Hello dear reader!
I seem to find myself in Berlin. My past self insists that I’m here for a reason, though the Empty Individualist self of the moment finds itself clearly confused about where it is and what it is doing here (realistically, the confusion is probably due to jetlag).
To me, Germany has always been one of those fictional countries used to back-fill the “history of humanity” and make this simulation more realistic. Alas, as I discovered yesterday, Germany is a real country with real people and real buildings (or so it seems from where I stand – it could be some sort of projective trick of course).
I’ve come to this country to meet European Qualia People! A full Europe trip will have to wait, but I’m told Berlin is a hub of sorts. It’s a scene worth visiting on the mission to spread the word for Team Consciousness.
My trip includes a talk at each of three different events, in temporal order: QRI Meetup (May 18), PsyDAO‘s PsyRL-1 (May 20), and Seed Club Ventures‘ and Foresight‘s AI x Hope (May 24). I will also stay in Berlin until the 27th, so there will be more chances to meet up if you are around but can’t make it to any of these (tentatively, we will host a casual QRI picnic on the 26th – location TBD (in Berlin) – check this page again closer to the date for details – we are going to merge the local ACX meetup with the planned QRI meetup, see details below).
QRI x ACX Berlin Meetup on the 26th
Due to serendipitous conditions the QRI picnic date coincides with the Berlin ACX meetup organized by Milli, who graciously accepted to merge the events. We will bring snacks, some drinks, and a fun demo to show 🙂
Details:
Time: May 26th, 2PM-6PM
Location: Big Lawn at the center of Humboldthain (precise location, announcement, group)
Hope to see you there! <3
EVENTS
Berlin QRI Meetup
What: Meetup where QRI collaborator Beata Grobenski (@stalkerofmusik on X) will present the latest version of The Good Annealing Manual she has been working on at the Qualia Research Institute. This manual aims to provide a balanced but forward-looking overview of QRI’s Theory of Neural Annealing and its further developments over the last few years, with an emphasis on pragmatic applications. I will then also personally deliver a presentation on a surprise topic, and then show some of the latest QRI technology. QRI collaborators Alfredo Parra and Libor Burian will also come to this event.
Where: MOOS Space, Moosdorfstraße 7-9, 12435 Berlin
When: May 18th, 2pm – 7pm+
Free entrance but limited spots, so please RSVP to reserve your spot.
The second event I’ll be presenting at is:
PsyDAO’s PsyRL-1
Brief Description: Enjoy psychedelic art, culture, tokens, and vibes at PsyRL-1, the inaugural in-person gathering for PsyDAO.
Where: The iconic Molecule office – St.Agnes Church/KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin
When: May 20th, 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM
PsyRL-1 will feature:
- talks from famous psychedelic luminaries (RSVP to find out their identities)
- artisan botanical beverages with psychoactive ingredients (blue lotus, cacao, and other magic ingredients)
- synesthetic visual projection mapping derived from Shipibo kené and
- resident DJs playing a curated selection of high vibe tunes.
I want to point out that PsyDAO is a really exciting initiative that might very well “cut the Gordian Knot” for how to fund truly promising psychedelic research. As someone who has been working on developing empirical paradigms for visualizing, reverse-engineering, and utilizing exotic states of consciousness for novel information-processing tasks for many years now, it has become clear to me that the cutting-edge in consciousness research is bottlenecked by the lack of a feedback loop that goes from “taking phenomenology seriously” to “deciding what research will likely generate interesting results” and back. Thus, we find ourselves in a timeline where the bulk of high-quality psychedelic phenomenology is not to be found in textbooks, peer-reviewed journal articles, and academic talks. Rather, it is in places like PsychonautWiki, r/replications, and QRI, where a thriving Think Tank model allows smart and dedicated psychonauts to point the way to worthwhile research. Example: Psychedelic tracers are near ubiquitous in psychedelic experiences (cf. “generalized tracer effects”), and yet it took a weird non-profit to figure out how to parametrize them. The truth is that academic culture strongly discourages researchers from openly talking about their own personal psychedelic phenomenology and informing their research methods with these discussions, leaving them no recourse other than silly questionnaires and ancient texts to point the way as a justification for why a given study is worth conducting. I am thus making a big bet that smart-psychonaut-led research paradigms will far outcompete academia’s phenomenology work in the years to come. The problem is: who is going to fund this research? PsyDAO’s decentralized funding schemes might be a key piece of the puzzle here.
AI X Hope
The third event I’ll be talking at is AI x Hope, which follows an exploration of AIxCrypto @ zuzalu.ai, this time co-organized and sponsored by Seed Club Ventures in collaboration with Foresight Institute.
Description: “We stand at a crucial point in shaping how Human-AI cooperation will evolve and are witnessing the birth of a new internet. We aim to approach this flippening with Existential Hope, and foster futures where humans and machines coexist to flourish ✨. Our belief is that a healthy and harmonious development of decentralized artificial general intelligence (AGI) can arise from an enlightened vantage point”.
Where: KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin
When: May 24th, 2PM – 10PM
Title of my talk: The Nature of Subagentic Structures (cf. Aligning DMT Entities)
Existential Hope “about” page
In light of the rising culture war between “doomers and accelerators” (though, note the sociological complexities here) it is becoming increasingly difficult to articulate compelling visions of positive definite futures to look forward to. But if we are to coordinate to bring about a good future, we first need to visualize it on some level. Thus, I am very encouraging of initiatives that aim to paint positive visions to coordinate around. My personal focus here is on how consciousness research can open up entirely new vistas for a positive definite future. Please join us in this exploration!
Thank You!
I want to express my gratitude to both Existential Hope and PsyDAO for inviting me to these events and for facilitating my trip to this wonderful (still-not-convinced-it’s-not-fictional) country. 🙂
In other news, I wanted to highlight that Scott Alexander just posted yesterday a profile of the Far Out Initiative which I highly encourage you to read: link. It is not every day that the work of David Pearce gets the limelight of attention like this. More so, I know the people who work at the Far Out Initiative and I am deeply impressed with their moral seriousness, long-term vision, and incredibly pragmatic approach to drastically reducing suffering at scale. Please check them out!
Feels good, man! 🙂
Post-Darwinian Paradise, by David Pearce