Remembering and Rediscovering Anders Amelin

In Memory of Anders Amelin (1959 – 2023)

Dear Qualia Enthusiasts, Collaborators, Friends, Benefactors, and the Community at large,

With heavy hearts, we announce the recent passing of our dear friend and strategic advisor, Anders Amelin. He bravely fought a battle with a severe and unusual peripheral neuropathy, caused by a largely undiagnosed, steadily worsening condition. As a testament to his incredible spirit and character, we wish to express our profound gratitude for his invaluable contributions to the mission of the Qualia Research Institute (QRI). Anders was an exemplary and compassionate individual whose memory will forever be cherished. Our deepest condolences are extended to his family and friends during this difficult time.

As a non-profit dedicated to pioneering the new science of consciousness, our primary aim is to enhance the lives of humans and other sentient beings. The news of Anders’ passing first elicited a deeply human reaction within us, a profound sense of sadness and grief. However, in the face of this loss, we have a renewed sense of mission to pursue the development of pragmatic technologies to prevent and reduce extreme suffering. Additionally, we are reminded of our responsibility to lead by example, and to thoughtfully consider the best ways in which we should confront the universal challenges of death and suffering at a personal and community level.

In this spirit, we’d like to share some concepts that may offer some existential comfort during such challenging times. Drawing from various philosophical and spiritual traditions, these ideas – frequently resonating well with the scientific lens – may assist in navigating the difficult terrain of loss and grief.

Content Notice: This text investigates consciousness, reality, and the implications of death from a variety of perspectives. It delves into themes of ontological shifts and altered states of consciousness, which may evoke intense feelings, memories, or reactions for some readers. The text discusses the late Anders Amelin’s life and ideas, as well as speculative possibilities of his continued existence.

Please approach the content with caution if these topics are likely to cause distress or discomfort.

Drawing from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which we regard as an inspiring proto-scientific framework rather than subscribe fully to its ontological assumptions, it is suggested that the period immediately following one’s death is crucial for determining one’s future birth. This phase is described as being laden with numerous challenges and mind-altering ontological shifts, known as the “Bardos”. It also involves confronting one’s own deeply ingrained misconceptions about the nature of reality. Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) interpreted the effects of high doses of the “classic” psychedelics (LSD/psilocybin/mescaline/DMT) through the lens of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In their view, the peak experience of becoming one with the “clear light of the void” at the moment of death could be reasonably equated with the moment of ego dissolution of a psychedelic experience. Like a ball that is dropped from a certain height and then bounces off the floor, making smaller and smaller arcs, the psychedelic experience (at high enough doses) gives you several opportunities to realize your oneness with ultimate reality. Suppose you miss the first chance precisely at the point of death. In that case, you may still have a few more opportunities when the ball reaches its peak height in the following bounces (but beware: with each bounce, the energy gets dissipated so it doesn’t reach the same height, and the potential for delusion is more significant – really, the best bet is to awaken on the first bounce). Whether a literal post-death experience or a metaphor for high-grade psychedelia, it is hard for us to imagine how this applies to the experience of Anders as he experiences the journey he’s embarking on since his death: his mind seemed to be, by default, already instantiating a high-grade psychedelic trip all of its own! How much higher could it really get?

By all lights, and to his own admission, Anders never tried any psychedelic substance (though he was curious about them and would have done so if the opportunity had presented itself). He also never tried dissociatives like ketamine, MXE, or DXM (despite making a fantastic video about ketamine therapy in light of the Neural Annealing framework with Maggie). He also never tried the empathogenic/entactogenic molecules (such as MDMA, MDA, MDEA, or 5-APB) either. And to boot, he also never explored intensive meditation deliberately. We were deeply skeptical of these claims – how could he, a self-admitted “simple person” from Sweden, be conversant on so many mind-bending topics without any exposure to psychedelia in any form? Something seems fishy!

Well, Anders shared that he had many spontaneous, deeply meditative experiences in childhood. For instance, he realized that he had spontaneously experienced a very similar phenomenological progression of exotic states of consciousness as a kid, reminiscent of the so-called “Spiral Experience” described by Ann Shulgin in PIHKAL. This would make him quite unique indeed – despite sharing Ann’s description on Qualia Computing and asking readers if they ever experienced anything like it, only Anders ever reported going through something so similar as a child. Perhaps, making an analogy to wild vs. cultivated plants, all of the exotic states of consciousness he stumbled upon were accidental “wild variety” meditative states akin to what you encounter in a forest, as opposed to the modern hydroponic cultivars with light-and-temperature-optimized conditions characteristic of growing operations, which could symbolize the meditative states cultivated in monasteries or meditation retreats.

In the spirit of honoring Anders in a very Anders kind of way it makes sense to discuss the ways in which, it may turn out, Anders is still with us. For context, one of the most inspiring works of Anders and Maggie (“The Dyad” from here on out ¹) is “The Seven Seals of Security” (writeup) which discusses how our peculiar epistemological position concerning key fundamental questions about our reality actually has advantages, some of which may translate into better coordination mechanisms between us. They discuss how our uncertainty about fundamental issues, such as the nature of God, whether we’re in a simulation, aliens, consciousness, and death, can work to align us with one another. In a similar vein, we would like to suggest how there are seven possibilities not yet ruled out by science or philosophy that make Anders’ existence “still with us” very much possible – perhaps to the point that we could, at least in some sense, coordinate with him beyond the veil of death. They are ordered by their level of plausibility as we see it (from most plausible to least plausible):

Seven ways Anders is still with us (for additional possibilities, see also: a, b):

Eternalism
Memetic Perseverance (Contributions to the Cause)
Vibe Embedding (incl. “Dyadic Survival”)
Simulation Window-Watching
Exotic Physical Memory Mechanisms
Archetypical Attractor Basins
Indexical Uncertainty

(1) Eternalism: This is a very straightforward one. The brief explanation is that there are strong arguments in favor of the view that time and space can trade with each other, all depending on one’s frame of reference. The famous Rietdijk-Putnam argument proposes that this tradeoff entails that present, past, and future are all “equally real”, and it’s a simple consequence of the transitivity of realness. Assume that in Andromeda, an alien civilization is deciding whether to invade Earth. Now imagine that someone is traveling really fast towards Andromeda but is physically located right next to Earth. From their point of view, the alien species may, in fact, have “already decided” and be on their way. Due to transitivity, we can see that Andromeda’s population, according to our frame of reference, is just as real as us, which is just as real as the person traveling towards Andromeda, which is just as real (according to her) as the Andromeda from her point of view. In other words, the population of the alien species is just as real when deciding whether to invade us as it is when it is already underway. Hence, the past and the future are both “equally real”. According to this argument, Anders is, in fact, still with us, though to witness that, we might need to choose an appropriate (and perhaps currently inaccessible) frame of reference. Light-cone considerations aside, whether we can interact with him or not shouldn’t be a determinant of his ontological status. Every photograph ever taken of him, every word he ever wrote, and every sentence he ever uttered are all capturing moments of his life that are “just as real” as you reading this (or our writing this!). Now all we need is a way to get there from here (perhaps not a viable prospect given our current knowledge, but one never knows!).

(2) Memetic Perseverance (and Contributions to the Cause): Anders and The Dyad made enormous efforts in advancing the mission of QRI: this ranged from making amusing and insightful videos (cf. all of the Qualia Productions series) to contacting countless individuals and organizations to discuss QRI with them, to answering correspondence, to selecting promising collaborators for us to learn more about, to highlighting worthwhile research lineages, to advising the organization on a very pragmatic front, to emotionally encouraging us when it was getting tough in various ways. But what stands out to me, and also thoroughly contradicts their self-deprecating ²humor, is their top-notch writings produced in the service of the cause. Simply put, the emails, letters, and private messages we received from Anders (and the Dyad more broadly), in our humble opinion, approximate the brilliance of some of the best writings in the field of consciousness. We are not exaggerating. In time we will publish as much of this corpus as is feasible and ethical (once applicable privacy considerations have been thoroughly evaluated). Of course, as future Large Language Models read the corpus and pass on its insights into leaked packets of weights for future generations to play with ad-lib, we can expect Anders’ signature sense of humor and uniquely insightful commentary to influence the generations to come.

(3) Vibe Embedding (incl. “Dyadic Survival”): Hofstadter commented about his wife’s passing that he spent so much time with her that she now lived inside him, embedded in a self-reinforcing pattern of cognitive and emotional loops. Anders’ benevolent and charismatic personality is, according to QRI and us qualiaphiles who take the structural properties of valence very seriously, really an outward expression of an unseen (but clearly felt) “vibe”. In technical terms, a specific configuration of coupled harmonic oscillators gives rise to patterns of consonance, dissonance, and noise of an amiable and creative type. The records he left, the impression he made, and the body language with which he expressed his communications indeed “live within us”. The wake of these “vibes’’ can still be felt among those who knew him. Still, their future is perhaps even grander. As we develop ways to analyze, visualize, and reproduce vibes (aka.”vibe computing” and “vibe synthesis”) we will be better able to capture and propagate his vibe in more scalable ways, perhaps by embedding them in “Vibe Standard Candles” (e.g. a sort of “Vibe Metric System” cf. “The Meter” in France) that could function as templates for future benevolent superintelligences. “Safety-via-Vibe” may sound far-fetched. Still, if valence structuralism and qualia computing are on the right track, this may be a definite step in the right direction. Will Anders’ vibe feed into a “benevolent score” and substantially contribute to the safety of future AIs? This might very well be in store for us. After all, Anders’ vibe was uniquely appropriate for the benevolent alignment of potential advanced superintelligences: he always emphasized the importance of Open Individualism and Valence Realism along with a healthy dose of “longevity-focused vacationing” and humor. Undoubtedly, we’d rather have his vibe supervise the next generation of Super-Bings than, say, one drawn from the distribution of “industry experts” today.

(4) Simulation Window-Watching: It is a common trope, and an understandable human reaction to feelings of grief, to posit that our deceased loved ones are “watching us and taking care of us from heaven”. A secular version of this idea can be found in the Simulation Hypothesis, where perhaps death might be equated with ending one’s presence in the simulation (it’s worth pointing out that most thinkers in this area believe that even if we are in a simulation, it “all adds to normality” in that this information alone doesn’t entail there should be any significant behavioral change on our part). What is the simulation for, though? The existence of suffering, and ill-being more broadly, poses a formidable challenge to this hypothesis: why would an advanced intelligence, civilization, or God, choose to create the states of consciousness characterized by dullness, pain, and anxiety rather than continuous super-bliss? This resembles the traditional “problem of evil” in theodicy. What purpose could our humble lives serve such a super-organism? To say that we will “simply never know” is a cop-out. Shouldn’t this fact (the problem of evil) reduce the probability we assign to this being a Simulation? To a certain extent, no doubt! That said, there are possible, in our mind, defensible viewpoints that prevent ruling out this general hypothesis space. In particular, two classes of explanations stand out to me:

First, that we are undergoing a sort of “training” that requires us to not be aware of what we’re doing. A drill (say, simulating that a ship is sinking) is always much more valuable when one truly believes one’s life and that of our loved ones is in danger. Dealing with panic, uncertainty, and fear are all, after all, essential features of an actual emergency, so believing that “it’s merely a drill” might give us a false sense of security. In this view, while perhaps our bodily forms are precarious and perishable, our “soul” is in fact (perhaps holographically), learning valuable lessons that can only be internalized when experienced under the proper level of uncertainty. The classic “soul training” or “soul testing” tropes of religion and spirituality would be readily transposed to this overall framework. If we are, as many spiritually “realized” masters say, spiritual beings having a human experience (rather than the other way around), undergoing the right training might be essential to prevent us from causing enormous harm when liberated. With God-like powers comes God-like responsibility – without the empathy and learnings we obtain from this simulation, we might be at risk of misusing our powers. More so, this “soul training” might be all about vibe computing too. Was Anders’ visit to this plane of existence perhaps for the purpose of “stealing a vibe” for the outside of the simulation? (Cf. How to Steal a Vibe: The Phenomenal Unity of Reality, the Mind-Body Problem, and the Blockchain of Consciousness).

The second possibility is centered around the potential epistemological value of a simulation like ours. Anders and Maggie have posited in many of their writings that simulating our current time might be of special value to a superintelligence in the “far future”, presumably in a post-Singularity era. This is because the historical records of the pre-Singularity era might have been corrupted, lost, or erased due to the complex acceleration of technologies at the point of transition. Understanding where they are and how they got there would likely be of enormous value. For instance, it might be useful to figure out if there are other superintelligences hiding beyond their cosmological horizon – the historical period we’re witnessing might have many possible branching futures depending on subtle conditions. In other words, the kind of Singularity that arises might be very sensitive to the conditions of our current era. Understanding the counter-factual post-Singularity states would potentially be a security measure (to be able to anticipate the nature and behavior of competing superintelligences) or a way to exit technological grid-locks and legacy systems.

Of course here we cannot ignore the numerous hints dropped by Anders (and the Dyad) about his nature. Our dear Dyad has helped us with their ability to run “conscious simulation” (see, e.g., how they simulated Dennett’s mind on psychedelics) with what appears to be surprising precision and creativity. Tongue-in-cheek, some rather strange “evidence” can also be of significance: Anders and Maggie have appeared numerous times “inside” DMT hallucinations, usually displaying unusual and exotic states of awareness, often mixed with the theme that they are somehow part of an alien civilization visiting Earth to encourage its positive development. Of course this is not much evidence as far as rigorous scientific principles go, but perhaps it is still worth pointing out to those who are open minded among us (please note this is more of a humorous point than anything else).

(5) Exotic Physical Memory Mechanisms: Could it be possible that Anders is somehow “embedded” in the electromagnetic field around us? Or in the quantum foam? Perhaps eternally recorded in a structure resembling “The Akashic Records”? Here again, “psychedelic evidence” is of enormous relevance. Some ibogaine trip reports point out that in the states of consciousness induced by that “atypical psychedelic” there is access to previously lost or suppressed memories in, often, exquisite detail (in addition to more conventional memory retrieval-enhancing effects). Usually, these memories present themselves in ways readily consumable by one’s personality. If you have an old-times aesthetic where you keep physical photos in a family album, your long-lost memories might be lovingly rendered in that format. Alternatively, if you’re a very “phone-oriented” person, the memories might be displayed as files on your phone (see Teafaery’s Hard Reset trip report). Or, as an explorer once told me, if you’re a fan of historical museums, the memories might be found in a “memory hall” with countless rooms (one for each significant event in your life). More so, some people report that they could access these memories from points of view that should have been impossible, as if there were records of the events whether or not it was you, specifically, who experienced them. This isn’t a universal experience, though. But if we decide to take those reports seriously, perhaps that ibogaine states of consciousness can faithfully render with exquisite detail every moment of your life tells us something about how information is stored in the field at large. This suggests (though certainly doesn’t prove) that physical fields can keep information about events for much longer than we typically believe and be accessible in formats that hint at the existence of a higher intelligence embedded within them. Or it could all just be confabulations of a drug-addled mind, as Occam’s Razor would suggest. Nevertheless, we believe this is a “research lead” that should not be ignored. See also: terminal lucidity.

(6) Archetypical Attractor Basins: If we take the Buddhists seriously on their claim that “there really is no self”, then, of course, nothing ontologically fundamental is ever lost when someone dies. Taking the no-self doctrine not only as a meditation instruction but as an ontological reality has strange implications about the continuity of identity that ought to make death “not that big of a deal”. That said, this might not be much consolation to us self-havers and self-users who are still under the (perceptual) grip of a sense of personal identity. But there’s another angle to explore here. In brief, while our self-identity might not be fundamental, akin to a real “thing” that functions as an enduring metaphysical ego, it might nonetheless reflect a real “latent structure” in the field of consciousness. In this case, existing religious figures, fictional characters, and famous celebrities are, to greater or lesser extents, powerful “eigenstates” of consciousness – self-reinforcing qualia patterns of coherence. A fractally incoherent, chaotic person is like a weirdly-shaped cloud, a weather phenomenon that happens only once and never again.

On the other hand, a fractally coherent and self-consistent intelligence in reflective equilibrium is, in fact, a “solution” to the equations of physics. Anders, being a rather genius-level thinker with a coherent worldview, is perhaps a solution of this sort in this light. Meaning that, in time, more qualia soups and mind-designs will arrive at his attractor basin in the pursuit of truth and beauty. Anders is, therefore, bound to “re-occur” in the field sooner or later. Like in The Good Place, where every heaven and hell station has its “Janet” (really an attractor more than a specific identity), we could find that perhaps across the full multiverse, every level of reality has its Anders (and Maggie to match!), providing coherent and far-ahead-of-their-time advice and words of encouragement to those pursuing the vector of Team Consciousness.

(7) Indexical Uncertainty: A recurring theme in the Dyad’s work is that of Indexical Uncertainty. Namely, the view that it is not in the present moment possible to determine with certainty “who you really are” (e.g. Descartes’ in the Advanced Incompetence video presented as dying “in a state of indexical uncertainty”). Indeed, the situation is even stranger and trippier than any of the above scenarios. Indexical uncertainty is a Gordian Knot that cannot be cut with our current tools. And in the most extreme scenario, it makes it impossible to rule out that you are Anders (or someone else)! You’re him having a wild dream, or a conscious simulation of the state of affairs post-death, in which your own lack of knowledge about your identity is necessary to carry out the simulation in a faithful way.

Taking stock: We wrote this in the hopes of kindling a tangible sense that Anders is still with us. Albeit some of these possibilities are admittedly far-fetched, as a whole they present a picture we cannot ignore. In time, we think we will realize that Anders’ impact in the world (or the simulation) is far larger than the YouTube video counts would suggest. His keen intelligence, sense of humor, and ability to identify “what really matters” is a real inspiration to me and those who knew him. The unfortunate circumstances of his passing away are also ultimately thematic: the terribleness of suffering cannot be ignored and their solutions further delayed. We have powerful research leads (cf. ibogaine for reversing tolerance to painkillers) and aligned individuals to push the envelope. We need to enthuse the world with the appropriate sense of urgency mixed with hope (and bliss to avoid burnout) that will finally allow us to “destroy hell” and bring paradise to all sentient beings.

May Anders live within us and through us! Ahoy!

We invite you to visit Ander’s memorial page on Lavendla, a Swedish platform for remembering loved ones. Here, you can share your own memories of Anders, view photographs, and read messages from others who were touched by his life.

[1] The Dyad is the term we affectionately refer to the ways in which Anders & Maggie were/are “more than the sum of the parts”. A reference to Integrated Information Theory where the whole can at times behave in irreducible ways, as a kind of top-down causation? Yes, in part. But the original reference came from John and Antonietta Lilly’s book “The Dyadic Cyclone” in which they advance the idea that when two persons who are in love are sufficiently synchronized with each other, a new organism (or “holon”) arises that incorporates both at once.

[2] Anders & Maggie introduce themselves as a Dyad, the power-couple, in very humble ways. In a 2020 email making themselves known to David Pearce after an online meeting we had with the QRI community, they wrote: “We weren’t able to contribute much to the discussion ourselves since we are only this average Swedish soon to be retired couple with ordinary jobs in university administration, e-learning and marketing. We are pretty much at square one regarding ethics, philosophy, mathematics, computer science, neurology, psychiatry and so on. Even our English is far from what it ought to be, though it is slightly better than our Icelandic. But we do love the QRI for their great potential to make a better future more likely.” [Note the gross omission of the Oxford comma – they clearly really don’t know any English, do they? *smiles*]. Or, on another occasion, “Hello, again. The semi-zombies of QRI Sweden here.” The tongue-in-cheek introductions went on and on. But don’t be deceived – the Dyad is anything but ordinary.

[cross-posted at qri.org]

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

Posted on April 6 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:

Balenciaga is Mara. It's made to deceive you, to bind you to delusion, to keep you spinning in the wheel of Samsara, pursuing lesser forms embedded in a matrix of selfing.

The real deal is Valenciaga. The quality of consciousness that is within you. This is the true liberation.
— Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@algekalipso) April 6, 2023

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!

Aligning DMT Entities: Shards, Shoggoths, and Waluigis

Posted on March 5 by algekalipso

We have recently seen some incredible “rogue AI behavior” in Microsoft’s Bing.

While reading some of these outputs I was reminded of… rogue DMT entities. Indeed, sometimes people have DMT experiences and encounter beautiful angelic beings that want to help and heal you (and sometimes do so!), but other times people encounter demonic beings that want to harm and hurt you (and sometimes do so!).

Just as it is unwise to roll-out a technology like Bing that is full of potential misaligned subagents, I also reckon that it’s unwise to deliver DMT therapy to the masses *before* fixing this bug. While I think that responsible consenting adults *should* be allowed to experiment with DMT as they wish, the bar for “safety and effectiveness” should be much higher when we think of it as a possible mental health intervention.

Ok, so both Bing and DMT experiences can create insane rogue subagents. How are these two things more than merely superficially connected?

Someone I talked to recently was actually worried that DMT entities are perhaps controlling these AI technologies to infiltrate our world. I don’t think that’s a very likely explanation. Rather, I think there is a much more parsimonious explanation for this similarity. Namely that both involve having a predictive system spun up misaligned agents in order to fit narratives that appear in the training data. Let’s dig in!

When in Rome

Last year when playing with GPT and also after talking to Connor from Conjecture who introduced me to Janus‘ Simulator Theory[1] (see also: Janus’ Simulators by Scott Alexander) it became clear that there is a similarity between DMT entities and the quasi-agentic simulated characters GPT-like systems spin up in order to predict the next token in text. If this is true, then this suggests that there might be interesting transpositions between the strategies and concerns discussed in the AI Alignment world and the findings from psychedelic phenomenology about how to have a good time with the beings that you encounter in far-out places. Let me explain.

A very large fraction of our nervous system is dedicated to minimizing surprise (cf. free energy principle, predictive processing). Now, I don’t think that this is all that the nervous system is doing, nor do I think it is a theory of consciousness. But it is a very important piece of the puzzle nonetheless.

QRI has championed a set of integrative models that tie together the free energy principle within the larger context of consciousness research in order to explain psychedelic phenomenology. Most recently we have been discussing the frame of “Psychedelic Thermodynamics”, which brings together Neural Annealing, Non-Linear Wave Computing, Johnson’s Symmetry Theory of Valence, and Topological Approaches to Binding.

The bit that is relevant from Psychedelic Thermodynamics here is that there is a process by which psychedelics intensify the background noise that, together with sensory stimuli, stimulate internal representations (via a process of stochastic resonance). Importantly, internal representations function as energy sinks from the point of view of the background noise, whereas they are energy sources from the point of view of other representations.

The two key features that work as energy sinks of this background energy are symmetry and “recognition”. This was first discussed in The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences, but it also shows up elsewhere[2]. In particular, when you can interpret an ambiguous input as “expected given the context” then that sucks energy out of the background noise in order to energize a gestalt that binds together low-level features into a coherent high-level percept (e.g. Necker Cube). When this “clicks” it will radiate out its excess energy to the rest of the field, and also *constraint* the shape of the field such that it functions as new context that changes the probability for other ambiguous sensations to collapse into representations consistent with the new gestalt. In other words, on DMT you can go from what feels like “pure undifferentiated non dual consciousness” to “this specific carnival with harlequins doing acrobatics” by collapsing how you interpret slight imperfections in the field, which then snowball into instantiating an entire realm of experience where each shape resonates with every other shape (a “vibe lock”, as we call it).

Now, once you interpret a sufficient number of features as high-level gestalts, then they will start interacting with each other and further constraining the possible interpretations of the rest of the field. This, I believe, is somewhat similar to GPT, except on a full spatiotemporal context rather than a sequence of tokens context (cf. probabilistic graphical models).

If this model is correct, as soon as you start collapsing the energized field into interpretations, then a particular narrative structure may start dominating and “making sense” of what is happening. This can indeed snowball into getting into tricky and sometimes really unpleasant situations.

Slides from: Healing Trauma With Neural Annealing

Meet the Meeseeks

In parallel, it’s important to briefly mention the role that subagents typically have in us. Namely, what Romeo Stevens calls the “Mr. Meeseeks interpretation of subagents”. The subagents are created to achieve a goal, they don’t really like existing, but will continue to hang in there until they’re convinced the goal has been met. The subagents are spun up in order to accomplish goals that would normally require you to spend a lot of attention but that cannot be simply offloaded to muscle memory (e.g. like driving a car). Typical examples are things like the response one may have to living in an environment with very negative people (say, dark triad personalities) where you need to spin up subagents that behave like them so that you can predict their next move. In cases of PTSD, it may be that part of the problem is that one created a lot of rather negative subagents (of people, situations, dynamics, actual physical hazards, etc.) and that as a collective they reinforce each other.

Hi I’m Mr. Meeseeks! I see your grandmother is emotionally abusive. I’ll pretend to be her inside your mind so that you can predict what she will do next and thus avoid getting harmed. Let me know when she’s gone so I can go *PUFF*.

The Return to Goodness

Here loving-kindness meditation can be enormously helpful. I refer you to Anders & Maggie’s meditative exercise to heal negative internal subagents (see Letter XI: Douglas Adams). Essentially what you do is visualize a container of very positive benevolent and high-valence feelings (call it unconditional love, God, primordial goodness, Buddhamind, etc. – or whatever really resonates in your inner world simulation). You then tell the story that subagents come out of that container and once they achieve their goals they go back to it in order to “merge with love” once again. You can even explain this to the subagents, and they can feel the sense of relief that comes when they finally achieve union with this primordial love. Gently guide them towards it. And if you do this over and over, you will in fact be cleaning up a lot of subagents lingering implicit in the field, until you achieve a smooth field with high-valence and a non-dual feel.

Ok, so taking stock: our field of experience can “collapse” into familiar representations when they start predicting each other, sub-agents cease to exist once they have achieved their goal, and loving-kindness exercises can help you steer lost and lingering subagents towards their re-unification with primordial love (or, again, whatever resonates with you!). More so, these subagents are embedded in the predictive processing hierarchy and will try to do exactly what you find them most likely to do. So given these conditions, how do you align DMT entities?

Aligning DMT Entities

Here are some suggestions:

* First, the simplest and most straightforward intervention is to simply get good and prosocial training data. This is highlighted by the Waluigi Effect, in which Bing sort of turns nasty *because* character trait inversion is a *trope* in human stories, and there are plenty of such stories online. This could in principle be fixed by having an AI that classifies tropes and narrative structures and filters texts that contain any hint of Waluigi tropes or character trait switching narrative structures before feeding them as training data to GPT. Similarly, in the case of DMT entities, you can go to an environment with vetted inputs that are always really wholesome. Recall: the influence that the last couple of weeks have on what comes up in a psychedelic experience is vastly larger than what you experienced a year or a decade ago. The recent inputs matter a lot, so don’t worry about the fact that you’ve seen horror movies in the past. If you’ve been consuming really wholesome media for the last three months, that will matter enormously more.

* Second, add really highly-weighted good training data that makes it so that aligned outcomes are always the most likely. In our case, this would be indeed things like exercising the “gently guide subagents to the pool of love” move so that it’s a very likely outcome and they predict that that’s what’s going to happen. Train on visualizing the Buddha with a hand up saying “don’t fear”. Internalize that “love is always stronger than fear” (which is something I actually believe in, based on many incredible experiences). And so on.

Don’t Fear

* Third, use good vibes as the base. Essentially, negative entities feed off of negatively valanced patterns. Literally, feeling somatic sensations of pinching, pressure, twisting, etc. can become the building blocks of gestalts that end up becoming negative entities. Starting out with a very positive and smooth field reduces the fuel that negative entities have to construct themselves in resonance with patterns of dissonance. We’ve heard about good outcomes from Wim Hof and chanting metta meditation before trips (YMMV!).

* Fourth, More Dakka on equanimity. Remember the teachings of Rob Burbea (“what you resist persists”) and Shinzen Young (“suffering equals pain times resistance”). Essentially, resisting negative energies makes them stronger. This is doubly so on psychedelic states of consciousness. Instead, remember that high enough equanimity, where you don’t let positive or negative vibes “move you”, maximizes the rate of stress dissipation within your nervous system, and this accelerates the rate at which negative vibes flow through you and exit your system via some kind of radiative cooling process currently not understood by science. Practice taking cold showers without stalling or flinching, or eating relatively hot peppers without resisting or letting the pain get to you. At least for DMT realms up to Magic Eye-level the physical discomfort of the state is not stronger than a cold shower… that is, if you don’t resist it! If you do resits it, the discomfort can be drastically amplified, and you can turn some waves in a glass of water into a storm.

* Fifth, going back to the Waluigi Effect: the article explains why Reinforcement Learning via Human Feedback (RLHF) doesn’t really work for it (it encourages Waluigies to hide and pretend, rather than really getting rid of them). So instead of simply “rewarding good behavior” I suggest you reward “clean subagentic structures”. There is a “vibe” to the “intentions” of subagents. And you will soon realize that Waluigies have an “ambiguous intention” vibe. Use metta to reward sub-agents that have collapsed and clean intentions instead. Importantly, this takes priority over rewarding subagents that are really good at flattering you, for example. Because you’ve been fed enough narratives where flattery turns to betrayal that this is not a guarantee of alignment.

* Sixth, I think the principles of Shard Theory might be really useful here. In particular, really notice how not only is it that you can reward sub-agents with your attention and your top-down vibes, but once they are sufficiently “alive” they can actually start to *reward each other*. This, I believe, is how you get things like “egregore possessions” and other uncanny related phenomena. More on this below. You want to have a clean and smooth field of awareness so that subagent conspiracies can be easily spotted and addressed before they snowball.

Example Entities

Finally, let me ground this with some of the common categories of DMT entities:

Shoggoths: These are entities that seem to emerge out of the resonance of interpersonal representations of preferences at the cultural level. The things that you can “recognize the field as” in this case are “people doing what they want” where what they want may be different than what you want. If you have an adversarial relationship with a particular culture or subculture and you resist these wants, they will get reinforced by you disliking them and in some cases can start to locally bind with each other until you get what some psychonauts call “an amalgam” of cultural preferences. This is also what I think people are talking about when they say they have met an “egregore” of a culture of ideology on DMT. These are hard or perhaps impossible to align: cultures are in fact self-contradictory. So the amalgam will typically hold a lot of internal contradictions, which it will then externalize. The way to deal with a Shoggoth involves re-annealing, in addition to the suggestions above. DMT Shoggoths are sort of a symptom of failed clean annealing, in that they “coagulate” rather than “click”, and are amalgams of lots of incompatible preferences loosely held by a political coalition. This could perhaps be predicted from first principles with non-linear wave computing and Shard Theory, so the fact that it does happen to people makes it a salient case for this field of study.

Demons: these are sub-agents that come up in “hell realms” which are states of consciousness where you believe that you are a bad person and deserve some kind of punishment. The demons here are just, in my opinion, doing exactly what you expect them to do, namely, punishing you. I think that in addition to equanimity and metta, these entities also respond to boosting narratives of redemption that are wholesome in nature. For example, there is this spiritual belief that demons ultimately are all on the path towards God… they are just in a more extreme version of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and they might take thousands of years to redeem themselves. But they will do so. In this case, you sending them metta and telling them that they are actually intrinsically good, can slowly, but surely, help them unwind their dissonant configurations.

Harlequins: these are entities from what feels like some kind of “clown dimension”. They are extremely common on DMT. Because we have so many tropes of negative clowns, this can often turn ugly. I suggest you reinforce the narrative of “harlequins as tricksters who are child-like in their curiosity about consciousness”. In fact, prompted properly and softened with enough metta, harlequins can be extremely helpful for consciousness research. You can play positive sum games with them in which you give them a really good time, and in exchange they help you explore the most surprising features of the space you are inhabiting. They can become “consciousness research assistants” with a flair for the weird and wondrous.

There is of course a zoo of possible entities, and in fact many possible entities currently exist merely in potential. As we imagine new healthy and wholesome tropes in our sense-making attempts for DMT realms, I predict that we will “unlock” new and more helpful DMT beings. In particular, I think that Team Consciousness tropes can give us a really good aesthetic to use as the primary energy sink for “recognizing” entities in this space. If you ever meet Rainbow God, say hi for me. It *always* gives you a mind-blowing revelation about reality and consciousness that enriches your life for the better 😉

How does this help AI Alignment?

I will conclude by saying that studying DMT entities might actually be a way to make headway in AI alignment in two ways. First, because they genuinely can be really smart entities you can interact with, on a bounded timeframe, and who seem to share a lot of features with AI technologies. They are human-level or higher in their intelligence (because they have access to new geometries of phenomenal space and hence to novel qualia computing, and because they lack the ego defenses that make you incapable of having certain thoughts!). And second, because all of the above may actually also transpose to discussions in AI alignment. In particular, I think the above suggestions are helpful for researchers. AI alignment can expose you to a lot of mental health risks (from the belief that “we’re doomed”, to creating strong tulpas that don’t align with your own values!). The recommendations I provide above may transpose to that domain: realize that even AI alignment research makes you spin up subagents inside you! The tools I shared may be helpful to increase the mental health of anyone studying this field who is now suffering from an infestation of negative subagents. Bring them back to Love!

See also:

DMT-Nexus‘ Hyperspace Lexicon
Kevin Simler‘s Neurons Gone Wild
QRI‘s Magical Creatures line of scents
CubeFlipper‘s How to use DMT without going insane
Trolls Under the Bridge by Evan McMullen at The Stoa
The Bayesian Brain and Meditation by Shamil Chandaria
Mapping the Heaven Realms – presentation I gave at an Astral Codex Ten meetup
The Magickal, Shamanic, Imperial, Ethical, and Tantric Implications of Pokémon Go by Daniel Ingram
Michael Johnson‘s The Neuroscience of Meditation: Four Models and his writeup on Neural Annealing
What Happens When You Ask Questions to the DMT Entities? (excerpt from Josikinz‘ Psychedelic Entities – broken down and described)

[1] Not to be confused with simulationism (the belief that we actually live in a computer simulation) or indirect realism about perception (the philosophical realization that all we ever have access to are the features of an internal world simulation and we don’t perceive the world “directly”)

[2] Lehar’s Harmonic Gestalt argues that this emerges naturally out of the hill-claiming towards higher harmony between internal representations. Also discussed in Healing Trauma with Neural Annealing.

Good Vibe Theory

Posted on February 25 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!

Symmetry in Qualia – an Interview with Andres Gomez-Emilsson by Justin Riddle

Posted on January 12 by algekalipso

I recently had the pleasure to talk to Justin Riddle*, who is one of the few people in academia who takes quantum theories of consciousness seriously while also doing formal neuroscience research (see his publications, which include woks on transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) for a number of conditions, EEG analysis for decision making, reward, and cognition, as well as concept work on the connection between fractals and consciousness).

I first met him at Toward a Science of Consciousness in Tuscon in 2016 (see my writeup about that event, which I attended with David Pearce). About a year ago I noticed that he started uploading videos about quantum theories of consciousness, which I happily watched while going on long walks. Just a few months ago, we both participated in a documentary about consciousness (more on that later!) and had the chance to sit down and record a video together. He edited our long and wide-ranging discussion into a friendly and consumable format by adding explainers and visual aids along the way. I particularly appreciate his description of “mathematical fictionalism” at 21:30 (cf. Mathematics as the Study of Patterns of Qualia).

We hope you enjoy it!

* Thanks to David Field for catalyzing this meeting 🙂

Video Description:

In episode 32 of the quantum consciousness series, Justin Riddle interviews Andres Gomez-Emilsson, the director of research at the Qualia Research Institute. Andres is passionate about understanding qualia, which is the feeling and quality of subjective experience. In this interview, we discuss many of Andres’ theories: mathematical fictionalism, models of valence, neural annealing as it pertains to psychedelic therapy, and antitolerance medications to reduce suffering.

First up, we discuss the nature of qualia and whether or not there can be a universal mathematical description of subjective experience. Andres posits that the experience of having a thought should not be confused with the thought itself. Therefore, any attempt at mathematical description will be wrapped up within the experience of the person suggesting the mathematics. As he states, mathematics is as real as the Lord of the Rings, a great story that we can tell, but not to be confused with reality itself. Next up, we discuss the symmetry theory of valence [proposed by Michael Johnson in Principia Qualia] which postulates that the structure of experience determines how good or bad an experience feels (such as the imagination of certain geometric patterns imbuing a sense of well-being whereas other patterns being anxiogenic). The geometric patterns that lead to positive valence (positive emotional experiences) are those shapes recognized as “sacred geometry”. However, Andres cautions that because these “sacred” geometric shapes generate well-being, people have used this reproducible experience to peddle New Age metaphysics. We should be cautious of the ability to generate positive experience as it can be used to manipulate people into buying into particular belief systems. Third, we discuss recent findings that single dose psilocybin in a therapeutic context can produce a lasting reduction in symptoms of depression. Andres posits that this could be explained as a form of neural annealing (see also, and also). The mind “heats up” and breaks through discordant neural pathways and through neural plasticity during the psychedelic experience will allow for the formation of new neural pathways with higher resonant properties consistent with positive valence. This contributes to Andres’ overall ontological model of reality in which the universe is a unified field of experience that is pinched off into individuals. Here, he starts with an unbroken unity of all things that is topologically segmented into individuals. Finally, Andres is a devout hedonist with the long-term goal of reducing suffering. His group at the Qualia Research Institute is investigating medications that reduce adaptation to molecules over long-term use. Go check out Andres’ YouTube channel and the Qualia Research Institute website!

~~~ Timestamps ~~~

0:00 Introduction to the Qualia Research Institute

21:28 Mathematical fictionalism and qualia

28:58 Symmetry Theory of Valence

35:23 Using subjective experience for scientific discovery

41:10 Consciousness as topological segmentation

45:19 Topographic bifurcations within the mind-field

51:07 Neural annealing in psychedelic therapy

1:02:09 Electrical oscillations in neural annealing

1:06:23 Hyperbolic geometry in the brain

1:12:16 Definition of hyperbolic geometry

1:16:23 Antitolerance medication to reduce suffering

1:23:59 Quantum computers and qualia

Website: http://www.justinriddlepodcast.com

QRI: A Year in Review – 2022

Posted on December 21 by algekalipso

We are deeply grateful to have you with us on our expedition through the state-space of consciousness. It’s been an exciting and productive year and we’re thrilled to share all of our updates and accomplishments. None of this would have been possible without support from sentient beings like you.

1+ Million Views

First of all, we are thrilled to announce that our presentation on DMT & Hyperbolic Geometry has reached an amazing milestone of 1+ million views this year. We highly appreciate the support and engagement of the community. This presentation has also helped to catalyze some incredible collaborations.

Check Out QRI’s Latest DMT Research

“I interpret QRI as coming at the problem from the opposite direction as everyone else: normal neuroscience starts with normal brain behavior and tries to build on it until they can one day explain crazy things like jhana; QRI starts with crazy things like jhana and tries to build down until they can explain ordinary behavior. This is naturally going to be shakier and harder to research – but somebody should be trying it.”

– Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten¹

Peer-Reviewed Research Publication Pipeline

Our Slicing Problem paper, which provides a novel critique of computational theories of consciousness, has been accepted to the journal Open Philosophy.

We’ve also recently submitted a paper on our Heavy-Tailed Valence Hypothesis (read the preprint), which is the latest iteration of our Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain – a key foundational piece for the field of valence research.

QRI has been working on building this field since 2015. We are proud to continue pushing the boundaries of knowledge in valence research. We are just getting started!

Up next: QRI’s solution to the Boundary Problem of Consciousness and a hypothesis piece for the Symmetry Theory of Valence and how it might be tested!

Tyringham Initiative

In addition to our research efforts, we’ve had the opportunity to connect with others in the research community. Our Director of Research, Andrés Gómez Emilsson, presented at the Tyringham Initiative, and we held a meet-and-greet in London with approximately 40 attendees, including some of QRI’s earliest supporters. We are thrilled to see such a strong interest in building a worldwide “qualia research community”, and we look forward to hosting more meetups in the future.

QRI now has an unofficial Discord server which has already gathered over 1000 members and has fostered engaging discussions related to QRI, attracting notable figures in the field like Roger Thisdell and the founders of PsychonautWiki.

Join

QRI Summer Event

One of the highlights of the year for us was getting to host a QRI event in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended by over 200 people. It was a great opportunity for us to showcase some of our latest tangible innovations, such as our scents and a demo of our Light-Sound-Vibration system. We also had a speech about the Future of Consciousness, which generated some thought-provoking conversations.

TEDx Talk

QRI’s first TEDx Talk got published, which discusses interventions that will have as much, if not more, impact in reducing suffering as anesthesia. The most innovative part of the talk was about anti-tolerance drugs. We believe that we are the only organization in the entire world talking about anti-tolerance drugs as a dedicated field of study with enormous implications rather than as a mere biochemical oddity.

QRI Articles

Just Look At The Thing!

A thorough explanation of how the science of consciousness and valence structuralism inform ethics and what the Effective Altruism movement is missing.

Digital Sentience

Digital computers will remain unconscious until they recruit physical fields for holistic computing using well-defined topological boundaries.

QRI Media

The Ontological Dinner Party

w/ Daniel Ingram, Andrés Gómez Emilsson, Frank Yang, & Ryan Ferris

Reflections on a 2-Week Jhāna Meditation Retreat

A deep phenomenological reflection on Pīti and the 1st Jhāna through a QRI-theoretic lens.

Harmonic Gestalt

Steven Lehar provides an overview of the core insights of his life’s work.

Exploratory Haptic Research

Valence, Arousal, Phenomenal Complexity, and Loving-Kindness

The History of HedWeb

Andrés Gómez Emilsson interviews QRI Board of Advisor and author of the Hedonistic Imperative, David Pearce.

The Aesthetic of the Meta-Aesthetic – On the Stoa

This talk explores modeling the generator of each aesthetic in order to create a network of “compatibility between aesthetics” that minimizes dissonance between them while emphasizing their synergies as well as their unique and valuable contributions.

Andrés Gómez Emilsson & Roger Thisdell – WystanTBS

Discussion on indirect realism, phenomenal time, qualia formalism, exotic phenomenal spacetime in psychedelic and meditative phenomenology, the effects of persistent subject-object nonduality on phenomenal spacetime and hedonic valence, and more!

Stephen Snyder & Andrés Gómez Emilsson – WystanTBS

A wide-ranging discussion and sharing of perspectives covering jhāna, Brahmavihārās, comparisons with psychedelic states, and the journey to and from the Absolute.

Leigh Brasington & Andrés Gómez Emilsson – WystanTBS

AI, Sentience & the Binding Problem of Consciousness – Adam Ford’s Science, Technology & the Future

Is Google’s LaMDA sentient? The phenomenal binding problem asks us to consider, ‘how can a huge set of discrete neurons form a unified mind?’ Is topological binding a requirement for AI to be sentient?

The Future of Consciousness – Adam Ford’s Science, Technology & the Future

A positive vision of the future that is both viable given what we know, and also utterly radical in its implications.

Psychedelic Qualia – Martin W. Ball

A discussion on psychedelic qualia, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, salvia divinorum, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, MDMA, and more!

Listen to QRI on the Go!

You can now listen to QRI material on the go, while driving, doing exercise, in the sauna, or any other healthy annealing rituals!

Supporting QRI

Purchase a scent pack from QRI’s new scent line “Magical Creatures”. This line of scents explores the complex and often puzzling interactions that exist in the state-space of olfaction, highlighting the exotic and unique qualities that can emerge in this space.

Purchase QRI’s Magical Creatures

Please feel free to donate to QRI independent of our Magical Creatures campaign.

Thank you!

We want to thank everyone who has helped QRI in any way, including our current and past collaborators, donors, readers, video watchers, and event attendees. Special thanks to Hunter, Anders & Maggie, Marcin, Chris, Winslow, Olaf, Crystal, Libor, and David who really stepped up this year to help QRI in an incredible way. Our efforts wouldn’t matter or be possible without all of you! May you all be prosperous, energized, and access the full-state of consciousness for the benefit of all beings! Thank you!

¹ Additional QRI references by Scott Alexander on Astral Codex Ten this year:

Magical Creatures: Explore the State-Space of Consciousness with QRI’s First Line of Scents

Posted on December 13 by algekalipso

Hello Qualia Enthusiasts,

We are excited to announce the release of our first line of Qualia Research Institute scents, “Magical Creatures”. This line explores the complex and often puzzling interactions that exist in the state-space of olfaction, highlighting the exotic and unique qualities that can emerge in this space.

Get Magical Creatures at the QRI Website – See Video

QRI’s Scent Philosophy

“Bearing your intentions in the back of your mind has all kinds of effects in navigating your practice, without you even being conscious of it. It’s a powerful thing. Intentions are extremely powerful things. Intentions create our worlds. And that’s not hyperbole.”

– Rob Burbea, in Practicing the Jhanas

Vimalakīrti then asked the bodhisattvas from the Host of Fragrances [world], “How does Accumulation of Fragrances Tathāgata explain the Dharma?”

Those bodhisattvas said, “In our land the Tathāgata* explains [the Dharma] without words. He simply uses the host of fragrances to make the gods and humans enter into the practice of the Vinaya. The bodhisattvas each sit beneath fragrant trees, smelling such wondrous fragrances, from which they attain the ‘samādhi of the repository of all virtues.’ Those who attain this samādhi all become replete in the merits of the bodhisattva.”

– Chapter X – The Buddha Accumulation Of Fragrances

[*Tathāgata is an honorable name for the Buddha of a realm.]

In his 2019 Jhana retreat lectures, Rob Burbea explains that the intention you use as your source of energy, your reserve, your approach, and your guide to meditation has an enormous influence on what unfolds and what arises during a retreat.

If you practice Jhana meditation to be more calm, or to reduce stress, or to tick a box of “having done a Jhana retreat”, or because someone really likes the teacher and recommended it to you, or as an instrumental stepping stone to then use for insight practices, or anything else that is not open to the mystery of the Jhanas and has the flexibility and responsivity to what comes up naturally out of them, then many of the deepest and most worthwhile realms of experience this practice has to offer will simply not unfold.

Similarly, approaching an ayahuasca session with the intention of healing a particular relationship, or experiencing a mystical sense about a specific spiritual tradition, or for the sake of neurogenesis, or anything else with a predetermined target, will entail that some things will not unfold.

The approach, the intentions, and the desires that fuel a particular exploration of consciousness will determine the limits of what will unfold from it. This insight is an important conceptual background to understand the exploration of consciousness we are pursuing at QRI. To truly get the most out of experiencing our scents, we want to think of it in terms of what we call the cultivation of Qualia Mastery.

Qualia Mastery consists of three core intentions that work in the background during any exploration of consciousness:

It’s for the Benefit of Sentient Beings: The exploration intends to benefit all sentient beings. The explorer should not do anything damaging, which may limit future explorations. We should let our efforts be guided by compassion and sympathetic joy in addition to curiosity and creativity. And the goal should be altruistic: we are seeking solutions to the problem of suffering in all its guises, and we believe that understanding consciousness is essential for achieving this.
To Develop an Intellectual Understanding: Unlike many spiritual traditions which advocate for a strictly non-intellectual understanding of consciousness, Qualia Mastery fully embraces the value, importance, and necessity of intellectual understanding. This embrace entails approaching the exploration of consciousness with epistemological optimism. Yes, with enough dedication, cleverness, and knowledge, it is possible to eff the ineffable. Or, at the very least, not trying to do so will surely make it impossible!
To Experience the Mystery of Consciousness Directly: In other words, an essential aspect of Qualia Mastery involves the intention to acquire the capacity to instantiate, navigate, and utilize any and every possible state of consciousness. It is not enough to know that the 6th Jhana exists intellectually; we want to experience it ourselves! Likewise, we want to develop the ability to abide in all shades of wonder, color, taste, and so on.

With Qualia Mastery in mind, you will get much more out of exploring our scents (and any other scent you may encounter on your own!). Don’t let your preconcieved sense of what scents are (and what they are for) limit the way you approach them. They are disclosing hidden properties of consciousness! Drink and delight in experiencing the wonder of the unknown, and join us in developing an intimate and unmediated relationship with this most outstanding mystery.

Importantly, please do not think of these scents as perfumes for two reasons. First, that way of perceiving them will be limiting. It comes with a large set of cultural imports and expectations (cf. functional fixedness). Instead, these scents are qualia research tools: they are molecular compositions meant to disclose varieties of qualia and to allow you to engage in an intimate and unmediated way with the mystery of consciousness. And second, these scents are not intended as skin scents. The makeup of these scents is a mixture of common essential oils and perfume ingredients. Their relative proportions do not adhere to IFRA guidelines, which would enable us to sell them as proper perfumes intended to be used on one’s skin. Some of those regulations restrict the range of qualia accessible. Although clever perfumist tricks can, in principle, be used to deliver the same qualia while adhering closely to the guidelines. However, as a non-profit with a limited budget, this is something we have yet to invest in doing (but we may invest in the future).

See also:

Magical Creatures

What is this line of scents about? And what is the aesthetic generator behind it?

Color is the quintessential example used to illustrate the concept of qualia. The state-space of color qualia is rather simple¹. It consists of three orthogonal dimensions: the red-green axis, the yellow-blue axis, and the white-black axis. Every shade of color can be found as a coordinate in this three-dimensional space.

The QRI logo illustrates two of the three dimensions of color qualia.

Albeit controversial in some circles, fundamental properties of this qualia space can be understood experientially by anyone who pays close attention. For example, orange, purple, yellow-green, and green-blue are all secondary color qualia. Orange is, in some sense, both yellow-like and red-like; it isn’t a “pure” color quale. A fair number of phenomenal puzzles can be formulated with color qualia alone. But at its core, the space is simple: linear, Euclidean, and 3-dimensional.

The state-space of scent qualia, however, isn’t that simple. Depending on who you ask, scent-space might have between 30 and 300 dimensions. It is our measured assessment, however, that seeking a Euclidean space for scents is, at best premature and, at worst, fundamentally misguided. Early research in the geometry of the state-space of scent suggests it is hyperbolic. But we at QRI would suggest it is also irregular, and its topology might be far from trivial.

Here are a couple of examples of what makes us think there may be many puzzling interactions that suggest the presence of irregularities in the state-space of olfaction:

There are many examples where two scents mixed give rise to new emergent “scent gestalts” that genuinely feel like more than the sum of their parts. As elaborated in the description of Eau de Cologne Vide, there are tactile scent effects (such as the coolness of mint and the prickly spiky trigeminal stimulation of aldehydes). Some scents modify other scents called “character impact”: two scents that refuse to “blend” with each other can be merged by adding the right character impact into the mix.

Thus, we may need new interpretative lenses to make sense of the state-space of scents. We encourage, cultivate, and celebrate creative explorations of this (and other) qualia spaces that provide new insights and perspectives. This is what Magical Creatures is all about.

Magical Creatures is a line of scents emphasizing the “special effects” found in the state-space of scents. Rather than thinking of scents as mere points in a Euclidean space, we think of them as exotic creatures inhabiting a complex and irregular space with hidden interstitial gems found in unique places like triple points and unexpected phase transitions.

As an intuition pump, perhaps think of the range of powers that Pokémon have. If you’ve only ever seen water, fire, ground, fighting, and grass Pokémon types, is it possible to derive from first principles that there is also such a thing as an electric type? What about psychic? And ghost? These seem like entirely new categories coming out of the blue rather than linear combinations out of a simple vector basis!

Likewise, the state-space of scents can, at times, seem more like an ecosystem of unique and exotic Magical Creatures than linear combinations of a few simple primitives. For example, if you were a perfume connoisseur but had never encountered minty scents of any sort, could you figure out from first principles that there ought to be such a thing as cooling scents? No way! Where did that come from?

Magical Creatures highlight some of the fascinating “special effects” that exist hidden in the state-space of scents. Think of it as a magical treasure trove of qualia secrets. Each of the scents we present has been carefully crafted to show a “special effect” in a clear and undeniable way:

Fearless: a scent designed for countering and extinguishing fear vibrations.
Dust Devil: a scent that showcases how scents can be mysteriously powdery.
Glacial Gumdrop: a scent that incorporates cooling and “gummy” qualities.
Frisson: A scent that can cause a subtle, strange, and rather remarkable synesthetic ASMR-like sensation.
Eau de Cologne Vide: a scent that explores character impact with no flavor, a celebration of emptiness.
Hedonium Shockwave: a scent that explores positive valence in its purest form – what would a rich scent with no negative features smell like? This is our best attempt.

Note that these are just the first six of this line of scents and that there might very well be more. We’ve come across many other rather unique effects, and in time we aim to share them.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that there are countless other ways to explore scent-space – Magical Creatures is a very generative and fun approach, but ultimately just one of many. Mapping, understanding, and utilizing the full-state space of scents is undoubtedly worthy of a lifetime of exploration. We invite you to join us in this creative pursuit and in cultivating Qualia Mastery in the olfactory domain.

See also:

[1] We are here following the well-known findings that dates back to the psychophysics work underpinning the CIELAB color space with an Euclidean metric for color difference. Admittedly this is hiding vast amounts of complexity, such as what goes on each kind of color blindness, how power spectrum distributions map onto qualia space, tetrachromatism, blue-yellow/red-green hybrids, and hypercolors. One thing at a time!

Open Fearless

Originally debuted at QRI’s Future of Consciousness Party on the 24th of June, 2022.

Fearless 3.0 is a scent optimized for expressing the reduction of common varieties of fear. Open Fearless is a slight improvement over Fearless 3.0. The term Open is intended to convey two meanings. First, it is an open-source formulation rather than a proprietary blend, drawing inspiration from the open-source cola movement (e.g. OpenCola). And second, it alludes to the concept of Open Individualism, the philosophical position about personal identity that says that we are all one universal consciousness, a single subject of experience experiencing itself through the universe (cf. The Goldilocks Zone of Oneness). Hence, Open Fearless is an open-source scent optimized for expressing the reduction of fear at the transpersonal level: not only the common animalistic variety, but it also tackles deeper forms of existential fear, such as the fear of being alone or the unpleasant suspicion that the universe is meaningless.

The scent combines the three most friendly and soft facets of scent-space we know of: sweetness, creaminess, and coolness. In Open Fearless, these are balanced using olfactory tricks that soften the phenomenal boundary and division between facets to give rise to a coherent scent gestalt that is intended to express happiness, freshness, and a care-free state of mind.

Open Source Formula

Dust Devil

It is not without some degree of confusion that people react when one says that a scent is “powdery”. It doesn’t help that most people don’t have much experience with the powdery scent that is used as the quintessential example of powdery: violet (unless you grew up with Parma Violets). Alas, even when someone knows what violet smells like, the fact that it also has floral, sweet, and oily facets tends to make the qualia reference somewhat ambiguous. Common powdery scents you may be familiar with are cedarwood, sandalwood, cinnamon, talc, and some kinds of pear. Their phenomenology is a neighbor of the dry facet. Still, it has an additional quality: it creates the sensation of a dusty misty layer of fine particles whose grain size will vary depending on the precise scent. In early experiments, we determined that making a very powdery effect is not as easy as simply mixing a lot of powdery notes together: they have a habit of canceling each other out, perhaps not unlike at times mixing different kinds of powders can lead to caking and viscous consolidation.

Dust Devil combines a carefully mixed set of powdery scents that synergize with one another: violet, cedarwood, turmeric, and iso-e super. We use a dash of tangerine to give it an uplifting yet dry, citrusy spark. The result is a powerfully dusty tornado of drying and refining sensations. It’s great to create an Old West vibe characterized by tumbleweeds, whisky neat, pistol duels, droughts, and dust devils everywhere. Enjoy!

Glacial Gumdrop

Menthol can increase the threshold temperature of activation for cold receptors. In other words, it can trick neurons into thinking that the current ambient temperature is colder than it is. Now, Glacial Gumdrop does not have a single drop of menthol. It’s menthol-free! In a daring bit of self-aware and honest advertisement, we admit that this is akin to publicizing a carbonated drink sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup as sucrose-free. Yes, but! Glacial Gumdrop does not use menthol for cooling for the simple reason that in our experiments, it didn’t seem to perform as well as a cooling agent as a mixture of menthone, carvone, and wintergreen extract. The synergy we identified between these three “cooling alternatives” has desirable phenomenological properties that menthol alone does not. Since they “hit” different kinds of coolness effects, together, they pack a much bigger and more powerful punch.

Additionally, the shape of the envelope of the combination (cf. ADSR) is compatible with other aspects of the olfactory experience. Menthol tends to monopolize attention and anesthetize one’s sensitivity to other facets of scent; our proprietary blend leaves some gaps open for attention to interweave and incorporate anise, apple, and lotus nuances which for mysterious reasons make the scent “gummy” (akin to the synesthetic equivalent of munching a gummy bear, but with your olfactory bulb). What are example scents that have this “gummy bear” quality? Marigold, auranone, and some bergamots (e.g. H’ana’s) are good examples, but only Glacial Gumdrop blends this bouncy and fun gummy quality with coolness. This scent will surely surprise you and open your mind to qualia-space mysteries.

Frisson

Frisson is a scent formulation that plays with an unexpected olfactory effect we identified when exploring the space of powdery citruses (such as bergamot). When the scent facets of citrus, powdery, dry, and etheric are combined in the right proportions, the resulting gestalt can cause a subtle psychogenic shiver of a synesthetic nature: a mix of olfactory and tactile qualia with a subdermal quality reminiscent of the sound of rubbing sandpaper on wood. Some people describe it as the olfactory equivalent of ASMR and a cross between a hiss and musical frisson. This effect is achieved by combining large amounts of tangerine and bergamot, the most powdery citruses, and honeysuckle. The emergent gestalt brings about this effect like no other combination we have tried. Now the question arises: what is this good for? The answer is: for contemplating novel qualia varieties, of course!

Eau de Cologne Vide

A psychonaut once asked a DMT elf if they could tell them something they didn’t know about the state-space of scents. They were expecting some incredible download of information in the form of hyperbolic state-space representations and hyperstereoscopic synesthetic displays of qualia dynamics. Alas, nothing of the sort happened. Instead, the elf asked them: “Are you sure that scent is just one qualia variety?”. A riddle! After chewing on it for a while, they concluded that no, scent qualia seems to somehow blend and interweave at least three qualia varieties into one multifaceted experience:

Scents have “flavor” (ex. lemony, rosy, herbaly, woody, etc.).
They often have distinctly “tactile components” (ex. the literally cooling effect of mints, or the “prickly” trigeminal nerve stimulation of aldehydes).
Perhaps the most interesting and mysterious of all, they come with “character impact”. Namely, a distortion of spacetime, boundaries, and valence characteristics that modify whatever flavor and tactile elements one is experiencing.

Analogized to the auditory domain, we could say that “flavor” would correspond to the frequencies and rhythms one hears, such as a piano note, applause, or a child’s laugh. A “tactile component” would be akin to the haptic vibrations one feels in the body when listening to a powerful base or the prickly pinchy feeling in the ear of a screechy sound. And finally, the “character impact” would correspond to signal processing effects like reverb, echoes, spatial audio, and frequency filters. Character impact gives you a lot of control you may not know you had: with clever tricks, you can take the sound of two persons talking and, say, remove annoying high-pitch sounds, harmonize them, create the illusion of movement, or even “blend” them into a single voice with an appropriate amount of reverb. In other words, these signal processing effects allow you to “musicalize” audio which may, on its own, be of little aesthetic merit. Or in the culinary domain, Luca Turin describes “character impact” in the following way. Given tomato soup, the tomato would be the “flavor,” whereas the creaminess would be the character impact. And according to him, in fact, “the money is in making a new cream, not in finding yet another tomato”. Early in our investigations, we discovered that incompatible scents could be “blended into a single gestalt” with the clever use of character impact. Say, a mixture of alpha-pinene, citral, and vanillin tends to “flicker” between kinds of scents in a chaotic fashion (what we call “multiphasic scents”). But if you add linalool or ambroxan, they will mysteriously “blend” into a unified scent gestalt.

Now, ambers and musks are the most common “character impact” scents, with flagship examples like ambroxan, iso e super, galaxolide, and habanolide, all of which are subtle, low in pitch, and “transparent”. The idea of creating a perfume around these isn’t new: Molecule 01 Escentric Molecules (iso e super isomer mix) and Molecule 02 Escentric Molecules (ambroxan) were a big success in the 2000s despite their niche status. By all means, they are more of a work of conceptual art than perfumery in any recognizable form. Beyond the niche, there are also examples of mega-hit mainstream fragrances with enormous amounts of character impact relative to flavors, such as the impossibly clean CK One (hedione, iso e super, galaxolide) and the masterfully musky Le Male by JPG (galaxolide, tonalide).

Such perfumes would have you believe that character impact is always a base note; they largely play with enveloping and calming low-frequency scents. But our work at QRI has convinced us that character impact effects are also present in the heart and top notes. Hence, Eau de Cologne Vide explores fresh, electric, high-voltage character impact effects fit for a wake-me-up cologne (citruses are typically high in pitch and mostly top notes).

The name follows the age-old tradition of perfumes named after mystical concepts such as Nirvana, Eternity, and Truth (“If we were to discover the biomolecular signature of pleasure, its name would surely find its way into the brand of a toothpaste.” – David Pearce). Eau de Cologne Vide packs a powerful punch of such character-impact elements to decorate… “nothing”. Emptiness beautified. Therefore, the impression is of intense salience, but you are left wondering, “what was that about?”. Eau de Cologne Vide is a way of saying “much ado about nothing!”

How is this achieved? Eau de Cologne Vide combines the ethereal alcoholic reverb-ey effect of lavender (linalool), the incredible anodyne softness of rose (phenylethyl alcohol), the dry astringent effect of bergamot (terpinene), the intensely aromatic, stimulating and borderline citrusy effect of spices like thyme and dill (p-cymene), the warming, sweet and spicy, balsamic, “oriental” and “rindy” note typical of bisabol aka. “opoponax” (bisabolene, also found in oregano and cubeb), and fructone (nigh flavorless sweetness). It brings these notes into coherence with the classic aromatic fougere note of aggressive freshness of scents like Drakkar Noir (dihydromyrcenol), and a nanodose of the sour, soapy, and always reliable agrumen aldehyde light.

What does Eau de Cologne Vide smell like? Transparent, sweet, soft, dank, intense, ethereal, slightly sour, mysterious, and yet… flavorless. Eau de Cologne Vide intensifies, vivifies, enriches, and thickens the experience of other scents. But as with Buddhist Emptiness of the highest grade, it’s best experienced by itself.

Hedonium Shockwave

Hedonium is matter and energy optimized for pure bliss. It is not a shallow sense of well-being but the most profound sense of holistic well-being possible within the laws of physics. Cosmic awe, deep wellness, and rapturous joys are all human emotions and are merely low-dimensional shadows of the real deal. A Hedonium Shockwave is a hypothetical phase transition traveling near the speed of light which changes the very composition of matter and energy by turning everything it touches into Hedonium. Classical Utilitarianism, in its typical formulation, might hold the latent implication that not only would the instantiation of a Hedonium Shockwave be desirable, but we are morally obliged to bring it into existence. QRI’s ethical theories are agnostic, but Hedonium plays an important role in its memetic landscape. Namely, as a theoretical entity that embodies the essence of pure positive valence, it challenges us to consider the nature of value in and of itself and its possible “physical compilation”.

Hedonium Shockwave is a scent developed in-house to illustrate this anticipated phase transition in consciousness. The primary “olfactory idea” of Hedonium Shockwave is the synergistic combination of violet, mint, and an accord of pear and honeysuckle. This combination expresses a powerful yet anodyne uplifting mood grounded in a qualia landscape devoid of negative elements—pure olfactory pleasure at last.

Review of Hedonium Shockwave: It is, overall, incredibly smooth. My first thought is that it feels like a combination of Metta and Mudita, which are two different Brahmavihara meditations where it’s very soft and expansive for me. It feels very golden and pink. It’s very soft, but it’s a bit sharper, then a really soft sharp. It’s like a combination of metta and cocaine. It hits you, but in a loving way. It doesn’t hold back, but it hits you in a loving way. It’s almost like being woken up. “Wake up the world is great!” “Wake up there’s something important!” but a soft, loving wake-up!

– Nick Cammarata

On Rhythms of the Brain: Jhanas, Local Field Potentials, and Electromagnetic Theories of Consciousness

Posted on October 27 by algekalipso

Of potential interest to readers: here’s part of an email exchange I recently had with Scott Alexander about Rhythms of the Brain by György Buzsáki, a book I recommended he read to learn more about the neuroscience of brainwaves. This is an essay he published about it; I had a chance to read a pre-publication draft to check whether he was describing the science and my positions accurately. This is part of my feedback on the draft (lightly edited for clarity and consistent formatting):

Andrés – Oct/13/2022

First of all, thank you again for writing a review of Rhythms Of The Brain. As I mentioned, I think your review is spot-on. It’s already really great as it is. But I think the following pieces of information might help you answer some of the questions you pose and enrich the mental model you have about brainwaves. I should also mention that I’m still learning a lot on the topic from a number of angles and my model still has quite a few moving parts.

Without further ado, here are 5 key points I’d like to share:

(1) I think that Susan Pockett‘s Consciousness Is a Thing, Not a Process (link to PDF) is very relevant here. She argues based on neurophysiological and behavioral evidence that conscious perception only happens when Local Field Potentials (LFPs) are generated. The timing, functional correlates, and location of events of conscious perception of sensory stimuli seem to agree with this (pgs. 4-5):

Here’s how I think about this:

Have you wondered why brainwaves track levels of wakefulness? See, in principle you can have a great deal of neural activity without any brainwaves. Raster plots of spike neural networks could in principle look like white noise… which in turn would generate no brainwaves at all because the oscillations in the electric field would cancel each other out at the macroscopic level. Recall that perfectly compressed information is indistinguishable from noise. So, in principle, an optimal use of the state-space of neural activity would look totally like white noise and lack brainwaves.

Susan Pockett would say that the non-conscious parts of neural activity can be like this… greatly optimized in a certain sense. But they will lack consciousness. The advantage of the coherence (which comes at the cost of greatly reduced information content) is distributed representations. In turn, this may solve the binding problem.

(2) Johnjoe McFadden‘s Conscious Electromagnetic Field (CEMI) theory is worth digging into.

The “LFPs as mediators of consciousness” story has a lot going for it. In particular, it is quite elegant in how it can help us make sense of our phenomenological relation to our brain and nervous system. Brainwaves and LFPs are be highly correlated. Coherent neural activity causes LFPs, which in turn mediate/bias activity in neurons, with a causal structure like this:

If “we are” the patchwork of interlaced LFPs the brain is generating, in some sense we could say that we “have a brain” rather than that we “are the brain” (loosely speaking). Without putting any strong metaphysical import on the concept of free will, the phenomenology of it seems to me at least to make more sense when you identify with the field rather than the neurons per se (see clues 1 and 3 in his paper). In this view, we are like the “ghost in the machine”, capable of biasing neural activity here and there. But at the same time, we need the coherent neural activity to be booted up. So we are sort of “riding the brain” while the brain is giving us our foundation. Perhaps this gives us another angle to think about the “elephant taming” metaphor for the progression of the meditative path:

(3) The work of Stephen Grossberg (Adaptive Resonant Theory, and more recently his book Conscious Mind, Resonant Brain) as well as that of his student Steven Lehar, have macroscopic resonance as a key computational step. Arguably this is something you can simulate with classical neural networks. But using the EM field would potentially produce a significant computational speedup. Talking to Lehar, he used an interesting analogy, where in which he described “neurons spiking as a kind of sand blasting of the electric field” in order to activate internal representations. Recent research seems to confirm that the information content of internal representations is better captured by the structure of the electric field than by the neurons that sustain it (“Neurons are fickle. Electric fields are more reliable for information.“).

NOTE: One of the contributions to the conversation that QRI is aiming to make (essentially by publishing in academia what’s already discussed in our website) is that while these field theories of consciousness do address the binding problem, they now have to contend with the boundary problem. Our solution is “topological segmentation”, which itself comes with empirically testable predictions. Topological pockets allow for holistic field behavior *and* for solving the boundary problem at the same time, finally rendering bound consciousness both causally efficacious and objectively bounded. [In your essay] you could point out that I claim that resonance is necessary but not sufficient to solve the phenomenal binding problem. So even if AIs were using brainwaves, that might not be enough for them to be conscious, though it would go in the right direction. More on this on our website soonish.

(4) I think that we can use the Symmetry Theory of Valence (STV) to explain the hedonic properties of different network topologies. This would be responsible for the “intrinsic valence” of a given brain region. You write:

> Why this combination of tasks? Rhythms sort of suggests that brain areas are less about specific tasks than about specific graph-theoretic arrangements, which are convenient for specific algorithms, which are convenient for specific tasks.

Yes! This is a great way of putting it. I think that having diverse network topologies available is one of the key ingredients of a general intelligence like ours. A learning algorithm that patches together the right sections to produce the right kind of structure for internal representations with holistic properties seems like a natural way to construct a mind. More so, some of these patches will cause dysphoric waves and others euphoric waves. The dysphoric parts of the brain, if STV is in the right direction, would have a network topology that work as a sort of frustration generator. The waves generated by these parts sort of “hate themselves”: activating them causes internal dissonance and stress that is then radiated out as waves with unfriendly ADSR envelopes to the rest of the brain. In contrast, the euphoric parts would produce highly aligned waves with soft ADSR envelopes and the right level of impedance matching to harmonize with other wave generators.

(5) Merging with God as a kind of global coherence:

> Andres suggests all of this is a good match for oscillatory coupling between brain regions.

Perhaps add something akin to “which according to him ‘dissolves internal boundaries'”

> Andres thinks this is part of what’s behind “spiritual” or “mystical” experiences, where you suddenly feel like you’ve lost the boundaries of yourself and are at one with God and Nature and Everything.

My strongest phenomenological evidence here is the difference between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT (video): competing clusters of coherence feel like “a lot of entities in an ecosystem of patterns” whereas global coherence feels like “union with God, Everything, and Everyone”. Hence the terms “spirit molecule” for DMT and “God molecule” for 5-MeO-DMT. The effect size of this difference is extremely large and reliable. I’ve yet to find someone who has experience with both substances who doesn’t immediately agree with this characterization. [This can be empirically tested] by blinding whether one takes DMT or 5-MeO-DMT and then reporting on the valence characteristics, “competing vs. global” coherence characteristics, and on whether one gets a patchwork of entities or one feels like one is merging with the universe.

With classic psychedelics, which stand somewhere between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT in their level of global coherence, you always go through an annealing process before finally “snapping” into global coherence and “becoming one with God”. That coherence is the signature of these mystical experiences becomes rather self-evident once you pay attention to annealing signatures (i.e. noticing how incompatible metronomes slowly start synchronizing and forming larger and larger structures until one megastructure swallows it all and dissolves the self-other boundary in the process of doing so).

You will not find academic publications describing this process (because their psychological scales are not detailed enough, aren’t focused on structure, and aren’t informed by actual practice). Nor will you find psychonauts talking much about this, because they tend to focus on the semantic content of the experience rather than on the phenomenal texture [see our guide]. Naturally, one is typically socially rewarded for providing an entertaining story about one’s trip… not a detailed *technical* report of phenomenal texture. Therefore, right now you’ll only find QRI content explaining all of this. But I’m fairly confident about this after talking to very experienced. So I think this will significantly shape the conversation in a couple of years once we start getting some consensus on it.

I could share much more, but I have to restrain myself (taming the elephant!). Let me know if you need anything else.

Thank you!!

Infinite bliss!

Scott – Oct/13/2022

Thanks. […] two questions:

> Susan Pockett would say that the non-conscious parts of neural activity can be like this… greatly optimized in a certain sense. But they will lack consciousness. The advantage of the coherence (which comes at the cost of greatly reduced information content) is distributed representations. In turn, this may solve the binding problem.

Not sure I understand this. Aren’t there clear examples of unconscious brain waves (eg delta waves during sleep)? Can you explain more about what you mean by distributed representations and why they’re linked to consciousness?

> If “we are” the patchwork of interlaced LFPs the brain is generating, in some sense we could say that we “have a brain” rather than that we “are the brain” (loosely speaking). Without putting any strong metaphysical import on the concept of free will, the phenomenology of it seems to me at least to make more sense when you identify with the field rather than the neurons per se (see clues 1 and 3 in his paper). In this view, we are like the “ghost in the machine”, capable of biasing neural activity here and there.

Confused by this too. My model for thinking about brain waves has been cellular automata – in this case, there would be no difference between the pattern and the machinery, and it wouldn’t make sense to say that the pattern is able to bias the activity here or there. Is this a bad model? Can you explain more what you mean by “us” (by which I’m assuming you mean consciousness) “biasing” activity (by which I assume you mean causing brain activity different from what you would expect by lower-level laws)?

Andrés Oct/15/2022

Hey Scott!

> Thanks […] two questions:

(I’ll answer your questions in a different order than how you asked them, on the basis that my answer to the first one is much more weird and less credible… In other words, I’m answering more or less in order of how weird my responses are so that you are not put off by my first answers. This way you can choose when to stop reading without missing anything useful for your essay):

> My model for thinking about brain waves has been cellular automata – in this case, there would be no difference between the pattern and the machinery, and it wouldn’t make sense to say that the pattern is able to bias the activity here or there. Is this a bad model?

I think that “brainwaves can be explained as emergent patterns of a cellular automata” is a very good starting model, and it has a lot of explanatory power. But there are empirical and experiential facts that would go against it as a complete explanation. And perhaps, it misses the most important hint for a theory of consciousness that satisfies all of the necessary criteria I consider such a theory must satisfy. And that is, that binding has non-trivial computational effects. I.e. At some level, patterns of organization exert “weak downward causation” on the substrate that gave rise to them. This does not mean there is “strong emergence” or that we’re going against the laws of physics. On the contrary, a key guiding principle for QRI is to be strict physicalists. The laws of physics are causally closed and complete (or at least as good as it gets; the Standard Model can be taken at face value for the time being, until something better comes along). Without violating physicalism, we nonetheless still see instances of weak downward causation in the physical world.

As an intuition, consider the fact that something like TMS can change neural activity. In fact, TMS, and especially rTMS, can cause seizures. This suggests that at a sufficiently high dose, EM oscillations can exert top-down influence on neuronal firing thresholds and phase coherence, and more so when they come in repetitive waves rather than pulses. In the case of LFPs, which are far more localized and less energetic, the influence isn’t huge. But it is there. As far as I understand the neuroscience literature on LFPs (and ephatic coupling more generally), the fact that LFPs change firing thresholds is uncontroversial. The question is “by how much”. Most studies find small effects (otoh between 1% and 20% of the variance, but I can look up more precise and recent figures – e.g. see: Ephaptic coupling of cortical neurons).

The more interesting and perhaps significant effect that LFPs have is to change the degree of coherence between neurons. In other words, they may not change much their probability of firing, but do change a lot their probability of firing in phase. You can see how this would lead to interesting self-reinforcing effects. Namely, if neural coherence causes LFPs, and LFPs increase neural coherence, there might be attractors of hypercoherent neural firings coupled with strong and very orderly LFPs. I believe this explains the Jhanas.

Now, can’t you just expand your cellular automata to include LFPs and call it a day? Well, yes, in a theoretical but rather impractical sense. Building a cellular automata that simulates a simple neural network is easy. Building one that simulates water is more tricky. By the time you are constructing cellular automata to simulate EM fields you get into trouble. It’s possible, but you need all sorts of tricks, shortcuts, and handling complex edge cases (e.g. topological segmentation!). Can you construct a cellular automata that simulates physics? Quantum mechanics proper? Yes… if you are Wolfram. But recall that his explorations invoke cellular automata with unusual mathematical primitives. We are no longer in the territory of simple grid-like graphs. We are in Ruliad-space, with hypergraphs and exotic rulesets. Quantum coherent states behave in a very holistic fashion (where the “next step” is the result of solving Shrödinger’s equation in configuration space). So while it’s possible to use cellular automata to think of physics at this level, it isn’t a very natural choice. Rather, I posit that thinking of it in terms of universal principles like energy minimization, extremas, and the preservation of zero information is what takes us closer to the phenomenon at hand. These principles are, by their very nature, holistic. An electron, as Feynman would put it, can sort of “smell its surroundings” to decide where to go. It somehow explores all possibilities at once and “chooses” the one that balances the minimization of energy and maximization of entropy. A truly holistic sort of phenomenon.

Source: A Class of Models with the Potential to Represent Fundamental Physics by Stephen Wolfram

I think that if at that point one uses a cellular automata to represent this, one has actually reintroduced the very thing the cellular automata conceptual framework was trying to avoid. And that is, the computational power of holism. This is because even though the Ruliad that simulates physics is in some way a cellular automata, the ruleset itself requires a kind of God-like capacity to integrate pieces of information and “see all at once” entire regions of the (hyper)graph and decide what to do next. My claim is that at this point one has “pushed” the undesired holism to the ruleset in order to avoid seeing it directly. It’s a reductionist sleight of hand.

Now, I’m not saying consciousness is quantum mechanical. What I’m pointing out is that EM waves are sort of in the spectrum between simple cellular automatas and QM, where the waves interacting with one another have all kinds of peculiar holistic effects. Binding, if it involves EM waves, turns out to be computationally non-trivial.

In this model, the brain is physically providing a soil that can instantiate EM waves with many different kinds of properties. Some behave linearly, some non-linearly. And together, they give rise to the vast zoo of possible internal representations, many kinds of binding, topologies, and dynamics we experience (such as the strangeness of “fire meditation“).

> Can you explain more what you mean by “us” (by which I’m assuming you mean consciousness) “biasing” activity (by which I assume you mean causing brain activity different from what you would expect by lower-level laws)?

You can’t voluntarily shut down your brain with conscious control. At least not immediately. But you can direct your attention to two parts of your experience at once, and the resonances in those two regions will slowly but surely begin to synchronize. In other words, from an EE point of view, spreading your attention over a given region of your experience increases the impedance matching between the metronomes in those regions. This, I think, is the influence of LFPs (or similar) on neural activity. This may be subtle, but over enough time and neural rewiring, the process can lead to very interesting effects. Hyperconcentrated states of consciousness, starting with access concentration all the way to single-pointed attention and ultimately to the formless Jhanas are obtained through mental moves that slowly by surely “unify the mind” (i.e. brings coherence between disparate metronomes in the nervous system). This is “us” learning to influence “our brain”.

> Not sure I understand this. Aren’t there clear examples of unconscious brain waves (eg delta waves during sleep)?

Two quick things here. The first is that we think brainwaves (macroscopic oscillations in the EM field more generally) are necessary but not sufficient for consciousness. They still need to form a topological pocket, or they will remain unclosed eddies that cannot contain information nor maintain a boundary with their surroundings. The second is that the main point is that the brainwaves track the texture of degrees of wakefulness. More so, it’s not just the spectral power distribution, but also the patterns of spatiotemporal cross-frequency coherence. Thus, two states might look the same in terms of their spectrum, but carry significantly different internal textures since one of them has a high degree of, say, gamma coherence and the other doesn’t.

> Can you explain more about what you mean by distributed representations and why they’re linked to consciousness?

One of the key insights from Stevan Lehar is that using a dynamic, smooth, spatial medium of representation allows us to run spatial algorithms on our representations. One example is the incredibly general reverse grassfire & reverse shock schaffold algorithms that explain a wide range of visual illusions (discussed in The Constructive Aspect of Visual Perception / as well as in his magnum opus video Harmonic Gestalt). Based on the fact that these algorithms generalize to things like breakthrough level DMT experiences and that they apply to hyperdimensional phenomenal objects and their resonant modes, I’m fairly convinced that the local cellular automata view doesn’t explain the facts. The structures that exist in those states follow law-like energy minimization properties reminiscent of fluid dynamics in higher dimensions. To me they seem to necessitate something like Maxwell’s equations; a cellular automaton would need a lot of training and fine-tuning to be able to instantly generate those dynamics right and seamlessly. Combine this with the (not fully verified but tentative) observation that DMT states are phenomenologically similar to those induced by high-dose Fire Kasina. I believe that the mechanism is actually fairly simple: both methods energize the visual field to the point where it transitions from a linear and partially linear state into a fully nonlinear regime. The phenomenon is better seen as what happens when you energize a non-linear optical computer than, say, the effect of changing the ruleset of a cellular automaton.

I know this lacks credibility for the time being […]. I aim to identify crisp and experimentally verifiable demonstrations of this that trained physicists and neuroscientists can both agree on.

In the long-term, I expect humans to figure out ways to use high-energy states of consciousness to tap into the EM field as a computational substrate. Not only will this entail a revolution in consciousness, but also, interestingly, in how we think of computation. The Turing Paradigm will turn out to be a tiny special case of… qualia computing.

Alright, I hope that wasn’t too much, haha.

Thank you again, and happy to answer more questions.

Infinite bliss!

See also:

Nick Cammarata On Jhana and Stephen Zerfas‘s response.
On Dark Rooms, Jhanas, Ecstasy, and the Symmetry Theory of Valence
Milan Griffes and Sandra Sobanska’s writeup about the scientific study of Jhanas as a possible Effective Altruist cause area: [Cause Exploration Prizes] Jhana meditation
I recently did a podcast with Leigh Brasington (author of Right Concentration) and Wystan Bryant-Scott where we discussed a model for Jhanas in terms of neural annealing, the Symmetry Theory of Valence, and the feedback loop between neural coherence and LFPs.

David Pearce on the Long-Term Future of Consciousness: The Meta-Copernican Revolution

Posted on October 23 by algekalipso

Excerpt from David Pearce‘s 2008 Diary Update (images made w/ DALL-E, except for the pictures of Shulgin):

New discoveries? Nothing dramatic. I dutifully flip through Nature each week; wade through turgid tomes of analytic philosophy; and scan Medline abstracts. A lot of the time my heart isn’t in it. Compared to an item from Dr Shulgin‘s library, the illumination can seem trivial. I very much doubt if people who have tried major psychedelics are any smarter on average than the drug-naïve; in fact psychonauts may be cognitively overwhelmed or (rarely) even brain-damaged by their experiences. To complicate comparisons further, many altered states are dross – just like innumerable textures of everyday life. But by opening up a Pandora’s box of new phenomena, psychedelics do confer an immensely richer evidential base for any theory of mind and the world – an evidential base too rich, indeed, for our existing primitive terms, language and conceptual equipment to handle. One compares the laments of physicists starved of new empirical data to test their theories beyond the low-energy Standard Model with the fate of the psychedelic investigator. For in contrast the aspiring psychonaut may be forced to abandon the empirical method, not because he exhausts the range of novel phenomenology it delivers, but because the Darwinian mind can neither cope with LSD / ketamine / salvia / DMT‘s (etc) weirdness, nor weave the novel modes of sentience disclosed into an integrated world-picture.

Alexander Shulgin in his lab. #1

Of course, claims of epochal significance cut no ice with the drug-naïve. Those innocent of drug-induced exotica see no more need to enhance their evidential base than did the cardinals (apocryphally) invited to look through Galileo‘s telescope. An a priori refusal to acknowledge the potential significance of alien modes of sentience is impossible to overcome in subjects whose experience of altered states is confined to getting drunk. Over time, even my own knowledge of these bizarre realms is fading. My ancestral namesake was briefly awoken from his dogmatic slumbers; but DP version-2008 has rejoined the ranks of the living dead in the ghetto of consensus reality.

Alexander Shulgin in his lab. #2

My assimilation isn’t yet complete. Even as a born-again sleepwalker, I sometimes wonder if there may be a first-person method alternative to drug-based investigations that can unlock novel phenomenology latent within excitable nervous tissue. There is a crying need for alternative avenues, I think, since drug-driven self-assays are for the most part not merely unlawful and taboo, but arguably can’t be practised responsibly until the substrates of well-being are guaranteed in a (hypothetical) post-Darwinian era of genetically pre-programmed bliss. I’ve thought about alternatives to using psychoactive drugs, not least because of the shallowness of my own current research compared to the richness of the empirical methodology pioneered by Dr Shulgin. In order to discover both the formal, mathematico-physical and the intrinsic, subjective properties of the world, a dual methodology of third- and first-person research is indispensable. The former can be abdicated to the physical sciences; but not the latter. Natural science offers no explanation of why we’re not zombies, an unfortunate anomaly if consciousness is fundamental both to our understanding of the world and the world itself. By forswearing the empirical method, we effectively guarantee that the mysteries of consciousness will never be solved. Whereas insentience is, so to speak, all of a piece – hypothetical “zombies” in the philosophical sense of the term are all exactly alike in being non-conscious – there are innumerable ways to be sentient: qualia are fantastically diverse in ways we’ve scarcely begun to map out. So I reckon the only way adequately to understand Reality will be both to capture its formal structure – ideally the master equation of the TOE of the Multiverse – and literally to incorporate ever more of the stuff of the world into one’s expanding psyche to explore the state-space of its textures – the “what-it’s-likeness”. Only incorporation and systematic molecular permutation can disclose the subjective features of all permutations of matter and energy: the solutions, I conjecture, to the equations of the TOE. A priori, one could never have guessed that cells of the striate cortex mediate visual experience and cells in the posterior parietal cortex mediate auditory experience, quite irrespective of their typical functional role in the sensory systems of naturally evolved organisms. We know about such phenomena – and full-blown phenomenal sunsets and symphonies – only because we instantiate the neuronal cell-assembles that embody such qualia. Thus to discover novel categories of experience, I think we should construct and personally instantiate genetically enhanced designer brain cells, systematically altering their intracellular amino acid sequences and gene expression profiles to design/discover new categories of experience as different as is sight from sound, making them part of one’s own psyche/virtual world. Or if this incorporation sounds too irreversible, perhaps we might splice in designer genes and allelic combinations for new modes of experience into subsets of our existing nerve cells, systematically coding new protein sequences into discrete areas of the brain and then selectively expressing the designer proteins they code for at will. Eventually, however, systematic manipulation of the molecular ingredients of one’s neural porridge/mind-dust can be harnessed to mind-expansion in the literal sense. This is because we need bigger mind/brains, not just to mirror external reality more effectively, but also to discover more of its subjective properties. Such discoveries can only be accomplished empirically.

New neuron types for new neurotypes.

I suppose what drives me here is reflection on just how (superficially) trivial are the neurochemical differences between nerve cells mediating, say, phenomenal colour and phenomenal sound – and indeed reflection on how (superficially) trivial are the molecular differences in the cells mediating the phenomenology of desire, volition and belief-episodes. How can such tiny molecular differences exert such dramatic subjective effects? LSD, for instance, is undetectable in the body three hours after consumption; and yet a few hundred micrograms of the serotonin 5-HT2A partial agonist can transport the subject into outlandish alternative virtual worlds for 10 hours or more. How many analogous, radically incommensurable kingdoms of experience, mediated by equally “trivial” molecular variations, await discovery? How will the uncharted state-spaces be systematically explored? What will be the nature of life/civilisation when these kingdoms of experience are spliced together in composite minds; recruited to play an information-bearing role; harnessed to new art forms and new lifestyles; and ultimately integrated into communities of composite minds in advanced civilisations? For sure, talk of discovering a “new category of experience” doesn’t sound a particularly exciting kind of knowledge when couched in the abstract, any more than discovery of a new brand of perfume. OK, it’s a new experience; but so what? [Andrés adds: so what!?] One might sacrifice a lot for the opportunity to experience a novel phenomenal colour; but what cognitive value should be ascribed to an unknown category of experience for which one hasn’t even a name? Initially at any rate, the novel modes of experience that we discover within a modified neural proteome won’t be harnessed to senses, either internal or external, let alone harnessed to whole conceptual schemes, cultures and novel languages of thought. So they won’t play any functional role in the mind/brain: they won’t be information-bearing. But then neither are visual or auditory experiences per se; they have no intrinsic connection to sensory perception. Dreams, for instance, can be vibrantly colourful; they don’t reliably track anything in the external world. Honed by natural selection after recruitment by awake living organisms to track mind-independent patterns, visual and auditory experience has taken millions of years to play out; and who knows where it will end. By the same token, the developmental potential of new modes of experience that we discover in tweaked neurons is equally unfathomable from here.

Every scent, every color, every touch sensation, every sound, every novel qualia…

I can understand the impatience of an exasperated sceptic. What interest have novel “tickles” of experience beyond the psychopathology of the subject? Analogously, conventional wisdom in an echolocation (etc)-based civilisation might scornfully ask a similar question if and when post-chiropteran psychonauts first access drug-induced speckles of colour or jarring shrieks or whistles of sound – or perhaps when investigators recklessly explore a new methodology of mind-expansion by incorporating alien nervous tissue into their psyche. The chiropteran consensus wisdom might account the new phenomena weird but trivial – and inexpressible in language to boot. So why should any sane chiropteran mind run the risk of messing itself up just to explore such psychotic states? For our part, human ignorance of what it’s like to be a bat isn’t too unsettling because we know that bats don’t have a rich conceptual scheme, culture or technology. We are “superior” to bats; and therefore their alien modes of experience aren’t especially important. We don’t even give our ignorance much thought.

What is it like to be a bat? An empirical neural tissue insertion protocol to explore nature’s very own echolocation qualia from the comfort of your own home…

But latent in matter and energy – and flourishing in other branches of the universal wavefunction – are presumably superintellects and supercivilisations in other Everett branches whose conceptual schemes are rooted in modes of experience no less real than our own. I suspect that accessing the subjective lifeworlds of hitherto alien mind/brains will inaugurate a meta-Copernican Revolution to dwarf anything that’s come before. The textures of such alien minds are as much a natural property of matter and energy as the atomic mass of gold; and no less important to understanding the nature of the world. Needless to say, grandiose claims of new paradigms, meta-Copernican revolutions, etc, should usually be taken with a healthy grain of salt. I am loath to write such expressions, not least because I can imagine both the withering scorn of my hyper-rational but drug-naïve teenage namesake, and likewise the dismissive reaction of my drug-naïve contemporaries today. Such are the perils of a priori philosophizing practised by academic philosophers (and soi-disant scientists) unwilling to get their hands (or their minds) dirty with the empirical method. In each case, our ignorance of the intrinsic, subjective nature of configurations of most of the stuff of the world is fundamental. It’s an ignorance not remediable by simple application of the hypothetico-deductive method, falsificationism, Bayesianism or the usual methodologies of third-person science. If you want to find out what it’s like to be a bat, then you have to experience the phenomenology of echolocation. Knowledge-acquisition entails a hardware upgrade. A notional IQ of 200 won’t help without the neural wetware to go with it – any more than a congenitally deaf supergenius can hear music by virtuoso feats of reasoning alone.

I guess one deterrent to investigation of altered and exotic states is the thought that the novel phenomena disclosed “aren’t Real” – as though the reality of any phenomenon depended on it being a copy or representation of something else external to itself. I wonder if I lived in a world of Mary-like superscientists – smart monochromats who see the world in black and white – whether I would dare put on “psychedelic” spectacles and hallucinate phenomenal colour? And could I communicate to my Mary-like superscientist colleagues the significance of what they were missing without sounding like a drug-deranged crank? Probably not.

Literally Expanding Our Mind To Overcome Our Fundamental Ignorance of Alien Modes of Experience

So I reckon that we should, literally, expand our minds. If we do, how far should incorporation go? The size of the human brain is limited by the human birth-canal, a constraint that technologies of extra-uterine pregnancy from conception to term will presumably shortly overcome. Over time, brains can become superbrains; and sentience can become supersentience. Ultimately, should we aspire to become God or merely gods? My (tentative) inclination is that we should all become One [Andrés adds: see David’s Quora response on the topic of Open Individualism]; and not merely out of deference to my New Age friends. Separateness from each other is an epistemic, not just an ethical, limitation: a source of profound ignorance. For we fundamentally misconstrue the nature of other sentient beings, misunderstanding each other as objects to which we fitfully attribute feelings rather than as pure subjects. [Actually, the story is more complicated. If inferential realism about perception is true, then the sceptic about Other Minds is right, in a sense: the phenomenal people encountered in one’s egocentric world-simulation are zombies. But when one is awake, the zombies serve as avatars that causally covary with sentient beings in one’s local environment. So the point stands.] Yes, literally fusing with other minds/virtual worlds sounds an unattractive (as well as infeasible) prospect for the foreseeable future; and not just because of their lousy organic avatars. For we certainly wouldn’t want to Become One with a bunch of ugly Darwinian minds; and likewise, they might get a nasty shock if they tasted one’s own. Infatuated lovers may want to fuse; rival alpha males certainly don’t [unless one eats a defeated opponent, a form of intimacy practised in some traditional cultures; but this is a very one-sided consummation of a relationship]. However, perhaps the prospect of unification will be more exciting if and when we become posthuman smart angels, so to speak: beautiful in every sense. I have no hidden agenda beyond my abolitionist propagandizing; but on current evidence it’s likely we belong to a family of Everett branches that will lead to god-like beings. And thence to God? I’m sceptical, but I don’t know.

Mindmelding with other Darwinian creatures is kind of a bummer sometimes.

Divinity takes many forms. What kind of (demi)gods might we become? Superhappy beings, I reckon, yes, but superhappiness in what guise? A unitary Über-Mind, or fragmented minds as now? At one extreme of the continuum, posthumans may opt to live solipsistically in designer paradises: an era not just of personalized medicine but personalized VR. [Would I opt to dwell with a harem of several thousand houris and become Emperor Dave the First, Lord of The Universe? And supremely modest too. Yes, probably. I’m a Darwinian male.] Occupying the middle of the continuum is the superconnectivity of web-enabled minds (via neural implants, etc) without unitary experience or loss of personal identity. Such a scenario is a recognizable descendant of the status quo whereby we are all connected via the Net to everyone else. This sort of future is the most “obvious” since it’s an extrapolation of current trends. Extreme interconnectivity is still consistent with extensive ignorance of each other, although expansion and/or functional amplification of our mirror neurons could magnify our capacity for mutual empathetic understanding. Finally, at the other extreme of the continuum, there is presumably a more-or-less complete fusion of posthuman mind/brains into a unitary collective: a blissful analogue of the Borg, but contiguous rather than scattered: there is no evidence spatio-temporally disconnected beings have token-identical experiences. It’s hard enough to solve the binding problem in one mind/brain, let alone across discrete skulls.

Emperor Dave the First, Psychonaut Lord of The Universe, Bliss For All Creatures Under the Sun

I don’t know which if any of these three families of scenario is the most likely culmination of life in the Multiverse. Indeed it’s unclear whether the third scenario, i.e. a unitary experiential Supermind, is even technically feasible. For there is an upper limit to the size and duration of the conjectural “warm” quantum coherence needed for unitary sentience; it’s difficult enough to avoid ultra-rapid thermally-induced decoherence in even a single human mind/brain, let alone a hypothetical global super-mind/brain. Is there a way round this constraint? In spite of the well-worn dictum “black holes have no hair“, I used to play around with the idea that blissful superminds lived on the ultra-cool “surface” of supermassive black holes. All the information content of their interior and information content at the horizon is smeared out across the entire horizon, allowing unitary megaminds of maximum information density – and maximum intelligent bliss: what Seth Baum aptly calls “utilitronium”. This conjecture needs more work. But whether conscious mind is unitary or discrete, I suspect that posthuman modes of existence will be based, not on today’s ordinary waking consciousness, but on unimaginably different modes of sentience. In addition, I predict that these modes of sentience will be as different in intensity from ours as is a supernova from a glowworm. Thus any speculative story we may now be tempted to tell about what life may be like millions or billions of years hence will of necessity ignore a fundamental difference between future minds and us. Human futurology omits the key evolutionary transitions ahead in the nature of consciousness – not only the ethically all-important hedonic transition to superhappiness that I stress, but other modes of sentience currently unknown. The discontinuity promised by any future technological Singularity – or soft Singularities – derives not merely from an exponential growth of computer processing power, but from inconceivably different textures of sentience. Actually, I entertain many bizarre ideas. The art is taking them seriously enough to explore their implications and testable predictions, but sceptically enough not to be seduced into believing they are likely to be true. And what about the nearest I come to a dogmatic commitment? Could the abolitionist project turn out to be mistaken too? I guess so. Yet at least the abolition of suffering is not a phenomenon we will live to regret.

Three families of scenarios for the culmination of life in the Multiverse: #1 everyone kinda doing their own thing in their little virtual worlds. #2 hybrid hive minds of hypersocial connected individuals who choose to retain their (porous) individuality. #3 God, a single mega-mind, that maximally bounds as much matter and energy into unitary superexperiences.

Just Look At The Thing! – How The Science of Consciousness Informs Ethics

Posted on September 22 by algekalipso

It is very easy to answer many of these fundamental biological questions; you just look at the thing!

From Richard Feyman’s talk There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom (1959)

Introduction

The quote above comes from a lecture Richard Feynman gave in which he talks about the challenges and opportunities of studying and interacting with the world at a very small scale. Among other things, he touches upon how gaining access to e.g. a good-enough electron microscopes would allow us to answer long-standing questions in biology by just looking at the thing (cf. Seeing Cell Division Like Never Before). Once you start to directly engage with the phenomenon at a high-enough resolution, tackling these questions at the theoretical level would turn out, in retrospect, to be idle arm chair speculation.

I think that we can make the case that philosophy of ethics at the moment might be doing something like this. In other words, it speculates about the nature of value at a theoretical level without engaging with the phenomenon of value at a high resolution. Utilitarianism (whether classical or negative), at least as it is usually formulated, may turn out to have background assumptions about the nature of consciousness, personal identity, and valence that a close examination would show to be false (or at least very incomplete). Many criticisms of wireheading, for instance, seem to conflate pleasure and reward (more on this soon), and yet we now know that these are quite different. Likewise, the repugnant conclusion or the question between total vs. mean utilitarianism are usually discussed using implicit background assumptions about the nature of valence and personal identity. This must stop. We have to look at the thing!

Without further ado, here are some of the key ways in which an enriched understanding of consciousness can inform our ethical theories:

Mixed Valence

One ubiquitous phenomenon that I find is largely neglected in discussions about utilitarianism is that of mixed valence states. Not only is it the case that there are many flavors of pleasure and pain, but it is also the case that most states of consciousness blend both pleasurable and painful sensations in complex ways.

In Principia Qualia (Michael Johnson) the valence triangle was introduced. This describes the valence of a state of consciousness in terms of its loadings on the three dimensions of negative, positive, and neutral valence. This idea was extended in Quantifying Bliss, which further enriched it by adding a spectral component to each of these dimensions. Let’s work with this valence triangle to reason about mixed valence.

In order to illustrate the relevance of mixed valence states we can see how it influences policies within the context of negative utilitarianism. Let us say that we agree that there is a ground truth to the total amount of pain and pleasure a system produces. A naïve conception of negative utilitarianism could then be “we should minimize pain”. But pain that exists within an experience that also contains pleasure may matter a lot less than pain that exists in an experience without pleasure that “balances it out”!

The naïve conception, would thus, not be able to distinguish between the following two scenarios. In Scenario A we have two persons, one suffering from both an intense headache and an intense stomach ache and the other enjoying both a very pleasant sensation in the head and a very pleasant sensation in the stomach. In Scenario B, we switch it up: one person experiences an intense headache while also a very pleasant sensation in the stomach, and the other way around for the other person.