The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes

[Content Warning: Trying to understand the contents of this essay may be mind-warping. Proceed with caution. Featured image credit: Paul Nylander]
Friends, right here and now, one quantum away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien.
—Terence McKenna
The Geometry of DMT States
This 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.
Conceptual Framework: Algorithmic Reduction
We 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).
In 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.
What is Hyperbolic Geometry?
Perhaps the clearest way to describe hyperbolic space is to show examples of it:

The 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.
An 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.
We Can Only Remember What We Can Reconstruct
We 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.
What about DMT suggests hyperbolic geometry?
Why 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):

Perception of far-out travel (as we said, small movements in hyperbolic space lead to huge changes in the scene).
Feelings of becoming big (you can fit a lot more inside a circle of radius r in hyperbolic space).
The space experienced is often depicted as "more real and more dense than normal".
The use of terms like "mind-expanding" and "warping" to describe the effects of the drug are very common.
People describing it as "a different kind of space" and frequently using the word "hyperspace" to talk about it.
Difficulty integrating/remembering the objects and scenes experienced (e.g. "they were too alien to recall").
Constant movement/acceleration and change of perspectives which are often described as "unfolding scenes and expanding patterns" (cf. the chrysanthemum, jitterbox).
Continuous 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).
Crowding 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!")
Reported similarity with fractals.
Omnipresence 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.
Looking 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*).
PSIS-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).
Psychedelic replication pictures usually include features that can be interpreted as hyperbolic objects embedded in Euclidean 3D.
People describe "incredibly advanced mechanisms" and "impossible objects" that cannot be represented in our usual reality (e.g. Terence Mckenna's self-dribbling basketballs).
At least one mathematician has stated that what one experiences on DMT cannot be translated into Euclidian geometry (unlike what one experiences on LSD).
We 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).

This 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:
The Phenomenology of DMT experiences: The 6 Levels
In 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.
The six levels of a DMT experience are: Threshold, Chrysanthemum, Magic Eye, Waiting Room, Breakthrough, and Amnesia. Let us dive in!
(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.)
(1) Threshold
The 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.
Within 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."

On 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.
(2) The Chrysanthemum
If 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.
Depending 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.

The 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.
You 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).
In 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.
An 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.
The 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):

The 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.
Now, 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…
(3) The Magic Eye Level
A 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.
In 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.
There are three major components of variance on the DMT Magic Eye level:

Texture (dependent on the Chrysanthemum's evolution)
World-sheet (non-occluding 3D1T depth maps)
Extremely lowered information copying threshold.

The 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.
World-Sheets

The 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.).
It 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.
Magic 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.
Whatever 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.

A 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).
There 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).

In 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…
(4) Waiting Room
In 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".

The 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).
DMT 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.
Serious 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…
(5) Breakthrough
If 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.

The 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.
While 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.
(6) Amnesia Level
Unlike 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).
Recalling the Immemorial
We 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.
This 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.
DMT Objects
The 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.
What 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:

Notice 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.
DMT Space Expansion
The 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.

DMT entities
DMT 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.

Threshold: 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.
Chrysanthemum: 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.
Magic 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.
Waiting 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.
Breakthrough: 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.
Amnesia: 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).

Modeling the Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT
How 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:
(1) Control Interruption + Symmetry detection = Change in Metric
Recall that on a previous article we algorithmically reduced general psychedelic states. The building blocks of that reduction were:

Control Interruption (which amounts to a "longer half-life for all qualia")
Drifting ("breathing walls, eyes moving from their normal place, waving sensations")
Enhanced Pattern Recognition (pareidolia, cf. Getting Closed to Digital LSD)
Lowered Symmetry Detection Threshold (quasi-symmetric patterns tend to "lock into" perfectly symmetrical structures)

Using 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.
The 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.
Different 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).
(2) Dynamic System Account: Energy Sources, Sinks and Invariants
Energy Invariants
Let 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.
Under 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.
More 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.
Energy Sources and Sinks
In 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.
This model postulates that attention functions as an energy source, whereas pattern recognition functions as an energy sink.
The Hamiltonian of a World-sheet
The 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.
You 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.
It 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.
Bayesian Energy Sinks
One 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.
This 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!
Forgive 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.
Like 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.
Every 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.
(3) Hyperbolic Micro-structure of Consciousness
Subjectively, 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.
Perhaps 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.
As 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.
Generalizing hyperbolization to non-spatial experiential fields
In 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.
Getting a handle on the DMT state
Gluing 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.

Relatedly… Get a handle on your DMT trip by creating a stabilizing 4D hyperbolic manifold in four easy steps:

Unifying Your Space
God, 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.
Applications to Qualia Computing and Closing Thoughts
Beyond 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.
Mathematics post-hyperbolic consciousness
I 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.

*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.
P.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.
P.S.S. Example Self-Dribbling Basketball:
Self-dribbling basketball
To 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.
P.S.S.S.: Example on world-sheet bending:
Below 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.
(Super-trippy symmetric hyperbolic manifold representations: http://newearthlovelight.tumblr.com/post/<PHONE>)


Thinking in Numbers

To 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?
Imagine.
Close 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.
Such 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.

– Extract from the book Thinking in Numbers, by Daniel Tammet.
Daniel 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.

Thinking in Numbers


Praise and Blame are Instrumental

The 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.

Relatedly, 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.

Thus, 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.

In 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.

– Extract from the essay "Demandingness" by Brian Tomasik

Praise and Blame are Instrumental


The Tyranny of the Intentional Object

> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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".
– Wirehead Hedonism vs Paradise Engineering by David Pearce

Direct 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.
Whereas 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.
A 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:
Sandy the Dog!
Sandy 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.
Of 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.

For 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.
Now 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.
Sandy 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.
Could 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.
A 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.

The Tyranny of the Intentional Object


Schrödinger's Neurons: David Pearce at the "2016 Science of Consciousness" conference in Tucson

Abstract:

Mankind'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.

For more see: https://www.physicalism.com/

(cf. Qualia Computing in Tucson: The Magic Analogy)

(Trivia: David Chalmers is one of the attendees of the talk and asks a question at 24:03.)

Schrödinger’s Neurons: David Pearce at the “2016 Science of Consciousness” conference in Tucson


Beyond Turing: A Solution to the Problem of Other Minds Using Mindmelding and Phenomenal Puzzles

Here is my attempt at providing an experimental protocol to determine whether an entity is conscious.
If you are just looking for the stuffed animal music video skip to 23:28.

Are you the only conscious being in existence? How could we actually test whether other beings have conscious minds?
Turing 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.
But 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.
In 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.
To conduct the experiment you need:

A 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).
A 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).
A phenomenal puzzle (as described above).
The right set and setting: the use of a proper protocol.

Here 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:
A) Person A learns about the phenomenal puzzle but is not given enough time to solve it.
B) Person A and B mindmeld using the phenomenal bridge, creating a new being AB.
C) AB tells the phenomenal puzzle to itself (by remembering it from A's narrative).
D) A and B get disconnected and A is sedated (to prevent A from solving the puzzle).
E) B tries to solve the puzzle on its own (the use of computers not connected to the internet is allowed to facilitate self-experimentation).
F) When B claims to have solved it A and B reconnect into AB.
G) AB then tells the solution to itself so that the records of it in B's narrative get shared with A's brain memory.
H) 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!
To 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.
Of 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.


Core Philosophy

David Pearce asked me ages ago to make accesible videos about transhumanism, consciousness and the abolitionist project. Well, here is a start

In this video I outline the core philosophy and objectives of Qualia Computing. There are three main goals here:

Catalogue the entire state-space of consciousness
Identify the computational properties of each experience (and its qualia components), and
Reverse engineer valence (i.e. to discover the function that maps formal descriptions of states of consciousness to values in the pleasure-pain axis)

While 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).

With 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.

And 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).

I 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).

Core Philosophy


David Pearce on the "Schrodinger's Neurons Conjecture"

My friend +Andrés Gómez Emilsson on Qualia Computing: LSD and Quantum Measurements: Can you see Schrödinger's cat both dead and alive on acid?

Most 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!!

What 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.

In 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.

Here'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.

Critically, 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).

OK, that's the claim. Why would (almost) no scientifically informed person take the conjecture seriously?

In a word, decoherence.

On 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!

Too quick.
Let's step back.
Many 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.

Unfortunately, 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.

How 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.

We shall see.
– David Pearce, commenting on the latest significant article published on this blog.

David Pearce on the “Schrodinger’s Neurons Conjecture”


Samadhi

Vanished are the veils of light and shade,
Lifted the vapors of sorrow,
Sailed away the dawn of fleeting joy,
Gone the mirage of the senses.
Love, hate, health, disease, life and death –
Departed, these false shadows on the screen
of duality.
Waves of laughter, scyllas of sarcasm, whirlpools
of melancholy,
Melting in the vast sea of bliss.
Bestilled is the storm of maya
By the magic wand of intuition deep.
The universe, a forgotten dream, lurks
subconsciously,
Ready to invade my newly wakened memory divine.
I exist without the cosmic shadow,
But it could not live bereft of me;
As the sea exists without the waves,
But they breathe not without the sea.
Dreams, wakings, states of deep turiya sleep,
Present, past, future, no more for me,
But the ever-present, all-flowing, I, I everywhere.
Consciously enjoyable,
Beyond the imagination of all expectancy,
Is this, my samadhi state.
Planets, stars, stardust, earth,
Volcanic bursts of doomsday cataclysms,
Creation's moulding furnace,
Glaciers of silent X-rays,
Burning floods of electrons,
Thoughts of all men, past, present, future,
Every blade of grass, myself and all,
Each particle of creation's dust,
Anger, greed, good, bad, salvation, lust,
I swallowed up – transmuted them
Into one vast ocean of blood of my own one Being!
Smoldering joy, oft-puffed by unceasing meditation,
Which blinded my tearful eyes,
Burst into eternal flames of bliss,
And consumed my tears, my peace, my frame,
my all.
Thou art I, I am Thou,
Knowing, Knower, Known, as One!
One tranquilled, unbroken thrill of eternal, living, ever-new peace!
Not an unconscious state
Or mental chloroform without wilful return,
Samadhi but extends my realm of consciousness
Beyond the limits of my mortal frame
To the boundaries of eternity,
Where I, the Cosmic Sea,
Watch the little ego floating in Me.
Not a sparrow, nor a grain of sand, falls
without my sight
All space floats like an iceberg in my mental sea.
I am the Colossal Container of all things made!
By deeper, longer, continuous, thirsty,
guru – given meditation,
This celestial samadhi is attained.
All the mobile murmurs of atoms are heard;
The dark earth, mountains, seas are molten liquid!
This flowing sea changes into vapors of nebulae!
Aum blows o'er the vapors; they open their veils,
Revealing a sea of shining electrons,
Till, at the last sound of the cosmic drum,
Grosser light vanishes into eternal rays
Of all-pervading Cosmic Joy.
From Joy we come,
For Joy we live,
In the sacred Joy we melt.
I, the ocean of mind, drink all creation's waves.
The four veils of solid, liquid, vapor, light,
Lift aright.
Myself, in everything,
Enters the Great Myself.
Gone forever,
The fitful, flickering shadows of a mortal memory.
Spotless is my mental sky,
Below, ahead, and high above.
Eternity and I, one united ray.
I, a tiny bubble of laughter,
Have become the Sea of Mirth Itself.

– Songs of the Soul. Paramahansa Yogananda (source)
(cf. Ontological Qualia: The Future of Personal Identity)

Samadhi


Panpsychism and Compositionality: A solution to the hard problem

By Anand Rangarajan

We 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.

– Talk given at The Science of Consciousness 2016, held in Tucson Arizona (slides)
(cf. Qualia Computing in Tucson: The Magic Analogy)