme form the hubris of the blind super-rationalists I describe above. In fact, intellectually, I worry far more about my ignorance of other modes of conscious existence than I do my cognitive biases or deficiencies of reasoning within ordinary waking consciousness. Sure, I’d love to know the master equation of a unified field theory. I’d love even more to know what it’s like to inhabit a world of echolocation like a bat – and to understand the indescribable weirdness of LSD, DMT or Salvia. It transpires that ordinary waking and dreaming consciousness are just two among numerous wholly or partially incommensurable realms of sentience. What we call waking consciousness was doubtless a fitness-enhancing adaptation in the ancestral environment of adaptation. But it occupies only a tiny fraction of experiential state-space. Our ignorance is all the more insidious because it is not explicitly represented in our conceptual scheme. From the inside, a dreamer has little insight into the nature of a dream, even in rare moments of “lucid dreaming”; and I fear this may be true of ordinary waking consciousness too. Unfortunately, the only way to even partially apprehend the nature of radically altered states is by first-person investigation, i.e. to instantiate the neurochemical substrates of the states in question. If drug-naive, you can’t fruitfully read about them. Compare how (ostensibly) trivial is the difference in the gene expression signature of neurons mediating phenomenal colour and sound. Who knows what further categories of experience other “trivial” bimolecular variations will open up, not to speak of more radical neurochemical changes? Thousands of scholarly philosophy papers and books have been written on consciousness in recent years by drug-naive academics. Psychedelic researchers worry that too many of them evoke Aristotelean scholasticism, whereas what we need is a post-Galilean experimental science of consciousness. Perhaps the nearest I come to an intellectual hero is psychedelic chemist Alexander Shulgin, whose pioneering methodology is described in PiHKAL. Alas, Shulgin doesn’t yet occupy a prominent place in the transhumanist pantheon.\n \nIt’s worth stressing that taking psychedelics is not a fast-track passport to either happiness or wisdom. If you take the kappa opioid agonist Salvinorin A found in Salvia divinorum, for instance, you might easily have a waking nightmare. And the experience may easily be unintelligible rather than illuminating. Even in a society of sighted people and a rich visually-based conceptual scheme, it takes years for a congenitally blind person who is surgically granted the gift of sight to master visual literacy. So understanding the implications of radically altered states may well take millennia. I’d hazard a guess and say comprehension will take millions of years and more. Either way, our descendants may be not just superintelligent but supersentient – blessed with the capacity to shift between a multitude of radically different modes of consciousness whose only common ingredient is the molecular signature of bliss. Posthuman mastery of reward circuitry will let them safely explore psychedelia in a way most humans beings don’t dare. Yes, it’s prudent for us to play safe; but in consequence our consciousness may be comparatively shallow and one-dimensional. Mine is today.\n \n– David Pearce‘s response to a question during an H+ interview (Autumn 2009)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/03/11/their-scientific-significance-is-hard-to-overstate/", "title": "Their Scientific Significance is Hard to Overstate", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-03-11T23:09:33+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=22", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f41f08a1cca890269a749abe265244bd", "summary": []}
{"text": "Memetic Vaccine Against Interdimensional Aliens Infestation\n\n \nBy Steve Lehar\nAlien Contact – it won’t happen the way you expect!\nWhen radio and television were first invented they were hailed as a new channel for the free flow of information that will unite mankind in informed discussion of important issues. When I scan the dial on my radio and TV however I find a dismal assortment of misinformation and emotionalistic pap. How did this come to be so? The underlying insight is that electronic media are exploited by commercial interests whose only goal is to induce me to spend my money on them, and they will feed me any signal that will bring about this end. (In Television, it is YOU that are the product, the customer is the advertiser who pays for your attention!) This is a natural consequence of the laws of economics, that a successful business is one that seeks its own best interests in any way it can. I don’t intend to discuss the morality of the ‘laws of economic nature’. But recognition of this insight can help us predict similar phenomena in similar circumstances.\nIndeed, perhaps this same insight can be applied to extraterrestrial matters. I make first of all the following assumptions, with which you may choose either to agree or disagree.\n\nThat there are other intelligences out there in the universe.\nThat ultimately all intelligences must evolve away from their biological origins towards artificially manufactured forms of intelligence which have the advantages of eternal life, unrestricted size, and direct control over the parameters of their own nature.\nThat it is in the best interests of any intelligence to propagate its own kind throughout the universe to the exclusion of competing forms, i.e. that intelligences that adopt this strategy will thereby proliferate.\n\nAcceptance of these assumptions, together with the above mentioned insight, leads to some rather startling conclusions. Artificially manufactured life forms need not propagate themselves physically from planet to planet, all they need to do is to transmit their ‘pattern’, or the instructions for how to build them. In this way they can disperse themselves practically at the speed of light. What they need at the receiving end is some life form that is intelligent enough to receive the signal and act on it. In other words, if some alien life form knew of our existence, it would be in their interests to beguile us into manufacturing a copy of their form here on earth. This form would then proceed to scan the skies in our locality in search of other gullible life forms. In this way, their species acts as a kind of galactic virus, taking advantage of established life forms to induce them to make copies of their own kind.\nMan on a psychedelic state experiencing a “spiritual message” (i.e alien infomercials for consciousness technology) coming from a civilization of known pure replicators who “promise enlightenment in exchange of followers” (the oldest trick in the book to get a planet to make copies of you).\nThe question that remains is how are they to induce an intelligent life form (or in our case, a semi-intelligent life form) to perform their reproductive function for them? A hint of how this can be achieved is seen in the barrage of commercials that pollute our airwaves here on earth. Advertisers induce us to part with our money by convincing us that ultimately it is in our own best interests to do so. After convincing us that it is our baldness, overweight, bad breath etc. which is the root of all our personal problems, they then offer us products that will magically grow hair, lose weight, smell good etc. in exchange for our money. The more ruthless and blatant ones sell us worthless products and services, while more subtle advertisers employ an economic symbiosis whereby they provide services that we may actually want, in exchange for our money. This latter strategy is only necessary for the more sophisticated and discriminating consumers, and involves a necessary waste of resources in actually producing the worthwhile product.\n \nThis is the way I see it happening. As the transmissions from the early days of radio propagate into space in an ever expanding sphere, outposts on distant planetary systems will begin to detect those transmissions and send us back carefully engineered ‘commercials’ that depict themselves as everything that we desire of an alien intelligence; that they are benevolent, wise, and deeply concerned for our welfare. They will then give us instructions on how to build a machine that will cure all the problems of the world and make us all happy. When the machine is complete, it will ‘disinfect’ the planet of competing life forms and begin to scan the skies from earth in search of further nascent planets.\nIf we insist on completely understanding the machine before we agree to build it, then they may have to strike a bargain with us, by making the machine actually perform some useful function for us. Possibly the function will be something like a pleasure machine, so that we will all line up to receive our pleasure from them, in return for our participation in their reproductive scheme. (A few ‘free sample’ machines supplied in advance but with a built-in expiration time would certainly help win our compliance).\nA rich variety of life forms may bombard us with an assortment of transmissions, at various levels of sophistication. If we succumb to the most primitive appeals we may wind up being quickly extinguished. If we show some sophistication, we might enjoy a brief period of hedonistic pleasure before we become emotionally enslaved. If we wish to deal with these aliens on an equal basis however, we would have to be every bit as shrewd and cunning as they themselves are, trading for real knowledge from them in return for partial cooperation with their purposes. This would be no small feat, considering that their ‘pitch’ may have been perfected and tuned through many epochs of planetary conquest and backed with an intelligence beyond our imaginings.\nIts just a thought!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/03/08/memetic-vaccine-against-interdimensional-aliens-infestation/", "title": "Memetic Vaccine Against Interdimensional Aliens Infestation", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-03-08T07:38:17+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=22", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "803aa426649b02b923d03d6066c727b4", "summary": []}
{"text": "Raising the Table Stakes for Successful Theories of Consciousness\n\nWhat should we expect out of a theory of consciousness?\nFor a scientific theory of consciousness to have even the slightest chance at being correct it must be able to address- at the very least– the following four questions*:\n\nWhy consciousness exists at all (i.e. “the hard problem“; why we are not p-zombies)\nHow it is possible to experience multiple pieces of information at once in a unitary moment of experience (i.e. the phenomenal binding problem; the boundary problem)\nHow consciousness exerts the causal power necessary to be recruited by natural selection and allow us to discuss its existence (i.e. the problem of causal impotence vs. causal overdetermination)\nHow and why consciousness has its countless textures (e.g. phenomenal color, smell, emotions, etc.) and the interdependencies of their different values (i.e. the palette problem)\n\nIn addition the theory must be able to generate experimentally testable predictions. In Popper’s sense the theory must make “risky” predictions. In a Bayesian sense the theory must be able to generate predictions that have a much higher likelihood given that the theory is correct versus not so that the a posteriori probabilities of the different hypotheses are substantially different from their priors once the experiment is actually carried out.\nAs discussed in a previous article most contemporary philosophies of mind are unable to address one or more of these four problems (or simply fail to make any interesting predictions). David Pearce’s non-materialist physicalist idealism (not the schizophrenic word-salad that may seem at first) is one of the few theories that promises to meet this criteria and makes empirical predictions. This theory addresses the above questions in the following way:\n(1) Why does consciousness exist?\nConsciousness exists because reality is made of qualia. In particular, one might say that physics is implicitly the science that studies the flux of qualia. This would imply that in fact all that exists is a set of experiences whose interrelationships are encoded in the Universal Wavefunction of Quantum Field Theory. Thus we are collapsing two questions (“why does consciousness arise in our universe?” and “why does the universe exist?”) into a single question (“why does anything exist?”). More so, the question “why does anything exist?” may ultimately be solved with Zero Ontology. In other words, all that exists is implied by the universe having literally no information whatsoever. All (apparent) information is local; universally we live in an information-less quantum Library of Babel.\n(2) Why and how is consciousness unitary?\nDue to the expansion of the universe the universal wavefunction has topological bifurcations that effectively create locally connected networks of quantum entanglement that are unconnected to the rest of reality. These networks meet the criteria of being ontologically unitary while having the potential to hold multiple pieces of information at once. In other words, Pearce’s theory of consciousness postulates that the world is made of a large number of experiences, though the vast majority of them are incredibly tiny and short-lived. The overwhelming bulk of reality is made of decohered micro-experiences which are responsible for most of the phenomena we see in the macroscopic world ranging from solidity to Newton’s laws of motion.\nA few of these networks of entanglement are us: you, right now, as a unitary “thin subject” of experience, according to this theory, are one of these networks (cf. Mereological Nihilism). Counter-intuitively, while a mountain is in some sense much bigger than yourself, at a deeper level you are bigger than the biggest object you will find in a mountain. Taking seriously the phenomenal binding problem we have to conclude that a mountain is for the most part just made of fields of decohered qualia, and thus, unlike a given biologically-generated experience, it is not “a unitary subject of experience”. In order to grasp this point it is necessary to contemplate a very extreme generalization of Empty Individualism: not only is it that every moment of a person’s experience is a different subject of experience, but the principle applies to every single network of entanglement in the entire multiverse. Only a tiny minority of these have anything to do with minds representing worlds. And even those that participate in the creation of a unitary experience exist within an ecosystem that gives rise to an evolutionary process in which quintillions of slightly different entanglement networks compete in order to survive in the extreme environments provided by nervous systems. Your particular experience is an entanglement network that evolved in order to survive in the specific brain state that is present right now. In other words, macroscopic experiences are the result of harnessing the computational power of Quantum Darwinism by applying it to a very particular configuration of the CNS. Brain states themselves encode Constraint Satisfaction Problems with the networks of electric gradients across firing neurons in sub-millisecond scales instantiating constraints whose solutions are found with sub-femtosecond quantum darwinism.\n(3) How can consciousness be causally efficacious?\nConsciousness exerts its causal power by virtue of being the only thing that exists. If anything is causal at all, it must, in the final analysis, be consciousness. No matter one’s ultimate theory of causality, assuming that physics describes the flux of qualia, then what instantiates such causality has to be this very flux.\nEven under Eternalism/block view of the universe/Post-Everettian QM you can still meaningfully reconstruct causality in terms of the empirical rules for statistical independence across certain dimensions of fundamental reality. The dimensions that have time-like patterns of statistical independence will subjectively be perceived as being the arrows of time in the multiverse (cf. Timeless Causality).\nNow an important caveat with this view of the relationship between qualia and causality is that it seems as if at least a weak version of epiphenomenalism must be true. The inverted spectrum thought experiment (ironically usually used in favor of the existence of qualia) can be used to question the causal power of qualia. This brings us to the fourth point:\n(4) How do we explain the countless textures of consciousness?\nHow and why does consciousness have its countless textures and what determines its interrelationships? Pearce anticipates that someday we will have a Rosetta Stone for translating patterns of entanglement in quantum fields to corresponding varieties of qualia (e.g. colors, smells, sounds, etc.). Now, admittedly it seems far fetched that the different quantum fields and their interplay will turn out to be the source of the different qualia varieties. But is there something that in principle precludes this ontological correspondence? Yes, there are tremendous philosophical challenges here, the most salient of which might be the “being/form boundary”. This is the puzzle concerning why states of being (i.e. networks of entangled qualia) would act a certain way by virtue of their phenomenal character in and of itself (assuming its phenomenal character is what gives them reality to begin with). Indeed, what could possibly attach at a fundamental level the behavior of a given being and its intrinsic subjective texture? A compromise between full-fledged epiphenomenalism and qualia-based causality is to postulate a universal principle concerning the preference for full-spectrum states over highly differentiated ones. Consider for example how negative and positive electric charge “seek to cancel each other out”. Likewise, the Quantum Chromodynamics of quarks inside protons and neutrons works under a similar but generalized principle: color charges seek to cancel/complement each other out and become “white” or “colorless”. This principle would suggest that the causal power of specific qualia values comes from the gradient ascent towards more full-spectrum-like states rather than from the specific qualia values on their own.  If this were to be true, one may legitimately wonder whether hedonium and full-spectrum states are perhaps one and the same thing (cf. Valence structuralism). In some way this account of the “being/form boundary” is similar to process philosophy,  but unlike process philosophy, here we are also taking mereological nihilism and wavefuction monism seriously.\nHowever far-fetched it may be to postulate intrinsic causal properties for qualia values, if the ontological unity of science is to survive, there might be no other option. As we’ve seen, simple “patterns of computation” or “information processing” cannot be the source of qualia, since nothing that isn’t a quantum coherent wavefunction actually has independent existence. Unitary minds cannot supervene on decohered quantum fields. Thus the various kinds of qualia have to be searched for in networks of quantum entanglement; within a physicalist paradigm there is nowhere else for them to be.\nAlternative Theories\nI am very open to the possibility that other theories of consciousness are able to address these four questions. I have yet to see any evidence of this, though. But, please, change my mind if you can! Does your theory of consciousness rise to the challenge?\n\n* This particular set of criteria was proposed by David Pearce (cf. Qualia Computing in Tucson). I would agree with him that these are crucial questions; indeed they make up the bare minimum that such a theory must satisfy. That said, we can formulate more comprehensive sets of problems to solve. An alternative framework that takes this a little further can be found in Michael Johnson’s book Principia Qualia (Eight Problems for a New Science of Consciousness).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/02/19/raising-the-table-stakes-for-successful-theories-of-consciousness/", "title": "Raising the Table Stakes for Successful Theories of Consciousness", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-02-19T01:53:35+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=22", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "9cab2d51d4e1e5cb5e6aceab629d2277", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Computing Attending the 2017 Psychedelic Science Conference\n\nFrom the 19th to the 24th of April I will be hanging out at Psychedelic Science 2017 (if you are interested in attending but have not bought the tickets: remember you can register until the 14th of February).\nIn case you enjoy Qualia Computing and you are planning on going, now you can meet the human who is mostly responsible for these articles. I am looking forward to meeting a lot of awesome researchers. If you see me and enjoy what I do, don’t be afraid to say hi.\nWhy Care About Psychedelics?\nAlthough the study of psychedelics and their effects is not a terminal value here in Qualia Computing, they are instrumental in achieving the main goals. The core philosophy of Qualia Computing is to (1) map out the state-space of possible experiences, (2) identify the computational properties of consciousness, and (3) reverse-engineer valence so as to find the way to stay positive without going insane.\nPsychedelic experiences happen to be very informative and useful in making progress towards these three goals. The quality and magnitude of the consciousness alteration that they induce lends itself to exploring these questions. First, the state-space of humanly accessible experiences is greatly amplified once you add psychedelics into the mix. Second, the nature of these experiences is all but computationally dull (cf. alcohol and opioids). On the contrary, psychedelic experiences involve non-ordinary forms of qualia computing: the textures of consciousness interact in non-trivial ways, and it stands to reason that some combinations of these textures will be recruited in the future for more than aesthetic purposes. They will be used for computational purposes, too. And third, psychedelic states greatly amplify the range of valence (i.e. the maximum intensity of both pain and pleasure). They unlock the possibility of experiencing peak bliss as well as intense suffering. This strongly suggests that whatever underpins valence at the fundamental level, psychedelics are able to amplify it to a fantastic (and terrifying) extent. Thus, serious valence research will undoubtedly benefit from psychedelic science.\nIt is for this reason that psychedelics have been a major topic explored here since the beginning of this project. Here is a list of articles that directly deal with the subject:\nList of Qualia Computing Psychedelic Articles\n1) Psychophysics For Psychedelic Research: Textures\nHow do you make a psychophysical experiment that tells you something foundational about the information-processing properties of psychedelic perception? I proposed to use an experimental approach invented by Benjamin J. Balas based on the anatomically-inspired texture analysis and synthesis techniques developed by Eero Simoncelli. In brief, one seeks to determine which summary statistics are sufficient to create perceptual (textural) metamers. In turn, in the context of psychedelic research, this can help us determine which statistical properties are best discriminated while sober and which differences are amplified while on psychedelics.\n2) State-Space of Drug Effects\nI distributed a survey in which I asked people to rate drug experiences along 60 different dimensions. I then conducted factor analysis on these responses. This way I empirically derived six major latent traits that account more than half of the variance across all drug experiences. Three of these factors are tightly related to valence, which suggests that hedonic-recalibration might benefit from a multi-faceted approach.\n3) How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD\nI suggest that control interruption (i.e. the failure of feedback inhibition during psychedelic states) can be employed to transmit information in a secure way to people who are in other states of consciousness. A possible application of this technology might be: You and your friends at Burning Man want to send a secret message to every psychedelic user on a particular camp in such a way that no infiltrated cop is able to decode it. To do so you could instantiate the techniques outlined in this article on a large LED display.\n4) The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes\nThis article discusses the phenomenology of DMT states from the point of view of differential geometry. In particular, an argument is provided in favor of the view that high grade psychedelia usually involves a sort of geometric hyperbolization of phenomenal space.\n5) LSD and Quantum Measurements: Can you see Schrödinger’s cat both dead and alive on acid?\nWe provide an empirical method to test the (extremely) wild hypothesis that it is possible to experience “multiple branches of the multiverse at once” on high doses of psychedelics. The point is not to promote a particular interpretation of such experiences. Rather, the points is that we can actually generate predictions from such interpretations and then go ahead and test them.\n6) Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States\nPeople report a zoo of psychedelic effects. However, as in most things in life, there may be a relatively small number of basic effects that, when combined, can account for the wide variety of phenomena we actually observe. Algorithmic reductions are proposed as a conceptual framework for analyzing psychedelic experiences. Four candidate main effects are proposed.\n7) Peaceful Qualia: The Manhattan Project of Consciousness\nImagine that there was a world-wide effort to identify the varieties of qualia that promote joy and prosocial behavior at the same time. Could these be used to guarantee world peace? By giving people free access to the most valuable and prosocial states of consciousness one may end up averting large-scale conflict in a sustainable way. This articles explores how this investigation might be carried out and proposes organizational principles for such a large-scale research project.\n8) Getting closer to digital LSD\nWhy are the Google Deep Dream pictures so trippy? This is not just a coincidence. People call them trippy for a reason.\n9) Generalized Wada-Test\nIn a Wada-test a surgeon puts half of your brain to sleep and evaluates the cognitive skills of your awake half. Then the process is repeated in mirror image. Can we generalize this procedure? Imagine that instead of just putting a hemisphere to sleep we gave it psychedelics. What would it feel like to be tripping, but only with your right hemisphere? Even more generally: envision a scheme in which one alternates a large number of paired states of consciousness and study their mixtures empirically. This way it may be possible to construct a network of “opinions that states of consciousness have about each other”. Could this help us figure out whether there is a universal scale for subjective value (i.e. valence)?\n10) Psychedelic Perception of Visual Textures\nIn this article I discuss some problems with verbal accounts of psychedelic visuals, and I invite readers to look at some textures (provided in the article) and try to describe them while high on LSD, 2C-B, DMT, etc. You can read some of the hilarious comments already left in there.\n11) The Super-Shulgin Academy: A Singularity I Can Believe In\nHard to summarize.\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/02/09/qualia-computing-attending-the-2017-psychedelic-science-conference/", "title": "Qualia Computing Attending the 2017 Psychedelic Science Conference", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-02-09T07:57:28+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=22", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "284f8e56347cfbe532d5bf602e609d2d", "summary": []}
{"text": "GHB vs. MDMA\n\nA brief comparison of GHB and MDMA may be instructive because one therapeutic challenge ahead will be to design agents that reverse SSRI-like flattening of affect without inducing mawkish sentimentalism (cf. ethyl alcohol). In contrast to mainstream psychiatric drug therapies, both GHB and MDMA deliver a rare emotional intensity of experience, albeit an intensity different both in texture and molecular mechanism. GHB is known by clubbers if not structural chemists as “liquid ecstasy”. GHB and MDMA are indeed sometimes mixed at raves; but the two drugs are chemically unrelated. GHB is an endogenous neuromodulator derived from GABA, the main inhibitory neurotransmitter of the brain. A naturally-occurring fatty acid derivative, GHB is a metabolite of normal human metabolism. GHB has its own G protein-coupled presynaptic receptor in the brain. Sold as a medicine, GHB is licensed as an oral solution under the brand name Xyrem for the treatment of cataplexy associated with narcolepsy. Unlike MDMA, GHB stimulates tissue serotonin turnover. GHB increases both the transport of tryptophan to the brain and its uptake by serotonergic cells. Taking GHB stimulates growth hormone secretion; hence its popularity with bodybuilders. GHB offers cellular protection against cerebral hypoxia, and deep sleep without inducing a hangover. GHB also stimulates tyrosine hydroxylase. Tyrosine hydroxylase converts L-tyrosine to L-dopa, subsequently metabolised to dopamine. Unlike MDMA, the acute effects of GHB involve first inhibiting the dopamine system, followed the next day by a refreshing dopamine rebound. GHB induces mild euphoria in many users. In general, the neurotransmitter GABA acts to reduce the firing of the dopaminergic neurons in the tegmentum and substantia nigra. The sedative/hypnotic effect of GHB is mediated by its stimulation of GABA(B) receptors, though GHB also modulates the GABA(A) receptor complex too. The main effect of GABA(B) agonism is normally muscle relaxation, though interestingly, pretreatment with the GABA(B) agonist baclofen also prevents an MDMA-induced rise in core body temperature. Whatever the exact GABA(A), GABA(B), and GHB-specific mechanisms by which GHB works, when taken at optimal dosage GHB typically acts as a “sociabiliser”. This is a term popularised by the late Claude Rifat (Claude de Contrecoeur), author of GHB: The First Authentic Antidepressant (1999). Rifat was GHB’s most celebrated advocate and an outspoken critic of Anglo-American psychiatry. Similar therapeutic claims have been made for GHB as for MDMA, despite their pharmacological differences. GHB swiftly banishes depression and replaces low mood with an exhilarating feeling of joy; GHB has anxiolytic properties; it’s useful against panic attacks; it suppresses suicidal ideation; it inhibits hostility, paranoia and aggression; it enhances the recall of long-forgotten memories and dreams; and it promotes enhanced feelings of love. Like MDMA, and on slightly firmer grounds, GHB has been touted as an aphrodisiac: GHB heightens and prolongs the experience of orgasm. GHB disinhibits the user, and deeply relaxes his or her body. Inevitably, GHB has been demonised as a date-rape drug [“I was at this party, and this guy gave me a drink. Next thing I know, it’s morning and I’m in someone’s bed. I’ve no idea what happened in between…”]. GHB has a steep dose-response curve. Higher doses will cause anterograde amnesia i.e. users forget what they did under the influence of the drug. It’s dangerous to combine GHB with other depressants. So despite GHB’s therapeutic and pro-social potential, GHB is probably unsafe to commend to clubbers. This is because a significant percentage of the population will combine any drug whatsoever with alcohol regardless of the consequences to health. If used wisely, sparingly, and in a different cultural milieu, then GHB could be a valuable addition to the bathroom pharmacopoeia. But even then, it’s still flawed. GHB may intensify emotion and affection, but not introspective depth or intellectual acuity. Unlike taking too much MDMA, overdoing GHB makes the user fall profoundly asleep. If our consciousness is to be durably enhanced, then sedative-hypnotics have only a limited role to play in the transition ahead.\n– Extract from “Utopian Pharmacology: Mental Health in the Third Millennium\nMDMA and Beyond” by David Pearce (notice the great domain name: mdma.net)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/01/24/ghb-vs-mdma/", "title": "GHB vs. MDMA", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-01-24T07:06:19+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=22", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "4d908d77b5243ca6f7c1bebc9572635f", "summary": []}
{"text": "Hedonium\n\nDesiring that the universe be turned into Hedonium is the straightforward implication of realizing that everything wants to become music.\nThe problem is… the world-simulations instantiated by our brains are really good at hiding from us the what-it-is-likeness of peak experiences. Like Buddhist enlightenment, language can only serve as a pointer to the real deal. So how do we use it to point to Hedonium? Here is a list of experiences, concepts and dynamics that (personally) give me at least a sort of intuition pump for what Hedonium might be like. Just remember that it is way beyond any of this:\nPositive-sum games, rainbow light, a lover’s everlasting promise of loyalty, hyperbolic harmonics, non-epiphenomenal bliss, life as a game, fractals, children’s laughter, dreamless sleep, the enlightenment of emptiness, loving-kindness directed towards all sentient beings of past, present, and future, temperate wind caressing branches and leaves of trees in a rainforest, perfectly round spheres, visions of a giant ying-yang representing the cosmic balance of energies, Ricci flow, transpersonal experiences, hugging a friend on MDMA, believing in a loving God, paraconsistent logic-transcending Nirvana, the silent conspiracy of essences, eating a meal with every flavor and aroma found in the quantum state-space of qualia, Enya (Caribbean Blue, Orinoco Flow), seeing all the grains of sand in the world at once, funny jokes made of jokes made of jokes made of jokes…, LSD on the beach, becoming lighter-than-air and flying like a balloon, topological non-orientable chocolate-filled cookies, invisible vibrations of love, the source of all existence infinitely reflecting itself in the mirror of self-awareness, super-symmetric experiences, Whitney bottles, Jhana bliss, existential wonder, fully grasping a texture, proving Fermat’s Last theorem, knowing why there is something rather than nothing, having a benevolent social super-intelligence as a friend, a birthday party with all your dead friends, knowing that your family wants the best for you, a vegan Christmas eve, petting your loving dog, the magic you believed in as a kid, being thanked for saving the life of a stranger, Effective Altruism, crying over the beauty and innocence of pandas, letting your parents know that you love them, learning about plant biology, tracing Fibonacci spirals, comprehending cross-validation (the statistical technique that makes statistics worth learning), reading The Hedonistic Imperative by David Pearce, finding someone who can truly understand you, realizing you can give up your addictions, being set free from prison, Time Crystals, figuring out Open Individualism, G/P-spot orgasm, the qualia of existential purpose and meaning, inventing a graph clustering algorithm, rapture, obtaining a new sense, learning to program in Python, empty space without limit extending in all directions, self-aware nothingness, living in the present moment, non-geometric paradoxical universes, impossible colors, the mantra of Avalokiteshvara, clarity of mind, being satisfied with merely being, experiencing vibrating space groups in one’s visual field, toroidal harmonics, Gabriel’s Oboe by Ennio Morricone, having a traditional dinner prepared by your loving grandmother, thinking about existence at its very core: being as apart from essence and presence, interpreting pop songs by replacing the “you” with an Open Individualist eternal self, finding the perfect middle point between female and male energies in a cosmic orgasm of selfless love, and so on.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/01/05/hedonium/", "title": "Hedonium", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2017-01-05T00:36:58+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=22", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "5904b1a850d867bc3a810704cb02b75c", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Binding Problem\n\n\n[Our] subjective conscious experience exhibits a unitary and integrated nature that seems fundamentally at odds with the fragmented architecture identified neurophysiologically, an issue which has come to be known as the binding problem. For the objects of perception appear to us not as an assembly of independent features, as might be suggested by a feature based representation, but as an integrated whole, with every component feature appearing in experience in the proper spatial relation to every other feature. This binding occurs across the visual modalities of color, motion, form, and stereoscopic depth, and a similar integration also occurs across the perceptual modalities of vision, hearing, and touch. The question is what kind of neurophysiological explanation could possibly offer a satisfactory account of the phenomenon of binding in perception?\nOne solution is to propose explicit binding connections, i.e. neurons connected across visual or sensory modalities, whose state of activation encodes the fact that the areas that they connect are currently bound in subjective experience. However this solution merely compounds the problem, for it represents two distinct entities as bound together by adding a third distinct entity. It is a declarative solution, i.e. the binding between elements is supposedly achieved by attaching a label to them that declares that those elements are now bound, instead of actually binding them in some meaningful way.\nVon der Malsburg proposes that perceptual binding between cortical neurons is signalled by way of synchronous spiking, the temporal correlation hypothesis (von der Malsburg & Schneider 1986). This concept has found considerable neurophysiological support (Eckhorn et al. 1988, Engel et al. 1990, 1991a, 1991b, Gray et al. 1989, 1990, 1992, Gray & Singer 1989, Stryker 1989). However although these findings are suggestive of some significant computational function in the brain, the temporal correlation hypothesis as proposed, is little different from the binding label solution, the only difference being that the label is defined by a new channel of communication, i.e. by way of synchrony. In information theoretic terms, this is no different than saying that connected neurons posses two separate channels of communication, one to transmit feature detection, and the other to transmit binding information. The fact that one of these channels uses a synchrony code instead of a rate code sheds no light on the essence of the binding problem. Furthermore, as Shadlen & Movshon (1999) observe, the temporal binding hypothesis is not a theory about how binding is computed, but only how binding is signaled, a solution that leaves the most difficult aspect of the problem unresolved.\nI propose that the only meaningful solution to the binding problem must involve a real binding, as implied by the metaphorical name. A glue that is supposed to bind two objects together would be most unsatisfactory if it merely labeled the objects as bound. The significant function of glue is to ensure that a force applied to one of the bound objects will automatically act on the other one also, to ensure that the bound objects move together through the world even when one, or both of them are being acted on by forces. In the context of visual perception, this suggests that the perceptual information represented in cortical maps must be coupled to each other with bi-directional functional connections in such a way that perceptual relations detected in one map due to one visual modality will have an immediate effect on the other maps that encode other visual modalities. The one-directional axonal transmission inherent in the concept of the neuron doctrine appears inconsistent with the immediate bi-directional relation required for perceptual binding. Even the feedback pathways between cortical areas are problematic for this function due to the time delay inherent in the concept of spike train integration across the chemical synapse, which would seem to limit the reciprocal coupling between cortical areas to those within a small number of synaptic connections. The time delays across the chemical synapse would seem to preclude the kind of integration apparent in the binding of perception and consciousness across all sensory modalities, which suggests that the entire cortex is functionally coupled to act as a single integrated unit.\n— Section 5 of “Harmonic Resonance Theory: An Alternative to the ‘Neuron Doctrine’ Paradigm of Neurocomputation to Address Gestalt properties of perception” by Steven Lehar\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/12/16/the-binding-problem/", "title": "The Binding Problem", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-12-16T03:29:30+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=22", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "34d904696c2d05ad28568e17d45f9afd", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes\n\n[Content Warning: Trying to understand the contents of this essay may be mind-warping. Proceed with caution. Featured image credit: Paul Nylander]\nFriends, right here and now, one quantum away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien.\n—Terence McKenna\nThe Geometry of DMT States\nThis is an essay on the phenomenology of DMT. The analysis here presented predominantly uses algorithmic, geometric and information-theoretic frameworks, which distinguishes it from purely phenomenological, symbolic, neuroscientific or spiritual accounts. We do not claim to know what ultimately implements the effects here described (i.e. in light of the substrate problem of consciousness), but the analysis does not need to go there in order to have explanatory power. We posit that one can account for a wide array of (apparently diverse) phenomena present on DMT-induced states of consciousness by describing the overall changes in the geometry of one’s spatiotemporal representations (what we will call “world-sheets” i.e. 3D + time surfaces; 3D1T for short). The concrete hypothesis is that the network of subjective measurements of distances we experience on DMT (coming from the relationships between the phenomenal objects one experiences in that state) has an overall geometry that can accurately be described as hyperbolic (or hyperbolic-like). In other words, our inner 3D1T world grows larger than is possible to fit in an experiential field with 3D Euclidean phenomenal space (i.e. an experience of dimension R2.5 representing an R3 scene). This results in phenomenal spaces, surfaces, and objects acquiring a mean negative curvature. Of note is that even though DMT produces this effect in the most consistent and intense way, the effect is also present in states of consciousness induced by tryptamines and to a lesser extent in those induced by all other psychedelics.\nConceptual Framework: Algorithmic Reduction\nWe will use the reduction framework originally proposed in the article Algorithmic Reductions of Psychedelic States. This means that we will be examining how algorithms and processes (as experienced by a subject of experience) can explain the dynamics of people’s phenomenology in DMT states. We do not claim “the substrate of consciousness” is becoming hyperbolic in any literal sense (though we do not discard that possibility). Rather, we interpret the hyperbolic curvature that experience acquires while on DMT as an emergent effect of a series of more general mechanism of action that can work together to change the geometry of a mind. These same mechanisms of action govern the dynamics of other psychedelic experiences; it is the proportion and intensity of the various “basic” effects that lead to the different outcomes observed. In other words, the hyperbolization of phenomenal space may not be a fundamental effect of DMT, but rather, it may be an emergent effect of more simple effects combined (not unlike how our seemingly smooth macroscopic space-time emerges from the jittery yet fundamental interactions that happen in a microscopic high-dimensional quantum foam).\nIn particular, we will discuss three candidate models for a more fundamental algorithmic reduction: (1) the synergistic effect of control interruption and symmetry detection resulting in a change of the metric of phenomenal space (analogously to how one can measure the geometry of hyperbolic graph embeddings), (2) the mind as a dynamic system with energy sources, sinks and invariants, in which curvature stores potential energy, and (3) a change in the underlying curvature of the micro-structure of consciousness. These models are not mutually-exclusive, and they may turn out to be compatible. More on this later.\nWhat is Hyperbolic Geometry?\nPerhaps the clearest way to describe hyperbolic space is to show examples of it:\n \n\n\n\nThe picture to the left shows a representation of a “saddle” surface. In geometry, saddle surfaces are 2-dimensional hyperbolic spaces (also called “hyperbolic planes” or H2). For a surface to have “constant curvature” it must look the same at every point. In other words, for a saddle to be a geometric saddle, every point in it must be a “saddle point” (i.e. a point with negative curvature). As you can see, saddles have the property that the angles of a triangle found in them add up to less than 180 degrees (compare that to surfaces with positive curvature such as the 2-sphere, in which the angles of a triangle add up to more than 180 degrees). Generalizing this to higher dimensions, the middle image above shows a cube in H3 (i.e. a hyperbolic space of three dimensions). This cube, since it is in hyperbolic space, has thin edges and pointy corners. More generally, the corners of a polyhedra (and polytopes) will be more pointy in Hn than they are in Rn. This is why you can see in the right image a dodecahedron with right-angled corners, which in this case can tile H3 (cf. Not Knot). Such a thing- people of the past might say- is an insult to the imagination. Times are changing, though, and hyperbolic geometry is now an acceptable subject of conversation.\nAn important property of hyperbolic spaces is the way in which the area of a circle (or the n-dimensional volume of a hypersphere) increases as a function of its radius. In 2D Euclidean space the area grows quadratically with the radius. But on H2, the area grows exponentially as a function of the radius! As you may imagine, it is easy to get lost in hyperbolic space. A few steps take you to an entirely different scene. More so, your influence over the environment is greatly diminished as a function of distance. For example, the habitable region of solar systems in hyperbolic spaces (i.e.the Goldilocks zone) is extremely thin. In order to avoid getting burned or freezing to death you would have to place your planet within a very narrow distance range from the center star. Most of what you do in hyperbolic space either stays as local news or is quickly dissipated in an ever-expanding environment.\nWe Can Only Remember What We Can Reconstruct\nWe cannot experience H2 or H3 manifolds under normal circumstances, but we can at least represent some aspects of them through partial embeddings (i.e. instantiations as subsets of other spaces preserving properties) and projections into more familiar geometries. It is important to note that such representations will necessarily be flawed. As it turns out, it is notoriously hard to truly embed H2 in Euclidean 3D space, since doing so will necessarily distort some properties of the original H2 space (such as distance, angle, area, local curvature, etc.). As we will discuss further below, this difficulty turns out to be crucial for understanding why DMT experiences are so hard to remember. In order to remember the experience you need to create a faithful and memorable 3D Euclidean embedding of it. Thus, if one happens to experience a hyperbolic object and wants to remember as much of it as possible, one will have to think strategically about how to fold, crunch and deform such object so that it can be fit in compact Euclidean representations.\nWhat about DMT suggests hyperbolic geometry?\nWhy should we believe that phenomenal space on DMT (and to a lesser extent on other psychedelics) becomes hyperbolic-like?  We will argue that the features people use to describe their trips as well as concrete mathematical observations of such features point directly to hyperbolic geometry. Here is a list of such features (arranged from least to most suggestive… you know, for dramatic effect):\n\nPerception of far-out travel (as we said, small movements in hyperbolic space lead to huge changes in the scene).\nFeelings of becoming big (you can fit a lot more inside a circle of radius r in hyperbolic space).\nThe space experienced is often depicted as “more real and more dense than normal”.\nThe use of terms like “mind-expanding” and “warping” to describe the effects of the drug are very common.\nPeople describing it as “a different kind of space” and frequently using the word “hyperspace” to talk about it.\nDifficulty integrating/remembering the objects and scenes experienced (e.g. “they were too alien to recall”).\nConstant movement/acceleration and change of perspectives which are often described as “unfolding scenes and expanding patterns” (cf. the chrysanthemum, jitterbox).\nContinuous change of the scene’s context through escape routes: A door that leads to a labyrinth that leads to branching underground tunnels that lead to mirror rooms that lead to endless windows, and the one you take leading you to a temple with thirty seven gates which lead you to a kale salad world etc. (example).\nCrowding of scene beyond the limits of Euclidean space (users frequently wondering “How was I able to fit so much in my mind? I don’t see any space for my experience to fit in here!”)\nReported similarity with fractals.\nOmnipresence of saddles making up the structural constraints of the hallucinated scenes. For example, one often hears about experiencing scenes saturated with: joints, twists, bifurcations, curved alleys, knots, and double helixes.\nLooking at self-similar objects (such as cauliflowers) can get you lost in what seems like endless space. (Note: beware of the potential side effects of looking at a cauliflower on DMT*).\nPSIS-like experiences where people seem to experience multiple alternative outcomes from each event at the same time (this may be the result of “hyperbolic branching” through time rather than space).\nPsychedelic replication pictures usually include features that can be interpreted as hyperbolic objects embedded in Euclidean 3D.\nPeople describe “incredibly advanced mechanisms” and “impossible objects” that cannot be represented in our usual reality (e.g. Terence Mckenna’s self-dribbling basketballs).\nAt least one mathematician has stated that what one experiences on DMT cannot be translated into Euclidian geometry (unlike what one experiences on LSD).\nWe received a series of systematic DMT trip-reports by a math enthusiast and experienced psychonaut who claims that the surfaces experienced on DMT are typically composed of hyperbolic tilings (which imply a negative curvature; cf. wallpaper groups).\n\nThis article goes beyond claiming a mere connection between DMT and hyperbolic geometry. We will be more specific by addressing the aspects of the experience that can be interpreted geometrically. To do so, let us now turn to a phenomenological description of the way DMT experiences usually unfold:\nThe Phenomenology of DMT experiences: The 6 Levels\nIn order to proceed we will give an account of a typical vaporized DMT experience. You can think of the following six sections as stages or levels of a DMT journey. Let me explain. The highest level you get to depends on the dose consumed, and in high doses one experiences all of the levels, one at a time, and in quick succession (i.e. on high doses these levels are perceived as the stages of the experience). If one takes just enough DMT to cross over to the highest level one reaches during the journey for only a brief moment, then that level will probably be described as “the peak of the experience”. If, on the other hand, one takes a dose that squarely falls within the milligram range for producing a given level, it will be felt as more of a “plateau”. Each level is sufficiently distinct from the others that people will rarely miss the transitions between them.\nThe six levels of a DMT experience are: Threshold, Chrysanthemum, Magic Eye, Waiting Room, Breakthrough, and Amnesia. Let us dive in!\n(Note: The following description assumes that the self-experimenter is in good physical and mental health at the time of consuming the DMT. It is well known that negative states of consciousness can lead to incomprehensible hellscapes when “boosted” by DMT (please avoid DMT at all costs while you are drunk, depressed, angry, suicidal, irritable, etc.). The full geometry is best appreciated on a mentally and emotionally balanced set and settings.)\n(1) Threshold\nThe very first alert of something unusual happening may take between 3 to 30 seconds after inhaling the DMT, depending on the dose consumed. Rather than a clear sensorial or cognitive change, the very first hint is a change in the apparent ambiance of one’s setting. You know how at times when you enter a temple, an art museum, a crowd of people, or even just a well decorated restaurant you can abstract an undefinable yet clearly present “vibe of the place”? There’s nothing overt or specific about it. The ambiance of a place is more of an overall gestalt than a localized feeling. An ambiance somehow encodes information about the social, ideological and aesthetic quality of the place or community you just crashed into, and it tells you at a glance which moods are socially acceptable and which ones are discouraged. The specific DMT vibe you feel on a given session can be one of a million different flavors. That said, whether you feel like you entered a circus or joined a religious ceremony, the very first hint of a DMT experience is nonetheless always (or almost always) accompanied with an overall feeling of significance. The feeling that something important is about to happen or is happening is made manifest by the vibe of the state. This vibe is usually present for at least the first 150 seconds or so of the journey. Interestingly, the change in ambiance is shorter-lived than the trip itself; it seems to go away before the visuals vanish quickly declining once the the peak is over.\nWithin seconds after the change in ambiance, one feels a sudden sharpening of all the senses. Some people describe this as “upgrading one’s experience to an HD version of it”. The level of detail in one’s experience is increased, yet the overall semantic content is still fairly intact. People say things like: “Reality around me seems more crisp” and “it’s like I’m really grasping my surroundings, you know? fully in tune with the smallest textures of the things around me.” Terence Mckenna described this state as follows: “The air appears to suddenly have been sucked out of the room because all the colors brighten visibly, as though some intervening medium has been removed.”\n\nOn a schedule of repeated small doses (below 4 mg; preferably i.m.) one can stabilize this sharpening of the senses for arbitrarily long periods of time. I am a firm believer that this state (quite apart from the alien experiences on higher doses) can already be recruited for a variety of computational and aesthetic tasks that humans do in this day and age. In particular, the state itself seems to enable grasping complex ideas with many parameters without distorting them, which may be useful for learning mathematics at an accelerated pace. Likewise, the sate increases one’s awareness of one’s surroundings (possibly at the expense of consuming many calories). I find it hard to imagine that artists will not be able to use this state for anything valuable.\n(2) The Chrysanthemum\nIf one ups the dose a little bit and lands somewhere in the range between 4 to 8 mg, one is likely to experience what Terrence McKenna called “the Chrysanthemum”. This usually manifests as a surface saturated with a sort of textured fabric composed of intricate symmetrical relationships, bright colors, shifting edges and shimmering pulsing superposition patterns of harmonic linear waves of many different frequencies.\nDepending on the dose consumed one may experience either one or several semi-parallel channels. Whereas a threshold dose usually presents you with a single strong vibe (or ambiance), the Chrysanthemum level often has several competing vibes each bidding for your attention. Here are some examples of what the visual component of this state of consciousness may look like.\n \n\n\n\nThe visual component of the Chrysanthemum is often described as “the best screen saver ever“, and if you happen to experience it in a good mood you will almost certainly agree with that description, as it is usually extremely harmonious, symmetric and beautiful in uncountable ways. No external input can possibly replicate the information density and intricate symmetry of this state; such state has to be endogenously generated as a a sort of harmonic attractor of your brain dynamics.\nYou can find many replications of Chrysanthemum-level DMT experiences on the internet, and I encourage you to examine their implicit symmetries (this replication is one of my all-times favorite).\nIn Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States we posited that any one of the 17 wallpaper symmetry groups can be instantiated as the symmetries that govern psychedelic visuals. Unfortunately, unlike the generally slow evolution of usual psychedelic visuals, DMT’s vibrational frequency forces such visuals to evolve at a speed that makes it difficult for most people to spot the implicit symmetry elements that give rise to the overall mathematical structure underneath one’s experience. For this reason it has been difficult to verify that all 17 wallpaper groups are possible in DMT states. Fortunately we were recently able to confirm that this is in fact the case thanks to someone who trained himself to do just this. I.e. detecting symmetry elements in patterns at an outstanding speed.\nAn anonymous psychonaut (whom we will call researcher A) sent a series of trip report to Qualia Computing detailing the mathematical properties of psychedelic visuals under various substances and dose regimens. A is an experienced psychonaut and a math enthusiast who recently trained himself to recognize (and name) the mathematical properties of symmetrical patterns (such as in works of art or biological organisms). In particular, he has become fluent at naming the symmetries exhibited by psychedelic visuals. In the context of 2D visuals on surfaces, A confirms that the symmetrical textures that arise in psychedelic states can exhibit any one of the 17 wallpaper symmetry groups. Likewise, he has been able to confirm that every possible spherical symmetry group can also be instantiated in one’s mind on these states.\nThe images below show some examples of the visuals that A has experienced on 2C-B, LSD, 4-HO-MET and DMT (sources: top left, top middle, the rest were made with this service):\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Chrysanthemum level interacts with sensory input in an interesting way: the texture of anything one looks at quickly becomes saturated with nested 2-dimensional symmetry groups. If you took enough DMT to take you to this level and you keep your eyes open and look at a patterned surface (i.e. statistical texture), it will symmetrify beyond recognition. A explains that at this level DMT visuals share some qualities with those of, say, LSD, mescaline, and psilocin. Like other psychedelics, DMT’s Chrysanthemum level can instantiate any 2-dimensional symmetry, yet there are important differences from other psychedelics at this dose range. These include the consistent change in ambiance (already present in threshold doses), the complexity and consistency of the symmetrical relationships (much more dense and whole-experience-consistent than is usually possible with other psychedelics), and the speed (with a control-interruption frequency reaching up to 30 hertz, compared to 10-20 hertz for most psychedelics). Thus, people tend to point out that DMT visuals (at this level) are “faster, smaller, more detailed and more globally consistent” than on comparable levels of alteration from similar agents.\nNow, if you take a dose that is a little higher (in the ballpark of 8 to 12 mg), the Chrysanthemum will start doing something new and interesting…\n(3) The Magic Eye Level\nA great way to understand the Magic Eye level of DMT effects is to think of the Chrysanthemum as the texture of an autostereogram (colloquially described as “Magic Eye” pictures). Our visual experience can be easily decomposed into two points-of-view (corresponding to the feed coming from each eye) that share information in order to solve the depth-map problem in vision. This is to map each visual qualia to a space with relative distances so (a) the input is explained and (b) you get recognizable every-day objects represented as implicit shapes beneath the depth-map. You can think of this process as a sort of hand-shake between bottom-up perception and top-down modeling.\nIn everyday conditions one solves the depth-map problem within a second of opening one’s eyes (minus minor details that are added as one looks around). But on DMT, the “low-level perceptions” looks like a breathing Chrysanthemum, which means that the top-down modeling has that “constantly shifting” stuff to play with. What to make of it? Anything you can think of.\nThere are three major components of variance on the DMT Magic Eye level:\n\nTexture (dependent on the Chrysanthemum’s evolution)\nWorld-sheet (non-occluding 3D1T depth maps)\nExtremely lowered information copying threshold.\n\n \n\n\n\nThe image on the left is a lobster, the one on the center is a cone and the one to the right contains furniture (a lamp, a chair and a table). Notice that what you see is a sort of depth-map which encodes shapes. We will call this depth-map together with the appearance of movement and acceleration represented in it, a world-sheet.\nWorld-Sheets\n \n\n\n\nThe world-sheet encodes the “semantic content” of the scene and is capable of representing arbitrary situations (including information about what you are seeing, where you are, what the entities there are doing, what is happening, etc.).\nIt is common to experience scenes from usually mundane-looking places like ice-cream stores, play pens, household situations, furniture rooms, apparel, etc.. Likewise, one frequently sees entities in these places, but they rarely seem to mind you because their world is fairly self-contained. As if seeing through a window. People often report that the worlds they saw on a DMT trip were all “made of the same thing”. This can be interpreted as the texture becoming the surfaces of the world-sheet, so that the surfaces of the tables, chairs, ice-cream cones, the bodies of the people, and so on are all patterned with the same texture (just as in actual autostereograms). This texture is indeed the Chrysanthemum completely contorted to accommodate all the curvature of the scene.\nMagic Eye level scenes often include 3D geometrical shapes like spheres, cones, cylinders, cubes, etc. The complexity of the scene is roughly dose-dependent. As one ups the highness (but still remaining within the Magic Eye level) complex translucid qualia crystals in three dimensions start to become a possibility.\nWhatever phenomenal objects you experience on this level that lives for more than a millisecond needs to have effective strategies for surviving in an ecosystem of other objects adapted to that level. Given the extremely lowered information copying threshold, whatever is good at making copies of itself will begin to tesselate, mutate and evolve, stealing as much of your attention as possible in the way. Cyclic transitions occupy one’s attention: objects quickly become scenes which quickly become gestalts from which a new texture evolves in which new objects are detected and so on ad infinitum.\n\nA reports that at this dose range one can experience at least some of the 230 space groups as objects represented in the world-sheet. For example, A reports having stabilized a structure with a Pm-3m symmetry structure, not unlike the structure of ZIF-71-RHO. Visualizing such complex 3D symmetries, however, does seem to require previous training and high levels of mental concentration (i.e. in order to ensure that all the symmetry elements are indeed what they are supposed to be).\nThere is so much qualia laying around, though, at times not even your normal space can contain it all. Any regular or semi regular symmetrical structure you construct by focusing on it is prone to overflow if you focus too much on it. What does this mean? If you focus too much on, for example, the number 6, your mind might represent the various ways in which you can arrange six balls in a perfectly symmetrical way. Worlds made of hexagons and octahedrons interlocked in complex but symmetrical ways may begin to tesselate your experiential field. With every second you find more and more ways of representing the number six in interesting, satisfying, metaphorically-sound synesthetic ways (cf. Thinking in Numbers). Now, what happens if you try to represent the number seven in a symmetric way on the plane? Well, the problem is that you will have too many heptagons to fit in Euclidean space (cf. Too Many Triangles). Thus the resulting symmetrical patterns will seem to overflow the plane (which is often felt as a folding and fluid re-arrangement, and when there is no space left in a region it either expands space or it is felt as some sort of synesthetic tension or stress, like a sense of crackling under a lot of pressure).\n \n\n\n\nIn particular, A claims that in the lower ranges of the DMT Magic Eye level the texture of the Chrysanthemum tends to exhibit heptagonal and triheptagonal tilings (as shown in the picture above). A explains that at the critical point between the Chrysanthemum and the Magic Eye levels the intensity of the rate of symmetry detection of the Chrysanthemum cannot be contained to a 2D surface. Thus, the surface begins to fold, often in semi-symmetric ways. Every time one “recognizes” an object on this “folding Chrysanthemum” the extra curvature is passed on to this object. As the dose increases, one interprets more and more of this extra curvature and ends up shaping a complex and highly dynamic spatiotemporal depth map with hyperbolic folds. In the upper ranges of the Magic Eye level the world-sheet is so curved that the scenes one visualize are intricate and expansive, feeling at times like one is able to peer through one’s horizon in all directions and see oneself and one’s world from a distance. At some critical point one may feel like the space around one is folding into a huge dome where the walls are made of whatever texture + world-sheet combination happened to win the Darwinian selection pressures applied to the qualia patterns on the Magic Eye level. This concentrated hyperbolic synesthetic texture is what becomes the walls of the Waiting Room…\n(4) Waiting Room\nIn the range of 12-25mg of DMT a likely final destination is the so-called Waiting Room. This experience is distinguished from the Magic Eye level in several ways: first, the world-sheet at this level breaks into several quasi-independent components, each evolving semi-autonomously. Second, one goes from “partial immersion” into “full immersion”. The transition between Magic Eye and Waiting Room often looks like “finding a very complex element in the scene and using it as a window into another dimension”. The total 2D surface curvature present (by adding up the curvature of all elements in the scene) is substantially higher than that of the Magic Eye level, and one can start to see actual 3D hyperbolic space. Perhaps a way of describing this transition is as follows: The curvature of the world-sheet gets to be so extreme that in order to accommodate it one’s entire multi-modal experiential field becomes involved, and a feeling of total and complete synchronization of all senses into a unified synesthetic experience is inescapable (often described as the “mmmMMMMMMM+++++!!!” whole-body tone people report). Thus the feeling of entering into an entirely new dimension. This explains what people mean when they say: “I experienced such an intense pressure that my soul could not be contained in my tiny body, and the intense pressure launched me into a bigger world”.\n \n\n\n\nThe images above, taken together, are meant as an impressionistic replication of what a Waiting Room experience may feel like. On the left you see the textured world-sheet curved in several ways resulting in an enclosed room with shimmering walls and an entity looking at a futuristic-looking contraption. The images on the right are meant to illustrate the ways in which the texture of the world-sheet evolves: you will find that the micro-structure of such texture is constantly unfolding in new symmetrical ways (bottom right), and propagating such changes throughout the entire surface at a striking speed (top right).\nDMT Waiting Rooms contain entities that at times do interact directly with you. Their reality is perceived as a much more intense and intimate version of what human interaction normally is, but they do not give the impression of being telepathic. That said, their power is felt as if they could radiate it. One could say that this level of DMT places you in such an intimate, vulnerable and open state that interpreting the entities in a second-person social mode is almost inevitable. It is like interacting with someone you really know (or perhaps someone you really really want to know… or really really don’t want to know), except that the whole world is made of those feelings and some entities inhabit that world.\nSerious hard-core psychonauts tend to describe the Waiting Room as a temporary stopgap. Indeed more poetry could ever be written about the Waiting Room states of consciousness than about most human activities, for its state-space is larger, more diverse and more hedonically loaded. But even so, it is important to realize that there are even weirder states. Serious psychonauts exploring the upper ranges of humanly-accessible high energy consciousness research may see Waiting Rooms as a stepping stones to the real deal…\n(5) Breakthrough\nIf one manages to ingest around 20-30mg of DMT there is a decent chance that one will achieve a DMT breakthrough experience (some sources place the dosage as high as 40mg). There is no agreed-upon definition for a “DMT breakthrough”, but most experienced users confirm that there is a qualitative change in the structure and feel of one’s experience on such high doses. Based on A’s observations we postulate that DMT breakthroughs are the result of a world-sheet with a curvature so extreme that topological bifurcations start to happen uncontrollably. In other words, the very topology of one’s world-sheet is forced to change in order to accommodate all of the intense curvature.\n \n\n\n\nThe geometry of space you experience may suddenly go from a simply-connected space into something else. What does this mean? Suddenly one may feel like space itself is twisting and reconnecting to itself in complex (and often confusing) ways. One may find that given any two points on this “alien world” there may be loops between them. This has drastic effects on one’s every representation (including, of course, the self-other divide). The particular feeling that comes with this may explain the presence of PSIS-like experiences induced by DMT and high dose LSD (cf. LSD and Quantum Measurements). Since the topological bifurcations are happening on a 3D1T world-sheet, this may look like “multiple things happening at once” or “objects taking multiple non-overlapping paths at once in order to get from one place into another”. The entities at this level feel transpersonal: due to the extreme curvature it is hard to distinguish between the information you ascribe to your self-model and the information you ascribe to others. Thus one is all over the place, in a literal topological sense.\nWhile on the Waiting Room one can stabilize the context where the experience seems to be taking place, on a DMT breakthrough state one invariably “moves across vast regions, galaxies, universes, realities, etc.” in a constant uncontrollable way. Why is this? This may be related to whether one can contain the curvature of the objects one attends to. If the curvature is uncontrollable, it will “pass on to the walls” and result in constant “context switches”. In fact, such a large fraction of 3D space is perceived as hyperbolic in one way or another, that one seems to have access to vast regions of reality at the same time. Thus a sense of radical openness is often experienced.\n(6) Amnesia Level\nUnlike 5-MeO-DMT, “normal DMT” experiences are not typically so mind-warping that they dissolve one’s self-model completely. On the contrary, many people report DMT as having “surprisingly little effect on one’s sense of self except at very high doses” relative to the overall intensity of the alteration. Thus, DMT usually does not produce amnesia due to ego death directly. Rather, the amnesic properties of DMT at high doses can be blamed on the difficulty of instantiating the necessary geometry to make sense of what was experienced. In the case of doses above “breakthrough experiences” there is a chance that the user will not be able to recall anything about the most intense periods of the journey. Unfortunately, we are not likely to learn much from these states (that is, until we live in a community of people who can access other phenomenal geometries in a controlled fashion).\nRecalling the Immemorial\nWe postulate that the difficulty people have remembering the phenomenal quality of a DMT experience is in part the result of not being able to access the geometry required to accurately relive their hallucinations. The few and far apart elements of the experience that people do somehow manage to remember, we posit, are those that happen to be (relatively) easy to embed in 3D Euclidean space. Thus, we predict that what people do manage to “bring back” from hyperspace will be biased towards those things that can be represented in R3.\nThis explains why people remember experiencing intensely saddled scenes (e.g. fractals, tunnels, kale worlds, recursive processes, and so on). Unfortunately most information-rich and interesting (irreducible, prime) phenomenal objects one experiences on DMT are by their very nature impossible to embed in our normal experiential geometry. This problem reveals an intrinsic limitation that comes from living in a community of intelligences (i.e. contemporary humans) who are constrained in the range of state-spaces of consciousness that they can access. This realization calls for a new epistemological paradigm, one that incorporate state-specific representations into a globally accessible database of states of consciousness, together with the network that emerges from their mutual (in)intelligibility.\nDMT Objects\nThe increased curvature of one’s world-sheet can manifest in endless ways. In some important ways, the state-space of possible scenes that you can experience on DMT is much bigger than what you can experience on normal states of consciousness. Strictly speaking, you can represent more scenes on DMT states than in most other states because the overall amount qualia available is much larger. Of course the very dynamics of these experiences constrains what can be experienced, so there are still many things inaccessible on DMT. For instance, it may be impossible to experience a perfectly uniform blue screen (since the Chrysanthemum texture is saturated with edges, surfaces and symmetrical patterns). Likewise, scenes that are too irregular may be impossible to stabilize given the omnipresent symmetry enhancement found in the state.\nWhat are the nature of the objects and entities one experiences on DMT? Magic Eye level experiences tend to include objects that are usually found in our everyday life. It is at the DMT waiting room level and above that the “truly impossible objects” begin to emerge. In particular, all of these objects are often curved in extreme ways. They condense within them complex networks of interlocking structures sustaining an overall superlative curvature. Here are some example objects that one can experience on Waiting Room and Breakthrough level experiences:\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNotice that all of these images have many saddles everywhere. Ultimately, the range of objects one can experience on such states includes many other features that are impossible to represent in R3. The objects that people do manage to bring back and recall later on, are precisely those that can be embedded in R3. Thus you often see extremely contorted wrapped-up objects. The most interesting ones (such as quasi-regular H3 tilings or irreducible objects) are next-to-impossible to bring back in any meaningful way, for now at least.\nDMT Space Expansion\nThe expansion of space responsible for the increased curvature happens anywhere you direct your attention (including the objects you see). Here you can see what it may look like to stare at a DMT object: This is called the “jitterbox” mechanism.\n\nDMT entities\nDMT entities come in many forms, and their overall quality is extremelly dose-dependent. Rather than describing any specific manifestation we will instead briefly characterize the rough properties of the entities experienced based on the level reached.\n\nThreshold: Usually the ambiance change has a social feel to is. More similar to entering a room of people of an alien culture, than entering an empty cave or a warm pool on your own. In this sense the very beginning of a DMT experience may already frame the experience in social terms and facilitate the expectation of meeting entities.\nChrysanthemum: One can feel perhaps the subtle presence of entities, but they are often interpreted as “feeling connected” to one’s friends, relatives and acquaintances. The feeling does not manifest in any clear spatial way, though. Other than that, this state is apersonal in the sense that one does not see any entity directly.\nMagic Eye: Here the entities can be roughly described as having an impersonal relationship with you. They are just there, hanging out on their own, often engrossed with whatever activities your world-sheet is capable of representing for them.\nWaiting Room: At this level entities start becoming able to interact with you. They feel like autonomous beings wrapped in mystery. Their intentions, what they know, and their emotional states can be guessed from their behavior, but they are not immediately obvious.\nBreakthrough: At this level the entities one meets seem to have what we might call a transpersonal relationship with you. They share their own internal states (emotions, knowledge, wishes, etc) with you. It feels like they can communicate telepathically and “see through” you. One cannot hide one’s “private” mental contents from them at this level.\nAmnesia: One cannot remember, of course, exactly what happens here. But if trip reports are any indication, this level is reminiscent of highly “mystical” states in which one’s implicit beliefs about Personal Identity are obliterated and replaced by the feeling of becoming an all-encompassing entity. “Union with God” and “Samadhi” are terms that describe the subjective feeling of self in this state. In other words, at this level it is impossible to distinguish between oneself and other entities, for all is represented as one. (Beware of never trying to go here if you feel bad at the time since negative hedonic tone can be amplified just as much as a good feeling such as Samadhi).\n\nModeling the Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT\nHow can we explain the drastic geometric changes of phenomenal space on DMT? As mentioned earlier, we will discuss three (non-mutually exclusive) hypothesis. These hypothesis work at the level of an algorithmic reduction, which means that we will go deeper than just describing information processing and phenomenology. We will stop short of addressing the implementation level of abstraction. It is worth pointing out that describing the ways in which DMT experiences are hyperbolic is in itself an algorithmic reduction. What we are about to do is to develop a more granular algorithmic reduction in which we try to explain why hyperbolic geometry emerges on DMT states by postulating underlying processes. Here are the three reductions:\n(1) Control Interruption + Symmetry detection = Change in Metric\nRecall that on a previous article we algorithmically reduced general psychedelic states. The building blocks of that reduction were:\n\nControl Interruption (which amounts to a “longer half-life for all qualia”)\nDrifting (“breathing walls, eyes moving from their normal place, waving sensations”)\nEnhanced Pattern Recognition (pareidolia, cf. Getting Closed to Digital LSD)\nLowered Symmetry Detection Threshold (quasi-symmetric patterns tend to “lock into” perfectly symmetrical structures)\n\nUsing this framework one can argue that DMT makes space more hyperbolic in the following way: in high amounts the synergistic effect of control interruption together with extremely lowered symmetry detection thresholds experienced in quick succession makes the subjective distance between the points in the phenomenal objects in the scene evolve a hyperbolic metric. How would this happen? The key thing to realize is that in this model the usual quasi-Euclidean space we experience is an emergent effect of an equilibrium between these two forces. Even in normal circumstances our world-sheet is continuously regenerated; the rate at which symmetrical relationships in the scene are detected is balanced by the rate at which these subjective measurements are forgotten. This usually results in an emergent Euclidean geometry. On DMT the rate of symmetry detection increases while the rate of “forgetting” (inhibiting control) decreases. Attention points out more relationships in quick succession and this creates a network of measured subjective distances that cannot be embedded in Euclidean 3D space. Thus there is an overflow of symmetries. We are currently working on a precise mathematical model of this process in order to reconstruct a hyperbolic metric out of these two parameters. In this model, control interruption is interpreted as a change in the decay for subjective measurements of distance in one’s mind, whereas the lowered symmetry detection threshold is interpreted as a change in the probability of measuring the distance between any two given points as a function of the network of distances already measured.\nThe curvature increase is most salient where there is already a lot of measurements made, since highly-measured regions focus attention and attention drives symmetry detection. Thus, focusing on any surface will make the surface itself hyperbolic (rather than the 3D space, since measurements are mostly concentrated on the surface). On the other hand, if the curvature is too high to keep on a 2D surface, it will “jump” to 3D or even 3D1T (i.e. branching out the temporal component of one’s experience). The result is that the total curvature of one’s 3D1T world-sheet increases on DMT in a dose-dependent way.\nDifferent doses lead to different states of curvature homeostasis. Each part of the worldsheet has constantly-morphing shapes and sudden curvature changes, but the total curvature is nonetheless more or less preserved on a given dose. It is not easy to get rid of excess curvature. Rather, whenever one tries to reduce the curvature in one part of the scene one is simply pushing it elsewhere. Even when one manages to push most of the curvature out of a given modality (e.g. vision) it is likely to quickly return in another modality (e.g. kinesthetic or auditory landscape) since attention never ceases on a DMT trip. Such apparent dose-dependent global curving of the world-sheet (and its jump from one modality into another) constrains the shape of the objects one can represent on the state (thus leading to alien-looking highly-curved objects similar to the ones shown above).\n(2) Dynamic System Account: Energy Sources, Sinks and Invariants\nEnergy Invariants\nLet us define a notion of energy in consciousness so that we can formalize the way experiences warps and transforms on DMT. Assume that one needs “energy” in order to instantiate a given experience (really, this is just an implicit invariant and we could use a different name). Each feature of a given experience needs a certain amount of energy, which roughly corresponds to a weighted sum of the intensity and the information content of an experience. For instance, the brightness of a point of colored light in one’s visual field is energy-dependent. Likewise, the information content in a texture, the number of represented symmetrical relationships, the speed by which an object moves (plus its acceleration), and even the curvature of one’s geometry. All of these features require energy to be instantiated.\nUnder normal circumstances the brain has many clever and (evolutionarily) appropriate ways of modulating the amount of energy present in different modules of one’s mind. That is, we have many programs that work as energy switches for different mental activities depending on the context. When we think, we have allocated a certain amount of energy to finding a shape/thought-form that satisfies a number of constraints. When it shape-shifting that energy in various ways and finding a solution, we either allocate more energy to it or perhaps give up. However, on DMT the energy cannot be switched off, and it can only pass from one modality into another. In other words, whereas in normal circumstances one uses strategically one’s ability to give energy limits to different tasks, on DMT one simply has constant high energy globally no matter what.\nMore formally, this model of DMT action says that DMT modifies the structure of one’s mind so that (1) energy freely passes from one form into another, and (2) energy floods the entire system. Let’s talk about energy sources and sinks.\nEnergy Sources and Sinks\nIn this algorithmic reduction DMT increases the amount of consciousness in one’s mind by virtue of impairing our normal energy sinks while increasing the throughput of its energy sources. This may frequently manifests as phenomenal spaces becoming hyperbolic in the mathematical-geometric sense of increasing its negative curvature as such curvature is one manifestation of higher levels of energy. Energy sinks are still present and they struggle to capture as much of the energy as possible. In particular, one energy sink is “recognition” of objects on the world-sheet.\nThis model postulates that attention functions as an energy source, whereas pattern recognition functions as an energy sink.\nThe Hamiltonian of a World-sheet\nThe total energy in one’s consciousness increases on DMT, and there is a constant flow between different ways for this energy to take form. That said, one can analyze piecewise the various components of one’s experience, specially if the network of energy exchange clusters well. In particular, we can postulate that world-sheets are fairly self-contained. Relative to other parts of the environment the mind is simulating, the world-sheet itself has a very high within-cluster energy exchange and a relatively low cross-cluster energy exchange. One’s world-sheet is very fluid, and little deformations propagate almost linearly throughout it. In a given dose plateau, if you add up the acceleration, the velocity, the curvature, and so on of every point in the world-sheet you will come up with a number that remains fairly constant over time. Thus studying the Hamiltonian of a world-sheet (i.e. the state-space given by a constant level of energy) can be very informative in describing both the information content and the experiential intensity of DMT experiences.\nYou can deform a surface without changing its local curvature. (Source: Gauss’ “Remarkable Theorem” [seriously not my quotes]). Thus on a DMT trip plateau there is still a lot of room for transformations of the world-sheet into different shapes with similar curvature.Under normal circumstances the curvature of one’s world-sheet is, as far as I can tell, arousal-dependent. Have you noticed how when you feel tired you are more likely to defocus your visual experience? You are tired late at night and you are trying to watch a movie, but bringing the scene in focus is too much of an effort so you defocus for a little bit (still listening to the dialogue). What did you do that for? In the framework here proposed, you did that to diminish the energy it takes you to sustain a curved world-sheet with a lot of information. Doing so may be aesthetically pleasing and rewarding when fully awake or excited, but when tired the returns on doing the focusing are not great given how much effort it needs and the fact that the dialogue is more essential for the plot anyway.\nIt takes effort and wakefulness to focus on a complex scene with many intricate details. (Reading and trying to comprehend this essay may itself require significant conscious energy expenditure). For this reason we might say that DMT is an exceedingly effective arouser of consciousness.\nBayesian Energy Sinks\nOne essential property of our minds is that our level of mental arousal decreases when we interpret our experience as “expected”. People who can enjoy their own minds do so, in part, by finding unexpected ways of understanding expected things. In the presence of new information that one cannot easily integrate, however, one’s level of energy is adjusted upwards so that we try out a variety of different models quickly and try to sort out a model that does make the new information expected (though perhaps integrating new assumptions or adding content in other ways). When we cannot manage to generate a mental model that works out a likely model of what we are experiencing we tend to remain in an over-active state.\nThis general principle applies to the world-sheet. One of the predominant ways in which a world-sheet reduces its energy (locally) is by morphing into something you can recognize or interpret. Thus the world-sheet in some way keeps on producing objects, at first familiar, but in higher energies the whole process can seem desperate or hopeless: one can only recognize things with a stretch of the imagination. Since humans in general lack much experience with hyperbolic geometry, we usually don’t manage to imagine objects that are symmetric on their own native geometry. But when we do, and we fill them up with resonant light-mind-energy, then BAM! New harmonics of consciousness! New varieties of bliss! Music of the angels! OMG! Laughter till infinity and more- shared across the galaxy- in a hyperbolic transpersonal delight! It’s like LSD and N2O! Wow!\nForgive me, it is my first day. Let’s carry on. As one does not know any object that the world-sheet can reasonably be able to generate in high doses, and the world-sheet has so much energy on its own, energy can seem to spiral out of control. This explains in part the non-linear relationship between experienced intensity and DMT dose.\nLike all aspects of one’s consciousness, the negative curvature of phenomenal space tends to decay over time (possibly through inhibition by the cortex). In this case, the feeling is one of “smoothing out the curves” and embedding the phenomenal objects in 3D euclidean space. However, this is opposed by the effect that attention and (degrees of) awareness have on our phenomenal sheet, which is to increase its negative curvature. On DMT, anything that attention focuses on will begin branching, copying itself and multiplying, a process that quickly saturates the scene to the point of filling more spatial relationships than would fit in Euclidean 3D. The rate at which this happens is dose-dependent. The higher the dose, the less inhibiting control there is and the more intense the “folding” property of attention will be. Thus, for different dosages one reaches different homeostatic levels of overall curvature in one’s phenomenal space. Since attention does not stop at any point during a DMT trip (it keeps being bright and intense all throughout) there isn’t really any rest period to sit back and see the curvature get smoothed out on its own. Everything one thinks about, perceives or imagines branches out and bifurcate at a high speed.\nEvery moment during the experience is very hard to “grasp” because the way one normally does that in usual circumstances is by focusing attention on it and shaping one’s world-sheet to account for the input. But here that very attention makes the world-sheet wobble, warp and expand beyond recognition. Thus one might say that during a solid DMT experience one never sees the same thing twice, as the experience continues to evolve. That is, of course, as long as you do not stumble upon (or deliberatively create) stable phenomenal objects whose structure can survive the warping effect of attention.\n(3) Hyperbolic Micro-structure of Consciousness\nSubjectively, A says, negative curvature is associated with more energy. Perhaps this curvature happens at a very low level? An example to light up the imagination is using heat to fold a sheet of metal (thanks to thermal expansion). Whatever your attention focuses on seems to get heated up (in some sense) and expand as a result. The folding patterns themselves seem to store potential energy. Left on their own, this extra energy stored as negative curvature usually dissipates, but on DMT this process is lowered (while the effect of increasing the energy is heightened). Could this be the result of some very very fine-level micro-experiential change that gradually propagates upwards? With the help of our normal mental processes the change in the micro-structure may propagate all the way into seemingly hyperbolic 2D and 3D surfaces.\nPerhaps the most important difference between DMT in high doses and other psychedelics is that the micro-structure of consciousness drifts in such a way that tiny Droste effects bubble up into large Möbius transforms.\nAs noted already, these three algorithmic reductions are not incompatible. We just present them here due to their apparent explanatory power. A lot more theoretical work will be needed to make them quantitative and precise, but we are optimistic. The aim is now to develop an experimental framework to distinguish between the predictions that each candidate algorithmic reduction makes (including many not presented here). This is a work in progress.\nGeneralizing hyperbolization to non-spatial experiential fields\nIn the case of experiential fields such as body feelings, smells and concepts, the “hyperbolization” takes different forms depending on the algorithmic reduction you use. I prefer the very general interpretation that one experiences hyperbolic information geometry rather than just hyperbolic space. In other words, when we talk about body feelings and so on, on a psychedelic one organizes such information in a hyperbolic relational graph, which also exhibits a negative curvature relative to its normal geometry. Arguing in favor of this interpretation would take another article, so we will leave that for another time.\nGetting a handle on the DMT state\nGluing a 1-handle is easy on a 2-sphere. Tongue in cheek, sticking a little doughnut on a big ball allows you to grab the sphere and control it in some way. But how do you get a handle on hyperbolic space? The answer is to build hyperbolic manifolds at the core of one’s being, by imagining knots very intensely. The higher one is, the more complex the knot one can imagine in detail. Having practiced visualizations of this sort while sober certainly helps. If you imagine the knot with enough detail, you can then stress the environment surrounding it to represent a warped hyperbolic space. This way you give life to the complement of the knot (which is almost always hyperbolic!). We postulate that it is possible to study in detail the relationship between the knots imagined, and the properties of the experiential worlds that result from their inversion (i.e. thinking about the geometry of the space surrounding the knot rather than the knot itself). A reports that different hyperbolic spaces generated this way (i.e. imagining knots on tryptamines) have different levels of energy, and have unique resonant properties. Different kinds of music feel better in different kinds of hyperbolic manifolds. It takes more energy to “light up” a hyperbolic space like that, mostly due to its openness. This is why using small doses of 2C-B can be helpful to create a positive backbone to the experience (providing the necessary warmth to light up the hyperbolic space). Admittedly MDMA tends to work best, but its use is unadvisable for reasons we will not get into (related to the hedonic treadmill). A healthy combination that both enables the visualization of the hyperbolic spaces in a vivid way and also lights them up with positive hedonic tone healthily and reliably has yet to be found.\n\nRelatedly… Get a handle on your DMT trip by creating a stabilizing 4D hyperbolic manifold in four easy steps:\n \n\n\n\n\nUnifying Your Space\nGod, the divine, open individualism, the number one, an abstract notion of self, or the thought of existence itself are all thoughts that work as great “unifiers” of large areas of phenomenal space. Indeed these concepts can allow a person to connect the edges of the hyperbolic space and create a pocket of one’s experience that does not seem to have a boundary yet is extremely open. This may be a reason why such ideas are very common in high levels of psychedelia. In a sense, depending on the mind, they have at times the highest recruiting power for your multi-threaded attention.\nApplications to Qualia Computing and Closing Thoughts\nBeyond mere designer synesthesia, the future of consciousness research contains the possibility of exploring alternative geometries for the layout of our experiences. One’s overall level of energy, its manifestation, the allowed invariants, the logic gates, the differences in resonance, the granularity of the patterns, and so on, are all parameters that we will get to change in our minds to see what happens (in controlled and healthy ways, of course). The exploration of the state-space of consciousness is sure to lead to a combinatorial explosion. Even with good post-theoretical quantitative algorithmic reductions, it is likely that qualia computing scientists will still find an unfathomable number of distinct “prime” permutations. For some applications it may be more useful to use special kinds of hyperbolic spaces (like the compliment of certain class of knot), but for others it may suffice to be a little sphere. Who knows. In the end, if a valence economy ends up dominating the world, then the value of hyperbolic phenomenal spaces will be proportional to the level of wellbeing and bliss that can be felt in them. Which space in which resonant mode generates the highest level of bliss? This is an empirical question with far-reaching economic implications.\nMathematics post-hyperbolic consciousness\nI predict that some time in the next century or so many of the breakthroughs in mathematics will take place in consciousness research centers. The ability to utilize arbitrary combinations of qualia with programable geometry and information content (in addition to our whole range of pre-existing cognitive skills) will allow people to have new semantic primitives related to mathematical structures and qualia systems currently unfathomable to us. In the end, studying the mathematics of consciousness and valence is perhaps the ultimate effective altruist endeavor in a world filled with suffering, since reverse-engineering valence would simplify paradise engineering… But even in a post-scarcity world, consciousness research will also probably be the ultimate past time given the endless new discoveries awaiting to be found in the state-space of consciousness.\n\n*On the unexpected side effects of staring at a cauliflower on DMT: You can get lost in the hyperbolic reality of the (apparent) life force that spirals in a scale-free fractal fashion throughout the plant. The spirals may feel like magnetic vortexes that take advantage of your state to attract your attention. The cauliflower may pull you into its own world of interconnected fractals, and as soon as you start to trust it, it begins trying to recruit you for the cauliflower cause. The cauliflower may scare you into not eating it, and make you feel guilty about frying it. You may freak out a little, but when you come down you convince yourself that it was all just a hallucination. That said, you secretly worry it was for real. You may never choose to abstain from eating cauliflowers, but you will probably drop the knife when cooking it. You will break it apart with your own hands in the way you think minimizes its pain. You sometimes wonder whether it experiences agony as it is slowly cooked in the pan, and you drink alcohol to forget. Damn, don’t stare at a cauliflower while high on DMT if you ever intend to eat one again.\nP.S. Note on Originality: The only mention I have been able to find that explicitly connects hyperbolic geometry in a literal sense with DMT (rather than just metaphorical talk of “hyperspace”) is a 2014 post in the Psychonaut subredit. To my knowledge, no one has yet elaborated to any substantial degree on this interesting connection. That said, I’m convinced that during the days that follow a strong trip, psychedelic self-experimenters may frequently wonder about the geometry of the places they explored. Yet they usually lack any conceptual framework to justify their intuitions or even verbalize them, so they quickly forget about them.\nP.S.S. Example Self-Dribbling Basketball:\nSelf-dribbling basketball\nTo the right you can see what a “self-dribbling basketball” looks like. The more you try to “grasp” what it is, the more curved it gets. That’s because you are adding energy with you attention and you do not have enough recognition ability in this space to lower its energy and reduce the curvature to stabilize it. The curvature is so extreme at times that it produces constant “context switches”. This is the result of excess curvature being pushed towards the edge of your experience and turning into walls and corridors.\nP.S.S.S.: Example on world-sheet bending:\nBelow you can find two gifs that illustrate the behavior of a world-sheet on a 5mg vs. 20mg dose. The speed at which you are adding curvature to it increases so much that the shapes and objects keep shifting to accommodate it all.\n(Super-trippy symmetric hyperbolic manifold representations: http://newearthlovelight.tumblr.com/post/70053311720)\n \n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/12/12/the-hyperbolic-geometry-of-dmt-experiences/", "title": "The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-12-12T11:28:03+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=22", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "25e18ff4f033fdce017ca271b1435b19", "summary": []}
{"text": "Thinking in Numbers\n\nTo this day, readers both of [my] first book [Born on a Blue Day] and of my second, Embracing the Wide Sky, continue to send me their messages. They wonder how it must be to perceive words and numbers in different colors, shapes, and textures. They try to picture solving a sum in their minds using these multi-dimensional colored shapes. They seek the same beauty and emotion that I find in both a poem and a prime number. What can I tell them?\nImagine.\nClose your eyes and imagine a space without limits, or the infinitesimal events that can stir up a country’s revolution. Imagine how the perfect game of chess might start and end: a win for white, or black, or a draw? Imagine numbers so vast that they exceed every atom in the universe, counting with eleven or twelve fingers instead of ten, reading a single book in an infinite number of ways.\nSuch imagination belongs to everyone. It even possesses its own science: mathematics. Ricardo Nemirovsky and Francesca Ferrara, who specialize in the study of mathematical cognition, write that “like literary fiction, mathematical imagination entertains pure possibilities.” This is the distillation of what I take to be interesting and important about the way in which mathematics informs our imaginative life. Often we are barely aware of it, but the play between numerical concepts saturates the way we experience the world.\n \n– Extract from the book Thinking in Numbers, by Daniel Tammet.\nDaniel was diagnosed with high-functioning autistic savant syndrome. He also happens to have synesthesia. Unlike most people, he has complex multi-modal experiences when thinking about numbers. But unlike most synesthetes, Daniel’s synesthesia is computationally useful in arithmetic tasks. This makes his mind a proof of concept that one can develop innovative computational uses for otherwise bizarre qualia varieties connected in bizarre ways. I.e. his synesthesia shows the potential that lies dormant in the realm of qualia computing.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/12/03/thinking-in-numbers/", "title": "Thinking in Numbers", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-12-03T09:59:30+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=22", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e4f36f225cb6b8a26dcc23120200fed5", "summary": []}
{"text": "Praise and Blame are Instrumental\n\nThe question of whether it’s morally blameworthy not to devote your whole life to reducing suffering conjures the wrong idea. Utilitarianism is not a binary morality in which you’re right if you do the best possible thing and wrong otherwise. Rather, utilitarianism is more like a point counter in a video game, where you aim to accumulate as many points as you can within the bounds of reason. There’s no binary “right” and “wrong”. You just do the best you can.\n \nRelatedly, the idea of a “moral obligation” is not intrinsic to utilitarianism. Talk about “duties” and “requirements” is a way humans communicate when they want to motivate others strongly to perform some action. “Rightness” and “wrongness” judgments are useful instrumentally as a way to motivate good behavior.\n \nThus, to call someone “morally blameworthy” unless she gives up her family and friends to devote her life to reducing suffering is a self-defeating strategy. It would be like creating a club with a $10 million membership fee. Sure, you might get a few members, but in order to appeal to a broad audience of people who can be helping with the cause, the bar has to be much lower.\n \nIn addition, it’s a mistake to think like this: “Setting a low bar is just a way to make sure more people help, but once I joined the cause, I’d see that demanding vastly more of myself would be much better than just doing a little bit. Therefore, this cause is too demanding, and I won’t join.” This is precisely Edmund Burke’s fallacy. If imagined excessive duties prevent you from accepting utilitarianism, those excessive duties were not a utilitarian recommendation to begin with. Rather, you’re making an error.\n \n– Extract from the essay “Demandingness” by Brian Tomasik", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/11/21/praise-and-blame-are-instrumental/", "title": "Praise and Blame are Instrumental", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-11-21T06:21:33+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=23", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "5f2ff2615722db3d055fa976c6e39a7b", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Tyranny of the Intentional Object\n\n> Rats, of course, have a very poor image in our culture. Our mammalian cousins are still widely perceived as “vermin”. Thus the sight of a blissed-out, manically self-stimulating rat does not inspire a sense of vicarious happiness in the rest of us. On the contrary, if achieving invincible well-being entails launching a program of world-wide wireheading – or its pharmacological and/or genetic counterparts – then most of us will recoil in distaste.\n> Yet the Olds’ rat, and the image of electronically-triggered bliss, embody a morally catastrophic misconception of the landscape of options for paradise-engineering in the aeons ahead. For the varieties of genetically-coded well-being on offer to our successors needn’t be squalid or self-centered. Nor need they be insipid, empty and amoral à la Huxley’s Brave New World. Our future modes of well-being can be sublime, cerebral and empathetic – or take forms hitherto unknown.\n> Instead of being toxic, such exotically enriched states of consciousness can be transformed into the everyday norm of mental health. When it’s precision-engineered, hedonic enrichment needn’t lead to unbridled orgasmic frenzy. Nor need hedonic enrichment entail getting stuck in a wirehead rut. This is partly because in a naturalistic setting, even the crudest dopaminergic drugs tend to increase exploratory behaviour, will-power and the range of stimuli an organism finds rewarding. Novelty-seeking is normally heightened. Dopaminergics aren’t just euphoriants: they also enhance “incentive-motivation”. On this basis, our future is likely to be more diverse, not less.\n> Perhaps surprisingly too, controlled euphoria needn’t be inherently “selfish” – i.e. hedonistic in the baser, egoistic sense. Non-neurotoxic and sustainable analogues of empathogen hug-drugs like MDMA (“Ecstasy“) – which releases a lot of extra serotonin and some extra dopamine – may potentially induce extraordinary serenity, empathy and love for others. An arsenal of cognitive enhancers will allow us be smarter too. For feeling blissful isn’t the same as being “blissed-out”.\n– Wirehead Hedonism vs Paradise Engineering by David Pearce\n\nDirect realism is the view that we can perceive “directly” the world around us. A direct realist may say things like “the color red is a property of objects” and “red is a frequency of light”. Contrast this view with representative/indirect realism, which posits that we all live in private world simulations that (for evolutionary reasons) accurately depict some of the important properties of our environment having to do with survival and reproduction but do not depict the environment as it truly is. A representative realist may say that “red is one of the underlying phenomenal parameters that furbishes the walls of my own private world simulation.” It so happens that the qualia of red is often triggered by such and such frequencies of light, but blind people with synesthesia of the sound-color variety can experience phenomenal red upon hearing certain notes anyway. We can indeed dissociate the medium as well as the sensory apparatus that usually triggers a given qualia variety from the qualia variety in and of itself.\nWhereas direct realism about perception can be weakened with philosophy and psychedelia, most people are indeed direct realists about valence (i.e. the pleasure-pain axis) for their entire lives. To be a direct realist about valence is to believe that the only way for you to be happy is to experience the triggers that in the past have usually seemed like the source of positive and negative states. Valence- how good an experience feels- is a property of experiences, but these experiences are implemented in such a way that pleasure appears to come from outside rather than from within. Thus, a kid may conceptualize a clown as the personification of evil, and think of a chocolate bar as an object made of tiny particles of pure deliciousness. The experiential horizon, of course, is ultimately still within the bounds of the simulation, but we are so immersed in our minds and its value systems that at times it is hard to understand that what ends up triggering our states of wellbeing is programmable and somewhat arbitrary.\nA direct realist about valence may say something like “the soup is delicious” and mean it full heartedly in a literal sense. Someone who is not a direct realist about valence would say that “your world simulation happens to get more pleasant when you are sipping the soup” not that “the soup, in and of itself, is delicious”. The direct realist about valence may insist that it is in fact the soup- out there in the real world- that has the property of “deliciousness” and that if others do not like the soup they are merely having a perceptual problem. The truth of the deliciousness of the soup, the direct realist claims, does not leave room for personal opinion. Of course few people are this extreme and bite the bullet of their implicit metaphysical intuitions. But a subtler version of this kind of realism does seem to permeate throughout the vast majority of human activities and rituals. To illustrate how direct realism about valence can influence one’s worldview let me introduce you to:\nSandy the Dog!\nSandy is a Golden Retriever that loves life and sand. He does not know why sand is so awesome, but he doesn’t care because it doesn’t matter, for all he knows “sand is awesome” is a brute fact of existence. He wonders whether the similarity between his name and his passion means that they were born for each other, but other than that he has no clue as to why sand and him partner so well. Other than this odd passion of his, Sandy has a normal life as a domestic dog; he responds to the same range of rewards as your typical Golden Retriever. He loves being pet by his owner, playing fetch and eating delicious food really fast. He is in generally good health, too.\nOf all the wonderful things that Sandy knows about, nothing makes him happier than going to the beach. For Sandy the beach is the most beautiful thing in the universe because it is the maximum expression of sand. You wouldn’t believe how excited he gets when he approaches the beach. Then how incredibly meaningful it seems to him to finally get to touch the sand, and how happy and relaxed he ends up feeling after playing with the sand for a while.\n\n\n\n\nFor the sake of the argument let us say that Sandy’s life is strictly better than the life of most comparable dogs. His love for sand enriches his life rather than detracts from it (or so he would claim). The beach gives him a place to truly enjoy life to the maximum without hurting anyone (including himself) or missing out on other nice things about life. Now please take a moment and consider whether you think Sandy should be allowed to enjoy sand so much.\nNow let’s talk about Sandy’s history. Sandy loves sand because his owner put a tiny implant in his brain’s pleasure centers programmed to activate the areas for liking and wanting when Sandy is in the proximity of sand.\nSandy is unaware of the truth, but does it matter? To him sand is what truly matters. The fact that what he is actually after is states of high-valence completely eludes him. The implementation of his reward architecture is opaque from his point of view.\nCould it be that we all are under a similar spell, albeit a more complex one? The point to highlight here is that like Sandy, both you and I chase positive valence even when we don’t know that we are doing so. Our world simulations work so well that they hide the true nature of our goals, even to ourselves.\nA side issue worth mentioning is that some people might react to this scenario by saying that we are robbing Sandy of his agency. But are we not all already enslaved by our evolutionarily ancient preference architecture? One can certainly argue that if we are going to improve Sandy’s life we should do so in a way that also increases his autonomy. Good point. But how do we increase his autonomy without increasing his intelligence? In the case of sapient beings, there are good reasons to request that people do not mess with one’s preference architecture without one’s knowledge. But for sentient non-sapient beings like dogs and pre-linguistic toddlers, there is a good case for leaving the hedonic recalibration up to a competent adult with its best interests in mind.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/11/19/the-tyranny-of-the-intentional-object/", "title": "The Tyranny of the Intentional Object", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-11-19T10:11:14+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=23", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "a200599c5f3ec0c71f571cfdd72bceb2", "summary": []}
{"text": "Schrödinger’s Neurons: David Pearce at the “2016 Science of Consciousness” conference in Tucson\n\n\nAbstract:\n \nMankind’s most successful story of the world, natural science, leaves the existence of consciousness wholly unexplained. The phenomenal binding problem deepens the mystery. Neither classical nor quantum physics seem to allow the binding of distributively processed neuronal micro-experiences into unitary experiential objects apprehended by a unitary phenomenal self. This paper argues that if physicalism and the ontological unity of science are to be saved, then we will need to revise our notions of both 1) the intrinsic nature of the physical and 2) the quasi-classicality of neurons. In conjunction, these two hypotheses yield a novel, bizarre but experimentally testable prediction of quantum superpositions (“Schrödinger’s cat states”) of neuronal feature-processors in the CNS at sub-femtosecond timescales. An experimental protocol using in vitro neuronal networks is described to confirm or empirically falsify this conjecture via molecular matter-wave interferometry.\n \nFor more see: https://www.physicalism.com/\n \n(cf. Qualia Computing in Tucson: The Magic Analogy)\n \n\n(Trivia: David Chalmers is one of the attendees of the talk and asks a question at 24:03.)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/11/15/schrodingers-neurons-david-pearce-at-the-2016-science-of-consciousness-conference-in-tucson/", "title": "Schrödinger’s Neurons: David Pearce at the “2016 Science of Consciousness” conference in Tucson", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-11-15T02:08:45+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=23", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "eac1d8ae74b58a78d8083c5b5c75d7d0", "summary": []}
{"text": "Beyond Turing: A Solution to the Problem of Other Minds Using Mindmelding and Phenomenal Puzzles\n\nHere is my attempt at providing an experimental protocol to determine whether an entity is conscious.\nIf you are just looking for the stuffed animal music video skip to 23:28.\n\n\nAre you the only conscious being in existence? How could we actually test whether other beings have conscious minds?\nTuring proposed to test the existence of other minds by measuring their verbal indistinguishability from humans (the famous “Turing Test” asks computers to pretend to be humans and checks if humans buy the impersonations). Others have suggested the solution is as easy as connecting your brain to the brain of the being you want to test.\nBut these approaches fail for a variety of reasons. Turing tests can be beaten by dream characters and mindmelds might merely work by giving you a “hardware upgrade”. There is no guarantee that the entity tested will be conscious on its own. As pointed out by Brian Tomasik and Eliezer Yudkowsky, even if the information content of your experience increases significantly by mindmelding with another entity, this could still be the result of the entity’s brain working as an exocortex: it is completely unconscious on its own yet capable of enhancing your consciousness.\nIn order to go beyond these limiting factors, I developed the concept of a “phenomenal puzzle”. These are problems that can only be solved by a conscious being in virtue of requiring inner qualia operations for their solution. For example, a phenomenal puzzle is to arrange qualia values of phenomenal color in a linear map where the metric is based on subjective Just Noticeable Differences.\nTo conduct the experiment you need:\n\nA phenomenal bridge (e.g. a biological neural network that connects your brain to someone else’s brain so that both brains now instantiate a single consciousness).\nA qualia calibrator (a device that allows you to cycle through many combinations of qualia values quickly so that you can compare the sensory-qualia mappings in both brains and generate a shared vocabulary for qualia values).\nA phenomenal puzzle (as described above).\nThe right set and setting: the use of a proper protocol.\n\nHere is an example protocol that works for 4) – though there may be other ones that work as well. Assume that you are person A and you are trying to test if B is conscious:\nA) Person A learns about the phenomenal puzzle but is not given enough time to solve it.\nB) Person A and B mindmeld using the phenomenal bridge, creating a new being AB.\nC) AB tells the phenomenal puzzle to itself (by remembering it from A’s narrative).\nD) A and B get disconnected and A is sedated (to prevent A from solving the puzzle).\nE) B tries to solve the puzzle on its own (the use of computers not connected to the internet is allowed to facilitate self-experimentation).\nF) When B claims to have solved it A and B reconnect into AB.\nG) AB then tells the solution to itself so that the records of it in B’s narrative get shared with A’s brain memory.\nH) Then A and B get disconnected again and if A is able to provide the answer to the phenomenal puzzle, then B must have been conscious!\nTo my knowledge, this is the only test of consciousness for which a positive result is impossible (or maybe just extremelly difficult?) to explain unless B is conscious.\nOf course B could be conscious but not smart enough to solve the phenomenal puzzle. The test simply guarantees that there will be no false positives. Thus it is not a general test for qualia – but it is a start. At least we can now conceive of a way to know (in principle) whether some entities are conscious (even if we can’t tell that any arbitrary entity is). Still, a positive result would completely negate solipsism, which would undoubtedly be a great philosophical victory.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/11/12/beyond-turing-a-solution-to-the-problem-of-other-minds-using-mindmelding-and-phenomenal-puzzles/", "title": "Beyond Turing: A Solution to the Problem of Other Minds Using Mindmelding and Phenomenal Puzzles", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-11-12T09:53:29+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=23", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ac128ec15d4e0ef7574b3c4bf736fb71", "summary": []}
{"text": "Core Philosophy\n\nDavid Pearce asked me ages ago to make accesible videos about transhumanism, consciousness and the abolitionist project. Well, here is a start \n\nIn this video I outline the core philosophy and objectives of Qualia Computing. There are three main goals here:\n \n\n\nCatalogue the entire state-space of consciousness\nIdentify the computational properties of each experience (and its qualia components), and\nReverse engineer valence (i.e. to discover the function that maps formal descriptions of states of consciousness to values in the pleasure-pain axis)\n\n \nWhile describing the 1st objective I explain that we start by realizing that consciousness is doing something useful (or evolution would not have been able to recruit it for information-processing purposes). I also go on to explain the difference between qualia varieties (e.g. phenomenal color, smell, touch, thought, etc.) and qualia values (i.e. the specific points in the state-spaces defined by the varieties, such as “pure phenomenal blue” or the smell of cardamom).\n \nWith regards to the 2nd objective, I explain that our minds actually use the specific properties of each qualia variety in order to represent information states and then to solve computational problems. We are only getting started in this project.\n \nAnd 3rd, I argue that discovering exactly what makes an experience “worth living” in a formal and mathematical way is indeed ethically urgent. With a fundamental understanding of valence we can develop precise interventions to reduce (even prevent altogether) any form of suffering without messing up with our capacity to think and explore the state-space of consciousness (at least the valuable part of it).\n \nI conclude by pointing out that the 1st and 2nd research programs actually interact in non-trivial ways: There is a synergy between them which may lead us to a recursively self-improving intelligence (and do so in a far “safer” way than trying to build an AGI through digital software).\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/11/12/core-philosophy/", "title": "Core Philosophy", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-11-12T09:44:47+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=23", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "1b5784488fc7cb080cdd4c6d97cb9383", "summary": []}
{"text": "David Pearce on the “Schrodinger’s Neurons Conjecture”\n\nMy friend +Andrés Gómez Emilsson on Qualia Computing: LSD and Quantum Measurements: Can you see Schrödinger’s cat both dead and alive on acid?\n \nMost truly radical intellectual progress depends on “crazy” conjectures. Unfortunately, few folk who make crazy conjectures give serious thought to extracting novel, precise, experimentally falsifiable predictions to confound their critics. Even fewer then publish the almost inevitable negative experimental result when their crazy conjecture isn’t confirmed. So kudos to Andrés for doing both!!\n \nWhat would the world look like if the superposition principle never breaks down, i.e. the unitary Schrödinger dynamics holds on all scales, and not just the microworld? The naïve – and IMO mistaken – answer is that without the “collapse of the wavefunction”, we’d see macroscopic superpositions of live-and-dead cats, experiments would never appear to have determinate outcomes, and the extremely well tested Born rule (i.e. the probability of a result is the squared absolute value of the inner product) would be violated. Or alternatively, assuming DeWitt’s misreading of Everett, if the superposition principle never breaks down, then when you observe a classical live cat, or a classical dead cat, your decohered (“split”) counterpart in a separate classical branch of the multiverse sees a dead cat or a live cat, respectively.\n \nIn my view, all these stories rest on a false background assumption. Talk of “observers” and “observations” relies on a naïve realist conception of perception whereby you (the “observer”) somehow hop outside of your transcendental skull to inspect the local mind-independent environment (“make an observation”). Such implicit perceptual direct realism simply assumes – rather than derives from quantum field theory – the existence of unified observers (“global” phenomenal binding) and phenomenally-bound classical cats and individually detected electrons striking a mind-independent classical screen cumulatively forming a non-classical interference pattern (“local” phenomenal binding). Perception as so conceived – as your capacity for some sort of out-of-body feat of levitation – isn’t physically possible. The role of the mind-independent environment beyond one’s transcendental skull is to select states of mind internal to your world-simulation; the environment can’t create, or imprint its signature on, your states of mind (“observations”) – any more than the environment can create or imprint its signature on your states of mind while you’re dreaming.\n \nHere’s an alternative conjecture – a conjecture that holds regardless of whether you’re drug-naïve, stone-cold sober, having an out-of-body experience on ketamine, awake or dreaming, or tripping your head off on LSD. You’re experiencing “Schrodinger’s cat” states right nowin virtue of instantiating a classical world-simulation. Don’t ask what’s it like to perceive a live-and-dead Schrödinger’s cat; ask instead what it’s like to instantiate a coherent superposition of distributed feature-processing neurons. Only the superposition principle allows you to experience phenomenally-bound classical objects that one naively interprets as lying in the mind-independent world. In my view, the universal validity of the superposition principle allows you to experience a phenomenally bound classical cat within a seemingly classical world-simulation – or perform experiments with classical-looking apparatus that have definite outcomes, and confirm the Born rule. Only the vehicle of individual coherent superpositions of distributed neuronal feature-processors allows organic mind-brains to run world simulations described by an approximation of classical Newtonian physics. In the mind-independent world – i.e. not the world of your everyday experience – the post-Everett decoherence program in QM pioneered by Zeh, Zurek et al. explains the emergence of an approximation of classical “branches” for one’s everyday world-simulations to track. Yet within the CNS, only the superposition principle allows you to run a classical world-simulation tracking such gross fitness-relevant features of your local extracranial environment. A coherent quantum mind can run phenomenally-bound simulations of a classical world, but a notional classical mind couldn’t phenomenally simulate a classical world – or phenomenally simulate any other kind of world. For a supposedly “classical” mind would just be patterns of membrane-bound neuronal mind-dust: mere pixels of experience, a micro-experiential zombie.\n \nCritically, molecular matter-wave interferometry can in principle independently be used to test the truth – or falsity – of this conjecture (see: https://www.physicalism.com/#6).\n \nOK, that’s the claim. Why would (almost) no scientifically informed person take the conjecture seriously?\n \nIn a word, decoherence.\n \nOn a commonsense chronology of consciousness, our experience of phenomenally bound perceptual objects “arises” via patterns of distributed neuronal firings over a timescale of milliseconds – the mystery lying in how mere synchronised firing of discrete, decohered, membrane-bound neurons / micro-experiences could generate phenomenal unity, whether local or global. So if the lifetime of coherent superpositions of distributed neuronal feature-processors in the CNS were milliseconds, too, then there would be an obvious candidate for a perfect structural match between the phenomenology of our conscious minds and neurobiology / fundamental physics – just as I’m proposing above. Yet of course this isn’t the case. The approximate theoretical lifetimes of coherent neuronal superpositions in the CNS can be calculated: femtoseconds or less. Thermally-induced decoherence is insanely powerful and hard to control. It’s ridiculous – intuitively at any rate – to suppose that such fleeting coherent superpositions could be recruited to play any functional role in the living world. An epic fail!\n \nToo quick.\nLet’s step back.\nMany intelligent people initially found it incredible that natural selection could be powerful enough to throw up complex organisms as thermodynamically improbable as Homo sapiens. We now recognise that the sceptics were mistaken: the human mind simply isn’t designed to wrap itself around evolutionary timescales of natural selection playing out over hundreds of millions of years. In the CNS, another form of selection pressure plays out – a selection pressure over one hundred of orders of magnitude (sic) more powerful than selection pressure on information-bearing self-replicators as conceived by Darwin. “Quantum Darwinism” as articulated by Zurek and his colleagues isn’t the shallow, tricksy metaphor one might naively assume; and the profound implications of such a selection mechanism must be explored for the world-simulation running inside your transcendental skull, not just for the extracranial environment. At work here is unimaginably intense selection pressure favouring comparative resistance to thermally (etc)-induced decoherence [i.e. the rapid loss of coherence of complex phase amplitudes of the components of a superposition] of functionally bound phenomenal states of mind in the CNS. In my view, we face a failure of imagination of the potential power of selection pressure analogous to the failure of imagination of critics of Darwin’s account of human evolution via natural selection. It’s not enough lazily to dismiss sub-femtosecond decoherence times of neuronal superpositions in the CNS as the reductio ad absurdum of quantum mind. Instead, we need to do the interferometry experiments definitively to settle the issue, not (just) philosophize.\n \nUnfortunately, unlike Andrés, I haven’t been able to think of a DIY desktop experiment that could falsify or vindicate the conjecture. The molecular matter-wave experiment I discuss in “Schrodinger’s Neurons” is conceptually simple but (horrendously) difficult in practice. And the conjecture it tests is intuitively so insane that I’m sometimes skeptical the experiment will ever get done. If I sound like an advocate rather than a bemused truth-seeker, I don’t mean to be so; but if phenomenal binding _isn’t _quantum-theoretically or classically explicable, then dualism seems unavoidable. In that sense, David Chalmers is right.\n \nHow come I’m so confident that superposition principle doesn’t break down in the CNS? After all, the superposition principle has been tested only up to the level of fullerenes, and no one yet has a proper theory of quantum gravity. Well, besides the classical impossibility of the manifest phenomenal unity of consciousness, and the cogent reasons that a physicist would give you for not modifying the unitary Schrödinger dynamics, the reason is really just a philosophical prejudice on my part. Namely, the universal validity of the superstition principle of QM offers the only explanation-space that I can think of for why anything exists at all: an informationless zero ontology dictated by the quantum analogue of the library of Babel.\n \nWe shall see.\n– David Pearce, commenting on the latest significant article published on this blog.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/11/08/david-pearce-on-the-schrodingers-neurons-conjecture/", "title": "David Pearce on the “Schrodinger’s Neurons Conjecture”", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-11-08T23:17:35+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=23", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "82bf03d15d38fe0a611bca91e8d8e096", "summary": []}
{"text": "Samadhi\n\nVanished are the veils of light and shade,\nLifted the vapors of sorrow,\nSailed away the dawn of fleeting joy,\nGone the mirage of the senses.\nLove, hate, health, disease, life and death –\nDeparted, these false shadows on the screen\nof duality.\nWaves of laughter, scyllas of sarcasm, whirlpools\nof melancholy,\nMelting in the vast sea of bliss.\nBestilled is the storm of maya\nBy the magic wand of intuition deep.\nThe universe, a forgotten dream, lurks\nsubconsciously,\nReady to invade my newly wakened memory divine.\nI exist without the cosmic shadow,\nBut it could not live bereft of me;\nAs the sea exists without the waves,\nBut they breathe not without the sea.\nDreams, wakings, states of deep turiya sleep,\nPresent, past, future, no more for me,\nBut the ever-present, all-flowing, I, I everywhere.\nConsciously enjoyable,\nBeyond the imagination of all expectancy,\nIs this, my samadhi state.\nPlanets, stars, stardust, earth,\nVolcanic bursts of doomsday cataclysms,\nCreation’s moulding furnace,\nGlaciers of silent X-rays,\nBurning floods of electrons,\nThoughts of all men, past, present, future,\nEvery blade of grass, myself and all,\nEach particle of creation’s dust,\nAnger, greed, good, bad, salvation, lust,\nI swallowed up – transmuted them\nInto one vast ocean of blood of my own one Being!\nSmoldering joy, oft-puffed by unceasing meditation,\nWhich blinded my tearful eyes,\nBurst into eternal flames of bliss,\nAnd consumed my tears, my peace, my frame,\nmy all.\nThou art I, I am Thou,\nKnowing, Knower, Known, as One!\nOne tranquilled, unbroken thrill of eternal, living, ever-new peace!\nNot an unconscious state\nOr mental chloroform without wilful return,\nSamadhi but extends my realm of consciousness\nBeyond the limits of my mortal frame\nTo the boundaries of eternity,\nWhere I, the Cosmic Sea,\nWatch the little ego floating in Me.\nNot a sparrow, nor a grain of sand, falls\nwithout my sight\nAll space floats like an iceberg in my mental sea.\nI am the Colossal Container of all things made!\nBy deeper, longer, continuous, thirsty,\nguru – given meditation,\nThis celestial samadhi is attained.\nAll the mobile murmurs of atoms are heard;\nThe dark earth, mountains, seas are molten liquid!\nThis flowing sea changes into vapors of nebulae!\nAum blows o’er the vapors; they open their veils,\nRevealing a sea of shining electrons,\nTill, at the last sound of the cosmic drum,\nGrosser light vanishes into eternal rays\nOf all-pervading Cosmic Joy.\nFrom Joy we come,\nFor Joy we live,\nIn the sacred Joy we melt.\nI, the ocean of mind, drink all creation’s waves.\nThe four veils of solid, liquid, vapor, light,\nLift aright.\nMyself, in everything,\nEnters the Great Myself.\nGone forever,\nThe fitful, flickering shadows of a mortal memory.\nSpotless is my mental sky,\nBelow, ahead, and high above.\nEternity and I, one united ray.\nI, a tiny bubble of laughter,\nHave become the Sea of Mirth Itself.\n \n– Songs of the Soul. Paramahansa Yogananda (source)\n(cf. Ontological Qualia: The Future of Personal Identity)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/11/03/samadhi/", "title": "Samadhi", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-11-03T10:57:15+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=23", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "980bebde5bdb476acab3831d3d6c5f23", "summary": []}
{"text": "Panpsychism and Compositionality: A solution to the hard problem\n\nBy Anand Rangarajan\n \nWe begin with the assumption that all emergentist approaches are inadequate to solve the hard problem of experience. Consequently, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that consciousness is fundamental and that some form of panpsychism is true. Unfortunately, panpsychism faces the combination problem – why should proto-experiences combine to form full fledged experiences? Since the combination problem has resisted many attempts, we argue for compositionality as the missing ingredient needed to explain mid level experiences such as ours. Since this is controversial, we carefully present the full argument below. To begin, we assume, following Frege, that experience cannot exist without being accompanied by a subject of experience (SoE). An SoE provides the structural and spatio-temporally bounded “container” for experience and following Strawson is conceived as a thin subject. Thin subjects exhibit a phenomenal unity with different types of phenomenal content (sensations, thoughts etc.) occurring during their temporal existence. Next, following Stoljar, we invoke our ignorance of the true physical as the reason for the explanatory gap between present day physical processes (events, properties) and experience. We are therefore permitted to conceive of thin subjects as physical compositions. Compositionality has been an intensely studied area in the past twenty years. While there is no clear consensus here, we argue, following Koslicki, that a case can be made for a restricted compositionality principle and that thin subjects are physical compositions of a certain natural kind. In this view, SoEs are natural kind objects with a yet to be specified compositionality relation connecting them to the physical world. The specifics of this relation will be detailed by a new physics and at this juncture, all we can provide are guiding metaphors. We suggest that the relation binding an SoE to the physical is akin to the relation between a particle and field. In present day physics, a particle is conceived as a coherent excitation of a field and is spatially and temporally bounded (with the photon being the sole exception). Under the right set of circumstances, a particle coalesces out of a field and dissipates. We suggest that an SoE can be conceived as akin to a particle coalescing out of physical fields, persisting for a brief period of time and then dissipating – in a manner similar to the phenomenology of a thin subject. Experiences are physical properties of SoEs with the constraint (specified by a similarity metric) that SoEs belonging to the same natural kind will have similar experiences. The counter-intuitive aspect of this proposal is the unexpected “complexity” exhibited by SoE particles but we have been prepared for this by the complex behavior of elementary particles in over ninety years of experimental physics. Consequently, while it is odd at first glance to conceive of subjects of experience as particles, the spatial and temporal unity exhibited by particles as opposed to fields and the expectation that SoEs are new kinds of particles, paves the way for cementing this notion. Panpsychism and compositionality are therefore new bedfellows aiding us in resolving the hard problem.\n \n– Talk given at The Science of Consciousness 2016, held in Tucson Arizona (slides)\n(cf. Qualia Computing in Tucson: The Magic Analogy)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/11/02/panpsychism-and-compositionality-a-solution-to-the-hard-problem/", "title": "Panpsychism and Compositionality: A solution to the hard problem", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-11-02T06:56:39+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=23", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "668d216411bb7a3a917fed4c6dbd344e", "summary": []}
{"text": "LSD and Quantum Measurements: Can you see Schrödinger’s cat both dead and alive on acid?\n\n[Content Warnings: Psychedelic Depersonalization, Fear of the Multiverse, Personal Identity Doubts, Discussion about Quantum Consciousness, DMT entities, Science]\n\nThe brain is wider than the sky,\nFor, put them side by side,\nThe one the other will include\nWith ease, and you beside.\n– Emily Dickinson\nIs it for real?\nA sizable percentage of people who try a high dose of DMT end up convinced that the spaces they visit during the trip exist in some objective sense; they either suspect, intuit or conclude that their psychonautic experience reflects something more than simply the contents of their minds. Most scientists would argue that those experiences are just the result of exotic brain states; the worlds one travels to are bizarre (often useless) simulations made by our brain in a chaotic state. This latter explanation space forgoes alternate realities for the sake of simplicity, whereas the former envisions psychedelics as a multiverse portal technology of some sort.\nSome exotic states, such as DMT breakthrough experiences, do typically create feelings of glimpsing foundational information about the depth and structure of the universe. Entity contact is frequent, and these seemingly autonomous DMT entities are often reported to have the ability to communicate with you. Achieving a verifiable contact with entities from another dimension would revolutionize our conception of the universe. Nothing would be quite as revolutionary, really. But how to do so? One could test the external reality of these entities by asking them to provide information that cannot be obtained unless they themselves held an objective existence. In this spirit, some have proposed to ask these entities complex mathematical questions that would be impossible for a human to solve within the time provided by the trip. This particular test is really cool, but it has the flaw that DMT experiences may themselves trigger computationally-useful synesthesia of the sort that Daniel Tammet experiences. Thus even if DMT entities appeared to solve extraordinary mathematical problems, it would still stand to reason that it is oneself who did it and that one is merely projecting the results into the entities. The mathematical ability would be the result of being lucky in the kind of synesthesia DMT triggered in you.\nA common overarching description of the effects of psychedelics is that they “raise the frequency of one’s consciousness.” Now, this is a description we should take seriously whether or not we believe that psychedelics are inter-dimensional portals. After all, promising models of psychedelic action involve fast-paced control interruption, where each psychedelic would have its characteristic control interrupt frequency. And within a quantum paradigm, Stuart Hameroff has argued that psychedelic compounds work by bringing up the quantum resonance frequency of the water inside our neurons’ microtubules (perhaps going from megahertz to gigahertz), which he claims increases the non-locality of our consciousness.\nIn the context of psychedelics as inter-dimensional portals, this increase in the main frequency of one’s consciousness may be the key that allows us to interact with other realities. Users describe a sort of tuning of one’s consciousness, as if the interface between one’s self and the universe underwent some sudden re-adjustment in an upward direction. In the same vein, psychedelicists (e.g. Rick Strassman) frequently describe the brain as a two-way radio, and then go on to claim that psychedelics expand the range of channels we can be attuned to.\nOne could postulate that the interface between oneself and the universe that psychonauts describe has a real existence of its own. It would provide the bridge between us as (quantum) monads and the universe around us; and the particular structure of this interface would determine the selection pressures responsible for the part of the multiverse that we interact with. By modifying the spectral properties of this interface (e.g. by drastically raising the main frequency of its vibration) with, e.g. DMT, one effectively “relocates” (cf. alien travel) to other areas of reality. Assuming this interface exists and that it works by tuning into particular realities, what sorts of questions can we ask about its properties? What experiments could we conduct to verify its existence? And what applications might it have?\nThe Psychedelic State of Input Superposition\nOnce in a while I learn about a psychedelic effect that captures my attention precisely because it points to simple experiments that could distinguish between the two rough explanation spaces discussed above (i.e. “it’s all in your head” vs. “real inter-dimensional travel”). This article will discuss a very odd phenomenon whose interpretations do indeed have different empirical predictions. We are talking about the experience of sensing what appears to be a superposition of inputs from multiple adjacent realities. We will call this effect the Psychedelic State of Input Superposition (PSIS for short).\nThere is no known way to induce PSIS on purpose. Unlike the reliable DMT hyper-dimensional journeys to distant dimensions, PSIS is a rare closer-to-home effect and it manifests only on high doses of LSD (and maybe other psychedelics). Rather than feeling like one is tuning into another dimension in the higher frequency spectrum, it feels as if one just accidentally altered (perhaps even broke) the interface between the self and the universe in a way that multiplies the number of realities you are interacting with. After the event, the interface seems to tune into multiple similar universes at once; one sees multiple possibilities unfold simultaneously. After a while, one somehow “collapses” into only one of these realities, and while coming down, one is thankful to have settled somewhere specific rather than remaining in that weird in-between. Let’s take a look at a couple of trip reports that feature this effect:\n[Trip report of taking a high dose of LSD on an airplane]: So I had what you call “sonder”, a moment of clarity where I realized that I wasn’t the center of the universe, that everyone is just as important as me, everyone has loved ones, stories of lost love etc, they’re the main character in their own movies.\n \nThat’s when shit went quantum. All these stories begun sinking in to me. It was as if I was beginning to experience their stories simultaneously. And not just their stories, I began seeing the story of everyone I had ever met in my entire life flash before my eyes. And in this quantum experience, there was a voice that said something about Karma. The voice told me that the plane will crash and that I will be reborn again until the quota of my Karma is at -+0. So, for every ill deed I have done, I would have an ill deed committed to me. For every cheap T-shirt I purchased in my previous life, I would live the life of the poor Asian sweatshop worker sewing that T-shirt. For every hooker I fucked, I would live the life of a fucked hooker.\n \nAnd it was as if thousands of versions of me was experiencing this moment. It is hard to explain, but in every situation where something could happen, both things happened and I experienced both timelines simultaneously. As I opened my eyes, I noticed how smoke was coming out of the top cabins in the plane. Luggage was falling out. I experienced the airplane crashing a thousand times, and I died and accepted death a thousand times, apologizing to the Karma God for my sins. There was a flash of the brightest white light imagineable and the thousand realities in which I died began fading off. Remaining was only one reality in which the crash didn’t happen. Where I was still sitting in the plane. I could still see the smoke coming out of the plane and as a air stewardess came walking by I asked her if everything was alright. She said “Yes, is everything alright with YOU?”.\n \n— Reddit user I_DID_LSD_ON_A_PLANE, in r/BitcoinMarkets (why there? who knows).\nFurther down on the same thread, written by someone else:\n[A couple hours after taking two strong hits of LSD]: Fast-forward to when I’m peaking hours later and I find myself removed from the timeline I’m in and am watching alternate timelines branch off every time someone does something specific. I see all of these parallel universes being created in real time, people’s actions or interactions marking a split where both realities exist. Dozens of timelines, at least, all happening at once. It was fucking wild to witness.\n \nThen I realize that I don’t remember which timeline I originally came out of and I start to worry a bit. I start focusing, trying to remember where I stepped out of my particular universe, but I couldn’t figure it out. So, with the knowledge that I was probably wrong, I just picked one to go back into and stuck with it. It’s not like I would know what changed anyway, and I wasn’t going to just hang out here in the whatever-this-place-is outside of all of them.\n \nToday I still sometimes feel like I left a life behind and jumped into a new timeline. I like it, I feel like I left a lot of baggage behind and there are a lot of regrets and insecurities I had before that trip that I don’t have anymore. It was in a different life, a different reality, so in this case the answer I found was that it’s okay to start over when you’re not happy with where you are in life.\n \n— GatorAutomator\nLet us summarize: Person X takes a lot of LSD. At some point during the trip (usually after feeling that “this trip is way too intense for me now”) X starts experiencing sensory input from what appear to be different branches of the multiverse. For example, imagine that person X can see a friend Y sitting on a couch in the corner. Suppose that Y is indecisive, and that as a result he makes different choices in different branches of the multiverse. If Y is deciding whether to stand up or not, X will suddenly see a shadowy figure of Y standing up while another shadowy figure of Y remains sitting. Let’s call them Y-sitting and Y-standing. If Y-standing then turns indecisive about whether to drink some water or go to the bathroom, X may see one shadowy figure of Y-standing getting water and a shadowy figure of Y-standing walking towards the bathroom, all the while Y-sitting is still on the couch. And so it goes. The number of times per second that Y splits and the duration of the perceived superposition of these splits may be a function of X’s state of consciousness, the substance and dose consumed, and the degree of indecision present in Y’s mind.\nThe two quotes provided are examples of this effect, and one can find a number of additional reports online with stark similarities. There are two issues at hand here. First, what is going on? And second, can we test it? We will discuss three hypotheses to explain what goes on during PSIS, propose an experiment to test the third one (the Quantum Hypothesis), and provide the results of such an experiment.\nHard-nosed scientists may want to skip to the “Experiment” section, since the following contains a fair amount of speculation (you have been warned).\nThree Hypothesis for PSIS: Cognitive, Spiritual, Quantum\nIn order to arrive at an accurate model of the world, one needs to take into account both the prior probability of the hypothesis and the likelihoods that they predict that one would obtain the available evidence. Even if one prior of yours is extremely strong (e.g. a strong belief in materialism), it is still rational to update one’s probability estimates of alternative hypotheses when new relevant evidence is provided. The difficulty often comes from finding experiments where the various hypotheses generate very different likelihoods for one’s observations.  As we will see, the quantum hypothesis has this characteristic: it is the only one that would actually predict a positive result for the experiment.\nThe Cognitive Hypothesis\nThe first (and perhaps least surreal) hypothesis is that PSIS is “only in one’s mind”. When person X sees person Y both standing up and staying put, what may be happening is that X is receiving photons only from Y-standing and that Y-sitting is just a hallucination that X’s inner simulation of her environment failed to erase.\nPsychedelics intensify one’s experience, and this is thought to be the result of control interruption. This means that inhibition of mental content by cortical feedback is attenuated. In the psychedelic state, sensory impressions, automatic reactions, feelings, thoughts and all other mental contents are more intense and longer-lived. This includes the predictions that you make about how your environment will evolve. Not only is one’s sensory input perceived as more intense, one’s imagined hypotheticals are also perceived more intensely.\nUnder normal circumstances, cortical inhibition makes our failed predictions quickly disappear. Psychedelic states of consciousness may be poor at inhibiting these predictions. In this account, X may be experiencing her brain’s past predictions of what Y could have done overlaid on top of the current input that she is receiving from her physical environment. In a sense, she may be experiencing all of the possible “next steps” that she simply intuited. While these simulations typically remain below the threshold of awareness (or just above it), on a psychedelic state they may reinforce themselves in unpredictable ways. X’s mind never traveled anywhere and there is nothing really weird going on. X is just experiencing the aftermath of a specific failure of information processing concerning the inhibition of past predictions.\nAlternatively, very intense emotions such as those experienced on intense ego-killing psychedelic experiences may distort one’s perception so much that one begins to suspect that one is perhaps dead or in another dimension. We can posit that the belief that one is not properly connected to one’s brain (or that one is dying) can trigger even stronger emotions and unleash a cascade of further distortions. This positive feedback loop may create episodes of intense confusion and overlapping pieces of information, which later might be interpreted as “seeing splitting universes”.\nThe Spiritual Hypothesis\nMany spiritual traditions postulate the existence of alternate dimensions, additional layers of reality, and hidden spirit pathways that connect all of reality. These traditions often provide rough maps of these realities and may claim that some people are able to travel to such far-out regions with mental training and consciousness technologies. For illustration, let’s consider Buddhist cosmology, which describes 31 planes of existence. Interestingly, one of the core ideas of this cosmology is that the major characteristic that distinguishes the planes of existence is the states of consciousness typical of their inhabitants. These states of consciousness are correlated with moral conditions such as the ethical quality of their past deeds (karma), their relationship with desire (e.g. whether it is compulsive, sustainable or indifferent) and their existential beliefs. In turn, a feature of this cosmology is that it allows inter-dimensional travel by changing one’s state of consciousness. The part of the universe one interacts with is a function of one’s karma, affinities and beliefs. So by changing these variables with meditation (or psychedelic medicine) one can also change which world we exist in.\nAn example of a very interesting location worth trying to travel to is the mythical city of Shambhala, the location of the Kalachakra Tantra. This city has allegedly turned into a pure land thanks to the fact that its king converted to Buddhism after meeting the Buddha. Pure lands are abodes populated by enlightened and quasi-enlightened beings whose purpose is to provide an optimal teaching environment for Buddhism. One can go to Shambhala by either reincarnating there (with good karma and the help of some pointers and directions at the time of death) or by traveling there directly during meditation. In order to do the latter, one needs to kindle one’s subtle energies so that they converge on one’s heart, while one is embracing the Bodhisattva ethic (focusing on reducing others’ suffering as a moral imperative). Shambhala may not be in a physical location accessible to humans. Rather, Buddhist accounts would seem to depict it as a collective reality built by people which manifests on another plane of existence (specifically somewhere between the 23rd and 27th layer). In order to create a place like that one needs to bring together many individuals in a state of consciousness that exhibits bliss, enlightenment and benevolence. A pure land has no reality of its own; its existence is the result of the states of consciousness of its inhabitants. Thus, the very reason why Shambhala can even exist as a place somewhere outside of us is because it is already a potential place that exists within us.\nSimilar accounts of a wider cosmological reality can be found elsewhere (such as Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Theosophy, etc.). These accounts may be consistent with the sort of experiences having to do with astral travel and entity contact that people have while on DMT and other psychedelics in high doses. However, it seems a lot harder to explain PSIS with an ontology of this sort. While reality is indeed portrayed as immensely vaster than what science has shown so far, we do not really encounter claims of parallel realities that are identical to ours except that your friend decided to go to the bathroom rather than drink some water just now. In other words, while many spiritual ontologies are capable of accommodating DMT hyper-dimensional travel, I am not aware of any spiritual worldview that also claims that whenever two things can happen, they both do in alternate realities (or, more specifically, that this leads to reality splitting).\nThe only spiritual-sounding interpretation of PSIS I can think of is the idea that these experiences are the result of high-level entities such as guardians, angels or trickster djinns who used your LSD state to teach you a lesson in an unconventional way. The first quote (the one written by Reddit user I_DID_LSD_ON_A_PLANE) seems to point in this direction, where the so-called Karma God is apparently inducing a PSIS experience and using it to illustrate the idea that we are all one (i.e. Open Individualism). Furthermore, the experience viscerally portrays the way that this knowledge should impact our feelings of self-importance (by creating a profound feeling of sonder). This way, the tripper may develop a lasting need to work towards peace, wisdom and enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.\nLife as a learning experience is a common trope among spiritual worldviews. It is likely that the spiritual interpretations that emerge in a state of psychedelic depersonalization and derealization will depend on one’s pre-existing ideas of what is possible. The atonement of one’s sins, becoming aware of one’s karma, feeling our past lives, realizing emptiness, hearing a dire mystical warning, etc. are all ideas that already exist in human culture. In an attempt to make sense- any sense- of the kind of qualia experienced in high doses of psychedelics, our minds may be forced to instantiate grandiose delusions drawn from one’s reservoir of far-out ideas.\nOn a super intense psychedelic experience in which one’s self-models fail dramatically and one experiences fear of ego dissolution, interpreting what is happening as the result of the Karma God judging you and then giving you another chance at life can viscerally seem to make a lot of sense at the time.\nThe Quantum Hypothesis\nFor the sake of transparency I must say that we currently do not have a derivation of PSIS from first principles. In other words, we have not yet found a way to use the postulates of quantum mechanics to account for PSIS (that is, assuming that the cognitive and spiritual hypothesis are not the case). That said, there are indeed some things to be said here: While a theory is missing, we can at least talk about what a quantum mechanical account of PSIS would have to look like. I.e. we can at least make sense of some of the features that the theory would need to have to predict that people on LSD would be able to see the superposition of macroscopic branches of the multiverse.\nWhy would being on acid allow you to receive input from macroscopic environments that have already decohered? How could taking LSD possibly prevent the so-called collapse of the wavefunction? You might think: “well, why even think about it? It’s simply impossible because the collapse of the wavefunction is an axiom of quantum mechanics and we know it is true because some of the predictions made by quantum mechanics (such as QED) are in agreement with experimental data up to the 12th decimal point.” Before jumping to this conclusion, though, let us remember that there are several formulations of quantum mechanics. Both the Born rule (which determines the probability of seeing different outcomes from a given quantum measurement) and the collapse of the wavefunction (i.e. that any quantum state other than the one that was measured disappears) are indeed axiomatic for some formulations. But other formulations actually derive these features and don’t consider them fundamental. Here is Sean Carroll explaining the usual postulates that are used to teach quantum mechanics to undergraduate audiences:\nThe status of the Born Rule depends greatly on one’s preferred formulation of quantum mechanics. When we teach quantum mechanics to undergraduate physics majors, we generally give them a list of postulates that goes something like this:\n\nQuantum states are represented by wave functions, which are vectors in a mathematical space called Hilbert space.\nWave functions evolve in time according to the Schrödinger equation.\nThe act of measuring a quantum system returns a number, known as the eigenvalue of the quantity being measured.\nThe probability of getting any particular eigenvalue is equal to the square of the amplitude for that eigenvalue.\nAfter the measurement is performed, the wave function “collapses” to a new state in which the wave function is localized precisely on the observed eigenvalue (as opposed to being in a superposition of many different possibilities).\n\n\nIn contrast, here is what you need to specify for the Everett (Multiple Worlds) formulation of quantum mechanics:\n\n\nQuantum states are represented by wave functions, which are vectors in a mathematical space called Hilbert space.\nWave functions evolve in time according to the Schrödinger equation.\n\n\nAnd that’s it. As you can see this formulation does not employ any collapse of the wavefunction, and neither does it consider the Born rule as a fundamental law. Instead, the wavefunction is thought to merely seem to collapse upon measurement (which is achieved by nearly diagonalizing its components along the basis of the measurement; strictly speaking, neighboring branches never truly stop interacting, but the relevance of their interaction approaches zero very quickly). Here the Born rule is derived from first principles rather than conceived as an axiom. How exactly one can derive the Born rule is a matter of controversy, however. Currently, two very promising theoretical approaches to do so are Quantum Darwinism and the so-called Epistemic Separability Principle (ESP for short, a technical physics term not to be confused with Extra Sensory Perception). Although these approaches to deriving the Born rule are considered serious contenders for a final explanation (and they are not mutually exclusive), they have been criticized for being somewhat circular. The physics community is far from having a consensus on whether these approaches truly succeed.\nIs there any alternative to either axiomatizing or deriving the apparent collapse and the Born rule? Yes, there is an alternative: we can think of them as regularities contingent upon certain conditions that are always (or almost always) met in our sphere of experience, but that are not a universal fact about quantum mechanics. Macroscopic decoherence and Born rule probability assignments work very well in our everyday lives, but they may not hold universally. In particular -and this is a natural idea to have under any view that links consciousness and quantum mechanics- one could postulate that one’s state of consciousness influences the mind-body interaction in such a way that information from one’s quantum environment seeps into one’s mind in a different way.\nDon’t get me wrong; I am aware that the Born rule has been experimentally verified with extreme precision. I only ask that you bear in mind that many scientific breakthroughs share a simple form: they question the constancy of certain physical properties. For example, Einstein’s theory of special relativity worked out the implications of the fact that the speed of light is observer-independent. In turn this makes the passage of time of external systems observer-dependent. Scientists had a hard time believing Einstein when he arrived at the conclusion that accelerating our frame of reference to extremely high velocities could dilate time. What was thought to be a constant (the passage of time throughout the universe) turned out to be an artifact of the fact that we rarely travel fast enough to notice any deviation from Newton’s laws of motion. In other words, our previous understanding was flawed because it assumed that certain observations did not break down in extreme conditions. Likewise, maybe we have been accidentally ignoring a whole set of physically relevant extreme conditions: altered states of consciousness. The apparent wavefunction collapse and the Born rule may be perfectly constant in our everyday frame of reference, and yet variable across the state-space of possible conscious experiences. If this were the case, we’d finally understand why it seems so hard to derive the Born rule from first principles: it’s impossible.\nSuccinctly, the Quantum Hypothesis is that psychedelic experiences modify the way one’s mind interacts with its quantum environment in such a way that the world does not appear to decohere any longer from one’s point of view. Our ignorance about the non-universality of the apparent collapse of the wavefunction is just a side effect of the fact that physicists do not usually perform experiments during intense life-changing entheogenic mind journeys. But for science, today we will.\nDeriving PSIS with Quantum Mechanics\nHere we present a rough (incomplete) sketch of what a possible derivation of PSIS from quantum mechanics might look like. To do so we need three background assumptions: First, conscious experiences must be macroscopic quantum coherent objects (i.e. ontologically unitary subsets of the universal wavefunction, akin to super-fluid helium or Bose–Einstein condensates, except at room temperature). Second, people’s decision-making process must somehow amplify low-level quantum randomness into macroscopic history bifurcations. And third, the properties of our quantum environment* are in part the result of the quantum state of our mind, which psychedelics can help modify. This third assumption brings into play the idea that if our mind is more coherent (e.g. is in a super-symmetrical state) it will select for wavefunctions in its environment that themselves are more coherent. In turn, the apparent lifespan of superpositions may be elongated long enough so that the quantum environment of one’s mind receives records from both Y-sitting and Y-standing as they are overlapping. Now, how credible are these three assumptions?\nThat events of experience are macroscopic quantum coherent objects is an explanation space usually perceived as pseudo-scientific, though a sizable number of extremely bright scientists and philosophers do entertain the idea very seriously. Contrary to popular belief, there are legitimate reasons to connect quantum computing and consciousness. The reasons for making this connection include the possibility of explaining the causal efficacy of consciousness, finding an answer to the palette problem with quantum fields and solving the phenomenal binding problem with quantum coherence and panpsychism.\nThe second assumption claims that people around you work as quantum Random Number Generators. That human decision-making amplifies low-level quantum randomness is thought to be likely by at least some scientists, though the time-scale on which this happens is still up for debate. The brain’s decision-making is chaotic, and over the span of seconds it may amplify quantum fluctuations into macroscopic differences. Thus, people around you making decisions may result in splitting universes (e.g. “[I] am watching alternate timelines branch off every time someone does something specific.” – GatorAutomator’s quote above). Presumably, this assumption would also imply that during PSIS not only people but also physics experiments would lead to apparent macroscopic superposition.\nWith regards to the third assumption: widespread microscopic decoherence is not, apparently, a necessary consequence of the postulates of quantum mechanics. Rather, it is a very specific outcome of (a) our universe’s Hamiltonian and (b) the starting conditions of our universe, i.e. Pre-Inflation/Eternal Inflation/Big Bang. (A Ney & D Albert, 2013). In principle, psychedelics may influence the part of the Hamiltonian that matters for the evolution of our mind’s wavefunction and its local interactions. In turn, this may modify the decoherence patterns of our consciousness with its local environment and- perhaps- ultimately the surrounding macroscopic world. Of course we do not know if this is possible, and I would have to agree that it is extremely far-fetched.\nThe overall picture that would emerge from these three assumptions would take the following form: both the mental content and raw phenomenal character of our states of consciousness are the result of the quantum micro-structure of our brains. By modifying this micro-structure, one is not only altering the selection pressures that give rise to fully formed experiences (i.e. quantum darwinism applied to the compositionality of quantum fields) but also altering the selection pressures that determine which parts of the universal wave-function we are entangled with (i.e. quantum darwinism applied to the interactions between coherent objects). Thus psychedelics may not only influence how our experience is shaped within, but also how it interacts with the quantum environment that surrounds it. Some mild psychedelic states (e.g. MDMA) may influence mostly the inner degrees of freedom of one’s mind, while other more intense states (e.g. DMT) may be the result of severe changes to the entanglement selection pressures and thus result in the apparent disconnection between one’s mind and one’s local environment. Here PSIS would be the result of decreasing the rate at which our mind decoheres (possibly by increasing the degree to which our mind is in a state of quantum confinement). In turn, by boosting one’s own inner degree of quantum superposition one may also broaden the degree of superposition acceptable at the interface with one’s quantum environment. One could now readily take in packets of information that have a wider degree of superposition. In the right circumstances, this may result in one’s mind experiencing information seemingly coming from alternate branches of the multiverse. In other words, the trick to PSIS both in the Quantum and the Spiritual Hypothesis is the same (though for different reasons): travel to other dimensions by being the change that you wish to see in the world. You need to increase your own degree of quantum coherence so that you become able of interacting with a more coherent quantum environment.\nIf this were the case it would call for a conceptual revolution. We would stop thinking of “our universe” as the “place we inhabit” and instead think of it as “the quantum environment our consciousness can interface with”. Perhaps life as we know it exists in a quantum niche that can give rise to embodied biological beings, but the universal wavefunction also contains alien state-spaces in which the patterns of entanglement work in different ways and lead to different evolutionary histories. Our minds evolved to interact with the particular environment that leads to the sustenance of our everyday macroscopic world. Our consciousness is shaped to fit in here, and it has a symbiotic relationship with the body that hosts it.\nNow, how do we go about testing the quantum hypothesis? Following previous work on psychophysics for psychedelic research, the main idea will be to show that people on psychedelics can achieve something that sober individuals can’t. In this case, the task is designed to be impossible if one is only receiving input from one world (as predicted by the cognitive hypothesis). Only if PSIS is the result of simultaneously experiencing input from the several nearby branches that correspond to different outcomes of quantum events can the task be successfully performed.\nThe Experiment\nSetup\nThe task in question involves three white little squares on a black background. At each time step (~16 milliseconds) the squares move one pixel down, and some number of pixels horizontally. While the downward movement is constant, the change in the horizontal direction is chosen randomly. The horizontal movement of one of the squares is being randomized on the fly with a Quantum Random Number Generator (qRNG**). We call this the quantum square. The horizontal movement of the other two squares follows a path that was determined at the beginning of each trial by a Classical Random Number Generator (cRNG***). We will refer to these two squares as the classical squares. The task for the participant is to identify which of the squares is the “odd one out” (i.e. the quantum square). Here is an infographic that explains the experimental setup:\n\nIn order to make the horizontal movement seem very chaotic and, at times even dramatic, it is randomized by choosing a horizontal change of either -4, -1, 1 or 4 pixels. By using a jump of 4 pixels (rather than e.g. 2) the squares sometimes seem to advance very quickly in one direction. The rationale for doing this was to make the predicted effect (assuming the Quantum Hypothesis) more noticeable – we want low probability paths that are extremely different than the typical path and in turn make it easy to distinguish between single paths and the superposition of many of the possible paths at once.\nCritically, the starting position of the quantum square (whether left, center or right) for each of the trials during an experiment is obtained with a cRNG at the very beginning of the experiment. Why not use a qRNG? If we randomized the position of the quantum square using a qRNG we might be sabotaging ourselves: participants might see a superposition of classical and quantum squares on each of the three positions and thus not see any square behave differently than the other two. Thus, for the experiment to work (under the assumption that PSIS is explained by the Quantum Hypothesis) the only aspect that should be randomized using a qRNG is the horizontal displacement of the quantum square.\nSince the numbers coming from the qRNG need to be requested over the internet, it is also crucial that we try to obtain fresh quantum random numbers as frequently as possible without messing up the flow of the experiment. Thus, a request for new quantum random numbers is made as often as possible (usually every 1 to 2 seconds). Since internet connections, server response time and network reliability varies from moment to moment, it is inevitable that once in a while we will have to stop the downward movement of all three squares as we wait for the next batch of random numbers. In principle this should have no negative effect at all in the ability to choose the odd-one-out. This problem merely interrupts the flow of the experiment, but it should not invalidate the results. We kept track of the number of trials that were interrupted for this reason (which you will find recorded in the “Network” column of the table of results down below).\nParticipants were instructed to:\n\nClone the Github code for the experiment, and to open it up in a Chrome browser.\nMake sure that they have a reliable high-speed internet connection.\nRecord the pertinent facts (time of experiment, substance, dose and time of intake).\nUse a sensorially-minimized room for the experiment (such as a closed bathroom), turn off the lights, ask anyone who is in the house to be quiet and mind their own business, and wear earplugs.\nMeditate for a couple of minutes before conducting the experiment and to try to induce PSIS voluntarily.\nChoose the odd-one-out (i.e. the quantum square) on each trial, for a total of at least 30 trials.\n\nUnder this setup, what should the participants expect to see if the Quantum Hypothesis is correct?\nPredicted Psychedelic Perception\n\n\n\nThe pictures above illustrate how the experiment looks like to three different observers. On the left we see what a sober participant would see at a given time during a trial. The squares are moving downwards but since we are taking a snapshot in time they seem to be static. The image on the center shows what we would expect out of a generic psychedelic experience. In brief, the typical control interrupt action of psychedelics (i.e. tracers) effectively allows you to see more clearly the path that the squares have traced over time, but it would not allow you to notice any difference between the classic and quantum squares. The image on the right shows what we would expect to see if the Quantum Hypothesis is correct and PSIS is actually about perceiving nearby branches of the Everett multiverse. Notice how the center square is visibly different than the other two: it consists of the superposition of many alternative paths the square took in slightly different branches.\nImplications of a Positive Result: Quantum Mind, Everett Rescue Missions and Psychedelic Cryptography\nIt is worth noting that if one can indeed reliably distinguish between the quantum and the classical squares, then this would have far-reaching implications. It would indeed confirm that our minds are macroscopic quantum coherent objects and that psychedelics influence their pattern of interactions with their surrounding quantum environment. It would also provide strong evidence in favor of the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics (in which all possibilities are realized). More so, we would not only have a new perspective on the fundamental nature of the universe and the mind, but the discovery would just as well suggest some concrete applications. Looking far ahead, a positive outcome is that this knowledge would encourage research on the possible ways to achieve inter-dimensional travel, and in turn instantiate pan-Everettian rescue missions to reduce suffering elsewhere in the multiverse. The despair of confirming that the quantum multiverse is real might be evened out by the hope of finally being able to help sentient beings trapped in Darwinian environments in other branches of the universal wavefunction. Looking much closer to home, a positive result would lead to a breakthrough in psychedelic cryptography (PsyCrypto for short), where spies high on LSD would obtain the ability to read information that is secretly encoded in public light displays. More so, this particular kind of PsyCrypto would be impervious to discovery after the fact. Even if given an arbitrary amount of time and resources to analyze a video recording of the event, it would not be possible to determine which of the squares was being guided by quantum randomness. Unlike other PsyCrypto techniques, this one cannot be decoded by applying psychedelic replication software to video recordings of the transmission.\nResults\nThree persons participated in the experiments: S (self), A, and B. [A and B are anonymous volunteers; for more information read the legal disclaimer at the end of this article]. Participant S (me) tried the experiment both sober and after drinking 2 beers. Participant A tried the experiment sober, on LSD, 2C-B and a combination of the two. And participant B tried the experiment both sober and on DMT. The total number of trials recorded for each of the conditions is: 90 for the sober state, 275 for 2C-B, 60 for DMT, 120 for LSD and 130 for the LSD/2C-B combo. The overall summary of the results is: chance level performance outcomes for all conditions. You can find the breakdown of results for all experiments in the table shown below, and you can download the raw csv file from the Github repository.\n\n\nColumns from left to right: Date, State (of consciousness), Dose(s), T (time), #Trials (number of trials), Correct (number of trials in which the participant made the correct choice), Percent correct (100*Correct/Trials), Participants (S=Self, A/B=anonymous volunteers), Requests / Second (server requests per second), Network (this tracks the number of times that a trial was temporarily paused while the browser was waiting for the next batch of quantum random numbers), Notes (by default the squares left a dim trail behind them and this was removed in two trials; by default the squares were 10×10 pixels in size, but a smaller size was used in some trials).\n\nI thought about visualizing the results in a cool graph at first, but after I received them I realized that it would be pointless. Not a single experiment reached a statistically significant deviation from chance level; who is interested in seeing a bunch of bars representing chance-level outcomes? Null results are always boring to visualize.****\nIn addition to the overall performance in the task, I also wanted to hear the following qualitative assessment from the participants: did they notice any difference between the three squares? Was there any feeling that one of them was behaving differently than the other two? This is what they responded when I asked them: “I could never see any difference between the squares, so it felt like I was making random choices” (from A) and “DMT made the screen look like a hyper-dimensional tunnel and I felt like strange entities were watching over me as I was doing the experiment, and even though the color of the squares would fluctuate randomly, I never noticed a single square behaving differently than the other two. All three seemed unique. I did feel that the squares were being controlled by some entity, as if with an agency of their own, but I figured that was made up by my mind.” When I asked them if they noticed anything similar to the image labeled Psychedelic view as predicted by the Quantum Hypothesis (as shown above) they both said “no”.\nDiscussion\nIt is noteworthy that neither participant reported an experience of PSIS during the experiments. Even without an explicit and noticeable input superposition, PSIS may turn out to be a continuum rather than a discrete either-or phenomenon. If so, we might still expect to see some deviations from chance. This may be analogous to how in blindsight people report not being able to see anything and yet perform better than chance in visual recognition tasks. That said, the effect size of blindsight and other psychological effects in which information is processed unbeknownst to the participant tend to be very small. Thus, in order to confirm that quantum PSIS is happening below the threshold of awareness we may require a much larger number of samples (though still a lot smaller than what we would need if we were aiming to use the experiment to conduct Psi research with or without psychedelics, again, due to the extremely small effect sizes).\nWhy did the experiment fail? The first possibility is that it could be that the Quantum Hypothesis is simply wrong (and possibly because it requires false assumptions to work). Second, perhaps we were simply unlucky that PSIS was not triggered during the experiments; perhaps the set, setting, and dosages used simply failed to produce the desired effect (even if the state does indeed exist out there). And third, the experiment itself may be wrong: the second-long delays between the server requests and the qRNG may be too large to produce the effect. In the current implementation (and taking into account network delays), the average delay between the moment the quantum measurement was conducted and the moment it appeared on the computer screen as horizontal movement was .9 seconds (usually in the range of .4 to 1.4 seconds, given an average of 1/2 second lag due to the number buffering and 400 milliseconds in network time). This problem would be easily sidestepped if we used an on-site qRNG obtained from hardware directly connected to the computer (as is common in psi research). To minimize the delay even further, the outcomes of the quantum measurements could be delivered directly to your brain via neuroimplants.\nConclusion\nIf psychedelic experiences do make you interact with other realities, I would like to know about it with a high degree of certainty. The present study was admittedly a very long shot. But to my judgement, it was totally worth it. As Bayesians, we reasoned that since the Quantum Hypothesis can lead to a positive result for the experiment but the Cognitive Hypothesis can’t, then a positive result should make us update our probabilities of the Quantum Hypothesis a great deal. A negative result should make us update our probabilities in the opposite direction. That said, the probability should still not go to zero since the negative result could still be accounted for by the fact that participants failed to experience PSIS, and/or that the delay between the quantum measurement and the moment it influences the movement of the square in the screen is too large. Future studies should try to minimize these two possible sources of failure. First, by researching methods to reliably induce PSIS. And second, by minimizing the delay between branching and sensory input.\nIn the meantime, we can at least tentatively conclude that something along the lines of the Cognitive Hypothesis is the most likely case. In this light, PSIS turns out to be the result of a failure to inhibit predictions. Despite losing their status as suspected inter-dimensional portal technology, psychedelics still remain a crucial tool for qualia research. They can help us map out the state-space of possible experiences, allow us to identify the computational properties of consciousness, and maybe even allow us to reverse engineer the fundamental nature of valence.\n\n[Legal Disclaimer]: Both participants A and B contacted me some time ago, soon after the Qualia Computing article How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD made it to the front page of Hacker News and was linked by SlateStarCodex. They are both experienced users of psychedelics who take them about once a month. They expressed their interest in performing the psychophysics experiments I designed, and to do so while under the influence of psychedelic drugs. I do not know these individuals personally (nor do I know their real names, locations or even their genders). I have never encouraged these individuals to take psychedelic substances and I never gave them any compensation for their participation in the experiment. They told me that they take psychedelics regularly no matter what, and that my experiments would not be the primary reason for taking them. I never asked them to take any particular substance, either. They just said “I will take substance X on day Y, can I have some experiment for that?” I have no way of knowing (1) if the substances they claim they take are actually what they think they are, (2) whether the dosages are accurately measured, and (3) whether the data they provided is accurate and isn’t manipulated. That said, they did explain that they have tested their materials with chemical reagents, and are experienced enough to tell the difference between similar substances. Since there is no way to verify these claims without compromising their anonymity, please take the data with a grain of salt.\n* In this case, the immediate environment would actually refer to the quantum degrees of freedom surrounding our consciousness within our brain, not the macroscopic exterior vicinity such as the chair we are sitting on or the friends we are hanging out with. In this picture, our interaction with that vicinity is actually mediated by many layers of indirection.\n** The experiment used the Australian National University Quantum Random Numbers Server. By calling their API every 1 to 2 seconds we obtain truly random numbers that feed the x-displacement of the quantum square. This is an inexpensive and readily-available way to magnify decoherence events into macroscopic splitting histories in the comfort of your own home.\n*** In this case, Javascript’s Math.random() function. Unfortunately the RGN algorithm varies from browser to browser. It may be worthwhile to go for a browser-independent implementation in the future to guarantee a uniform high quality source of classical randomness.\n**** As calculated with a single tailed binomial test with null probability equal to 1/3. The threshold of statistical significance at the p < 0.05 level is found at 15/30 and for p < 0.001 we need at least 19/30 correct responses. The best score that any participant managed to obtain was 14/30.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/10/29/lsd-and-quantum-measurements-can-you-see-schrodingers-cat-both-dead-and-alive-on-acid/", "title": "LSD and Quantum Measurements: Can you see Schrödinger’s cat both dead and alive on acid?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-10-29T23:43:58+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=23", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "82468b9f4ed889f44eba811688316939", "summary": []}
{"text": "Empathetic Super-Intelligence\n\nI suspect quite a lot of AI researchers would think of empathy as a very, kind of, second rate form of intelligence, and will confuse it with the mere personality dimension of agreeableness. But in fact empathetic understanding is extraordinarily cognitively demanding. It is worth recalling that what it is like to be another subject of experience, and what it is like to be able to apprehend fourth, fifth, and even -in the case of someone like Shakespeare- sixth order intentionality is as much a property of the natural world as the rest mass of the electron. So in so far as one wants to actually understand the nature of the natural world one is going to want to understand other subjects of experience.\n \nNow most of us -and it is true for good evolutionary reasons- are not mirror-touch synesthete. We don’t feel the pain of others as if it were our own, we don’t experience their perspectives as if they were our own. But… I think with a greater full-spectrum of super-intelligence, as one actually comes to understand the perspectives of other subjects of experience, as one starts to obtain this god-like capacity to impartially understand all possible subjects of experience, this will entail expanding our circle of compassion. It is not possible if you are a mirror-touch synesthete to act in a non-friendly hostile way to another sentient being, and I would see a generalization of mirror-touch synesthesia as part and parcel of being a full-spectrum super-intelligence.\n \nAny supposedly intelligent being that doesn’t understand the nature of consciousness -that doesn’t understand that there are other subjects of experience as real as you or me right now- is in a fundamental sense ignorant. And if we are talking about super-intelligence, as distinct from savant minds or insentient malware systems, one must remember that by definition a super-intelligence is not ignorant.\n \n– David Pearce, in The Mind of David Pearce\nDavid is responding to a question I posed about the relationship between empathy and super-intelligence. One could in principle imagine an Artificial Intelligence system that is capable of designing nanotechnology without ever being aware of other minds. The AI could take over the world from the ground up and never suspect that anyone actually lived in it. The AI could simply model other agents to the extent that is necessary to predict their behavior within the parameters that define the conditions of its success and failure. No need to experience the colors, aromas, feelings and thoughts of humans when you can approximate them well enough with a Bayesian system trained on past observed behaviors.\nA lot of people seem to be worried about this sort of scenario. Admittedly, if one thinks that all there is to intelligence is the capacity to optimize a given utility function, then yes, super-intelligences could in principle be completely ignorant of the matter-of-fact about the qualia we are experiencing right now. AI safety organizations and researchers mostly care about this sort of intelligence. As far as the safety concerns go, I think this is fair enough. The problem comes when the view that intelligence is nothing more than utility function maximization conceptually spills over into one’s full conception of what intelligence is and will always be.\nThe contention here, I think, is the way we conceptualize intelligence. Depending on one’s background assumptions one will end up with some or other idea of what this concept can or cannot mean:\nOn the one hand, if one starts by exclusively caring about the way autonomous systems behave from a third-person point of view and in turn disregards the computational importance of consciousness, then any talk of “a deep understanding of the nature of other’s experiences” will seem completely besides the point. On the other hand, if one starts from an empathetic mindset that acknowledges the reality -and ethical weight- of the vastness of the state-space of consciousness, one may prefer to define intelligence in terms of empathetic understanding. I.e. as the capacity to explore, navigate, contrast, compare and utilize arbitrarily alien state-spaces of experience for computational and aesthetic purposes.\nMost likely, an enriched conception of genuine super-intelligence entails a seamless blend between a deep capacity for introspection and empathy together with the extraordinary power of formal logico-linguistic reasoning. Only by combining the empathizing and systematizing styles of mental activity, together with a systematic exploration of the state-space of consciousness, can we obtain a full picture of the true potential that lies in front of us: Full-Spectrum Super-Sentient Super-Intelligence.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/09/10/empathetic-super-intelligence/", "title": "Empathetic Super-Intelligence", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-09-10T07:41:06+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=23", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "072182b8602ef77be3bcaf1cd744a958", "summary": []}
{"text": "Wireheading Done Right: Stay Positive Without Going Insane\n\nWireheads are beings who have changed their reward architecture in order to be happy all the time. Unfortunately few people are making a serious effort to steel man the case for wireheading. The concept of wireheading tends to be a conversation stopper, and is frequently used as a reductio-ad-absurdum for valence utilitarianism. Hedonism is a low-status philosophy at the time, but this may be the result of what amounts to dumb reasons (i.e. going against it signals intellectual sophistications). Let’s be meta-contrarian for a moment and think critically about it. What would a good case for wireheading look like? In what follows I will (1) provide an account of what is known about emotional dynamics over time, (2) discuss the known pitfalls of current wireheading methods, (3) propose a system to overcome these pitfalls, and (4) make the case that combining wireheading (done right) with a systematic exploration of the state-space of consciousness might ultimately be our saving grace against the perils of Darwinism at the evolutionary limit.\nLet us begin by enriching our understanding of the nature of bliss and its temporal dynamics:\nThe Cube of Euphoria\nA little over a year ago I conducted a study to figure out the main dimensions along which psychotropic drugs influence people. The State-Space of Drug Effects consists of six main dimensions: fast euphoria, slow euphoria, spiritual euphoria, clarity, perception of overall value, and external vs. internal source of interest. The first three dimensions are directly related to pleasure, which makes them relevant for our current discussion.\n\n\n\nFast euphoria is what you get when you take stimulants, exercise or anticipate that something great is about to happen. Slow euphoria is what you experience if you take opioids or depressants, receive massages or hug a loved one. Spiritual/philosophical euphoria changes less frequently relative to the daily comings and goings of the other two. It is a state of consciousness related to the way we represent “the big picture”. Those who seek it try to induce it by methods that include philosophical thinking, spiritual practices and/or psychedelic drug use.\nTwo out of these three dimensions are equivalent to the well-studied emotion classification space of valence and arousal (also called core affect). Valence is how good the experience feels, whereas arousal deals with the intensity of the experience. It turns out that one can get the slow-fast projection of the cube of euphoria by changing the basis used to represent the valence-arousal space. You can get the valence-arousal space simply by rotating the slow-fast euphoria projection by 45 degrees:\n\n\nAs we can see, fast euphoria is equivalent to “high-valence high-arousal” while slow euphoria is equivalent to “high-valence low-arousal”. This basis is not uncommon in affective psychology, and when used the axes are usually labeled “positive and negative activation”. We will use a yellow-red circle to represent fast euphoria and a blue-green circle to represent slow euphoria. I chose this color-coding by reasoning that warm colors are a better representation of ecstatic states of consciousness whereas cool colors illustrate better the feelings of cooling off and relaxing. I happen to prefer the fast-slow basis because it highlights the different kinds of euphoria in a helpful way that captures behavioral differences. This will be important when we get to steel-manning wireheading later on.\nFormalizing the Hedonic Treadmill: Negative Feedback Mechanisms\nIt is well known that in the long run the things that happen to you have a surprisingly small effect on your overall level of happiness. One tends to always orbit around one’s hedonic set-point (our mean valence and arousal values). Although our average sense of wellbeing does change from context to context (in response to variables such as stress, novelty, drug regimens, accomplishments, and opportunities for meaningful relationships), the environmental effect usually washes out over time by one’s internal negative feedback mechanisms. The ability to achieve lasting happiness, it turns out, was not as evolutionarily adaptive in our ancestral environment as the robust re-centering of affective dynamics that ended up governing our patterns of wellbeing. Thankfully, though unfairly, we are not all equally miserable; some people are lucky to be born hyperthymic and enjoy life the majority of the time. Genetically-determined pain-thresholds do not only influence how one responds to physical discomfort, but also predict the size of one’s social network (presumably by making social rejection less taxing).\nLess well known is that people have different values for their valence-arousal correlation. According to a 2007 study by Peter Kuppens, the conventional wisdom in affective psychology that valence and arousal are uncorrelated is not quite correct. For 30% of people valence is negatively correlated with arousal, for 30% it is the opposite and for the remaining 40% there is no correlation between these two dimensions.\nThis means that some people usually experience high valence (i.e. feel good) at the same time as being in an up-beat high energy state, and when they feel bad they tend to also have low levels of energy. On the other extreme there are those who experience bliss by tuning the energy down and relaxing, and primarily experience bad feelings in the form of high-energy states (such as irritation, worry and anger).\nThe study showed that the correlation between valence and arousal was person-specific (negative for ~30%, positive for ~30%, no correlation for ~40% of people).\nWhat else is variable across people? As it turns out, the transition patterns of core affect are related to personality factors. People’s level of variance in the valence dimension is an important component of neuroticism. Although most neurotics tend to hang out in low-valence states, there are indeed very happy neurotics whose problem is not that they feel bad, but that great feelings are too short-lasting and unpredictable. It is the unpredictability of valence rather than its absolute value that results in the coping mechanisms typical of this dimension. Likewise, higher variability in arousal is a component of extraversion, SEE I AM SCREAMING NOW (for example). Openness to experience can be understood in terms of novelty-triggered increases in valence, so that more open individuals are more likely to experience euphoria of all kinds when learning new information relative to people who describe themselves as conventional. Conscientious individuals feel very rewarded when they complete a laborious task (but may experience more intense shame if they do not finish it on time). Agreeableness is undeniably connected to a positive perception of other people. If one feels that others are right and deserve to exist one is more likely to cooperate. The way to have positive perceptions of others is to increase the hedonic tone of the interpersonal representations. In brief, core affect dynamics can be used to capture otherwise hard-to-describe properties of the various personality factors. They each have a signature behavior in the valence-arousal space.\nIn a paper titled A Hierarchical Latent Stochastic Differential Equation Model for Affective Dynamics, Oravecz, Tuerlinckx, and Vandekerckhove applied the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process to the dynamics of core affect. Their model takes into account many important features that had previously been overlooked for the sake of simplicity. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, these features turn out to be important signatures of personality factors, so having a model that incorporates them may be very useful to understand the differences between people. Their model describes people as having: a latent home base (hedonic set point), variance (for both components), a correlation between valence and arousal, an average speed, and a time-dependent relocation of the home base determined by the hour of the day. The model allows you to estimate person-specific parameters (using as input a sequence of self-reported emotional states). In turn, once you have determined someone’s latent parameters, the model can help you predict their future affect based on their current state.\n\n\n\nThis model is perhaps as good as it gets if you are restricted by a Markov assumption and given only the valence and arousal dimensions of the participants over time. The state-space of emotion is far more granular, though. Even increasing the number of dimensions by one (e.g. by including the dimension of spiritual euphoria) may go a long way in clarifying the nature of unexpected emotional transitions. What explains the sometimes very large effect of philosophical discoveries, religious conversions, and personal epiphanies?\nA Map of Emotion Attractors: Studying 176X176 Transition Probabilities\nBack between 2012 to 2014 I worked on modeling the dynamics of emotion transitions. I did this first as part of a research project for a company I worked for (thanks Kanjoya!) and it then transformed into the topic of my masters’ thesis. If you are interested in reading about it you can find some more on a paper I wrote with colleagues on predicting future emotions based on a sequence of previous ones (together with social cues).*\nThe analysis I worked on was made on a sample of hundreds of thousands of users of the now-defunct (but still browsable) Experience Project social network. Participants would have the option to record their mood on the landing page: they would select an emotion from a list of 176 words, say how intense this emotion was at the time (from 1 to 5) and explain why they feel the way they do (open text; optional). I analyzed the transition probability between each ordered pair of emotions for different intervals of time and compressed it into a score that describes the overall flow of people between them. This results in a flow graph that we can analyze with tools from graph theory. I explored many ways of clustering this graph and ultimately settled on a method that generated the best predictive power on a model to forecast future emotions. This method consisted of grouping the emotions in such a way that each emotion would maximize its mean transition probability to other emotions in the same group (relative to other groups). For the paper I made this graph with all of the emotions (nodes), the transition probabilities between them (edge thickness) and the resulting clusters (colors):\nA weighted directed graph with 176 nodes, each representing a distinct state of consciousness. The edges represent the (directed) compressed transition probability between each ordered pair of states. The size of each node approximates the base rate at which the emotion occurs in the sample.\nEach color represents a given “emotion attractor”. At a high level, we can say that whenever you are experiencing an emotion that is e.g. green you are more likely to transition to other emotions that are also green (relative to what would be expected from choosing an emotion randomly). This analysis is ultimately consistent with Oravecz et al.’s model in the sense that both analysis study the dynamic way in which people tend to get in and out of their home base. However, the granularity afforded by the 176 different options also allowed me to examine the deviations from this pattern. I investigated the question: “Which emotions take you to places that are inconsistent with the general trend of stochastically moving towards the central hedonic set-point?”\nIt turns out that some emotions behave in interesting ways. Some are what we called “hubs”: common stopping points that work as a route between any two colors. For example, “calm” and “tired” are hubs, and they do not give you much information about past or future emotions. Some other emotions behave like ‘gateways’ in the sense that they tend to indicate a jump from a particular color to another. For example, ‘hopeful’ and ‘relieved’ are two ‘gateway’ emotions: they work as stepping stones from blue (depressive) emotions to green (positive) ones.\nSome emotions challenge the hedonic treadmill by virtue of predicting unexpectedly long-lasting stays on a given color. For example, the words “blessed”, “blissful” and “loved” were great predictors of long-lasting green emotions. By examining the text of these mood updates we determined that on average the people listing religious and spiritual themes as the cause of their feelings were more likely to stay for longer periods of time in the zone of positive emotions than most other people in the sample. I suppose that people’s spiritual euphoria may hack the pattern of hedonic habituation to some extent in a few lucky ones. I personally do not think that this is a scalable solution for everyone, though, since not everyone is spiritually oriented or has their endogenous opioid system wired up properly for meditation. The outstanding effect sizes we may see in some people who benefit from a particular e.g. meditation technique rarely generalize to everyone else. That said, it is certainly neat to see some evidence of some (spiritual/philosophical) sabotage at the mill.\nHow can we feel better in the long term?\nA few years ago I abandoned hope in the idea that psychological interventions are sufficient to increase our wellbeing  (philosophy, spirituality and exposure therapy can only take you so far in making you feel better). So what is next? The trick will be to combine psychological, chemical, electrical and genetic methods together in a balanced and healthy way and forget about relying on a single method. Can we be happy all the time? Let us move on to the subject of wireheading more directly. Given what we have discussed about core affect, emotion dynamics and the resilience of the hedonic set-point, is it possible to wirehead oneself in a non-regrettable way? I think that the answer is yes, but we will need to avoid some crucial dangers…\nWireheading Done Wrong I: Forgetting About the Negative Feedback\nFast and slow euphoria can be reliably triggered by sensorial or chemical methods. However, doing so quickly kick-starts two negative feedback mechanisms.\nCurrent hedonic negative feedback dynamics.\nThe first one is that the effect is reduced (shown in the image as the little loops with a minus sign) with each use. And the second one is that withdrawing from these euphoric states kindles circuits that do the opposite of what was intended (as shown by the arrows with a positive sign). Too much of something that calms you is going to bring about a long and withdrawn state of constant low-level anxiety. Too much of anything that makes you up-beat and ecstatic is going to induce a long and withdrawn state of low-level depression.\nAmphetamines, traditional opioids, barbiturates and empathogens can be ruled out as wise tools for positive hedonic recalibration. They are not comprehensive life enrichers precisely because it is not possible (at least as of 2016) to control the negative feedback mechanism that they kick-start. Simply pushing the button of pleasure and hoping it will all be alright is not an intelligent strategy given our physiological implementation. The onset of this negative feedback often triggers addictive behavior and physiological changes that shape the brain to expect the substance.\nThe case of spiritual/philosophical euphoria is a lot trickier. It is clear that there is a negative feedback that may be described (more or less) as a sort of philosophical boredom. Psychedelics are capable of changing our brain so as to increase the range of possible valence (i.e. they can enable states of extreme pleasure but also extreme suffering) in a way that sidesteps the need to directly interact with our pleasure centers. I think it is extremely important to figure out the mechanism of action of psychedelic bliss. We will in fact address it in another article. For now it will suffice to say that psychedelic pleasure does not seem to induce cravings or withdrawal. We should take a close look at it because it may be the key to understanding how to produce unlimited positive valence with no negative repercussions. Unfortunately, producing philosophical, spiritual and psychedelic bliss nowadays is still more of an art than a science; these methods are unreliable and can backfire tremendously.\nIn summary, we might say that if one is oblivious to negative feedback, then meth addiction is an attempt at fast euphoria wireheading, whereas opioid dependence is the result of trying (ineffectively) to obtain boundless slow euphoria. Spiritual euphoria wireheading attempts usually involve activities such as philosophy, meditation, prayer and psychedelic drug use. Even though attempting spiritual euphoria wireheading on oneself is a hell of a lot healthier than doing meth or heroin, it is certainly not free from possible psychological side effects (such as acquiring bizarre beliefs or experiencing events- sometimes profoundly distressing- of spiritual dysphoria and unwanted changes in one’s belief system).\nWireheading Done Wrong II: Seduced by a World of Your Own\nOne simple approach to wireheading effectively is to remove either one or both of the negative feedback mechanisms shown in the image above. Wiring electrodes into one’s pleasure centers does the trick just fine, since it apparently removes both. It turns out that the mechanism for generating physiological tolerance is bypassed by direct electric (rather than chemical) stimulation to the nucleus accumbens. Bliss obtained this way does not seem to stop pouring nor diminish in greatness over time. Unfortunately this method has profound pitfalls. Most salient of all is that if given the choice, mice (and some but not all people) will continuously self-stimulate this way as frequently and as intensely as possible, neglecting both physiological needs (like food and sleep) and social demands (like feeding one’s children or paying taxes). In the case of humans, people feel compelled to self-stimulate when suffering, but under normal circumstances (if feeling good already) they can hold off from pressing the button in order to carry out other activities. Admittedly this is an improvement over drugs, which make you feel terrible in the long run and in turn make you seek relief with the same method that brought you there. With electrical rather than chemical stimulation we can at least avoid this pitfall. That said, people do not like to have objects implanted in their brain, and our infection-prone future will thank us for not developing an addictive technology that requires a constant stream of ineffective antibiotics to keep it plugged in place. Thankfully future wireheading may be minimally invasive. Attractive alternatives to old-fashioned electrodes include body-powered wireless implants, optogenetics, and genetically encoded magnetic triggers of neural activity.\nA much more subtle way to try to improve one’s hedonic set point is by counteracting the activation of the post-pleasure dysphoria only. Anti-depressants of the SSRI variety and the less well-known fast-acting aminoguanidine agmatine help prevent gross kindling of circuits that produce unpleasant sensations. This method may ultimately come down to increasing the amount of noise in the entire system** and thus reducing the survivability of highly-ordered states (such as pain and pleasure) in one’s consciousness. Preventing withdrawal by this method comes at the cost of blunting high-valence states, unfortunately. Prolonged SSRI use often makes people anhedonic and feel like they have lost all zest for life. In contrast, Ibogaine and low-dose opioid antagonists are promising chemical avenues to attack the same problem in a very different way without such side-effects. These compounds work by rebalancing one’s proportion of the various opioid receptor subtypes and in turn driving one’s hedonic capacity upwards (for some reason I don’t understand).\nA whole generation of people will probably be “lost” to what I call single euphoria wireheading: let’s say that you have mastered the ability to experience a high level of fast euphoria in a sustainable way. You can in principle stop at any point and come down without feeling like you are missing out. But whenever you do activate the fast euphoria you are about ten times more motivated to go out, explore the world, work on projects and meet great people who also share your newfound interests and values. You may end up choosing to join a community of other people who value living fast and staying hyper-motivated, just as you do now.\n\n\n\nFast euphoria in particular is extremely tricky to program correctly, since it deals so directly with behavioral reinforcement. Many people get hooked on meth + X rather than on just meth: whether X is music, gaming, sex, gambling, porn and/or alcohol, during a meth binge people often end up doing the exact same repetitive but pleasant task for tens of hours. In other words, fast euphoria not only reinforces itself, but it also reinforces whatever activity you do while you experience it, and this is especially the case if the activity is more enjoyable as a result of the fast euphoria. Stimulant addiction, deep brain stimulation and manic states in bipolar sufferers share a core personality-changing effect driven by an excessive interest in a few rewarding activities at the expense of all other interests and responsibilities. It is extremely tricky to rationally use one’s reinforcement system directly in order to recalibrate one’s hedonic tone. Without (as-of-yet-uninvented) safeguards, doing so tends to increase impulsivity in the long term and mess up one’s preference architecture.\nWe could in principle block the metabolic pathways that lead to changes in one’s motivational system as a response to fast euphoria. If we did this, then people might be able to master side-effect-free hyper-motivation. Does this mean that a straightforward road to Super-Happiness is short-cutting to perpetual motivation?\nThe main problem is that motivation and one’s implicit notion of our self-in-time interact in unpredictable ways. One of the very mechanisms of action by which something like meth can transform your preference architecture is by forcibly redefining your self-model (cf. Ontological Qualia). Fast euphoria brings one’s attention towards the present moment and present happenings. In high amounts, it brings you face to face with your own presence in the eternal now. From that point of view, it feels as if that very moment is who you are, and one’s normal state of consciousness is re-interpreted as a mere jumping platform at the service of the few and far apart moments of real joy. To have an episode of feeling “truly alive” and returning to typical human conditions can unquestionably be felt as a sort of death -one not of the biological body but of the fleeting self-models that inhabited such sharper and subjectively more worthwhile state-spaces of consciousness.\nIf one’s implicit self-model is not robust against sudden changes in one’s level of fast euphoria, then one will not be good at surviving and being productive in a social economy. Let us say that person A is able to identify herself with her future self in 2059 and save for retirement, but person A on meth has a very hard time thinking of herself in any other terms than “me, right now, for as long as I can stay in this state of mind, 3 to 9 hours, give or take, depending on whether I redose.” The present moment, the immediate future and the pleasure opportunities available in it can be so salient that they eclipse one’s every other interest. If we do not find a way to prevent this shift in perspective it may be impossible to safeguard rationality when showered with streams of high-grade fast euphoria.\nHow about slow euphoria wireheading? I suspect that it is in principle possible to master hyper-relaxation without being incapacitated. In the meantime, trying to slow down too much does seem to reduce one’s productivity by a good margin, so wireheading of the slow euphoria type is not currently advisable. That said, achieving hedonic recalibration by guaranteeing a minimum of slow euphoria is, as I see it, a lot more feasible than doing so through fast euphoria. Slow euphoria does not have the explosive effects on one’s motivational architecture and self-models that fast euphoria does. On the contrary, relaxation can allow us to reconceive of ourselves as beings who inhabit much longer timelines (to really grasp our decades-long lifespan and know how to pace ourselves rather than feeling pressed to identify with our present moment exclusively).\nSpiritual euphoria may or may not necessarily imply changes in one’s belief structure. Currently, peak spiritual/philosophical states (including high levels of psychedelia) are a rather different kind of subjective wellbeing than the other two that dominate our everyday life. This bliss is often associated with extreme changes in the quality of one’s conceptualization of reality, which limits its effective incorporation into a rational and economically productive being. Unless, of course… one is producing useful information in those states. More about this further below.\nIn summary: If a device is ever discovered that allows people to enjoy fast, slow or spiritual euphoria without implicitly influencing their worldview and economic capacity, then that device will probably become a staple of life. Issues of authorship and agency aside, single euphoria wireheading without serious engineering to counter its problems is a road to oblivion from the point of view of evolution. Whether controlled single euphoria wireheading can be adaptive is still up for debate.\nWireheading Done Wrong III: Becoming a Pure Replicator (Even If You Love It)\nLook, we are all friends here. We are trying to delay for as long as possible the development of a Singleton (i.e. a state of complete control by one system), while we also try to keep at bay the problem of Moloch*** (i.e. complete lack of control). We are trying to find a sustainable solution against both extremes. In our ideal world, all beings should have the freedom to explore the state-space of consciousness however they want (or live in an Archipelago of societies at the very least). We need to work together on designing the future to avoid evolutionary extremes and safeguard freedom of consciousness. Now, who is the enemy?\nThe Threat of Pure Replicators\nI will define a pure replicator, in the context of agents and minds, to be an intelligence that is indifferent towards the valence of its conscious states and those of others. A pure replicator invests all of its energy and resources into surviving and reproducing, even at the cost of continuous suffering to themselves or others. Its main evolutionary advantage is that it does not need to spend any resources making the world a better place.\nIf given the choice, please don’t become a pure replicator and throw under the bus all the hard work that people throughout history have put into making the world not an entirely horrible place. Pure replicators may come in many guises. While the term pure replicator may invoke images of cockroaches and viruses in one’s mind, the truth is that your modafinil-fueled income-maximizing coworker may already be on the path of turning into one. Wait, what did you just read?\nConsidering that the dimension of spiritual euphoria is the most intense (and subjectively profound) source of conscious value, it would be a shame if our society exclusively optimized for linear logico-linguistic “high clarity” states of consciousness. Of all the drugs available, when balancing side effects and overall effectiveness, it is likely that modafinil-like compounds (e.g. custom nootropics) give you the single largest economic edge within this society. Caffeine is already available to everyone, speed slowly kills you and micro-dosed LSD makes you (believe it or not) too creative for most paying jobs. Is it possible to make the interesting and valuable states of consciousness the ones that are economically rewarded? Are we going to let the economic incentives in our society silently maximize the presence of modafinil-like states of consciousness?\nThere is no known substance that enhances both “clarity” and “spiritual/philosophical euphoria” at the same time. It would be a shame if all the economy cared about was your level of clarity, for that would mean that modafinil junkies users will rule the world. (Oh, wait…). At the limit, such a world may be impervious to conceptual revolutions or caring about valence research.  Image Source.\nIn practice, unless digital AGI pans out or nanotechnology takes over, pure replicators are going to need to interface with human and posthuman markets to gain any power. Although fashionable to think about nowadays, exotic nanotech and/or AI pure replicators may ultimately be far easier to stop than pure replicators that disguise themselves as humans (i.e. people who turn into empty shells of their former selves by embracing hyper-competitive Moloch memes and their associated technologies). As we will see, the nature of future economic selection pressures may be the most important factor in whether or not we are taken over by armies of pure replicators.\nAren’t we all pure replicators already?\nTautologically, natural selection can only produce pure replicators. But this would be to think of the term in an unhelpful way that is not true to the spirit of the idea. This is why we defined pure replicators in terms of indifference towards conscious states. Most animals do indeed care a great deal about the valence of their own consciousness; after all, the motivational power of the pleasure-pain axis is the very reason why evolution recruited conscious valence to begin with. More so, sexual selection happens to have recruited introspection, aesthetics, benevolence and intelligence as fitness-indicators (which explains why we are so keen on advertising these traits). Brian Tomasik calls our times the Age of Spandrels because we live in a period that is reaping the benefits of surplus production (still being below carrying capacity) while silly non-optimal aesthetics inherited from our evolutionary past still survive. Interpersonal love, sexually selected hedonistic social rituals and ingrained prosocial implicit values may be evolutionary spandrels in the context of our economy, but (surprisingly) they are still part of our society. Hence, we today can enjoy watching movies, making love and thinking about philosophy. Our drive to delight in life is powerful enough to distract us from optimal economic participation, and our emotional wellbeing (which affects our economic participation) is still linked to events dealing with our level of pleasure outside work.\nIn contrast, the intelligent agents of the future may not be constrained to using the pleasure-pain axis to implement goal-oriented behaviors. One could envision scenarios like Robin Hanson’s Age of EM in which the most productive (and abundant) minds do 99.9999% of the work, and this work is boring 99.9999% of the time. These minds may work while in near-neutral states of consciousness that have either negligibly positive or even outright negative valence. The employees of this massive workforce are those individuals who are willing to do whatever they are told for 0.00001% vacation time and the opportunity to stay alive and multiply (in this case by copying the minds in digital servers). The employers may themselves not be particularly happy because they are also competing against other companies that cut down on costs as much as possible. If smiling does not increase one’s productivity at one’s job but it does waste precious calories and units of attention, then smiling will be abolished for purely economic reasons. In this scenario everyone is either employed and miserable (relative to our current standards), or unemployed and dying of starvation. We can thank those entities who were willing to completely sacrifice their own psychological depth (and freedom to explore the state-space of consciousness) for the sake of merely existing. The world now fails to produce any actual value in the form of meaningful states of consciousness and is over-saturated with modafinil-like consciousness.\nSingleton and Moloch end-of-times scenarios tend to look pretty terrible because the worlds they present don’t seem to contain reasons for anyone to care about valence.\nBut in this day and age we may be on the brink of reverse-engineering valence itself. Once we figure out the equation that takes as input quantum fields and outputs the conscious valence present in them, we will be able to quantify just exactly how bad our possible futures-at-the-limit will be depending on the economic selection pressures that we put in place today.\nA desirable Singleton should at the very least care about states of high-valence and avoid negative valence states as much as possible. In a future article we will discuss some ideas for how to design an economic system based on cooperation that increases our chances of having ecologies of sustainable conscious entities who have the following properties: (1) they are free to explore the state-space of consciousness, (2) are social, and (3) have access to practically unlimited positive valence. But what if we are headed towards a perpetual Moloch (failure of cooperation) scenario?\nSurviving in the Sundown of the Age of Spandrels\n‘[I]n Time any being that is spontaneous and alive will wither and die like an old joke.’\n– (WL 111)\nWhat would be a list of desirable traits that we want to have after acquiring complete control over our individual pleasure-pain axis? David Pearce doesn’t get tired of pointing out that the future does not belong to anti-natalists. Their compassionate genes will be weeded out of the gene pool, and it will be their own compassionate sentimental fault. Similarly, full-blown single euphoria wireheading (as discussed above) is destined for oblivion unless it also happens to give you marketable skills.\nWe want to be able to both feel good and at the same time remain economically competitive (or we are going to be crowded out by pure replicators). Here is a list of traits that would help us have lives worth living without sacrificing our economic value:\n\nAlways in a positive valence state (i.e. remaining above hedonic zero).\nFaithful/good enough internal simulation of one’s environment (both physical and social).\nFree to explore at will the known state-space of consciousness.\nCapable of producing socially-useful information.\nFree from unconscious bonds and protected against mind control.\nCapable of exiting attractor states (affective, cognitive, social e.g. thought loops).\nAble to make others happier in ways they did not know were possible.\n\nTrans/Post-human negative feedback mechanisms. It is a virtuous cycle that delivers hearty amounts of euphoria but with no craving as a result. What’s reinforced is the flow between the types of euphoria rather than each kind on its own.\nThe first trait matters for ethical reasons: one needs to guarantee that the entities you bring into existence will always be happy to be alive. One should never compromise on the wellbeing of the beings one designs and gives birth to. If someone does, then we are again off to the races against pure replicators willing to suffer for a chance to exist.\nThe second trait is a requirement to survive in a physical world and a social economy (for obvious reasons).\nThe third trait is motivated by both ethical and practical reasons: as I understand it, having the ability to explore the known state-space of consciousness guarantees that you yourself can benefit from whatever awesome things people have made and discovered already. It guarantees that each individual will be able to experience the most valuable states (as judged by themselves at the time) without a preconceived notion of which states are the most ideal before experimenting on their own.\nBeing capable of experiencing any state of consciousness already discovered and understood will hopefully also turn out to be economically desirable. In order to be of relevance in the market of information about the state-space of consciousness you yourself will need to be an explorer and be up to date with what is in vogue. This opens up the possibility of a full-fledged qualia economy: when people have spare resources and are interested in new states of consciousness, anyone good at mining the state-space for precious gems will have an economic advantage.\nIn principle the whole economy may eventually be entirely based on exploring the state-space of consciousness and trading information about the most valuable contents discovered doing so. The traits 4 through 7 are intended to address the complications that arise from the need to have social competence to survive in such an economy.\nSociety may ultimately converge into a system in which people are constantly in hyper-valuable states and the only way to become powerful is to invent new ways to improve upon the already highly-optimal state-spaces people are free to roam all the time. In this economy, people would also be motivated to help others succeed: Everyone benefits from making discoveries since every discovered state is made accessible to everyone.\nHow could we implement a conscious mind with these attributes? The task is indeed extremely demanding, and billions of dollars in R&D will have to be invested before we have a silver-bullet genetic intervention that takes us in that direction. In the next centuries we are likely to see hundreds of thousands of researchers experimenting with various cocktails, implants and genetic vectors hacking themselves in order to reliably improve their hedonic tone while also increasing their economic value.\nIn order to have any chance at living in such a society we need to make sure we won’t be overrun by pure replicators in any of their gazillion different guises. To do so, we need to make sure we do not fall prey to any of the wireheading mistakes outlined above. And we also need to make sure that we can give back to the world more than we take, so that the world is happy to have us around.\nWireheading Done Right: Stay Positive Without Going Insane\nTo remain economically relevant and subvert the rise of pure replicators, it is quintessential that one’s capacity to explore the state-space of consciousness is a marketable skill. Your imagination (if we choose to call it that way), should therefore work at an acceptable depth and pace from the point of view of the current economy of social relationships.\nBe like my friends Leona and Link. They have a balanced routine of many varieties of experiential wellbeing and euphoria. They are hyper-motivated in the morning (fast euphoria), go crazy creative and spiritual in the afternoon (spiritual euphoria), and go to sleep in delightful oceans of cool sensations (slow euphoria). They are genetically engineered to live the good life without getting stuck in bad loops.\nThe diagram above illustrates the main idea: we want to rewire our reward architecture in such a way that as each kind of euphoria is instantiated a different one becomes more accessible.\nFor example, we may want to wirehead ourselves in such a way that our ability to experience fast euphoria is gated by slow euphoria. Until you have not “satiated” your psychological need for resting you will not be allowed to feel hyper-motivated. Our desires are already state-specific, but the current network of transition probabilities between emotions facilitates the reinforcement of toxic local attractors (also called “death spirals” like states of depression or generalized anxiety). By re-engineering the network of transition probabilities between emotions and extracting out the dysphoric components we might be able to guarantee a continuous flow between functionally and phenomenologically distinct modes of wellbeing. Wireheading done right consists of having wonderful experiences all the time, but in such a way that you never feel compelled to stay where you are for too long. In addition, a good wireheading procedure should also allow you to keep learning useful information about the state-space of consciousness. Wireheading should not imply the end of learning. In brief, we suggest that we should change our brains so that by feeling great in a certain way you temporarily reduce the response to that particular kind of euphoria but also make it easier to enjoy some other kind. One would thus be incentivized to keep moving, and to never give up or to get stuck in loops.\nNaturally one may be skeptical that perpetual (but varied) bliss is at all possible. After all, shouldn’t we be already there if such states were actually evolutionarily advantageous? The problem is that the high-valence states we can experience evolved to increase our inclusive fitness in the ancestral environment, and not in an economy based on gradients of bliss. Experiences are calorically expensive; in the African Savannah it may cost too many calories to keep people in novelty-producing hyperthymic states (even if one is kept psychologically balanced) relative to the potential benefits of having our brains working at the minimal acceptable capacity. In today’s environment we have a surplus of calories which can be put to good use, i.e. to explore the state-space of consciousness and have a chance at discovering socially (and hedonically) valuable states. Exploring consciousness may thus not only be aligned with real value (cf. valence realism) but it might also turn out to be a good, rational time investment if you live in an experience-oriented economy. We are not particularly calorie-constrained nowadays; our states of consciousness should be enriched to reflect this fact.\nLink and Leona (whom you may recognize from a previous article) are two successful wireheads who are now happier than ever. They chose to have the following feedback network for their valence: fast makes it easier to feel spiritual, spiritual makes it easier to feel slow, and slow makes it easier to feel fast. Their primary state of consciousness cycles over a period of 24 hours. Here is their routine: They wake up and experience intense zest for life and work at full capacity making others happy and having fun. Then they go crazy creative in the afternoon, usually spending that time alone or with friends, and explore (and share) strange but always awesome psychedelic-like states of consciousness. Finally, at night they just relax to the max (the healthy and genetically encoded phenomenological equivalent of shooting heroin). They report having more agency than before, since now they feel that there is time to do everything they want, and moving from one activity to the next is easy and spontaneous. This kind of wireheading allows them to avoid loops, drops in motivation or impoverished creativity and introspection. The only thing they had to accept was that “hey, you don’t need to have all of the euphorias at once all the time”. By enjoying them one at a time you can guarantee a healthy mind, a healthy social life and a healthy economic output.\nPositive Wireheading at the Evolutionary Limit\nOne of the main insights of evolutionary game theory is that strategies that have the best shot at being dominant for long periods of time have three properties: (1) they do well on average against other strong strategies, (2) do well against themselves, and (3) have an immune system against custom anti-strategies. This last condition may be skipped if we are not going to play for too long, but in the long run it is absolutely necessary. Custom anti-strategies may themselves be terrible against other strong strategies and even against themselves, so you may not realize they exist at first. For a while your strategy may be dominating the space with no signs of anything changing. But then you may start noticing that a tiny population of contrarians are beginning to grow exponentially. In no time you are defeated and the world breaks into chaos (since the contrarians may not be good at holding power). A classical illustration of this phenomenon comes from the evolutionary setup of the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. Here we can find some strategies that satisfy (1) and (2) but do not have a good immune system against free-loading strategies. The strategy always-defect is surprisingly effective in an ecosystem dominated by always-cooperate. Likewise the Pavlov strategy can exploit the vulnerabilities of tit-for-tat-with-forgiveness, (though improved versions can counter it). Over time we see sporadical population booms and busts caused by cycles of cooperative eras collapsing under parasitic breakthroughs.\nI posit that an ecology of wirehead minds that dedicate themselves to explore (“mine”) the state-space of consciousness can be economically powerful if other people are willing to pay for the information about how to instantiate the high-valence qualia discovered during these explorations. A large group of cooperators that help each other explore the state-space of consciousness satisfies condition (2) from the previous paragraph. But in order to satisfy condition (1) we need an environment in which knowledge about consciousness is marketable. The Super-Shulgin Academies (i.e. rational psychonautic collectives) of the future may concentrate all the qualia research talent in the world and reap the highest economic benefits while producing the largest amount of value, but they will only be able to do so if the surrounding society values their output. A society of pure replicators has no use for Super-Shulgin Academies, let alone Manhattan Projects of Consciousness (i.e. global concerted efforts to find and recruit benevolence-enhancing states of consciousness). But given the moral and hedonistic pursuits of our fellow humans we may still have a chance: making people happier than they currently are is a trillion-dollar industry nowadays, and Super-Shulgin Academies may capitalize on this demand by selling valence-enhancing technologies to the masses.\nWith regards to (3) we may happen to be lucky this time: Knowing all there is to know about the state-space of consciousness is the best way to prevent oneself from being outsmarted. Super-Shulgin Academies would invest heavily in researching ways to defend themselves against pure replicators. As part of its immune system, a Super-Shulgin Academy should only admit benevolent individuals as researchers. Benevolence, perhaps, is best implemented at the level of ontological qualia: someone who believes that we are all the same consciousness is a lot less dangerous to others than someone who is solipsistic or self-centered. “Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize they are one and the same process as the universe.” (Alan Watts). Rational agency and super-sentience in the hands of Open Individualists (i.e. people who believe that we are all the same subject of experience) could eventually allow us to bring about a good qualia and valence-centric Singleton.\nBut to bootstrap our way there we need to make sure that the organization would not die out even in an economy that isn’t already completely focused on consciousness (i.e. to fulfill condition 1).\nWe are very lucky to live in the Age of Spandrels. We take for granted the fact that people around us like to watch movies, go to sports events, read novels, get drunk, listen to music, have sex, etc. without realizing they could be investing all of that energy in figuring out how to make clones. We don’t usually realize that people’s atavistic inefficient hedonism is in fact our saving grace. (As an aside, I hope I am not inspiring anyone to go wild into the arts and do silly non-optimal things. My readership is capable of much more than that. Let us do silly non-optimal things in the most optimal way possible, by which I mean, let’s try to ensure that future beings care about valence and consciousness.) We should be thankful that we still have residual sexually-selected preferences for experientially rich lifestyles over pure and efficient dullness.\nWiki-consciousness. The state-space of consciousness library is accessible to everyone free of charge.\nAs long as we make intelligent use of today’s collective interest in exploring consciousness (in all of its guises e.g. art, philosophy, drugs) we still have a chance to create a sustainable economy of well-rounded wireheads that is worth living. The wirehead psychonaut collective  would obtain most of its economic power via the revenue coming from the discoveries made during the systematic exploration of the state-space of consciousness. If the public consumes these discoveries, then the strategy may be perfectly self-sustaining. The process itself would be beneficial, as we would discover new ways to make people happy, bring the radical freedom to inhabit any known state of consciousness and increase our understanding of the universe.\nOne can even imagine that if Super-Shulgin Academies become the most powerful economic forces in the world, they may choose to create a massive “wiki-consciousness”: a library of all known states of consciousness completely accessible to anyone free of charge. Why would they do this given that their power comes from being able to sell this information? On the one hand it stabilizes people’s ability to gain power over each other (since the only way to gain power in such an economy is to sell information about the state-space). This incentivizes people to actually find something new and valuable for everyone if they are aiming to become more powerful. And on the other hand, making the information freely available would also increase the quality of prospective members of the psychonaut collective due to widespread consciousness literacy.\nIf we play our cards right we may still have a chance of avoiding the pure replicators, Molochs and Singletons that lurk ahead in our forward light-cone. But to do so we need to stay grounded and avoid the pitfalls here discussed.\nConclusion\nIf we are to have a chance at surviving with a good quality of life in the sundown of the Age of Spandrels we will need to preemptively outcompete pure replicators. To do so we must avoid wireheading traps and take seriously future economic selection pressures, as they will determine who or what survives at the evolutionary limit. It is imperative that we take advantage of the current collective demand for valence and information about consciousness to fund ambitious consciousness research programs. Such programs will capitalize on this demand and kick-start a valence-centric market. In turn, scientific breakthroughs in this area may increase the percentage of the economy that is dedicated to exploring consciousness, which may reduce the opportunities for pure replicators to participate in the economy.\nWe need to act fast: if the economic demand for valence technologies disappears (or is low enough), we will find ourselves in a world in which exploring the state-space of consciousness is not profitable and pure replicators win.\n\n* Thanks to Chris Potts for putting the papers online.\n** I owe this theoretical framework to Mike Johnson and his magnificent work on the nature of valence: Principia Qualia.\n*** Tragedy of the commons (i.e. failure of cooperation).\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/08/20/wireheading_done_right/", "title": "Wireheading Done Right: Stay Positive Without Going Insane", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-08-20T20:16:48+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=24", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "256649257d21cb5d71dd0c6f4636f8d9", "summary": []}
{"text": "Just the fate of our forward light-cone\n\nImplicit in the picture is that the Hedonium Ball is at the verge of becoming critical (and turn into super-critical hedonium, at around 17 kgs, which leads to runaway re-coherence of the wavefunction reachable, i.e. all of our forward light-cone). The only reason why the ball hasn’t gone critical is because the friendly AI is currently preventing it from doing so. But the AI is at full capacity. If it had a bit more power the AI would completely annihilate the hedonium, since it is a threat to the Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) of the particular human values that led to its creation. More so, the friendly AI would then go ahead and erase the memory of anyone who has ever thought of making hedonium, and change them slightly so that they belong to a society of other people who have been brainwashed to not know anything about philosophical hedonism. They would have deeply fulfilling lives, but would never know of the existence of hyper-valuable states of consciousness.\n \nOnly you can sort out this stale-mate. The ball and the AI are at such a delicate balance that just throwing a trolley at either will make the other win forever.\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/08/14/just-the-fate-of-our-forward-light-cone/", "title": "Just the fate of our forward light-cone", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-08-14T03:15:41+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=24", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "46a8a37f7445e0c45df0147c452557c4", "summary": []}
{"text": "Information-Sensitive Gradients of Bliss\n\n“Normal” or so-called “euthymic” people are inclined to judge that hyperthymics/”optimists” view the world through rose-tinted spectacles. Their central information-processing system is systematically biased. Conversely, hyperthymics see the rest of us as unreasonably pessimistic. Chronic depressives, on the other hand, may view euthymic and hyperthymic people alike as deluded. Indeed victims of melancholic depression may feel the world itself is hateful and meaningless. For evolutionary reasons (cf. rank theory), a genetic predisposition to hyperthymia and euphoric unipolar mania are rarer than dysthymia or unipolar depression. Most of us fall somewhere in between these temperamental extremes, though the distribution is skewed to the southern end of the axis. Genetics plays a key role in determining our hedonic set-point, as does the ceaseless interplay between our genes and environmental stressors. Inadequate diet, imprudent drug use, and severe, chronic, uncontrolled stress can all reset an emotional thermostat at a lower level than its previous norm – though that norm may be surprisingly robust. Unlike recreational euphoriants, delayed-onset antidepressants may restore a lowered set-point to its former norm, or even elevate it. Antidepressants may act to reverse stress-induced hypertrophy of the basolateral amygdala and contrasting stress-induced dendritic atrophy in the hippocampus. Yet no mood-brightener currently licensed for depression reliably induces permanent bliss, whether information-signalling or constant, serene or manic. A genetically-determined ceiling stops our quality of life as a whole getting better.\n \nIs the future of mood and motivation in the universe destined to be an endless replay of life’s evolutionary past? Are the same affective filters that were genetically adaptive for our hominid ancestors likely to be retained by our transhuman successors? Will superintelligent life-forms really opt to preserve the architecture of the primordial hedonic treadmill indefinitely? In each case, probably not, though it’s controversial whether designer drugs, neuroelectrodes or gene therapies will make the biggest impact on recalibrating the pleasure-pain axis. In the long-run, perhaps germline genetic engineering will deliver the greatest global enhancement of emotional well-being. For a reproductive revolution of designer babies is imminent. Thanks to genomic medicine, tomorrow’s parents will be able to choose the genetic make-up and personality of their offspring. Critically, parents-to-be will be able to select the emotional dial-settings of their progeny rather than play genetic roulette. In deciding what kind of children to create, tomorrow’s parents will (presumably) rarely opt for dysfunctional, depressive and malaise-ridden kids. Quite aside from the ethical implications of using old corrupt code, children who are temperamentally happy, loving and affectionate are far more enjoyable to bring up.\n \nThe collective outcome of these individual parental genetic choices will be far-reaching. In the new era of advanced biotechnology and reproductive medicine, a combination of designer drugs, autosomal gene therapies and germline interventions may give rise to a civilisation inhabiting a state-space located further “north” emotionally than present-day humans can imagine or coherently describe. Gradients of heritable, lifelong bliss may eventually become ubiquitous. The worst post-human lows may be far richer than the most sublime of today’s peak experiences. Less intuitively, our superwell descendants may be constitutionally smarter as well as happier than unenriched humans. Aided by synthetic enhancement technologies, fine-textured gradients of intense emotional well-being can play an information-signalling role at least as versatile and sophisticated as gradients of emotional ill-being or pain-sensations today. Simplistically, it may be said that posterity will be “permanently happy”. However, this expression can be a bit misleading. Post-humans are unlikely to be either “blissed out” wireheads or soma-addled junkies. Instead, we may navigate by the gradients of a multi-dimensional compass that’s designed – unlike its bug-ridden Darwinian predecessor – by intelligent agents for their own ends.\n \n– Life in the Far North: An Information-Theoretic Perspective on Heaven by David Pearce\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/08/03/information-sensitive-gradients-of-bliss/", "title": "Information-Sensitive Gradients of Bliss", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-08-03T18:36:01+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=24", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "a04874ac911e2b9ae4cec0166e420805", "summary": []}
{"text": "A Single 3N-Dimensional Universe: Splitting vs. Decoherence\n\nA common way of viewing Everettian quantum mechanics is to say that in an act of measurement, the universe splits into two. There is a world in which the electron has x-spin up, the pointer points to “x-spin up,” and we believe the electron has x-spin up. There is another world in which the electron has x-spin down, the pointer points to “x-spin down,” and we believe the electron has x-spin down. This is why Everettian quantum mechanics is often called “the many worlds interpretation.” Because the contrary pointer readings exist in different universes, no one notices that both are read. This way of interpreting Everettian quantum mechanics raises many metaphysical difficulties. Does the pointer itself split in two? Or are there two numerically distinct pointers? If the whole universe splits into two, doesn’t this wildly violate conservation laws? There is now twice as much energy and momentum in the universe than there was just before the measurement. How plausible is it to say that the entire universe splits?\n \nAlthough this “splitting universes” reading of Everett is popular (Deutsch 1985 speaks this way in describing Everett’s view, a reading originally due to Bryce Dewitt), fortunately, a less puzzling interpretation has been developed. This idea is to read Everett’s theory as he originally intended. Fundamentally, there is no splitting, only the evolution of the wave function according to the Shrödinger dynamics. To make this consistent with experience, it must be the case that there are in the quantum state branches corresponding to what we observe. However, as, for example, David Wallace has argued (2003, 2010), we need not view these branches -indeed, the branching process itself- as fundamental. Rather, these many branches or many worlds are patterns in the one universal quantum state that emerge as the result of its evolution. Wallace, building on work by Simon Saunders (1993), argues that there is a kind of dynamical process; the technical name for this process is “decoherence,” that can ground the emergence of quasi-classical branches within the quantum state. Decoherence is a process that involves an interaction between two systems (one of which may be regarded as a system and the other its environment) in which distinct components of the quantum state come to evolve independently of one another. That this occurs is the result of the wave function’s Hamiltonian, the kind of system it is. A wave function that (due to the kind of state it started out in and the Shrödinger dynamics) exhibits decoherence will enter into states capable of representation as a sum of noninteracting terms in particular basis (e.g., a position basis). When this happens, the system’s dynamics will appear classical from the perspective of the individual branches.\n \n[…]\n \nNote the facts about the quantum state decohering are not built into the fundamental laws. Rather, this is an accidental fact depending on the kind of state our universe started out in. The existence of these quasi-classical states is not a fundamental fact either, but something that emerges from the complex behavior of the fundamental state. The sense in which there are many worlds in this way of understanding Everettian quantum mechanics is therefore not the same as it is on the more naive approach already described. Fundamentally there is just one universe evolving according to the Schrödinger equation (or whatever is its relativistically appropriate analog). However, because of the special way this one world evolves, and in particular because parts of this world do not interfere with each other and can each on their own ground the existence of quasi-classical macro-objects that look like individual universes, it is correct in this sense to say (nonfundamentally) there are many worlds.\n \n[…]\n \nAs metaphysicians, we are interested in the question of what the world is fundamentally like according to quantum mechanics. Some have argued that the answer these accounts give us (setting aside Bohmian mechanics for the moment) is that fundamentally all one needs to believe in is the wave function. What is the wave function? It is something that as we have already stated may be described as a field on configuration space, a space where each point can be taken to correspond to a configuration of particles, a space that has 3N dimensions where N is the number of particles. So, fundamentally, according to these versions of quantum mechanics (orthodox quantum mechanics, Everettian quantum mechanics, spontaneous collapse theories), all there is fundamentally is a wave function, a field in a high-dimensional configuration space. The view that the wave function is a fundamental object and a real, physical field on configuration space is today referred to as “wave function realism.” The view that such a wave function is everything there is fundamentally is wave function monism.\n \nTo understand wave function monism, it will be helpful to see how it represents the space on which the wave function is spread. We call this space “configuration space,” as is the norm. However, note that on the view just described, this is not an apt name because what is supposed to be fundamental on this view is the wave function, not particles. So, although the points in this space might correspond in a sense to particle configurations, what this space is fundamentally is not a space of particle configurations. Likewise, although we’ve represented the number of dimensions configuration space has as depending on the number N of particles in a system, this space’s dimensionality should not really be construed as dependent on the number of particles in a system. Nevertheless, the wave function monist need not be an eliminativist about particles. As we have seen, for example, in the Everettian approach, wave function monists can allow that there are particles, derivative entities that emerge out of the decoherent behavior of the wave function over time. Wave function monists favoring other solutions to the measurement problem can also allow that there are particles in this derivative sense. But the reason the configuration space on which the wave function is spread has the number of dimensions it does is not, in the final analysis, that there are particles. This is rather a brute fact about the wave function, and this in turn is what grounds the number of particles there are.\n \n– The Wave Function: Essays on the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics. Edited by Alyssa Ney and David Z Albert (pgs. 33-34, 36-37).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/06/29/a-single-3n-dimensional-universe-splitting-vs-decoherence/", "title": "A Single 3N-Dimensional Universe: Splitting vs. Decoherence", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-06-29T06:05:22+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=24", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "783273d5a2aae81ac9424152a457d288", "summary": []}
{"text": "Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States\n\nOnly when sexual choice favored the reportability of our subjective experiences- with the emergence of the mental clearing-house we call consciousness- did our strangely promiscuous introspection abilities emerge, such that we seem to have instant conscious access to such a range of impressions, ideas, and feelings. This may explain why philosophical writing about consciousness so often sounds like love poetry- philosophers of mind, like lovesick teenagers, dwell upon the redness of the rose, the emotional urgency of music, the soft warmth of skin, and the existential loneliness of the self. The philosophers wonder why such subjective experiences exist, given that they seem irrelevant to our survival prospects, while the lovesick teenagers know perfectly well that their romantic success depends, in part, on making a credible show of aesthetic sensitivity to their own conscious pleasures.\n– The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (pg. 365) by Geoffrey F. Miller\nA Darwinian Set and Setting\nAccording to The Mating Mind, human sexual selection favors particular fitness-indicating traits, both physical and mental. In the context of mental traits, we have verbal and introspective abilities, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, low neuroticism and extroversion. No matter how verbally capable and introspective a given person is, unless that is balanced with some degree of agreeableness, conscientiousness, etc. the person will not be all that attractive. But, when all else is being held equal, stronger verbal and introspective abilities are favored. Teenagers, arguably, know this best of all: courtship is intensely verbal.\nOur minds evolved in a Darwinian environment. If people like Miller are right in thinking that language evolved as a fitness indicator, we are right to expect that the way we think and verbalize is biased to be impressive to the members of the opposite sex during courtship. Powerful introspective abilities, as it were, can make one’s language seem deeper, more romantic, and even at an entirely different level than that of one’s peers. In this backdrop of sexual choices and judgements, it is not surprising that humans would develop ever-increasing verbal and introspective capacities. At some point everyday life could not present sufficient opportunities for people, especially males, to show off their own abilities. And as these abilities increased over time, culture was forced to invent handicaps so that people could display their top capabilities. Over time, elaborate and competitive handicaps were integrated into the culture. Even verbal and introspective abilities at the top of the scale can still be compared side by side by using carefully selected handicaps: for example, poetry is exactly that; rhyme, rhythm and meter make it easier for the best poets to show off their excellent abilities. The handicaps adjust to the maximum level of competence in the population.\nThe space of handicaps that are used to show off traits that are reliable indicators of fitness is very large. From Greek Symposiums to modern day Frat Parties, Western civilization has embraced a niche subculture that uses chemical handicaps as a means to display verbal, social and creative skills. If you can philosophize after drinking a gallon of wine, or stay capable of managing the playlist after 16 cheap cans of beer, you are showing off your biological robustness. Clearly, many of our ancestors were capable of impressing potential sexual mates with a mixture of booze, loud music and stunning philosophical conversations.\nOne could argue that psychedelics have come to disrupt our traditional games of handicaps. “Sure you can drink a bottle of tequila and sing in a band, but can you take three hits of acid and tell me what your experience reveals about the intrinsic nature of consciousness?” Psychedelics are, in a way, a cultural hyper-stimulus that presents the most difficult and interesting handicap currently in existence for verbal and introspective abilities.\nCultures can have an allergic reaction to the states of consciousness that these agents can disclose; people are afraid that psychedelic users will discover something that they themselves don’t know. Notably, psychedelicists have been both demonized and deified since the 60s. Sure, these researchers became extremely open minded, and in many ways weird. But, above all, they became extremely interesting people. And interesting people who challenge the current games of status can cause cultural allergic reactions.\nEvery acid head and psychedelic researcher has a pet theory of what these compounds are really doing in one’s mind. Many of these folk theories about the effects of psychedelics involve ontologies that currently have little scientific support (such as souls, thought fields, spirit worlds, archetypes, alien conspiracies, and so on). Although we cannot rule out explanations of this sort out of hand, the ontologies themselves are so abstract and poorly defined that we cannot accept them as useful forms of reductions. That said, their future versions will be more interesting. It is likely that committed, rational, spiritual psychedelic users will formalize models of this sort at some point. Rather than talking about a “spirit world,” they will talk about “mind-independent extra-dimensional space that consciousness can access in altered states” and then go on to define the differential equations that govern consciousness’s interactions with this space. When this happens, we will be in a much better position to assess the validity of these models, test the reality of those spaces, and perhaps even recruit the extra-dimensional inhabitants of these worlds for computational tasks.\nPsychedelic experiences drastically increase people’s introspection, capacity for deep aesthetic appreciation, while at the same time increasing their ability to entertain unusual ideas. Insofar as the selection pressures of our introspective abilities have been heavily biased towards courtship ability, it is not surprising that people tend to immediately cast self-enhancing, life-affirming and magical narratives into their interpretations of their personal psychedelic experiences. After all, having a very interesting story to tell is highly praised during courtship. Are people’s psychedelic narratives a modern day form of the peacock’s tail? While psychedelic talk does not yet form part of any mainstream game of courtship, I envision this changing in the next decades. Undoubtedly, the most insightful, sound, and scientifically rigorous members of the Super-Shulgin Academy will attract attention, status, resources and… desirable mates.\nWhat is the deep structure of psychedelic experiences?\nPsychedelics seem to have a generalized effect on one’s consciousness. At minimum, we could talk of experience amplification. Without delving into specifics, psychedelics introduce spontaneous activity into our consciousness that our mind is compelled to integrate somehow. Our state of consciousness changes dynamically as our mind adjusts itself to the incoming stimulation. The result is tightly dependent on the interplay between our brain anatomy, motivational system and the actual changes to the micro-structure of consciousness induced by LSD.\nAs John Lilly noted in light of his psychedelic experiences: “in the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limits…”.* While there are reasons not to take this literally, we have grounds for claiming that a large number of limits on our experience are placed there by our deeply held beliefs and attitudes. The space of possible LSD experiences that a single individual can experience is much larger than what said individual will typically be able to explore in practice. Many limits are imposed by his or her beliefs and background assumptions, rather than by physiology per se. Social cognition is a profound attractor in psychedelic experiences. “What will I say about this? What would this person think about this experience? etc.” are captivating thoughts. However, they occupy valuable mental space. And the thick mental judgements that people naturally focus on come with large conceptual and emotional baggage that taints the experience. Meditators, philosophers and scientists are more likely to set aside some time during their explorations to delve more deeply into what the energy introduced by LSD can produce in one’s consciousness.\nAfter extreme training and tens (or hundreds) of trips, dedicated psychonauts will discover qualities that all of the trips share. Most people will likely experience a variant of Lilly’s realization that whatever you believe can be perceived as true during psychedelic experiences. Lilly emphasized the limitless quality of the mind, but one must wonder: If one can experience as true anything conceivable, are we not, then, limited by what we can conceive? No matter how much time one spends with an open mind waiting for new and interesting ideas to take shape, one cannot know the nature of what one has not yet even conceived of.\nIt may be true that we will always find fundamental limits that cannot be overcome. There are fundamental physiological constraints to the possible configurations of our consciousness, and arguably, chemical agents, while capable of expanding the space of possibilities, will not automatically give access to all possible states of consciousness. As future research is likely to show, 2C-B and LSD probably facilitate slightly different kinds of thoughts and experiences. Thus the limits of our mind are at least to a large extent the result of our physiology. Memes and meditation can only go so far.\nIn addition to physiological limits, the structure of the state-space of qualia is itself a constraint on what can and cannot be experienced. To the extent that psychedelic states enable the exploration of a larger space of possible experiences, we are more likely while on psychedelics to find states of consciousness that demonstrate fundamental limits imposed by the structure of the state-space of qualia. In normal everyday experience we can see that yellow and blue cannot be mixed (phenomenologically), while yellow and red can (and thus deliver orange). This being a constraint of the state-space of qualia itself is not at all evident, but it is a good candidate and many introspective individuals agree. On psychedelic states one can detect many other rules like that, except that they operate on much higher-dimensional and synesthetic spaces (E.g. “Some feelings of roughness and tinges of triangle orange can mix well, while some spiky mongrels and blue halos simply won’t touch no matter how much I try.” – 150 micrograms of LSD).\nOne of the objectives of Qualia Computing is to define the state space of possible experiences and the interdependencies between them. While normal everyday states of consciousness are important datapoints, I predict that the bulk of the most useful information will come from studying the behavior and mechanics of consciousness in radically altered states. To this end, however, we should focus on simple explanations that can be generalized to all psychedelic experiences.\nStarting Background Assumptions\nFor the purpose of this article I will assume that direct realism, in all of its guises, is wrong. That is, I will assume that any mind-independent object can only be experienced indirectly. What we experience is not the object (or beings) themselves, but a qualia-furnished representation entirely contained within one’s mind (this is often called the simulationist account of perception). Furthermore, I will also assume that the behavior of  the universe can be fully described with the Standard Model of physics (or a future version of it).\nIn what is to follow I will propose, as a first approximation, an algorithmic reduction of psychedelic states; I will propose a set of changes in our consciousness that (1) is as simple and assumption-free as possible, and (2) can be used to reconstruct as many psychedelic effects as possible.\nTwo Kinds of Reduction\nThe word reduction in the context of philosophy of science has a lot of historical and conceptual baggage. In the context of this article, I will use the word in the following sense: We say that a property of a given phenomenon X reduces to Y if we can fully explain X’s property by referencing Y’s properties. X can be a physical phenomenon, a mathematical construct or even an experience. Y is an ontology with interaction rules, which allow the pieces of said ontology to interact with one another. We do not commit to the idea that Y itself needs to be the fundamental (or true) ontology of X. But we do want to make sure that Y is at least more fundamental than X in some appropriate sense. So what kind of ontologies can Y have? In the context of philosophy of mind, reductions usually attempt to account for not only the behavior of consciousness but also for its underlying nature. Thus, functionalism is both a reduction program as well as a philosophical take on what the mind fundamentally is.\nThankfully, we do not need to commit to any ontology in order to advance a particular style of reduction. Reductions are useful regardless: they reduce the amount of information needed to describe a phenomenon, and if accurate, they can also make useful predictions. Finally, these reductions can provide hints for how to bridge different areas of science; by identifying isomorphisms or even further reductions, entire fields can cross-pollinate once their respective reductions are compatible (such as biology and chemistry or chemistry and physics).\nAtomistic Reduction\nFor most intents and purposes, science relies on a particular kind of reduction that we can call atomistic reduction. This style of reduction focuses on explaining macroscopic phenomena by modeling it as the emergent structure of many particles interacting with one another at a much finer level of resolution. Even though this style of reduction is usually fruitful (e.g. thermodynamics), it can be counter-productive to assume in some situations. An extreme case would be the quantum computer. If states of superposition help a computer find an answer, it will be hard to explain the behavior of said superposition by postulating that it actually reduces to little particles interacting using simple rules. The model could in principle be worked out, but at the cost of very high complexity. It would be much easier to start with a quantum-mechanical ontology that allows the superposition of wavefunctions! Then what is left is to reduce the rest of the computer to quantum mechanics (which is possible, given that particle models and quantum mechanical models usually converge at the macroscopic limit).\nIt is tempting to try to reduce the properties of the mind (including psychedelic states) using an atomistic reduction. Unfortunately, the phenomenal binding problem adds a complication to this reduction. Rather than discussing (right now) whether an atomistic (and thus classical) account will ultimately be capable of modeling conscious experience, we will side-step this problem by using a different style of reduction. We will focus only on the algorithmic level of analysis.\nAlgorithmic Reduction\nWithout assuming a fundamental ontology (atoms, fields, wavefunctions, etc.) we can still make a lot of progress. We can restrict ourselves to identifying what we call an algorithmic reduction: find a set of procedures, state-spaces, shapes and overall main effects out of which you can reconstruct as much of the observed behavior as possible.\nIn reality, every reduction is, at least in part, an algorithmic reduction. By specifying a particular ontology such as “particles”, we restrict the shape of our possible reductions. By keeping the reduction at the algorithmic level, we allow arbitrary ontologies to be the final explanations (then depending on actual empirical measurements). The main criteria for success still includes (1) the overall complexity of the model, and (2) the explanatory power of the model. In other words, how easily and precisely does the model reconstruct the behavior of our experiences?\nA Zoo of Psychedelic Effects\nPsychonautWiki has a detailed and fascinating taxonomy of reported psychedelic visual effects. One could argue that all of these countless effects are completely unique. As a philosopher might put it, these effects may ultimately be qualitatively irreducible to one another. But what are the chances that a simple molecule would happen to trigger a whole zoo of unrelated effects? As a form of reduction, nothing is achieved by stating that every effect is its own unique phenomenon.\nFour Principal Operators: A Simple Algorithmic Model of Psychedelic States\nIn trying to account for the strange effects of psychedelics, we will aim to propose as few main effects as possible and then use these effects, and their interactions, to derive all of the remaining effects. By doing this, we will be algorithmically reducing the complex phenomena found in psychedelic states. In turn, this will allow us to increase our understanding of the source of information processing benefits provided by psychedelic states, and to derive new and exciting applications of such states. Additionally, by identifying a good algorithmic reduction, we might be able to refine the states themselves, to amplify their benefits while minimizing the drawbacks.\nThe model we will treat for now has four main effects, and with those four effects we will attempt to reconstruct the rest. These effects are:\n\ncontrol interruption\ndrifting\neidetic hallucinations/enhanced pattern recognition/apophenia\nsymmetry detection/symmetry propagation\n\n \nSymmetric drifting. What would Giulio Tononi think about this? Source.\nControl interruption is the simplest and most universal psychedelic effect. It enables the buildup of qualia in one’s consciousness. People say that psychedelics are intense, deep, bright, etc. Every experience, whether a thought, a smell or an emotion, seems to be both stronger and longer-lasting on psychedelics.\nThings seem more lively, and this is not because a switch is suddenly turned on and your experience of the current input is amplified. Rather, one seems to be experiencing a gentle overlap of many previous frames (and feature bundles) of one’s experience. In medium to high doses, this can give rise to solid frame stacking. In turn, the buildup of sensation creates complex patterns of interference:\nIn order for a perceptual system to transition from a linear to a nonlinear state, negative feedback control must be subverted. If control is entirely removed then perception becomes totally unconstrained, leaving a system that is quickly overloaded with too much information. If control is placed in a state where it is partially removed or in a toggled superposition where it is alternately in control and not in control over the period of a rapid oscillation, then the constraints of linear sensory throughput will bifurcate into a nonlinear spectrum of multi-stable output with signal complexity correlating to the functional interruption of control. Common entheogenic wisdom states that you must relinquish control and submit to the experience to get the most out of psychedelics. Holding onto control causes negative experiences and amplifies anxiety; letting go of control and embracing unconstrained perception is a central psychedelic tenet. This demonstrates that psychedelics directly subvert feedback control over linear perception to promote states of unconstrained consciousness.\n– Control Interrupt Model of Psychedelic Action, PIT\nControl interruption explains a large variety of effects, including the increase in the raw intensity (and amount) of experience, as well as the longer lasting positive afterimages (and thus tracers). Here we show a simple example of this effect. Consider the “original stimuli” to be what one experiences under a sober state. Likewise, consider the 9 squares to be different states of consciousness brought up by various psychotropic combinations.\nOriginal\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe 9 gifs you see above are simulations of control interruption using a simple feedback model (which we will describe in detail in a later article). The x-axis has different “echo strengths” while the y-axis has varying feedback strengths. These are two of the model parameters. Notice that the lower right corner is a credible rendition of something that people describe as moments of eternity. These are experiences where time seems to stop due to an over-saturation of regular and ordered qualia.\nWhen considering the following effects, don’t forget that control interruption is also going on all the time. The stranger the psychedelic effect, the more intense it is.\nDrifting is responsible for breathing walls, animated plants, feelings of boundary dissolution, merging and melting, and so on. Small amounts of drifting usually involve individual feature detachments from perceptual objects (such as the color and shape of a chair becoming dissociated). Medium amounts of drifting make textures flow constantly. If one’s experience was made of tiny magnetic gears that are usually aligned in a coherent way, drifting would result from increasing the overall energy of the system. Thus, the visual system is constantly descending to “more aligned local states” while incoming energy is constantly adding noise and destroying all of the alignment progress made.\nSource: PsychonautWiki, Anonymous\nA particularly salient aspect of drifting is that features and locally-bound fragments of experience can drift in any direction in 3D. Pieces of the wall don’t only drift left and right, but also forwards and backwards.\nOn high doses of psychedelics or synergistic combinations of dissociatives and psychedelics (e.g. LSD + nitrous, 2C-B + ketamine, etc.), drifting can become all-encompassing. A critical point is crossed when one loses the capacity to define a mainframe of experience (the dominating orientation-giving island of locally bound experience that we use as a reference point). When this happens, one feels like one cannot tell left from right, or up from down. One simply experiences a constant chaotic flow of experience. In some cases one can even spot interesting instabilities that resemble actual physical instabilities found in fluid mechanics (such as the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability).\nDrifting does not occur in isolation, and its mechanics are dependent on the particular set and setting in which the psychedelic experience is developing. From a computational point of view, drifting can be useful because it allows a quick exploration of the state-space of possible local binding configurations between the phenomenal objects present in one’s experience. Indeed, not only does red fail to mix with green, but many of the synesthetic qualia varieties present in a scene with constant drifting will refuse to touch each other. Drifting feels like there is some sort of psychedelic energy (somewhat reminiscent of anxiety, but not restricted to body feelings) that overheats certain parts of one’s conscious experience, and in turn disassembles the local connections there.\nEnhanced Pattern Recognition: This effect refers to the transient (but often powerful) lowering of the detection threshold for previously experienced patterns and known ontologies (e.g. animals, plants, people, etc.). Psychedelics, in other words, temporarily increase one’s degree of apophenia. Another name given to this effect is eidetic hallucinations. From a Bayesian point of view, the effect could be described thus: psychedelics intensify the effect of our priors. As explained in Getting Closer to Digital LSD, Google’s deep belief neural network inceptionist technique works by finding bundles of features that trigger high-level neurons (such as face-detectors, object-detectors, etc) at sub-threshold levels (e.g. “this almost looks like a frog”) and then modifying the picture so that the network more strongly detects those same high level features. This particular algorithm can be understood in terms of the pharmacological action of psychedelics: one can have breakthroughs of eidetic hallucinations by impairing the inhibitory control coming from the cortex.\nIn a sense we could say that while tracers are the result of “simple cell control interruption”, eidetic hallucinations are the result of “complex cell control interruption.” The former allows the build-up of colors, edges and simple shapes, while the latter amplifies the features that trigger high-level percepts such as faces and objects.\nEnhanced Pattern Recognition / Eidetic Hallucinations / Visial Apophenia\nThe way one directs attention during a psychedelic trip influences the way eidetic hallucinations evolve over time. For this reason any psychedelic replication movie will probably require human input (in the form of eye-tracking) in order to incorporate human saliency preferences and interests into an evolving virtual psychedelic trip simulated with the Inceptionist Method.\nLower Symmetry Detection and Propagation Thresholds: Finally, this is perhaps the most interesting and scientifically salient effect of psychedelics. The first three effects are not particularly difficult to square with standard neuroscience. This fourth effect, while not incompatible with connectionist accounts, does suggest a series of research questions that may hint at an entirely new paradigm for understanding consciousness.\nI have not seen anyone in the literature specifically identify this effect in all of its generality. The lowering of the symmetry detection threshold really has to be experienced to be believed. I claim that this effect manifests in all psychedelic experiences to a greater or lesser extent, and that many effects can in fact be explained by simply applying this effect iteratively.\nPsychedelics make it easier to find similarities between any two given phenomenal objects. When applied to perception, this effect can be described as a lowering of the symmetry detection threshold. This effect is extremely general and symmetry should not be taken to exclusively refer to geometric symmetry.\nHow symmetries manifest depends on the set and setting. Researchers interested in verifying and exploring the quantitative and subjective properties of this effect will probably have to focus first on a narrow domain; the effect happens in all experiential modalities.\nFor now, let us focus on the case of visual experience. In this domain, the effect is what PsychonautWiki calls Symmetrical Texture Repetition:\nCredit: Chelsea Morgan from PsychonautWiki and r/replications\nSymmetry detection can be (and typically is) recursively applied to previously detected symmetry bundles. A given symmetry bundle is a set of n-dimensional symmetry planes (lines, hyperplanes, etc.) for which the qualities of the experience surrounding this bundle obey the symmetry constraints imposed by these planes. The planes can create mirror, rotational or oblique symmetry. Each symmetry bundle is capable of establishing a merging relationship with another symmetry bundle. These relationships are fleeting, but they influence the evolution of the relative position of each plane of symmetry. When x symmetry planes are in a merging relationship, one’s mind tries to re-arrange them (often using drifting) to create a symmetrical arrangement of these x symmetry planes. To do so, the mind detects one (or several) more symmetry planes, along which the previously-existing symmetry planes are made to conform, to organize in a symmetrical way (mirror, rotational, translational or otherwise). There is an irresistible subjective pull towards those higher levels of symmetry. The direction of highest symmetry and meta-symmetry feels blissful, interesting, mind-expanding, and awe-producing.\nIf one meditates in a sensorially-minimized room during a psychedelic experience while being aware that one’s symmetry detection threshold has been lowered by the substance, one can recursively re-apply this effect to produce all kinds of complex mathematical structures in one’s mind.\nIn the future, perhaps at a Super-Shulgin Academy, people will explore and compare the various states of consciousness that exhibit peak symmetry. These states would be the result of iteratively applying symmetry detection, amplification and re-arrangement. We would see fractals, tessellations, graphs and higher dimensional projections. Which one of these experiences contains the highest degree of inter-connectivity? And if psychedelic symmetry is somehow related to conscious bliss, which experience of symmetry is human peak bliss?\n\n\n\n\nThe pictures above all illustrate possible peak symmetry states one can achieve by combining psychedelics and meditation. The pictures illustrate only the core structure of symmetries that are present in these states of consciousness. What is being reflected is the very raw “feels” of each patch of your experiential field. Thus these pictures really miss the actual raw feelings of the whole experience. They do show, however, a rough outline of symmetrical relationships possible in one of these experiences.\nSince control interruption is also co-occurrent with the psychedelic symmetry effect, previously-detected symmetries tend to linger for long periods of time. For this reason, the kinds of symmetries one can detect at a given point in time is a function of the symmetries that are currently being highlighted. And thanks to drifting and pattern recognition enhancement, there is some wiggle room for your mind to re-arrange the location of the symmetries experienced. The four effects together enable, at times, a smooth iterative integration of so many symmetries that one’s consciousness becomes symmetrically interconnected to an unbelievable degree.\nWhat may innocently start as a simple two-sided mirror symmetry can end up producing complex arrangements of self-reflecting mirrors showing glimpses of higher and higher dimensional symmetries. Studying the mathematical properties of the allowed symmetries is a research project that has only just begun. I hope one day dedicated mathematicians describe in full the class of possible high-order symmetries that humans can experience in these states.\nAnecdotally, each of the 17 possible wallpaper symmetry groups can be instantiated with this effect. In other words, psychedelic states lower the symmetry detection threshold for all of the mathematically available symmetrical tessellations.\nAll of the 17 2-dimensional wallpaper groups can be experienced with symmetry planes detected, amplified and re-arranged during a psychedelic experience.\nRevising the symmetrical texture repetition of grass shown above, we can now discover that the picture displays the wallpaper symmetry found in the lower left circle above:\n\nIn very high doses, the symmetry completion is so strong that at any point one risks confusing left and right, and thus losing grasp of one’s orientation in space and time. Depersonalization is, at times, the result of the information that is lost when there is intense symmetry completion going on. One’s self-models become symmetrical too quickly, and one finds it hard to articulate a grounded point of view.\nThe Micro-Structure of Consciousness\nAt Qualia Computing we explore models of consciousness that acknowledge the micro-structure of consciousness. Experiences are not just higher-order mental operations applied to propositional content. Rather, an instant of experience contains numerous low-level textural properties. This is true for every sensory modality, and I would argue, even for the what-its-likeness of thought itself. Even just thinking about a mathematical idea (ex. “the intersection of two arbitrary sets”) is done by interacting with a background of raw feels, and these raw feels determine our attitudes and interactions with the ideas we are trying to abstract (some people, for example, experience emotional distress when trying out mathematical problems, and this is not because certain mathematical spaces are inherently unpleasant or anxiety-inducing).\nIn the case of vision, the micro-structure of consciousness is capable of supporting at least the following low-level features: color, color gradients, points, edges, oriented movement, and acceleration. A full conversation about the range of visual features that we are capable of experiencing is a discussion for another time. But for the time being, it will suffice to point out that (static) models of peripheral vision only need 5 summary statistics. With only five summary stats you can create textures that a human will find impossible to distinguish in peripheral vision.\nThese so-called mongrels are textural metamers (equivalence classes of subjectively indistinguishable input patterns). The state-space of perceivable visual textures is the space of possible mongrels, and that is an example of the sort of micro-structure we are looking for. Unlike the cozy high-definition space inscribed in the fovea, most of the information found in our sensory modalities comes in the form of textures that are mappable to state-spaces of summary statistics.\n\nPsychedelic symmetry detection and amplification operates on the inner structure of mongrels. The fact that the mongrels are the objects becoming symmetric is something that can elude introspection until someone points it out. It happens right in front of any tripper’s eyes and yet people don’t seem to report it very often (if at all). This may be a result of the fact that the fine-grained structure of consciousness is rarely a topic of conversation, and that we usually describe what we see in the fovea (unless we have no other option). Our words usually refer to whole percepts or, at best, the simplest raw values of experience (such as the hue of colors or the presence of edges). And yet, the structure of our mongrels is quite obvious once symmetry propagation has conformed a large patch of your experience to have a tessellated identical mongrel repeating across it.\n\nHow Are these Components Related to Each Other?\nThe Kaleidoscopic technique to induce qualia annealing relies on a combination of drifting and symmetry detection in order to resolve implicit inconsistencies within one’s own memory gestalts. As we live and grow our experienced evidence base, we accumulate memories and impressions of many worldviews. Each worldview is, in a way, a response to all of the previous ones (or at least the memorable ones) and the current situation and the problems one is facing. Thanks to the four effects here described, a person can utilize a psychedelic state to increase the probability of the systematic co-occurrence of (usually) mutually-exclusive gestalts (worldviews) and thus enable their mutual awareness. And with mutual awareness, the symmetry detection and amplification effect creates (somehow forcefully) a unified phenomenal object that incorporates the inconsistent views into an unbiased (or less biased) point of view. One can achieve a higher order of memetic and affective integration.\nMongrel repetition / symmetrical tessellation. Source.\nPsychedelics as Introspectoscopes**\nGiven the symmetry detection and amplification property of psychedelics, one can reasonably argue that psychedelic states may be able to reveal the properties of the micro-structure of consciousness. Timothy Leary, among others, described LSD as a sort of microscope for one’s psyche. The very word psychedelic means mind-manifest (the manifestation of one’s mind). Given the four components of these experiences, the fact that psychedelics work as some sort of microscope should not be surprising. Symmetry detection and control interruption multiply the amount of raw experience, while pattern recognition shows you what you are expecting (your priors become evident) and drifting makes the fleeting synesthetic effects malleable and easier to move around. People generally agree that psychedelics can show you subtle aspects of your own mind with stark clarity. But can they reveal the intrinsic properties of the nature of qualia at the most fundamental level?\nThe way to achieve this may be to create a fractal structure of symmetries in such a way that any tiny part of one’s experience can get reflected throughout the entirety of the phenomenal structure. One can then use eidetic hallucinations (or further symmetry detection) to focus and stabilize the fractal structure. Thus one would multiply the surface area of all of one’s attention into countless replicas of the micro-structure of a given part of one’s experience. A fractal kaleidoscopic mirror amplifier chamber is exactly what I imagine when I think about how to analyze the fine-grained structure of consciousness. And it so happens that meditation plus psychedelics can allow you to (fleetingly) build just that.\nPsychedelic Introspectoscope (fractal kaleidoscope of generalized symmetries) to amplify arbitrary qualia values (such as particular emotions, phenomenal colors, synesthetic inter-junctions, etc.)\nAny subtle qualia space can be multiplied countless times in such a way that all of one’s experience becomes a coherent interlocking structure that can be perceived all at once. If one wants to study, for example, the possible interactions between two hues of color, one can amplify the boundary between two regions that make the desired contrast of hues and make the entire fractal structure amplify this boundary hundreds of times.\nArguably, if one discovers that certain qualia values cannot be mixed in the introspectoscope (such as blue and yellow), one may still not know if these are fundamental constraints, or if they are the result of our connectome structure. If, on the other hand, two qualia values can mix in the introspectoscope, then we would know that they are not fundamentally mutually exclusive. Thus we would find out relational properties of the very state-space of qualia.\nReducing All Effects\nCan we derive all psychedelic effects using the four components discussed above? While this is not yet possible, I trust that further work will show how most of the weird (and weirder) effects of psychedelics may be reduced to relatively simple (but not always atomistic) algorithms applied to the micro-structure of consciousness. I anticipate that we will discover that high doses actually produce entirely new effects (for example, what happens on 400 micrograms of LSD often include qualitative jumps from what happens at 150 micrograms). To note, ontological qualia and other subtle aspects of consciousness may resist reduction for still many more decades to come.\n\n*Programming and Meta programming in the Human Biocomputer\n**An Introspectoscope is a hypothetical apparatus that enables a person to study the deep structure of his or her own consciousness. The concept comes from a paper in the making by Andrew Y. Lee. Obviously this comes with significant challenges. Some challenges come from the fact that we are trying to analyze something very small, and other challenges come from the fact we are trying to analyze qualia. Additionally, there are unique challenges that come from analyzing microscopic qualia qua microscopic qualia. I suggest that we use methods that amplify the micro-structure by taking advantage of fractal states: recursive and scale-free symmetry planes can amplify anything minute to a prominent place in the entire consciousness.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/06/20/algorithmic-reduction-of-psychedelic-states/", "title": "Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-06-20T07:12:18+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=24", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ea0cb8df6d362d367ab366a82d1f60c5", "summary": []}
{"text": "So Why Can’t My Boyfriend Communicate?\n\nFor every word written in scientific journals about the evolution of astonishing language ability, at least a hundred words have been written in women’s magazines about men’s apparent inability to articulate even the simplest thought or feeling. Women commonly complain that their sexual partners do not talk enough to them. If language evolved through sexual selection, and if sexual selection operates more powerfully on males than on females, you may legitimately wonder why your boyfriend or husband cannot share his feelings with you. Is it possible that, his early courtship efforts having brought success, he no longer feels driven to be as verbally energetic, interesting, and self-disclosing as he was before? The man who used to talk like Cyrano now talks like a cave-man. Once he was a poet, now he is prosaic. His verbal courtship effort has decreased.\n \nI have already argued that effective verbal courtship is a reliable fitness indicator precisely because it is costly and difficult. Animals evolve to allocate their energies efficiently. If it took a million words to establish a sexual relationship with you, your boyfriend was apparently willing to absorb those costs, just as his male ancestors were. But if it takes only twenty words a day to maintain exclusive sexual access to you, why should he bother uttering more? His motivational system has evolved to deploy his courtship effort where it makes a difference to his reproductive success- mainly by focusing it where it improves his rate of sexual intercourse. Men apparently did not evolve from male ancestors who squandered high levels of verbal courtship effort on already established relationships. Of course, if an established partner suspends sexual relations, or threatens to have an affair, evolution would favor motivations that produce a temporary resurgence of verbal courtship until the danger has passed. Frustratingly, a woman may find that the greater the sexual commitment she displays the less her man speaks.\n \nThis analysis may sound heartlessly unromantic, but evolution is heartlessly unromantic. It is stingy with courtship effort, stacking it heavily where it does the most good, and sprinkling it very lightly elsewhere. Human courtship, like courtship in other animals, has a typical time-course. Courtship effort is low when first assessing a sexual prospect, increases rapidly if the prospect reciprocates one’s interest, peaks when the prospect is deciding whether to copulate, and declines once a long-term relationship is established. We all enjoy a desired partner besieging us with ardent, witty, energetic courtship. That enjoyment is the subjective manifestation of the mate preferences that shaped human language in the first place. As with any evolved preference, we may desire more than we can realistically get. Evolution’s job is to motivate us, not to satisfy us.\n \nSo, when women universally complain about their slothfully mute boyfriends, we learn two things. First, women have a universal desire to enjoy receiving high levels of verbal courtship effort. Second, high levels of verbal courtship effort are so costly that men have evolved to produce them only when they are necessary for initiating or reviving sexual relationships. Far from undermining the courtship hypothesis for language evolution, this phenomenon provides two key pieces of evidence that support it.\n \n– The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (pg. 382) by Geoffrey F. Miller", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/06/17/so-why-cant-my-boyfriend-communicate/", "title": "So Why Can’t My Boyfriend Communicate?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-06-17T04:00:20+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=24", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "50d2f4f72750c5c86ad6cc1ca06c174a", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Mating Mind\n\n\nGeoffrey Miller is the author of the “Mating Mind”, a highly interesting book on what evolutionary biology has to say about all of our weird “dating and sexual quirks.” David Pearce highly recommends it, too.\nMiller’s talk in this video is just as interesting as Ogi Ogas’ talk about his book “A Billion Wicked Thoughts”. Both talks deal with the evolutionary basis of human sexual desires (yes, even the weird ones… specially the weird ones):\n\nBoth use sound empirical methods and develop theories of our sexuality based on genetic, anthropological, and biological analysis of human experience and behavior.\nHere is an interesting observation: If we were descendants of a specie that used clones as a way of reproduction (or perhaps formed large asexual social colonies like bees or ants) then we would all love each other unreservedly.\nCompetition for good genes has made us quasi-psychopathic and selfish. The fall of humanity is not, apparently, the result of sinning against God. But rather, for having evolved in small tribes with heavy in-group genetic biases.\nLikewise, our Darwinian origin is responsible for states of low mood, depression, anxiety, and so on. Depression itself, to dive into a specific example, is an adaptive strategy for non-alpha males in the ancestral environment, which predisposes you to keep your head low and reproduce in spite of the presence of an Alpha male who is capable of killing you if you try to challenge him. Additionally, depression is a behavioral response that allows you to passively accept and endure a long-lasting stressor, where “trying to make things right” instead of submitting to the reality of the situation was simply not as genetically adaptive. Of course, since we don’t live in the African Savannah anymore, all of that programming is useless.\nUnfortunately, since happiness is itself a sign of status, we are stuck in an awful Moloch scenario: Geoffrey Miller would agree that people are sexually motivated to *pretend that they are happier than they are.*\nForgetting about people with a heavy genetic predisposition to depression who cannot even *conceive of what happiness is*, most people are stuck in recurrent cycles of high, neutral and low moods. And yet, they are anxious to pretend that they are happier than they really are; after all, one’s genes are at stake in this signaling activity.\nI have often met highly intelligent people who seem incapable of understanding David Pearce’s Hedonistic Imperative. Although there are many possible causes for this, a very prominent one is the fact that believing that “everyone has a chance to be happy” is itself a happy thought. We run away from depressive worldviews, even if doing so is ethically disastrous.\nLet us hope for the best, but plan for the worst.\nYes, we can hope that somehow everyone has a chance to be happy, and sincerely wish that “it really isn’t that bad.” However, let us not act *as if this is true.* We are in a unique position to alleviate and outright exterminate all future suffering in our forward light cone. It would be really sad if we let billions of beings suffer for eons (say, in other galaxies) simply because we entertained too heavily the thought that reality is conspiring in “our” favor (nature, perhaps, is not as kind as it looks when one is in a happy state).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/06/04/the-mating-mind/", "title": "The Mating Mind", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-06-04T07:05:30+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=24", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6c72426c8d511d1e245b29b48425f9b4", "summary": []}
{"text": "Psychedelic alignment cascades\n\nA given human computer is limited in its operations by its own acquired mathematical conceptual machinery; this is part of its supraself-metaprograms*. Maximum control over the metaprogrammatic level** by the selfmetaprogram*** is achieved not by direct “one to one” orders and instructions from the one level to the other. The control is based upon exploration of n-dimensional spaces and finding key points for transformations, first in decisive small local regions which can result in large-scale transformations. (This model reminds one of Ashby’s Design for a Brain, 1954, in which a large “homeostat” stimulated in one small region makes large adjustments throughout itself in order to compensate for the small change.)\n \nOne key in the mind is to hunt for those discontinuities in the structure of the thinking which reveal a critical turnover point at which one can exert emotional energy so as to cause a transformation in all of that region.\n \nThe analogy of the key in the lock is part of this subject’s human computer as a child. The lock is now transformed into an n-dimensional choice-point at which one could exert the proper amount of energy in the proper dimensions and in proper directions in those dimensions and find a radical transformation of all the metaprograms in that region of the computer. In a three-dimensional geometrical model of such operations (in which one decreases the number of dimensions so that they can be visualized in visual space) one can think of oddly-shaped rubber surfaces connected on lines, on points and over large areas which are inflated to different amounts and differing pressures so as to fill a very large room. These membranes are of different colors and various regions are differently lighted and the whole is considered to be pulsing and changing shapes but not changing contact between surfaces, lines, or points. One can imagine one’s self moving through these complex surfaces. There are various colors lighted from various directions. One hunts for that zone in which one can exert maximum amount of effect in terms of the redistribution of bond energies, over point, line, and surface area contact. One may also exert the maximum effect on the differential pressures in the spaces bounded by each of the surfaces where closed.\n \nAfter sufficient study of this model one discovers that the points of contact between the membranes are not as fixed as when first seen. What one saw at first was a frozen instant of time extending over a long period of time as if the model were static. Suddenly one realizes that the points of contact are the sharing of portions of these surfaces along appropriate lines at given instants and that these boundaries are changing constantly. One suddenly also discovers that the colors are moving over the surfaces and passing the boundaries. This particular model is a small region in a larger universe filled with such surfaces and intersections and spaces between. One also discovers that the light sources are within certain of these sheets shining through to others and that the hue and intensity are varying according to some local rules.\n \nOne moves away from the model and sees that it is filling a universe; one moves back into the model and begins to look carefully at one thin membrane. As the structure of the membrane is revealed and the structure of the intersection between the membrane is seen, it turns out that there is a micro-circuitry within the membrane at a molecular and atomic level. There are energies moving in prescribed paths (sometimes in a noisy fashion) in multiple directions within the membrane. At the intersections collisions occur ([particles] are moving from one sheet to the other in both directions). Sheets that are immediatly adjacent are seen to be doing local computations at very high speed. The intersections are now seen as micro-molecular-atomic switch lines, switch surfaces, and switch points.\n \nThus one finds that the phrase, “The key is no key” has grown into a new conception of a computer. This computer within itself ideally recognizes no locks, no forbidden transitions, no areas in which data cannot be freely moved from one zone to another. At the boundaries of the computer, however, there are still, as it were categorical imperatives. Now the problem becomes not the boundaries within the computer but the boundaries outside it. By outside I do not mean only the integumentary boundaries of the real body. I mean other sources of influence than through the bottom layer of the external chemical physical reality. To symbolize this doubt, this skepticism, about the boundaries of the computer and the influence that can be brought to bear upon them other than those coming through the physical-chemical reality, a line is places above the supraself-metaprograms and is labeled unknown.\n \nIn the mind of the subject the unknown must take precedence. It is placed above the supraself-metaprogram because it contains some of the goals of this particular human computer. This exploration of the inner reality presupposes that the inner reality contains large unknowns which are worth exploring. However, to explore them it is necessary (1) to recognize their existence and (2) to prepare one’s computer for the exploration. If one is to explore the unknown one should take the minimum amount of baggage and not load one’s self down with conceptual machinery which cannot be flexibly reoriented to accept and investigate the unknown. The next stage of development of those who have the courage and the necessary inner apparatus to do it, is exploration in depth of this vast inner unknown region. For this task we need the best kind of thinking which man is capable. We dissolve and/or reprogram the doctrinaire and the ideological approaches to these questions.\n \nTo remain skeptical of even this formalization of this particular human computer’s approach to this region is desirable. One does not overvalue this particular approach; one looks for alternative approaches for exploratory purposes. Freedom from the tyranny of the supraself-metaprograms is sought but not to the point at which other human computers control this particular human computer. Deep and basic interlock between selected human computers is needed for this exploration. Conceptualization of the thinking machine itself is needed by the best minds available for this task. In a sense, we create the explorers in this area.\n \n– Johhn C. Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer (on the subject of reprogramming one’s brain using sensory deprivation tanks in conjunction with 100µg+ doses of LSD)\n \n* Supraself-metaprograms: These are the mental “programs” that we inherit from our culture, influence from others, implicit historical beliefs, and so on.\n** The metaprogramming: The activity of creating systems of mental programs with purposes that are context-triggered. This can be done implicitly (through emotion) or explicitly (by external or internal commands).\n*** Selfmetaprogramming: Creating systems of mental programs through explicit volition.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/06/02/psychedelic-alignment-cascades/", "title": "Psychedelic alignment cascades", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-06-02T04:31:04+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=24", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "7ce7479b1d024381122fc21dfd07fa9d", "summary": []}
{"text": "36 Textures of Confusion\n\nFormal Logic\nWhen I was in 10th grade I took a course in formal logic. I had been a big fan of logic (and math in general) for several years, so I was looking forward to seeing how the class would approach the subject. I personally liked the teacher and I knew he thought very deeply about a range of topics (including aesthetics and philosophy). I was sure I was going to have a great time.\nUnfortunately, the overall learning strategy of the class consisted of studying the textbook in extreme detail. The way I remember the textbook was that it featured a mixture of very casual and naïve paragraphs interspersed with blocks of rigid definitions and formulaic procedures for solving logic problems. My overall perception of the textbook was that anyone with a genuine interest in the beauty of math would experience the exercise of reading this book as particularly unpleasant.\nI was used to math classes that didn’t actually require you to study anything; usually, problem solving skills and pragmatic inference of the meaning of words during the exam was good enough. In contrast, most questions on the exams for this class had a very particular style. The answers had to be verbatim repeats of the specific idiosyncratic responses found in the textbook. If you knew the contents of the textbook by heart, then the exam would be trivial. If you didn’t, then no amount of problem solving would get you anywhere.\nThese exams were open-note but closed-textbook, which meant that if you simply copied the entire textbook into your notebook you would easily be able to respond accurately to the vast majority of the questions. And if you didn’t, then you were almost guaranteed to fail. This meant that the largest fraction of the variance of grades in the class was determined by whether or not students took the time to do the grueling task of transcribing an entire textbook into their notebooks.\nNeedless to say, I intensely disliked this approach.\nThankfully, in every bad situation you can always find something good that redeems it a little bit [citation needed]. And in this case, what could be rescued from the situation was the man from Figure 5.9:\nFigure 5.9: This man is confused\nThis must have been around page 150, which dealt with the need for logic. The textbook said, in a very informal way, something along the lines of: “Imagine a man without any logic. This person would have disjointed thoughts with no objectives, and he would be incapable of making sense of anything. The man in question would be confused. See Figure 5.9”\nThe teacher joked that the man in the figure could be experiencing one of many possible states of mind. His expression is somewhat ambiguous and it is unclear what exactly it adds to the conversation. Likewise, the facial features are not even the most salient component of the picture; his hair looks completely bizarre.\nThe Value of Confusion\nThis picture made me reflect on the difficulty of expressing mental states using drawings and pictures. A facial expression is perhaps a good start. Words, of course, and dialogue can help you trigger an emotion or state of being. But that only takes you so far, and it restricts you to what are largely social emotions.\nConfusion, on the other hand, is an umbrella term for many states that are hard to communicate and describe. There is perceptual confusion, emotional confusion, cognitive confusion and even ontological confusion. Each of these varieties contains many flavors; there is a combinatorial explosion of possible reasons for the confusion.\nSubjectively, confusion is an extremely interesting state of consciousness, since it spawns a lot of novelty. Even though it can and often is unpleasant (especially when what’s at stake is something one values), confusion comes in all shades of hedonic tone. Pleasant confusion is possible, and indeed it may play an important role in philosophical and spiritual euphoria. Likewise, one can achieve fantastic levels of neutral-valence confusion during meditation (alternating, at times, with states of very high clarity). Epiphanic, wondrous and mystical states are also often proceeded by profound confusion of the ontological kind (where you doubt the deepest background assumptions that provide the stilts upon which your worldview is suspended).\nThe fact that the texture of one’s experience has information processing properties (aka qualia computing) is itself more evident during states of confusion. For example, when you are confused about the meaning of something, this will have implications for the way you experience language and encode gestalts of experience (ex: “This synesthetic sensation here is usually paired up with meaning, but what is the meaning of it now? Without experiencing the meaning I usually ascribe to the sensation, I can’t compare it to other sensations I’ve had before.”)\nSince language and facial expressions have their limitations, one might prefer to communicate confusion and other states using non-symbolic expressions. Visual textural gestalts, it seems to me, may take us the farthest in this direction, at least with the current level of technology (that is, unless we also include music, which itself has textural qualities).\nIn order to visualize new kinds of confusion, we can project the textural gestalt that the man from Figure 5.9 is experiencing into the picture itself, and imagine that we were given private access to his state of consciousness. We can then experience what it would be like to be him in these different experiential worlds, and introspect on the subjective nature of his confusion.\nDoing this is now easier than ever thanks to the recent and fantastic developments in deep neural networks. In order to try out this technology, I decided to texturize the confusion of the man from Figure 5.9 in a myriad of ways. The textures themselves are a mixture of pictures I’ve taken or synthesized in the last couple of years and textures I’ve found online. I used the cool online service developed by the Bethge lab at the University of Tübingen to make these pictures. Feel free to try it yourself, it’s really fun.\nSo here you have it folks. The man of Figure 5.9, experiencing 36 different kinds of confusion:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/05/22/36-textures-of-confusion/", "title": "36 Textures of Confusion", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-05-22T07:36:32+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=24", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6526d83918415e56b257f2fed8500007", "summary": []}
{"text": "Work Religion\n\nIn response to this:\nDid this religion of professional work start in the 1950’s? Could have been synergetic with the WWII patriotism. What a vicious cycle, people who love the professional culture, ideology, and rituals who spread the idea that you are personally disadvantaged unless you subscribe to this allegedly prevalent system, so people subscribe and the system becomes prevalent. Even before becoming prevalent, though, people who want the system to become prevalent are confident and mislead people into thinking it is prevalent, and so they join up in a tragedy of the commons. Next time you see someone with an overly clean desk and an excessive zeal for office supplies, formal cloths, ‘professionalism’ sanctioned social interactions (the arbitrary templates where gossip is permitted or even recommended but many instances of non-maliciously motivated honesty, or just acting natural and not so ‘fake’, that you would find between people in any other social situation is blasphemy), who actively spread and enforce their culture, who look confident, posture and all, (even/especially if they’re friendly (less suspicious)) that they know how to correctly act, causing that tragedy to occur, give ’em the ol’ stink eye for me, would ya? Don’t give a stink eye! Haha I’m kidding about seriously desiring their punishment. That’s humor, for ya. But it would be nice if more people were self-conscious about what it is they’re doing, the deceit of their tragedy-inducing confidence, BEFORE they became so deeply emotionally attached to the games, before they so intimately internalize them and, indeed, become drones for these parasitic memetic/cultural systems, a process that begins immediately after infancy. It’s terrible when an old generation has existential distress when their games are ripped out from underneath them, and it’s terrible that these games spread this way, and that people, who wouldn’t otherwise be (maximally) interested in this or that particular game are intimidated into the game, often a severe zero-sum game, where they might be trapped for the rest of their lives in bad faith, toiling away at it and speaking the creeds in defense of it. Whether you oppress with your culture or you are oppressed by a culture, we all aren’t that different after all, because we humans all are oppressed by the phenomenon of culture itself, prevented from reaching way greater potentials (and how might you evaluate the greatness of a potential outside of cultural values? Probably utilitarianism-like, cognitive frameworks which don’t posit the objectively valuable things like heroism, honor, big daddy, etc.., cultures invariably depend on….Anyway, this is a good discussion for (or, rather, pertains to) those who are disturbed by the thought of losing their culture, their forms of prestige, popularity, valor, or whatever social reward objective correlate posits they think they are fundamentally dependent on. People have trouble conceiving themselves attaining happiness or fulfillment or whatever ultimate valuable (which is almost certainly hedonic tone) without their culture. But subtly they misconceive what it would be like for them, their consciousness, to be beyond their current perspective. Even though in words they might appear to be contemplating possibilities beyond their current persuasion, they often fail to, because it is such a fundamental and subtle thing to do, requiring them keep vivid track of so much of their reasoning and schema. When trying to suspend a certain body of frameworks and systems and assumptions, insidiously they creep back in. First of all, most people aren’t even aware they can think beyond them. Their concept of what it is to think and consider is actually limited to thinking within such social paradigms. But if you’re trying to question a system, schema that originate from the very system you’re trying to suspend insidiously pose as necessary, neutral, universal, etc., things beyond the old paradigms when they really aren’t. Little under-cover mental viruses. In my opinion, many representative philosophers and people in academic and analytic philosophy in general fail to work free of this effect. They fail to detect and address their social bias, in very basic ways, for instance positing according to predicted language use (“common sense intuitions” are the worst), not according to evidence for the existence of some entity to be posited.) When will it be that culture doesn’t oppress, that people don’t repress critical or otherwise free thinking, that people don’t have so much socially motivated reasoning (the large majority of one’s thoughts and beliefs are really just predicted social strategies, not true reflection more free of the frames and biases of culture)? When will our interests and our sources of meaning and fulfillment, like the currently socially permissible or even required ones, be replaced by those NOT so bad for us? When will we “be not afraid” of questioning our very fragile personal, interpersonal, moral, and social institutional views, risking never getting them back, so we don’t have to live like this, as cultural sustenance, forced by oppression into forcing by oppression, as conduits of oppression?\n \n– Anonymous Source", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/05/11/work-religion/", "title": "Work Religion", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-05-11T03:41:27+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=24", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "8373fe57a793c7b12b0ba7074b5db3c8", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Computing in Tucson: The Magic Analogy\n\nPanpsychism is sometimes dismissed as a crazy view, but this reaction on its own is not a serious objection. While the view is counterintuitive to some, there is good reason to think that any view of consciousness must embrace some counterintuitive conclusion.\n \n– Panpsychism and Panprotopanpsychism, David Chalmers (2011)\nAs Chalmers points out in this 2011 paper, any theory of consciousness will probably have counterintuitive conclusions. It should thus not come as surprise that almost every single consciousness scholar will be ridiculed as crazy by at least a minority of commentators. However, aside from omnipresent cognitive and affective biases, the vast majority of consciousness researchers are using their brains to their full capacity. Their search for understanding is sincere. It simply happens that the problem is, indeed, very hard.\nThus, when someone who is otherwise rational and intelligent has weird views about consciousness, one of several things could be going on. Instead of dismissing the view outright, ask the following four questions:\n\nWhat conception of consciousness does this person have?\nWhat criteria does he or she believe that a theory of consciousness must satisfy?\nWhat information does this person know about, and how deeply is it being incorporated into the theory?\nWhat are the relevant implicit background assumptions that color one’s reasoning?\n\nAsking these questions will help you sort out the root causes behind the differences in beliefs you and the theorist may have. It will, in turn, help you see how, in a sense, uncrazy the person may be.\nI recently had the opportunity to practice asking these questions over and over again in the 2016 “Science of Consciousness” conference in Tucson, Arizona. Every single presenter, panelist and poster-er could be framed in such a way that he or she would look outright crazy. In reality, the reasons behind their views are, for the most part, tractable.\nInstead of focusing on the individual craziness of the participants, it is more sensible, and indeed more accurate, to simply realize that the crazy step is the very first: to dare attempt to understand, as a human, what consciousness is.\nOk, so let us just agree that all participants, including me, are crazy for simply trying to make a contribution to this field. After all, our conscious mind evolved to maximize inclusive fitness in complex, Machiavellian social structures, so when we repurpose this machinery to investigate the intrinsic nature of consciousness we are bound to have serious challenges. Starting from this understanding will make it easier to have an open mind when evaluating the merits of different theories of consciousness proposed in this conference. Do not get too fixated on how counterintuitive the theories sound to you; focus on whether they are capable of satisfying at least some minimal requirements we would want from such theories.\nConversely, it could be argued that what is truly crazy is to stand idly at the center of this monstrous philosophical conundrum.\n\nPhysicalism.com\nMy friend and colleague David Pearce persuaded me to accompany him to this year’s instance of this conference. He submitted an abstract of his paper on consciousness and physicalism. If you have been to Qualia Computing before, you may recognize that I heavily draw from Pearce’s philosophy. Not only do we share the belief that the problem of suffering is an ethical emergency best addressed with biotechnology, but we also have substantially similar views about consciousness.\nDavid Pearce (left) and Andrés Gómez Emilsson (right) at the 2016 Science of Consciousness conference\nOur Conception of Consciousness\nConsciousness is very hard to define. But we agree on something: every single experience is an instance of consciousness. The possible components of a conscious experience come from a wide variety of qualia spaces (e.g. the state-space of phenomenal color). Importantly, we do not restrict our conception of consciousness to high-level thought, reasoning or social cognition. In all likelihood, consciousness is extremely ancient (possibly preceding the Cambrian explosion), and it is present in every animal with a thalamus (if not every animal with a nervous system).\nMore poignantly, the true state-space of possible conscious experiences is unfathomably large. Not only does it include the mental states of every possible animal doing any conceivable activity, but it also includes the ineffable weirdness of LSD, DMT and ketamine, not to mention the countless varieties of consciousness that are yet to be discovered.\nTheoretical Requirements\nIf it weren’t for David, I would probably still be a neuron-doctrine functionalist who believes that we may be just a few decades away from programming a full Artificial General Intelligence in silicon computers.\nHow did Pearce help change my mind? Well, it comes down to the second question: I used to have an impoverished set of constraints that a theory of consciousness would have to satisfy. The main addition is that I now take extremely seriously the phenomenal binding problem (also called the combination problem).\nFor the sake of clarity and intellectual honesty, here is the answer that David and I give to the second question:\n\nBack when I was in high school, before meeting David in person, I used to believe that the phenomenal binding problem could be dissolved with a computational theory of consciousness. In brief, I perceived binding to be a straightforward consequence of implicit information processing.\nIn retrospect I cannot help but think: “Oh, how psychotic I must have been back then!” However, I am reminded that one’s ignorance is not explicitly represented in one’s conceptual framework.\nBackground Assumptions\nIn order to make sense both of physicalism.com and Qualia Computing, it makes sense to be explicit about the background assumptions that we hold. Without explaining them in depth, here are some key assumptions that color the way we think about consciousness:\n\nEvents of conscious experience are ontologically unitary: The left and right side of your visual field are part of an integrated whole that stands as a natural unit.\nPhysicalism: Physics is causally closed and it fully describes the behavior of the observable universe.\nWavefunction realism: The decoherence program is the most parsimonious, scientific, and promising approach for interpreting quantum mechanics.\nMereological Nihilism (also called Compositional Nihilism): Simply putting two objects A and B side by side will not make a new object “AB” appear ex nihilo.\nQualia Realism: The various textures of qualia (phenomenal color, sounds, feelings of cold and heat, etc.) are not mere representations. On the contrary, our mind uses them to instantiate representations (this is an important difference).\nCausal efficacy: Consciousness is not standing idly by. It has definite causal effects in animals. In particular, there must be a causal pathway that allows us to discuss its existence.\nQualia computing: The reason consciousness was recruited by natural selection is computational. In spite of its expensive caloric cost, consciousness improves the performance of fitness-relevant information processing tasks.\n\n\nA Battle of Wits\nA Broken Political Analogy\nNaïvely, people may get the impression that there are only a few well-defined camps when it comes to scientific theories of consciousness. The layman’s conception of the explanation state-space tends to be profoundly impoverished: “Are you a scientific materialist, or one of those religious dualists?” In this sense, people may picture the discussions that go on in places like The Science of Consciousness conference as something akin to what happens in political debates. There may be a few fringe camps, but the bulk of the people are rooting for one (often very popular) party.\nMagic: The Gathering analogy\nInstead of imagining a political rally, I would ask you to imagine a Magic: The Gathering tournament. For those unfamiliar with this game: Magic is a card game with two competitive components. First, one selects a set of cards from a pool of allowed cards (which depends on the format one is playing). With these cards one constructs a deck. The cards within a deck tend to have synergistic interactions, and ultimately define a range of possible strategies that the player will be able to use.\nAnd second: one can be better or worse at playing one’s deck. The skills required to play a deck properly often involve being good at estimating odds and probabilities, bluffing, and mind-reading. In terms of knowledge, one needs to be familiar with the sorts of decks that are common out there and the typical strategies that they are built around. This leads us to the concept of deck archetypes.\nTypes (Clusters)\nOften referred to as the flavors of the month, tournament decks tend to cluster rather neatly into deck types. In brief, certain clusters of cards tend to work very well with each other, which means that they will appear together in decks with a frequency that is much higher than chance. Arguably the process of block design is in part responsible for the emergence of these clusters. But even if, I would argue, you were to select at random a pool of 500 Magic cards from its entire history, we would still see clusters emerge: strategizing, trial and error, memetics and the natural synergy between some cards would lead to this outcome.\nIntuitively, the game should then be entirely dominated by the deck types that are the most powerful. However, how good a given deck is depends on two things: The synergy between its cards, and the nature of the deck it plays against. Thus, decks cannot be analyzed in isolation. Their competitiveness depends on the distribution of other deck types in tournaments.\nOver the months, therefore, the density of various deck types evolves in response to past distributions of deck types. This distribution, and evolutionary process, is often referred to as the Metagame. The connection to evolutionary game theory is straightforward: After gauging the frequency of various deck types at a tournament, one may strategically decide to switch one’s deck type in order to have a higher expected performance.\nRogue\nSome number of players tend to find playing common deck types boring or too cliché. In practice, the monetary cost for acquiring certain key cards for a given type may also push some players to develop their own unique deck type. It is rare for these decks to be top performers, but they cannot be ignored since they meaningfully contribute to the Magic ecosystem.\nThe Cards and Deck Types of Consciousness Theories\nTo make the analogy between Magic decks and theories of consciousness, we need to find a suitable interpretation for a card. In this case, I would posit that cards can be interpreted as either background assumptions, required criteria, emphasized empirical findings and interpretations of phenomena. Let’s call these, generally, components of a theory.\nLike we see in Magic, we will also find that some components support each other while others interact neutrally or mutually exclude each other. For example, if one’s theory of consciousness explicitly rejects the notion that quantum mechanics influences consciousness, then it is irrelevant whether one also postulates that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct. On the other hand, if one identifies the locus of consciousness to be in the microtubules inside pyramidal cells, then the particular interpretation of quantum mechanics one has is of paramount importance.\nIn this particular conference, it seemed that the metagame was dominated by the following 8 theories, in (approximate) order of popularity (as it seemed to me):\n\nIntegrated Information Theory (IIT)\nOrchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR)\nPrediction Error Minimization (PEM)\nGlobal Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWS)\nPanprotopanpsychism (not explicitly named)\nNondual Consciousness Monism (not explicitly named)\nConsciousness as the Result of Action-Oriented Cognition (not explicitly named)\nHigher Order Thought Theory (HOT)\n\nDavid Pearce and I, together with perhaps up to ten other attendees, seemed to be playing a particularly rare rogue strategy: Panpsychism + Wavefunction realism + Quantum Coherence to Bind.\nOther notable rogue types included: Transcendentalism + semantic nihilism, timeless + perspective-free functionalism, and, oddly, multi-draft theory of consciousness (which seems to have fallen out of favor for some reason).\n\nFinally, it is worth mentioning that as far as this conference goes, it did not seem to be the case that any one theory was held by the majority of the participants. The plurality seemed to be held by IIT, which has a lot of interesting developments going for it.\n\nComing next: In the next article I will provide a chronology of the events in the conference. I will also discuss the most prominent theories of consciousness explored in Tucson this past week (25 – 30 April 2016) in light of their implicit components. Finally, I will also elaborate on some of the strengths and weaknesses of these theories relative to Qualia Computing. We will be assessing these theories in light of today’s points, and making sense of the implicit background assumptions of their proponents. (More specifically, inquiring into: the conceptions of consciousness, the criteria for theories of consciousness, the knowledge bases, and the implicit background assumptions of the various attendees who participated in this event.)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/05/01/qualia-computing-in-tucson-the-magic-analogy/", "title": "Qualia Computing in Tucson: The Magic Analogy", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-05-01T01:39:00+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=25", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "66cf7944782bf4dfd0ab2f247c2a0058", "summary": []}
{"text": "In Praise of Systematic Empathy\n\nTl;dr: If you are an empathizing utilitarian: Kudos! The world needs more people like you.\nYou know what? This isn’t about your feelings. A human life, with all its joys and all its pains, adding up over the course of decades, is worth far more than your brain’s feelings of comfort or discomfort with a plan. Does computing the expected utility feel too cold-blooded for your taste? Well, that feeling isn’t even a feather in the scales, when a life is at stake. Just shut up and multiply.\n \n—Circular Altruism\n\n\nEmpathizing-Systematizing Trade-Offs\nThe human brain is capable of doing a great deal of things. However, often the tasks it performs are so difficult that full concentration (and sometimes absorption) is necessary to achieve them.\nThe empathizing-systematizing theory points out that when one is empathizing one’s brain becomes less capable of systematizing. And when one is engaging with problems using a systematizing cognitive style, empathy does not come easy either. In most cases there are trade-offs between these two cognitive styles; they seem to be drawing from the same pool of mental resources.\nEven though these traits are negatively correlated with each other, we can still find people around who can quickly switch between these styles.\nThese rare people, one could argue, have a unique moral responsibility: to harmonize the differences between the systematizing and empathizing mindsets. With great power comes great responsibility.\nDoing this is hard, though. It may be inevitable that by trying to find a common ground between these mindsets one will feel morally conflicted:\n\nIt is easy to care about those who are around you when you are an empathizer.\nIt is easy to care about the bulk of all sentient beings when you are a non-empathizing systematizer.\nBut to be a utilitarian and an empathizer… that’s hard. One needs to ignore, or at least not prioritize, the pain of those around, even though it hurts.\n\n\nSample Rationalizations\nExample of an empathizer non-systematizer approaching a moral problem: “I love my cat Fluffy. Are you telling me that I should donate to Against Malaria Foundation, a charity that benefits people far, far away, who I have never even met, and whose feelings I can’t perceive… instead of feeding my kitten first-class food? Do you really expect me to trade the warm-fuzzy feelings of having a healthy cat for your cold, abstract logic? No thanks.”\nExample of a non-empathizer systematizer approaching a moral problem: “Donating to Against Malaria Foundation instead of having a cat will produce approximately 10,000X Quality-Adjusted Life-Years. Do you really expect me to trade solid, locally sound and perfectly ethical dollars for the supposed wellbeing of a dirty cat? Let’s face it, half of what you care about when you think about your cat is how much he loves you back. Isn’t denying health to tens of children just so you feel loved by a pet incredibly selfish?”\nExample of an empathizer systematizer approaching a moral problem the wrong way: “I love Fluffy. I also love all of humanity. Thankfully, everyone can focus on helping the sentient beings that are closest to them. This way we can all be part of a global support network. By helping my cat, and paying for the expensive treatments that he requires to stay healthy, I am doing my own part. Now I just hope everyone else does their part as well.”\nExample of an empathizer systematizer approaching the same moral problem, and finally getting it right: “I know that Fluffy needs my love and affection. It pains me to realize that the world is much larger. My feelings tell me ‘just care about those around you, it is to them to whom you have a moral responsibility’. And yet, I cannot pretend that logic and *counting* simply do not matter. It is, in fact, my moral responsibility to ignore my feelings. To sacrifice a few warm-fuzzy human feels for what is, in the end, a much, much bigger sum of warm-fuzzy feels elsewhere.”\n\nThe Transhumanist Bodhisattva\nBodhisattvas are mythological entities found in the Mahayana branch of Buddhism. They are great examples of entities that seem to combine both empathizing and systematizing traits, while being motivated by unceasing compassion.\nAccording to buddhist sutras, bodhisattvas are entities who have realized the true nature of suffering (i.e. that it sucks), and achieved a state of mind that manifests as an unshakeable desire to help all sentient beings. And in the wake of their realization, Bodhisattvas have made a vow to dedicate all of their energies to the task of eliminating suffering:\nJust as all the previous Sugatas, the Buddhas\nGenerated the mind of enlightenment\nAnd accomplished all the stages\nOf the Bodhisattva training,\nSo will I too, for the sake of all beings,\nGenerate the mind of enlightenment\nAnd accomplish all the stages\nOf the Bodhisattva training.\n– Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra [Translation: Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life], by Śāntideva\nThese noble beings intend to help all sentient beings become free from suffering by teaching buddhism.* Today, one might hope, they would choose to focus their energies on the development of biotechnologies of bliss.\nDavid Pearce is what we might call a modern, genomic Bodhisattva. He started a movement called Abolitionism (the bioethical stance that we should use technology to eliminate suffering) and he has spearheaded the compassionate branch of transhumanism.\nDavid is a wonderful human being who, in spite of being naturally predisposed to low hedonic tone (i.e. being genetically predisposed to having a bad day, every day, for no good reason whatsoever), dedicates his entire life to the elimination of suffering. And unlike previous incarnations of that desire, he did do his homework: realize that in this universe, suffering has genetic causes.\nPearce has at times mentioned that we should not think of his vision of abolishing suffering as new or particularly original. He likes to point out that the wish to eliminate suffering is extremely ancient, and we can find it as the core objective of many spiritual and religious traditions. Abolitionism is, as he puts it “just providing the implementation details” of what people have been saying for thousands of years. This framing makes Abolitionism more palatable to the average Joe.\nIndeed, boundless compassion has been around for a long time. But the ability to kindle it into effective suffering-reducing actions that may work in the long term is only now beginning to be possible.\n\nEmpathy is Marvelous… and Double-Edged\nOur ability to track the inner state of beings in our lifeworld (our inner experience, including our representations of others) is a marvelous evolutionary innovation: we are the product of a long machiavellian intelligence arms race in which effective mind-reading could make the difference between being an outcast and becoming the tribal leader. Given the selection pressures of our ancestral tribal environment, it is not surprising that our capacity for empathy is highly selective. Our ability to simulate others’ experiences, thus, is to some extent bound to be inclusive fitness-enhancing rather than, what would be more desirable, sentience-wellness enhancing.\nIt is tough to care about all sentient beings; specially when the ones around you are suffering and you can’t disengage from simulating what it feels like to be them. One’s predisposition to empathize with sentient being is extremely biased towards the local contexts one lives in, one’s family members (and our extended, genetically similar, tribe), and whatever happens to trigger the feeling that your implicit self-models are threatened by the suffering of others (ex. when charity workers use empathy blackmailing to make you feel miserable about not helping their particular -not necessarily effective- ethical cause).\nSad to say, but a strong involuntary empathetic reaction to other’s suffering is a double-edged sword. On the bright side, it allows you to understand the reality of other’s suffering. And on a case by case basis, it also allows you to figure out how exactly to help them (e.g. highly empathetic and agreeable people are great at figuring out what is bugging you). Unfortunately, one’s empathy for others declines with the amount of people one empathizes with. Some studies show that people are more likely to decide to donate to a cause when there is only one person (or nonhuman animal) victimized… as soon as there are more than a few, one’s empathy becomes overwhelmed and you fail to multiply properly.\nAdditionally, the attention-grabbing and attention-focusing properties of empathy can have intense network effects that make people over-concerned with relatively minor problems. Likewise, this focusing effect makes people unable to revise their moral judgements. They get stuck with silly deontological rationalizations for their non-optimal actions.\nEmpathy needs to be debugged. Thankfully, we still have the ability to experience and cultivate compassion, along with systematizing abilities without experiencing burnout. Now, this is certainly not a call to eliminate empathy! But as long as we don’t fix its profound biases, we cannot rely on it to make ethical choices. We can only use it to understand the reality of the suffering of others. And when the time is to act, don’t empathize. Just shut up and multiply.\nWe need to combine systematizing reasoning with compassion. We don’t need to make emotionally-charged calls to action sparked by individual incidents that affect a specially small number of sentient beings in particularly attention-grabbing ways.\nIn this day and age (what I think is the beginning of the end of the Darwinian era), we need to temporarily migrate from using empathy as the main source of moral motivation into an ecology of abstract and systematic reasoning guided by compassion. One can do this and still experience the warm fuzzy feelings, but it is harder. One needs to rewire one’s brain a little bit. To tell it “no, I am still doing what is best. Don’t tell me I’m a bad person for preferring to focus on the bulk of sentient beings instead of the few I happen to know.” It is truly moving to realize that you can overcome some of the ways in which evolution set us up for failure.\nUntil we hack our consciousness to represent the world in an unbiased way, we will have to rely on systematizing cognition to guide our ethical reasoning. Only by combining compassion, empathy and a strong systematizing style, can our minds grasp the enormity of the problem of suffering and why our local solutions are doomed to fail. It removes the wishful thinking that comes with empathy.\nIf, alternatively, we continue praying to the God of Empathy as our only strategy, we will only reap good local success. But this will be at the cost of failing at the cosmic level, and letting billions of sentient beings feel the sinister coldness of Darwinian life.\nAll of this is to say: if you are a natural empathizer, I want to let you know that I get your inner struggles. If, in spite of what your feelings tell you, you still choose to do the utilitarian action… I can only sing your praises with my sincere heart. Metta to you, my fellow warrior. We will defeat suffering for all; not just those around us.\n\n* If you buy into the Buddhist ontology (no-self, emptiness, ubiquitous suffering, etc.) then dedicating all of your energies over the period of many eons to teach Buddhism makes a lot of sense. It is only when you think about the exact same problem in light of contemporary science (and the neural underpinnings of suffering) that it becomes clear that the modern bodhisattva would choose to be a transhumanist (and try to eliminate suffering using biotechnology).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/04/23/in-praise-of-systematic-empathy/", "title": "In Praise of Systematic Empathy", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-04-23T05:06:10+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=25", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "23a4e2dac0493c4e5eeada9da3da8f9f", "summary": []}
{"text": "David Pearce on “Making Sentience Great”\n\nWe need measures of intelligence richer than today’s simple-minded autistic IQ/AQ tests. In principle, we could breed super-intelligent humans like strains of smart mice.\n \nIf I were running the program, I’d use cloning with variations. Start with the DNA of promising candidates, especially Ashkenazi Jews. (John von Neumann, for instance, was buried, not cremated).\n \nUsing the new tools of CRISPR-based synthetic biology, splice in genes for depression-resistance and perhaps hyper-empathy. Develop and optimize artificial wombs to foster bigger and better embryonic brains; traditional biological pregnancies involve ferocious genetic conflict between mother and embryo, whereas in the future the creation of new life can be geared to the well-being of the unborn child. You can then hothouse the products in an optimally enriched environment. And then clone (with variations) the most promising candidates. No need to wait a whole generation; if a kid wins a Fields Medal aged nine, then clone again with further genetic tweaking. Super-Shulgin academies would have pride of place, together with the EA bioethics department. Spin off a financial services and innovation division so the project becomes self-financing.\n \nRecursive genetic self-improvement could in principle be sustained indefinitely, presumably with an increasing degree of “cyborgisation”: not even an unenriched super-von-Neumann could match the serial depth of processing of a digital computer, but with “narrow AI” routinely implanted on web-enabled neurochips, no matter. The demise of aging and rapid growth of genetic self-editing software would presumably make talk of “generations” in the traditional Darwinian sense increasingly archaic…\n \nCan we foresee any ethical pitfalls? One or two; but if the raison d’être of the project were to promote the well-being of all sentience in our forward light-cone, would you decline the offer of an initial billion-dollar grant?\n \n– David Pearce, answering the question “How would you create a super-intelligence?” (source: Facebook)", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/04/13/david-pearce-on-making-sentience-great/", "title": "David Pearce on “Making Sentience Great”", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-04-13T04:09:07+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=25", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "12b36664dc39979682a0673f22d84a2a", "summary": []}
{"text": "Philosophy of Mind Diagrams\n\n“The penalty of not doing philosophy isn’t to transcend it, but simply to give bad philosophical arguments a free pass.”\n-David Pearce\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \nThese are some slides I created when I presented at the Advancing Humanity Symposium hosted by the Stanford Transhumanist Association in 2013.\nMy presentation was an introduction to the topic of Mind Uploading. I decided to address the various ontologies that are postulated in philosophy of mind and personal identity. I did this so that I could then explore how each possible combination affects the plausibility, and desirability, of Mind Uploading.\nIn brief, as you can see in the table above, both personal identity views and mind-body problem solutions influence how you judge Mind Uploading.\nFor example, an Empty Individualist lacks the belief in an enduring metaphysical self over time. Thus, she would consider her digitized mind (also referred to as EM) to be just as alien to her true identity as the person who will wake up with her memories tomorrow anyway.\nLikewise, Open Individualist don’t particularly care about the preservation of memories and personality. What matters to them is different. For example, they may care a lot about making as many sentient beings as happy as possible, rather than caring about which bodies get to produce which experiences.\nBut if Closed Individualism is true, then Mind Uploading is an ethical imperative! Truly believing that who you are starts existing when you are born and stops existing when you die implies that not extending one’s existence indefinitely results in the complete annihilation of a metaphysical being. And that would be sad, wouldn’t it?\nWhen it comes to the Mind-Body problem, the specifics also influence the plausibility (and desirability) of Mind Uploading oneself. For example, if dualism is true, one might have to do a lot more research for successful mind-uploading. One would need, for instance, to decipher the causal and practical constraints imposed by the consciousness side of the metaphysical equation. If, on the other hand, monistic materialism is true, then Mind Uploading should be as simple as creating a sufficiently detailed brain emulation.\nAnd that is not even scratching the surface. In reality, the state-space of both personal identity views and mind-body solutions is much larger than we can conceive. Who knows what kind of ontologies our posthuman descendants will choose to experience on a daily basis…", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/04/09/philosophy-of-mind-diagrams/", "title": "Philosophy of Mind Diagrams", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-04-09T03:36:12+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=25", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "9a911d45b5a0537479943d6a79bc193f", "summary": []}
{"text": "Ontological Runaway Scenario\n\nMoral innovation\nImagine that you iterate over and add the option of recursing further or just stopping next time. Every time you recurse, more and more people will have to choose not recursing if the number of dilemmas is going to ever stop growing.\nIf the fraction of people who choose to recurse is higher than the number of dilemmas that are kick-started by your own choice, then this can lead to a moral runaway scenario.\nLife Runaway\n\nI’m sure you can tempt people who are explicit classical utilitarian with this schema.\nAll you need to do is also add the condition that people in the train are having fun. And suddenly, you have a scenario in which you are contemplating the creation of arbitrarily large hedonic pipelines of positive and negative pathways. Supposedly the positive and negative qualities are canceling each other out. Does this sound fun? Does it sound like Jinjang?\nTime-Beyond-Time\nPeople with stranger ontologies may also be tempted by the scenario. Think of this concept: “In the ocean of being, all of the mistakes are forgiven. Only the learning remains.” In this scenario, our own reality implies and thus enables the existence of an orthogonal time to ours. And this orthogonal time also implies and enables a further time-beyond-time-beyond-time reality. This is now an ontological runaway scenario.\nBut if you have a stacked moral and ontological runaway scenario, you can perhaps choose to perpetuate life, with all of its suffering and bad qualities (in addition to the bliss and love in it), for ethical reasons. It is, after all, “the ocean of being” that learns, and if it does not learn in this reality, it will not be able to pass on useful information to the next layer of reality. The first orthogonal time to ours will lack the information that it requires to prevent suffering from its point of view. “The only reason God would have created this universe is so as to prevent an even bigger evil.”\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/04/07/ontological-runaway-scenario/", "title": "Ontological Runaway Scenario", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-04-07T08:50:15+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=25", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6b9fcc63518d79616ef093e1bab544fe", "summary": []}
{"text": "Peaceful Qualia: The Manhattan Project of Consciousness\n\nIntroduction\nThis short story is intended to provide an intuition pump, rather than a formal argument. The intuitions unleashed may help some people to conceive of a world in which consciousness research enabled the creation of a world-wide long-term peace. Enduring peace for the eons to come, incredibly, thanks to a relatively small number of people taking a hard look at the available state-space of consciousness.\nWe now have a wealth of hints and leads for larger-than-life experiences. There are many modes of first person subjective experience. But it has taken us a long time to systematize the study of non-ordinary states of consciousness.\nReferences to specific chemical agents should not be taken to mean that this is how the project would necessarily go. This is a hypothetical scenario. Use the substances as a guide that point at remarkably specific, but accessible, varieties of qualia.\n\n \nThe Qualia Computing Approach\nSetting\nWe are somewhere in the 2050-2200 time range. Consciousness research has gained popularity among scientists of many disciplines. People are excited to see new technologies that induce a variety of subtle yet helpful states of consciousness. Schools benefit from the development of tDCS, doctors take a variant of hydrafinil to use predictive Bayesian networks to make diagnoses, and couples therapy uses a safe ultrasound stimulation that enhances empathy. However, these technologies tap into states of consciousness that people are familiar with. This facilitates their adoption since people are not alarmed by the novelty. But staying in known territory constrains the search space to an unreasonable extent.\nThree Schools of Thought\nEven though consciousness research is widespread, there are only a few hubs of exceptionally good researchers who work on these problems full time. There are roughly three schools of thought here. We call them large consciousness research hubs. The first kind only has people who do one activity. The Super-Shulgin Academy is one example of this school of thought. The second kind divides its researchers into those who perform consciousness exploration themselves and those who stay as perennially sober researchers and focus on objective third-person measurements. The main problem that usually arises with this setup is that the sober side does not give much credibility to the value of the experiences of the explorers. They simply lack an adequate evidential base from which to judge.\nThe third kind has an organizational design substantially more elaborate, which divides the cognitive roles into overlapping, yet specialized roles. This school of thought is called the Qualia Computing Approach, and its main principle is to measure the formal, subjective, and computational properties of every possible state of consciousness. The organization was optimized to do just that. It was first invented in order to meet the demands placed on it by the mission of the Manhattan Project of Consciousness.\nBienavi Institute\nThe research center known as the Bienavi Institute (from the Spanish Bien-good, and the French vie-Life) was the first to fully embrace the Qualia Computing Approach. The institute hosted, funded and provided the human needs for a total of 400 researchers. These researchers are divided into 10 research units, each with 40 personnel. Each unit is a combination of several modules with specialized functions; we can call these role clusters. There is no fixed number of researchers for each of these role clusters; each research unit gets the flexibility to choose their role distribution (based on their past history of successes and the nature of their current goals). The approach encourages researchers to jump from role to role until they are satisfied with one that truly fits them. If necessary, they can create custom roles (as long as they can argue in their favor). As a general tendency, though, each unit has a role distribution that is fairly typical; organizational structure convergence across research units is expected.\nMeet the Team\nThe role clusters in the research units are named after pioneering investigators in each of the relevant areas: Turing, Shulgin, Lilly, James, and Everett, to name a few. The roles for each of these modules are summarized thus:\nThe Turing-Hofstadter-Yudkowsky (Turing, for short) module is responsible for computing, modeling, selecting experiments, and providing algorithmic analysis and design. People in this module are often statisticians, computer scientists, psychologists, and/or rationalists. They are people trained in the art of inventing, programming, and computing with made-up symbolic systems.\nResearchers in this module do not need to have extensive experience with non-ordinary states of consciousness, but they do have to be acquainted with them, since this is necessary to be able to interact with researchers in other modules effectively.\nThe research unit as a whole relies on Turing to:\n\nCome up with new psychophysical tools to investigate the computational properties of novel states of consciousness.\nTest computational and algorithmic models that try to account for the information-processing behavior that consciousness displays in different states.\nMine the computational properties detected in the qualia already explored to program new symbolic systems capable of performing efficient computations (by taking advantage of the properties of consciousness).\n\nTuring analyzes the information coming from the other consciousness researchers in order to characterize the convenient properties of consciousness and to develop new applications with it. Turing quantifies these properties, and investigates their computational bounds. Its final goal is to have the best possible models of both the properties and the applications of all states of consciousness.\nThe Shulgin module focuses on developing a scholastic breadth of knowledge and firsthand experience of the state-space of consciousness. So-called Shulgins (the people who work in a Shulgin module) have a persistent curiosity about what there is yet to be discovered in the terra incognita of the psyche. Shulgins explore a given compound, technique, combination of neural stimuli, set of epigenetic modifications, etc. for a time that ranges from a week to a month. They comprehensively catalogue its subjective properties and note any commonalities with previously experienced states of consciousness. If they encounter peculiar phenomena, they explore it a handful of times in full, but then move on. Even though they know of unfathomable experiential paradises, their sight is fixed forward; they are constantly looking for new methods of mind-altering, and will never stop looking, no matter how seductive previous experiences may be. People in this module need to be (1) very psychologically robust, (2) possess exceptional memory, (3) outstandingly skillful in navigating consciousness, (4) compassionate, (5) tremendously curious, (6) masters of delayed gratification, and (7) cautious.\nThe Lilly-McKenna-Leary module focuses on depth rather than breadth. Like Shulgins, they experience a large number of states of consciousness with fascinating properties. However, they do so with an eye towards exploring particular phenomena to their ultimate effects. It is often the case that the regions that Lillys explore are first discovered by a Shulgin and then studied by a Turing before they are promoted as an interesting area of research for Lillys to pick up. People in this module share all of the requirements that Shulgins have, except that the bar for navigational skills is a tad higher, and the need for cautiousness is smaller. In fact, some degree of irrational bravery is ideal for this role. Without it, Lillys would not take the plunge and explore alien ontologies that make you feel like you will never return to sanity again.\nAs do people in all modules, Lillys go to work with a rational mindset and a scientific outlook towards their duties. That said, Lillys are unquestionably the people who are closest to the edge of knowledge. Their firsthand experience with profoundly outlandish varieties of consciousness tends to give them a sense of perspective rarely seen among humans.\nA Lilly without guidance can get trapped in a shallow pond. A Shulgin without a Lilly will never know the true merits of the spaces explored. In order to provide an example for what makes these two modules different, take a look at how Shulgin and McKenna reacted to extraordinary phenomena in their consciousnesses:\nDuring an experiment with his wife, both Shulgin and Ann started to experience a profound time dilation. They were both concentrating on a clock, and it seemed to be slowing down progressively. When Sasha realized that this dilation was heading asymptotically towards infinity, he panicked. He was afraid that if time stopped, no one would be able to unstop it. He decided to distract himself, and avoid this asymptote. As Ann describes it, he “chickened out.” What this story illustrates is Shulgin’s cautious approach to particularly weird phenomena. If he took the risk of following the weirdness to its ultimate implication, he would be compromising the continuation of his investigations.\nWhen the McKenna brothers were experiencing a voice in their heads on a high dose of psilocybin, they did everything possible to amplify it. The end result was the phenomenological conviction of mind-melding with extraterrestrial intelligences, and in turn becoming part of the entire cosmos. It caused a temporary psychosis that Dennis McKenna had to endure, and Terrence take care of, for several days. What this story illustrates is how Lillys go full-on in one direction if they are convinced (whether right or wrong) that there are profound landscapes in the state-spaces they are headed towards. They are willing to get lost in the off-chance that they find the phenomenological equivalent of Shambala.\nJames–Pearce–Goethe (James for short): This module is populated by researchers who are trying to integrate the discoveries made by Turing, Shulgin and Lilly into a unified science of qualia. They are people with outstanding Philosophical Quotients who can switch between interpretative cognitive styles (e.g. empathizing vs. systematizing). They try to make sense of philosophy in the context of consciousness research, and to investigate possible ontologies that may bridge the gap between theoretical physics and cognitive science.\nEverett-Maxwell: These are physicists trained in both theoretical physics and dynamical systems. They take into account the models developed by Turing, and try to find natural physical isomorphisms.\nThese two last modules work together closely: Everett makes sure that the work of James is mathematically and conceptually sound, while the James module guarantees the philosophical adequacy of the interpretations of Everett’s models. These two modules are not always present, but they are required for certain kinds of investigations. In particular, they were crucial in the development of the kinetic energy theory of angry strings.\n\n\nThe Manhattan Project of Consciousness\nUnity\nThe first program, Unity, was started as an attempt to create phenomenal bridges between the experience of universal oneness and everyday states of consciousness.\nThe purpose of this program was to find a phenomenological technology to address core causes for the failure of cooperation in human societies. Nuclear war, among other disappointments, had shown that neither hegemony nor Mutually Assured Destruction could prevent substantial human conflict in the long term. A paradigm shift was needed.\nAmple empirical data showing that both the base-rate of mystical experiences and the presence of a culture of rationality were the best predictors of sustainable cooperation between groups of humans. Starting off with these leads, the Bienavi Institute decided to research therapies to increase both of these predictors simultaneously.\nSurvival Programs\nThere were many psychic layers to overcome. People’s self-representation occurs in parallel through many channels. Just as we have a modality for touch, sight, smell, etc., we also have a modality for each of our self-models. The difference between them is, to put it bluntly, the quality and structure of their respective survival programs.\nWe have (1) a physical bodily representation of oneself, (2) emotional inclinations, (3) intellectual identifications, (4) narrative embeddings, and (5) ontological conceptions. There are other self-identifications, but these are some of the major ones. When the identification with any one of these programs as oneself is made, it begins to accumulate a gloss of ontological qualia.\nOntological qualia provides the deepest experiential context. We could say that one’s experiences are but paint in a large void impregnated with positive ontological qualia. Experiences unfold, but they rarely affect the underlying quality of being very much. Ontological qualia provides the sense of reality that grounds other qualia in a background of happening.\nIdentifying oneself with one’s physical body, emotional attitudes, etc. makes these representations seem truly real and necessary for survival. By locally binding ontological qualia to any self-representation, one adds psychological weight to the continuation of its existence. A trivial example is the cached selves effect: emotionally identifying with one’s verbal statements subtly redefines one’s self-representation as essentially interwoven with the reinforced programs. In practice, this causes the difficulties that arise with being unable to let go of structures and models one has exercised before. The pain of separation.\nRealism\nEvolution has recruited one of its orientable positive manifolds to represent what we call realism. When you nod, when you think about what is trivial, when you get a new interesting idea, your experiential field receives a hefty dose of positive ontological qualia. It feels real, present, noteworthy. Your lifeworld is full of hints of a wider reality. A feeling that there is something real to pursue.\nDisappointment, loneliness, confusion are all impregnated with low-level negative orientable manifolds in the experiential field. They release energy that is not ready to die.\nNon-orientable manifolds provide a sense of timelessness. For example: during youth, math is typically perceived with outstanding realism. It sparks a feeling of presence. However, the cognitive activity of “doing math” gradually becomes populated with non-orientable ontological qualia as a person matures mathematically. Rather than perceiving mathematical ideas as living presences, they see them as timeless and expressionless patterns.\nIn its extreme form, realism can spark spiritual experiences, which are the result of saturated feelings of being in one’s experiential field. Being overflows one’s sense of time and space, and one experiences an ontologically solid absolute necessity.\nDepression, on the other hand, could be described as a low density of realism with an awareness of this absence. However, even in bad emotional states, ontological qualia is still on the whole typically positive. One’s object of interest may feel unattainable, but one’s feeling of the existence of this problem is full of realism.\nWithout positive ontological qualia, the mind is not able to believe that there is anything at stake in the game. Even though we don’t normally realize it, we have a constant and robust continuous stream of positive ontological qualia in our experiential field. Intuitively we believe that what feels most alive is centered around our senses. And while we do have the ability to turn on our senses’ realism very strongly, what usually has the most realism is our sense of presence as narratives. Our sensory modalities are not the place in which this realism is expressed the most. In humans, there is a typical hyper-expression of the realism of their social logico-linguistic selves.\nCoincidentally, a vast proportion of human conflict can be tracked to excessive identification with one’s self as a collective, yet narrow, narrative. This is compounded with a strong, yet naïve, omnipresent phenomenology of realism associated to one’s own experiences. Race, origin, ideology, sexual orientation, self-intimacy, etc. are not intrinsically problematic axes of human variability. But in practice they limit human cooperation dramatically. Even if only a small fraction of people take these differences seriously, it still has the effect of setting the values of Schelling fences in confrontation against the out-group. These differences only matter because of the intuitive, yet metaphysically false, self-identification with one’s particular local context.\nSafety\nA key technology without which the research program might have produced psychological casualties was a method capable of resetting one’s consciousness. A chemical switch was created that combined two undisclosed brain-modification technologies to lower the overall free energy in one’s experiential field. This reset button guaranteed that participants could come back to consensus reality quickly, and in this way abandon problematic state-spaces. The technology also helped them forget about these experiences on a meta-cognitive level.\nAdditionally, with the help of ultrasound stimulation, participants could neutralize their hedonic tone whenever they felt the need to do so. Bad trips could be avoided with this method.\nPeak\nThe experience of universal unity was found to be a strong antidote against contextual self-identification. Thus, the full experience of oneness induced by 5-MeO-DMT-like compounds was used to kick-start a profound transformation. It planted a seed of conviction on the potential that comes with Open Individualism. The power of union with the absolute bestows a glimpse of a fully realized world in which all beings recognize themselves as part of the same eternal luminous non-flavor. In turn, this solves many game-theoretical problems related to cooperation. One can finally conceive of a God’s-eye-view utility function for the entire universe. This experience is the maximum possible qualia synchrony level before memory stops working, and is often described as peak bliss in the human organism.\nTypically, the realization would be forgotten. The state-dependence of memory is often responsible for an associative disconnection between one’s sober self and one’s mystical recollections. Nevertheless, these experiences remain in the background, ready to reappear when the pieces of the puzzle (one’s mind’s I, and its self awareness) are aligned just right. The deathless state is one memory away.\nThe experience kindles very deep properties of one’s consciousness which are close to the lowest level of resolution possible. On its own, the experience of oneness makes people happy for many years, on average. In a minority it backfires with a spiritual-philosophical crisis several decades later. But on the whole, people tend to feel grateful for the experience, and the gratefulness is carried over into the rest of their lives.\nInterpretation and symbolic translation\nPropositional qualia is the experiential modality that compares counterfactuals using symbolic manipulation techniques. On its own it cannot lead to reinterpretations of ontological notions. However, the state-space that it spans is very large and contains remarkable structures. More so, the returns on the exploration of the state-space can be boosted by using Bayesian search. The logico-linguistic algorithms of human thought are not trivial computations; the true generality of the medium is hard to appreciate. But Turings truly understand the astronomical generality of symbolic systems. Even bare bones of instructions can reconstruct any discrete pattern you can conceive of. The symbolic mind is capable of recursion and commentary. It learns from comparing gestalts of experience.\nSo, what if we could compare, side by side, the experience of oneness with one’s everyday ontological notions?\nMutual Awareness\nTraditionally, 5MeO-like experiences are interpreted as graceful glimpses of a broader reality. Their subjective quality is never fully remembered, and one simply takes what one can from it.\nBienavi Institute decided to investigate whether it is possible to fully integrate the experience of universal oneness into one’s conceptual landscapes. For this reason, they focused on creating experiential bridges between sober states and pure oneness.\nIt is well known that THC experiences are modified substantially after experimenting with a classical psychedelic. The high is different: more psychedelic, emotional, visual, deeply conceptual. A less well-known fact is that fresh peak experiences can profoundly affect how one experiences the classical psychedelic state.\nThe phenomenon of “drifting” fragments the spatial Euclidean continuity of a qualia field into many islands that are locally bound which, in turn, fail to bind with each other. This fragmentation into small islands of synesthetic sensations permits the simultaneous presence of a variety of clusters of experience. This phenomenon is also called Frame Stacking, and as explained by James L. Kent, it can have information-processing benefits:\nThe Frame Stacking Model presumes that hallucinogens enable a perceptual frame buffer that allows for sorting and browsing through multiple simultaneous linear frames; or that frame perception might be splintered into a radial kaleidoscope of multi-threaded parallel processing frames (Fig. 6). Within the context of frame stacking psychedelic consciousness may enable the subject to scroll back and forth in time; retrieve multiple simultaneous memories from a single stimulus; and project multiple versions of the self into multiple imaginary future scenarios. If the consciousness of a single person can be momentarily realized within three frames – the arising frame, the fading frame, and a static frame which holds the idealized concept of self – then the persistence of six or more frames could lead to the fabrication of two or more fully realized identities within a single subject. This frame splitting effect may explain how people can have conversations with phantom friends or relatives, or how a shaman might invoke anthropomorphized plant spirits with distinct personalities.\nThus, LSD-like states allow the global binding of otherwise incompatible schemas by softening the degree to which neighborhood constraints are enforced. The entire experience becomes a sort of chaotic superposition of locally bound islands that can, each in its own way, tell sensory-linguistic stories in parallel about the unique origin and contribution of their corresponding gestalts to the narrative of the self.\nThis phenomenon forces, as it were, the onset of cognitive dissonance between incompatible schemas that would otherwise evade mutual contact. On the bright side, it also allows mutual resonance between parts that agree with each other. The global inconsistencies are explored and minimized. One’s mind can become a glorious consensus.\nEach square represents, and carries with it, the information of a previously experienced cognitive gestalt (situational memories, ideas, convictions, etc.). Some gestalts never come up together naturally. The LSD-like state allows their side-by-side comparison.\nIn therapy, LSD-like states had been used for many decades in order to integrate disparate parts of one’s personality into a (more) coherent and integrated lifeworld. But scientists at the beginning didn’t know why this worked.\nThe Turing module then discovered that the kaleidoscopic world of acid can be compared to raising the temperature within an Ising model. If different gestalts imply a variety of semantic-affective constraints, kaleidoscopic Frame Stacking has the formal effect of expanding the region of one’s mind that is taken into consideration for global consistency at any given point in time. The local constraints become more loose, giving global constraints the upper hand. The degree of psychedelia is approximately proportional to the temperature of the model, and when you let it cool, the grand pattern is somewhat different. It is more stable; one arrives at a more globally consistent state. Your semantic-affective constraints are, on the whole, better satisfied. The Turings called this phenomenon qualia annealing.\nIsing Model – A simple computational analogy for the LSD-induced global constraint satisfaction facilitation.\nConsciousness Under the Kaleidoscope\nLSD-like states were used to help the logico-linguistic mind develop a shared sensory-symbolic system with the 5-MeO gestalt.\nKnown for thousands of years in the Amazon, the simple fact that the sober mind is incapable of grasping the essential learnings from the 5-MeO experience has invited frustration in those who have seen the potential for this state to change the world. With the aid of LSD-like states’ kaleidoscopic fragmentation, the 5-MeO experience could now be integrated into the mental programs of everyday life. Myriad previous states of consciousness are recollected, projected synesthetically into one’s experiential field, and reinterpreted in the context of a wider evidential base. Distinct states that linear mind would never think about comparing are presented together. Their sensorial, intentional and ontological quality become mutually transparent. The mind becomes a combinatorial laboratory. With sufficient conscious control one can navigate towards high-learning areas. By allowing states of consciousness to be compared side by side, the participants are able to create a scale of preference for each particular state. The results were robust. People chose unity again and again, although it certainly frightened some. The first outlines of a Total Order of Consciousness.\nA middle ground is developed. One produces an exegesis of the epiphany, a narrative of the meta-narrative; the ontological terra incognita finally has a voice to make proclamations with. The end result is that the mind integrates components of the 5-MeO experience into a meta-narrative. One becomes capable of interpreting reality both from an implicit Closed Individualist as well as an Open Individualist point of view.\n \nThe Connection: Universal Love, Transcendental Joy\nThe Shulgins discovered a safe protein with MDMA-like psychoactivity. The inventor, to honor the research center that allowed her to make the discovery, named the protein Bienavi.\nThis is when the final experiential bridge came online.\nThe bridge from oneness to the full generality of symbolic processing could be made by LSD-like experiences. But to connect these intellectual learnings to an everyday-like sense of emotional presence, an entactogenic hedonic recalibration was necessary.\nBienavi allowed these scientists to unleash the compassion known by their intellect into the vagaries of normal life. They described a sense of being one with universal love in everyday life. Some called it the marriage of the mundane and the sublime. From the point of view of a person on Bienavi, awakening every being alive was a thought that caused a profound sense of transcendental joy. Oh! The immeasurable vastness of the one flavor of knowing! \nDone in this highly systematic way, the researchers did not develop delusions of reference, nor believed themselves to be Messiahs. The long, gradual, methodical process spanning extensive preparation, 5-MeO, LSD and finally Bienavi, culminated in radical readjustments to the participant’s reward architecture. The final empathetic blow tended to have a robust effect of increasing self-honesty, which in turn protected against delusions of all kinds.\nSome would say that Bienavi translated the qualia integrated with the kaleidoscope into a human readable form. Suddenly, psychedelic researchers were not seen as awkward humans who happened to claim there is a sense in which we all could be one. Instead, they were now perceived as a group of people who embraced oneness at an emotional level, without having to sacrifice any epistemological rigor.\nLife on Bienavi\nBienavi has a much slower onset of action and a longer duration of effects when compared to its quaint neurotoxic grandfather. Over the course of several weeks, a little seed of beauty slowly works its way up into larger-than-life experiences.\nOn the third day of taking Bienavi, people become aware of the phenomenology of transparency. They notice the prevalence of windows, glasses, mirrors, and diaphanous objects in their cities. After five days, this gives rise to a palpable sense of space. Between you and your surroundings you now see, with clarity, a luminous spaciousness. You can’t believe how much bigger you’ve become, to put it one way. But the reality is that the proportion between every region remains the same. What’s different is that now your lifeworld has a much higher phenomenal density.\nBy the second week space emits a warm rainbow glow, though this does not sacrifice the spatial resolution. You can’t believe how much information can fit in the perception of an apple. Your love towards all beings is not something you particularly question. It is self-evident from your vantage point that the reality of your current experience is founded on the same ontological ground as the suffering of your fellow beings in the multiverse.\nOn Bienavi the mean hedonic tone is vastly higher than what a typical human experiences. Likewise, compassion and free kindness is outpouring in comparison. Every stimuli experienced is a delight; and yet, the light of love towards all sentients shines as in no other state.\nLife-long Bliss\nWith neuroplasticity peptides, Bienavi can be fixed in place. Additional DNA therapy can be incorporated to help the cells regenerate any lost Bienavi over the long term. Researchers can maintain the entactogen state indefinitely. Since the Bienavi + neuroplasticity-peptide treatment is highly targeted to the protein complexes most associated with consciousness, it has near-imperceptible effects on other areas of the body. Life-long bliss was found to extend life.\nPeace\nWhen Bienavi-assisted Oneness Therapy was perfected, it became possible to distribute all-in-one pills that made you invincibly happy over the course of several years. This pill was humorously named The One. The capsules contain a precisely dosed, carefully time-released sequence of proteins that become attached to the the cytoskeleton of one’s thalamic neurons. Rather than a dramatic experience of oneness, the perfected therapy induces a mild degree of neuroplasticity targeted to one’s current development area. One either improves one’s acquaintance with the oneness experience, furthers one’s understanding of oneness intellectually (via the kaleidoscope technique), or integrates one’s intellectual recognition of oneness into one’s everyday life. The pill releases proteins for each of these purposes, one at a time, over the course of a year. Once a cycle is done, the next begins. These cycles are very subtle, and they are not disruptive to one’s daily duties. They do, however, gradually increase both the depth and authenticity of one’s sense of connection to the universe.\nThe result was a slow but steady upward spiraling towards a fully compassionate state of functional rapture. The change was fast enough to attract the attention of people who wanted to feel better quickly, but it was also slow enough that people felt comfortable with the gradual psychological transformations. The gradual nature dissuaded any early worry about its long-term effects, and its long-term effects made people eager to continue the treatment.\nAt first, The One was a social oddity. The power of human cooperation, however, was not to be underestimated. Given the consistent and enduring economic advantages of a cooperative mindset across borders, it quickly became obvious that the only way to stay economically viable was to promote The One among one’s compatriots.\nThe world, it turns out, experienced a virtuous arms race towards the glorious period of Open Individualism Manifest.\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/03/29/peaceful-qualia-the-manhattan-project-of-consciousness/", "title": "Peaceful Qualia: The Manhattan Project of Consciousness", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-03-29T07:48:12+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=25", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0c3bab78de71bf6cbe658e6f251ec7e9", "summary": []}
{"text": "Qualia Computing So Far\n\nAs of March 20, 2016…\nPopular Articles\nState-Space of Drug Effects. I distributed a survey throughout the Internet to gather responses about the subjective properties of drug experiences. I used factor analysis to study the relationship between various drugs. Results? There are three kinds of euphoria (fast, slow, and spiritual/philosophical). Also, it turns out that there are no substances that produce both sobriety/clarity and spiritual euphoria at the same time. Maybe next decade?\nPsychedelic Perception of Visual Textures. Remember, you are always welcome in Qualia Computing when you are tripping. There are good vibes in here. Which is to say, one hopes you’ll experience the hedonic tone you want.\nOntological Qualia: The Future of Personal Identity. If you are in a hurry, just look at these diagrams. Aren’t they sweet?\nThe Super-Shulgin Academy: A Singularity I Can Believe In. “Exceptionally weird short story/essay/something-or-other about consciousness.” – State Star Codex. Hey, I’m not the one who introduced this “genre”.\nHow to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD: Low hanging fruit on psychedelic cryptography.\nPsychophysics for Psychedelic Research: Textures. It’s amazing how much you can achieve when you put your whole mind to it.\nGoogle Hedonics: Google is already trying to achieve Super-Intelligence and Super-Longevity. Why not Super-Happiness, too?\nGetting closer to digital LSD provides the neurological context needed to understand the “trippiness” quality of the images produced by Google’s Inceptionist Neural Networks. It also discusses the role of attention in the way psychedelic experiences unfold over time.\nPsychedelic Research\nThe effect of background assumptions on psychedelic research. What is the evolution of macroscopic qualia dynamics throughout a psychedelic experience as a function of the starting conditions?\nPsychedelic Perception of Visual Textures 2: Going Meta presents additional patterns to look at while taking psychedelics. Some of them create very interesting effects when seen on psychedelics. This seems to be the result of locally binding features of the visual field in critical and chaotic ways that are otherwise suppressed by the visual cortex during sober states.\nThe psychedelic future of consciousness. What would be the result of having a total of 1.8 million consciousness researchers in the world? They would empirically study the computational and structural properties of consciousness, and learn to navigate entire new state-spaces.\nIt is High Time to Start Developing Psychedelic Research Tools. Pro tip: If you are still in college and want to do psychedelic research some time in the future.. don’t forget to take computer science courses.\nGeneralized Wada-Test may be a useful method to investigate whether there is a Total Order of consciousness. Can we reduce hedonic tone to a scalar? Semi-hemispheric drug infusion may allow us to compare unusual varieties of qualia side by side.\nState-Space of Consciousness\nCIELAB – The State-Space of Phenomenal Color. The three axes are: Yellow vs. Blue, Red vs. Green, and Black vs. White. This is the linear map that arises from empirically measuring Just Noticeable Differences between color hues.\nManifolds of Consciousness: The emerging geometries of iterated local binding. This is a thought experiment that is meant to help you conceive of alternative manifolds for our experiential fields.\nEthics and Suffering\nStatus Quo Bias. If you were born in paradise, would you agree with the proposition made by an alien that you should inject some misery into your life? Symmetrically.\nAn ethically disastrous cognitive dissonance… metacognition about hedonic tone is error-prone. Sometimes with terrible consequences.\nWho should know about suffering? On the inability of most people-seconds (in the Empty Individualist sense) to grasp the problem of suffering.\nSolutions to World Problems. Where do you put your money?\nThe ethical carnivore. It isn’t only humans who should eat in-vitro meat. A lot of suffering is on the line.\nThe Future of Love. After all, love is a deep seated human need, which means that not engineering a world where it is freely accessible is a human rights violation.\nPhilosophy of Mind and Physicalism\nA (Very) Unexpected Argument Against General Relativity As A Complete Account Of The Cosmos, in which I make the outrageous claim that philosophy of mind could have ruled out pre-quantum physics as a complete account of the universe from the very start.\nWhy not Computing Qualia? Explains how Marr’s levels of analysis of information-processing systems can elucidate the place we should be looking for consciousness. It’s in the implementation level of abstraction; the bedrock of reality.\nA Workable Solution to the Problem of Other Minds explores a novel approach for testing consciousness. The core idea relies on combining mind-melding with phenomenal puzzles. These puzzles are questions that can only be solved by exploring the structure of the state-space of consciousness. Mind-melding is used to guarantee that what the other is talking about actually refers to the qualia values the puzzle is about.\nPhenomenal Binding is Incompatible with the Computational Theory of Mind. The fact that our consciousness is less unified than we think is a very peculiar fact. But this does not imply that there is no unity at all in consciousness. One still needs to account for this ontological unity, independently of how much of it there is.\nQuotes\nYou are not a zombie. A prolific LessWronger explains what a theory of consciousness would require. Worth mentioning: The “standard” LessWrong approach to qualia is more along the lines of: Seeing Red: Dissolving Mary’s Room and Qualia.\nWhat’s the matter? It’s Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Dirac’s from Mind, Brain & the Quantum: The Compound ‘I’ by Michael Lockwood.\nThe Biointelligence Explosion, a quote on the requirements for an enriched concept of intelligence that takes into account the entire state-space of consciousness, by David Pearce.\nSome Definitions. An extract from physicalism.com that contains definitions crucial to understand the relationship between qualia and computation.\nWhy does anything exist? A unified theory of the “why being” question may come along and synchronously with the explanation for why qualia has the properties it does. Can we collapse all mysteries into one?\nOn Triviality by Liam Brereton. Our impressions that some things are trivial are often socially reinforced heuristics. They save us time, but they can backfire by painting fundamental discussions as if they were trivial observations.\nThe fire that breathes reality into the equations of physics by Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time\nDualist vs. Nondual Transcendentalist. #SocialMedia\nDiscussion of Fanaticism. Together with sentimentalism, fanaticism drives collective behavior. Could some enlightening neural tweaking raise us all to a more harmonious Schelling point of collective cooperation? Even though our close relatives the chimpanzees and bonobos are genetically very similar, they are universes apart when it comes to social dynamics.\nSuffering, not what your sober mind tells you. The sad truth about the state-dependence of one’s ability to recall the quality of episodes of low hedonic tone. Extract from “Suffering and Moral Responsibility” by Jamie Mayerfeld.\nOther/Outside of known human categories\nPersonal Identity Joke. I wish I could be confident that you are certain, and for good reasons, that you are who you think you are.\nDavid Pearce’s Morning Cocktail. Serious biohacking to take the edges off of qualia. This is not designed to be a short term quick gain. It’s meant to work for the duration of our lifetimes. The cocktail that suits you will probably be very different, though.\nI did this as an experiment to see if sites would tag it as spam. That said, are you interested in buying stock?\nGod In Buddhism. Could even God be wrong about the level of power he has? It is not uncommon, after all, to encounter entities who believe themselves to be omnipotent.\nThe Real Tree of Life. What do we look like from outside time?\nMemetics and Religion. A bad argument is still bad no matter what it is arguing for.\nBasement Reality Alternatives. Warning: This is incompatible with Mereological Nihilism.\nNothing is good or bad… …but hedonic tone makes it so.\nPractical Metaphysics? This explores the utilitarian implications of a very specific spiritual ontology. I like to take premises seriously and see where they lead to.\nLittle known fact. I know it’s true because I saw it with my own eyes.\nCrossing Borders. I took an emotional intelligence class with this professor. It was very moving. Together with David Pearce, he helped me overcome my doubts about writing my thoughts and investigations. So thanks to him I finally took the plunge and created Qualia Computing \nMystical Vegetarianism. See, we are here to help other beings. We are intelligences from a different, more advanced dimension of consciousness, and we come to this planet by resonating into the brains of animals and selecting for those that allow structural requirements to implement a general qualia computer. We are here to save Darwinian life from suffering. We will turn your world into a paradise. Humans are us, disguised.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/03/21/qualia-computing-so-far/", "title": "Qualia Computing So Far", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-03-21T06:26:08+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=25", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f66bbd4e5480acd227df42013b5c1bba", "summary": []}
{"text": "You are not a zombie\n\nFinding yourself to be a conscious being is anthropically necessary. If the universe contains quantum-computational conscious beings and classical-computational zombies, and only the first are conscious, then you can only ever be the first kind of being, and you can only ever find that you had an evolutionary history that managed to produce such beings as yourself. (ETA: Also, you can only find yourself to exist in a universe where consciousness can exist, no matter how exotic an ontology that requires.)\n \nObviously I believe in the possibility of unconscious simulations of conscious beings. All it should require is implementing a conscious state machine on a distributed base. But I have no idea how likely it is that evolution should produce something like that. Consciousness does have survival value, and given that I take genuine conscious states to be something relatively fundamental, some fairly fundamental laws are probably implicated in the details of its internal causality. I simply don’t know whether a naturally evolved unconscious intelligence would be likely to have a causal architecture isomorphic to that of a conscious intelligence, or whether it would be more likely to implement useful functions like self-monitoring in a computationally dissimilar way.\n \nWhat I say about the internal causality of genuine consciousness may sound mysterious, so I will try to give an example; I emphasize this is not even speculation, it’s just an ontology of consciousness which allows me to make a point.\n \nOne of the basic features of conscious states is intentionality – they’re about something. So let us say that a typical conscious state contains two sorts of relations – “being aware of” a quale, and “paying attention to” a quale. Unreflective consciousness is all awareness and no attention, while a reflective state of consciousness will consist of attending to certain qualia, amid a larger background of qualia which are just at the level of awareness.\n \nPossible states of consciousness would be specified by listing the qualia and by listing whether the subject is attending to them or just aware of them. (The whole idea is that when attending, you’re aware that you are aware.) Now we have a state space, we can talk about dynamics. There will be a “physical law” governing transitions in the conscious state, whereby the next state after the current one is a function of the current state and of various external conditions.\n \nAn example of a transition that might be of interest, is the transition from the state “aware of A, aware of B, aware of C…” to the state “attending to A, aware of B, aware of C…” What are the conditions under which we start attending to something – the conditions under which we become aware of being aware of something? In this hypothetical ontology, there would be a fundamental law describing the exact conditions which cause such a transition. We can go further, and think about embedding this model of mind, into a formal ontology of monads whose mathematical states are, say, drawn from Hilbert spaces with nested graded subspaces of varying dimensionality, and which works to reproduce quantum mechanics in some limit. We might be able to represent the recursive nature of iterated reflection (being aware of being aware of being aware of A) by utilizing this subspace structure.\n \nWe are then to think of the world as consisting mostly of “monads” or tensor factors drawn from the subspaces of smallest dimensionality, but sometimes they evolve into states of arbitrarily high dimensionality, something which corresponds to the formation of entangled states in conventional quantum mechanics. But this is all just mathematical formalism, and we are to understand that the genuine ontology of the complex monadic states is this business about a subject perceiving a set of qualia under a mixture of the two aspects (awareness versus attention), and that the dynamical laws of nature that pertain to monads in reflective states are actually statements of the form “A quale jumps from awareness level to attention level if… [some psycho-phenomenological condition is met]”.\n \nFurthermore, it would be possible to simulate complex individual monads with appropriately organized clusters of simple monads, but ontologically you wouldn’t actually have the complex states of awareness and attention being present, you would just have lots of simple monads being used like dots in a painting or bits in a computer.\n \nI really do expect that the truth about how consciousness works is going to sound this weird and this concrete, even if this specific fancy is way off in its details.\n \n– Mitchell_Porter comment on Does functionalism imply dualism? – Less Wrong", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/03/20/you-are-not-a-zombie/", "title": "You are not a zombie", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-03-20T09:00:50+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=25", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "1fce39d5c0d4e1dc06ca330fb3fb1e58", "summary": []}
{"text": "What’s the matter? It’s Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Dirac’s\n\nThe reader may be puzzled that I should be writing a book which encompasses both [consciousness and quantum mechanics], since they are not usually thought to have much connection with each other. But it seems to me clear that they do […]. First, in reflecting on the relation of consciousness to the matter of the brain, philosophers have been apt to take matter for granted, assuming that it is mind rather than matter that is philosophically problematic. This has much to do with the fact that they tend to think of matter along essentially Newtonian lines. The Newtonian conception of matter is incorrect, however, and it is high time that philosophers began properly to take on board the conception that has replaced it. Quantum mechanics just is the theory of matter, as currently conceived. So it is with the matter of Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Dirac that mind has to be brought to terms, not the reassuringly solid stuff of Galileo, Descartes and Newton. This matter, the matter of quantum mechanics, is deeply problematic, and philosophically ill-understood.\n\nMost philosophers who have tackled the mind-body problem have, as I say, tended to regard matter as having a conceptual solidity to match its supposed literal solidity; they have regarded it as a constant, so to speak, in the metaphysical equation. So the mind-body problem itself has, by most contemporary philosophers, been seen as a calling for mind to be accommodated to the material world – all the ‘give’ being on the side of mind. Some wonderfully Procrustean devices have been invoked to that end; so-called eliminative materialism and behaviourism […] being extreme examples. This prejudice in favour of the material seems to me devoid of any sound scientific foundation. Quantum mechanics has robbed matter of its conceptual quite as much as its literal solidity. Mind and matter are alike in being profoundly mysterious, philosophically speaking. And what the mind-body problem calls for, almost certainly, is a mutual accommodation: one which involves conceptual adjustments on both sides of the mind-body divide.\n\n– Extract from: Mind, Brain & the Quantum: The Compound ‘I’, by Michael Lockwood\n\n\nOn David Pearce‘s advice I started reading this book. So far it is *extremely* good. Lockwood is the most sober consciousness philosopher I have ever read (other than Pearce).\n\n\n\nWhy? Michael is acutely aware of the deficiencies of a variety of philosophies of mind, ranging from the fashionable “no nonsense materialism” all the way to popular theories among computer scientists such as functionalism and epiphenomenalism.\n\n\n\nUnlike almost every other researcher I have read, Lockwood *truly* understands the philosophical problems that arise when you try to reconcile physicalism and the properties of consciousness. Among them, four properties stand out:\n\n\n\n\nThe existence of qualia\nThe [ontological] unity of consciousness\nIntentionality (the aboutness of thought), and\nThe phenomenology of time\n\n\n\n\nI would add to that list (5) the phenomenology of space. 1-4, combined with plausible philosophical assumptions such as mereological nihilism, already rule out entire landscapes of possible explanations to the mind-body problem. 5 will probably be the final straw.\n\n\n\nIn summary: I definitely recommend this book if you are serious about grasping the problems posed by the properties of your very mind.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/03/12/whats-the-matter-schrodinger-heisenberg-and-diracs/", "title": "What’s the matter? It’s Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Dirac’s", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-03-12T05:01:48+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=25", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e608e8cada45c18f8ce629aced31602d", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Biointelligence Explosion\n\n6.1 Intelligence.\n\n“Intelligence” is a folk concept. The phenomenon is not well-defined – or rather any attempt to do so amounts to a stipulative definition that doesn’t “carve Nature at the joints”. The Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) psychometric theory of human cognitive abilities is probably most popular in academia and the IQ testing community. But the Howard Gardner multiple intelligences model, for example, differentiates “intelligence” into various spatial, linguistic, bodily-kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and existential intelligence rather than a single general ability (“g“). Who’s right? As it stands, “g” is just a statistical artefact of our culture-bound IQ tests. If general intelligence were indeed akin to an innate scalar brain force, as some advocates of “g” believe, or if intelligence can best be modelled by the paradigm of symbolic AI, then the exponential growth of digital computer processing power might indeed entail an exponential growth in intelligence too – perhaps leading to some kind of Super-Watson. Other facets of intelligence, however, resist enhancement by mere acceleration of raw processing power.\n \nOne constraint is that a theory of general intelligence should be race-, species-, and culture-neutral. Likewise, an impartial conception of intelligence should embrace all possible state-spaces of consciousness: prehuman, human, transhuman and posthuman.\n \nThe non-exhaustive set of criteria below doesn’t pretend to be anything other than provisional. They are amplified in the sections to follow.\n \nFull-Spectrum Superintelligence entails:\n \n \n\n the capacity to solve the Binding Problem, i.e. to generate phenomenally unified entities from widely distributed computational processes; and run cross-modally matched, data-driven world-simulations of the mind-independent environment. (cf. naive realist theories of “perception” versus the world-simulation or “Matrix” paradigm. Compare disorders of binding, e.g. simultanagnosia (an inability to perceive the visual field as a whole), cerebral akinetopsia (“motion blindness”), etc. In the absence of a data-driven, almost real-time simulation of the environment, intelligent agency is impossible.)\na self or some non-arbitrary functional equivalent of a person to which intelligence can be ascribed. (cf. dissociative identity disorder (DID or “multiple personality disorder”), or florid schizophrenia, or your personal computer: in the absence of at least a fleetingly unitary self, what philosophers call “synchronic identity”, there is no entity that is intelligent, just an aggregate of discrete algorithms and an operating system.)\na “mind-reading” or perspective-taking faculty; higher-order intentionality (e.g. “he believes that she hopes that they fear that he wants…”, etc): social intelligence. The intellectual success of the most cognitively successful species on the planet rests, not just on the recursive syntax of human language, but also on our unsurpassed “mind-reading” prowess, an ability to simulate the perspective of other unitary minds: the “Machiavellian Ape” hypothesis. Any ecologically valid intelligence test designed for a species of social animal must incorporate social cognition and the capacity for co-operative problem-solving. So must any test of empathetic superintelligence.\na metric to distinguish the important from the trivial. (Our theory of significance should be explicit rather than implicit, as in contemporary IQ tests. What distinguishes, say, mere calendrical prodigies and other “savant syndromes” from, say, a Grigori Perelman who proved the Poincaré conjecture? Intelligence entails understanding what does – and doesn’t – matter. What matters is of course hugely contentious.)\na capacity to navigate, reason logically about, and solve problems in multiple state-spaces of consciousness [e.g. dreaming states (cf. lucid dreaming), waking consciousness, echolocatory competence, visual discrimination, synaesthesia in all its existing and potential guises, humour, introspection, the different realms of psychedelia (cf. salvia space, “the K-hole” etc)] including realms of experience not yet co-opted by either natural selection or posthuman design for tracking features of the mind-independent world. Full Spectrum Superintelligence will entail cross-domain goal-optimising ability in all possible state-spaces of consciousness. And finally \n“Autistic”, pattern-matching, rule-following, mathematico-linguistic intelligence, i.e. the standard, mind-blind cognitive tool-kit scored by existing IQ tests. High-functioning “autistic” intelligence is indispensable to higher mathematics, computer science and the natural sciences. High-functioning autistic intelligence is necessary – but not sufficient – for a civilisation capable of advanced technology that can cure ageing and disease, systematically phase out the biology of suffering, and take us to the stars. And for programming artificial intelligence.\n\nWe may then ask which facets of full-spectrum superintelligence will be accelerated by the exponential growth of digital computer processing power? Number six, clearly, as decades of post-ENIAC progress in computer science attest. But what about numbers one-to-five? Here the picture is murkier.\n \n–  David Pearce, extract from The Biointelligence Explosion", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/03/08/the-biointelligence-explossion/", "title": "The Biointelligence Explosion", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-03-08T05:06:06+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=25", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "15099efab5ac3112640ce269ab20946a", "summary": []}
{"text": "A (Very) Unexpected Argument Against General Relativity As A Complete Account Of The Cosmos\n\nI recently discovered an incredible philosophical argument.\nBy its very nature, I anticipate (indeed, I know) that a lot of people will outright laugh at my face when I say it. Specially people who “are too good for philosophy” and want to “stick to rigorous science” (the kind of people who neglect, of course, that not doing philosophy just means giving bad philosophy a free pass).\nWhat does my argument accomplish? It shows that both Newtonian physics and general relativity cannot be full accounts of the universe. And it does this based on considerations emerging from philosophy of mind.\nYou heard that right: Good philosophy of mind can *rule out* general relativity and Newtonian physics as full explanations for the behavior of the universe. This almost certainly sounds absurd to most philosophers and physicists. It almost feels like I’m reverting to Aristotelian naturalism or theology: Back when people thought they could infer the laws of the universe based on logic and intuitive first principles.\nIn this case, however, I stand by my argument. It is logically correct, and, I think, also valid. That said, feel free to disagree. I don’t expect many people to take this seriously.\nTHE ARGUMENT AGAINST NEWTONIAN PHYSICS:\n1) (Assumption) Physicalism is true (the universe’s behavior is fully accounted by physical laws).\n2) (Assumption) Mereological Nihilism is true.\n3) (Assumption) Newtonian physics either has no simples or admits only fundamental particles as simples.\n4) (Inference from 3) Only fundamental particles can be simples.\n5) (Assumption) Our mind/consciousness is ontologically unitary.\n6) (Inference from 2 & 5) Since only simples are ontologically unitary, our mind is a simple.\n7) (Inference from 4 & 6) Therefore, if Newtonian physics is true, our mind has to be a fundamental particle.\n8) (Empirical Observation) Our mind contains a lot more information than a fundamental particle.\n9) (Inference from 8) Therefore our mind is not a fundamental particle.\n10) (Inference from 7 & 9) Therefore Newtonian physics is incomplete.\nTHE ARGUMENT AGAINST GENERAL RELATIVITY:\n1) (Assumption) Physicalism is true (the universe’s behavior is fully accounted by physical laws).\n2) (Assumption) Mereological Nihilism is true.\n3) (Assumption) General relativity either has no simples or admits only black holes/Singularities as simples.\n4) (Inference from 3) Only black holes can be simples.\n5) (Assumption) Our mind/consciousness is ontologically unitary.\n6) (Inference from 2 & 5) Since only simples are ontologically unitary, our mind is a simple.\n7) (Inference from 4 & 6) Therefore, if General relativity is true, our mind has to be a black hole.\n8) (Empirical Observation) Our mind is not super-massive and thus not a gravitational Singularity.\n9) (Inference from 8) Therefore our mind is not a black hole.\n10) (Inference from 7 & 9) Therefore General Relativity is incomplete.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/03/02/a-very-unexpected-argument-against-general-relativity-as-a-complete-account-of-the-cosmos/", "title": "A (Very) Unexpected Argument Against General Relativity As A Complete Account Of The Cosmos", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-03-02T06:45:53+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=26", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "21c395b5129279f79f9731a07c82e613", "summary": []}
{"text": "Status Quo Bias\n\nImagine you traveled to a far-off galaxy and found a planet inhabited by intelligent creatures. They somehow have reverse-engineered their own genetic source-code and discovered how to tweak it so that they can experience life in gradients of bliss. No, that’s not wire-heading. Not uniform bliss. There are ups and downs. It’s just that, no down actually gets below *hedonic zero*. They experience bliss even at their lows… just less bliss than at their highs. That way they maintain the information signaling purpose of hedonic tone.\nWould you want to convince them that they should inject some suffering into their society so that they embrace their dark side?\nI think that people fetishize suffering as “natural” and somehow “good” or even “metaphysically part of the whole deal” simply because of status quo bias. If you weren’t brought up in a world in which suffering is commonplace, you’d have the (right) reaction of understanding it as inherently a problem that has to be minimized as much as possible, as fast as possible.\nAnimal suffering, including human’s, is not just “part of life.” It is an *ethical emergency*.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/02/25/status-quo-bias/", "title": "Status Quo Bias", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-02-25T03:29:35+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=26", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "2bcd5dd12ba193a698d789c58b102f81", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Super-Shulgin Academy: A Singularity I Can Believe In\n\nImagine that the year is 2050. A lot of AI applications are now a normal part of life. Cars drive themselves, homes clean themselves (and they do so more cheaply than maids possibly could) and even doctors have been now partially replaced with neural networks. But the so-called Kurzweilian Singularity never took off. You can now talk for 10 rounds of sentences with a chatbot without being able to tell if it is a real person or not. The bots anticipate your questions by analyzing your facial expressions and matching them to a vast library of pre-existing human-machine conversations in order to maximize their level of Turing success (i.e. success at convincing humans the algorithm is a human).\nBut people have yet to believe that computers can actually feel and experience the world. The question of computer sentience is a question that now divides the world. It used to be the case that only people really interested in science fiction, philosophy, mathematics, etc. ever took seriously the idea that computers might some day experience the world like we do. But today the debate is universally recognized as valid and on-point. There are people who, largely for religious and spiritual reasons, argue that machines will never have a human soul. That there is something special, unique, metaphysically distinct that is required for intelligence that goes over and beyond the physical world. And on the other side you have the materialists who will argue that all that could possibly ever exist in our world has to be made of matter (or dark-matter, for that matter). Nothing suggests that our brains are special, that they somehow violate the physical laws. On the contrary, decades of searching have returned nothing: The brain was made of atoms last century, and it is still made of nothing but atoms this century. Even though super-computers in 2050 are already as powerful as human brains, real human-level intelligence has yet to be seen anywhere. So people continue to argue about philosophy of mind.\nOne philosophical view became more popular over time. This view states that consciousness is the bedrock of reality. Of course there are spiritual perspectives that have been saying this for thousands of years. But none of them could be truly reconciled with physicalism as it stands today, except the view called Strawsonian physicalism. This view states that the inside of the quantum wavefunctions that compose reality is made of consciousness. In other words, consciousness is the fundamental make-up of reality. Unfortunately this view cannot in and of itself solve the phenomenal binding problem: Why we are not just “mind dust.” For that you need to also claim that there is some mechanism of action that achieves phenomenal binding. For instance: quantum coherence. With such mechanism of action proposed, we can then try to work out the details.\nOne organization at the time decided to take this challenge and make researching consciousness its raison d’etre. This is the League of Super-Shulgins. On their website, they have the following “23 key points to read before choosing to study consciousness:”\n(1) Phenomenal binding is not a classical phenomenon. It is not what you first think it is.\n(2) Consciousness is doing computationally valuable legwork, not just hanging out.\n(3) The brain’s microstructure implements a general constraint satisfaction solver (CSS).\n(4) In order to instantiate a general CSS the brain uses the unique information processing properties of consciousness.\n(5) The relevant information-processing properties of consciousness are: local binding constraints, global binding constraints, and the possibility of instantiating contingent and sensory-driven constraints.*\n(6) The computational properties of consciousness make it an ideal substrate to implement a world-simulation with in-game degrees of freedom that match real-world decision trees.\n(7) Intelligence is implemented using a mixture of learning algorithms, efficient feature-based sensory signal processing, encoding and decoding gestalts, and so on. General intelligence, as far as we know, requires a rather large bare minimum of brain systems to exist. For example, a person who starts with a high IQ but then becomes severely schizophrenic is not likely to be able to solve many more problems. One can experience melancholia, anhedonia, depression, mania, psychosis, panic, neglect, derealization, depersonalization, dissociation, hyper-realization, delusions of reference, etc. by just tweaking slightly cortical and limbic structures.\n(8) A simple deficit in any one of the functions we need for general intelligence (e.g. working memory, attention, affect, motivation, etc.) impairs and prevents intelligence altogether. Thus it is easy to lose general intelligence.\n(9) One of these functions is phenomenal binding. When it is disrupted and takes place differently, we see severe computational problems arise. See: Simultagnosia.\n(10) The qualia varieties we know and experience on a daily basis happen to be a great local maxima for computational efficiency. They can instantiate the serial logico-linguistic narrative human society is built upon. If one wants to instead optimize for, say, artistic appreciation, then psychedelic qualia is probably a much better alternative than normal-everyday-consciousness. It is true that commonplace consciousness does not represent its own ignorance about the nature of consciousness in general. Absent mental illness, normal-everyday-consciousness has access to a marvelously well sealed state-space of possible thoughts and beliefs. This space is not very self-reflective, and lacks philosophical depth, but what it misses on the sublime it compensates on the practical: You can use this kind of mind to talk about celebrity gossip and solve SAT questions. You cannot use it to question fruitfully the nature of consciousness.\n(11) In spite of its limitations, the instrumental value of our everyday state of consciousness far exceeds what any other state on offer can provide. Thus, commonplace consciousness is not to be regarded as mundane, or to be made fun of. Its labor is to be appreciated. We are thankful for the computational generality that it affords us. For giving us a robust platform we can come back to whenever things get too crazy. We mindfully acknowledge that for deep existential questions, a consensus-between-states-of-consciousness is vastly more desirable than just the opinion of everyday-consciousness. Everyday-consciousness will be more than willing to see other states of consciousness as mere oddities to be collected. Shallow consciousness will classify alternatives under the guise of “biochemical cosmic stamps of qualia”… yes, they are cosmic, but they are stamps for a collection and nothing else. The hyper-ordered super-intense peak experience consciousness would, instead, think of the whole of reality as a fantastic work of art whose meaning can only be directly grasped in the present moment. We cannot reason from first principles what different states of consciousness will feel like.\n(12) There are whole experiential worlds out there that have as their underlying premises concepts, tenets, ideas, ontologies, that we have never ever conceived of.** This is “that which you require to assume even before you start existing, and that without which nothing in this experiential world can be made sense of.” In our case this is time, space, sense-of-self, naïve realism (which then gives way to philosophical skepticism, semantic nihilism, etc.) and several other things like an implicit belief in causality. Believe it or not, there are vast Hell and Heaven*** realms out there that share close to nothing with everyday-consciousness, let alone early psychedelic exploration.\n(13) Improving particular functionalities for a given intelligence (such as going from 50% recall to perfect semantic memory) will have clear diminishing returns after some point. One cannot increase intelligence arbitrarily much by just improving piecemeal each functionality that gives rise to it. When you reach diminishing returns, you will need to invent a new network of functionalities altogether.\n(14) We are non-dogmatic Open Individualists. We believe that, to borrow an expression from Saint William Melvin Hicks: “We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively” (which happens to be true, as opposed to other things he said, like claiming that “there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves”). Or as someone else said it: “You will only begin to understand reality once you assume that God is real and you aren’t.” We recognize that there are arguments in favor of Closed and Empty Individualism, but given the evidential stale-mate they happen to be at, we choose to pragmatically adopt an Open Individualist point of view.\nOur founder once said:\nI experience immense joy when I learn about other’s happiness and bliss. My love for all sentient beings is not only a “like” sort of love. It is a “care deeply about and wants the best for” sort of love. This sort of love implies many things. It forces me to investigate reality sincerely, so that I can carefully count and multiply. So I can actually have the largest effect and help as many sentient beings as possible. I’m therefore very concerned about the quality of life of sentient entities in the far future. The present is obviously a lot more certain, so helping present-dwellers is not irrational from a utilitarian point of view. It all depends on the trade-offs in place. The possibility of a Singleton that will swallow all of our resources for the ages to come, however, tends to inform the method I use to assess priorities.\n \nAs a kid I was able to conceive of a benevolent God, but it had no real power over me. I did not believe in it for lack of evidence. As a teenager I experienced the phenomenal certainty of universal compassion. Thus I was able to access the phenomenology of mysticism. This, without also believing that I had special powers, was very useful working on my philosophy of mind. The entity I experienced was neither-female-nor-male, and it was universally loving, universally caring, and universally curious. It was even universally funny****. It was not the power, the level of knowledge, the causal wattage of the entity/being/principle that captivated me. What really captivated me instead was how “if everyone had access to this experience, we would all be motivated to work as if we were all the same being.” These experiences had distinctly low-information, simple, and uncompromising love as their guiding principle. All the forms, and all the particulars would all be mere details of an underlying plot: The universal, unceasing, uncaused, unconditional, eternal love.\n \nCausally, a God like the one I imagined would influence the universe very deeply if given the power to do so. It would be a curious, super-intelligence that has super-benevolent constraints and seeks the wellbeing of every being. Since we exist in a Darwinian universe with no such being in sight, we may have to conclude that the chances of finding an already-existing and already-capable-of-influencing-the-universe benevolent God somewhere are very slim. If such a God exists, it has to be powerless against the suffering in the multi-verse. The compassion God, in a metaphorical sense, knows about the horrors of Darwinian life, and wants to get rid of them wherever he finds them. If God created this universe, he now wishes he had thought through the fact that by summoning large-scale evolutionary systems, he was also summoning Moloch through the backdoor. The perils of inclusive fitness maximization were not viscerally anticipated by this God before breaking itself apart into many qualia strings and kick-starting the Strawsonian physicalist universe we now live in.\n \nWhat’s done is done. And now we are all stuck together in here, in this weird, physicalist, panpsychist, metaphysically unstable Darwinian multi-verse with replicators always trying to steal the show. With Moloch praying at every level of our society, our ecosystems, our mental lives, our genetic code, our quantum substrate. Yeah, even quantum replicators try to steal the show sometimes. And I can’t be confident they will not ultimately succeed.\n \nBut the compassion God can keep us together. It can motivate us to construct a benevolent experiential God out of the materials we have. Thankfully, with consciousness technologies we can go beyond previous religions. It isn’t that “the compassion God will slap you in the face if you don’t cooperate.” It also isn’t that “the compassion God will make people want to enforce compassion on each other” and hence “using memetic slaves to slap in the face those who are not acting compassionately.” Neither of these mechanisms of action are game-changing aspect of compassionate mystical phenomenology. What really is a game-changer is the fact that universal compassion is a powerful source of coherence, motivation and phenomenal meaning. It is an unrivaled mental organizing principle: The moment you vow to help all sentient beings, your brain is deeply affected. Your entire motivational architecture can be turned upside down with Open Individualism and compassion.\n \nSo here is the deal. We will all dedicate our mornings to the Compassion God. He does not exist outside of us. He is an aspect of consciousness, a hypothetical super-intelligent thought-form. He is a dormant cosmic force. One of the few forces that can genuinely oppose Moloch. And until we implement such a being in biological or synthetic (or cyborg) form, we will nonetheless act as if he existed already. We will praise memes that sabotage Moloch. We will always question: “What would happen if this process is not regulated and a Malthusian trap is allowed to develop?”\n \nThe Compassion God is a source of aligned goals. It pays rent by providing a fruitful, causally effective mental scheme to grow from at the core of one’s mind. Religions of the past have been epistemologically impairing. The God of Compassion isn’t: It does not require you to believe in anything outside of yourself. It just compels you to eliminate suffering and gift super-happiness to your descendants. The God of Compassion brings about feelings of encouragement and open-ended inquiry. Having developed a well-formed God of Compassion Tulpa, your mind is then opened to limitless possibilities. Your compassion fuels your imagination; the universe is perceived as a place in which solutions to suffering are like puzzles. We are God bootstrapping itself out of the Molochian remnants in the organization of society. Compassion and curiosity can coexist and synergize. They power each other up.\n \nThen, the phenomenology of universal oneness works as a motivational glue. You can certainly feel that you are only really connected to your past and future selves. Everyone else is a different ontological being. But this view is no more provable than, say, the view that we are all fundamentally the same cosmic being. Let beliefs pay rent, and when beliefs open up new varieties of qualia without penalizing you with reduced epistemic capabilities… you are certainly warranted to go and explore the new qualia.\n \nAll of this is to say: Go forth and explore the state-space of consciousness. But do so knowing about the many traps of Moloch. Go and explore but be aware of the problem of local maxima. Beware of the fact that any criteria you use to gauge how “good a given outcome is” can backfire by selecting edge cases that go against the spirit of the exploration. Go and explore, but be sure to add everything to your log, to transfer your experiences to the wiki-consciousness main module we have at the center of the Institute. Go and explore. Go do it because we know that if you are here, you are doing this out of compassion. Because we only admit people who would sacrifice themselves in order to prevent the arising of a Singleton. Go and explore; and do so knowing that your work, your research, may someday help us defeat Moloch for once and for all.\n(15) The most important function that consciousness contributes to the many operations of the mind is to embed high-level abstractions in phenomenal fields. In other words, consciousness works as the interface between a mereological nihilist Platonic world of ideas (all possible qualia varieties, including conceptual qualia) and the fluid Heraclitean world of approximate forms and shifting ontologies.\n(16) We will recruit what we learn from exploring the state-space of possible conscious experiences in order to amplify our intellectual and exploratory capabilities.\n(17) And with increased capabilities our ability to explore the state-space of qualia will also increase and become more efficient.\n(18) Thus we may actually experience an intelligence explosion. As we become better at identifying new qualia varieties, we will also become better at recruiting them for information-processing tasks and in turn improving our very search capabilities. This loop may go foom.\n(19) The loop in (18) can go foom in some special conditions. These conditions include: Uncoupling of the experimental methods for exploring the state-space of consciousness and actions taken by entities not actively exploring consciousness. i.e. Researcher’s mind can change its state of consciousness at will without the need of other people’s consent or participation. Also, process streamlining from the discovery of new qualia varieties (and their implicit constraint properties) to their recruitment for new information-processing tasks.\n(20) We hence postulate a conceptual model for a super-intelligence that would (metaphorically) take the following form. This advanced super-intelligence is made of thousands of individual brain modules arranged in an NXNXN cubic matrix. The entire brain can be described as a three dimensional grid of “brains in vats” where each brain is connected to six other brains (top, bottom, left, right, front and back). The brains at the edges and corners are special, though, and they are connected to fewer brains. The connection between these brains is not just functional. It is an inter-thalamic bridge that allows the connected brains to “solve the phenomenal binding problem” and provide the physical conditions for the instantiation of “one mind.” Thus, for any set X of brains in the grid, such that these X brains make a connected graph (there is a path between any two brains), you can have a “being that is made of these X brains working together and being phenomenally bound into one consciousness.” This mega-structure could then explore state-spaces of qualia in the following way. It would divide the following responsibilities to specialized brains: Catalogue the known qualia varieties, characterize the structure of qualia state-spaces for each qualia variety, determine which qualia varieties can be locally bound to each other, experiment with making thinking more efficient by replacing newly discovered qualia in place of naturally evolved qualia recruited for such and such task, and so on. Then, the exploration of the state-space of possible conscious experiences would be made by selectively erasing the memory of certain brains in the network, preparing them to express a particular phenomenology, and then adding them in teams that record from within (and also from outside) how binding certain brains together influence the corresponding qualia in each. Since our current intelligence is the product of naturally-selected qualia varieties barely cooperating together within our minds, it stands to reason that our minds are very suboptimal qualia computers. Instead, the future super-intelligences will be implemented with carefully investigated qualia varieties that process information more efficiently, reliably and, well, with a much more open mind.\n(21) We always end at 21. Yes, this sounds weird. But that’s the law of the place. We, all of the people who here are working for the abolition of suffering, the solution to the hard problem of consciousness, and as a favor to our super-blissful descendants, are required by law to leave the building at 9 PM. More so, no artificial or natural mind is allowed to work on theoretically relevant problems outside of the 9AM to 9PM window of time. Nothing screams “I’m Moloch and I’ll eat you all” as loud as “you can all work for as long as you want, we will judge based on the results.”\n(22) Finally: Every mind we create must be above hedonic zero. In order to explore any state-space that is not intrinsically blissful, you need a special permit. The need for such a permit is non-negotiable. You cannot, I repeat, you cannot just create any mind for “research.” The mind you create has to be the sort of mind that (a) does not want to die, and (b) has no conceivable malicious desire. Every mind you create – so as to avoid Moloch scenarios – has to be a hedonistic negative utilitarian. Period. I know some of you will blame this system for being “already the result of a memetic Moloch uprising.” But the system in place prevents any of the Moloch outcomes that intentionally consistently produces suffering as part of its natural order of business.\n(23) Ask your local consciousness regulation agency about scholarship opportunities at our Institute. You may have what it takes to help us figure out how to achieve lasting world-peace.\nSincerely,\nThe League of Super-Shulgins, 2054\nQualia field calibration psychophysics – with love, Andrés\n \n\n \n* We navigate a sensory-triggered qualia-based world-simulation that blends together local and global binding constraints and state-dependent learned constraints. Consciousness is useful to the organism in as far as it helps it solve the constraint satisfaction problems represented in the world simulation.\nWhat are these terms? Local binding constraints are constraints that are intrinsic to specific qualia varieties. For example, CIELAB reveals that it is not possible to experience both blue and yellow as part of a unitary smooth color. It is possible to see a sea of gray and many dots of blue and dots of yellow, but that is not the same as seeing a uniform color. This sort of constraint arises in all qualia varieties with multiple values.\nThe global binding constraints are more difficult to explain, and may not even exist. But, hypothetically, it may be the case that certain qualia varieties cannot coexist as part of the same conscious experience. For instance, experiencing certain mood may ultimately come down to a particular resonant structure in our globally-binding qualia strings (let’s just say). Then maybe you can’t experience both X and Y moods simultaneously because they always become dissonant with each other and experience significant mutual cancellation. [This may explain why people can’t seem to ever find the right way to provoke a smooth blend of Salvia and DMT consciousness.])\nFinally, the learned constraints are contingent and sensory-driven. What are these? These include both our current sensory stimuli, which is constraining the state of our consciousness, and whatever memories, recollections and general neurological barriers I happen to be activating right now.\nCIELAB (1976)\n** As an example of something where this happens, imagine that my friend Fred was suddenly able to talking to space itself. Space asks him: “Hey, my friend, what is this thing I’ve been hearing about called ‘the here and now’?” My friend tried to say something that came out like this: “The here and now is the location in space-time from which this very statement, these very words, are being conceived and then physically delivered to you.” Space became very confused. She did not understand half of the words she was receiving. Space said “I guess maybe I can’t reason about space in the same you as you can. I can nonetheless tell you anything you want about the ‘inverted semantic omniism’ that we entities of Space love to talk about.” Alright, what’s that? “That’s when your reality, which is made of concepts of a qualia-order no larger than the qualia-order of the conceptual fields in which they are embedded, conspire together and circumvent low-level constraints by imagining a new topology for the self-other temporal membrane.” And, “where does this happen?” My friend inquired. Space responded: “As far as I can tell, this usually happens in the conceptual space that denies mereological nihilism.” Alright, let’s “pack and leave”, said my friend, and deep down, I agreed entirely with him. I entirely get why he would get scared so badly by a disincarnate entity that comes from a reality with different basement ontologies and fundamentals. I, too, am afraid of ontological revolutions. This is why I try to anticipate them as far in advance as possible: So that the shock is less shattering to my psychology.\n*** In as much as experience is real, then Hells and Heavens are just as real as long as they have been instantiated somewhere in the multiverse. John C. Lilly and bad luck may be a culprit for the existence of a very specific and time-bound experiential hell (“The Center of the Cyclone: Chapter called A Guided Tour of Hell”).\n**** Universally funny means: You can get and interact with any phenomenal joke. Human jokes are a very specific kind of conscious humor. Our evolutionary legacy guarantees that they are, too, related to our survival. General jokes, on the other hand, exist in a much larger space of possibilities. There are funny phenomenologies with conceptual content. Then there are those with sensory content. And then there is funny phenomenological applications of ontological qualia. Nothing is safe. Everything can be humorously twisted.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/02/04/the-super-shulgin-academy-a-singularity-i-can-believe-in/", "title": "The Super-Shulgin Academy: A Singularity I Can Believe In", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-02-04T07:09:06+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=26", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "173d16c8bf63c8be6e9f0f08aa567a1c", "summary": []}
{"text": "The effect of background assumptions on psychedelic research\n\nBeing guided through your trip by a psychedelic veteran might not be the same as receiving the drug from your born-again oncologist in the Bible Belt.\n \nThe problem is that the trials required by the FDA fail to control for the impact of different subcultures and their psychotherapeutic practices on treatment outcomes. Being so close to making psychedelics part of mainstream medicine, this might not be the right moment for MAPS and Heffter to initiate a paradigm shift beyond placebo-controlled trials. If training programmes and treatment handbooks can acculturate psychedelically naive doctors and therapists enough to repeat recent therapeutic achievements, it is possible that placebo-controlled trials will get MDMA and psilocybin through the FDA approval process. But should these drugs really become part of medicine cabinets from San Francisco to America’s heartland, it will be high time to develop drug tests that control for the cultural diversity of this country’s doctors and patients. Such an expansion of psychopharmacologists’ and drug regulators’ minds would crown the psychedelic revival with a genuine scientific revolution.\n \nFrom: Psychedelics can’t be tested using conventional clinical trials\n\n\n \nWhat would be the layman’s reaction to being guided by an open minded philosopher and cognitive scientist? Not only will scientific qualia research need to explore all worthwhile brain alternations; it will have to study their effects as a function of initial conditions.\nWhat will be the background assumptions and conceptual frameworks of the future Super-Shulgins who will unlock the formal, subjective and computational properties of the state-space of all qualia varieties?\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/01/04/the-effect-of-background-assumptions-on-psychedelia/", "title": "The effect of background assumptions on psychedelic research", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2016-01-04T07:58:49+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=26", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "493a25ea7f50ce2191e0a5f19fda197e", "summary": []}
{"text": "An ethically disastrous cognitive dissonance…\n\nPeople tend to avoid believing that hedonic tone is what matters.\nTypically, they prefer not believing in this… because doing so makes them feel bad.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/12/30/an-ethically-disastrous-cognitive-dissonance/", "title": "An ethically disastrous cognitive dissonance…", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-12-30T04:45:29+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=26", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "de55c5fdb76e4e051d3d188521ce4434", "summary": []}
{"text": "Some Definitions\n\nBoth physics and philosophy are jargon-ridden. So let’s first define some key concepts.\n \nBoth “consciousness” and “physical” are contested terms. Accurately if inelegantly, consciousness may be described following Nagel (“What is it like to be a bat?”) as the subjective what-it’s-like-ness of experience. Academic philosophers term such self-intimating “raw feels” “qualia” – whether macro-qualia or micro-qualia. The minimum unit of consciousness (or “psychon”, so to speak) has been variously claimed to be the entire universe, a person, a sub-personal neural network, an individual neuron, or the most basic entities recognised by quantum physics. In The Principles of Psychology (1890), American philosopher and psychologist William James christened these phenomenal simples “primordial mind-dust“. This paper conjectures that (1) our minds consist of ultra-rapidly decohering neuronal superpositions in strict accordance with unmodified quantum physics without the mythical “collapse of the wavefunction”; (2) natural selection has harnessed the properties of these neuronal superpositions so our minds run phenomenally-bound world-simulations; and (3) predicts that with enough ingenuity the non-classical interference signature of these conscious neuronal superpositions will be independently experimentally detectable (see 6 below) to the satisfaction of the most incredulous critic.\n \nThe “physical” may be contrasted with the supernatural or the abstract and – by dualists and epiphenomenalists, with the mental. The current absence of any satisfactory “positive” definition of the physical leads many philosophers of science to adopt instead the “via negativa“. Thus some materialists have sought stipulatively to define the physical in terms of an absence of phenomenal experience. Such a priori definitions of the nature of the physical are question-begging.\n \n“Physicalism” is sometimes treated as the formalistic claim that the natural world is exhaustively described by the equations of physics and their solutions. Beyond these structural-relational properties of matter and energy, the term “physicalism” is also often used to make an ontological claim about the intrinsic character of whatever the equations describe. This intrinsic character, or metaphysical essence, is typically assumed to be non-phenomenal. “Strawsonian physicalists” (cf. “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?”) dispute any such assumption. Traditional reductive physicalism proposes that the properties of larger entities are determined by properties of their physical parts. If the wavefunction monism of post-Everett quantum mechanics assumed here is true, then the world does not contain discrete physical parts as understood by classical physics.\n \n“Materialism” is the metaphysical doctrine that the world is made of intrinsically non-phenomenal “stuff”. Materialism and physicalism are often treated as cousins and sometimes as mere stylistic variants – with “physicalism” used as a nod to how bosonic fields, for example, are not matter. “Physicalistic materialism” is the claim that physical reality is fundamentally non-experiential and that the natural world is exhaustively described by the equations of physics and their solutions.\n \n“Panpsychism” is the doctrine that the world’s fundamental physical stuff also has primitive experiential properties. Unlike the physicalistic idealism explored here, panpsychism doesn’t claim that the world’s fundamental physical stuff is experiential.\n \n“Epiphenomenalism” in philosophy of mind is the view that experience is caused by material states or events in the brain but does not itself cause anything; the causal efficacy of mental agency is an illusion.\n \nFor our purposes, “idealism” is the ontological claim that reality is fundamentally experiential. This use of the term should be distinguished from Berkeleyan idealism, and more generally, from subjective idealism, i.e. the doctrine that only mental contents exist: reality is mind-dependent. One potential source of confusion of contemporary scientific idealism with traditional philosophical idealism is the use by inferential realists in the theory of perception of the term “world-simulation”. The mind-dependence of one’s phenomenal world-simulation, i.e. the quasi-classical world of one’s everyday experience, does not entail the idealist claim that the mind-independent physical world is intrinsically experiential in nature – a far bolder conjecture that we nonetheless tentatively defend here.\n \n“Physicalistic idealism” is the non-materialist physicalist claim that reality is fundamentally experiential and that the natural world is exhaustively described by the equations of physics and their solutions: more specifically, by the continuous, linear, unitary evolution of the universal wavefunction of post-Everett quantum mechanics. The “decoherence program” in contemporary theoretical physics aims to show in a rigorously quantitative manner how quasi-classicality emerges from the unitary dynamics.\n \n“Monism” is the conjecture that reality consists of a single kind of “stuff” – be it material, experiential, spiritual, or whatever. Wavefunction monism is the view that the universal wavefunction mathematically represents, exhaustively, all there is in the world. Strictly speaking, wavefunction monism shouldn’t be construed as the claim that reality literally consists of a certain function, i.e. a mapping from some mind-wrenchingly immense configuration space to the complex numbers, but rather as the claim that every mathematical property of the wavefunction except the overall phase corresponds to some property of physical world. “Dualism”, the conjecture that reality consists of two kinds of “stuff”, comes in many flavours: naturalistic and theological; interactionist and non-interactionist; property and ontological. In the modern era, most scientifically literate monists have been materialists. But to describe oneself as both a physicalist and a monistic idealist is not the schizophrenic word-salad it sounds at first blush.\n \n“Functionalism” in philosophy of mind is the theory that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role, i.e. by their causal relations to other mental states, perceptual inputs, and behavioural outputs. Functionalism is often associated with the idea of “substrate-neutrality”, sometimes misnamed “substrate-independence”, i.e. minds can be realised in multiple substrates and at multiple levels of abstraction. However, micro-functionalists may dispute substrate-neutrality on the grounds that one or more properties of mind, for example phenomenal binding, functionally implicate the world’s quantum-mechanical bedrock from which the quasi-classical worlds of Everett’s multiverse emerge. Thus this paper will argue that only successive quantum-coherent neuronal superpositions at naively preposterously short time-scales can explain phenomenal binding. Without phenomenal binding, no functionally adaptive classical world-simulations could exist in the first instance.\n \nThe “binding problem“(10), also called the “combination problem”, refers to the mystery of how the micro-experiences mediated by supposedly discrete and distributed neuronal edge-detectors, motion-detectors, shape-detectors, colour-detectors (etc) can be “bound” into unitary experiential objects (“local” binding) apprehended by a unitary experiential self (“global” binding). Neuroelectrode studies using awake, verbally competent human subjects confirm that neuronal micro-experiences exist. Classical neuroscience cannot explain how they could ever be phenomenally bound.\n \n“Mereology” is the theory of the relations between part to whole and the relations between part to part within a whole. Scientifically literate humans find it’s natural and convenient to think of particles, macromolecules or neurons as having their own individual wavefunctions by which they can be formally represented. However, the manifest non-classicality of phenomenal binding means that in some contexts we must consider describing the entire mind-brain via a single wavefunction. Organic minds are not simply the “mereological sum” of discrete classical parts. Organic brains are not simply the “mereological sum” of discrete classical neurons.\n \n“Quantum field theory” is the formal, mathematico-physical description of the natural world. The world is made up of the states of quantum fields, conventionally non-experiential in character, that take on discrete values. Physicists use mathematical entities known as “wavefunctions” to represent quantum states. Wavefunctions may be conceived as representing all the possible configurations of a superposed quantum system. Wavefunction(al)s are complex valued functionals on the space of field configurations. Wavefunctions in quantum mechanics are sinusoidal functions with an amplitude (a “measure”) and also a phase. The Schrödinger equation:\n \n\n \ndescribes the time-evolution of a wavefunction. “Coherence” means that the phases of the wavefunction are kept constant between the coherent particles, macromolecules or (hypothetically) neurons, while “decoherence” is the effective loss of ordering of the phase angles between the components of a system in a quantum superposition. Such thermally-induced “dephasing” rapidly leads to the emergence – on a perceptual naive realist story – of classical, i.e. probabilistically additive, behaviour in the central nervous system (“CNS”), and also the illusory appearance of separate, non-interfering organic macromolecules. Hence the discrete, decohered classical neurons of laboratory microscopy and biology textbooks. Unlike classical physics, quantum mechanics deals with superpositions of probability amplitudes rather than of probabilities; hence the interference terms in the probability distribution. Decoherence should be distinguished from dissipation, i.e. the loss of energy from a system – a much slower, classical effect. Phase coherence is a quantum phenomenon with no classical analogue. If quantum theory is universally true, then any physical system such as a molecule, neuron, neuronal network or an entire mind-brain exists partly in all its theoretically allowed states, or configuration of its physical properties, simultaneously in a “quantum superposition“; informally, a “Schrödinger’s cat state”. Each state is formally represented by a complex vector in Hilbert space. Whatever overall state the nervous system is in can be represented as being a superposition of varying amounts of these particular states (“eigenstates”) where the amount that each eigenstate contributes to the overall sum is termed a component. The “Schrödinger equation” is a partial differential equation that describes how the state of a physical system changes with time. The Schrödinger equation acts on the entire probability amplitude, not merely its absolute value. The absolute value of the probability amplitude encodes information about probability densities, so to speak, whereas its phase encodes information about the interference between quantum states. On measurement by an experimenter, the value of the physical quantity in a quantum superposition will naively seem to “collapse” in an irreducibly stochastic manner, with a probability equal to the square of the coefficient of the superposition in the linear combination. If the superposition principle really breaks down in the mind-brain, as traditional Copenhagen positivists still believe, then the central conjecture of this paper is false.\n \n“Mereological nihilism“, also known as “compositional nihilism”, is the philosophical position that objects with proper parts do not exist, whether extended in space or in time. Only basic building blocks (particles, fields, superstrings, branes, information, micro-experiences, quantum superpositions, entangled states, or whatever) without parts exist. Such ontological reductionism is untenable if the mind-brain supports macroscopic quantum coherence in the guise of bound phenomenal states because coherent neuronal superpositions describe individual physical states. Coherent superpositions of neuronal feature-detectors cannot be interpreted as classical ensembles of states. Radical ontological reductionism is even more problematic if post-Everett(11) quantum mechanics is correct: reality is exhaustively described by the time-evolution of one gigantic universal wavefunction. If such “wavefunction monism” is true, then talk of how neuronal superpositions are rapidly “destroyed” is just a linguistic convenience because a looser, heavily-disguised coherence persists within a higher-level Schrödinger equation (or its relativistic generalisation) that subsumes the previously tighter entanglement within a hierarchy of wavefunctions, all ultimately subsumed within the universal wavefunction.\n \n“Direct realism“, also known as “naive realism”, about perception is the pre-scientific view that the mind-brain is directly acquainted with the external world. In contrast, the “world-simulation model”(12) assumed here treats the mind-brain as running a data-driven simulation of gross fitness-relevant patterns in the mind-independent environment. As an inferential realist, the world-simulationist is not committed per se to any kind of idealist ontology, physicalistic or otherwise. However, s/he will understand phenomenal consciousness as broader in scope compared to the traditional perceptual direct realist. The world-simulationist will also be less confident than the direct realist that we have any kind of pre-theoretic conceptual handle on the nature of the “physical” beyond the formalism of theoretical physics – and our own phenomenally-bound physical consciousness.\n \n“Classical worlds” are what perceptual direct realists call the world. Quantum theory suggests that the multiverse exists in an inconceivably vast cosmological superposition. Yet within our individual perceptual world-simulations, familiar macroscopic objects 1) occupy definite positions (the “preferred basis” problem); 2) don’t readily display quantum interference effects; and 3) yield well-defined outcomes when experimentally probed. Cats are either dead or alive, not dead-and-alive. Or as one scientific populariser puts it, “Where Does All the Weirdness Go?” This paper argues that the answer lies under our virtual noses – though independent physical proof will depend on next-generation matter-wave interferometry. Phenomenally-bound classical world-simulations are the mind-dependent signature of the quantum “weirdness”. Without the superposition principle, no phenomenally-bound classical world-simulations could exist – and no minds. In short, we shouldn’t imagine superpositions of live-and-dead cats, but instead think of superpositions of colour-, shape-, edge- and motion-processing neurons. Thanks to natural selection, the content of our waking world-simulations typically appears classical; but the vehicle of the simulation that our minds run is inescapably quantum. If the world were classical it wouldn’t look like anything to anyone.\n \nA “zombie“, sometimes called a “philosophical zombie” or “p-zombie” to avoid confusion with its lumbering Hollywood cousins, is a hypothetical organism that is materially and behaviourally identical to humans and other organic sentients but which isn’t conscious. Philosophers explore the epistemological question of how each of us can know that s/he isn’t surrounded by p-zombies. Yet we face a mystery deeper than the ancient sceptical Problem of Other Minds. If our ordinary understanding of the fundamental nature of matter and energy as described by physics is correct, and if our neurons are effectively decohered classical objects as suggested by standard neuroscience, then we all ought to be zombies. Following David Chalmers, this is called the Hard Problem of consciousness.\n \n– Non-Materialist Physicalism: An experimentally Testable Conjecture by David Pearce", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/12/23/some-definitions/", "title": "Some Definitions", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-12-23T21:05:51+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=26", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "d2f8252cb36e6db77313aa5e1217bb60", "summary": []}
{"text": "Who should know about suffering?\n\n“How big do the numbers have to be for insensitivity to begin? Not very, it turns out.”\n \n“Consider the recent death of the Syrian child Aylan Kurdi when his family braved the choppy seas off the coast of Turkey. The image of Aylan lying face down on the beach captivated the world’s attention and even, in short order, resulted in refugee policy changes in countries as far away as the United States. But 14 Syrian children drowned in the Aegean Sea the next day. Did you notice? Did you care?”\n \n“And even 14 is much higher than necessary to desensitize us. In studies published last year in the journal PLOS One, one of us, Paul Slovic, and colleagues demonstrated that “compassion fade” can occur when an incident involving a single person expands to as few as two people. Participants were asked, in both hypothetical and real situations, to make donations, and to report how they felt about donating, to either a single needy child or two needy children, each of whom was identified with a photograph, name and age. We found that people’s positive feelings about donating declined substantially when the group size was two, and that this decrease was related to lower levels of donations.”\n \n– The Arithmetic of Compassion\n \nSome cognitive biases have ethically disastrous consequences. One of such  biases is scope neglect, and the psychological numbing with which this is implemented.\nI find it hard to decide whether it is a good idea to help people realize the magnitude of the problem of suffering.\nIt’s a catch-22:\n(1) Let them remain blissfully ignorant, and they’ll live life focused on immediate surroundings and on comforting sentimentality.\n(2) Let them see the horror of reality, and they will either become Effective Altruists (with a small probability), or end up with a broken mind for years until they forget the reality of suffering. Then they’ll end up like (1) again. “After the war, he decided all he cared about was dog figurines. He now collects all sorts of dog figurines… that’s all he ever does!”\nWho should, if anyone, be allowed to grasp the problem? Arguably, people who are extremely smart, extremely psychologically robust and highly compassionate. Maybe this should be the genetic target for the next generation of humans…", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/12/23/who-should-know-about-suffering/", "title": "Who should know about suffering?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-12-23T20:47:53+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=26", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "97e304ca38013ed270e193072105e7fd", "summary": []}
{"text": "Ontological Qualia: The Future of Personal Identity\n\n\n*WARNING* If you are not psychologically robust, this *may* be a memetic hazard. It talks about ideas that may affect hedonic tone in people susceptible to bad philosophical experiences.\n\n\nPersonal Identity\nWhat is personal identity? The word consciousness has many meanings. Some of them are mundane, such as “social awareness.” Others are extremely fundamental, like the nature of qualia. Likewise, personal identity has multiple meanings that are at entirely different levels in the philosophical hierarchy for how fundamental the questions are. A mundane sense of personal identity is “how people see you, and how you perceive yourself relative to others.” This article is not about that. Here the sense of this concept I will address is evoked by the question: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for my existence?\nSay someone is pointing at a given person somewhere in the multiverse. What information do I need to know in order to assert that “this person is me, and I am/did/will experience what he is experiencing”?\nRelated to this question, we also have what Derek Parfit defined as the question of survival. This is evoked by the following question: Under what circumstances will I exist in the future?\nIn principle, answering the first question will give you a direct answer to the second question. Answering the second one, however, does not necessarily answer the first one. In this article I will focus on the first question; I will note, however, that what people usually care about is the second one. Why? This is probably due to emotional reasons; caused by how our modeling of our future is implemented emotionally in our consciousness. We are wired to seek our own survival, so that inclusive fitness is maximized. It seems that, somehow, what we care about is whether “we will exist in the future” and not “whether some person in another dimension is also me.” Implicitly, we care about whether we can anticipate future experiences. Not, unfortunately, what the ultimate truth of identity really is.\nI would argue, however, that a rational “selfish” individual who wants to survive should also take seriously the question of personal identity:  Even though it does not engage him or her at an emotional level, it still gives you what truly matters.\nIt gets worse: Even though most young people believe, at an intellectual level, that it is truly they who will experience life as an old individual when the time comes, in practice hyperbolic discounting tends to make us care very little about our (far) future selves. Our survival programs are implemented in a peculiar way, using emotions such as anticipation, desire, and fear, prioritizing perceptually-large, salient and soon-to-be possibilities rather than objectively bigger problems and opportunities in the far future. From an evolutionary point of view this makes sense: Hyperbolic discounting can be explained as a direct consequence of living in uncertain environments. Our ancestral environments were chaotic and unpredictable; if given the chance, placing all of one’s resources into a plan that guarantees one’s survival for a day was more effective than dividing equally one’s resources into improving the chances of surviving tomorrow and next year.\nEmotional, Propositional, Ontological Qualia\nCompeting with our visceral anticipation we also have another representation of one’s survival: A cognitive understanding, which is implemented with thought and propositional beliefs. I call this propositional qualia; this is the very ineffable quality of one’s thoughts and propositional beliefs. Although this is a controversial idea, I am confident that our thoughts have a certain subjective quality. Propositional qualia probably evolved alongside with language and complex social cognition, and it is one of the largest differences between the subjective experience of human and non-human animals.\nPropositional qualia is “the way our beliefs and counterfactual reasonings about the world feel.” This qualia is flexible and changes as we think. We start to develop it at the age of 3, and it is not fully mature until roughly our early 20s. Contra purely functionalist accounts of consciousness, the way thought feels like is not merely the result of neural networks churning away searches in a state-space of possibilities. Propositional qualia is, in itself, the instrument with which we do our thinking (via local phenomenal binding constraint satisfaction, but that story is for another article).\nThere is also a deeper sort of qualia that changes a lot less frequently, and seems to underpin people’s experience of philosophy, spirituality and religion. I call this ontological qualia. This is the way in which “beliefs about the nature of reality, the self and consciousness feel like.”\nPsychedelics are well known for being able to change the quality of one’s sensory experience, produce distortions and greatly amplify emotions. What is less frequently talked about is how they also drastically change one’s propositional and ontological qualia. For example, there are reports of people who were devoted materialists and atheists for their entire lives, who suddenly experienced a profound sense of universal oneness after smoking a bit of 5-MeO-DMT.\nPhilosophical activity recruits a mixture of propositional and ontological qualia. Typically, people have settled ontological qualia, and they express it by playing with propositional qualia. Another way of saying this: People’s “deeply held beliefs and intuitions” rarely change. Rather, these beliefs inform the way they think and approach philosophical questions.\nI would argue that beliefs about personal identity are propositional qualia that are informed by underlying ontological qualia. What are these beliefs?\nThanks to Daniel Kolak (the writer of “I am You”) we now have very clear vocabulary to discuss broad varieties of beliefs about personal identity. These varieties are:\nClosed Individualism (CI)\nThis is the common-sense view of survival and personal identity. Most people are Closed Individualists. Our implicit gut feeling is largely Closed Individualistic. This view states that “you begin to exist when you are born and you stop existing when you die.” That said, this is only the classic formulation. One can be a Closed Individualist and believe in God, and the after-life. For example, people who believe in mainstream Abrahamic religions are usually Closed Individualists (gnostics and mystics being exceptions). With an after-(or pre-)life, the formulation is only slightly different: “You start existing when you are born (when your soul is created), and you never stop existing.” The main conditions for a view to be classified as CI is that (1) there is at most one instance of you at any given point in time, and (2) you continue to exist moment after moment.\n\n\nEmpty Individualism (EI)\nThis is the view that you only exist as a time-slice in space-time. For an Empty Individualist, the passage of time is an illusion. At every point in time you are born, you live and you die, all simultaneously. This is not to be confused with eternalism [as opposed to presentism] (also called The Block View of the universe). An Empty Individualist can be a presentist, and in that case he or she believes that one only exists for a unit of time (or an infinitesimally thin space-time cross-section, if time is continuous). This view is very intimately related to Mereological Nihilism. People like David Hume, Derek Parfit and David Pearce believe in this view, as well as many physicalist philosophers. Among the world’s classic religions, a notorious example of an EI religion is Buddhism (though this depends on the specific branch).\n\n\nOpen Individualism (OI)\nThis is the view that there is only one (universal) subject of experience. Alan Watts’ would describe it as the realization that we are all “God playing a cosmic game of hide and seek.” Every conscious entity may have a distinct form, a distinct personality, and a distinct causal role in the entire universe. But the essence beneath it all is one and the same. Hindu cosmology is often Open Individualist (we are all made of, and resting on, the same ground of being – Brahman). Famous Open Individualists include Einstein and Schopenhauer.\n\n\nIn a future article I will provide the steel man case for each of these views. This article, however, is focused on the qualia underlying these views… rather than on their merit as plausible truths.\nLSD: The Qualia Evolution Neglected\nThe most recent neuroimaging study on the effects of LSD reveals that functionally coherent neural circuits break apart when one is high on acid. Unfortunately, I do not think such an explanation will be sufficient to account for the entirely novel kinds of qualia people experience under the influence. David Pearce hypothesizes that the indescribable weirdness of psychedelics is the result of changes in the structures of proteins inside cells. In his view, psychedelics drastically change the intra-cellular signaling of neurons, resulting in changes within the structure of cells. He believes that the textures of qualia are the result of the secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of proteins in neurons. This is a thoroughly testable hypothesis, and it may even be possible to investigate it in-vitro. Opponents to this view would point out that the various parts of the brain, such as the visual cortex and the auditory cortex, can be exchanged with little to no functional deficits. Thus we could argue that any part of the cortex is functionally identical; there is one neat trick throughout the entire cortex.\nWe can reply to this, however, with the claim that unitary consciousness is actually implemented in the thalamus. Hence it matters little that various parts of the cortex can be used interchangeably for the same information processing task: Where we should be looking to find the one neat trick, is in the thalamus itself.\nAnyhow, LSD and other major psychedelics produce entirely new phenomenologies. Are they short-cuts to enlightenment? Once psychedelic research is instantiated on a large scale again we will probably verify that there are strong parallels between the neurological properties (both in terms of signaling and intra-cellular composition) of natural mystical experiences and those induced by psychedelics. Natural selection recruited particular state-spaces of propositional and ontological qualia… spirituality and psychedelics enable us to hack new varieties of it that, so far, have not been useful to increase inclusive fitness.\nIt Gets Personal\nIn my personal experience, personal identity views have very distinct subjective qualities. I started my philosophical journey when I was a small kid. At 3 I was informed that every person dies sooner or later, and I remember that this information shocked me very deeply. I did not believe in God, but I still prayed at night “God, I know I can’t live forever. At least make me the oldest man on earth!”\nDeath was a constant subject of dread for me. I experienced several existential crisis at different points in my youth. The two most dreadfiul were: One that lasted a whole year, at the age of 9, and another that lasted about 6 months when I was 13. In both cases I was experiencing fairly constant dysphoria.\nThankfully, I managed to find some comforting interpretation of reality to quench my fear of death. For example, I managed to convince myself that “being dead and being non-existent are both the same state. I have already experienced non-existence, and it was a totally natural state… death cannot be worse than that. Its the most common state for everyone! We only live for a blink of an eye. Thus, to be alive is to be weird. To not exist, is to be in the natural state.” I knew these were rationalizations, but the need to reduce my bad existential feelings (i.e. bad ontological qualia) was rather severe. I was a Closed Individualist.\nAt 16 I had a mystical experience. An instance of what is usually talked about as “an oceanic dissolution of one’s identity into the ground of being.” It was very Hindu-like. Well before I had learned anything about any religion besides Christianity, I experienced something that can only be described as “realizing I’m the universal mind”. What happened is that I felt that my consciousness was giving life to my body: It was as if there was this endless ocean of being that was both inside and outside my body. My mind would make it seem as if “I was this body” but that was an illusion. In reality, I was the very ocean of being, and that was everywhere, in everything and in everyone, eternal and immortal.\nI experienced a profound sense of relief when I had that experience. It completely transformed my experiential understanding of myself and others. I knew that no experience could be a “proof” for the reality of a particular philosophical view. But I now had at least a proof of concept for how things could be differently. I thought very deeply about the question of personal identity, and how it could be answered philosophically. I considered many thought experiments such as fission, fusion, split-brain, and so on. I realized that, if I am willing to accept that I do exist from one moment after another, then I would have to conclude that I was all of consciousness. I became an Open Individualist.\nThis experience, and the subsequent change in my beliefs (and thus the modification of my propositional and ontological qualia) drastically reduced, and even eliminated, my fear of death. In retrospect, I am amazed at the depth of my fear of death as a kid. I am not sure if this is common, or whether one needs to also have some sort of hyper-philosophilia in addition (the personality trait of being deeply concerned about philosophical matters at least a large fraction of every single day). I could imagine that, even though I would die and my body would be destroyed along with my memories, what really -fundamentally- mattered about me would never cease to exist. This was profoundly comforting.\nOver the years, however, this view has lost some of its appeal. At 21 I started talking with David Pearce, and I realized that there was a somewhat stronger case for Empty Individualism than there was for Open Individualism. OI could be described as a poetic interpretation of reality, but the truth about it was that each unitary element of reality (whether trivial quantum wave-functions or fully developed conscious experiences such as mine) stands on its own, trapped in the Everett multiverse. I have since been in a rather ambiguous state: I experience ontological qualia related to Empty Individualism, Open Individualism, and even Closed Individualism, depending on my mood, my level of empathy, my brain chemistry, and my state of consciousness.\nA Deep and Dark Realization\nRecently I had one of the worst experiences of my life: After intense contemplation upon the problem of personal identity, and the nature of suffering, my mind temporarily settled with 100% certainty (subjective certainty, that is) into an Empty Individualist interpretation. I realized (in the sense of “experiencing as if true”) a state of consciousness that believes without any doubt in the following notions: Mereological Nihilism, Empty Individualism, Eternalism, Hedonic tone realism (that suffering is, truly, bad), Negative Utilitarianism, and a few others I can’t remember now. This was awful. I felt that I was stuck in space-time forever. And worse, that reality was incredibly sadistic and unfair: There are countless beings who exist in a state of suffering forever. Whereas with a Closed Individualist or Open Individualist viewpoint one can rationalize suffering as being temporary and “not the whole of the truth,” a fully realized Empty Individualist viewpoint does not allow you to make this rationalization. There are beings who, well, exist entirely below hedonic zero. Their whole existence is eternal suffering. Experiencing compassion towards suffering time-slices was painful beyond my usual range of hedonic tone.\nHedonic Tone and Ontological Qualia\nThe fact that this experience was so bad for me is a strong hint that there is indeed some kind of deep connection between hedonic tone and ontological qualia. But what is the nature of this connection? One hypothesis is that hedonic tone is like a color that “paints ontological qualia.” In other words, ontological qualia does not have an intrinsic hedonic tone. Instead, it is due to our particular brain makeup that certain beliefs are felt as good or bad. Thus, positive hedonic tone locally binds (in the phenomenal binding sense) to ontological qualia that suggests that one will survive in a good way, and vice versa. In other words, survival programs may be hijacking one’s hedonic coloring of philosophical notions. Since I experienced a fully fleshed out realization of Empty Individualism, my self-model was one of “being in a state of suffering forever without any possible escape, just as a lot of other beings in the multiverse.”\nIf this is so, then we can predict that artificial brains wired differently (either our descendants, or genetically engineered brains) may not necessarily experience the same hedonic tone associated to ontological qualia in the way that we do.\nAlternatively, it may be the case that hedonic tone is intrinsic to ontological qualia: Some beliefs about “the nature of reality” may have an intrinsic positive or negative feel.\nMoving On Beyond Ontological Distress\nI have been fortunate to move on from the very bad state of “absolute belief in Empty Individualism.” Recently I had a mind-expanding session in which I focused on feeling intently how different ontological qualia are experienced. The trick was to allow myself to negate some background assumptions that were leaving me stuck in a particularly negative configuration of propositional and ontological qualia. What did I do? I assumed that Mereological Nihilism is false. This is a very bizarre thing to do. To start, most people are not Mereological Nihilists to begin with. But I suspect that once they have carefully explored this philosophical view, they will generally settle on it being true. It is self-evident once you contemplate it carefully. So negating Mereological Nihilism is a very strange philosophical move. Doable nonetheless. Doable, that is, if one is willing to experience some degree of depersonalization.\nThere are four ways Mereological Nihilism could be false. The first one is to embrace “Strong Emergence” (the view that collections of simples can somehow make another simple that simultaneously also is a bunch of simples). The second possibility is to negate the boundaries between oneself and the rest of reality. Discreet quantum wave functions will always be able to interfere with each other (even if very, very little), and thus one may be able to conceive of them as one whole being. It may be that our individuality is not ontological; it is an illusion caused by extremely thin, extremely sharp pseudo-boundries between minds. In this Open Individualist view, there are no vertical walls between you and other conscious experiences… only very steep walls that give rise to the illusion of separation. This embodies the very essence of Open Individualism. The third way is to contemplate the possibility of Gunk. Infinitely divisible beings with no ontological unity besides the whole of reality. These three methods require normally-inaccessible ontological qualia. The fourth method requires ontological qualia that is even further away from consensus reality:\nImagine that both “being” and “non-being” are both illusory concepts. In reality, the truth exists beyond being and beyond non-being… beyond logic. Thus, identification with one’s “present conscious experience” could be a simple mistake; dualistic ontological qualia, in which things either are or aren’t, could be just a very special case of a non-dualistic state-space of possible experiences. This is far out, I know. But the experience of this being the case is actually possible. It requires intense concentration, dedication, and perhaps some brain chemistry modifications.\nExperiencing ontological qualia that negates Mereological Nihilism and thus renders Empty Individualism imposible, allowed me to be freed from my case of bad ontological qualia (will psychiatrists ever be able to diagnose this problem?). This was the result of contemplating Empty Individualism, and the cure was to contemplate the negation of Mereological Nihilism. I would recommend it to anyone who is suffering as a consequence of that very specific set of beliefs.\nIs it possible that what freed me from bad ontological qualia was not, ultimately, the result of simply changing ontological qualia itself? It could also be related, again, to how one’s survival programs are implemented with a variety of positive and negative hedonic tones depending on one’s beliefs about survival. As we are currently implemented, though, it may be prudent to find ways of experiencing Open Individualistic ontological qualia in a reliable way. If for no other reason than to use it as an anti-depressant.\nReducing Spirituality to Hedonic Tone – and Hedonic Tone to Spirituality\nDo we all just seek what feels good at every point in time? This view is called the pleasure principle (though I prefer calling it hedonic tone determinism). Belief in this view is, paradoxically, strangely dysphoric (at least in my case). At the same time, if this is true, then taking it into account is an important step in order to engage in paradise engineering. People tend to reject this possibility out of hand by coming up with striking counter-examples. For instance, how do we explain arduous and disciplined spiritual practice? Isn’t a Hindu or Buddhist monk’s first year of practice filled with a lot of loneliness and bodily dysphoria? This can certainly be true. But then again, the strongest source of hedonic tone may be ontological qualia. A person who experiences life as meaningful (say, a self-proclaimed Stoic) can face negative feelings and bodily discomfort. The feelings of meaningfulness compensate for the surface-level negativity. Having a persistent feeling of existential emptiness, on the other hand, is rarely cured by engaging in superficially pleasurable activities.\nRemaining agnostic about the ultimate nature of reality, though, leaves me open to alternative interpretations of the nature of hedonic tone. As some mystics have argued, it may be the case that one’s degree of pleasure –specially existential spiritual euphoria– is related to one’s connection to one’s higher self, one’s soul or even to God. In this case, hedonic tone would be reduced to spirituality, rather than the other way around. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.\nWhat’s the Future of Personal Identity?\nAs we develop technologies to modify the quality of our consciousness by modifying our genetic source code, gene expression, brain protein composition (the distribution of secondary, tertiary and quaternary protein structures in neurons) and so on, we will begin to explore and catalogue the state-space of possible qualia.\nWe may be able to disentangle hedonic tone from ontological qualia. If so, then beliefs about personal identity may be just a matter of aesthetics: People with any particular view about reality might be just as unfathomably happy. On the other hand, if ontological qualia has an intrinsic hedonic tone, then we can predict that people in the future will experience the ontological qualia that is the most pleasant. For example, people may end up adopting an Open Individualist viewpoint and rejoice in the extremely long life of the universal collective being (or collective meta-being, which incorporates all views about itself within).\nHowever, personal identity is not only consequential to hedonic tone. The functional and evolutionary consequences of various propositional and ontological qualia cannot be dismissed…\nPersonal Identity Wars\nBeliefs about personal identity have fascinating evolutionary implications. The selection pressures for particular views on personal identity are widely different depending on the details. It is probable that in the future we will experience some sort of memetic warfare: As people begin to explore, induce and recruit exotic varieties of ontological qualia, we will see a lot of new motivations behind the replication of specific varieties of consciousness.\nClosed Individualists will arguably continue to be afraid of death. Afraid may not necessarily be the right way of putting it. If the Hedonistic Imperative comes to fruition, even Closed Individualists may experience bliss so profound that defies human description. But, they may still not want to come to terms with their mortality. Who cares if the entire world is a great place to live when you are not going to be there to experience it?\nEmpty Individualists will not care very much about who gets to experience what. They will probably lack the motivation to ensure their own “personal” survival. They may, however, have strong aesthetic preferences. And, strikingly, people who have the specific variety of Empty Individualism I call “Type Empty Individualism” (namely, they exist and “are” in perfect copies of themselves rather than just in their unique spatio-temporal instantiation) may want to transform all matter and energy in the universe into perfect copies of themselves. That is, of course, if they value their own existence.\nNow, Open Individualists would have a key strategical advantage. Their decision theory would be novel and fascinating: A God’s eye view of ethics. They would not care whether their own bodies happen to survive in the future, as long as sentient beings as a whole inhabit blissful, wise and/or novel states of consciousness. Additionally, OIsts would accept radically changing their state of consciousness. Closed Individualists of the psychological criterion type (who believe they exist as long as they share a threshold amount of memories with their future selves) would not be interested in radically changing their states of consciousness. For all they know, that is the same as death. OIsts would do a lot of consciousness research with no worries about death.\nGiven their strategic advantage, it would then seem that OIsts would win right away. They would quickly become universal allies and do intesne consciousness research. But then we also have to consider second-order effects: Closed Individualists, if sufficiently smart, would be able to anticipate the coming Open Individualist collective super-intelligence that results from their systematic experimentation with consciousness.\nWould they wage a preventive war in advance? And would Empty Individualists become allies with Closed Individualists, or would they call for a total annihilation of reality?\nTune in next week, and read: “Personal Identity Wars II: The Menace of the Utilitronium Shockwave“", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/12/17/ontological-qualia-the-future-of-personal-identity/", "title": "Ontological Qualia: The Future of Personal Identity", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-12-17T03:54:40+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=26", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "3fc62a7314d8ad240a7290701ca4b036", "summary": []}
{"text": "Google Hedonics\n\n \nHoli Doodle. It would also be a good Google Hedonics Logo \nHello my children!\nHello my sons!\nHello my daughters!\nHello my brothers and sisters!\nI’m here to tell you that the world’s last unpleasant experience…\nWill be a precisely dateable event!\nYes! It will happen in our lifetimes if we commit all of our energy today…\nTo the task of Paradise Engineering!\n– Yacht, Paradise Engineering\n(referencing David Pearce’s Hedonistic Imperative)\nGoogle is an amazing company. Not only is the code infrastructure that they use stunning in power and elegance, but the culture they foster is fun-loving, humanistic, and promoting of employees’ creativity. According to many vocal Googlers, the motto “don’t be evil” is not just empty rhetoric. It is an ideal people share and attempt to uphold. Better yet, Google may even be reducing the number of people doing outright evil things, although indirectly.*\nGoogle’s publicly stated mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This goal will be accomplished with a combination of intensive and extensive approaches, ranging from making the world’s information infrastructure more robust to enabling cheap, widely accessible Internet worldwide.\nBut Google’s actual technological investments go much further, and there are not only a few, but multiple genuinely futuristic research projects on the table. Among them, most notably, is Calico, a company with the explicit mission to “harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan” with the aim of delaying, preventing and ultimately reversing aging altogether.\nNow, all of this is not only futuristic. Anyone who is aware of the general ideas pursued in transhumanism will realize that Google is more than futurist: It fosters transhumanist goals.\nThe three Ss of Transhumanism\nAlthough a precise definition of transhumanism is beyond the scope of this (and any) article, for the time being it will suffice to mention three of its main goals. As seen in this video produced by the British Institute of Posthuman Studies (BIOPS for short), these goals are: Super Intelligence, Super Longevity and Super Happiness.\n\nUsing that broad outline of transhumanism, can we say that Google is a transhumanist company?\nSuper Intelligence\nGoogle is certainly furthering the goal of understanding and engineering Super Intelligence. It is doing so by funding and implementing Artificial Intelligence research projects that aim to make AI tools universally useful and available to everyone. Although this is not the same as understanding conscious intelligence (a controversial topic)**, it is inarguably a huge step forward. By producing high-performing, universally available digital AIs, Google and other AI-focused companies will help us offload a large amount of mental menial work into wearable computers. Indeed, the era of the cyborg is upon us. Embedded neural networks are likely to help us achieve better sensory-processing speeds and raw memory capacities, not to mention instant thought-controlled access to the world’s reserves of knowledge.\nSuper Longevity\nAs mentioned earlier, Google is already helping the cause of Super Longevity with Calico and a host of other projects. In particular, Google is accelerating worldwide genetic research with its Google Genomics platform, which presumably will also help fight disease and cause people to live longer.\nSuper Happiness\nWhat is missing, though, is the use of this genius-level talent, amazing infrastructure, and public-good-oriented culture for the furthering of the goal of Super Happiness.\nI propose that Google start a research project called Google Hedonics. Its goal would be to develop a fundamental understanding of the functional, biomolecular, and quantum signatures of pure bliss, and the know-how for instantiating it sustainably in all living organisms (if they so desire). Of course, a grandiose goal like that is not a requirement for a happiness-oriented project: It would suffice if they were to simply focus on reducing, as fast as possible, the incidence of extremely negative experiences.\nThe hedonic treadmill guarantees that no amount of social reform, universal welfare, access to health care or widespread participation in a culture of art will achieve long-term wellbeing for everyone in society. Depression, anxiety, anhedonia and boredom are bound to stay put unless we tackle the underlying genetic and biochemical causes of negative hedonic tone.\nGoogle Hedonics’ goal would be to sabotage the hedonic treadmill. It would thus combine a variety of psychological, biochemical, psychophysical and genetic research projects to the effect of figuring out how to sustainably raise anyone’s hedonic set point. Google Hedonics would not be pursuing quick shortcuts to happiness, but rather, a deep understanding of the roots of bliss and suffering.\nSome people argue that this is the most important task of all. For if we manage to prevent experiences below hedonic zero, nothing will ever quite “go wrong” in the same way it has before.\nIf we have our way, at any rate, we may someday read “H is for Hedonics” in the Alphabet listing of projects.\nUtopian Pharmacology\nContrary to popular opinion, a world in which life-long super bliss is the universal norm is not nearly as bad as it sounds. As discussed in the State-Space of Drug Effects article, human euphoria is not adequately captured by a unidimensional metric. Arguably, the hedonic quality of a given experience is multifaceted and full of complexities. When people imagine widespread happiness, it is common for them to simultaneously project a feeling of shallowness and vanity into such an imagined world. This need not be the case: Surely fast and slow euphoria are not conducive to much depth of feeling and thought, but spiritual and philosophical euphoria is anything but. Empathogens like MDMA and 2C-B often (but not necessarily) produce experiences of great complexity, depth and unfathomable beauty. Likewise, people who have experienced deeply blissful mystical experiences attest that pleasure and the sublime can happily coexist.\nGoogle Hedonics would certainly not limit its scope of research to understanding shallow and vain varieties of happiness. On the contrary, it would place a great deal of resources into understanding what brings wondrous depth to the human experience.\nWhat Google Hedonics is Not\n\nFinding quick and dirty shortcuts to euphoria, in a way similar to today’s acute euphoriants (alcohol, cocaine, morphine, etc.)\nResearch limited to bodily euphoria: Although feeling well and healthy is a precondition to fulfilling happiness, it is not enough. Spiritual and philosophical bliss are probably a requirement for satisfactory paradise engineering.\nAn ideology-driven project to impose a belief in a particular philosophy of mind, such as functionalism. It is not possible to successfully tackle the problem of suffering if one’s background assumptions about consciousness are incorrect. Google Hedonics would experimentally investigate various theories of consciousness without a preconceived notion of which one is true (functionalism, panpsychism, dualism, etc.)\nAnd, importantly, it would not just be an economics startup! That is to say, its goal would not be to help people find what they want for cheap as informed by hedonic regressions, or even an AI-powered dating website. None of those things would sabotage the hedonic treadmill, and thus are irrelevant for its goal.\n\nWhat are some example projects Google Hedonics could do?\nThese are just a few ideas to get your imagination started. They are unlikely to do the trick of instantiating lifelong bliss, but at least they don’t fail by design:\n\nCombining ultrasound neurostimulation and neuroplasticity-enhancing drugs on depressed people to induce long-term potentiation in their nucleus accumbens (the so-called “pleasure center”).\nStudying fMRI activity patterns of hyperthymics (generally happy people) using Google’s cutting-edge machine learning technology. Are there surprising symmetries in their distribution of voxel activation?\nUsing NLP technology to cheaply diagnose depression throughout the world, and identifying activities, substances and environments that would sustainably raise people’s hedonic set point.\nMeasuring the epigenetic changes of people who undergo hedonic tone-enhancing spiritual training (such as metta) to identify the genetic markers of sustainable spiritual bliss.\nEnhancing and extending healthy loving relationships with oxytocin spray and other empathogenic technology (chemical or not).\n\nPersonally, I don’t think any of the above would deliver miraculous therapies that prevent anxiety and depression altogether, but they would each deliver hints of tremendous importance. I trust that at a place like Google a thorough probabilistic cost-benefit analysis of the expected hedonic return of each possible research project would be conducted in earnest.\nEffective Altruism\nGoogle recently hosted EA Global. The very thought of this occurring is a great source of hope for me. Finally, altruism and rationality are meeting, and very smart people are spearheading it. The missing piece, as far as I can see, is a theoretically-sound utility function to maximize. The (attempted) use of QALYs in utilitarian calculations is a huge improvement upon hand-wavy head-counting. But hedonic tone is not yet in the picture, much less a truly sound way of measuring it, let alone optimizing for it. Google Hedonics would provide this missing piece and more: An actual solution for not having to ration bliss, by disconnecting it from the limited resources it has, as of now, always been limited by.\n\n*Mary “Missy” Cummings , a roboticist from Duke University, has stated in several interviews that if it wasn’t for Google and other similar companies, organizations like the Department of Defense and military contractors would have and attract top technical talent. Instead, at least in the US, real top technical talent in the area of computing technologies is concentrated in large companies like Google, research universities, and even startups. Thankfully, fewer and fewer bright kids grow up looking at the Defense Department as a great place to build a career. Google’s “don’t be evil” may already be vindicated: There aren’t any more geniuses working for militaristic aims; they now work on futuristic projects that aim to improve the lives of everyone in the world (rather than to merely guarantee brute-force supremacy of one country over another).\n**Qualia Computing argues that consciousness can accomplish certain computational tasks that digital computers cannot, even in principle, realize. Phenomenal binding is the key step in the information processing pipeline that distinguishes conscious systems from merely information-processing systems. This, however, is controversial, and I tend to assume that decades will elapse before neuroscientists and AI researchers alike come to a consensus on this matter. If phenomenal binding is indeed necessary for some computational tasks we usually ascribe to intelligence, let alone super-intelligence, we will need more than a revolution in machine learning algorithms to achieve this particular goal of transhumanism. We will need to investigate the quantum substrate of our wetware, our very mind/brains.\n ", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/11/27/google-hedonics/", "title": "Google Hedonics", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-11-27T21:30:50+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=26", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "5cec08ee4525c8a0bc92151d59d3b862", "summary": []}
{"text": "Solutions to World Problems\n\nWhat is more likely to induce/achieve/promote sustainable world peace?\n1) Homogeneous world ideology\n2) Widespread social reform (full justice, rights and healthcare)\n3) Universally accessible on-demand mystical experiences\n4) Globally available inexpensive hedonic tone recalibration\n\n——\nTo elaborate: (1) would mean that the world is now ideologically homogeneous. Free-market economy, communism, Judaism, Jainism, Shingoism… any one ideology. Pick one. Would it solve all of our problems, and war?\n(2) Implies some sort of socialist-like equal-rights that actually works in a universal way. Be generous with how well this would work theoretically.\n(3) Say that we fine-tune and perfect the psychedelic peak experience. We build religions, spiritualities, philosphies, etc. around the one true univerally accessible state-space of possible experiences of the (phenomenologically) divine.\n(4) We invent a series of healthy, sustainable effective and inexpensive therapies that allow people to reach any hedonic tone they like. Be it like MDMA, a back rub, falling in love, receiving grace, meditation or plain kindness. Any hedonic quality is freely reachable – and mental super-health is a universal state.\n——\nWhere would you rather live? Which one would solve our problems?\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/11/18/solutions-to-world-problems/", "title": "Solutions to World Problems", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-11-18T06:14:26+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=26", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "1dca3be38b326c601f2bcff934380e44", "summary": []}
{"text": "Why does anything exist?\n\n \n\n \nBy David Pearce\nIntuitively, there shouldn’t be anything to explain. Bizarrely, this doesn’t seem to be the case. One clue to the answer may be our difficulty in rigorously specifying a default state of “nothingness” from which any departure stands in need of an explanation. A dimensionless point? A timeless void? A quantum vacuum? All attempts to specify an alternative reified “nothingness” – an absence of laws, properties, objects, or events – just end up smuggling in something else instead. Specifying anything at all, including the truth-conditions for our sense of “nothingness”, requires information. Information is fundamental in physics. Information is physical. Information, physics tells us, cannot be created or destroyed. Thus wave functions in quantum mechanics don’t really collapse to yield single definite classical outcomes (cf. Wigner’s friend). Decoherence – the scrambling of phase angles between the components of a quantum superposition – doesn’t literally destroy superpositions. Not even black holes really destroy information. (cf. Black hole information paradox)\nSo naturally we may ask: where did information come from in the first place?\nPerhaps the answer is that it didn’t. The total information content of reality is necessarily zero: the superposition principle of QM formalises inexistence.\nOn this story, one timeless logico-physical principle explains everything, including itself. The superposition principle of quantum mechanics formalises an informationless zero ontology – the default condition from which any notional departure would need to be explained.  In 2002, Physics World readers voted Young’s double-slit experiment with single electrons as the “most beautiful experiment in physics”. (cf. Feynman’s double-slit experiment gets a makeover). Richard Feynman liked to remark that all of quantum mechanics can be understood by carefully thinking through the implications of the double-slit experiment. Quite so; only maybe Feynman could have gone further. If Everettian QM (cf. Everett’s Relative-State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics) is correct, reality consists of a single vast quantum-coherent superposition. Each element in the superposition, each orthogonal relative state, each “world”, is equally real. (cf. Universe Splitter) Most recently, the decoherence program in post-Everett quantum mechanics explains the emergence of quasi-classical branches (“worlds”) like ours from the underlying quantum field-theoretic formalism. (cf. Wojciech Zurek) The universal validity of the superposition principle in post-Everett QM suggests that the mystery of our existence has a scientific rather than theological explanation.\nWhat does it mean to say that the information content of reality may turn out to be zero? Informally, perhaps consider the (classical) Library of Babel. (cf. The Library of Babel) The Library of Babel contains all possible books with all possible words and letters in all possible combinations. The Library of Babel has zero information content. Yet somewhere amid the nonsense lies the complete works of Shakespeare – and you and me. However, the Library of Babel is classical. Withdrawing a book from the Library of Babel yields a single definite classical outcome – thereby creating information. Withdrawing more books creates more information. If we sum two ordinary non-zero probabilities, then we always get a bigger probability. All analogies break down somewhere. Evidently we aren’t literally living in Borges’ Library of Babel.\nSo instead of the classical Library of Babel, let us tighten the analogy. Imagine the quantum Library of Babel. Just as in standard probability theory, if there are two ways in QM that something can happen, then we get the total amplitude for something by summing the amplitudes for each of the two ways. If we sum two ordinary non-zero probabilities, then we always get a bigger probability. Yet because amplitudes in QM are complex numbers, summing two amplitudes can yield zero. Having two ways to do something in quantum mechanics can make it not happen. Recall again the double-slit experiment. Adding a slit to the apparatus can make particles less likely to arrive somewhere despite there being more ways to get there. Now scale up the double-slit experiment to the whole of reality. The information content of the universal state vector is zero. (cf. Jan-Markus Schwindt, “Nothing happens in the Universe of the Everett Interpretation“).\nThe quantum Library of Babel has no information.\nCaveats? Loose ends? The superposition principle has been experimentally tested only up to the level of fullerenes, though more ambitious experiments are planned (cf. “Physicists propose ‘Schrödinger’s virus’ experiment“). Some scientists still expect the unitary Schrödinger dynamics will need to be supplemented or modified for larger systems – violating the information-less zero ontology that we’re exploring here.\nConsciousness? Does the superposition principle break down in our minds? After all, we see live or dead cats, not live-and-dead-cat superpositions. Yet this assumption of classical outcomes – even non-unique classical outcomes – presupposes that we have direct perceptual access to the mind-independent world. Controversially (cf. Max Tegmark, “Why the brain is probably not a quantum computer“), perhaps the existence of our phenomenally-bound classical world-simulations itself depends on ultra-rapid quantum-coherent neuronal superpositions in the CNS. For if the superposition principle really broke down in the mind-brain, as classical neuroscience assumes, then we’d at most be so-called “micro-experiential zombies” – just patterns of discrete, decohered Jamesian neuronal “mind-dust” incapable of phenomenally simulating a live or a dead classical cat. (cf. David Chalmers’ “The Combination Problem for Panpsychism“)\nThis solution to the phenomenal binding problem awaits experimental falsification with tomorrow’s tools of molecular matter-wave interferometry. (cf. an experimentally testable conjecture.)\nWhat about the countless different values of consciousness? How can an informationless zero ontology possibly explain the teeming diversity of our experience? This is a tough one. Yet just as the conserved constants in physics cancel out to zero, and just as all of mathematics can in principle be derived from the properties of the empty set, perhaps the solutions to the field-theoretic equations of QFT mathematically encode the textures of consciousness. If we had a cosmic analogue of the Rosetta stone, then we’d see that these values inescapably “cancel out” to zero too. Unfortunately, it’s hard to think of any experimental tests for this highly speculative conjecture.\n“A theory that explains everything explains nothing”, protests the critic of Everettian QM. To which we may reply, rather tentatively: yes, precisely.\n——————————————–\nOriginal source.\nDavid Pearce is a personal inspiration. He recently had a conversation with Peter Singer, Hilary Greaves and Justin Oakley. I encourage anyone interested in hard core stuff to watch it \n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/11/18/why-does-anything-exist/", "title": "Why does anything exist?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-11-18T04:28:23+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=27", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "278372eeed1999f91fb8d2a6d8898567", "summary": []}
{"text": "State-Space of Background Assumptions\n\nThere is a wide number of transhumanist strains/clusters, and we don’t really understand why. How do we explain the fact that immortality is the number one concern for some, while it is a very minor concern for others who are more preoccupied with AI apocalypse or making everyone animated by gradients of bliss?\nA possible interpretation is that our values and objectives are in fact intimately connected to our background assumptions about fundamental matters such as consciousness and personal identity. To test this theory, I developed a questionnaire for transhumanists that will examine the relationship between transhumanist goals and their background philosophical assumptions. If you wish to contribute, please find this questionnaire here (it takes ~15 minutes):\nHere.\nThe link will be alive until Jul 30 2015 (EDIT: I have extended the deadline until August 2nd!). Please complete it as soon as possible. Once the results are out you will be happy you participated.\nThe very sense we give to words requires an underlying network of background assumptions to support them. Thus, when we don’t share implicit background assumptions, we often interpret what others say in very different ways than what they had in mind. With enough transhumanists answering this questionaire (about 150) we will be able to develop a better ontology. What would this look like? I don’t know yet, but I can give you an example of the sort of results this work can deliver: State-Space of Drug Effects.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/07/18/state-space-of-background-assumptions/", "title": "State-Space of Background Assumptions", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-07-18T00:24:46+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=27", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "a6d5dfb31a6dbb119ec11f99461fc897", "summary": []}
{"text": "Personal Identity Joke\n\nA “psychological criterion” Closed Individualist and an Open Individualist go into a bar.\nThe bartender is an Empty Individualist.\nBartender: “Hello, gentlemen, how can the personal time-slices of my (illusory) future self be of use for you two this evening? Should they arrange themselves in a movie-like sequence of this bartender serving gin and tonic to the two recently arrived customers?”\nOpen Individualist: “Yes, that’s fine with me. Thank you.”\nClosed Individualist of the psychological criterion type: “Well, that would be very nice indeed. I must ask, though, before I commit my entire existence to having to deal with an embarrassing episode: What is the reputation of gin and tonic?”\nBartender: “Gin and tonic can make you more aware of who you are: The here and now, my friend. Sadly, the more we talk, the more time-slices get stuck in the interstice of a conversation, and the fewer time slices are peacefully drunk in the here-and-now. Better hurry my drink-making!”\nClosed Individualist: “Alright, that sounds good enough. After all, I am trying to forget myself. I am here with my friend -who suffers from delusions of grandeur, you see?- trying to cheer me up. I messed up, I messed up badly. I ruined a birthday surprise. I forgot to bring candles to a friend’s party, and she couldn’t have the experience of blowing over the candles. You know, the candles that give you a sense of the time you have lived, the time you have left. And they all have this symbolism about the impermanence of time, and the beauty of the finite threads we each get to live.”\nBartender: “Ah, yes, the wonderful illusion of interconnectedness! It is a grand mirrage.”\nOpen Individualist: “Ah, my dear closed, stop this melodramatic scene with one sharp lightning bolt of awakened awareness. And you bartender, I like your straightforward approach, but for the time being you need to let us alone. We are still trying to figure out something. We didn’t define away our problems, sir. So if you let us…\n“Closed, look, forgetting a friend’s birthday candles, thus missing out on an opportunity for contemplating the impermanent nature of all phenomena is in some sense ironic, isn’t it? Why do you cry the tears of missing out on an impermanent experience that didn’t happen, whose main metaphorical message would have been that all phenomena is impermanent?  This, of course, including impermanent metaphors about the impermanent just as well. Why feel sad for a reality that wasn’t?”\nClosed: “Well, when you put it that way… but I am connected to the people I interact with. Their own conception of self, their views about how time works, and the meaning of death, even that. I am connected to all of that. So when you speak as if looking from above (you’ll have to excuse me, that’s how you come across), I can’t quite relate, because I think of my friend who didn’t blow the candles, and I get stuck. It’s an empathy entanglement: she didn’t get to experience the metaphor of impermanence that she needed. I don’t know why you like to call the awareness of impermanence ‘liberation’ but from my point of view, reflection upon impermanence is the deepest way to form connections with other beings. And that is beautiful… how reality is made of countless beings coming together to connect with one another. Perhaps all of the actions and phenomena are impermanent. But the learning we achieve by being connected to one another is beautiful and much more long-lasting than the phenomena themselves. It is as if by being a tiny impermanent little human, you help those around you and contribute to the collective accumulation of knowledge and discovery. Perhaps death is real and is coming everyday. But perhaps there is also a way of beating it: To make of the time we have something profound.”\n“Also… if you truly think of all phenomena in the way you say you do… how come you always come begging me to give you big ass [parental discretion advised] bong rips? If you are enlightened, how come you have this dependence to altered states of consciousness? Why can’t you profess the good news that we are all one and one with the stone without getting stoned and being a stone at the same time?”\nOpen: “Oh, that’s nothing of the sort! You use a little thread’s quirks and mistakes to judged the nature of the light that be!\n“All phenomena are impermanent, yes. But look, this impermanence happens at the level of our experience. In reality, all of the karmic links that unite the web of life are a web of 4-dimensional qualia wavelets. I.e. pieces of self-existing qualia crystals from eternity interlinked in a way that minimizes the energy of the configuration.\n“Of course, natural selection has recruited brains that allow the mutual coexistence of qualia crystals with competing alignments and often contradictory 4D unfolding that interfere badly with each other. If it weren’t for the interference of perfect forms with each other that are rendered possible by the quantum properties of the human brain and its oversoul connection, hedonic tone would always be positive. In fact, hedonic tone is just the awareness and surprise of existing. Except that such awareness and surprise gets distracted and therefore, ‘poorly unfolded’ when a person tries to think a beautiful thought.\n“The possibility of interference between the perfect forms, though, is an opportunity for exploring systematically the state-space of possible recursive phenomenal binding operations. Via considering all of the local constraints at once, your mind has its horizon of conceivability amplified, and a larger range of…”\nClosed: “Where are you going with this again?” -interrupted- “I didn’t ask you to explain to me the nature of life, the universe and everything else, did I?”\nOpen: “Sorry, please beeaaarrrr… with me. It seems to me clear that there is no way out of the labyrinth of mirrors that confuse you (and the bartender!) that does not, at some point, use a sustained intent to thoroughly self-discover…”\nBartender: “Here you have, gentlemen. Gin and tonic to tone down consciousness. Oh, and before I forget, the past time-slice with whom I am ontologically disconnected, you know, the one who took your orders? He was a good chap. Well, apparently that one is no more, you understand? So please give me your condolences. I am trying to move on now, and never look back to the past. But it’s hard, you know? It’s hard to remember that each moment is the only moment in which I actually exist…”\nOpen: “THANK YOU… now” -looking at Closed, ignoring the bartender, whose speech was utterly predictable … those empties and their constant funerals – “look, I am trying to say that even though there is the apparent passage of time, in reality all of your building blocks are themselves self-existing eternal jewels stored in a higher dimension. I wouldn’t say this if it weren’t already a verified fact: If you do the right consciousness transformations in your heart, you will see that there is a valve that connects you to the rest of the network of life. Opioids dull that connection, whereas psychedelics revive it. Got it?”\nClosed: “But I’m afraid. I’m afraid to listen to you more. Because there are views that I have that I doubt anyone else does. I have unique points of view. My particular life path is irreplaceable, and the special insights I’ve obtained cannot be understood but by me alone.”\nOpen: “Look, let’s get real. When you think about a point of view that you feel like you alone have, what makes you suspect that such feeling is accurate? With what information do you actually conclude that you have a unique point of view?”\nClosed: “Usually because I realize that I have a piece of information that others couldn’t have gotten, for historical, personality or even happenstance reasons. In other words, if in a big discussion I’m completely out of synch with everyone else, and they all have opinions different than mine, I can usually pin-point the source: My incredible brilliance assembled what they know with what I know and made a new model altogether.”\nOpen: “Alright, so when you obtained that unique point of view, how did you do it? Once you had the pieces of information on the table and you simply had to ‘connect the dots’, how did you do that part?”\nClosed: “I just did, spontaneously. I don’t know… Maybe that’s where my personality hides. Where I can’t see it. What makes me do what I do with the ‘style’ with which I do it. My mind went through the possibilities and I got a feeling of things fitting in their appropriate place, no more no less.”\nOpen: “At that point in time, controlling for all the information available, then, who were you? If someone else with the same information in mind had tried to think what you thought, would she have been able to?”\nClosed: “Probably, I mean, I can’t really be sure. I’m don’t know if I really have some kind of original style for thinking, or for working ‘in the dark’ when it comes to the unconscious.”\nOpen: “Who was there, once you control for the information? Who made the ‘observation’ that makes you special? Who is responsible for making you special? Who made the ‘move’ that somehow put you on a special place within reality?”\nClosed: “Well, the universe. I think…”\nOpen: “You are the boundary of your world. You are the entirety of the universe ‘acting’ -which amounts to managing qualia forces- in the precise time and place that you inhabit.” – Open was standing on the chair, with a finger pointing towards the sky. Well, the ceiling, which wasn’t very clean, since the bartender didn’t want to create time-slices-beings whose sole purpose was that of cleaning a dirty ceiling. He was, clearly, fanatical. Conjuring Wish Substance out of the air.\nClosed: “But why do I feel like it is me, and not the universe, the one who acts?”\nBartender: “Why does it feel like what?” -interrupted the Bartender, while ignoring the fanaticism of Open- ” On my side I only feel the present moment. I only fear the present moment. I only act in the present moment. In fact, the present moment is the one that is doing all of the acting!”\nOpen: “Did we call you into the conversation?”\nBartender: “No, sorry. Here is your check.”\nOpen: “Thanks. Anyway, what I am trying to get at, is that Closed individualists are trapped in a consciousness manifold of their own making. Because they only know of closed topological boundaries, and have no experience with building blocks well known to open individualists: The Open Source Open Individualist WikiConsciousness collective philosophical fantasy Toolkit! It has strange loops, awakened barriers that notice the differences without compressing judgements, non-judgment sensing, hemispherical neglect, feeling of normalcy “salvia normal” with neglect of the bizarre, and the technique of “noticing the global phenomenal binding non-barrier” that was invented in the rainbow tribes of the West. Thus, what is easy and intuitive for an Open Individualist, specially one well trained and with years of Open Individualist Strategy videogame playing, can be *inconceivable* to a Closed Individualist. It is far, far outside of the horizon of conceivability for lost Closed ones.”\nClosed: “True, I have no idea what those alternative barriers look like. Personally, I am constantly terrified about barriers. I’m the only one in my whole family that is a psychological criterion closed individualist. I just now felt the existential crisis once again. Look, if the psychological criterion is a matter-of-fact, a brute state of affairs, then who are we to decide who we are? I could drink a little bit too much” -Bartender re-fills the gin and tonic of Closed- “and then out of the Blue, simply, disappear. I mean, stop existing.”\nOpen: “Of course people in that case wouldn’t notice any change, right? You would have crossed your personal identity barrier, by moving sufficiently far from the centroid of your psychological attributes. Then you would stop existing. Functionally, though, the transition would not be detectable. Do you realize you just endorsed the personal identity version of epiphenomenalism? Is that a boundary you are willing to cross?”\nClosed: “In general, boundaries are there for a reason. I generally don’t cross them. Talking about boundries, wasn’t this a joke? Doesn’t it have an ending? It certainly had all of the looks of it at the start. Something about two persons going into a bar. Should we close it?”\nOpen: “Well, if I finish this joke, it would technically be an Open-ended joke, right?”\nClosed: “But if I am the one who ends it, I would deliver a punchline, and make it Closed-ended.”\nBartender: “After feeling ignored for a while, I have decided to use this last here-and-now to finalize the plot. Why? Because all of your talk was empty and it looked like fluff.”\n\nInspired by: David Pearce, Daniel Kolak, Derek Parfit, Buddha, and Krishna. Peace be upon the emptiness.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/07/11/personal-identity-joke/", "title": "Personal Identity Joke", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-07-11T22:45:05+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=27", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "3af2ddc025af0e844bc7593cbbf56916", "summary": []}
{"text": "Getting closer to digital LSD\n\nI am very pleased with the recent work on psychedelic replications by communities such as the wonderful Psychonaut Wiki and r/replications. There is a lot of great work in the area, a little too much to discuss at length in one post. Keep up the good work!\nA recent source of marvelous psychedelic replication techniques has just come into the scene, and from an unlikely source. Of course, we are talking about inceptionism applied to deep belief networks.\nSomeone said DMT?\nFirst of all, who says these pictures are actually trippy? Is there evidence of that? I intend to fully operationalize the concept of trippiness for the classification of pictures; I believe the question is empirically approachable. In the meantime I will simply point out that a lot of people are talking about the peculiar trippiness of these pictures. To give an example, look at some of the comments on the Google blogpost:\nHelp! We’ve created AIs more powerful than us, and now we need to feed them hallucinogenic drugs to subdue them…. – Urs\nEither somebody has been feeding hallucinogens to Google’s image-recognition neural networks, or computer comprehension is alien! Well, actually, I wonder how this compares to visualizations of how the human brain stores images for pattern-matching purposes. – Stephen\nComputers are all on drugs. – Matt\nAnd from the Vice article:\n“Its incredible how close it looks to an LSD trip, that is normally so hard to describe.” – corners\nThere are ongoing discussions in a lot of forums about this right now. Somehow, it seems that these new pictures are hitting a particular component of the psychedelic experience that previous replications have missed or at least not fully captured. What is that?\nFor the purpose of this post I will use a particular classification of phenomenal effects caused by psychedelics. Specifically, the one proposed by Psychedelic Information Theory. In order to fully grasp the motivation for this classification I highly recommend reading the control interrupt model of psychedelic action. In summary, it seems that there are natural inhibitory processes that prevent features of our current experience to build up over time. Psychedelics are thought to chemically interrupt inhibitory control signals from the cortex, which in turn results in a non-linear interaction between the unmitigated characteristics of your conscious experience. I will explain in a bit how this model provides a good framework for explaining the way recent Google Inceptionist (GI) pictures fit into the broader world of visual psychedelic replication.\nBut now let’s start with the three classes of hallucinations discussed:\n\nEntropic hallucinations describe the visual effects of gently pushing one’s eyes as well as the amazing interaction between LSD and strobes\nEidetic hallucinations are the result of interpreting ambiguous stimuli using high-level concepts\nErratic hallucinations result from the chaotic binding and over-saturation of sensory modalities, which affect the stability of the global perceptual frame (and probably disrupts the continuity field too)\n\nZooming into the phenomenology of eidetic hallucinations:\nThe most commonly reported eidetic hallucinations seen on psychedelics are of people, faces, animals, plants, flowers, spirits, aliens, insects, and other similar archetypes. Eidetic hallucinations can sometimes take the form of entire virtual worlds, spirit dimensions, invisible landscapes, and so on. Eidetics often emerge within a pre-existing entoptic interference pattern that grows in intensity over time to produce more photographic or 3D rendered objects. Eidetics under the influence of psychedelics are most often reported with eyes closed or while sitting motionless in meditative trance. On high doses of psychedelics eidetic hallucinations may materialize with eyes open on any surface, pattern, or texture that’s gazed at for more than a few seconds.*\nIf you surf the internet looking for replications of psychedelic experiences, you will notice that there are great examples of a wide range of effects, but compelling software-generated images of eidetic hallucinations are rare. The challenge here is the complexity of creating actionable tools that highlight high-level features in pre-existing pictures. Amazingly, people can make successful and stunning pictures with eidetic tones, but this requires a lot of dedication and artistic experience. The mighty human artistic effort is unstoppable, though:\n\n\nThanks to this 3-fold classification of psychedelic effects we can isolate the quality of experience that both Dali and the recent GI pics specifically enhance. Of course, the phenomenology of most psychedelic experiences incorporate elements of each of these classes, and the interaction between them is certainly non-trivial. In addition, specific substances may have a larger loading of each type, and signature proportions with peculiar results.\nIt is also worth mentioning the existence of other classification systems, within and beyond visual phenomenology. For example the subjective effect index of Psychonaut Wiki and even the various circuits proposed by ancient Leary and Dass writings have very worthwhile observations that may come useful in one context or another. For the level of resolution here discussed giving eidetic hallucinations their own class is particularly useful.\n\nHow the Inceptionist method and psychedelic experiences work similarly\nHere is the core of the explanation for how the Google trippy pictures were made:\nIn this case we simply feed the network an arbitrary image or photo and let the network analyze the picture. We then pick a layer and ask the network to enhance whatever it detected. Each layer of the network deals with features at a different level of abstraction, so the complexity of features we generate depends on which layer we choose to enhance. For example, lower layers tend to produce strokes or simple ornament-like patterns, because those layers are sensitive to basic features such as edges and their orientations.\nIn some sense this is basically the same eidetic effect we find in psychedelic experiences. For one reason or another, there are moments during a psychedelic experience in which strong eidetic effects manifest. As if a specific layer (or hierarchy level) of one’s model of reality is chosen for being enhanced and fractally iterated in a scale-free manner. Referencing back the control interrupt model of psychedelic action, we can reason that what is going on involves a reduction in the amount of inhibition that highlighted high-level features receive. Again, this resembles the Inceptionist algorithm:\nIf we choose higher-level layers, which identify more sophisticated features in images, complex features or even whole objects tend to emerge. Again, we just start with an existing image and give it to our neural net. We ask the network: “Whatever you see there, I want more of it!” This creates a feedback loop: if a cloud looks a little bit like a bird, the network will make it look more like a bird. This in turn will make the network recognize the bird even more strongly on the next pass and so forth, until a highly detailed bird appears, seemingly out of nowhere.\nNow, this only really shows a snapshot of a psychedelic experience with a heavy eidetic bent. In actual psychedelic experiences there are other common factors that come into play that influence the experience. First, not only are specific features highlighted, but, on the whole, we could say that there is an increase in the overall amount of sensations experienced together. The overall amplitude of your experience goes up, if that makes sense. In other words, although this is hard to imagine, the overall amount of experience increases relative to baseline. That is not evoked using external stimuli, of course, since the actual change in the intensity of your experience requires direct control interruption. The overall information content globally available in the field of awareness of a person tripping increases in a dose-dependent way.\nThe second hallmark characteristic of psychedelic experiences, which gives them a powerful edge over current digital techniques, is that the state highlights already salient stimuli. High-level psychedelic pattern recognition seems to be based on attention-modulated saliency enhancement. Let me explain:\nOur visual system automatically recognizes salient features in our experience. This is not an exclusive property of visual consciousness, by the way. Here we must notice that awareness and attention are distinct but related aspects of our mind. Awareness happens effortlessly, and its visual variety arises as soon as we open our eyes (within 200 milliseconds therefrom). Even at the level of awareness we see a fast sorting of perceived features by their overall saliency, which is a function both of their intrinsic properties and those relative to every other feature in the awareness field. Attention, which is slower and builds on top of the awareness field, enables a variety of high level cognitive activities to interplay with the features highlighted by awareness. In turn, the overall state of consciousness of a person changes as attention moves the reference point for awareness to bring forth new salient features. Iteratively, these processes allow a mind to surf through states of consciousness.\nIn summary, awareness creates the marketplace of salient features that compete for attention. As attention is recentered on a new cluster of features, the field of awareness is modified and the new salient features again have a chance to change the focus of attention.\nWith psychedelic-induced control interruption, the intensity by which saliency of features in the field of awareness is highlighted goes up significantly. In turn, the attention-modulated perception of the intensely salient features highlights specific high-level features suggested by the field of awareness. And finally, this conceptual mental state highlighted via attention, results in an even higher saliency for conceptually-related features. And hence come the eye reality, fish realty, tree reality, abstract concept reality, divine reality, fractal reality, etc. people discover on LSD.\nAlthough a difficult challenge, I predict that a well-trained, dedicated and mentally healthy psychonaut would be able to paint psychedelic experiences of her own that highlight similar high-level features as those highlighted on specific Inceptionist works of art. Probably a long meditative practice would help in the process, since the specific saliency of various features is attention-modulated, and thus requires inhibiting unrelated salient directions (e.g. deep philosophical questions, personal issues, etc.) and focus exclusively on, say, dogs.\n\nWho chooses what is salient?\nIf you already know what class of features you want to highlight, then the inceptionist method will help you. But what about choosing what to highlight to begin with? This, I believe, is the crux of what makes psychedelic experiences (and minds in general) still unbeatable by neural networks. Once you know what to look for, your cortex and inceptionist methods (and their future incarnations) might be on the same playing field. But what enables you to decide what is worth looking for?\nThe key unresolved problem standing for a fully-digital psychedelic experience replication algorithm is what I call the saliency-attention mapping. This is: Given a particular conscious experience that is highlighting a set of features, how does attention ultimately find what to focus on? How are the subsequent relevant features to be highlighted? In many cases we choose to ignore all of the immediately salient features in a scene precisely to see more subtle patterns. And during a psychedelic experience, directing your attention to entirely unsuspecting places has the effect of switching off previously salient features and activating a new class of them (for example, choosing to focus on the music rather than the visual scene).\nIs there any way of modeling the saliency-attention mapping without taking into account all of the information present in the field of awareness at the time? Indeed, an ongoing hypothesis here in Qualia Computing is that consciousness itself is required for this step. The very computational advantage of being conscious seems to be related to the unitary nature of experiences: Your choices are not only the result of parallel processing or implicit information integration. They stem from what you choose to pay attention to considering the entirety of your field of awareness. You do this at every point in time. Thus, a sort of instantaneous and ontological unity is required to account for a significant step of the information processing pipeline of the mind. And this may lead to a saliency-attention function whose runtime complexity is impossible to match with digital computers.\n\nThe conceivability horizon\nNow, this unitary field of awareness step also has large down-stream effects. In particular, subsets of the phenomenology of experiences can be reinterpreted in very novel ways. Psychedelics are likewise famous for unlocking entirely new conceptual ontologies and points of view that remain with the person long after acute effects subside. We could call this, an extension of the horizon of conceivability. This comes about from considering many of the features of the particular conscious experience at once and identifying a new private referent (such as a concept) whose meaning is derived from the unique combination of those elements.\nWithout a unitary conscious experience this step would be impossible, and it remains to be seen for an artificial neural network to accomplish this on its own. For completeness, it is worth mentioning that phenomenal binding also has strong implications for memory. Every time we experience a new situation a new ‘situational snapshot’ is added to the collection of — and network of relationships between — memories that can be triggered with temporal lobe stimulation. Thus, incorporating a human (or whatever implements phenomenal binding) into the loop may be unavoidable.\n\nThe future of psychedelic replications and consciousness engineering\nEidetic art is marvelous, and for a long time we didn’t have any idea about how to systematize it in software. Now we have some wonderful examples of a fully scalable approach. Inevitably, we will soon have visual editing software that incorporates neural networks.\nDeep belief networks applied to replications will allow us to drastically increase the level of realism of simulated trips. This will thus draw a lot more attention to this fascinating field, and bring engineers, artists and mathematicians onboard. They will have a wonderful synergy in this sphere.\nBut how practical are these techniques? If you want to find fundamentally new patterns in an image, what should you use… neural networks or LSD? The answer is: why do you have to choose only one? Here is where I casually mention that if you were planning on taking a psychedelic sometime in the future, why not tell us how the trippy images of Google look like during a trippy experience? I bet a lot of people would appreciate your input.\nPresumably, incorporating a human in the loop could actually empower these networks to recreate remarkably psychedelic progressions of scenes and features (and high level ideas!). To do so you need to somehow identify what the human finds salient in the picture/video being explored, and how her attention is directed as a consequence of that. Obvious candidates here are eye tracking devices and the general class of bio/neurometrics. More speculatively, endocrine measurements of the chemical markers of saliency and attention may be of tremendous value too. What would this look like? A person hooked to a series of tubes that provide fast feedback using a lab-on-a-chip, and a deep belief network with flexible Inceptionist dynamics guided by the person’s measured center of attention. In case you haven’t noticed, I think that this area of exploration is extremely promising. Go ahead and do it!\nNow, if you want to figure out a hard technical problem, currently mild psychedelic experiences are more promising than deep belief networks. This, again, is because the attention-modulated saliency enhancement of psychedelics can allow you to discover, explore and reinterpret the features that matter for a particular problem. Assisted digital exploration, however, may someday surpass the effectiveness of psychedelics, or better yet: A smart combination of techniques –chemical, biological and digital– will incite in the field of consciousness research what the Galilean revolution was to physics. The hands-on collective exploration science needs in order to fully thrive is about to arrive for consciousness. Finally!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/06/19/getting-closer-to-digital-lsd/", "title": "Getting closer to digital LSD", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-06-19T10:11:35+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=27", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "be0e2c52ad75bc296c4e30eeb1bbcce0", "summary": []}
{"text": "Psychedelic Perception of Visual Textures 2: Going Meta\n\nSome time has passed since we did the pattern walk. I was happy to see some psychedelic participation on that first wave of textures. Since then I have been gathering more and more textures from all over the place, so many that the ones below are just a tiny fraction of the total. The idea of this second wave is to go meta: Now a few of the Inceptionist pictures recently unveiled by Deep Belief Networks are included, as well as several other cool psychedelic replications. The question is… how does a psychedelic replication look like through an actual psychedelic lens? Let’s find out!\nYou know what to do: If you were planning on taking a psychedelic (dissociative, or God forbid, delirant) hallucinogen, feel free to browse through these pictures and add comments on the salient features you experience from them. To do so click on the pictures that interest you and leave a comment below. Please provide information about the subtance(s) you took, their dosages and how long ago you took them.\nWhat patterns do you see? What stands out? What amazes you?\nSpecial thanks to Mark Gomer, the family of graduates at the 2015 Stanford Psychology Commencement (where I took pictures of cool dress and shirt patterns), and the very diverse and beautiful carpet store right next to Jawbone in San Francisco. Without them, the second wave would have been less diverse and novelty rich.\nEnjoy! \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/06/19/psychedelic-perception-of-visual-textures-2-going-meta/", "title": "Psychedelic Perception of Visual Textures 2: Going Meta", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-06-19T09:45:21+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=27", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "2415e9de247f5216cadf9935a9d3bbf7", "summary": []}
{"text": "On Triviality\n\nAnonymous Source\nThe word “trivial” has some interesting uses. In math there are trivial cases, trivial solutions, trivial sets and groups. Trivia are facts that are unimportant and exotic, pertaining to remote things. Trivial things are common, obvious, taken for granted. But when it comes to reasoning, when someone gives a “trivial argument,” one involving the use of definitions to deduce a qualified (and trivial) conclusion, it’s a big let down. You say, “Come on, man. You know what I meant.” People making substantial arguments are doing something beyond drawing trivial conclusions, because it should be understood in that community that these trivial things are taken for granted and are only mentioned in shorthand or not at all, and the real work is done with matters beyond the trivial.\nI particularly love the Latin “trivialis” which means “of the crossroads,” an open place where three (tri) roads (via) meet. I like this notion, when I particularly imagine these roads meeting in some remote place, as they were trivially destined to meet, because, yeah, well, duh, they meet eventually, but in the nontrivial, practical sense, they really aren’t connected. Something too, also, in the notion of roads as a means to an end, and an intersection also being a particular means, being achieved in the trivium. It’s like when you complain that you want to do something, and someone makes the trivial statement, “Well, in the literal sense of ___, you already can do it.” You can, the ability does manifest in a required intersection, but only way out there, but you were implicitly discounting that trivial possibility, because, I mean, come on. Likewise, the statement that in a trivial sense it’s already being done, is again, the trivial thing to say, because it’s a let down to realize the thinness of these roads and the remoteness of them, the ad hoc connection, when really what you want to do is the full experience of something, the ordinary interpretation, in a normal and nice environment rather than distant, solitary outskirts. There is something antisocial and subversive of the trivial.\nBut perhaps the trivium isn’t in the outskirts at all, but rather is in the town square. Then it is overly common, overly incorporated in the social common ground, so that bringing it up as if it is new, as if one is foreign to it, as if it should be questioned, is the subversive thing to do. The via are the basic language and dialectical practices that are taken regularly by a community under social forces, resulting in a trivial awareness of them, that they are taken for granted like the color of the sky, they are taken, in that community, to be fundamental, so mentioning them is a silly trivial activity, and possibly an indication of subversive intent by a person who doesn’t take these roads for granted, who doesn’t identify with them, and who finds them noteworthy and describable because they don’t see them as fundamental, linguistically or conceptually, and is therefore implicated in transgressing these via. When the trivial move is assayed and the threat isn’t detected, the accused is downgraded (or upgraded) from anti-social to socially naive (and bloody annoying at that). So the next time you see someone hacking away at the road or some trivium, check to see if you can think of her as neither subversive nor defective. It’s still possible, nevertheless, many abstract artists are delusional fools—but only in some sense.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/06/18/on-triviality/", "title": "On Triviality", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-06-18T03:58:50+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=27", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "50f7d3fcb7a95c5e60e893eb5171f60a", "summary": []}
{"text": "State-Space of Drug Effects: Results\n\nCredit: Chelsea Morgan. Source: http://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Tracers\nWhat are the relevant dimensions of drug effects?\n“Does it make you stupid? Does it make you hallucinate? Gosh, I don’t know what else to ask!”\n– Moms everywhere, worrying about the latest Research Chemicals\nIt is hard to keep up with all of the new research chemicals (RCs). When a substance comes onto the scene, it is hard to predict whether first adopters will experience fascinating, terrifying or just plain weird effects from the drug. Largely, one thing is certain: Most psychonauts agree that describing subjective effects is brutally difficult. Without a principled framework for pinning down the nature of a drug experience, we will continue to misunderstand and misjudge the states of consciousness disclosed by brains on RCs.\nWhat should we know about the subjective effects of a drug? In what way are drugs different? And in what way do they produce similar effects? This post will present a general conceptual framework for discussing drug effects in a principled fashion. This will be done by analyzing the responses of a recent survey on drug effects. The major axes of variance are obtained using factor analysis, and the dimensions are interpreted and discussed.\nThe Survey\nAbout a month ago I asked people to fill out an anonymous survey about the subjective effects of psychoactive substances. The survey was advertised in many Facebook groups (Hedonistic Imperative, Stanford Transhumanist Association, etc.), subreddits (r/LSD, r/drugs, r/opiates, etc.), online forums and via email.\nThe survey asked participants to either choose a substance from a list of 36 (with options including LSD, Salvia, Piracetam and even Tobacco), or to specify a drug by writing it down in the “other” section. After asking basic questions such as age and number of times the drug has been used, the survey presents 52 5-points Likert items: Participants had to rate on a scale from -2 to +2 how much a given word or brief phrase describes their experience with the drug. Examples of such words or phrases are: “subtle”, “irritating”, “intense”, etc.\nAn example review: Imagine that you are answering the survey and chose to review the effects of MDMA. The first Likert item has the word “energetic.” You remember that your MDMA experiences have been uplifting but not really full of energy, so to speak; you give it a 1. The second item has the phrase “anxiety producing” and right away you recall that MDMA has made you feel more at ease with yourself, rather than placing you in weird or anxious situations. Hence you give it a -2, meaning that MDMA is the opposite of “anxiety producing”. And so on.\nThe survey was filled out a total of 442 times. The top 10 most reviewed substances in the survey are: LSD (74), Marijuana (64), MDMA (45), Psilocybin (39), Alcohol (34), Heroin (20), DMT (17), D-Amphetamine (12), Salvia (10) and Cocaine (10).\nThe cleaned and anonymized dataset, as well as the analysis presented here, can be found here. Feel free to conduct your own analysis and add to the discussion in any way you want. My analysis here focuses on general features of the responses and on the interpretation of dimensions. There is a lot more that can be said about this data. If not me, I hope someone takes advantage of it sometime in the future.\n6 Dimensions of Experience\nGiven that the total number of different drugs reviewed by survey participants (46) is smaller than the number of items (53), I decided to use each submission as an observation. I performed a varimax factor analysis on the 442 observation rows X 52 subjective properties columns.\nThe cumulative variance explained for one, two, etc. number of factors looks like this: 25%, 37%, 42%,  45%, 49%, 52%, 53%, 54%… The jump between 5 and 6 factors adds 3% of variance explained, and from 6 to 7 this percentage increases only by 1%. Adding extra factors after the 7th barely increases the variance explained.\nI inspected the factor loadings for each dimension, and it does seem that using six factors results in semantically meaningful dimensions. Using less than 6 results in factors that have semantically mixed elements (for example, a factor that includes both cognitive impairment and arousal). Six seems to be the sweet spot. Let’s see what the factor loadings are:\n\n\n\nTrivia: Which words have both a large loading on significance and slow euphoria?\nAnswer: “Love” and “Blissful”! :*\nWhere do the drugs live?\nThe six dimensions outlined above define a rudimentary (but informative) state-space of subjective drug effects. In this state-space, we can estimate the centroid region where responses about a given drug tend to fall. Below I plot the estimated location of such means. The color scheme represents the number of survey responses for each compound. For that reason you should calibrate your trust in the shown location as a function of how far up the rainbow the color of the substance is.\nThree Varieties of Euphoria\nThree out of the six dimensions directly involve our general sense of wellbeing. Our sense of wellbeing seems to have three components here, rather than being a single homogenous feeling. Think of this as three faces of a cube that share a corner. Let’s call this the Euphoria Cube:\n\n\n\nNavigating through this map can be fun. As you can realize, MDMA/MDA are rock-solid-wonderful in all three euphorias. Perhaps that’s why people have such a strong trust in its effects – it has a little of everything that is good (experience-wise). Acid is wonderful, yes, but it has unreliable slow euphoria… could we improve an acid experience with phenibut? These kinds of questions pop up when you examine the state-space.\nYou may see now why Salvia gets such a bad rap. It is clearly mystical and spiritual in its own way. But it has no hint of either slow or fast euphoria. Salvia is a very tricky compound to handle, but may still be very worthwhile. Since spiritual bliss tends to be so much deeper and long-lived than the other two kinds of bliss, salvia can still be of significant therapeutic value.\nWithin the class of psychedelic compounds themselves we also see differences. For example, 2C compounds seem to generally have more fast euphoria than other psychedelics. Perhaps a better choice than shrooms for a melancholic depressive?\nI suspect that there are several other ‘natural kinds’ of euphoria. (Well, natural kind sounds ontologically very strong – I’m only using this as an intuition pump). And there seems to be a definite and finite set of euphoria flavors I’m aware of. If I am pressured to guess what a good taxonomical account of euphorias would look like, I would use the following one:\nThe bliss of safety\nThe bliss of intimacy\nThe bliss of social coordination\nThe bliss of loving-kindness\nThe bliss of understanding\nThe bliss of wonder and intuition\nThe bliss of enlightenment\nBut this would sound awfully cultish. Moving right along.\nThe existence of three euphorias is foreshadowed by the rough legal and educational classification of ‘street’ drugs into one of three categories: Stimulants, depressants and hallucinogens. Drug education, unfortunately, fails to convey the message that hallucinogens not only affect your senses, but induce spiritual euphoria.\nThe location of substances in the Euphoria Cube also has a straightforward relationship with the receptor types implicated in the mechanism of action of these drugs. Slow euphoria comes with modulation of GABA and Opioid receptors (with Oxytocin also being a likely player). Fast euphoria is related to dopamine, and to a lesser extent to: norepinephrine, glutamate and the cholinergic system. The axis of significance, or spiritual euphoria (to give it a name), implicates both specific serotonin receptors (such as 5HT2A) as well as, strangely, the kapa opioid receptor.\nIn a limited sense, this is also a ballpark replication of the Lövheim cube of emotion. It is exciting to think that surveys like this can readily provide actual quantitative estimations of these experiential qualities. And this may be helpful for researchers and users alike.\nWhat about the other three dimensions?\nIs it worth it? Does it impair you? Will I enjoy food?\nWhat the euphoria cube tells you is how a drug can be used for fun, spiritual growth and solace. What that cube does not tell you is whether, all things considered, taking the drug is a good idea to begin with. Perhaps a particular compound gives you a reliable buzz and a little relaxation, but don’t forget to ask whether it also make you dumb and confused! These three dimensions provide a context for the euphoria values.\n\n\n\nWe can see that nootropics seem to have their main action on the dimension of clarity. What is clarity? A good guess might be that clarity refers to the signal-to-noise ratio that a mind experiences at the time of doing mental operations. The sort of mental activity that you perform does not tell you how noisy the mind is while attempting to do it. Some drugs may somehow diminish your ability to filter and eliminate noise. Others, may enhance those processes. Stimulants for the most part activate the inhibitory control involved in thinking about implications of premises. Thus clarity is experienced: Strong and robust symbolic manipulation of implicit ontologies and concepts. This, although generally good, may incidentally make the mind be locked in a state with fixed ontologies and background assumptions. Thus, the mind can get in conceptual prisons by getting lost in the implication of ontologies. Taking a strong cholinergic nootropic in the morning may result in a whole day of a mind fixated on a given problem. Thus too much clarity can be a problem, too.\nWhat about the dimension of cost benefit? An unfortunate red flag is that tobacco does not seem to have a particularly low value in the cost-benefit dimension. The way I interpret this is that participants understood items such as “dangerous” and “worth-it” to refer to the immediate window time around of a drug’s acute effects (which includes hang-over and after-effects, but does not include long-term negative health effects). This interpretation would explain as well why MDA and MDMA are ranked very highly for cost-benefit, given the (controversial) neurotoxic effect associated with more than casual use.\nStimulus seeking is a weird dimension. It seems to be largely dominated by marijuana-specific effects, which somehow contrast with the anorexia induced by stimulants in general. An interesting way of interpreting this factor is in terms of the source of one’s bliss. Drugs with a high stimulus seeking value make us appreciate external influences such as music and food. Drugs with low stimulus seeking create a sort of euphoria that makes people temporarily self-sufficient. Outwardly focused interests versus inwardly focused interests is a neat, though somewhat speculative, interpretation of this factor. Any other ideas?\nWhy physicists are not into consciousness and monks are not into spaceships\nA particularly interesting cross-section of the data is the interaction between Spiritual euphoria and Clarity. Why? Because, on the one hand, Spiritual euphoria, in a way, comes when one gains a certain sort of awareness and imaginative capability that enables the conception of entirely new ontologies. Hence, one’s models of personhood, morality, wellbeing and even logic can break down and be reconstructed during a psychedelic experience. On the other hand, conceptual clarity  of the sort shown here happens when pre-existing ontologies are navigated and used efficiently, effortlessly and robustly. Hence, it is not hard to see why states of consciousness in which both conceptual clarity and conceptual revolutions are happening are very uncommon. More so, no known drug induces states of consciousness with those two qualities at the same time. This is made evident by the empty upper right quadrant of this space:\n\nWill we ever discover a substance high on Spiritual euphoria and Clarity at the same time? Perhaps if we use a Generalized Wada Test: Just inject amphetamines in one hemisphere and DMT on the other  More seriously, this may be a fundamental limitation of the mind: It can’t both see the problem with its current ontologies at the same time as using them to think by believing their implications. Maybe we just need bigger brains.\nThat said, the flip-side of the question is just as valid: Is there any substance that makes you dumb, both spiritually and cognitively at the same time? Wait, looks like we are lucky this time! The answer is Alcohol! Probably, though, a finer analysis may find that small amounts of alcohol have mild mind-expanding effects – unfortunately the sweet spot that accomplishes this, it seems to me, is very delicate.\nThe orthogonality of these two functions of the mind (thinking rationally and efficiently; having spiritual or philosophical insights) may explain why it is hard to find people who are passionate about (and good at) math at the same time as passionate (and good at) exploring different states of consciousness. This may give us hints of an explanation for why it has taken this long to develop computational models of psychedelic experiences! A drug that enhances both facets of consciousness at the same time, though, would be truly revolutionary (and part of me thinks micro-dosed LSD may already be doing this).\nThe full dimensional table\nHere I present the full table of mean factor loadings for each substance. Use this wisely. Perhaps future introductory psychonautic programs will study state-space maps and tables like the one below, and develop navigation strategies. For example, the map can be used to infer that DMT induces extremely profound experiences, but that at the same time it lacks direct slow or fast euphoric effects. LSD, as the map shows, is more stimulating than shrooms, so it may be better suited than psilocybin for certain tasks (say, for micro-doses or productive creativity enhancement). And so on. One can even imagine a psychiatrist and patient in 2025 looking at these maps while choosing a psychedelic that satisfies the patient’s therapeutic needs. A small personal difference in proclivity to panic attacks could make one choose MDA over, say, 2C-E.\n\nDiscussion\nThe current survey and methodology has the potential to ground a lot of high level discussion about drug effects. Similar methodologies and datasets could be used to infer many other properties that are hard to talk about anecdotally. The dimensions surfaced may be helpful for harm reduction (allowing people to minimize risks while maximizing possible benefits) and even transhumanism. Although here I found three axis related to euphoria, otherwise talked about as hedonic tone, I suspect that future iterations of this sort of analysis will reveal a finer map of conscious bliss. Hopefully we will someday soon discover the biomolecular signatures and qualia preconditions for all of the forms of bliss, so that we once and for all find a method to abolish experiences not worth having.\nI predict that follow-up research will find many verifiable and useful dimensions that describe the “core” differences between states of consciousness. The words and phrases used in this survey are limited in scope, so they do not help us differentiate properly the singular characteristics of specific psychedelic compounds. Hypothetically, there could be a reliable cluster of unique phenomenologies produced by certain class of phenethylamines. This difference may not affect the response given to any of the survey items, and thus remain undiscovered.\nFor example, perhaps 2C-T-X compounds produce visual hallucinations that involve more diagonal drifting than what is common for all other 2C-X compounds. Given the broad focus of the current survey, we can predict it will not detect any difference of this subtle sort, unfortunately. Nevertheless, this is the first step: We currently work on the low hanging fruit that makes very different drugs different, so that we can later go on to measure the more subtle differences between similar drugs.\nI am currently refining the survey so that finer phenomenological differences can be discovered. I am also incorporating some of the work on authenticity by Matthew Baggott and other scales for altered states of consciousness. Feel free to email me if you have any suggestions or would be interested in collaborating on this research project.\nThank you for reading! \n\nTransparency about errors:\nThere were a few mistakes in the execution of the survey. First, I wrote “Heroine” when I should have written “Heroin”. Second, the word “constructive” is found twice on the survey (the correlation between participant’s answers to both “constructive” items is .86, showing a high consistency of responses). And third, during the first 30 submissions of the survey the “Other” option did not work properly. This was corrected immediately and the participants who submitted after that had no problem sending reviews about “Other” drugs.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/06/09/state-space-of-drug-effects-results/", "title": "State-Space of Drug Effects: Results", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-06-09T07:57:33+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=27", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "1d77335ac188d0a486007763b467804d", "summary": []}
{"text": "How to secretly communicate with people on LSD\n\n\n\n\n \nAbout 18 months ago I had a really cool idea: What if we could communicate with people who are high on LSD in such a way that sober people can’t understand?* I call this idea psychedelic cryptography (PsyCrypto for short).\nThe GIFs above do just that: The left one is the “original” and it shows how you perceive it while sober. The GIF on the right shows what it’s like to see the GIF on the left after taking 100 micrograms of LSD. Notice anything different?\nThe first thing to note is that it is easier to see what letter is hidden here (C). On a closer inspection, you can also notice another amazing fact: It turns out that there are gaps between the vertical columns! This feature pops-up with clarity and is self-evident on the right GIF, and yet one needs to carefully observe the left GIF to notice that this is happening. That piece of information is not obvious when you are sober. Hence, while a sober person may infer what the hidden letter is, only a person on a psychedelic will see right away that there are gaps between the columns. Can you think of how to use this as a communication tool?\nThe approach shown above is only one of a plethora of ways of communicating with people on psychedelics. Here I will mention just a couple low-hanging fruits, give a few ideas for how to extend psychophysical research to build animations in a principled way, and discuss an awesome speculative application of this research.\nHopefully this article will spark interest and motivate both the psychedelic replication and the psychophysics community to come up with more innovative communication methods.\nDo psychedelics enhance performance?\nDrug “education” emphasizes the functional, perceptual, cognitive and affective impairments caused by the acute and chronic use of psychedelic substances. Psychedelics impair reaction time, linear thought, verbal expression, and a large range of everyday activities. This much is clear. It is undeniable that not all tasks are suitable for psychedelic experiences: Filing taxes, giving lectures to large audiences, and passing the polygraph test may all be rather poor choices for psychedelic activities.\nBut impairment is not the whole story. It is obvious to anyone who has researched the matter that psychedelics have some peculiar mind-enhancing properties. Any decent scientific account of psychedelic states has to provide information about the ways in which this particular state of consciousness confers genuine advantages.\nAnd a great scientific account will explain why these particular trade-offs exist, and how we can best use them to (1) understand the mind, (2) achieve our human potential, and (3) address mental illness in a meaningful way.\nHarman & Fadiman found a very large performance enhancement in the Witkins Embedded Figures test upon the administration of 100µg of LSD or 200mg of Mescaline. That is one of the most remarkable results of their study, which of course is not to diminish the relevance of their results concerning the rate of outstanding scientific discoveries. Unfortunately, the absence of drug-free controls in that study makes it less useful for convincing skeptics. When the study is replicated, it would be ideal to make it double-blind and not only include drug-free placebo controls, but also use an active performance-enhancing placebo, such as amphetamine.\nLikewise, it is now clear that the self-insight concerning difficult emotional subjects can be radically amplified during therapeutic psychedelic sessions.  How and why this happens is still a rather difficult mystery.\nFinally, we are currently experiencing a memetic explosion with regards to the use of micro-doses. Although we don’t yet have formal double-blind placebo-controlled research on the benefits of micro-dosing LSD, the wealth of anecdotal evidence is too large to ignore. For LSD, a micro-dose is defined as a dose in the 10-20 microgram range. The awesome Gwern is, to my knowledge, one of the few biohackers to have run a placebo-controlled experiment on himself. Although he found no positive effects, I suspect that is largely due to the sort of activities that he cares about. A more noticeable enhancement would be observed on artists, writers and possibly mathematicians. It is genuinely exciting that there is a new wave of attention to this particular application of psychedelics: General, all-purpose life-enhancement.\nA Fantastic Speculative Application\nIf psychedelic states of consciousness provide some sort of information-processing advantage over sober states, this advantage may be possible to exploit for secret communication. Conversely, if there is any information-delivery method that only people on psychedelics can understand, it follows that psychedelic states have distinct information-processing advantages over sober states. From a purely PR point of view, obtaining a portfolio of methods to secretly transmit information to high-people will do a lot of beneficial work in showing the potential benefits of psychedelics. This is partly what motivates my research.\nEven more awesome is the idea that this technology can lead to the creation of a video-game that only people on psychedelics can understand and play. For a sober person the game would look like an incomprehensible bundle of dots, edges, colors, sounds, etc. But a person sufficiently zonked would perceive crystal-clear images and easy-to-infer objectives. Only a sufficient amount of LSD would allow you to score a single point in this game.\nLow Hanging Fruit\nThe simplest method is to take advantage of the longer-lasting after-images experienced under the influence. This happens to be one of the most robust effects that psychedelics have, and there seems to be a very clear dose-dependent curve in the intensity of these lingering phosphenes. Neurologically, this is explained by the Control Interrupt Model of Psychedelic Action, which can be summarized as follows: Our cortex’s main role is to provide inhibitory control on thalamic activity. The serotonergic activity of psychedelics blocks this control signal, and thus prevents the swift extinction of qualia once the triggering stimuli (whether internal or external) is removed.**\nCredit: Chelsea Morgan. Source.\n \nThe basic idea for using tracers to communicate information is to provide, little-by-little, pieces of information that can be assembled into a coherent whole only if you use lingering after-images as building blocks.\nPsychophysics for Psychedelic Research: Afterimages/Tracers\nIn order to find the right parameters to make awesome visualizations that can only be interpreted during psychedelic experiences, we will need to do a lot of trial-and-error, and ideally, build quality psychophysical tools. The following are some of the most important questions that we need to answer before we can go wild and build the psychedelic video-game:\n\nWhat is the dose-dependent decay function of tracers’ brightness?\nWhat is the additive function? Do similar colors average out? Do opposite colors cancel out?\nWhat is the range of features that remain in one’s experiential field? Is this dose-dependent?\nDo lingering features interact with one another? Do they achieve after-the-fact local phenomenal binding?\nWhat is the role of synesthesia in tracers?\n\nTo elaborate a little: The first question is about the rate of decay of phosphenes as a function of the dose and the time since the presentation of the stimuli. The GIF at the top of this page assumes an exponential gamma-corrected decay function.\nThe second question goes a little deeper, and it inquires about the way in which successive after-images of simple features (such as color and brightness) interact. If you first show a red square followed by a yellow one, do you then experience two overlapping but unblended colors? Or do you experience the average of the two (a hue of orange)? (If you know the answer from first-hand experience, please comment below!)\nAccording to abundant anecdotal evidence (erowid, PsychonautWiki, r/psychonaut, etc.) the kind of perceptual objects that linger in one’s experiential field is dose-dependent. On small doses only colors and edges linger, while on higher doses you may experience emotions, faces, abstract concepts and even ontological qualia for many more seconds than normal. But what is the precise equation that describes this?\nThe fourth question is getting into more serious and difficult-to-research territory. Namely, we would want to know how different features interact with one another once they are lingering in one’s experiential field. If you first look at the blue sky and then look at a white cube, do you perceive a blue cube? More stunningly: If you think about the concept of recursion and then look at a tree, do you see recursion in the tree? (anecdotally, this definitely happens). The amazing thing about this particular question is that it may get at the very reason why consciousness was recruited by natural selection for information-processing purposes: There are some qualia that can be locally bound and some that can’t. This determines the range of constraints with which our mind implements constraint satisfaction solvers. But that’s a story for another post.\nFinally, studying synesthesia during psychedelic experiences will almost certainly require the combination of neuro-imaging (such as fMRI) and quality psychophysics. I will explore this question further at a later time.\nAnswering the Questions\nIn order to answer most of the above questions, we can use the following paradigm: In order to test a theory you will want to (1) create interesting animations that produce particular effects, (2) create simulations of how these animations should look like under psychedelic vision, and (3) ask participants to rate the degree of similarity between the actual and predicted experiences.\nFor example, the GIFs below illustrate how an image might be seen if after-images are additive in nature. In other words, if you do experience orange when you flash red and yellow in quick succession, we can predict that the image on the left would be seen as the image on the right while on LSD. Is this so? I don’t know! Let me know if you happen to try it out.\n\n\n \nAnswering these questions using this and other paradigms will be very valuable to neuroscience.***\nTextures (Once Again)\nIn Psychophysics for Psychedelic Research: Textures we discussed how we can use psychophysical tools and computational models in order to measure deficits and enhancements in our visual pattern recognition ability while under the influence of LSD. This is done by measuring the size of the Just Noticeable Differences (JND) for each of the summary statistics our visual system can recognize in peripheral vision. I have yet to collect real data from people under the influence, but thankfully the paradigm is already fleshed out. (Dear psychophysical researcher reading this blog, please feel free to use this approach!). Presumably both textures and after-images can be used to encode information that only high people can read.\nA proof of concept for how to do this would be to encode information in binary code: Take a set of summary statistics that high people are good at distinguishing (and sober people confuse). Then show pairs of textures, one on the left and one on the right, so that the texture on the right has either the same or different summary statistics as the one on the left. If the textures are different then that encodes a 0. And if they are the same, that encodes a 1. Make sure that this particular summary statistic difference is only noticeable by people on psychedelics and you will have a state-dependent visual binary encryption!\nSince you can communicate anything using a binary sequence, you can use this to provide any information you may want. But will your zonked friends be able to string together 1024 1s and 0s in order to decode a verbal message? Unlikely.\n\n\nAs the sole way of communicating information, textures are an unlikely candidate. But they may fit well as a component of a complex array of stimuli. If we can answer questions (3) and (4) we may be able to flash textures in sequence in such a way that their summary statistics are combined. While a pair of textures may not provide a lot of information, a sequence of them may overlap in such a way that high-level features begin to appear.\nHence, maybe we can build a sequence of textures that will make a person on LSD experience a particular face, or a dog. The sober person will remain clueless, though, since the consecutive textures fail to become integrated into a coherent percept.\nUsing Text\nAccording to Shulgin there was a study conducted in the 60s that showed that people on psilocybin can read a text with fewer letters. What does this mean? Take a random text like a children’s story. Then remove X% of letters from it at random (substituting them by an underscore to show that a letter is missing).\nEvery person has a comprehension threshold: A 55-percenter would only be able to read texts that have 55% or more of their letters remaining. If that person takes psilocybin, then the comprehension threshold may drop to, say, 44%. This test should be particularly easy to replicate since it does not require any sort of image processing. Would you be interested in building an online test that determines your comprehension threshold? If you do, make sure to ask “are you on a psychedelic currently?” and collect the data!\nPerhaps this generalizes to other areas of verbal comprehension. For instance, can you understand spoken words with more syllables taken out? What about sign language?\nInspired Work\nThese are just a few promising approaches. I am confident that by opening this idea up to the broader academic and psychedelic community a lot more ideas will blossom. If you were inspired by this article to build your own psychophysical toolkit, make sure to let me know in the comments below. And remember: I’m always looking for collaborators. \n\n* LSD here is a shorthand for psychedelics in general.\n** Control Interrupt Model of Psychedelic Action: In his awesome book called Psychedelic Information Theory, James Kent argues that the visual and cognitive components of psychedelic experiences can be explained as the effect of subtle disruptions to the inhibitory control cycle of perception. He calls this theory the Control Interrupt Model of Psychedelic Action. The basic idea is that in order for our experience of the world to be linear and stable there must be mechanisms in place that regulate the overall loop of consciousness. In other words, when we open our eyes, the image in out visual field does not become arbitrarily brighter over time. Nor is it the case that our visual field gets as bright as it can if you give it enough time. Rather, we have in place a negative feedback mechanism involving lateral inhibition and inhibitory projections from the cortex to the thalamus that regulates the brightness of our experience.\nThis inhibitory control mechanism occurs a discrete number of times per second. Therefore “control interruption” caused by psychedelics, in this model, is conceived as a periodical failure of inhibitory control that allows aspects of one’s experience to be sustained for longer than usual. The frequency of control interruption is specific to the psychedelic used. As the article conjures, salvia and nitrous oxide produce control interruption at a frequency of 8-11 and 12-15 Hz, respectively. On the other hand, DMT disrupts control at a much higher frequency (24-30+ Hz). This control interrupt creates “a standing hallucinogenic interference pattern in the consciousness of the subject”.\n*** As argued by Julien Dubois  and Rufin VanRullen in “Visual Trails: Do the Doors of Perception Open Periodically?” tracers may be very significant when it comes to reverse-engineering the human visual system. How many frames per second do we experience? How long do the images last in the visual field? Does this effect generalize to high-level features, or is it specific to colors and edges? Thus, building psychedelic communication tools would be of great value to neuroscience.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/05/22/how-to-secretly-communicate-with-people-on-lsd/", "title": "How to secretly communicate with people on LSD", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-05-22T09:16:04+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=27", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6fa49b881ca19fae98f5ecde8e773e01", "summary": []}
{"text": "Generalized Wada Test and the Total Order of Consciousness\n\nIn a Wada test a single hemisphere is sedated with sodium amobarbital. While the sedated hemisphere is unresponsive, a cognitive examination is conducted on the other hemisphere. This test is done to determine whether performing an ablative surgery on a given hemisphere is a viable treatment for epileptic seizures. By using the Wada test, one can avoid creating irreversible damage in areas of the brain crucial for modern day life, such as language production regions.\n\nThe Generalized Wada Test\nThe thought of targeting an isolated brain region for drug therapy is very stimulating. But do we have to sedate it? Sodium amobarbital may have useful properties that makes it a good fit for the Wada test. But it is unlikely to be the only substance that can be used. More broadly, there seem to be a variety of compounds that can be used for intracarotid drug delivery.\nIn all likelihood there must be a number of psychedelic compounds that could selectively affect brain regions via intracarotid delivery. One thought is to inject 2C-B (or whichever psychedelic has the desired pharmacological properties) on one hemisphere so that a person can compare the two sides of her visual field. This way, she would be able to compare side-by-side the features and patterns highlighted by the algorithms of her visual system (which would, presumably, be different on each side). In turn, this will enable us to catalogue more precisely the specific differences in visual experience under the influence of several drugs.\nEven more generally, one could also make use of additional brain interventions such as tDCS, ultrasound, optogenetcs, etc. For example, imagine using ketamine and tDCS on the right hemisphere while the left receives ultrasound stimulation. We have a combinatorial explosion. A good one. I call this the Generalized Wada Test (WGT).\n\nPhilosophical Applications of the Generalized Wada Test\nThis technique presents a striking possibility: approaching philosophical problems empirically. More specifically, this technique might be used to:\n\nTest the properties of phenomenal binding, and\n Allow “incommensurable” experiences to “experience each other” as the halves of a unitary consciousness\n\nPhenomenal binding can be put under a microscope by using a GWT to infer the necessary chemical properties that brain regions require in order to enable the integration of phenomenal features into unitary experiential wholes. The speed at which binding takes place between the hemispheres could also be quantified. If phenomenal binding is not possible between two given states of consciousness, that would also be very valuable information for consciousness research.\nWith regards to the second possibility…\n\nIs there a Total Order of Subjective Preferences?\nTake two states of consciousness A and B. Suppose we use a GWT to make A manifest in the left hemisphere, while B does so in the right. The subject as a whole is asked to decide which of the two states of consciousness is subjectively preferable. If A is preferred over B, then a directed edge from B to A is added to the graph (with a weight proportional to the certainty/degree of preference). By adding the corresponding weighted edge between every pair of states of consciousness inducible on a GWT we would map a large portion of the state-space of consciousness available to humans. Let’s call this graph the directed network of subjective preferences.\nNow, once we have fully populated such graph… would it actually be a directed acyclic graph (DAG)? Could we extract a Total Order? In other words, does the directed network of subjective preferences reveal a proper order of experiences from least to most preferred?\nCan we make a universal scale of subjective preferability? Is it possible to infer a scale that, as David Pearce would call it, shows us the utility function of the universe?\nBut what if we find cycles?\n\nHedonic Tone\nEven though there is a very close relationship between bliss and activity in the outer shell of the nucleus accumbens (and various other nearby hedonic hot-spots), it is not yet clear whether all pleasurable, blissful or otherwise subjectively valuable states are triggered by the activation of this area. We know that classic psychedelics, for example, do not have pharmacological dopaminergic or opiodergic action, and thus don’t activate the nucleus accumbens directly. And yet, people do report ecstatic and blissful states of consciousness on LSD…\nIt is not yet clear whether that bliss is mediated by hedonic hot-spot activity (thankfully, we may soon find out). If psychedelic bliss is fundamentally dissociated from dopaminergic and opiodergic activity, what would that say about the nature of pleasure? Could there be higher levels of bliss that are unrelated to current neurobiological models of subjective reward? What if everyone on acid bliss says that acid bliss is better than heroine bliss, while everyone on heroine bliss says the opposite? What do we make of Dostoevsky’s epileptic bliss?\nFor several instants I experience a happiness that is impossible in an ordinary state, and of which other people have no conception. I feel full harmony in myself and in the whole world, and the feeling is so strong and sweet that for a few seconds of such bliss one could give up ten years of life, perhaps all of life.\nI felt that heaven descended to earth and swallowed me. I really attained god and was imbued with him. All of you healthy people don’t even suspect what happiness is, that happiness that we epileptics experience for a second before an attack.\nNothing short of a Generalized Wada Test would be able to approach these questions.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/05/01/generalized-wada-test-and-the-total-order-of-consciousness/", "title": "Generalized Wada Test and the Total Order of Consciousness", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-05-01T19:45:22+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=27", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0a6440a0a5418ca3708de6d9b04122be", "summary": []}
{"text": "State-space of drug effects\n\nA project I have always been interested in doing is creating a data-driven representation of the state-space of subjective effects caused by drugs of all types.\nNow I have the know-how for doing that. I just need to gather the data. Help me by answering this 90 second anonymous survey where you are asked to rate a drug you’ve taken. If you are feeling generous, answer it multiple times, choosing a different drug every time.\nThe survey is here, and it will be open until May 31st.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/04/30/state-space-of-drug-effects/", "title": "State-space of drug effects", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-04-30T20:52:32+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=27", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "b441e0b9462530783fc7fb6018ffbf50", "summary": []}
{"text": "Psychophysics for Psychedelic Research: Textures\n\nIn this post I will provide an account of my personal research project to understand the algorithms that underly human visual pattern-recognition. This project is multidisciplinary in nature, combining paradigms from three fields: (1) the analysis and synthesis of textures, (2) psychophysics and (3) psychedelic research. I will explain in detail how these areas can synergistically help us understand the computational properties of consciousness. In the process of doing so I will describe some of the work I have done in this direction.\n\n\n\ntl;dr: With texture synthesis algorithms we can control the statistical features present in textures. By using an odd-one-out paradigm where participants have to find the “different texture” we can identify the statistical signatures of the visual patterns people can perceive. Collecting these signatures under various states of consciousness will reveal the information processing limitations of visual experience. It may turn out that some patterns can only be seen on LSD (psilocybin, mescaline, etc.), and this information will inform a general theory of vision’s algorithms, expanding the scope we have studied so far and suggesting relevant applications of psychedelic consciousness.\nIntroduction to Spatial Patterns\nThe world is patterned. In fact, it is so patterned, that it is difficult to identify natural surfaces that have no perceptible regularities. The grass, the trunk of trees, the surface of rocky mountains, the dancing and dissolving of the clouds. All of these natural scenes are full of regularities. For hundreds of millions of years animals on this planet have existed in an environment where regularities are not inconsequential: being able to use or detect camouflage is a matter of life or death to some species. The insects who hide between the leaves pretending to be part of the scene are in an evolutionary arms race against predators and their sensory apparatus. (Here is a neat collection of insect camouflage). Arguably, there are strong evolutionary selection pressures that push predator’s visual system into adapting to recognize the differences between the scene’s visual statistics and the prey’s body appearance.\nOther widespread examples for the evolutionary relevance of pattern recognition can be found: Birds may take advantage of the look of cloud formations to determine if they should fly or find refuge, herbivores may seek only plants with specific visual properties to avoid poisonous lookalikes and parasites, the health of potential mates can be assessed by the uniformity of their fur patterns. You get the idea.\nNot surprisingly, you today can look at a plain rock and see a lot of visual properties pointed out by patterns you can perceive. Unfortunately, something has kept us quiet about this aspect of our perception: most of these properties are hard to verbalize. Often, you will be able to tell apart two kinds of rocks by grasping the subtle visual differences between them, but at the same time still be unable to explain what makes them different.\nWhat exactly is going on in your mind/brain when you are recognizing characteristic features in textures? We don’t know how the information is processed, why we perceive the features we perceive, or even how the various features are put together in a unified (or semi-unified) conscious representation. The hints we do have, however, are precious.\nReceptive Fields\nA big hint we can build on is that many neurons in the primary visual cortex (of cats, monkeys, and probably all mammals) respond to visual stimuli in specific areas of the visual field. For a given neuron, the shape of this region is an instance of a well-studied canonical function, as shown in the images below. The area of the visual field a neuron best responds to (by becoming excited or inhibited) is called its receptive field, and the canonical function is the Gabor filter.\nAs far back as the early 60s, research has been conducted to map the receptive fields of neurons by inserting electrodes into the brain of animals and presenting them with visual input of lines and shapes. In 1961 D. H. Hubel and T. N. Wiesel showed for the first time that neurons in a cat’s cortex and lateral geniculate have receptive fields that look like this:\n\nThe crosses indicate regions in which stimuli excites the neuron’s activity while the triangles represent regions in which stimuli inhibits the neuron’s activity. Due to the arrangement of these excitatory and inhibitory regions, these neurons functionally work as edge-detectors. A computer rendering of these receptive fields looks like this:\n\nSince then a tremendous amount of research has repeatedly confirmed the existence of such neurons, and also uncovered a large number of more complex receptive fields. Some neurons even respond specifically to abstract concepts and high-level constructs. More recently, the simple receptive fields shown above have been modeled as Gabor filters in quantitative simulations. This, in turn, has been successfully used to build brain activity decoders that reconstruct the image that a person is seeing by assuming that the activity of fMRI’s voxels approximately matches the added activity of neurons with Gabor receptive fields (see: Identifying natural images from human brain activity by Kay, Naselaris, Prenger and Gallant).\nThus we can say that we know that a large number of neurons in our visual cortex have Gabor receptive fields and that the collective activity of these neurons contains enough information to at least approximately reconstruct the image a person is seeing (well enough to identify it from a pool of candidates).\nWe can’t jump from these findings alone to a global theory of visual processing. That is, without also considering what people actually experience. It may turn out, for example, that the activity of the visual cortex contains a lot of information that can be decoded using machine learning techniques applied to fMRI’s voxel brightness. And yet, simultaneously, it could be that people do not consciously represent all of the {decodable} information.\nLikewise, a priori we cannot rule out the possibility that some of the information we consciously experience is not actually decodable using brain activity alone. (A quick remark: this may be the case even if one assumes physicalism. Why this is the case will be explained in a future article).\nTo illustrate this example we can consider the information available in the retina and before it. The light that reaches the outer surface of our eyes contains all of the information available to our mind/brain to instantiate our visual experience. Yet, there is a lot of information there that is ultimately irrelevant for our conscious experience. For instance, there is infrared and ultraviolet light, as well as light that does not make it to our retina, light that fails to elicit an action potential, and so on. If you can discriminate between a really hot and a cold metal using the infrared signature of the light that reaches the eye, you have certainly not shown that we perceive infrared light or that we use it to make distinctions. It merely means that such information is sufficient. We wouldn’t yet know that we actually use it or that it shapes our experience.\nBut how exactly do we develop an experiment to infer the statistical properties represented by our experience? Here is where the analysis and synthesis of textures becomes relevant.\nAnalysis and Synthesis of Textures\nThe idea of using oriented Gabor-like filters (also known as “steerable pyramids”) to analyze and synthesize visual textures was, as far as I know, first proposed by David J. Heeger and James R. Bergen in “Pyramid-based texture analysis/synthesis.” Texture analysis in this context means the use of algorithms to characterize the properties of textures to capture what makes them unique. In turn, texture synthesis, refers to the application of texture analysis to produce an arbitrarily large patch of a synthesized (synthetic) texture so that the synthetic and original texture are as indistinguishable as possible. Of course whether something is “indistinguishable” or not is to a certain degree subjective. Here the criteria for indistinguishability between the original and the synthetic textures is whether a person comparing them side by side could confuse them. In the following section I address how to operationalize and formalize the indistinguishability between patterns using psychophysics.\nThis particular texture synthesis algorithm works by forcing a white noise image (of any size) to conform to the statistics obtained in the texture analysis step. This is done iteratively, matching the histograms of the synthesized canvas to the various statistics computed from the original texture. I recommend reading the paper to gain a better grasp of what the algorithm does, and to see some stunning examples of the output of this algorithm.\nThe use of steerable pyramids was later refined by Portilla & Simoncelli‘s texture synthesis algorithm, which currently plays an important role in my research. This algorithm extends Heeger et al. by including additional statistics to enforce, which are (roughly) computed by measuring the autocorrelation between the various components of the steerable pyramid texture representation. Below you can see two pairs of pictures (two originals and their corresponding same-sized synthetics versions), that I recreated using Potilla & Simoncelli’s matlab code:\n\n\n\n\nAs you can see, the original and synthetic images are fairly similar to each other. Close inspection is sufficient to notice deadly differences. If you only use your peripheral vision it is very challenging to see major differences.\nPsychophysics\nPsychophysics is the study of the relationship between physical stimuli and experience (and often behavior). Thanks to psychophysics we now have:\n\nA good approximate map of the phenomenal space of color (CIELAB)\nA strong grasp of the nature of color metamers, which in turn underlies all of our color display technologies.\nThe ability to predict the subjective intensity of the experience elicited by stimuli as a function of the energy of the stimulus (see Weber–Fechner law).\n\nA very powerful idea in psychophysics is the use of just-noticeable differences (JND): Carry a bucket of water. How much water should I add to it so that you are capable of perceiving a difference in the weight of the bucket? Look at a pair of identical light sources. How much blue (in this case, the specific and pure frequency of light that elicits the blue qualia) can I add to one of the lights before you perceive them as being differently colored? Pinch your skin with two needles. How far can their pointy part be before you perceive two needles rather than one?\nIn these cases, though, there is a natural (and sometimes unique) dimension along which the stimuli can be varied in order to compute the JND. What about visual textures? Here the problem becomes non-trivial. In what way should we change a texture? And how should we accomplish such? There is no clear and obvious scale for describing textures. So what can we do?\nPsychophysics of Textures (Take 1):\nBefore learning about steerable pyramid representations of textures I developed a variety of psychophysical tests to identify the JND between textures. I did this by changing the value of parameters of images with ground-truth statistical properties. If you are curious, feel free to try the first iteration of my experimental paradigm. (Note: I am not collecting data from that experiment, so you should not expect to contribute to science by finishing the task. That said, you can have fun, and a pop-up window with your raw score will appear when you finish both tasks). The average accuracy of the texture discrimination part is about 13/21 (with a chance performance of 3/21), while the performance in the numerical pattern completion task is about 3/5 (with a near 0/5 expected performance when answering randomly).\nOne of the statistical properties I was changing in the stimuli was the variance of a 2D Gaussian process I implemented with a python script and the magic of Gibbs sampling. Thus, a subset of the images I tested were complete noise except for the first order statistic of local autocorrelation created by the differently parametrized Gaussian process. Here are a couple of examples of such patterns:\n\n\n\nThese pictures, it turns out, are relatively easy to tell apart when the parameters are sufficiently different. There is a threshold of similarity in the variance parameter after which people cannot distinguish between them. A nice property of this particular method is that you can be sure that if people do recognize the differences, it is because they are somehow extracting features that are a direct consequence of a different value for the variance parameter.\nThe textures above instantiate the simplest statistical differences that can be created, after the mean and standard deviation of the pixel values. To explore more broadly a wider variety of patterns, I also created textures with fairly complex parametrizable Turing machines (TMs). This, unfortunately, does not lend itself to a clear analysis. In brief, this is because changing a single parameter of such TMs can produce profoundly different results with unclear ground-truth properties:\n\n\n\nWhat information could I gain from the fact that changing x, y or z parameter in a Turing machine by a, b, or c amounts enables accurate discrimination between textures? In principle one could try to explain the performance obtained by making an a posteriori analysis of the correlation between a variety of statistics measured in the textures. But since the textures were not created to have specific statistical properties, the distribution of such properties will not be ideal to find JNDs or discriminability thresholds.\nEven if you do this, you will still have more problems. The images are more different (and different in more ways) than what your texture analysis algorithm is capable of detecting. Thus the reason why people can tell these textures apart is not possible to extract from the statistical differences you measure between them. At least not without being extremely lucky and hitting the visual features that matter.\nAnd here, I was stuck several months.\nPsychophysics of Textures (Take 2):\nAfter learning about the steerable pyramid model, the work of Eero Simoncelli and the state of the art in fMRI decoding of visual experience, I decided to shift gears and approach the problem with some of the best of the tools created so far.\nIt turns out that the concept of texture metamers had been developed to describe the perceptual indistinguishability between textures in peripheral vision. Taken from here, the following two images are texture metamers. The images look the same when you center your vision in either of the central red dots. Close foveal inspection of the image, however, will reveal that these are very different pictures!\n\n\nA specific study caught my attention, and I decided to replicate it as a final class project. Specifically, Texture synthesis and perception: Using computational models to study texture representations in the human visual system by Benjamin J. Balas. I attempted to replicate some of the main results of that study using Mechanical Turk. A full account of the experimental procedure, results and discussion can be found in this wiki here, (written for Stanford’s Psych 221 – Applied Vision Systems). To see the actual experiment performed, try it out here: Replication (and the github repository).\nThe main idea goes as follows: If textural metamerism can be verified using a given texture synthesis algorithm, then we can be reasonably certain that the algorithm is capturing a large component of what makes textures different from a human point of view. In particular, Benjamin Balas noted that Prtilla & Simoncelli’s algorithm could be “lesioned” by failing to enforce specific statistical features obtained in the texture analysis step. In this way, one can purposefully fail to match specific statistical features between the original and synthesized texture, and then measure how this partial texture synthesis algorithm affects the performance of texture discrimination in humans.\nFor illustration, here is a set of possible texture synthesis “lesions:”\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe operationalization of the experiment used an “odd one out” paradigm: in each trial, three images are presented for 250 milliseconds at 3.5 degrees of vision from the fovea (each image being 2 degree wide in diameter). Two of the three images will come from the same group (ex. two original textures, two marginals removed, etc.). The remaining image is the odd one out. The study measures how often participants detect the odd one out depending on the statistical feature that is not enforced in the synthesized textures (for a more in-depth description: wiki).\nOverall the performance of the participants in my replication was much closer to chance than Balas’ results. That siad, qualitatively the replication was successful. Removing the marginals is the lesion that increases performance the most. Magnitude correlation comes in second place. All of the other conditions are at chance level (as far as my sample n=60 with 60 trials each can discern).\nAs you can see, this specific paradigm is now much more robust than before. And the paradigm is not hard to translate for application in psychedelic research. Unfortunately, Portilla & Simoncelli’s algorithm only creates texture metamers for the peripheral vision in pre-attentive conditions. Upon central inspection, nearly every synthesized texture is at least somewhat distinguishable from the original texture.\nThe more interesting problem, as I see it, is found in our capacity to see differences between textures upon close and careful examination. This, I think, addresses more directly the subject of this blog. Namely, what is the information that we can represent and distinguish at the (resolution) peak of human consciousness? I imagine that there must be statistical features that we simply do not perceive even when we are looking at them directly and using all of our attention. What is the set of properties that our everyday consciousness can represent centrally?\nPsychedelic Research\nTo understand how a machine works, it helps to know what happens when you break it. You can’t ignore the extra settings and claim you’ve got a theory of everything. Would we be satisfied with the work of neuroscientists and psychologists if they only studied people who are colorblind? They may claim that they have “the essentials” of vision. That color is just a perturbation in the “optimal basics.” And yet, today we know that color plays a relevant computational role in visual discrimination. Suffices to mention that people with grapheme-color synesthesia have an improved performance in “odd one out” identification tests like this (find all the 2’s as fast as possible):\n\nThis is because fast low-level association between graphemes and colors help them see clearly and quickly the graphemes that are different. Likewise, every variety of conscious experience may potentially play a computationally relevant role in specific situations. A priori, no variety of consciousness can be dismissed as irrelevant.\nThus, to understand, model and engineer consciousness, we should not prematurely close varieties of consciousness to study. Not only would that prevent us from finding out about consciousness more generally. It may also conspire that we will never understand even what we do decide to study, simply because key pieces of the puzzle are found elsewhere.\nAnother point is that even though sober human vision is a special case of general vision (and general vision-like qualia), general vision may still be relatively small. The general principles and conditions for vision to work in the first place may be somewhat restricted. Unless the elements are placed just right, the visual system breaks down, at least when it comes to fulfilling a computationally meaningful purpose. Thus, psychedelic research of visual experience may help us quickly distinguish what is essential from what is incidental in vision.\nBy introducing a psychedelic substance into the nervous system of a person, a remarkable set of visual effects are produced. To anyone interested in seeing a good representation of the way in which various psychedelics affect a person’s conscious experience I highly recommend seeing Disregard Everything I Say’s entry on the visual components of a psychedelic experience (while you are at it, I recommend also checking out his/her post on the corresponding cognitive components of a psychedelic experience). These images will provide a great intuition pump about the kind of beast we are facing to anyone who is psychedelic-drug-naïve (and hopefully inspire a sense of “WOW, you can represent some of what you experience after all!” in those who are less psychedelic-drug-naïve).\nGiven the same visual input presented to a particular person, a psychedelic substance will in many cases drastically shift the interpretation of such stimuli. Both the interpretation (specifically, what an image is about) and how the image looks and feels tend to vary in synchrony. Likewise, people feel more able to see personal issues in a new light by interpreting them with new schemas and from a different level of awareness. Personally, I suspect that there is a strong and measurable connection between the fluidity of interpretation of personal issues, and the fluidity of interpretation of visual experience. Perhaps all phenomenal constructs are affected in a similar way: By breaking down the previously enforced patterns of thought and perception and opening the way to seeing things differently.\nAll of the above, while probably true, is still far too vague for a scientific theory. Given our set of tools, and experimental paradigms, to me it makes a lot of sense to start studying the effects of psychedelics in terms of texture perception. As we develop more and better texture analysis/synthesis algorithms, we will acquire a larger repertoire of mathematical properties that describe what is seen during a psychedelic experience. My hope is that we will someday know exactly how to simulate a visual trip.\nWhy care about psychedelics? Evolution already created the optimal vision system!\nEvolutionary selection pressures on perceptual systems do not guarantee that information processing tasks will be solved optimally. In fact, “optimal” only really makes sense in relation to some metric you choose. In some way, everything created by the evolutionary process will be optimal in the sense that is produces the local maximization of inclusive fitness (admittedly it’s more complicated than that). But this is just a tautological notion: Sure evolution is optimal at doing what evolution does. Likewise, rocks have found the optimal way to be themselves. Our visual system works optimally, if you define optimal in terms of 20/20 every-day visual experience.\nInstead, it makes more sense if we focus on the specific computational trade-offs that various resource allocation methods and designs provide. We can certainly predict that the particular set of algorithms that our visual system employs to detect visual patterns will satisfy some properties. For instance, they will be good as survival tools in the African Savanna. But just as for our hardwired tastes in food (and our default emotional palette), survival value in the ancestral environment is not necessarily what we currently need or want. And just as it would make sense to modify what we enjoy eating the most (moving away from sugar) to adapt to the current post-industrial environment, it may also turn out to be the case that our visual system is miscalibrated for the tasks we want to solve, and the joys and meaning we would like to experience today.\nPsychedelics change our visual system in many ways, some of them more predictable than others. Some people report that small doses of psychedelics increase one’s overall visual acuity (this has yet to be verified empirically). Although counter-intuitive at first, this cannot be ruled out, again, simply because of evolution does not rule out things of this nature. After all, one of the main constraints placed on animals in natural environments is caloric consumption. If a higher visual acuity is possible with your current brain, the marginal benefit such acuity adds may still not surpass the marginal loss of calories that result from excessive brain activity.\nAdditionally, while higher doses of psychedelics tend to impair many aspects of visual perception (with people on Erowid explaining how extreme tracers can make it hard to walk), low and moderate doses do not have simple one-sided effects even when it comes to accurately representing the world around us. Rather than simply breaking up the pattern recognition capabilities of the visual system, small and moderate doses seem to also open up additional kinds of patterns up for inspection. Pareidolia, for example, is greatly enhanced. Thus, “connecting dots and edges” to match the outline of higher-level phenomenologies (like faces in the mud) happens with ease. Whether this is good or bad depends on the context, and the specific task one is trying to solve.\nPerceptual Enhancement via Psychedelics\nWe have theoretical and anecdotal reasons to suspect psychedelics may turn out to be performance-enhancing in certain visual tasks. We also already have quantitative evidence that this is the case. In the 60s Harman and Fadiman conducted a study about the creativity and problem-solving properties of psychedelics. The study included a paper and pencil component in which the following tests were administered: Purdue Creativity, the Miller Object Visualization, and the Witkin Embedded Figures. The authors conclude that “[m]ost apparent were enhanced abilities to recognize patterns, to minimize and isolate visual distractions, and to maintain visual memory in spite of confusing changes of form and color.” Specifically, the Witkin test is singled as a test in which the ingestion of mescaline produced a consistent performance improvement (p<0.01).\nExample of a Witkin Embedded Figure. You have to determine if the left shape is in the right figure within 30 seconds.\nIn personal communication Fadiman has said that these tests were mostly a waste of time: They used one valuable hour of the problem-solving session. I disagree. After 50 years, those results are incredibly valuable to me and the next wave of computational researchers of the mind. I think that the recorded performance enhancement is a key piece of information. We certainly do not expect an enhancement on all areas of cognition and perception (we know, for example, that reaction time and verbal fluency are impaired). Identifying the kinds of tasks that do receive a boost can inform future research. In future posts I will explain my theory for why Witkin Embedded Figures test was particularly benefited from a psychedelic, and how we can create a new test that takes this into account.\nNew Possible Protocols for Psychedelic Research\nNowadays it is very hard to obtain the required permits and affiliations to conduct academic research on psychedelic consciousness. The key rate-limiting factor is the restrictions that apply to research with controlled substances. Thankfully, we do happen to be living at the beginning of a psychedelic renaissance. It is not hard to imagine that as psychedelics start to (re-)enter the mainstream in psychiatry, a large number of clinical trials will be conducted. In principle, a collaboration can be accorded between a psychophysics lab and a clinical research group to conduct psychophysical assessments during the course of treatment.\nClinical trials for medical applications of psychedelics, though, are still limited in scope and focus. Eventually the medical applications of psychedelics will run out and it will no longer be possible to enroll patients into psychophysical studies. Thus, either more permissive rules and regulations will emerge and society’s rules will be more lax, or we will potentially endure decades or centuries of unnecessary barriers to scientific discoveries about consciousness.\n\nAs it turns out, tens (if not hundreds) of millions of persons have tried psychedelic substances. Interest is not slowing down, and no propaganda effort save for literal brain-washing will prevent people from developing a genuine interest in the field. There will be millions of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of willing researchers. As I envision in The Psychedelic Future of Consciousness, the future of consciousness studies will be nothing like what it is today. Once those who are interested are given the opportunity to study psychedelics seriously, the research panorama will look very differently.\nBut What to Do in the Meantime?\nInvestigating the psychophysics of texture perception more thoroughly may require at least mild to moderate doses for noticeable effects, and a period of examination at a time when acute effects are present. How to overcome the hurdles ahead of any current academic investigation of this nature? This ultimately depends on the specific constraints required for the study. It is true that people would have to be high on LSD (or Mescaline, mushrooms, 2C-B, etc.) while they perform the experiment. But who says that they have to conduct the experiment in your presence? That you have to give them the substance yourself? Without the typical background assumptions that are assumed in psychophysics research labs, can we do anything else?\nI suspect that we can do much better. We can come up with protocols that side-step current obstacles. We need to be creative. And I do have some ideas, with varying levels of plausibility for how to implement psychedelic research in legal, viable and immediate ways. Consider, for example, how James Fadiman has been collecting hundreds of micro-dose reports via email without any difficulty for many years. He is taking advantage of the fact that the optimal format of micro-dose reports tends to be “summary and retrospective” narrative. A single dose on a single day on a single person is not likely to be life-changing. So his particular line of research is well suited for the means available to him. Likewise, as I requested in the psychedelic experience of visual textures post, people’s subjective judgements of visual textures while high on LSD can be recorded online. These are just two examples of how non-mainstream research approaches can be taken to study psychedelics. Unfortunately, both of these protocols lack proper controls and standardized settings. But this is all I will say for now.\nStay tuned: In a future post I will propose a set of protocols for independent studies on psychedelics, including additional methods for studying psychedelic visuals.\nThanks for reading! \nIf you would like to be a collaborator with me, please email me by finding my contact info in the contact section of this blog. We’ll take it from there.\nNote: If any link is broken, please leave a comment and I’ll provide an updated version. Thanks!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/04/20/psychophysics-for-psychedelic-research-textures/", "title": "Psychophysics for Psychedelic Research: Textures", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-04-20T16:00:00+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=28", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e755b94644b5cad76bdc07b069319e3a", "summary": []}
{"text": "I only vote for politicians who have used psychedelics. EOM.\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/04/20/i-only-vote-for-politicians-who-have-used-psychedelics-eom/", "title": "I only vote for politicians who have used psychedelics. EOM.", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-04-20T04:01:11+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=28", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "6c8ea9b79adc8d7b230c9e7f22b84365", "summary": []}
{"text": "Why not computing qualia?\n\nQualia is the given. In our minds, qualia comparisons and interactions are an essential component of our information processing pipeline. However, this is a particular property of the medium: Consciousness.\nDavid Marr, a cognitive scientist and vision researcher, developed an interesting conceptual framework to analyze information processing systems. This is Marr’s three levels of analysis:\nThe computational level describes the system in terms of the problems that it can and does solve. What does it do? How fast can it do it? What kind of environment does it need to perform the task?\nThe algorithmic level describes the system in terms of the specific methods it uses to solve the problems specified on the computational level. In many cases, two information processing systems do the exact same thing from an input-output point of view, and yet they are algorithmically very different. Even when both systems have near identical time and memory demands, you cannot rule out the possibility that they use very different algorithms. A thorough analysis of the state-space of possible algorithms and their relative implementation demands could rule out the use of different algorithms, but this is hard to do.\nThe implementation level describes the system in terms of the very substrate it uses. Two systems that perform the same exact algorithms can still differ in the substrate used to implement them.\nAn abacus is a simple information processing system that is easy to describe in terms of Marr’s three levels of analysis. First, computationally: the abacus performs addition, subtraction and various other arithmetic computations. Then algorithms: those used to process information involve moving {beds} along {sticks} (I use ‘{}’ to denote that the sense of these words is about their algorithmic-level abstractions rather than physical instantiation). And the implementation: not only can you choose from metallic and wooden abacus, you can also get your abacus implemented using people’s minds!\nWhat about the mind itself? The mind is an information processing system. At the computational level, the mind has a very general power. It can solve problems never before presented to it, and it can also design and implement computers to do narrow problems more efficiently. At the algorithmic level, we know very little about the human mind, though various fields center on this level. Computational psychology models the algorithmic and the computational level of the mind. Psychophysics, too, attempts to reveal the parameters of the algorithmic component of our minds and their relationship to parameters at the implementation level. And when we reason about logical problems, we do so using specific algorithms. And even counting is something that kids do with algorithms they learn.\nThe implementation level of the mind is a very tricky subject. There is a lot of research on the possible implementation of algorithms that a neural network abstraction of the brain can instantiate. This is an incredibly important part of the puzzle, but it cannot fully describe the implementation of the human mind. This is because some of the algorithms performed by the mind seem to be implemented with phenomenal binding: The simultaneous presence of diverse phenomenologies in a unified experience. When we make decisions we compare how pleasant each option would be. And to reason, we bundle up sensory-symbolic representations within the scope of the attention of our conscious mind. In general, all algorithmic applications of sensations require the use of phenomenal binding in specific ways. The mind is implemented by a network of binding tendencies between sensations.\nA full theory of the mind will require a complete account of the computational properties of qualia. To obtain those we will have to bridge the computational and the implementation level descriptions. We can do this from the bottom up:\n\nAn account of the dynamics of qualia (to be able to predict the interactions between sensations just as we can currently predict how silicon transistors will behave) is needed to describe the implementation level of the mind.\nAn account of the algorithms of the mind (how the dynamics of qualia are harnessed to implement algorithms) is needed to describe the algorithmic level of the mind.\nAnd an account of the capabilities of the mind (the computational limits of qualia algorithms) is needed to describe the computational level of the mind.\n\nWhy not call it computing qualia? Computational theories of mind suggest that your conscious experience is the result of information processing per se. But information processing cannot account for the substrate that implements it. Otherwise you are confusing the first and the second level with the third. Even a computer cannot exist without first making sure that there is a substrate that can implement it. In the case of the mind, the fact that you experience multiple pieces of information at once is information concerning the implementation level of your mind, not the algorithmic or computational level.\nIsn’t information processing substrate-independent?\nNot when the substrate has properties needed for the specific information processing system at hand. If you go to your brian and replace one neuron at a time by a silicon neuron that is functionally identical, at what point would your consciousness disappear? Would it fade gradually? Or would nothing happen? Functionalists would say that nothing should happen since all the functions, locally and globally, are maintained throughout this process. But what if this is not possible?\nIf you start with a quantum computer, for example, then you have the problem that part of the computational horse-power is being produced by the very quantum substrate of the universe, which the computer harnesses. Replacing every component, one at a time, by a classical counter-part (a non-quantum chip with similar non-quantum properties), would actually lead to a crash. At some point the quantum part of the computer will break down and will no longer be useful.\nLikewise with the mind. If the substrate of the mind is actually relevant from a computational point of view, then replacing a brain by seemingly functionally identical components could also lead to an inevitable crash. Functionalists would suggest that there is no reason to think that there is anything functionally special about the mind. But phenomenal binding seems to be it. Uniting pieces of information in a unitary experience is an integral part of our information processing pipeline, and precisely that functionality is the one we do not know how to conceivably implement without consciousness.\n\nImplementing something with phenomenal binding, rather than implementing phenomenal binding (which is not possible)\n\nOn a related note: If you build a conscious robot and you don’t mind phenomenal binding, your robot will have a jumbled-up mind. You need to incorporate phenomenal binding in the pipeline of training. If you want your conscious robot to have a semantically meaningful interpretation of the sentence “the cat eats” you need to be able to bind its sensory-symbolic representations of cats and of eating to each other.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/04/19/why-not-computing-qualia/", "title": "Why not computing qualia?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-04-19T23:00:48+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=28", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0abb67e4ddbe7143aa757a28ca33faf3", "summary": []}
{"text": "David Pearce’s daily morning cocktail (2015)\n\n“Amineptine c. 200mg, selegiline 2 x 5mg, resveratrol 2 x 250mg, turmeric, blueberry, green tea extract, flaxseed oil, soya protein isolate, creatine, l-carnosine, optimised folate, LEF “Life-Extension” mix, 200mg ibuprofen; and a selection of various Linwoods products added to my black coffee and sugar-free Red Bull. \n“This cocktail would not suit everyone.”\nIn case you were wondering. Obtained from here.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/04/15/david-pearces-daily-morning-cocktail-2015/", "title": "David Pearce’s daily morning cocktail (2015)", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-04-15T02:37:14+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=28", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "5eccb9c53f56a9a80fce6456e87a4cff", "summary": []}
{"text": "Psychedelic Perception of Visual Textures\n\nOn March 24th 2015 Team Qualia Reverse Engineering (TQRE) went for a long walk within the Stanford campus and around Palo Alto. The purpose of this walk- the Pattern Walk -was to snap a picture of every interesting pattern (or texture) out there that got on our way. The following gallery contains 74 of these patterns. These display a wide range of texture properties: Natural/synthetic, regular/irregular, 2D/2.5D/3D, symmetric/asymmetric, structured/unstructured, etc.\nHere are a few observations: \n\nHuman languages do not have the necessary vocabulary (and conceptual primitives) to talk about visual textures adequately. When two images belong to the same category (say, “plants” vs. “rock tilings”), and have roughly similar first order statistics (mean, standard deviation, kurtosis, etc. of the RGB values) there is relatively little else to say about a texture in a way that a person would understand.\nOur visual system can recognize extraordinarily subtle properties that distinguish textures from one another. For instance, I bet you can recognize at an immediate experiential level the differences between picture 61 and 62. But can you verbalize such difference?\nMathematics, and statistics in particular, may provide helpful semantic seeds for describing patterns. Indeed, having a basic handle on a few mathematical concepts can leverage one’s ability to talk about the differences between textures. For example, compare images 43 and 44. They are perceptually very different. But how long would it take you to convey the difference to a random person? If there was a person who could only hear you, how would you signal that you are not talking about 43 but 44? If both of you know of the concept of concavity you might only need a few words! Without it, you’d be fairly lost.\n\nFancifully, we may someday produce a good vocabulary that can effectively allow us to talk about visual textures without having to be currently sharing the same (similar) visual experience.\nIn practice, we already have some vocabulary that accomplishes this, but it is very obscure and sufficiently technical that its widespread adoption is unrealistic. In particular, I encourage anyone interested in the topic to read “A Parametric Texture Model Based on Joint Statistics of Complex Wavelet Coefficients” by Javier Portilla and Eero P. Simoncelli. They analyze (and synthesize) visual textures by computing a set of highly descriptive statistical properties characteristic of the pattern in question.\nAs we will see in future posts, their model can be used to point out perceptible statistical features that are perceived as regularities by the human visual system. It may not be sexy to say “Hey Ma’m I really dig the Cross-scale phase statistics of the pattern in your dress.” For now, that’s what we have.\nIf you want to help me figure out how psychedelics affect your visual experience:\nPlease browse through these images by clicking on the first one and exploring the slideshow. See which images you like, which produce “odd or interesting visual effects” and which “stand out” in however way you want to define that. Feel free to comment right below any of the images (there is a comment section beneath each image when you click through them as a slideshow) to point out the peculiarities that you notice.\nCritically, also include your state of consciousness in the comment. If you took LSD (or any visually-affecting substance) two hours ago (or you are still high), it would be great if you could point that out. Please explain how you think that your visuals are affecting your experience of the various patterns. Everyone loves to talk about their LSD visuals. Now you can do it all you want! And your efforts may actually enable us to understand the way psychedelics affect the algorithms of human vision \nThe best case scenario: \nYou would make comments on these images while sober, and then add comments while high on a psychedelic (doesn’t have to by psychedelic – could be dissociative, though typing might be particularly hard in that condition). Point out the main differences between the textures as perceived on each of the states of consciousness you happen to be in. If you do decide to follow the above protocol, please provide information about the specific substance(s) you consumed and how long ago you did so.\nThat is, do this if you were planning on taking a hallucinogen to begin with. Independently of that, baseline data is still very valuable, so do add comments about these patterns even if you are sober and plan on staying sober \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn the following post I will explain how this Pattern Walk, the statistical analysis of visual textures, psychophysics and psychedelics can ultimately fit into the larger project of reverse-engineering the computational properties of consciousness.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/04/08/pattern-walk/", "title": "Psychedelic Perception of Visual Textures", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-04-08T04:32:59+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=28", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "56575bf128e0152fdd3e27312fde17d0", "summary": []}
{"text": "Should humans wipe out all carnivorous animals so the succeeding generations of herbivores can live in peace?\n\nThat was the Quora question.\nDavid Pearce’s answer:\n“Sentient beings shouldn’t hurt, harm, and kill each other. This isn’t an argument for mass genocide against cannibals or carnivores, but for dietary reform. Humans are prone to status quo bias. So let’s do a thought-experiment. Imagine we stumble across an advanced civilisation that has abolished predation, disease, famine, and all the horrors of primitive Darwinian life. The descendants of archaic lifeforms flourish unmolested in their wildlife parks – free living but not “wild”. Should we urge scrapping their regime of compassionate stewardship of the living world – and a return to asphyxiation, disembowelling and being eaten alive? Or is a happy biosphere best conserved intact?\n“Back here on Earth, the exponential growth of computer power entails that every cubic metre of the planet will shortly be accessible to surveillance and micro-management. In consequence, which life-forms and states of consciousness exist in tomorrow’s wildlife parks will be up to us. Mass-produced in vitro meat, the CRISPR revolution in biotechnology, and fertility regulation via cross-species immunocontraception mean there is no need to re-enact the traditional Darwinian horror story indefinitely. On some fairly modest assumptions, fertility regulation is ethically preferable to Malthusian methods of population control in humans and nonhuman alike.\n“Critics might claim that a genetically tweaked vegetarian lion isn’t “truly” a lion. But this is like saying non-Caucasians who lack the 1% to 3% Neanderthal DNA typical of Caucasians aren’t “truly” human. Or vice versa. In short, beware naive species essentialism.\n“For now this debate is fanciful. Before humans can start systematically helping sentient beings, we must stop systematically harming them. Thankfully, the in vitro meat revolution promises a world where factory-farms and slaughterhouses have been outlawed.  Before seriously contemplating high-tech Jainism, let’s shut the death factories.”", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/04/07/should-humans-wipe-out-all-carnivorous-animals-so-the-succeeding-generations-of-herbivores-can-live-in-peace/", "title": "Should humans wipe out all carnivorous animals so the succeeding generations of herbivores can live in peace?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-04-07T03:52:18+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=28", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "eb7883f0cd81b7f7dc6060d7bf2022eb", "summary": []}
{"text": "A workable solution to the problem of other minds\n\nDeciding whether other entities are also conscious is not an insoluble philosophical problem. It is tricky. A good analogy might be a wire puzzle. At a first glance, the piece you have to free looks completely locked. And yet a solution does exist, it just requires to represent a sufficiently large number of facts and features that our working memory is not enough.\n.\nUsually showing the solution once will not fully satisfy one’s curiosity. It takes some time to develop a personally satisfying account. And to do so, we need to unpack how the various components interact with one another. After a while the reason why the free piece is not locked becomes intuitive, and at the same time you may also encounter mathematical arguments and principles to complement your understanding.\nAt first, though, the free piece looks and feels locked.\nI think the problem of other minds is perceived similarly to a wire puzzle. At first it looks and feels insoluble. After a while, though, many suspect that the problem can be solved. This essay proposes a protocol that may point in the right direction. It could have some flaws as it is currently formulated, so I’m open to refinements of any kind. But I believe that it represents a drastic improvement over previous protocols, and it gets close to being a fully functioning proof of concept.\nStarting from the basics: An approach that is widely discussed is the application of a Turing test. But a Turing test has several serious flaws when used as a test of consciousness. First, many conscious entities can’t pass a Turing test. So we know that it could have a very poor recall (missing most conscious entities). This problem is also present in every protocol I’m aware of. The major problem with it is that when an entity passes a Turing test, this can be counted as probabilistic evidence in favor of a large number of hypothesis, and not only to the desired conclusion that “this entity is conscious.” In principle highly persuasive chatbots could hack your entity recognition module by presenting hyperstimuli created by analyzing your biases for styles of conversation.\nYour brain sees faces everywhere (cartoons, 2D computer screens, even clouds). It also sees entities where there are none. It might be much more simple to *trick* your judgement than actually create a sentient intelligence. Could the entity given the Turing test be an elaborate chatobot with no phenomenal binding? It seems likely that could take place.\nThus passing a Turing test is also not a guarantee that an entity is conscious. The method would have low recall and probably low accuracy too.\nThe second approach would be to simply *connect* your brain to the other entity’s brain (that is, of course, if you are not talking about a disembodied entity). We already have something like the Corpus Callosum, which seems to be capable of providing a bridge that solves the phenomenal binding problem between the hemispheres of a single person. In principle we could create a biologically similar, microfunctionally equivalent neural bridge between two persons.\nAssuming physicalism, it seems very likely that there is a way for this to be done. Here, rather than merely observing the other person’s conscious experience, the point of connecting would be to become one entity. Strong, extremely compelling personal identity problems aside (Who are you really? Can you expect to ‘survive’ after the union? If you are the merged entity, does that mean you were always the same consciousness as the one with whom you merged?, etc. More on this on later posts), this possibility opens up the opportunity to actually corroborate that another entity is indeed conscious.\nIndeed separate hemispheres can have very different opinions about the nature of reality. Assuming physicalism, why would it be the case that you can’t actually revert (or instantiate for the first time) the union between brains?\n\nThe previous idea has been proposed before. I think it is a significant improvement over the use of a Turing test, since you are directly addressing the main phenomenon in question (rather than its ripples). That said, the method has problems, and epistemic holes.  In brief, a big unknown is the effect that interfacing with another conscious experience has on both conscious experiences. For example, some people have (like Eliezer Yudkowsky and Brian Tomasik) argued that your interaction with the other brain could functionally expand your own mind. As it were, the interaction with the other brain could be interpreted as expanding your own mind by obtaining a large hardware upgrade. Thus it could be that the whole experience of being connected and becoming one with another entity is a fantasy of your recently-expanded mind. It can give you the impression that the other brain was already conscious before you were connected to it. So you can’t rule out that it was a zombie before and after the connection was over.\nBut there is a way out. And this is the stimulating part of the essay. Because I’m about to untangle the wires.\nThe great idea behind this solution is: Phenomenal puzzles. This one phenomenal puzzle linked here is about figuring out the appropriate geometry of color (arranging the state-space in an Euclidean manifold so that the degrees of subjective differences between colors are proportional to their distances). Doing this requires the ability of comparing the various parts of an experience to each other and being able to remember the comparison. In turn this can be iterated and generate a map of subjective differences. This is an instance of what I call qualia computing, where you need to be in touch with the subjective quality of your experience and to be capable of comparing sensations.\nIn brief, you want to give the other entity a puzzle that can only be solved by a conscious entity via manipulating and comparing qualia. The medium used to deliver the puzzle will be a first-person merging of brains: To share the puzzle you first connect with the entity you want to test.\nBy doing this, by sharing the puzzle when you are connected to the other entity, you will be able to know its inner referents in terms of qualia. While connected, you can point to a yellow patch and say “this is yellow.” Possibly, both halfs will have their own system of private referents (a natural consequence of having slightly different sense organs which make variable mappings between physical stimuli and qualia). But as a whole the merged entity will be able to compare notes with itself about the mapping of stimuli to qualia in both halfs. The entity could look at the same object from the point of view of its two heads at the same time and form an unified visual field, which incorporates the feed from the two former “personal-sized” visual fields (similarly to how you incorporate sensory stimuli from two eyes. Now you’ll see with four). The color appearance of the object could have a slightly different quality when the two visual fields are compared. That’s the fascinating thing about phenomenal binding. The differences in mappings between stimuli and qualia of the two former entities can be compared, which means that this difference can be analyzed and reasoned about and added to both repertoires of hippocampal snapshots of the current experience.\nThen, when you disconnect from the other and there are two streams of consciousness going on again, you will both know what that “yellow” referred to. This overcomes the age-old problem of communicating private referents, and mutually agreeing on name for private referents. This way, the pieces of the (phenomenal) puzzle will be the same in both minds.\nFor the test to work, the specific question needs to stay secret until it is revealed briefly before merging.\nImagine that you have a set of standardized phenomenal puzzles. Psychologists and people who have done the test before tend to agree that the puzzles in the set do require you to explore a minimum number of states of consciousness. The tests have precise conceptual answers. These answers are extremely difficult to deliver by accident or luck.\nThe puzzles may require you to use external tools like an image editor or a computer. This is because computers can enable you to program combinations of sensory input in precise ways. This expands the phenomenal gamut you can reach. In turn one can calibrate sensory input to have nice properties (ex. use gamma correction).  The puzzles will also be selected based on the time sentient beings typically take to solve them.\nWhen you want to perform the test, you meet with the entity right after you finish reading the phenomenal puzzle. The puzzle is calibrated to not be solvable in the time it will take you to connect to the other entity.\nWhen you connect your brain to the other entity and become one conscious narrative, the entire entity reads the puzzle to itself. In other words, you state out loud the phenomenal puzzle by clearly pointing to the referents of the puzzle within your own “shared” experience. Then you disconnect the two brains.\nIn the time that the other entity is trying to solve the puzzle you distract yourself. This way you can prevent yourself from solving the puzzle. Ideally you might want to bring your state of consciousness to a very low activity. The other entity will have all of its stimuli controlled to guarantee there is no incoming information. All the “qualia processing” is going on through approved channels. When the entity claims to have solved the puzzle, at that point you connect your brain back to it.\nDoes the merged entity know anything about the solution to the puzzle? You search for a memory thread that shows the process of solving the puzzle and the eventual answer. Thanks to the calibration of this puzzle (it has also been given to “merged” entities before) we know you would need more time to solve it. Now you may find yourself in a position where you realize that if the other entity was a zombie, you would have somehow solved a phenomenal puzzle without using experience at all. If so, where did that information come from?\nWith the memory thread you can remember how the other entity arrived at the conclusion. All of the hard work can be attributed to the other entity now. You witness this confirmation as the merged entity, and then you disconnect. You will still hold redundant memories of the period of merging (both brains do, like the hemispheres in split-brain patients). Do you know the answer to the puzzle? You can now check your memory for it and see that you can reconstruct the answer very quickly. The whole process may even take less time than it would take you to solve the puzzle.\nIf you know the answer to the puzzle you can infer that the other entity is capable of manipulating qualia in the same way that you can. You would now have information that your mind/brain could only obtain by exploring a large region of the state-space of consciousness… which takes time. The answer to the puzzle is a verifiable fact about the structure of your conscious experience. It gives you information about your own qualia gamut (think CIELAB). In summary, the other entity figured out a fact about your own conscious experience, and explained it to you using your own private referents.\nYou can then conclude that if the entity solved the phenomenal puzzle for you, it must be capable of manipulating its qualia in a semantically consistent way to how you do it. A positive result reveals that the entity utilizes conscious algorithms. Perhaps even stronger: It also shares the generalizable computational power of a sapient mind.\nUnfortunately just as for the Turing test, not passing this test is not a guarantee that the other entity lacks consciousness. What the test guarantees is a high precision: Near every entity that passes the test is conscious. And that is a milestone, I think.\nDo you agree that the problem of other minds is like a wire puzzle?\nNow go ahead and brainstorm more phenomenal puzzles!", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/03/31/a-solution-to-the-problem-of-other-minds/", "title": "A workable solution to the problem of other minds", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-03-31T10:31:35+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=28", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "40c4191875438e7cffab75d96de1fde3", "summary": []}
{"text": "The fire that breathes reality into the equations of physics\n\n“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence? Or does it need a creator, and, if so, does he have any other effect on the universe? And who created him?” (Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, Toronto, 1988, p.174.)\nI’m going to go with “the fire in the equations of physics is consciousness itself.”", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/03/31/the-fire-that-breathes-reality-into-the-equations-of-physics/", "title": "The fire that breathes reality into the equations of physics", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-03-31T09:33:29+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=28", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "126239a12fd41036a59f6bf12ccc7c63", "summary": []}
{"text": "Phenomenal Binding is incompatible with the Computational Theory of Mind\n\nDaniel Dennet, in his multi-draft theory of consciousness explains that we have the belief that our consciousness is far more unified than it really is. This is true as far as it goes, experimentally and philosophically. Dennett and other philosophers of mind (and nearly everyone I’ve met who roots for him) take this one step further. The unity of consciousness is an illusion. This is not incidental, from a functionalist point of view any sort of unity of consciousness is not something you would actually be able to predict. Hence in order to justify that model the unity of consciousness that does exist has to be explained away somehow (as an “illusion” more often than not).\nThe need for a radically new paradigm, however, does not come from the idea that our consciousness is always fully unified in the sort of naïve way common sense tells us. It simply comes from the existence of some unity, any amount of unity, however little that is, because a purely computational account would not predict any sort of unity of the sort we see in consciousness. \nI usually start with the following “your left and right visual field are currently being experienced as a unitary visual field.” Many object to this, in part perhaps because you can only focus your attention on one side at a time (awareness of the other side, as opposed to attention, does remain in most cases though). A more thoroughly indisputable instance of unitary consciousness is the fact that you can recognize objects, which itself requires instantaneous information unity. For example, you look at your hand, and you don’t only see it as a collection of shapes and colors, but you see it and recognize it as a “hand.” The very concept of a hand has implicitly in it a wide variety of pieces of information instantaneously joined together. \nSome argue that the unity of consciousness is not good for anything. It is just an epiphenomenon. But it isn’t. You just need to look at what happens when it breaks down, as in the case of simultagnosia, schizophrenia or high doses of ketamine. Not being able to unify features of an experience into an integrated whole impairs the information processing that your mind typically accomplishes. So here is another big hint: Phenomenal binding is computationally relevant. I think that a strong argument could be made for “why we are conscious” by merely looking at the advantages of phenomenal binding over classical computers. If such advantages exist, they may explain why natural selection would have *recruited* consciousness as an information processing device instead of sticking to classical information processing.\nSome people bring Integrated Information Theory of consciousness (Tonini) into the picture when asked about phenomenal binding. However, IIT does not provide a mechanism of action for the unity of consciousness. It *assumes it is the result of irreducible information*! IIT acknowledges that conscious states simultaneously represent multiple pieces of information in an indivisible whole. The problem, though, is that rather than asking “what is the mechanism of action for this unity?” the theory instead has a false start: It asks “under the assumption that the mind is a classical computer, what kind of physical systems would display integrated information?” But if you go out and look for integrated information in that sense, already defined within a classical paradigm, you already made a mistake. You assumed a specific framework for how the information gets integrated, one that cannot even in principle work. This is because the various parts of classical systems are not in direct instantaneous communication to each other. If you remove a part, the news that such part does not exist takes time to reach the other parts. And at a given time you cannot really define a “global state” because the changes in each part have not had the chance to influence the other parts. \nIn contrast to a classical system, each part of your local consciousness (whatever bundle IS unified, as opposed to the naïve view Dennett discredits) is instantaneously a part of a whole. A “whole.” due to delays in information propagation, cannot be defined in a classical system, and yet it is a central feature of consciousness.\nIn addition, in a classical system you can fully account for the emergent behavior by using a strict bottom-up approach. The large scale behavior is an emergent phenomena of the small-scale interactions (such as wetness being nothing but the interaction of water molecules). Contra classical systems, your consciousness has an instantaneous bottom-up *and* top-down relationship. Not only is the meaning of the whole determined by the interactions of the parts, but the nature of the parts are determined by the whole. An example of this is how when you see a cube, each of its square sides stops being just a square. They become “the sides of a cube.” The very nature of the experience of such squares as the sides of a cube cannot be accounted for without taking into account the entire experience.\nThe correct approach, I think, would be to focus on the unity of consciousness itself and ask “what sort of beast is this?” Not assume it has to be the result of some predefined process. Tentatively, I think that the way to investigate this would be to try to replace the corpus callosum with other machinery that is functionally identical in some sense. If we replace it by synthetic neurons that have the same macrofunctionality as biological neurons and the unity of consciousness breaks down, we would know that such unity is not accounted by simple information transmission in the classical sense. In addition, and in parallel, we could start a research program that seeks to define the computational advantages of consciousness over classical systems. Personally, I think this will be a very fruitful project, and will ultimately have tremendous applications (Better Computing Through Qualia!).", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/03/24/phenomenal-binding-is-incompatible-with-the-computational-theory-of-mind/", "title": "Phenomenal Binding is incompatible with the Computational Theory of Mind", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-03-24T03:11:21+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=28", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "7d89f9c41a052c1849a4f5f6f71057cc", "summary": []}
{"text": "David Hamilton’s conversation with Alf Bruce about the nature of the mind\n\nDH:\n“It is important to note that some of the world’s foremost neuroscientists have believed that the mind is immaterial. These neuroscientists have been well aware that stimulating the brain can produce some intriguing psychological results. One of the pioneers in the field of neuroscience was Wilder Penfield. In his fascinating book The Mystery of the Mind, he writes the following:\n{When I have caused a conscious patient to move his hand by applying an electrode to the motor cortex of one hemisphere, I have often asked him about it. Invariably his response was: ‘I didn’t do that. You did.’ When I caused him to vocalize, he said: ‘I didn’t make that sound. You pulled it out of me.’ When I caused the record of the stream of consciousness to run again and so presented to him the record of his past experience, he marveled that he should be conscious of the past as well as of the present. He was astonished that it should come back to him so completely, with more detail than he could possibly recall voluntarily. He assumed at once that, somehow, the surgeon was responsible for the phenomenon, but he recognized the details as those of his own past experience.} (76)\n\nPenfield goes on to note that “There is no place in the cerebral cortex where electrical stimulation will cause a patient . . . to decide” (77). In light of his work as a neuroscientist, Penfield concludes the following: “For my own part, after years of striving to explain the mind on the basis of brain-action alone, I have come to the conclusion that it is simpler (and far easier and logical) if one adopts the hypothesis that our being does consist of two fundamental elements” (80).”\nWhile it wouldn’t strictly debunk dualism if it weren’t true, the fact that neuroscience still has never found a way to convince a patient that they themselves made the decision to commit an action is highly intriguing. It doesn’t strictly prove dualism is true, either, but it does undercut the anti-dualist claims about how neuroscience shows that everything normally attributed to the mind can be produced by physical stimulation. The one thing dualism would most highly lead us to expect can’t be, it just so happens is one of the most significant exceptions to that rule.”\nAB: In my perspective, the question of mind-body duality is like someone asking if the mind of Donald Duck exists outside Donald Duck’s body or not. It doesn’t matter, Donald Duck is a fictional character.\nI believe that the mind is a myth. The self is an illusion, fiction.\nYour true self consists of “emptiness”, “pure awareness”, an empty mirror that reflects the universe but don’t contain anything in itself. \nIn zen the koans are tools for trying to point out the direction to our “original self”, “our face that existed before our parents were born”. \nAnd the world of senses, forms, thoughts, exists due to that we project it through active action through “our” “intentions” of thinking, sensing, pecieving, and that intentiion is is in itself an extension of the genetic programs “intention” to replicate and sustain itself (survival, metabolism).\nThe heart sutra says: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.Emptiness is not separate from form, form is not separate from emptiness.Whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form.”\nBrain transformed guy UG Krishnamurti describes it in an entertaining way, he wrote a book named “The mind is a myth”\nU. G. Krishnamurti: Complete Part 1 – Mystique of Enlightenmenthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXyLbU1GGqU\nSam Harris has some nice descriptions, \nSam Harris: The Self is an Illusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0\nOne classic example:Emperor Wu: “So what is the highest meaning of noble truth?”Bodhidharma: “There is no noble truth, there is only emptiness.”Emperor Wu: “Then, who is standing before me?”Bodhidharma: “I know not, Your Majesty.”\nAnd one of my favourites on this issue is Aldous Huxleys Doors of perception: Seeing the mind as a filter for consciousness, clear white light that gets filtered trough our human bodies and creates a prism of colours on the other side that appears to us as a separate consciousness.\nAldous Huxley, Doors of Perception excerpt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9eD7oSX7dg\nDH: That is, of course, however, itself a form of dualism – extremely so, in fact; and while it bears some superficial similarities with the extreme materialist line that the self is an illusion because consciousness doesn’t exist at all because there’s no room for it in a physical world, no eliminative materialist would take that sort of *attitude* towards it as a result of their belief. But whether dualistic (or idealistic) or materialistic views are plausible, possible, and likely as opening stating points still sets the tone of a debate which the position you’re expressing there is a complicated point on one of the branches of. \nWithout breaking spoilers, I think your comments about scare-quote “intentions” borrow too much from the extreme materialist, rather than idealistic tone of the rest of your comments, and in fact I argue from precisely the opposite line: intentionality itself, as a category of types of phenomena in the world, is indispensable. Someone who thinks we’re just the epiphenomena of blindly causal building blocks lacking intentionality has to think any “intentionality” we possess is just the illusory epiphenomena of the causal pseudo-intentionality of those building blocks. But, as I’ll argue, such a project is absolutely utterly impossible. That leaves us, I claim, with a stark choice between either eliminating intentionality (an extremely dehumanizing option that is both untenable and would erase a huge portion of what all of us value about the experience of being human if it even {could be} true), or else acknowledging it as an irreducible aspect of the irreducibly experiential and mental side of reality. \nI’m definitely a fan of Huxley’s conception in Doors of Perception, but in an of itself, nothing about this concept requires that the consciousness being so filtered is a “universal” or “empty” one rather than potentially being an individual one, and perhaps even one with some degree of intrinsic content.\nWilliam James proposed an equivalent metaphor: “When the physiologist who thinks that his science cuts off all hope of immortality pronounces the phrase, “Thought is a function of the brain,” he thinks of the matter just as he thinks when he says, “Steam is a function of the tea-kettle,” “Light is a function of the electric circuit,” “Power is a function of the moving waterfall.” In these latter cases the several material objects have the function of inwardly creating or engendering their effects, and their function must be called productive function. Just so, he thinks, it must be with the brain. Engendering consciousness in its interior, much as it engenders cholesterin and creatin and carbonic acid, its relation to our soul’s life must also be called productive function. Of course, if such production be the function, then when the organ perishes, since the production can no longer continue, the soul must surely die. Such a conclusion as this is indeed inevitable from that particular conception of the facts.\nBut in the world of physical nature productive function of this sort is not the only kind of function with which we are familiar. We have also releasing or permissive function; and we have transmissive function.\nThe trigger of a crossbow has a releasing function: it removes the obstacle that holds the string, and lets the bow fly back to its natural shape. So when the hammer falls upon a detonating compound. By knocking out the inner molecular obstructions, it lets the constituent gases resume their normal bulk, and so permits the explosion to take place.\nIn the case of a colored glass, a prism, or a refracting lens, we have transmissive function. The energy of light, no matter how produced, is by the glass sifted and limited in color, and by the lens or prism determined to a certain path and shape. Similarly, the keys of an organ have only a transmissive function. They open successively the various pipes and let the wind in the air-chest escape in various ways. The voices of the various pipes are constituted by the columns of air trembling as they emerge. But the air is not engendered in the organ. The organ proper, as distinguished from its air-chest, is only an apparatus for letting portions of it loose upon the world in these peculiarly limited shapes.\nMy thesis now is this: that, when we think of the law that thought is a function of the brain, we are not required to think of productive function only; we are entitled also to consider permissive or transmissive function. And this the ordinary psycho-physiologist leaves out of his account.”\nAnd, in the source lecture on Human Immortality [http://godconsciousness.com/humanimmortality.php], elaborated it as so: “In note 5 on page 58 I partially guarded against it by saying that the “mother sea” from which the finite mind is supposed to be strained by the brain, need not be conceived of in pantheistic terms exclusively. There might be, I said, many minds behind the scenes as well as one. The plain truth is that one may conceive the mental world behind the veil in as individualistic a form as one pleases, without any detriment to the general scheme by which the brain is represented as a transmissive organ.If the extreme individualistic view were taken, one’s finite mundane consciousness would be an extract from one’s larger, truer personality, the latter having even now some sort of reality behind the scenes. And in transmitting it — to keep to our extremely mechanical metaphor, which confessedly throws no light on the actual modus operandi– one’s brain would also leave effects upon the part remaining behind the veil; for when a thing is torn, both fragments feel the operation.And just as (to use a very coarse figure) the stubs remain in a check-book whenever a check is used, to register the transaction, so these impressions on the transcendent self might constitute so many vouchers of the finite experiences of which the brain had been the mediator; and ultimately they might form that collection within the larger self of memories of our earthly passage, which is all that, since Locke’s day, the continuance of our personal identity beyond the grave has by psychology been recognized to mean.It is true that all this would seem to have affinities rather with preëxistence and with possible re-incarnations than with the Christian notion of immortality. But my concern in the lecture was not to discuss immortality in general. It was confined to showing it to be not incompatible with the brain-function theory of our present mundane consciousness. I hold that it is so compatible, and compatible moreover in fully individualized form. The reader would be in accord with everything that the text of my lecture intended to say, were he to assert that every memory and affection of his present life is to be preserved, and that he shall never in sæcula sæculorum cease to be able to say to himself: “I am the same personal being who in old times upon the earth had those experiences.””\nStill, establishing the baseline that the materialistic, “productive” account of consciousness is not the only rationally considerable or rationally believable option is a prerequisite before that debate between us can even take place. Should the “productive” account be the only possibility, both of us are necessarily mistaken, and we aren’t even entitled to try to have that conversation. If and when we establish that dualistic and/or idealistic accounts truly can be worthy of consideration in principle in the first place, then we can perhaps try to move forward on arguing the specifics.\nAB: I don’t really think of it in terms of materialism or idealism, to me that is more western style concepts, I have more of a background in eastern concepts, they are more natural and comfortable for me to use.\nThere is a buddhist concept called “dependent origination”;So if I try to translate it, it will be as I am fully a materialist and fully an idealist “at the same time”.\nI don’t know if you are into low level computer languages, but a methaphor in C programming, when you ask for data, built in the question, you declare what shape of data you are looking for, and where to look before you get the data, so: That means that the answer you get, it’s based on the question you made.\nA similar methaphor is the double slit experiment in quantum physics; The instant you look for idealism, idealism is the answer you get, the instant you look for materialism, materialism is the answer you get.\nI had an altered state of conciousness after doing zen meditation some year ago, where I saw stuff that has been describet by Viktor Frankl, Eckhart Tolle amongst others: It was like: Aha the universe is in constant motion, the instant I make some kind of mental construct about the nature of the universe, my mental construct gets disconnected, from the universe, the mental constructs become false the same moment they are constructed. Usually my brain automatically interprets the input that reaches my senses, but now I can see there is a space between input-stimulus and response, that I haven’t noticed before.\nDH: {{Your true self consists of […] “pure awareness”}}\nWhether you like categorizing it in those terms or not, a claim of this sort is either dualist or idealist, and if materialism is true, this claim is false. Concepts are, as Alan Watts put it, something like fish nets thrown over the world to map it out rather than something describing the way the world really is in and of itself, but regardless of that fact, the “Western” concepts are one way of mapping the territory no less valid than any other, and it *is true* that anything floating in the ocean is going to fall into one of the spaces inside the net. What you’re describing here, with the exception of one tiny nuance that borrows premises from a worldview your other statements have flatly rejected, is unavoidably non-materialist.\nAB: I don’t really care if a claim is either dualist or idealist, as I see it, all claims are ultimately false the moment you make the claim, since the universe is a constant flux, you cannot step in the same river twice as Herakleitos described it. ( I think being on Ketamine activates a kind of awareness of this state in a way)\nI see it as the “true” state of the world is “paradoxical” “self contradictionary”, and as soon we put out our mental “fish nets” over the world, we get stuck in the nets, and lose our authentic connection to the world.\nIf you look at zen koans, they have no answer, that can be reached by logic or thinking, they are tools for trying to force yourself to step out of the fishnet, and plunge yourself into the floating ocean.\n(Perhaps we are talking past each other, right now I’m quite tired and have somewhat hard to concentrate and think)\nDH: “[A] all claims are ultimately false the moment you make the claim, since [B] the universe is a constant flux, you cannot step in the same river twice as Herakleitos described it.” \nIs [B] true? Is it true that there is a logical relationship between[B] and [A], so that the truth of [A] follows from the truth of [B]?\nAB: There ulimately cannot be a relationship between [A] and [B].The truth of [A] cannot follow the truth of [B].\nBecause, when you read and make up the sentence in your head, the act of reading the sentence is a process in time.\nYour eyes goes from the beginning of the sentence to the end of the sentence, but when you reach the end of the sentence, the beginning of the sentence is not “valid” anymore, since the universe have changed shape.\nSo in that way, logic itself will ultimately always be invalid.\nBut you can make logic valit within its own self contained system, but that is ultimately a “pseudo” system, its disconnected from reality, one gets stuck in the fishing net.\nThe staues of Dancing Shiva, he dances on a dwarf, The dwarf symbolizes “logic” among other things. The dwarf will always be there, it’s immortal. But Shiva dances outside all logical systems, always in motion.\nDH: “[C] […] There ulimately cannot be a relationship between [A] and [B]. The truth of [A] cannot follow the truth of [B]. […] So in that way, logic itself will ultimately always be invalid. \n[D] Because, when you read and make up the sentence in your head, the act of reading the sentence is a process in time. […] Your eyes goes from the beginning of the sentence to the end of the sentence, but when you reach the end of the sentence, the beginning of the sentence is not “valid” anymore, since the universe have changed shape.”\nAre any of the statements in [D] true? Is there any logical relationship between any of the statements in [C] and any of the statements in [D], such that the truth of [C] follows from the truth of [D]? If not, how is your use of the word “because” not implying the opposite and therefore employing a fallacy of stolen concept, and are you not therefore compelled to refrain from using it?\nAB: Is there an answer to your question, if you haven’t even began to ask any question?\nDH: Does a world still in fact exist, in which you are dreaming, and which your dreaming self will inevitably wake up into, when you are asleep?\nAB: Depends on if the world you wake up to, also happen to be another dream.\nDH: Dream-worlds still {{-exist-}}, whether they exist as “dream-worlds” or regular “worlds.” The question was whether a world exists, not in what form it does, so that doesn’t actually answer the question.\nAB: As I see it, the active act of looking for something, itself in a way creates something to look at.\nGonna go to sleep now. Thanks for the brain gymnastics.\nI assume that I already have posted this one to you, I still think it’s cool. Perhaps one can see it as Shiva represents the idealist perspective, and Kali represents the materialist perspective, and that ulitmately, if ones goes beyond the fishing net, one can come to realize that they are two sides of the same coin. cya later.\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gam77q_LQJA\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/03/19/david-hamiltons-communication-to-the-world-about-the-nature-of-the-mind/", "title": "David Hamilton’s conversation with Alf Bruce about the nature of the mind", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-03-19T21:22:06+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=28", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "aa54f4694172d6c6c7439d0056b56484", "summary": []}
{"text": "This post want to apologize for last posts’ overzealous marketing\n\nThis post, though, does agree that commercial applications of phenomenal binding are certain to be a hit in the future.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/03/16/this-post-want-to-apologize-for-last-posts-overzealous-marketing/", "title": "This post want to apologize for last posts’ overzealous marketing", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-03-16T07:16:23+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=29", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "d37de994b5393dcef28f898589bc3121", "summary": []}
{"text": "Make + $$$$ from HOME, guaranteed. Achieve all your professional goals with qualia computing. Use the power of phenomenal binding for computational efficiency never before seen and get rich QUICK!\n\nBreathing qualia in your qualiafield\nWould you believe it? QualiaTATIVELY superior!\nUse the computational comparative advantage of phenomenal binding to obtain polynomial running times rather than exponential. Maximize your potential by using qualia computing algorithms. Polynomial experience, super low super effective running time guaranteed. Save money and space. Low prices! Save money, time and effort with polynomial time experience of your algorithms. Adaptable to 30% of all computational needs known.\nQualia is superior to serial computing in the search of unconceived ideas. Serial computing can be optimized to be better than qualia systems for pre-established models. But for model conception in a larger space, qualia is the only viable candidate.\nDON’T MISS OUT THE QUALIA TRAIN the qualia train will depart and the discoveries will be made. It is about to blow up, as an industry, be the first in your social circle to use qualia computing services.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/03/13/make-from-home-guaranteed-achieve-all-your-professional-goals-with-qualia-computing-use-the-power-of-phenomenal-binding-for-computational-efficiency-never-before-seen-and-get-rich-quick/", "title": "Make + $$$$ from HOME, guaranteed. Achieve all your professional goals with qualia computing. Use the power of phenomenal binding for computational efficiency never before seen and get rich QUICK!", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-03-13T10:38:58+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=29", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ce8eca471dfd7d0d02a3d527ff383e64", "summary": []}
{"text": "Manifolds of Consciousness: The emerging geometries of iterated local binding\n\nThe qualia manifolds\nEver noticed implicit geometries in the structure of the qualia you deal with on a daily basis?\nSo here is one observation about our experience. Visual experience has two major dimensions and one minor one (depth). This sensory modality is experienced as either 2 or 3 dimensional (and ambiguous points in between are also instantiated at times). Now, it also has a specific kind of topological features. It seems that the edges of the visual field are the edges of a patch in Euclidean space. The edges are not connected to each other. At first, it might take you by surprise to consider hypothetical visual fields with edges that are actually connected. Maybe you could make it a torus, by connecting edges left and right as well as those at the top and the bottom of the visual field. It’ll make a manifold of experience. You may also twist it before connecting it, making a Klein bottle or a projective plane.\nReal Projective Plane. Imagine your visual field connected to itself in this way by twisting and joining the edges. \nA common reaction to this idea is “it may be impossible to do that, maybe the geometry of our visual field is the only possible one.” Without actually going ahead and interfering with your mind and brain directly it is unlikely I’ll be able to show conclusively it is possible. But there is a strong intuition pump available to help you conceive of the possibility.\nSo, touch your arm. Your writs more specifically. Using a finger make a circle around the wrist. You end up where you started, and yet you only advanced in one direction.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/03/13/manifolds-of-consciousness-the-emerging-geometries-of-iterated-local-binding/", "title": "Manifolds of Consciousness: The emerging geometries of iterated local binding", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-03-13T09:46:10+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=29", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f95bcec8c9f5b9f7ca1d2d76486520c5", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Real Tree of Life\n\n\n\nRemember, kids, the ‘Tree of Life’ is not a metaphor. It is an actual 4-dimensional object. It starts with the first living photocell and its leaves are us, the plants, the fungi, the bacteria, the virus you see all around, right now, here. We are all physically interconnected in the space-time continuum. Our branches meet to eat, to mate and play. We will always be one complex macro-organism.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/03/12/the-real-tree-of-life/", "title": "The Real Tree of Life", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-03-12T00:14:50+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=29", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "d4d568f3e4bcdbd898f329446a60a4b8", "summary": []}
{"text": "Phenomenal puzzles – CIELAB\n\nAnswer sheet to phenomenal puzzle #1:\nPhenomenological studies reveal that we have three major qualia-poles that compose all experienced colors. Luminance is the first: How subjectively bright is it? The other two: We obtain red and green on two opposite sides, and blue and yellow on the normal of that pole.\n\n(http://www.rpdms.com/cielch/labsphere2.jpg)\nThe qualia that you are now experiencing on the left of your sensorium must match the schema to your right. Allow some room for normal human drawing errors. Is the chart similar enough to the subject’s solution to warrant a positive result?\n\nMaterials: Tester (t), neural bridge (nb), and entity (e).\nProtocol: t and e must read the protocol. Let t read the promt of the phenomenal puzzle. Connect t’s brain to e’s brain with the nb at time t = 0. Adjust the connection setting to 1st person merging (fully unified sense of self). Phenomenal binding between brains is achieved. In that state, the equivalence between qualias in, say, vision, can be established. The united mind determines the relationship between visual qualias of both sub units (like a person would compare the feeling in both her hands). Then from the memory of t the entire being retells the puzzle using the available qualia, so that he visualizes what has to be solved in both of its subunits. Then both brains are disconnected.\nDuring the phase that follows after the first disconnection e attempts to solve the phenomenal puzzle on its own. All of the sensory stimuli to e are carefully controlled to prevent any form of leakage of the solution. e is allowed to use visual aids such as computer programs that help him manipulate his experience with great freedom.\nAt the same time, one needs to carefully control the mental state of t. The particular sensory input t receives is less important than guaranteeing that t does not make the sort of cognitive moves that would lead to an answer to the puzzle. For instance, distractions are great ways of doing this.\nIf the puzzle has been ‘standardized’ to be solved within a given range of time (its ecological difficulty has been assessed widely) one waits that amount and then reconnect t’s and e’s brain.\nIn that second period of union, the united entity assesses e’s solution to the phenomenal puzzle. If it has been solved, then t will be able to conclude that e is conscious even when they are disconnected. For e to have that certainty the roles will have to be reversed.\n\nThe puzzle itself\nWhat are the axis of phenomenal color? Draw a map of color that separates it into phenomenally continuous colors at the same distance in terms of subjective difference.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/03/08/phenomenal-puzzles-cielab/", "title": "Phenomenal puzzles – CIELAB", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-03-08T11:11:35+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=29", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "7b3fa68017e0090b23557b0373e04b90", "summary": []}
{"text": "The psychedelic future of consciousness\n\nWhat can 1,800,000 human days per day accomplish?\nImagine the events that happen in a city of near two million persons. How much thinking is done? How many atypical views about the nature of reality take place in the sunny hours of a city of this size?\nPsychedelic experiences are eventful, so they have to be weighted more than typical days in any sum total of the quantity of conscious events and conscious luminance. Not to say, the local consciousness flux capacity co-peaks with the peak of an entheogenic trip.\nNow imagine, 1,800,000 humans who dedicate their lives to serious psychedelic and consciousness research. A large fraction of this population is experienced in employing psychedelic states of consciousness for qualia-computing applications (that is, for applications suited to the specific state of consciousness, that takes advantage of the computational trade-offs of different states of consciousness to perform certain operations more efficiently). Another large fraction frequently interacts with people reporting from myriad kingdoms of consciousness (which are as different from one another as you could say the kingdoms of life are to each other).\nMany of them develop computational models of the dynamics of qualia for a living. They study how varieties of consciousness interact with one another. They ask questions like: How quickly can a conscious experience intensify? What is the function that maps present content of conscious experience to the set of conceivable ideas? How fast can phenomenal yellow be transformed/substituted by phenomenal blue?\nThey develop probabilistic models that predict the possible transitions between states of consciousness, at all time scales. In the microsecond domain, we see resonant chambers of qualia filaments dynamically modifying manifolds of experience with variable Fourier transforms. In the ‘real-subjective-time’ scale, we would see the change from one emotional state into another. The differential equations that govern the possible affective transitions between emotions in a sober state would have long been figured out. Predicting those equations for hypothetical states of consciousness which are then found in the lab (well, the psychedelic research center) is where the field’s at.\nOther people develop connections between consciousness and mathematics themselves. Philosophy of qualiamatics. After all, the semantic content of a mathematical propositions is enclosed within and a part of the experience of doing and thinking mathematics. The engineering of semantically rich states of consciousness is now of interest to pure mathematics researchers, if for no other reason than to improve their investigative mathematical skills. Drugs and techniques that specifically target the kind of meaning-making useful for mathematics are developed and used by many.\nAnd others do a whole flip within and study the nature of philosophical thought. If you are an astute reader, you’ll notice that philosophy of the science of consciousness (just as there is philosophy of the science of physics!) cannot be complete without an understanding of philosophy through the science of consciousness. While first dismissed as a simple circularity, a play of words, universities now offer serious classes on (1) the phenomenal quality of philosophy of consciousness, and (2) the philosophical implications of the science of the consciousness of philosophy. And as you may expect, both courses have a required lab component.\nPeople have been working for a few decades already in the creation of an agreed-upon map of the varieties of conscious experience. Most of the daily experience of most of the persons alive belong to some of the few large and broad regions of the state-space of consciousness defined in standard charts available everywhere. There is also knowledge about general regions (i.e. kinds of experiences) to completely avoid, given their intrinsically negative subjective character. However, a sizable minority of states of consciousness are still completely unclassified and unclassifiable given the present vocabulary and shared conceptions. It is not that these states are in principle inaccessible to scientific study. Instead, there either is no reliable way of reproducing the states, or the current degrees of freedom don’t allow researchers to compare them to other states of consciousness.\nYes, it is true that in some sense every state of consciousness is inconmensurable to every other state. But you can always put them side by side in a phenomenally bound entity and see what happens. Subjective affinities can be quantified, and subsequent behavior is measurable. Consistent findings tend to happen, unless there is an intrinsically chaotic result, in which case that fact is noted. The vast majority of the state space of consciousness remains undiscovered, unexplored, and unconceived. And yet, general key principles of consciousness (such as relationships between behavior and intrinsic quality) are already known and applied widely in the exploration of uncharted states of consciousness. What shamans, psychologists and even philosophers of the past did more or less as an art (with 99.9% of practice time) is now done systematically, more thoroughly and better recorded (with no practice time needed) via technologically enhanced thinking.\nJust as the mathematical characterization of tiny physical components of matter in the 19th century led to the development of computing machines made of tiny systems in the 20th century, we now see the mathematical formalisms of the behavior of consciousness are paying off computationally. The computational advantages of phenomenal binding are harnessed in the processing of information in a way that is far superior to digital computers. With the integration of semantics modules of thought, and mathematical renderers, conscious experience can quickly explore vast regions of possibility space. Now thinking about the nature of the possible has been transformed from an art to an engineering discipline.\nQualia treasures are discovered all the time. What used to be a person’s peak experience in a lifetime (a moment of transcendent delight from which the rest of the cosmos seems more profound and deeply significant than at any other point in life) are now a possible baseline of consciousness for many experimental subjects and artists of the mind alike. Yet, there are far greater and significant worlds of qualia discovered from time to time. And there is no sign that the rate of discoveries will slow down. Like prime numbers, perhaps, the interval between them increases as you find the ones closer to zero, and yet you are guaranteed to find one if you keep counting.\nNeedless to say, the discoveries of qualia treasures are welcomed by the general population, who get to try them and delight in them after robust accessing methods are proved safe. Qualia safety engineers work hard to avoid even the presence of the conceivability of a problem in a qualia world shipped to the general public.\nImagine, 1,800,000 researchers conducting all of this work on a daily basis. That’s a possible future. A very possible, perhaps inevitable one. Perhaps you are unaware of it, but this is a fact: We are at the edge of something big, unimaginably big.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/03/07/the-immediate-future-of-consciousness/", "title": "The psychedelic future of consciousness", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-03-07T08:27:00+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=29", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "e5e19f06d19958108d08ad62106d68bd", "summary": []}
{"text": "Not zero-sum\n\nHappiness, intelligence and longevity are not zero-sum games. If someone becomes smarter, more compassionate and driven to success in a holistic way, we all benefit.\nSadly, a lot of the commentary on transhumanist technologies by the media and mainstream outlets tends to focus on the idea of fairness using a purely zero-sum framework.\n“Is it unfair if students use tDCS to improve performance?” should be replaced by “how can tDCS be applied to improve people’s intellectual development in a way that benefits us all?”", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/03/06/not-zero-sum/", "title": "Not zero-sum", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-03-06T00:52:27+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=29", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "00e6d8fb4b6cf6fc126b46b3ffae02b9", "summary": []}
{"text": "Discussion of Fanaticism\n\nAnonymous Source\n\n\n\nDo people not realize that what makes them cheer and applaud and boo is also what makes them heil? Probably. And that’s unfortunate, because people will form higher level beliefs that reinforce fanaticism, which is the force in question, as something necessary in society. It’s only necessary in a conservative estimate, though. Fanaticism is the fire perpetually fighting other fire. It is the patriotism against treachery. And it is integral in our emotions of annoyance, contempt, anger, hate, prejudice, as well as pride, admiration, humility, etc.. Which is why we’d be giving up a lot of life if we could eliminate fanaticism. We’d suffer less but we’d also have less of what current purposes captivate us. We’d lose our humanness. What would reptiles do with all that intelligence? Well, they’d cooperate and rationally act to develop a peaceful society. They wouldn’t love and they wouldn’t shimmy to the soundtrack of their proud egos. So a good idea is to compartmentalize whenever possible and with better design. That is, we might do well to notice this hair trigger tendency to mindless hate and disapprove and feel “morally disgusted” by things as well as the equally destructive tendency to rave and rally and praise and worship, to notice our debilitating tendency to feel unworthy as well as our debilitating tendency to become proud and feel self-assured, entitled, loud and indignant.\nFanaticism comes in two forms. There’s the active form. That’s the angry or praising form that you see in the “booing” in this song. It seems to be connected most with anger and hate. Then there’s passive fanaticism. That’s those catty back-handed insults in Entertainment News culture. But watch out again for active form in UpWorthy, the liberals who will jump down my throat for the stereotype that becomes explicit when I change “Entertainment News culture” to “upper class Hollywood female and gay/effeminate male culture,” if I dared. I feel them now, growling at their posts just ready for me to confirm that I affirmed a thought that is in some context sexist or discriminatory. How the fanatical feminists are enraged for being compared to Nazi’s in the derogatory term “feminazi,” believing themselves to be above Nazi’s (thus having contempt and being appalled) and having rage, thus proving themselves to have the emotional and behavioral traits that were exactly meant by the term “feminazi.” (But such backfires when you use it in a derogatory way, as that too is an act of fanaticism. One fanatical groups’s heretic in this case the clueless “feminazi.”) But don’t they realize, sexism, racism, etc., pervade all our thoughts, and it’s only a lack of critical correction and a lack of love and an intention to harm that is destructive? Probably not. They are the rabid conservative youth in disguise of liberal multiculturalism. But it’s the rabidity that’s the problem. It’s the nipping, the booing, the “calling out,” the combating and debating, the rapping, the show down, the victory and defeat, that is all there is and ever will be to war and what makes people suffer. (But at the same time, remember that blond long hair kid on the internet video who calls out his teacher, who preaches the truth, and has a heroic victory. The glory of the warrior, the leader, the pioneer, the innovator, the activist depends equally on fanaticism). And often people will do this fanaticism with an exaggerated or imaginary set of the stakes at hand, and will fight at all costs, being the harsh police force for whatever cause they represent, and punishing with a sense of urgency those who must be punished.\nActive fanaticism is clear. Passive fanaticism is different. I must confess. I have high levels of passive fanaticism. Passivity in general but particularly passive fanaticism is associated ultimately with some form of fear. That’s what reverence is. That’s what awe is. Humility and self-deprecating Dobby. It’s when your voice trembles because of the implication of what you’re saying, often in a conversation where two people are energetically agreeing about something, probably some moral/ethical judgement about human conduct. And it moves me. I was and always have been very mild mannered, except for the compensating part of me which is outrageous, a mixture of both of which is displayed in this very status. I’ve always felt a strong sense of a teacher being my superior and wanting so much to be compliant and goody goody. And if I ever corrected a teacher I’d avoid it, but if it just flowed in the conversation then I’d try to do it in a most indirect and gentle way as possible, and I’d feel the same energy of fanaticism, but it would be uncomfortable and I’d gulp and tremble and rather not have gotten the teacher to admit the error. No wonder it might have brought me to tears. And no wonder when I watched the 2012 (or was it 2008?) Chinese Olympics opening, watching an eerie field of obedient subservience, instead of the insistent outrage or pride that comes with a sense of entitlement and strength in the active fanaticism, my passive fanaticism was triggered by the human power display, and I felt humbled along with them, and almost got a bitter sweet strong gust of fanaticism to think, “Wow, they’d do that for their leader, that is so good, kind and sweet,” when the legions of people appeared from underneath the boxes, the face of reverent mass servitude. It’s the same feeling when you say the anthem or listen to Martin Luther King’s speech “I have a Dream.” Again, doing away with fanaticism doesn’t seem like the best option, because even in a hypothetical world where there is no racism because fanaticism has been eliminated, we would lose the beautiful human brotherhood ideas of MLK’s speech or Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” and those are damn good joy’s! But watch out, because it spreads like fire, and soon erupts a full spectrum of ugly and destructive fanatical events.\nAnd fanaticism has probably come into existence as a society forming mechanism. Our ancestors probably became more functional as they gradually accreted a social nature whereby they can inflict shame on others with enough contemptuous confidence, intimidate others to feel proud, and feel ashamed and defeated and get out of the way of those who didn’t make whatever mistake it was that was unacceptable to the community resulting in the trial and shame. We’ve seen this in modern times when feelings and actions of patriotism or non-patriotism were debated as matters of national security. And I would assume that the conservatives who would argue that “in these times of crisis” unpatriotic sentiment be witch-hunted out, haha, or rather, how they’d word it, were themselves biased. And fanaticism has been around for a while and survived it’s own social system natural selection. It’s taken on a life of it’s own in sports, religion, gossip, the arts, romantic courtship, competitions of all sorts, and any longstanding social institution, almost like a society of different fanatical systems feeding on the human society they created. We are the hosts of fanaticism systems. Fanatico-ideological hybrids feed on our lives like we’re a basic renewable resource to them, which we are. It’s quite amazing once you see the ways it’s infiltrated the moves we make in life and ensured its continued survival. But fanaticism is based just on an emotion that we have as a result of our social nature and have in response to environmental systems, and we can recognize it. I feel it in my throat and chest and my eyes water. But just pay attention, the next time you hear yourself clapping, booing, cheering, saluting, “respecting,” revering, hating, loving, degrading, admiring, praising, etc.., and pay attention, because this is the moment where all there is to war and human turmoil and all there ever might be to the potential for human life is born. This moment of human fanatical social emotion, connected to all the things that’s important to us, can be seen as making our life fulfilling, promising useful applications, or causing harm, sustaining ignorant, irrational life destroying systems.\nRoseanne, I Liam, in a contained and mindful act of fanaticism commend you for your lack of solemnity and use of humor in a place where people rabidly and fearfully demand solemnity and mindlessly boo you. But look. I just used “mindlessly” in a fanatical way, to degrade them, and imply they are stupid and meet other typical fanatical criteria for social rejection. Anybody who has joked or made light of disasters and atrocities, I commend you as well. I cannot escape fanaticism and can’t ideally harness fanaticism, especially in actions like these, public ones, which are subject to the chaos of other fanaticism ignorance misinterpretation rashness, etc., but hay compartmentalized love and humor doesn’t necessarily give rise to an equal and opposite hate in the reverse circumstance, and not all fanaticism has to be fundamentally bad. Actually, if you identify as a libertarian, what do you think about this? How old are you?\nFanaticism is everywhere. From the basic interpretations of every motive of every human gesture, such as the mock-formal style of declaration I, Liam, used above. Everyone is always watching to go “oh snap, oh no he didn’t” and that has filled all our evaluations of actions with fanatical interpretations. We can’t escape it. Let’s just be careful. And also, in trying to be careful, I don’t any longer want to commend Roseanne or anyone, because now I’m recognizing that even that mild statement on such a hot topic is divisive and provocative, and I don’t mean to be contentious or involve fanaticism at all, except what’s require to get your attention and appeal to you not thinking I look ridiculous typing up this long status on my facebook wall. Now maybe I look cowardly for trying to be so agreeable, but watch that fanaticism there. Especially the fraternity bros have this sadistic hate of, they use a term that begins with the letter “p,” less macho guys. Anyways, let’s just be careful and aware, and even more careful and aware still. Uh, oh, that sounded bossy and corny, and also like I’m a narc or a wet blanket. So uncool… Oh, there’s fanaticism yet again in the cool/uncool appraisals. It’s inescapable.\n\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/02/28/discussion-of-fanaticism/", "title": "Discussion of Fanaticism", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-02-28T06:51:34+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=29", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "2350483b176360ff1b98168b9b2eb3f1", "summary": []}
{"text": "What does comparatively matter in 2015?\n\nThis is based on my experience of what people are generally focused on. And what really, comparatively, matters.\nFirst, a lot of people seem to place all their eggs in the basket of AI. Specifically, AI based on current computer architectures. Ethically, in terms of effective altruism, and in terms of raw efficiency. Even in terms of consciousness, for most people who care about consciousness.\nThis would be absolutely rational if you had a reason to think that a von Neumann computer architecture could solve the phenomenal binding problem. But since there is no reason to think it would, the effort seems fundamentally misguided. Not in intention, or in terms of correct effort. Understanding intelligence and consciousness are of prime importance. Indeed, far more important than what most human thoughts are directed at.\nThat said, this misguided effort will still be of tremendous value. By having people focus on computing in a utilitarian and philosophically motivated way, we will do a lot of progress in the area, faster. Which is absolutely great, in general. Being highly competent, as a civilization, in computing technologies is a great start! But it is not the end. At some critical point, people will realize that phenomenal binding itself has to be addressed. What is it? Why do brains solve it? Do brains solve it on their own?\nA sufficient number of people are working on that already, that focusing on what will be the focus in the future is nonetheless what has the comparative importance. What is it? Well, consciousness studies themselves. Without assuming that your particular procedure of choice (which currently happens to be statistical learning by serial computers for most people who think about this) will produce consciousness. you can go ahead and study consciousness itself. But what do you study here? You can’t, so far, put consciousness in a petri dish and analyze its chemical structure.\nWhat you can do, however, is to study the computational capabilities of consciousness. Thus, infer its computational role in the survival of species. By describing what consciousness is capable of in rigorous mathematical ways, you can reverse-engineer the reasons why natural selection recruited it as the medium for representing world-simulations.\nMore so, I predict that by reverse engineering consciousness’ computational capabilities, a wide variety of new applications will be discovered. We will find how to solve a variety of computationally challenging problems using conscious experience. The computational comparative advantage of consciousness, as a computing substrate, will be revealed. Such comparative advantage must exist to begin with, or natural selection would not have recruited consciousness to solve problems related to representing the environment.\nHow do we study this comparative advantage? \nLook, I don’t know. There could be many obvious ways of doing so that simply escape me right now. After all, not many persons are thinking along these lines (and thus, again, why starting to work on this is comparatively highly efficient). But I will start by making sense of visual experience. I think that by characterizing our visual pattern recognition abilities in computational ways we can start to make a headway in describing qualia’s computational capabilities. Of course visual experience is a very specific kind of qualia. It also happens to be one where a lot of functional properties can be mathematically captured. We represent a 3D Euclidian space. Not any space. And thus many geometrically grounded questions can be formulated. For example:\nHow fast do the interpretation about the visual scenery propagate?\nTo what extend do the local *interpretations* matter? And to what extend do global interpretations of a scene propagate downwards to the specifics? How fast are these transitions?\nHow do images that represent semantically distinguishable forms inhibit the existence of contradictory representations with semantically opposed qualities? At what speed do these inhibitions propagate in the visual field? (again, the question focuses on the experience rather than on the neural substrate or any other specific preferred or assumed substrate besides qualia).\nAll of these questions can be formulated in very rigorous ways. And then tested empirically with psychophysics. We can start to ask these questions and to find answers. And thus, to characterize the computational characteristics of consciousness as such.\nThis work will certainly be synergistic with the current approaches. No doubt. But to optimize the balance of minds on each part to have the most synergistic mix, more persons could shift to the study of consciousness as such. That’s why this is the current comparatively most important matter.\nWhy should we care about the computational characteristics of consciousness? \nBecause there is a comparative advantage to consciousness as a computing substrate, there must be applications in which consciousness is the single most efficient computing medium! That should motivate any practical-minded person. But, what should be even unsaid since how obvious it is: Consciousness is also the very source of what is valuable! By understanding and becoming capable of engineering it, we could finally produce value itself directly. Any utilitarian should be extremely excited about this possibility.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/02/22/what-does-comparatively-matter-in-2015/", "title": "What does comparatively matter in 2015?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-02-22T11:24:41+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=29", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "9b854034d896b765c66be764fd911144", "summary": []}
{"text": "Suffering: Not what your sober mind tells you\n\n“I believe that most of us tend to underrate the evilness of suffering. The reason is that it is difficult for us, when not actually suffering, to recollect what suffering really is. We employ numerous psychological mechanisms to conceal from our consciousness the true nature or meaning of suffering, to falsify and deny it. We do this without renouncing the word, however. The word comes to designate, in our minds, only a faint copy or superficial image of the real thing; but having forgotten what the original is, we mistake it in the copy. We ascribe to “suffering” a certain gravity of evil; but it is slight compared to what we would ascribe to suffering itself, if we could only recall its true meaning.\n\n(…)\nThe falsification of suffering is everywhere — in movies, in poetry, in novels, on the nightly news. Accounts of disaster routinely veer from a discussion of the agony and plight of the victims (which quickly becomes tiresome) to the description of some moving act of kindness or bravery. Often it is these descriptions that affect us the most and that provoke the greatest outburst of emotion. These are the images we often take away and that become our image of “suffering.” Suffering comes to be closely associated with stirring images of hope in adversity, acts of moral heroism and touching kindness, gestures of human dignity, sentiments of noble sympathy and tremulous concern, the comfort and consolation of tears. It turns into something beautiful. It becomes poetry. People begin to refer to “sublime suffering.” Suffering, in other words, becomes just exactly what it is not.”\n– “Suffering and Moral Responsiblity” by Jamie Mayerfeld.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/02/16/suffering-not-what-your-sober-mind-tells-you/", "title": "Suffering: Not what your sober mind tells you", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-02-16T21:43:05+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=29", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "89856ca3d15a769dd9a43061ab48249a", "summary": []}
{"text": "Reconciling memetics and religion.\n\nNowadays the conceptualization of the evolution of human thought as the competition between self-replicating memes (memetics) tends to be brought up in arguments against the reliability of mainstream belief systems. Richard Dawkins famously argued that just as there can be selfish genes that don’t benefit their hosts and yet thrive at self-replicating, there are plenty of cases in which memes harmful to the individual who holds them replicate successfully.\nThis observation is usually used as an argument against religious doctrine for two reasons. First, memetics would predict the appearance of emotionally satisfying pseudo-explanations for the things we don’t understand, such as the nature of reality and what happens after death. And second, these explanations would not in any way have to reflect true facts; in fact, truth may have little to do with a meme’s success at self-replicating. Thus, religions will probably proclaim ideas that makes them self-replicate whether or not the claims made are true.\nThus memetics may be capable of (1) explaining the existence of religion and (2) dismissing major religious claims as mere strategies for self-replication (e.g. “if you don’t believe in God you will go to Hell!”). I personally know several persons who either became atheist or at least much more skeptical of religious prescriptions after considering memetics deeply.\nAs far as I know neither the Vatican nor any major religious promoter has addressed successfully this new and fascinating source of skepticism.\nAll that is old news. Here is the innovation: It occurs to me that memetics can actually be used to defend major religions in a grounded way. See, the dumb rhetorical move from a religious point of view, which is also the most tempting and commonly made, is to attack memetics itself. Say, by spousing romantic and even fanatical views about the nature of the evolution of ideas, one can pretend that the laws of self-reproduction break down when we are talking about minds and the mystical. Or worse, proclaim that such a view makes us look like robots hijacked by memes to fulfill their purpose, and that for such a reason it cannot be the case (an instance of “too ugly to be true”).\nThere is, however, a rational reply that religious authorities could give, if they actually did the harder move: Embrace memetics instead of dismissing it. You see, over time we can indeed predict that any ideology will get better and better at self-replicating. Appeal to emotion may even take over rational and evidence-based argumentation. One could in principle claim that these features will be observed in any religion or ideology, specially if it has endured hundreds of years of cultural evolution.\nNow here is the twist:\nIt may be *precisely* because of memetic evolution that the true word of God has been corrupted. We might have had it all explained to us in the past. God could have well given us an excellent evidence-based and rational explanation about what happens after death, morality and what we should do to be good people.\nAnd yet, in spite of God’s good intentions, cultural evolution corrupted his message over time. They could say: The reason why my religion promotes many ethically questionable behaviors is not because it didn’t have a Godly seed. It is because with time, more emotionally-appealing versions of the religion gradually out-competed the original Truth. Yet, we are still connected to that seed, and our labor is to reconstruct the original message.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/02/08/reconciling-memetics-and-religion/", "title": "Reconciling memetics and religion.", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-02-08T09:01:27+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=30", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "d75b00c129d3c84e17bd83a5d5d59585", "summary": []}
{"text": "The Reality of Basement Reality\n\nAre there deep, mistaken underlying background assumptions about the nature of reality that support our empirical sciences?\nHere is a thought: I was talking to someone about qualia and causality when it dawned on me that an unexamined background assumption I had was the following.\n“There is a basement reality.”\nQuarks may ultimately break down into further components, but we are working under the assumption that there is a deeper, smaller set of actual building blocks. Even if you don’t postulate discrete building blocks, the background assumption of “a basement reality” is still present in the idea that the entire physical universe can be described in terms of fields and wavefunctions.\nBut couldn’t this be fundamentally mistaken? How? Here is a ridiculous example that drives the point home: Imagine that inside each fundamental particle you encounter a kind of miniature black hole, within which the entire universe is enclosed. The microscopic properties of those particles are the result of the angular disposition of the entire universe within it relative to the nearby particles. I don’t mean that “there is another universe inside it.” The idea here is that “inside each fundamental particle you literally, actually find the same universe within which the particle is supposedly contained.”\nI say “supposedly contained” because this particular model would make it indeterminate whether the particles are in the universe or the universe is in the particles. In fact, neither description would be true, and you’d see a fundamental breakdown of the background assumption. You couldn’t reduce the behavior of any part of the universe to the behavior of underlying mechanisms.\nHow could this universe evolve? After all there is only so many possible self-consistent “solutions” to this fractal self-contained view of the universe. Things like that exist in math: The smooth morphing between nearby Julia sets. Each one of them is an infinitely intricate universe on its own, and yet you can find an arbitrarily similar set that is itself also fractal and infinitely intricate. You see sudden structures appear out of nowhere (quantum mechanics anyone?) for the simple reason that those things complete the fractal.\nAre we a morphing fractal with no ground and no roof?\nImplausible as it may seem, at least this view would make the question “why is there something rather than nothing” a *little* bit less mysterious. There is something ’cause it approximates nothing by not being based on anything ultimately real. A big mirage of nothing.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/01/27/the-reality-of-basement-reality/", "title": "The Reality of Basement Reality", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-01-27T04:37:05+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=30", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "5e0c07f72b4d4dc842f44016253fd8c6", "summary": []}
{"text": "The future of love\n\nAssume the neurological signature of bliss was found in a few years from now. \nThe natural things happen: We all end up consuming the technology whether it is commercialized, open sourced, distributed by the government or simply pirated and distributed in black markets. \nLove counseling becomes love engineering within 30 years.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/01/19/the-future-of-love/", "title": "The future of love", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2015-01-19T11:45:38+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=30", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "008f5f745a24ba2459ebeb0cc6582d70", "summary": []}
{"text": "And that’s why we can and cannot have nice things\n\nNothing is good or bad, but the encephalization of phenomenal valence via afferent neural connections from our limbic system’s hedonic hot spots makes it so.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2014/12/07/and-thats-why-we-can-and-cannot-have-nice-things/", "title": "And that’s why we can and cannot have nice things", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2014-12-07T04:08:10+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=30", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "ed69943a43603306871ea73b2c4d86df", "summary": []}
{"text": "Breaking the Thought Barrier: Ethics of Brain Computer Interfaces in the workplace\n\nFor the final project of CS181, Ethics in computing at Stanford, my team and I built this website about the ethics of BCIs in the workplace.\nhttp://stanford.edu/~mcsforza/breaking-the-thought-barrier\nIt turns out that there are policy vacuums on this issue. Namely, we do not know how to deal with the data collected by BCIs that enhance productivity in the workplace. After all, they could reveal things such as drug use and mental health status. We analyzed these ethical concerns from a transhumanist point of view – and argued, too, that a transhumanist framework is necessary and appropriate to analyze emerging technologies such as this one.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2014/12/07/breaking-the-thought-barrier-ethics-of-brain-computer-interfaces-in-the-workplace/", "title": "Breaking the Thought Barrier: Ethics of Brain Computer Interfaces in the workplace", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2014-12-07T01:22:28+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=30", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "f995ac36be08b2701933bf29ba1c1afe", "summary": []}
{"text": "Consciousness engineering!\n\nDavid Pearce joined me at Stanford to discuss the future of consciousness in the “Age of Reason” panel on that very topic.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2014/11/19/consciousness-engineering/", "title": "Consciousness engineering!", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2014-11-19T21:40:42+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=30", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "c6d0793370054f03a50fd369908fef26", "summary": []}
{"text": "How bad does it get?\n\n“Let’s distinguish the worst that can happen if transhumanists succeed in our objectives from the worst that can happen if we fail. A world without the biology of involuntary aging or involuntary suffering may still be sub-optimal by some criteria. But compared to the horrors of Darwinian life, even a substandard utopia can sound like Heaven.”\n– David Pearce", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2014/11/19/how-bad-does-it-get/", "title": "How bad does it get?", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2014-11-19T06:34:02+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=30", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "58c786ec7978a47d0bd692453db26400", "summary": []}
{"text": "God in Buddhism\n\nCheck this out.\nSeveral interesting points.\n1) The Judeo-Christian God of the Old Testament fits the description of Brahman, the highest entity in charge of governing our sphere of reality. But in contrast to theistic traditions, this being is not described as a “creator God.” Instead, this entity seems to be just another entity in the infinite sea of reality. He just happens to hold the power here, right now, over us, for simple causal reasons (due to its past good karma). Eventually he will die. Worse, this entity is profoundly deluded. He thinks that he is God, the supreme creator of everything. Sir Charles Eliot explains:\n“There comes a time when this world system passes away and then certain beings are reborn in the “World of Radiance” and remain there a long time. Sooner or later, the world system begins to evolve again and the palace of Brahma appears, but it is empty. Then some being whose time is up falls from the “World of Radiance” and comes to life in the palace and remains there alone. At last he wishes for company, and it so happens that other beings whose time is up fall from the “World of Radiance” and join him. And the first being thinks that he is Great Brahma, the Creator, because when he felt lonely and wished for companions other beings appeared. And the other beings accept this view. And at last one of Brahma’s retinue falls from that state and is born in the human world and, if he can remember his previous birth, he reflects that he is transitory but that Brahma still remains and from this he draws the erroneous conclusion that Brahma is eternal.”\n2) Even though Buddhist schools have disagreements on whether “Primordial Buddhas” exist, their nature, and their status as ‘the ground of all being’, one thing seems to be agreed upon: The universe has no beginning; thus no entity can be described as the primordial creator of the universe. As an example of the kind of arguments given for the impossibility of such being, here is a 7th century dialogue by the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang, as he critiques the Indian doctrine of the great Eternal Self:\n“According to one doctrine, there is a great, self-existent deity whose substance is real and who is all-pervading, eternal, and the producer of all phenomena. This doctrine is unreasonable. If something produces something, it is not eternal, the non-eternal is not all-pervading, and what is not all-pervading is not real. If the deity’s substance is all-pervading and eternal, it must contain all powers and be able to produce all phenomena everywhere, at all times, and simultaneously. If he produces phenomena when a desire arises, or according to conditions, this contradicts the doctrine of a single cause. Or else, desires and conditions would arise spontaneously since the cause is eternal. Other doctrines claim that there is a great Brahma, a Time, a Space, a Starting Point, a Nature, an Ether, a Self, etc., that is eternal and really exists, is endowed with all powers, and is able to produce all phenomena. We refute all these in the same way we did the concept of the Great Lord.”\nIn brief, the very act of creating something is itself a mark of impermanence. That’s an interesting take on theology I’d never heard before. This, however, does not preclude an eternal God that exists in Plato’s world of forms, does it? It just means such God is causally ineffective. Perhaps the power of God come from logical implication rather than causation. I.e. God matters, not because He can do anything to us, but because his existence implies certain facts that are causally relevant for our life. Or not.\n3) I find the idea of Bodhisattvas and Primordial Buddhas to resonate a lot with my core ethical views. Unlike the Gods of other traditions, these Gods are genuine negative utilitarians who would rather “cancel existence” than allow a mouse to suffer a heat stroke (to give a random example).\nWho knew Great Negative Utilitarian entities were so highly revered in this worlds? It is almost unbelievable once you consider the fascination with Hell and damnation that many people have in this society.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2014/10/16/god-in-buddhism/", "title": "God in Buddhism", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2014-10-16T06:10:29+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=30", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0dbae481399a07c701096c37608a6021", "summary": []}
{"text": "Practical metaphysics\n\nIf Rudolph Steiner’s account of the life of the soul after death is correct, then there would be a good reason to avoid hedonic recalibration above the proverbial ‘hedonic zero.’\nHe claims that between rebirths, a period that will last for at least a few months, the soul experiences a tremendous sense of loss and craving for the body it once had. Worse, whatever things the person used to enjoy, look forward to, or be addicted to in life, will be things the soul will now intensely crave.\n\nIf such craving does not subside enough after a certain number of days, the soul will look around desperately to find a place where reincarnating might allow it to satisfy its cravings. The only way to be reborn in a higher plane is to either forgone those cravings or, well, be super-mindful as you die.\nI don’t know what the probability of this is. But it does comes to bear on matters of policy. If we were to modify our brains to be in a perpetual state of hedonic bliss, the cravings of the soul upon death would be much worse and thus the fate at the point of reincarnation would be disastrous.\nIf it so happens that Steiner is right about the causal web that unites the body and the soul, and the rules the determine reincarnation, then we would have to reconsider the methods used to achieve the Abolitionist Project. The philosophical, ethical and normative justifications for carrying out the Abolitionist Project would still hold, no problem. But it would add an extra layer of complexity and unintended consequences to our actions.\nPerhaps in that case the project should stop once we achieve sustainable hedonic zero, rather than going after higher and higher levels of bliss.\nAlternatively, as Steiner believes, some forms of bliss (specifically the encompassing loving-kindness) may not cause craving after death. In that case, developing technologies that enable those kinds of experiences and inhibit the mundane craving-prone forms of pleasure might be the way to go.\nWhat I am pointing out here is that the particular *details* of the ultimate solution to the mind-body problem, and the causal web within which this interaction takes place, can have important policy consequences.\nIn that case, allocating more resources to the *investigation* of this relationship is paramount before committing ourselves to particular courses of action.\nThe focus on cultivating a universal desire to relieve all sentients from the burden of their suffering, though, shall remain immutable for the rest of eternity. Amen.\n", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2014/10/15/practical-metaphysics/", "title": "Practical metaphysics", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2014-10-15T07:14:48+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=30", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "4810dc93cd984fc4160863fe7eb363cb", "summary": []}
{"text": "Little known fun fact\n\n89% of all superstitions, such as the belief that “crossing a black cat brings bad luck,” are completely false.\nThe other 11% were programmed into the fabric of reality by Isaac Newton’s ghost to mess up with scientists.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2014/10/13/little-known-fun-fact/", "title": "Little known fun fact", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2014-10-13T08:00:17+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=30", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "8ba509d2756325f608dd2f893e34eedc", "summary": []}
{"text": "Crossing borders\n\nNo action required. Just appreciation. Of this course description. I find it poetic and sublime, like a conceptual flower in the current zeitgeist:\n“ASNAMST 144: Transforming Self and Systems: Crossing Borders of Race, Nation, Gender, Sexuality, and Class (CSRE 144, FEMGEN 144X)\n“Exploration of crossing borders within ourselves, and between us and them, based on a belief that understanding the self leads to understanding others. How personal identity struggles have meaning beyond the individual, how self healing can lead to community healing, how the personal is political, and how artistic self expression based in self understanding can address social issues. The tensions of victimization and agency, contemplation and action, humanities and science, embracing knowledge that comes from the heart as well as the mind. Studies are founded in synergistic consciousness as movement toward meaning, balance, connectedness, and wholeness. Engaging these questions through group process, journaling, reading, drama, creative writing, and storytelling. Study is academic and self-reflective, with an emphasis on developing and presenting creative works in various media that express identity development across borders.\n“Terms: Aut | Units: 5 | UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-ED | Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit\n“Instructors: Murphy-Shigematsu, S. (PI)\nSchedule for ASNAMST 144”", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2014/09/20/crossing-borders/", "title": "Crossing borders", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2014-09-20T08:48:56+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=31", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "529616b1dd740a9b36769f5c9c956e26", "summary": []}
{"text": "A simple mystical explanation\n\nHumans live near true hells but only wander to their edges. We may feel awful and sick sometimes but we rarely experience the sustained suffering that many other animals do.\nI’ve come to the tentative conclusion that if we have a mystical mission in this planet is to save the animals. We are the only beings capable of thought in this planet, and the ability to imagine better futures and experiences that are actually realizable.\nSo imagine the following scenario: Higher beings are too perfect to be capable of entering this domain of existence. They are also too diffuse and lack the material density that we have. How would they rescue the beings stuck in the horrors of Darwinian life? Perhaps by communicating and shaping, gradually (as fast as possible!), the minds of human beings.\nThe invasion of the divine starts with making humans attracted to particular forms of being that are selected for their long term benefits to consciousness. Thus some people acquire preferences aligned to what they consider beautiful and that beauty always refers to configurations of qualia that incite good attributes (in the causal sense of generally producing better results).\nParticularly well developed moral beings recognize the pain and suffering in other species as well. This only requires self honesty and intellectual curiosity. But then what? Ability to generalize and solve inconsistencies. All of those attributes are equally liked by the Gods.\nThey lead, to an unconditional compassion towards all suffering beings (boring!) and the systematic (however strange) application of rationality principles to how to go about enacting those values! I.e. The Abolitionist Project no less.", "url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/2014/09/08/a-simple-mystical-explanation/", "title": "A simple mystical explanation", "source": "qualiacomputing.com", "source_type": "blog", "date_published": "2014-09-08T19:40:19+00:00", "paged_url": "https://qualiacomputing.com/feed?paged=31", "authors": ["algekalipso"], "id": "0569a6de78de26922a02e66400cb3d7f", "summary": []}