From the 19th to the 24th of April I will be hanging out at Psychedelic Science 2017 (if you are interested in attending but have not bought the tickets: remember you can register until the 14th of February).

In case you enjoy Qualia Computing and you are planning on going, now you can meet the human who is mostly responsible for these articles. I am looking forward to meeting a lot of awesome researchers. If you see me and enjoy what I do, don’t be afraid to say hi.

Why Care About Psychedelics?

Although the study of psychedelics and their effects is not a terminal value here in Qualia Computing, they are instrumental in achieving the main goals. The core philosophy of Qualia Computing is to (1) map out the state-space of possible experiences, (2) identify the computational properties of consciousness, and (3) reverse-engineer valence so as to find the way to stay positive without going insane.

Psychedelic experiences happen to be very informative and useful in making progress towards these three goals. The quality and magnitude of the consciousness alteration that they induce lends itself to exploring these questions. First, the state-space of humanly accessible experiences is greatly amplified once you add psychedelics into the mix. Second, the nature of these experiences is all but computationally dull (cf. alcohol and opioids). On the contrary, psychedelic experiences involve non-ordinary forms of qualia computing: the textures of consciousness interact in non-trivial ways, and it stands to reason that some combinations of these textures will be recruited in the future for more than aesthetic purposes. They will be used for computational purposes, too. And third, psychedelic states greatly amplify the range of valence (i.e. the maximum intensity of both pain and pleasure). They unlock the possibility of experiencing peak bliss as well as intense suffering. This strongly suggests that whatever underpins valence at the fundamental level, psychedelics are able to amplify it to a fantastic (and terrifying) extent. Thus, serious valence research will undoubtedly benefit from psychedelic science.

It is for this reason that psychedelics have been a major topic explored here since the beginning of this project. Here is a list of articles that directly deal with the subject:

List of Qualia Computing Psychedelic Articles

1) Psychophysics For Psychedelic Research: Textures

How do you make a psychophysical experiment that tells you something foundational about the information-processing properties of psychedelic perception? I proposed to use an experimental approach invented by Benjamin J. Balas based on the anatomically-inspired texture analysis and synthesis techniques developed by Eero Simoncelli. In brief, one seeks to determine which summary statistics are sufficient to create perceptual (textural) metamers. In turn, in the context of psychedelic research, this can help us determine which statistical properties are best discriminated while sober and which differences are amplified while on psychedelics.

2) State-Space of Drug Effects

I distributed a survey in which I asked people to rate drug experiences along 60 different dimensions. I then conducted factor analysis on these responses. This way I empirically derived six major latent traits that account more than half of the variance across all drug experiences. Three of these factors are tightly related to valence, which suggests that hedonic-recalibration might benefit from a multi-faceted approach.

3) How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD

I suggest that control interruption (i.e. the failure of feedback inhibition during psychedelic states) can be employed to transmit information in a secure way to people who are in other states of consciousness. A possible application of this technology might be: You and your friends at Burning Man want to send a secret message to every psychedelic user on a particular camp in such a way that no infiltrated cop is able to decode it. To do so you could instantiate the techniques outlined in this article on a large LED display.

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

This article discusses the phenomenology of DMT states from the point of view of differential geometry. In particular, an argument is provided in favor of the view that high grade psychedelia usually involves a sort of geometric hyperbolization of phenomenal space.

5) LSD and Quantum Measurements: Can you see Schrödinger’s cat both dead and alive on acid?

We provide an empirical method to test the (extremely) wild hypothesis that it is possible to experience “multiple branches of the multiverse at once” on high doses of psychedelics. The point is not to promote a particular interpretation of such experiences. Rather, the points is that we can actually generate predictions from such interpretations and then go ahead and test them.

6) Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States

People report a zoo of psychedelic effects. However, as in most things in life, there may be a relatively small number of basic effects that, when combined, can account for the wide variety of phenomena we actually observe. Algorithmic reductions are proposed as a conceptual framework for analyzing psychedelic experiences. Four candidate main effects are proposed.

7) Peaceful Qualia: The Manhattan Project of Consciousness

Imagine that there was a world-wide effort to identify the varieties of qualia that promote joy and prosocial behavior at the same time. Could these be used to guarantee world peace? By giving people free access to the most valuable and prosocial states of consciousness one may end up averting large-scale conflict in a sustainable way. This articles explores how this investigation might be carried out and proposes organizational principles for such a large-scale research project.

8) Getting closer to digital LSD

Why are the Google Deep Dream pictures so trippy? This is not just a coincidence. People call them trippy for a reason.

9) Generalized Wada-Test

In a Wada-test a surgeon puts half of your brain to sleep and evaluates the cognitive skills of your awake half. Then the process is repeated in mirror image. Can we generalize this procedure? Imagine that instead of just putting a hemisphere to sleep we gave it psychedelics. What would it feel like to be tripping, but only with your right hemisphere? Even more generally: envision a scheme in which one alternates a large number of paired states of consciousness and study their mixtures empirically. This way it may be possible to construct a network of “opinions that states of consciousness have about each other”. Could this help us figure out whether there is a universal scale for subjective value (i.e. valence)?

10) Psychedelic Perception of Visual Textures

In this article I discuss some problems with verbal accounts of psychedelic visuals, and I invite readers to look at some textures (provided in the article) and try to describe them while high on LSD, 2C-B, DMT, etc. You can read some of the hilarious comments already left in there.

11) The Super-Shulgin Academy: A Singularity I Can Believe In

Hard to summarize.