Hedonic Tone

DMT for Cluster Headaches: Aborting and Preventing Extreme Pain with Tryptamines and Other Methods

Posted on by algekalipso

“If we lived in a really sane society with a strong compassionate streak, every building would have something like a ‘Break in case of fire’ box… only this one would read ‘Break in case of cluster headache.’ Inside you’d find a pre‑charged DMT vape pen. That would be really nice.”

Announcement: Do you have experience using psychedelics to treat cluster headaches? Want to support science and advocacy in this area? Submit your personal and/or professional testimonial to our upcoming “ClusterFree” Open Letter initiative.

Sitting Down with Cluster Busters at Psychedelic Science 2025

One of the highlight moments for me at Psychedelic Science 2025 in Denver this June was conducting an interview for Bob Wold, founder of Cluster Busters, and Joe Stone, and Joe McKay who work alongside Bob in patient support and advocacy.  Our conversation covered a lot of ground, but I had one key strategic goal in mind: document, in their own words, why the humble DMT vape pen looks like a once‑in‑a‑generation breakthrough for the most painful condition that medicine has ever encountered.

“With a regular vape pen it’s usually one inhalation. Thirty seconds later the pain is gone. I hear a click in the middle of my brain and the attack is just off.” —Bob Wold

Their story plugs directly into QRI’s ongoing attempt to map the upper reaches of experience (QRI has the long-standing mission of mapping the state-space of consciousness, reverse engineer valence, and reduce suffering at scale). Our logarithmic scales of pleasure and pain shows that as one climbs up the pain (or pleasure) scales, phenomenal intensity rises far higher than common sense anticipates. The Heavy‑Tailed Valence hypothesis extends that insight to society at large and seeks to question the validity of current econometric approaches to collective wellbeing (cf. QALYs) in light of the fact that the extremes are not properly represented. From where we stand, it seems that a handful of wildly intense states do most of the moral damage (or good). Cluster headaches live in that fat tail, which is precisely why a 30‑second fix like DMT matters so much; perhaps as big of a collective hedonic breakthrough as, say, the discovery of anesthesia (in aggregate).

Put bluntly, if we care about total suffering, we need to care about cluster headaches. The time is now.

Interview Highlights Pertaining to DMT

  • DMT as an acute rescue
    One lungful (where the instructions typically say “three full breaths”) ends most attacks in under a minute. A second puff a minute later covers nearly all the rest. No tolerance shows up (acutely or chronically) which allows patients to repeat the dose whenever necessary.
  • Low psychedelic burden
    The dose is about a quarter of a psychedelic hit; enough to see some color enhancement but not enough for significant “trippiness”. Patients describe “a mild two‑beer buzz” or “the room takes on a golden tint” or “faint auras appear.” The mild level of psychedelia needed for this treatment makes bedside use practical, even for parents who need to stay functional the day after.
  • Why it beats psilocybin and LSD in the heat of battle
    Psilocybin and LSD still shine for cycle prevention, taken every five days, but they work on a timescale that makes them impractical for acute events. DMT is for the here‑and‑now (note Eleusinia founder says DMT also interrupt cycles according to her work at the retreat center). Joe Stone calls it “a game changer” because he can abort a 2AM ethical emergency (a cluster) and fall back asleep within 10 minutes. No need to have an expensive psychotherapy, a professional sitter, or trip killers on hand, let alone having to book a whole day to trip.
  • A hunch about endogenous DMT
    Bob’s shares his intuitive working model for how cluster headaches work (to be refuted or confirmed by science): an attack begins when natural DMT in the brain dips below a threshold (why do we even have DMT in our brains to begin with?). He hazards the guess that a quick DMT top‑up pulls the breaks and re‑establishes homeostasis. Others suggest that melatonin abnormalities in cluster patients add plausibility to his view, given the biochemical link between melatonin and endogenous tryptamine synthesis.
  • Pain drives the psychiatric condition, not the other way around
    One key insight I wanted to make sure to get on the record: chronic physical agony breeds depression, anxiety, and PTSD‑like flashbacks. Fix the pain and the mental distress often dissolves; no need for heroic doses or eight‑hour therapy sessions (as with e.g. psilocybin for depression specifically). Cultural over-emphasis on mental health as _the_ thing to treat with psychedelics might make sense from the point of view of a slowly expanding Overton Window; but the big hedonic payouts (freedom from hellish states of consciousness) are likely concentrated in their application to the reduction of extreme physical pain (see also).

Why This Matters

Alfredo Parra’s quantitative analysis suggests that cluster headaches may contribute more net misery than migraines, cancer pain, or even major depressive disorder once intensity is included (and a proper long-tail model and Monte Carlo simulations are taken into accont). Effective Altruist “pleasure-bean‑counters” (I say this affectionately!) please take note: extremely nasty but “rare” states can dominate the integral, and need urgent consideration.

From a consciousness‑research angle, the interview is another data point for why direct phenomenological investigation should guide ethics; here, patients, confronted with the reality of their own phenomenology, themselves have again clearly pioneered the treatment all the while mainstream research (unsurprisingly) slept through five decades of drug war.

Closing Thoughts

Imagine a fire‑alarm box on every hospital wall that reads “Break glass in case of cluster headache.” Inside we find a sober-looking, very boring but perfectly functional, pre‑filled DMT cartridge that delivers reliable 3mg hits (enough to feel a light buzz, not enough to trip significantly – certainly far short of any dose needed for entity contact or alien abduction experiences). This isn’t science fiction; it is what the data we’re seeing support.  Freedom from one of the most extreme demonic forces on Earth is, counterintuitively… Spice. Let’s shorten the path from patient innovation to standard‑of‑care and, in the process, erase one of the darkest corners of conscious experience forever. I believe we can achieve a Cluster-Free World within a few years if we put our minds and hearts to the task.

Hallucinations are not a problem at the doses we have people use and that seem to work the best, which are much smaller than a recreational dose. We aren’t recommending people take doses that will have them playing cards with a deer (you can’t trust them!). The doses are small (e.g. 1.5g of mushrooms). You’re supposed to get to about the “giggle”. Get to the “giggle point” and you’re good to go. – Suicide or Psychedelics, Bob Wold at Horizons 2009

Resources and Further Reading:

How You Can Contribute:

  • Donate to Cluster Busters
  • Donate to QRI (earmark for “Cluster Headache Research and Advocacy”)
  • Donate to OPIS (Organization for the Prevention of Intense Suffering)
  • Share your testimonial if you’ve experienced relief through psychedelic therapy: Submit Here

Stay tuned for QRI’s upcoming Open Letter advocating for psychedelic access in treating severe pain conditions, the ClusterFree worldwide initiative.

The Voice in Your Head: Don’t Mind the Inner Monologue

Posted on by algekalipso

People complain about the “voice in their heads.” Often, advanced meditators say they’ve lost it, and their life is better for it. But more recent research shows a large percentage of the population doesn’t have it anyway (a case where natural variance combined with the typical mind fallacy makes things extra confusing).

But you know what? I think this is a massive red herring. As per usual, the problem with X (having a voice in your head in this case) was never X directly, but… you can guess what I’m about to say: the effect X has on valence. Don’t overindex on X. X IS INCIDENTAL. What matters is that X MAKES YOU FEEL BAD.

Rob Burbea distinguishes between discernment and judgement. Discernment tells you what is helpful. Judgement is an evaluation of the self/other, which relies on false metaphysical assumptions to stand on.

The problem with having a voice in your head is that it is a judgmental voice – it creates a self-view. In particular, it causes moral and social judgments on a fabricated sense of “self and other.” Judgment feels bad; it adds weight to experience. Even judging something as good feels subtly bad in the background, because it entails some level of inner tension and segmentation where you represent a part of you as bad to generate the contrast necessary to highlight the good.

Judgment is self-perpetuating. It stings. It costs energy. And it builds on top of itself. When you’re too far gone in a judgment spiral, you judge yourself for being judgmental.

Burbea calls judgment “the thief of happiness” and explains how it strangles creativity: how many poems die in the waste-basket because “I’m useless” barged in? He also reminds us that sometimes simple mindfulness isn’t enough; you have to challenge the habit by feeling its sting in the body and meeting that pain with kindness.

Things like hangovers and bad psychedelic trips are often bad because of the persistent tracer effect on judgment. A panic attack often involves a kind of judgment tinnitus. Without judgment and its symmetry-breaking effects in the field of awareness, a “voice in your head” would not be a problem. Bring it on! I’m OK having a zany, Bugs Bunny-like commentator on my experience, so long as it doesn’t jitter my attention without consent or cast judgment on my everyday activities or social cognition. It could very well be amusing: might as well have an entire cast of whacky characters putting on a schizophrenic show for me to enjoy. The problem is not the voices, but the bitterness and disenchantment they entail.

Rob, in his lecture on letting go of judgment, explains that not judging is a real, achievable way of life. Freedom from judgment is within grasp for all of us (assuming we put in the time and effort – though please don’t take this as a judgment on your temporal thriftiness or laziness!). Burbea affirms it’s “absolutely possible” for the habit of judgment to end – sometimes large chunks of the “mountain of judgment” crumble suddenly in a matter of weeks. Even when judgment thoughts continue to arise from habit, they arise “completely free of any charge… just like empty words” with no power behind them. Eventually, these empty judgments fade away because they’ve been “sucked dry” of meaning.

This effort, I believe, is far more targeted and beneficial for liberation than the poor proxy of “removing the voice in your head, which already ~50% (?) of people don’t have anyway.” Freedom from judgment and its associated sense of presence, direct experience, thinning of self, and homeostatic regulation is the real prize. Not mental silence.

Presidential Inaugural Address of Andrés Gómez Emilsson

Posted on by algekalipso

[Epistemic Status: fiction (in most timelines, that is); in my lane, having fun]

Place: The Equatorial Republic (pop. ~190M)

Time: 2032

My fellow citizens of this great Equatorial Republic,

Today, as I stand before you having accepted the solemn responsibility of the presidency, I am humbled by your trust and energized by the possibilities that lie before us. This administration marks not just a change in leadership, but a fundamental paradigm shift in how we approach governance, human welfare, and our collective future.

A New Era of Compassion Through Science

On this first day in office, I am announcing the formation of the National Hedonic Research Initiative. Let me be clear: extreme suffering can be worse than death itself. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of cluster headaches—aptly named “suicide headaches” by medical professionals, a condition where the pain is rated significantly more severe than childbirth, kidney stones, or even gunshot wounds.

Through Executive Order 001, I am establishing the Cluster Headache Elimination Commission with an initial $2 billion in funding. The data is clear: approximately 3 million people worldwide suffer from this condition, spending nearly 5 million person-days annually in extreme suffering rated 9/10 or higher on pain scales. This Commission will:

  1. Create a nationwide tryptamine research and distribution network, prioritizing low-dose N,N-DMT, psilocybin, and LSD trials based on compelling evidence that these compounds can not only abort attacks but extend remission periods indefinitely for many patients
  2. Establish 200 specialized treatment facilities across the nation within 6 months with mandatory oxygen therapy and other proven abortive treatments
  3. Fund 50 research laboratories dedicated to advancing our understanding of pain relief mechanisms and developing targeted interventions for these conditions based on patient-reported outcomes

Additionally, I am directing the Department of Health to create the Pharmaceutical Innovation Directive focusing on anti-tolerance compounds for chronic pain patients, next-generation flumazenil analogs to reverse benzodiazepine dependence, and targeted solutions for other iatrogenic conditions that have been unconscionably neglected. These extreme forms of suffering represent the deepest moral emergency in our society, and their elimination is our highest priority.

Mapping the Hedonic Landscape: Beyond QALY

For too long, our policies have been guided by economic indicators and inadequate health metrics like Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALY). The QALY framework fundamentally fails us by treating all human experiences as linearly equivalent and by capping wellbeing at an arbitrary “perfect health” that ignores the vast territory of heightened human potential.

The empirical evidence is compelling: our current metrics systematically undervalue both the depths of intense human experiences and the heights of human flourishing. As a result, we’ve created policies that address widespread but moderate challenges while neglecting concentrated instances of profound human experiences – both positive and negative.

Today, I am commissioning the first comprehensive Hedonic Landscape Observatory—a scientific assessment of the full spectrum of human experience that will:

  1. Develop more sensitive and accurate measurements of diverse human experiences across the wellbeing spectrum
  2. Map the neurological correlates of resilience and positive states to complement our understanding of health
  3. Create economic feedback loops that systematically reward businesses and institutions that demonstrably enhance quality of life
  4. Develop a new economic indicator—the Consciousness-Weighted Prosperity Index—that will appear alongside GDP in all government reporting

This initiative will ensure that governance decisions are evaluated not just by economic impact, but by their effect on the actual lived quality of conscious experience of our citizens—taking into account the true depth and breadth of human flourishing available to us.

Game Theory and Consciousness: A New Political Framework

We stand at an evolutionary crossroads. The old politics operated on outdated models that failed to recognize the fundamental relationship between consciousness and our collective future. Today, we begin the transition to a political framework that explicitly acknowledges the quality of conscious experience—as central to governance.

By Executive Order 002, I am establishing the Consciousness-Economy Integration Commission tasked with creating explicit feedback loops between consciousness research and economic selection pressures. This commission will:

  1. Develop metrics that quantify the wellbeing-enhancing potential of technologies, enabling investors to select for innovations that genuinely improve quality of life
  2. Create tax incentives for businesses that demonstrably improve the lived experiences of their employees and customers
  3. Establish a public research platform exploring the positive potential of consciousness, ensuring that discoveries about phenomenological wellbeing directly influence market forces

This systematic exploration of consciousness is not merely academic—it will fundamentally reshape our economic landscape by ensuring that technologies and policies that enhance human flourishing systematically outcompete those that merely optimize for shallow metrics. The implications for environmental policy, social welfare, and international relations are profound and far-reaching.

Transcending Tribal Politics Through Psychological Understanding

From this day forward, international diplomacy will operate with a new level of psychological sophistication. Through the newly formed Department of Psychological Architecture Analysis, we will explicitly model the subagent structure of world leaders and political movements, identifying when narcissism, psychopathy, or tribal thinking is driving decision-making.

International coalitions will be formed not just around shared interests, but around shared psychological awareness. This administration will not hesitate to name pathological dynamics when they appear on the world stage, while offering a path forward through a consciousness-centric yet pragmatic approach to governance.

I am also directing our diplomatic corps to explore new modalities for high-stakes negotiations. We will establish a Diplomatic Innovation Laboratory to research the application of empathy-enhancing protocols in negotiation settings where entrenched psychological barriers prevent resolution. When trillions of dollars and millions of lives hang in the balance of international agreements, we cannot afford to have negotiations hijacked by psychological defense mechanisms and tribal identification.

Just as we now understand that the pain of cluster headaches is objectively more severe than a migraine, despite superficially similar descriptions, we must develop precise language and metrics for the psychological architectures that drive international conflict. They are real, distortionary, and far from game-theoretically optimal. Only by seeing these structures clearly—and developing reliable methods to transform them—can we hope to address existential challenges that require genuine cooperation.

Longevity: The Right of Every Citizen

While extreme suffering can be worse than death, unnecessary death itself remains a profound tragedy and represents an incalculable loss of human potential. Today, I announce the formation of the National Longevity Institute with initial funding of $10 billion, coordinating research across public and private sectors to dramatically extend healthy human lifespan.

This institute will prioritize three areas:

  1. Senolytics and cellular reprogramming technologies to reverse biological aging
  2. Neural preservation techniques to maintain cognitive function
  3. Prevention of age-related suffering states through targeted interventions

The benefits of this research will not be reserved for the privileged few, but made available to every citizen as a basic right. Age-related suffering is not inevitable, and this administration will not accept it as such.

The Science of Awakening: Soteriology as a Research Target

Even as we pursue longevity, we must confront a fundamental truth: all things remain impermanent. Today, I am establishing the Institute for Contemplative Sciences with a mission to develop a rigorous scientific understanding of what traditions across time and cultures have called “awakening,” “enlightenment,” or “liberation.”

This research program will:

  1. Systematically study how humans throughout history have made peace with impermanence and transcended existential suffering
  2. Investigate the neurobiological and phenomenological correlates of awakening experiences across contemplative traditions
  3. Develop scalable, secular methods to help citizens process mortality, grief, and existential concerns within our scientific worldview
  4. Create interdisciplinary teams combining neuroscientists, contemplatives, philosophers, and clinicians to bridge ancient wisdom with modern scientific rigor

The ultimate human challenge is not merely to extend life, but to discover how to be fundamentally okay with the impermanent nature of existence. While various religious and philosophical traditions have offered paths to this goal for millennia, we now have the scientific tools to explore these states with unprecedented precision.

By creating a dialogue between contemplative wisdom and scientific method, we can forge new pathways for humanity to face its deepest existential challenges. This is not merely a spiritual pursuit—it is a practical necessity for a civilization grappling with the fundamental questions of meaning and mortality in an age of unprecedented technological power.

Understanding Exceptional States of Consciousness

The most profound states of human consciousness remain largely unexplored territory in scientific research. Today, I am directing the National Institutes of Health to establish the Center for Exceptional States of Consciousness (aka. The Super-Shulgin Academy) with a $5 billion initial investment, tasked with making sense of profoundly positive experiences across the full spectrum of chemically-facilitated and meditation-induced states.

This Center will:

  1. Create standardized protocols for psychedelic research, including 5-MeO-DMT with essential safeguards and contraindication screening, recognizing that while beneficial for many, it can induce challenging experiences in others—understanding these variables is crucial for responsible application
  2. Fund 25 dedicated research facilities specializing in Jhana acceleration techniques and other contemplative practices that achieve similar states without pharmacological intervention
  3. Develop a comprehensive empirical framework mapping the neural correlates of these heightened states while investigating both beneficial outcomes and adverse reactions to create predictive models for personalized approaches
  4. Prioritize sustainable MDMA production and research as a north star intervention, focusing on its potential for treating PTSD and enhancing empathetic connection while minimizing cardiovascular impact and developing protocols to mitigate tolerance and neurotoxicity concerns
  5. Translate findings into scalable interventions for depression, anxiety, and existential distress, ensuring that safety, accessibility, and individual neuropsychological differences guide all protocols

These states represent extraordinary territories of human wellbeing—regions of experience that offer not only therapeutic potential but a scientific window into the furthest reaches of human potential that we have barely begun to understand. Our commitment is to explore these states with both scientific rigor and ethical care, recognizing both their profound potential and the need for responsible stewardship.

Expanding Our Moral Circle: Non-Human Animal Consciousness

Our commitment to understanding consciousness and reducing suffering must extend beyond our own species. Today, I am establishing the Interspecies Consciousness Research Initiative with a dual mandate: rigorous scientific exploration and practical harm reduction.

This Initiative will:

  1. Develop objective metrics to quantify suffering in non-human animals, with immediate focus on factory-farmed animals where the concentration of suffering is most acute
  2. Allocate $3 billion annually to research and implement improved welfare standards for farmed animals while simultaneously investing in cultured meat technologies and plant-based alternatives
  3. Create a roadmap for the gradual, culturally sensitive phasing out of the most harmful animal agriculture practices over the coming decades, aligning economic incentives with ethical progress
  4. Establish the Wild Animal Welfare Research Program to cautiously explore the complex ethical landscape of wild animal suffering, acknowledging the immense scientific and ecological challenges involved

The ethical imperative is clear, but so is the need for careful, evidence-based approaches. We will neither rush interventions that could have unintended consequences nor hide behind complexity as an excuse for inaction when suffering is demonstrable and solutions are feasible. This balanced approach recognizes our ethical responsibilities without compromising scientific rigor or cultural realities.

Transforming Education: Experience, Don’t Memorize

A key pillar of this administration will be fundamentally reimagining education. Today, I announce the Consciousness Education Initiative that will transform how we develop young minds. This initiative rejects both outdated rote learning and any form of ideological indoctrination. Instead, it embraces a “see for yourself” approach where students:

  1. Learn meditation techniques alongside mathematics, building empirical skills for exploring internal states
  2. Study their own consciousness with the same rigor they apply to studying literature, using first-person methods complemented by third-person science
  3. Develop critical thinking by becoming aware of their own cognitive biases and subagent structures
  4. Understand the psychological architectures that drive political beliefs through evidence-based empirical investigations

The goal is not to tell students what to think about consciousness, but to give them the tools to explore their own minds with scientific precision and philosophical depth. This approach builds intellectual independence—teaching students to verify claims through direct experience rather than accepting them on authority, whether in consciousness studies or any other domain.

A Call to Action

My fellow citizens, I do not promise that these ambitious goals will be easy to achieve. They will require not just government action, but a transformation in how we approach science, governance, and our very understanding of what it means to be human.

But the stakes could not be higher. We have the opportunity to eliminate forms of suffering that have plagued humanity throughout history, to extend healthy life, to create social systems that support human flourishing, and to understand the very foundations of consciousness itself.

This is not a partisan agenda, but a human one. In fact, of consciousness itself. It transcends traditional political divisions and speaks to our shared desire for a world with less suffering and more joy, less confusion and more clarity, less conflict and more cooperation.

Let us begin this journey together, guided by compassion, informed by science, and dedicated to the proposition that the quality of conscious experience matters fundamentally—and that we have both the capability and the responsibility to improve it, in ourselves, our loved ones, and in the field at large.

Thank you, and may we move forward with wisdom, courage, and clear-eyed determination.

Infinite bliss!

[The crowd erupts in thunderous applause]

And now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the voted ‘most hedonic’ pop sensation of the year, performing their chart-topping anthem inspired by our vision for the future!

[Cue massive flashy fireworks as the stage transforms. Spotlights sweep across a diverse crowd of all ages beginning to dance as the music starts. Children, seniors, and everyone in between move to the rhythm. The singer emerges from beneath the stage on a rising platform surrounded by dancers in colorful neuron-patterned costumes, launching into their hit song about consciousness, wellbeing and the dawning of a new era of understanding…]

“Conscious Dawn” – Presidential Lyrics

Ancient wisdom meets the future’s light
Through pain’s darkest valleys, we’ll find the heights
Mapping consciousness beyond what we’ve known
A nation where suffering won’t reign on the throne

Tribal boundaries dissolve in our sight
As senolytics set our cells aright
The hedonic landscape unfolds like a scroll
Where DMT whispers truths to the soul

From cluster headaches to enlightened minds
Transcending metrics that keep us blind
Our moral circle widens beyond human skin
Wild animal welfare, a new dawn begins

Science awakens what sages once taught
Not just to live long, but find what we’ve sought
A republic where bliss is more than a dream
Infinite consciousness—our birthright supreme

Social Anhedonia Considered Selfish

Posted on by algekalipso

[Epistemic Status: Speculating on personality disorders from the point of view of their valence landscapes – it makes intuitive sense when you think about it, but the theory lacks empirical validation – take it with a grain of salt]

Overeating : Food Anhedonia :: Narcissism : Social Anhedonia

Unreflectively, we may assume that overeating is a result of liking food too much. This makes intuitive sense – people consume more of what they enjoy. But research in eating behavior reveals a counterintuitive pattern: often, overconsumption stems not from heightened pleasure but from its absence. Recent studies on anhedonia in binge eating (spectrum disorders) suggest that palatable foods may substitute for the pleasure typically obtained from day-to-day activities – pointing to a pleasure deficit rather than excess.

People eat, and overeat, for many reasons, each with distinct phenomenological signatures. The interiority of overeating induced by THC (aka. “munchies”) differs markedly from overeating driven by social contexts (imagine the colleague pressured into “just one more slice” at an office party despite feeling full). But particularly interesting is the connection between overeating and food anhedonia – consuming more precisely because one experiences less pleasure from normal eating. This drives individuals toward the most perceptible elements of food – the sugars, fats, and salt that can penetrate a dulled sensory system. Meanwhile, those with intact hedonic tone for food experience a richer valence landscape, allowing them to enjoy subtle flavor notes that others might find imperceptible.

I think one can think about narcissism in a similar light.

The Social Taste Blindness Hypothesis

Consider two people at a wine tasting. Person A experiences complex notes of cherry, tobacco, and oak, with subtle shifts as the wine breathes. Person B tastes… red. Just red. Not unpleasant, but phenomenologically sparse. Who’s more likely to grab the bottle with “WORLD’S STRONGEST FLAVOR!” on the label?

The narcissist isn’t rejecting the subtle beautify of reciprocal attention and vibe attunement in favor of the loud BANG of admiration. They’re living in a world where the BANG is the only sound they can hear. The rest is silence or background noise.

This isn’t a defense of narcissism… someone who can’t taste anything but salt still shouldn’t add a pound of it on your birthday cake (without your consent, that is). But it does suggest that what we’re seeing isn’t an overflow of self-love, but a desperate compensation for what might be called “social taste blindness” or perhaps a kind of “generalized social anhedonia”.

The Flattened Social Reward Landscape

The core hypothesis I want to propose is that narcissists aren’t choosing selfishness over compassion any more than a colorblind person is choosing to ignore the difference between red and green. Their valence landscape simply doesn’t trigger the normal reward response to reciprocal human connection. The opposite of narcissism might be the emotional equivalent of tetrachromacy – that extra dimensionality of experience that makes mutual presence inherently rewarding to the socially attuned – rather than, say, lack of self-esteem.

So they optimize for what they can feel: validation, status, control, dominance. These are the salt, sugar, grease, and even capsaicin of the social world – even very dulled taste buds can pick them up in high enough concentrations. And when you can’t taste vanilla, you reach for hot sauce not because it’s better, but because at least it’s something.

The Valence Mechanics of Narcissistic Subtypes

Three major forms of narcissism map neatly onto three forms of social anhedonia, with the fourth one needing a bit of wiggle room (but bear with me):

  1. Grandiose narcissists, in this framework, might have the equivalent of prosopagnosia (aka. face blindness) for emotional states that don’t relate to them. They need to be the center of attention because they can’t feel the streams of attention going between others. The hedonic tone of mere social presence (“we’re just two consciousnesses existing together”) doesn’t register, so they create a stage where they’re in the spotlight. I.e. the only kind of social interaction that feels real to them.
  2. Vulnerable/covert narcissists have their gain turned up for threats but down for comfort. Like those people who can only hear high-pitched sounds, their affective range picks up potential rejections with clarity but the baseline feeling of secure attachment sounds like quiet static. They oscillate between idealization and devaluation because those extremes are the only stations their emotional radio can tune into.
  3. Communal narcissists experience what researchers call “intrinsic moral motivation” as a phenomenological dead zone. While instruments like the Communal Narcissism Inventory (developed by Gebauer et al.) can identify these individuals, the deeper issue lies in their experiential gaps. The phenomenology of doing good anonymously (that distinctive feeling that makes private virtue self-reinforcing for others) simply doesn’t register in their experience. The internal satisfaction that normally accompanies alignment between values and actions is absent, creating a valence vacuum that can only be filled by external recognition. They’re not performing goodness because they prefer the validation (though they do); they’re performing it because, without the observer, the action lacks any significant hedonic tone. Their sense of virtuous action exists only in the reflecting mirrors of social reality.
  4. Malignant narcissists present the most paradoxical case, and may at first look like a counter-example to our hypothesis. Their apparent pleasure in domination and others’ suffering seems to contradict the anhedonia model entirely. Yet what if this represents not normal social enjoyment but an inversion of the reward system? Think: a sensory system so deprived of normal stimulation that it begins to cross-wire, like taste buds registering bitter as sweet after prolonged deprivation, or the phenomenon of phantom limb pain/sensation triggered by touching parts of the body nearby in homunculi-space (“in some of these patients, a vibrator placed on the jaw or cheek was felt as vibration of the phantom hand” – Ramachandran). The malignant narcissist may experience such profound anhedonia to ordinary social pleasure that their valence architecture has essentially flipped, thus finding stimulation only in the high-amplitude signals of others’ distress. (Note: sometimes energy is better than nothing, even if negative in valence at first, as it can still drive an annealing process). Their social reward system, unable to detect the subtle “notes” of mutuality, recalibrates to extract meaning from the only signals strong enough to make a reading: power differentials and the negative emotional states they can induce in others. We are not talking about sadism tout court; rather, it’s a desperate compensation mechanism within an otherwise dim landscape of interpersonal emotions.

In each case, what looks like “too much self” is actually “not enough experiential world” – a dimensionality collapse in their capacity to experience certain valence gradients involving others.

Items of the Communal Narcissism Inventory (Gebauer et al., 2012)

Dimensionality Collapse: Reduced Social Phase Spaces

Normal social rewards operate in a high-dimensional space with multiple independent variables. We track and respond to dozens of social signals simultaneously: facial expressions, voice tonality, conversational give-and-take, empathic resonance, mutual recognition, and contextual appropriateness. The phase space of healthy social interaction contains many degrees of freedom, allowing for a flush landscape of possible states and trajectories.

The narcissistic reward architecture, by contrast, exhibits a form of dimensional collapse. Rather than tracking the full spectrum of interpersonal variables, their attentional system focuses on a dramatically reduced subset, mainly those that directly import self-evaluation and status. For the narcissist, this is a constraint in what registers as phenomenologically salient and thus what they can *couple with*.

When dimensionality collapses in a dynamic system, the available trajectories through phase space become severely constrained. Even if the underlying system is complex, when you’re only tracking a few variables, the overall dynamics simplify into basic patterns. This explains why narcissists experience social interactions in such a binary, flat way: the attentional system isn’t capturing enough dimensions to represent the full complexity of interpersonal exchange. So the dimensionality of the dynamic interaction collapses: you’re pulled into the only mode of interaction they know how to navigate, i.e. the narcissistic manifold.

Importantly, narcissists aren’t simply choosing to ignore certain aspects of social interaction. Their experiential phase space lacks the dimensionality needed to represent the delicate harmonics that make mutual attunement intrinsically rewarding for others. They’re operating with a reduced-dimensionality model of social reality where most of the valence gradients others navigate simply don’t exist.

The Paradox of Intensity Without Resolution

A seeming contradiction: narcissists often experience powerful emotions. Rage, shame, triumph, exhilaration. How does this square with the social anhedonia hypothesis?

The answer is in distinguishing between emotional amplitude and emotional resolution. Think of an old television with the contrast turned up to maximum but the reception fuzzy. You see the bright parts and the dark parts with blinding clarity, but all the middle grays blur together.

This explains the curious way narcissists can be simultaneously overwhelmed by their own feelings yet oblivious to yours. Their emotional system isn’t registering less – it’s registering differently, with a dynamic range compressed around ego-relevant signals and a blind spot for the subtle melodies of mutual presence and the subtle dynamic control mechanisms they entail.

The Self-Model Resolution Problem

The narcissist’s predicament tells us something deep about the nature of self-knowledge. We gain access to ourselves through a recursive process of modeling others who are modeling us. The resolution of one’s self-model is fundamentally constrained by the resolution of one’s models of others.

If your internal representation of other minds lacks dimensionality, meaning, if it captures only the crude peaks and valleys of social evaluation while missing the subtle dynamics of mutual presence, then the self you construct through these reflections will inherit this dynamic poverty. Your own experiential landscape becomes accessible to you only through the same low-resolution filters you apply to others.

The narcissist isn’t choosing a simplified self-understanding over a more complex one. Rather, they’re operating with the only self-model their attentional architecture can generate given its constrained inputs. They’ve optimized for detecting a narrow band of social signals, and this same narrowness characterizes their self-perception.

This explains why narcissistic self-enhancement isn’t actually self-knowledge at all. The scaffolding required to build a high-resolution self-concept simply isn’t there. What from afar looks as excessive self-focus is actually an unpleasant attempt to compensate for a poorly rendered self-image by amplifying its most detectable features.

Therapeutic Implications: Re-enchanting the Social World

If narcissism results as an adaptation to social anhedonia rather than excessive self-regard, our therapeutic approaches require radical revision. The standard protocols presuppose a motivational defect rather than a perceptual one – like telling an anosmic person to try harder to enjoy Channel No. 5 (EDP).

More promising approaches might look like:

  1. Sustainable empathogens – MDMA temporarily expands social reward perception but isn’t sustainable long-term. Hypothetically, we might develop non-neurotoxic analogues that selectively enhance social valence sensitivity without serotonergic depletion. Such compounds would serve not as treatments themselves, but as phenomenological reference points showing the narcissist an opportunity to tune into the social reward landscapes that exist but they’re blind to.
  2. Biofeedback synchrony training – Systems that visualize interpersonal physiological coherence (heart rate variability, skin conductance) could make non-verbal attunement tangible. By rendering visible what was imperceptible, narcissists might gradually develop direct perception of these signals.
  3. Phase-locked interpersonal dynamics – Structured interactions involving synchronized movement, breathing, and speech provide moments where narcissists might experience multi-level attunement. These experiences, once registered, might create templates for recognizing similar but subtler states in everyday interactions.
  4. Valence-neutral reflective environments – Settings offering neither praise nor criticism but high-fidelity reflection of internal states circumvent both narcissistic supply and defensive contraction. This uncouples self-perception from evaluation while increasing perceptual resolution.

The common thread is treating narcissism as information access impairment rather than moral failing. The goal isn’t condemnation but expanding dimensions of experience – to help them taste vanilla by first establishing that it exists, then building perceptual pathways to it from detectable flavors.

A word of caution: This work would need to be approached with extraordinary care. Particularly with phase-locked dynamics and reflective environments, there’s a bidirectional risk: resonance typically flows both ways. The therapist must avoid phase-locking to the narcissistic manifold while helping the narcissist access the interpersonal valence landscape that most people inhabit. This asymmetric entrainment requires sophisticated safeguards and training, as the narcissistic attractor basin can be surprisingly powerful, especially when amplified through synchronized states.

Beyond a Moral Framing

This model invites us to think beyond simplistic moral framings without also inadvertently excusing harmful behavior. The narcissist isn’t choosing self over other in a world where both options feel equally real. They’re navigating a landscape where certain fundamental human experiences – the quiet joy of mutual recognition, the inherent reward of witnessing another mind – are blunted or dulled.

This doesn’t mean narcissists bear no responsibility for their actions. But understanding the valence landscape underlying their behavior creates space for more effective intervention. You can’t argue someone into tasting a flavor their receptors don’t register. But you might, with patience and precision, help their system remember or discover it.

Conclusion: The Tragedy of Phenomenological Poverty

There’s something deeply sad about this reframing. Rather than creatures of excess, narcissists emerge as beings of deprivation – not deprived of attention, but of the capacity to fully experience the rich valence landscape of human connection.

Rather than delighting in glorious self-love, they might desperately be trying to feel something in a social world that registers as mostly dull.

I hope that this perspective invites compassion without compromising clarity. The narcissist’s social world isn’t too full; it’s too empty. And in that emptiness lies both explanation and, perhaps, a path toward healing.

The Phenomenology of MDMA: Self-Honesty, Authenticity, & the Unraveling of Gnarly Knots in the Field

Posted on by algekalipso

In this video I discuss in depth the following topics:

1. MDMA is cardiotoxic and likely neurotoxic, with real and significant side-effects when taken often. Don’t do that. Respect and honor this beautiful state and save it for when you really need it.

2. The phenomenology is often described as “removing layers of conditioning and finding your essential, loving, and pure *core*”. It seems to significantly reduce greed, hate, and delusion, for at least a solid 90 minutes.

3. I argue that a good frame would be to think of the effects as drastically reducing both reactance and fear. Then you can assess a situation without the distortions of these two mental factors, which tend to generate rather self-serving thought-forms.

4. The concept of “authenticity” and its operationalization as a good lens with which to see the effects of MDMA. Big up to Matt Baggott, Co-founder and CEO of Tactogen, who is aiming to perfect MDMA and developed and applied the construct of authenticity in the scientific study of MDMA. Also thanks to Thomas S. Ray, who is on a similar path. Well done! Let’s get more people involved!

5. Another frame is to think of the state as clarifying what the “substance of thought” is like. We usually live under the illusion that emotional reactions follow Newtonian physics. They don’t. A better analogy would be corn starch and water, where applying force quickly can solidify (and even tear) the medium. Thus, we get in our own way and cause a lot of sense of solidity without even realizing it, which will take time and effort to soften and return to normal.

6. Discussion about QRI’s Psychedelic Thermodynamics model applied to MDMA.

7. Self-organizing principles, such as “repulsion-based algorithms” to undo knots, might explain what is happening to the field on MDMA.

8. A possible personality factor might be how “hard” someone is. I discuss personality disorders from a “hardness realism” point of view.

9. Emotional processing as a “skill tree” rather than “levels”.

10. High Entropy Alloys (HEA) are materials made of many metals that, in some cases, lead to really surprising effects, such as a new symmetry space group for their molecular organization (where none of the “ingredients” tend to crystalize that way, but as a whole they do). MDMA might be a bit of a unique HEA that balances serotonin (social anxiety reduction), dopamine (motivation and mental clarity), oxytocin (sense of closeness), and endorphins (bodily pleasure). It is more than the sum of the parts.

11. This leads to a speculation where the key high-level effects of MDMA, in addition to reducing fear and reactance, is the presence of courage, love and equanimity. I try to explain these features in terms of MDMA’s “vibratory signature”.

12. Deep discussion about self-honesty and why it develops in the state. I speculate it has to do with the de-modularization of our vascular clusters (or something else, if blood turns out to be a special case).

13. This blending of modules with each other results in an uncomfortable but helpful overlap between contradictory faces that we put in social settings. It is ideal to experience this with equanimity and patience, however difficult it is to acknowledge it to ourselves. The other side of this wall is light and beautiful, I promise.

14. It seems to me that MDMA creates a highly redundant and highly overdetermined Euclidean geometric phenomenal space, where each point “knows” really clearly how far it is from every other point. Psychedelics can sometimes do this for short periods of time, but they usually create complex fractaline phenomenal spaces. MDMA is different – highly “clear and normal” yet unblocked and euphoric.

15. The concept of Gnarliness as it relates to the “field knots” that MDMA can help unwind.

Relevant links:

Candy Flipping Optimized: Why LSD + MDMA Points to Blissful Nondual Awareness and How to Maximize It

Posted on by algekalipso

PLUS FOUR, n. (++++) A rare and precious transcendental state, which has been called a “peak experience,” a “religious experience,” “divine transformation,” a “state of Samadhi” and many other names in other cultures. It is not connected to the +1, +2, and +3 of the measuring of a drug’s intensity. It is a state of bliss, a participation mystique, a connectedness with both the interior and exterior universes, which has come about after the ingestion of a psychedelic drug, but which is not necessarily repeatable with a subsequent ingestion of that same drug. If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end, of the human experiment.

— Alexander Shulgin, PIHKAL, pages 963–965

In this post and accompanying video we provide a general “theory of candy flipping” that aims to explain why LSD + MDMA is so synergistic. What makes, say 200 micrograms of LSD and 150mg of MDMA so prone to be spiritual, psychologically healing, and loving? To get there, we address the following three/four questions:

  1. How do we improve research on candy flipping?
  2. How do we optimize candy flipping proper? And how do we generalize candy flipping for even better results?
  3. What would a general recipe for Shulgin’s ++++ be?

1- We go over current methodologies used to study candy flipping and why their results are limited (Straumann et al., 2023). Then we explain how a “think tank” approach (e.g. phenomenology club) allows us to create more phenomenologically grounded research paradigms (Gómez-Emilsson, 2021). By weighting in the personal experience of highly precise psychonauts with skills in areas like physics, math, visual art, and signal processing, we can arrive at mechanistic models such as those proposed by Steven Lehar in The Grand Illusion (Lehar, 2010) where MDMA causes your world simulation to vibrate in pleasant ways, which in turn “smooths out the rough edges” of the LSD state, or models involving algorithmic-level annealing dynamics (Gomez-Emilsson, 2016; Johnson, 2019; Gómez-Emilsson 2021, 2023). This kind of approach would add phase diagrams, wave mechanics, and nonlinear effects into the picture.

2- Optimizing candy flipping can be done by looking to generate the kind of synergy MDMA + LSD achieve in the best of conditions. Of note, trip reports involving low doses of each together with 2C-B and cannabis are discussed and analyzed. One needs to be mindful of annealing dynamics, drug effect arcs including how to handle the MDMA comedown, and pattern-focused readings of wave effects that for lack of a better metaphor could be catalogued as “qualia lensing“.

And

3- We hypothesize that the key ingredients to catalyze the blissful nondual awareness that comes from high-end candy flipping are (a) a full-spectrum energizer, (b) something that increases interconnectivity, and (c) a deeply relaxing agent. The combination of these three elements gives rise to a highly-nonlinear effect I call “FU§ION (Field Unification Search/Simplify in Invariant Optical Networks; to be fully unpacked at a later date), where all of the “resonant cavities” are fully relaxed, have a high degree of impedance matching between them, and are energized, so that they kick-start a “field harmonization” process that culminates in profound blissful nondual awareness. The energizer shouldn’t be narrow spectrum (like cocaine) and the relaxing agent shouldn’t be too blunting or non-Newtonian (like opioids). Examples of each:

a- LSD, DMT, Mescaline, Psilocybin, 2C-B, 2C-C, etc.
b- Cannabis/cannabinoids, 2C-B
c- MDMA, pregabalin, nitrous, ketamine, GHB

Combine one of each, carefully dosed, and according to this theory, you might get a ++++. (Please exercise caution when mixing substances – the rule of thumb is to not do it).

Note: 5-MeO-DMT might, in this model, be actually doing all three at once. It happens to be hitting receptors in the right combination for such a deep mystical “relaxed stimulation” to take hold. That said, it is possible that 5-MeO-DMT also has some rough edges, and that it can be further optimized (e.g. such as by combining it with nitrous). More research is needed 🙂

Example Formula: 15mg 2C-B, then an hour later 2g of GHB, and then an hour later DMT (100mg over the course of 2 hours) was reported as a ++++ by a trusted psychonaut recently (comparable in “depth” to 5-MeO-DMT). Please be careful – I am not encouraging anyone to try this. But if you do, or have done something similar, I’d be grateful if you let me know what happened. 🙂

Featured image by Cube Flipper.

References:

Lehar, S. (2010) The Grand Illusion. Excerpt “The Phenomenal Character of LSD + MDMA (Candy-Flipping) According to Cognitive Scientist Steve Lehar”. Retrieved from https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/12/12/the-phenomenal-character-of-lsd-mdma-candy-flipping-according-to-cognitive-scientist-steve-lehar/

Gomez-Emilsson, A. (2016) Peaceful Qualia: The Manhattan Project of Consciousness. Retrieved from https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/03/29/peaceful-qualia-the-manhattan-project-of-consciousness/

Johnson, M. (2019) Neural Annealing. Retrieved from https://opentheory.net/2019/11/neural-annealing-toward-a-neural-theory-of-everything/

Gómez-Emilsson, A. (2021) Healing Trauma With Neural Annealing. Retrieved from https://www.qri.org/blog/Neural-Annealing

Gómez-Emilsson, A. (2023), Neural Field Annealing and Psychedelic Thermodynamics presentation at PhilaDelic 2023. Retreieved from https://youtu.be/pM9k1I3VPOg

Straumann, I., Ley, L., Holze, F. et al. Acute effects of MDMA and LSD co-administration in a double-blind placebo-controlled study in healthy participants. Neuropsychopharmacol. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-023-01609-0

The Manhattan Project of Consciousness: The Making of the Love Bomb

Posted on by algekalipso

In this video we discuss possible meaningful, novel, and non-trivial parallels between something like the Manhattan Project and what we need to do to catalyze a positive breakthrough in our understanding of consciousness.

We cover how explosive lenses have a parallel in the “brain as a non-linear optical computer” paradigm developed at QRI. The short explanation is that the “index of refraction” for local field potentials (LFPs) can be modulated with drugs/interventions, and so in principle one can use varying concentrations of things like nitrous oxide, ketamine, and MDMA in order to focus waves of energy to catalyze precisely crafted phase transitions of consciousness.

There are also much more subtle parallels. Another one is how the development of the von Neumann computer architecture was a world-transforming significant outcome of the Manhattan Project. In the context of consciousness research, one could envision figuring out the “principles of qualia computing” that allows DMT entities to sample from a wide range of possible “mind designs” as an achievement of comparable significance. Arguably most DMT entities are “psychotic”, but some of them aren’t; the way they copy, mutate, differentiate, and analyze “qualia bundles” hints at a very general set of qualia computing building blocks for alternative qualia-based information processing pipelines. The successful Manhattan Project of Consciousness could in principle lead to a revolution on computing paradigms that generalize to qualia computing systems.

In contrast to the atomic bomb, the kind of “phase transition implosion” developed at the Manhattan Project of Consciousness would be deeply relaxing, rejuvenating, and capable of undoing years of trauma in seconds. Using as research leads “candy flipping done right” (usually with some 2C-B/2C-D/2C-C), 5-MeO-DMT, and LSD + nitrous oxide, one has in fact a lot of hints for how to produce instantly relaxing, deeply healing “waves of enlightened qualia”.

Importantly, the combination of Open Individualism and Valence Realism might catalyze a paradigm shift on how we approach the game theory of human collectives.

If it takes a bunch of geniuses in the desert to figure out how to optimize this effect, so be it. It would be a really worthwhile investment!

~Qualia of the Day: The Burning Man Collective Intelligence~

Relevant Links:

VALENCIAGA: QRI Bay Area Meetup on Saturday April 8th, 2023

Posted on by algekalipso

Dear Qualia Enthusiasts!

Do you live in the Bay Area? Are you curious about consciousness? Meditation? Psychedelics? The nature of bliss? Why music can feel so good? Philosophy of mind?

You’re in luck!

You are invited to this Saturday’s causal QRI meetup in San Francisco!

Come and meet other like-minded and like-hearted people who are curious about these topics in order to share fun experiences, listen to a comedy sketch about consciousness, experience exotic scents, and taste the bliss of a heartfelt community in a cozy plant-filled Oasis at the heart of SF!

Schedule

2PM – Setup (feel free to join and help)
2:30PM – Start, casual (and causal!) hangout
3PM – Drinks, snacks, and music-sharing
4PM – QRI scent workshop delivered by yours truly*
5PM – Comedy sketch and talk about the binding problem and aligning DMT entities
6PM – Participants share the experiences they brought
7PM – Food (catered**)
7:30PM – Participants can give a 5 minute speech (there will be a signup sheet)
8:30PM – Start of takedown
9PM – Everybody out, afterparty***

Please feel encouraged to bring with you an experience to share with others (your ~Qualia of the Day~) at 6PM! This can be exotic candy, spices, perfumes, special massagers or haptic devices, unusual sounds, weird concepts, brief meditation, etc.

Feel free to bring a +1, so long as they are indeed interested in consciousness and want to help reduce the suffering of sentient beings.

Location

One Embarcadero Center (Third Floor, Next to the Cinema), San Francisco, CA 94111. The venue is at the Embarcadero Building furthest away from the water, on the third floor (“promenade level”). You can get there via the elevator (“Floor P”) or by taking the escalator, and then the stairs, following the signs pointing you to the (now defunct) Cinema. It’s a big red building, right next to a large Maple tree.

VALENCIAGA

You have probably seen by now Harry Potter by Balenciaga (cf. Lord of the Rings, Breaking Bad, Star Wars, Pulp Fiction, Legend of Zelda, TPOT, etc. by Balenciaga). Besides this being an incredible show of power of recent AI advancements, seeing these videos also tickled my aesthetic sensibilities in a rather unusual way. On the one hand, the very idea that all of these powerful characters would leave aside their world-saving tasks for the sake of fashion and looking really sharp is compelling. On the other hand, it also highlights the incredible silliness of our perceptual filters: why on Earth does our Monkey Mind take more seriously someone just because of their sharp looks?

After mulling it over for a bit and letting reflective equilibrium naturally arise, I came to the conclusion that my strange reaction to these fashion shows was indeed a symptom of spiritual decadence:

In the battle of Consciousness vs. Replicators, there will be many seductive and attractive traps. Optimizing for looks is, in some sense, aligned with consciousness: you are exploring the state-space of consciousness, highlighting valuable qualia nuances, identifying ways to mess with the energy parameter, and discovering peculiar valence effects. At the same time, one is also sort of selling one’s soul to the devil: suffering, craving, selfing, and becoming transfixed by form. We need an alternative.

This is why we introduced VALENCIAGA by QRI. The first valence-centric luxury brand that aims to focus on the actual pursuit of altruistic bliss. Yes, it’s hot, sexy, and above all attractive. But at the same time, the dopaminergic wrapper hides within a core of real Jhanic bliss (unlike the amphetamine-comedown textures of qualia hiding behind your prototypical New York fashion houses).

Thus, for this QRI meetup you are encouraged to come in a fashionable, qualia-rich attire that makes you *feel* like you just came down from the 7th Jhana or your bliss-state of choice.

Looking forward to seeing you!

Thank you!

Note: We originally kept this meetup low-key on the basis that we were worried that the venue might reach its maximum capacity. After learning more about the venue, we are confident that it will hold up. And if we do experience overflow, don’t worry! There is a park nearby (Sue Bierman Park) which we can use as a buffer where you can hang out with others until there’s enough space for you. This is also why this announcement is in such a short notice. Sorry!

* You will have an opportunity to test (and purchase!) our exclusive QRI Scents, including the mythical Hedonium Shockwave.
** You can, and are encouraged to, bring vegetarian food, drinks, and snacks to share.
*** Location in Berkeley with capacity for up to 40 people (from 9PM): 2042 Hearst ave apt c Berkeley CA very close to the downtown Berkeley BART

Come to VALENCIAGA and meet QRI’s Magical Creatures IRL!

In Other News:

Last week I did a second Jhana retreat. I’ve been meaning to post a full writeup for both the first and second Jhana retreat, but it has been really difficult to do them justice in writting. Do expect some more content about Jhana phenomenology soon, though. In the meantime, I highly recommend checking out Rob Burbea’s Practising the Jhanas retreat lectures. They hold the potential to heal you in ways you didn’t even know were possible.

Infinite Bliss!

Unveiling QRI’s Consciousness Art Contests: Immerse, Innovate, and Inspire

Posted on by algekalipso

by Hunter Meyer & Andrés Gómez-Emilsson (cross-posted at QRI)

The Qualia Research Institute (QRI) is excited to announce the launch of three Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness (NSCs) Art Contests: Immerse, Innovate, and Inspire with submissions accepted until 5/17/2023. Examples of non-ordinary states of consciousness are psychedelic experiences, meditative experiences like the jhanas, and near-death experiences.

Our objective is to highlight the reciprocal relationship between art and consciousness research, enabling artists to create lifelike representations of non-ordinary states of consciousness, and contribute to the development of consciousness studies and psychedelic science.

About the Qualia Research Institute

The Qualia Research Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing our understanding of consciousness. Its mission is to:

  • Develop a precise mathematical language for describing subjective experience
  • Map out the full range of possible conscious experiences
  • Build technologies to improve the lives of sentient beings

Learn more at qri.org.

Contest Details

The contests include:

  • Replication Contest (Immerse): Entries will be judged based on transparent and interpretable qualities that accurately capture the low-level subjective effects experienced in non-ordinary states of consciousness.

  • Psychedelic Cryptography Contest (Innovate): Artists are invited to create encodings of sensory information that are only meaningful when experienced on psychedelics in order to show the specific information-processing advantages of those states.

Prizes

Cash prizes ranging from $500 to $5,000 will be awarded, along with packs of QRI’s Magical Creatures Scent Line and QRI swag.

How to Participate

Artists interested in participating or learning more about each contest can visit our submissions pages for further information:

Intellectual Property Rights

For the sake of transparency and to benefit the community as a whole, QRI reserves the right to publish the winning submissions made by contestants on its website. Artists retain their intellectual property rights, allowing them control over their artwork’s use and distribution. However, QRI would appreciate permission to showcase participants’ art on our website or use it in potential research publications with proper citations and links to the artists’ work.

Disclaimer

We understand that the replication contest may not capture the full complexity and nuances of psychedelic experiences, and that there are concerns about the potential harm associated with the use of psychedelics. Participation in these contests does not require the use of psychedelics, and we encourage all participants to prioritize their safety and well-being.

We welcome feedback and suggestions for future contests at hello@qri.org. We look forward to exploring these topics responsibly and respectfully.

Replication Contest

The Replication Contest seeks to celebrate the artistic capabilities of participants in accurately depicting and interpreting the low-level subjective effects experienced in non-ordinary states of consciousness (NSCs), with a particular emphasis on (1) valence effects and (2) geometric transformations.

  1. Valence effects focus on demonstrating how the shape of the experience can reveal whether a person is having a clean and blissful experience or a mixed affect experience. The transition between feeling normal and feeling blissful might involve changes to the shape of the visual experience. Rather than focusing on the semantic content (e.g. seeing an angel) here the point is to visualize the texture, shape, and dynamics that bring about this change (e.g. harmonizing flow by reducing turbulence).
  2. Geometric transformations such as rotations, reflections, glides, affine transformations, and so on often feature in psychedelic experiences. Can this be rendered in a realistic way? We suggest that you consider how symmetry and geometry are two sides of the same coin in order to better appreciate this quality of psychedelic experiences. When the geometry of phenomenal space changes, so do the symmetries within it. Can this be expressed artistically in an accurate way?

To participate, artists should create a piece of art that embodies the subjective effects they have researched or encountered during NSCs, emphasizing the two highlighted areas.

Familiarize yourself with the concept of algorithmic reduction (cf. our glossary), where the complex zoo of effects is interpreted as emerging out of a few core effects interacting with each other. See also the different subjective effects cataloged at effectindex.com, and draw inspiration from the QRI videos on psychedelic epistemology and the tracer tool. Additionally, explore the r/replications subreddit to see some remarkable replications.

Example ways to explore (1) and (2)

  1. Showcase how more smooth, symmetrical, regular, and soft visual features express pleasant qualities of the experience (cf. valence structuralism, Michael Johnson’s Symmetry Theory of Valence).
  2. Visualize an annealing process where the video contains blinking lights driven by metronomes that can sync up with each other until the whole scene is shining in a coherent way (cf. Neural Annealing).
  3. Show how bouba vs. kiki imagery highlight different emotional tones during a psychedelic experience (cf. CDNS in Quantifying Bliss), where spiky feelings tend to be harsh and disquieting, whereas bubbly and round features tend to be calming and welcoming (extra points if these features emerge out of some kind of annealing process, or if you find counterexamples to this general pattern).
  4. Visualize how wallpaper symmetry groups transform textures into repeating patterns.
  5. Show waves interacting with each other in order to construct psychedelic interference patterns (cf. non-linear wave computing) 
  6. Use hyperbolic minimal surfaces in order to exemplify how sensations aggregate on DMT.
  7. Show how the Reverse-Grassfire Algorithm can create 3D crystals (cf. Harmonic Gestalt).
  8. Show a 2D Euclidean grid becoming hyperbolic by adding additional nodes and edges in order to demonstrate a change of geometry (cf. world-sheet).
  9. Model the the experience of achieving a DMT breakthrough level experience using a physical instability (such as Kelvin-Helmholtz).
  10. Simulate a trajectory on the energy-complexity landscape.

These are just some suggestions and there are many other ways of connecting technical descriptions of the phenomenology of NSE and visual replications. It helps if you can ground the effects visualized on paradigms and explanations presented by QRI, but it is not necessary to win the contest. What matters is that you can create realistic yet interpretable visualizations that hint at the underlying processes that are generating these experiences. What we are after is insight. In other words, we want to be able to discover new, meaningful, and non-trivial explanations for why NSEs manifest in the way they do. Hence, being able to describe how the replication effects are achieved is highly beneficial.

Entries will be judged based on the number and precision of replicated subjective effects, with special attention given to valence effects and geometric transformations.

Prizes

  1. 1st place – $5k + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Cutting-Edge” pack + QRI Swag
  2. 2nd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “State-Space Explorer” pack + QRI Swag
  3. 3rd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Starter” pack + QRI Swag

Psychedelic Cryptography Contest

The Psychedelic Cryptography Contest invites artists to create unique encodings of sensory information that are only meaningful when experienced on psychedelics. The goal is to challenge participants to develop innovative methods of encoding sensory information in such a way that an encoded secret is only apparent on a NSC. The contest encourages the exploration of how sensory information can be modulated and presented in a way that reveals hidden patterns or messages when experienced under the influence of psychedelics.  

Entries will be judged based on the difficulty of the encryption method used and the clarity of the message or pattern when experienced on psychedelics.

Prizes

  1. 1st place – $3k + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Cutting-Edge” pack + QRI Swag
  2. 2nd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “State-Space Explorer” pack + QRI Swag
  3. 3rd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Starter” pack + QRI Swag

Inspirational Piece Contest

The Inspirational Piece Contest seeks to highlight the powerful connection between art and consciousness research by encouraging artists to create pieces that exemplify this relationship. The focus of this contest is on originality, creativity, inspiration, impact, quality, and execution. Artworks submitted for this contest should evoke a sense of wonder and curiosity about the nature of consciousness and the vast landscape of possible experiences.

Entries will be judged based on originality, creativity, inspiration, impact, quality, and execution, with winners determined by a public poll.

Prizes

  1. 1st place – $2k + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Cutting-Edge” pack + QRI Swag
  2. 2nd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “State-Space Explorer” pack + QRI Swag
  3. 3rd place – $500 + QRI’s Magical Creatures “Starter” pack + QRI Swag

Submission Guidelines for All Contests

  • Participants can submit their entry in the form of a video or image.
  • The submission should be original and created specifically for the contest.
  • Participants can submit up to three entries per contest.
  • Submissions will be accepted starting on March 17th 2023 and must be submitted by May 17th 2023. Winners will be announced on June 1st 2023.

We encourage artists from the psychedelic and visionary art communities to participate and explore the connection between art and consciousness research. Good luck to all participants!

QRI’s Resources for Technical and Artistic Inspiration

Harmonic Society: 8 Models of Art for a Scientific Paradigm of Aesthetic Qualia

Why it’s helpful: This article presents 8 models of art: 4 common ones, and 4 that connect it to consciousness studies. The overall frameworks of 8 models might help us arrive at methods to create innovative aesthetic qualia from first principles. We think that artists participating in any of the contests might benefit from the vocabulary introduced in these models to create innovative and meaningful pieces that explore the relationship between art and consciousness research. In particular, taking into account the energy parameter, efficient state-space exploration, annealing effects, and the vision of a meta-aesthetic all provide a unique lens for how psychedelics and art are so connected.

How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD

Why it’s helpful: This article discusses possible methods of communication that can be understood primarily by individuals under the influence of LSD and other tracer-inducing psychoactives. This may serve as inspiration for artists to think about novel ways to encode information or create unique experiences tailored to specific states of consciousness.

Algorithmic Reduction of Psychedelic States

Why it’s helpful: This article provides a detailed analysis of how the visual effects of psychedelics might be understood and replicated using algorithmic processes. It can serve as a foundation for artists attempting to replicate the visual aspects of non-ordinary states of consciousness in their artwork, or as inspiration to propose alternative algorithmic reductions that capture effects that are currently unaccounted for.

The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences

Why it’s helpful: This article explores the connection between the subjective effects of DMT experiences and hyperbolic geometry, various possible algorithmic reductions to explain this connection, as well as detailing the progression of an experience through the DMT levels. Artists participating in the Replication Contest may find inspiration and insights into replicating specific visual patterns and structures often encountered in DMT experiences.

Psychophysics Toolkit (article)

Why it’s helpful: The Psychophysics Toolkit and accompanying article are collections of resources and tools designed to help researchers and artists explore the intersection of perception, consciousness, and the physical world. It includes a variety of resources and interface tools that can aid artists in understanding the principles of psychophysics used to measure subjective experience and applying them to their work. This can be particularly useful for participants in all three contests, as it can provide insights into the ways that sensory information is processed during both ordinary and non-ordinary states of consciousness, and how this can be utilized in creating innovative and impactful art pieces.

Psychedelic Epistemology: Novel Epistemological Paradigms for Studying Exotic Modes of Consciousness

Why it’s helpful: This video introduces new epistemological frameworks for studying and understanding non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by psychedelic substances. By incorporating these paradigms into their creative process, artists can develop a deeper understanding of the nature of these experiences and their potential implications for human knowledge. This enhanced understanding can help artists create innovative and thought-provoking pieces that capture the essence of exotic states of consciousness.

(source: Healing Trauma with Neural Annealing)

The Pseudo-Time Arrow

Why it’s helpful: This article provides a detailed explanation of the concept of phenomenal time and how it relates to the structure of conscious experiences. Understanding this concept could help artists in the contest to better represent the perception of time in non-ordinary states of consciousness and incorporate these insights into their artwork. 

Wireheading Done Right: Stay Positive Without Going Insane

Why it’s helpful: This article explores the concept of wireheading and how it could be applied responsibly to maximize pleasure without causing psychological harm. Artists participating in the contest might find this article helpful in inspiring their work, particularly in the Inspirational Piece Contest, by envisioning a future where technology is used to enhance well-being and explore the state-space of consciousness responsibly.

Mapping State-Spaces of Consciousness: The Neroli Neighborhood

Why it’s helpful: This video explores the concept of state-space neighborhoods, where specific aspects of conscious experiences are clustered together. By understanding the structure and dynamics of these neighborhoods, artists can create pieces that more accurately represent the nuances of different non-ordinary states of consciousness, leading to a more immersive and impactful experience for the audience.

5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses

Why it’s helpful: This article provides a comparative analysis of the experiences induced by 5-MeO-DMT and N,N-DMT. By understanding the unique characteristics of each substance’s effects, artists can draw inspiration for their artwork and more accurately replicate specific psychedelic experiences in the Replication Contest.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our profound gratitude to the donors of the Qualia Research Institute. Your unwavering support has been invaluable in making our work possible. Your investment in our research has not only inspired a growing number of individuals to take our approach to consciousness research seriously but has also led to an expansion in our collaborations. As a result, we have seen the integration of our insights into the work of others, building upon the foundation we have established thus far.

First and foremost, we would like to extend our appreciation to Loka Vision for inspiring the contest. Their dedication to the Psychedelic/Visionary Art community, as demonstrated through their Psychedelic Replication Masterclass, has shown us the immense potential this community holds in furthering our understanding of consciousness.

Thank you Andrés Gómez Emilsson for offering technical insights that will enable artists to create life-like replications of the low-level subjective effects experienced on NSCs and incepting the idea of psychedelic cryptography as a viable field of research.

A thank you goes to Josie Kins of effectindex.com for their open-source approach to developing psychedelic art through generative AI, as well as their support of and feedback on the Replication contest and insights into the visionary/psychedelic art community.

Additional thanks to Scry, Marcin, gydravlik.eth, PsyNFT, and Ferociously Amused for their invaluable feedback on the contest and their contributions to our understanding of the visionary/psychedelic art community and thank you Maggie and Anders Wassinge for your unwaivering support.

❤️💎

Good Vibe Theory

Posted on by algekalipso

[Epistemic status: work in progress that is highly speculative but which I have reason to think has explanatory power – the content comes from this talk I gave at the Oxford Psychedelic Society a couple of weeks ago, which was then summarized/turned into a Twitter thread by Hunter Meyer]

QRI’s ‘Good Vibes Theory’ (GVT) is a speculative proposal for a physics of consciousness. This theory aims to establish an ontological foundation for a future rigorous science of good vibes. 🧵🧵🧵 #psychedelicthermodynamics #goodvibestheory

Two groups will make the most use of GVT; one is the “vibe engineers,” who are grounded in creating good vibes technically, and the mystics, who want to connect good vibes to deep insights and truths of wisdom traditions.

There is a deep connection between the shape of things and the way they vibrate. Different shapes have different energies, as their curvature, complexity, and surface area increase.

Internal representations act as energy sinks that absorb and channel ambient energy. They are often symmetrical and have semantic meaning, which makes them effective energy sinks. These representations also radiate energy and have energizing effects *to other representations*.

In physics, the Hamiltonian of a system is a measure of the system’s total energy. Similarly, the Hamiltonian of Consciousness would formulate how to add up all the energy of each component of a bound experience created by a system to get the total energy of that experience.

QRI proposes a new framework, “Psychedelic thermodynamics”, which offers a novel perspective on energy flow in consciousness.

In this framework, one system’s energy sink is another system’s energy source. The energy flows from sensory input to consciousness, where it’s transformed into internal representations or “solitons” and released through motor actions or field radiation.

The quality of conscious experience is shaped by the energy radiated from internal representations known as gestalts, which interact with each other to produce the texture and valence of the experience. The shape of the gestalts determines the vibe they radiate (cf. valence structuralism).

The “vibes” of our experiences are determined by the interaction of our internal representations, and dissonance can arise from being out of phase with input, incompatibility with noise, being intrinsically misshaped, or dissonance with other representations.

Psychedelic Thermodynamics suggests that the valence of a psychedelic experience can be modulated by inputs to the extent that they are in tune with the background noise and there are no misshapen or incompatible inputs leading to dissonance and negative valence.

Input valence effects are therefore the result of how external stimuli interact with internal representations in conscious experience. The degree of coherence between the input and the background noise, as well as the shape and resonance of the internal representation, determine an input’s valence effects.

The Flower of Life from sacred geometry can be steel-manned (within indirect realism) as a powerful metaphor for how experience is constructed. It may have deeper metaphorical relevance in physics than previously realized in light of Feynman and Wheeler’s “one-electron universe” where reality is an interference pattern of one electron bouncing back and forth in time.

The iterative way in which the Flower of Life is constructed takes on a new potential metaphorical meaning that can be used as a lens to understand the fundamental nature of reality.

There may be just one electron in the entire universe. It is because when an electron and an anti-electron interact, they merge and cancel out, producing a photon.

Mathematically, the interaction of an electron moving back in time is the same as an anti-electron, called a positron. As a result, there is only one type of observer in the universe, and it is bouncing back and forth in time, interfering with itself.

According to physics, quantum mechanics is mathematically equivalent whether it is thought of as fields or a superposition of all possible paths.

The Schrodinger equation, which describes the behavior of quantum mechanical systems, gives the same answers whether solving the field or taking one electron or one photon and making it go through every possible path and then superimposing all those paths simultaneously.

The behavior of an electron is the sum total of all possibilities. The field and the one electron can be thought of as the same, a matter of perspective. The field is a superposition of paths, while the electron is a smooth field evolving according to the Schrodinger equation.

The field usually segments into pockets, and the topology of the magnetic field changes through a process known as magnetic reconnection, which has real-world implications, like solar flares and coronal mass ejections in the sun.

A possible solution to the “boundary problem” (how is it that we are not all just one bound experience? why are we separate moments of experience?) is that the thing that creates a boundary around an individual’s experience is a topological pocket, and within it, there is a field.

The question then arises, what does it feel like to be that field in the topological pocket?

The field is equivalent to all possible paths within it. Thus, to be a pocket in the field might feel exactly like every point in that field, knowing about every other point. This interaction between all points within the field gives rise to the entirety of the shape.

The experience of being the one electron in the topological pocket would be precisely the superposition of all possible points of view that exist within it. It aligns with what mystics have talked about for a long time – the screen of consciousness is not fundamental, but emergent.

The screen of consciousness is a special case that requires the field to be shaped in a peculiar way so that “it seems like there is a screen from every possible trajectory within the topological pocket of the field”.

Symmetry, meaning “invariance upon transformation”, can entail that many different paths look the same. As a consequence, in some situations making the pocket perfectly symmetrical (via e.g. neural annealing) can collapse the dimensionality of the experience.

As a powerful metaphor, the symmetrical nature of electron orbitals might offer insights into the experience of altered states of consciousness, such as those induced by high doses of LSD.

Under LSD, symmetrification of self within a pocket collapses multiple points of view, leading to a collective wavefront. Points within the pocket sense the field and advance as a collective wavefront, blurring the line between a point and a wave.

Some states emit coherent waves of awareness in resonant patterns, with inherent trade-offs between location and frequency due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

The symmetrical structures on DMT function as “witnesses of the scene”. Hence, with each pattern of resonance that gets organized in a symmetrical way, you add a new “reference frame” for the experience.

With a physics of consciousness, we should be able to look at trippy DMT replication images, understand their non-trivial meaningful content, and interpret the reason for the existence of the patterns and structures within them.

DMT induces resonant and coherent states of consciousness that emit waves of awareness that are in phase and which seem to be subjectively equivalent to many points simultaneously sensing the (inner) environment.

These patterns on DMT are not just “3D patterns in the visual field”; they are far deeper and more coherent, with each cluster of coherence functioning as a coherent witness that is measuring its environment (art by Symbolika).

Understanding this we can reason about highly coherent states of consciousness like those induced by psychedelics, meditation, and other ecstatic/annealing methods in terms of a network of coherence, where each frequency at which the hierarchy is coherent with one another may tell us a lot about them.

The witness is a coherent wavefront of awareness that is interacting or embedded within your consciousness. As a consequence, it is possible to describe a state of consciousness as a network of coherence.

States where the physics of consciousness is evident, include DMT’s Symmetry Hotel, where every two-dimensional surface looks like a coherent symmetry group, and Crystal Worlds, which are between Magic Eye and the Waiting Room.

In the Crystal Worlds, the witnesses are three-dimensional, and there is a question of whether they are external or internal entities. However, they are coherent witnesses of awareness that are interacting or embedded within your consciousness and their inherently 3D “point of view” has geometric effects on the unfolding of the experience.

Coherence can help us understand the zoo of possible self-organizing principles that arise on something like DMT. The network of coherence can crystallize in various shapes, including low-level features or high-level features, fractally coherent, or hyperbolic networks (also Symbolika below). Many scale-specific network geometries are possible.

On DMT, as soon as there are coherent symmetrical structures there will be mirror rooms.

Each surface emits a coherent wavefront of awareness that reflects off of the other surfaces, and this behavior is reminiscent of light in that a coherent witness bounces off of itself in the various surfaces. This may explain why “mirror room experiences” on DMT are incredibly common.

Coherence has a remarkable effect on consciousness that mirrors its effect on light. When mirrors become parallel, the subject and object collapse with perfect symmetry. Every alignment feels like a union because the witness and the witnessed collapse.

DMT induces resonant and coherent states of consciousness that emit waves of awareness, and each cluster of coherence functions as a coherent witness that is measuring its environment.

Understanding the physics of consciousness on DMT can help us understand the network of coherence, the zoo of possible self-organizing principles that arise, and the common experiences such as the mirror room experiences.

The present depiction is an intuitive and conceptual overview, while a formal and scientifically rigorous formulation is currently under development. Nonetheless, we are enthusiastic about its capacity to provide comprehensive explanations and develop its practical applications.

QRI’s GVT and Psychedelic Thermodynamics are ambitious proposals, but they are exciting ones that could open up new avenues of exploration in the field of consciousness.

If you are as excited as we are about the direction consciousness research is headed, please consider learning more at qri.org

You can find the full presentation on GVT here. Thank you @kfshinozuka and Ali-Reza Omidvar and the rest of the folks at @OxPsySoc for hosting this event:

Thank you for reading!

Infinite bliss!