I find myself in Mexico City. We will have a low-key meetup at UNIVERSUM on January 10th, 11AM. (Find us near the entrance!)
Meet at 11AM, hang out outside the venue until roughly 1PM/1:30PM, then we enter the museum and wander around. First 2 hours are free-form. It’s a chance to meet the others and also have an “Everything You Wanted to Know About Consciousness (But Were Too Afraid to Ask)” moment (aka. asking me any questions you’ve been too shy to ask online [is there such a thing?]).
Qualia of the Day: Bring something interesting to share. A perfume. A wicked candy. A particularly strange tactile texture. A poem. JUST MAKE US FEEL SOMETHING. Thx!
I’ve been writing on Substack since last month. Still processing how I feel about it. (Substack kind of fills the “too important to leave on Twitter, not incomprehensible and meandering enough for Qualia Computing – just right to leave you thinking” vacuum my life has been needing for some years now).
My current habit is 1 post per day (partly inspired by Inkeaven‘s absurd (and awesome) productivity [get up to speed with friend-of-QRI Sasha Putilin‘s recent prolific output, including a neat short sci-fi story inspired by the QRI-universe], and partly because after recommending people write more blogposts I realized I really needed to step up my game if I didn’t want to look out of touch or, er, look like a has been blogger). That said, this habit has perhaps recently crossed from “discipline” into “probably a symptom of something.” The self-transforming machine elves would probably be staging an intervention if they weren’t so… state-dependent, and I haven’t had a single DMT experience this whole year.
And also a growing series on reasons to doubt computationalism (really, The Slicing Problem [video] alone should have functionalists lying awake at night, but I guess I need to continue building the case one post at a time until that happens…):
ClusterFree reminder: If you haven’t signed at clusterfree.org, please do. If you haven’t read the 12+ Reasons to Donate to ClusterFree post, that too. We’re trying to end one of the worst forms of suffering known to medicine and the bottleneck is just attention and resources. One of the reasons I’m in México is to meet relevant people, form key alliances, and establish collaborations for this project, before I go back to the Bay Area (late this month) and continue my unhinged delicate quest to systematically map out the state-space of consciousness and mathematically characterize its underlying dynamic generators.
ADDITIONAL REMINDER: Write blogposts. Seriously. The qualia community grows when people externalize their ideas. Or, as Scott Alexander said on our recent QRI Research Revealed fundraiser:
“All of the great research you’re doing is not useful unless it gets out to other people who can use it. If you are good at explaining things, please try to explain it publicly. If you are mediocre at explaining things, please talk to your local blogger and try to help them work on it and get this out there. If you’re bad at explaining things, I don’t want to hear from you.”
The bar is lower than you think. Most interesting ideas never get written down. Yours might be exactly what someone else needs to unstick their own thinking! Do it! (btw – if you do have a blog, please comment below – I’m compiling a list I will be sharing soon!).
Comparing what the distance between random points looks like in Euclidean spaces (torus vs. hypercupe) of different dimensions (source)
¡Hola a todos!
Me encuentro en la Ciudad de México. Tendremos una reunión informal en UNIVERSUM el 10 de enero, 11AM. (Encuéntranos por la entrada).
Nos vemos a las 11AM, pasamos el rato afuera del museo hasta más o menos la 1PM/1:30PM, luego entramos y exploramos. Las primeras 2 horas son libres. Es una oportunidad para conocer a los demás y también tener un momento de “Todo lo que querías saber sobre la conciencia (pero tenías miedo de preguntar)” (o sea, hacerme cualquier pregunta que les haya dado pena hacer en línea [¿existe tal cosa?])
Qualia del Día: Traigan algo interesante para compartir. Un perfume. Un dulce hechizado. Una textura táctil particularmente extraña. Un poema. SOLO HAZME SENTIR ALGO. ¡Gracias!
He estado escribiendo en Substack desde el mes pasado. Todavía estoy procesando cómo me siento al respecto. (Substack como que llena el vacío de “demasiado importante para dejarlo en Twitter, no lo suficientemente incomprensible y divagante para Qualia Computing – justo lo necesario para dejarte pensando” que mi vida ha necesitado por algunos años).
Mi hábito actual es de 1 post por día (parcialmente inspirado por la absurda (y genial) productividad de Inkeaven [pónganse al día con la prolífica producción reciente del amigo-de-QRI Sasha Putilin, incluyendo un buen cuento corto de ciencia ficción inspirado en el universo-de-QRI], y parcialmente porque después de recomendar a la gente que escribiera más blogposts me di cuenta de que realmente necesitaba mejorar mi juego si no quería parecer desconectado o, eh, un bloguero acabado). Dicho esto, este hábito quizás ha cruzado recientemente de “disciplina” a “probablemente un síntoma de algo.” Los elfos de máquinas que se auto-transforman probablemente estarían organizando una intervención si no fueran tan… estado-dependientes, y no he tenido una sola experiencia con DMT en todo el año.
Y también una serie creciente sobre razones para dudar del computacionalismo (en serio, El Problema del Rebanado [video] por sí solo debería tener a los funcionalistas despiertos por las noches, pero supongo que necesito seguir construyendo el caso un post a la vez hasta que eso suceda…):
Recordatorio sobre ClusterFree: Si no han firmado en clusterfree.org, por favor háganlo. Si no han leído el post de 12+ Razones para Donar a ClusterFree, también. Estamos tratando de acabar con una de las peores formas de sufrimiento conocidas por la medicina y el cuello de botella es simplemente atención y recursos. Una de las razones por las que estoy en México es para conocer gente relevante, formar alianzas clave y establecer colaboraciones para este proyecto, antes de regresar al Bay Area (a finales de este mes) y continuar mi desquiciada delicada búsqueda de mapear sistemáticamente el espacio de estados de la conciencia y caracterizar matemáticamente sus generadores dinámicos subyacentes.
RECORDATORIOADICIONAL: Escriban blogposts. En serio. La comunidad de qualia crece cuando la gente externaliza sus ideas. O, como dijo Scott Alexander en nuestro reciente evento de recaudación QRI Research Revealed:
“Toda la gran investigación que están haciendo no es útil a menos que llegue a otras personas que puedan usarla. Si son buenos explicando cosas, por favor intenten explicarlo públicamente. Si son mediocres explicando cosas, hablen con su bloguero local e intenten ayudarles a trabajar en ello y sacarlo a la luz. Si son malos explicando cosas, no quiero saber de ustedes.“
La barra es más baja de lo que creen. La mayoría de las ideas interesantes nunca se escriben. ¡La suya podría ser exactamente lo que alguien más necesita para desatorar su propio pensamiento! ¡Háganlo! (por cierto – si tienen un blog, por favor comenten abajo – ¡estoy compilando una lista que compartiré pronto!).
Just as a fire uniformly raises the temperature throughout a building, causing diverse but interconnected effects (metal beams expanding, wood supports burning, windows cracking from thermal stress, smoke rising through air currents) psychedelics might work through a single fundamental mechanism that ripples through all neural systems. This isn’t just theoretical elegance without grounding; it’s a powerful explanatory framework that could help us understand why substances like DMT and 5-MeO-DMT produce distinct but internally consistent effects across visual, auditory, cognitive, and somatic domains. A single change in coupling dynamics might explain why these compounds have such distinct but internally consistent effects: DMT creates rapidly alternating color/anti-color visual patterns and oscillating somatic sensations, whereas 5-MeO-DMT tends towards a state of global coherence.
As demonstrated in our work “Towards Computational Simulations of Cessation“, see how a flat “coupling kernel” triggers a global attractor of coherence across the entire system, whereas an alternating negative-positive (Mexican hat-like) kernel produces competing clusters of coherence. This is just a very high-level and abstract demonstration of a change in the dynamic behavior of coupled oscillators by applying a coupling kernel. What we then must do is to see how such a change would impact different systems in the organism as a whole. Source
The key insight is that psychedelics may modify the coupling kernels between oscillating neural systems throughout the body. Think of coupling kernels as the “rules of interaction” between neighboring neural oscillators. When these rules change, the effects cascade through different neural architectures (from the hierarchical layers of the visual cortex to the branching networks of the peripheral nervous system) producing the kaleidoscopic zoo of psychedelic effects we observe.
Simulation comparing coupling kernels across a hierarchical network of feature-selective layers (16×16 to 2×2), showing how different coupling coefficients between and within layers affect pattern formation. The DMT-like kernel (-1.0 near-neighbor coupling) generates competing checkerboard patterns at multiple spatial frequencies, while the 5-MeO-DMT-like kernel (positive coupling coefficients) drives convergence toward larger coherent patches. These distinct coupling dynamics mirror how these compounds might modulate hierarchical neural architectures like the visual cortex. Source: Internal QRI tool (public release forthcoming)
We’re excited to announce that we’ll be hosting a meeting in Amsterdam to explore this paradigm-shifting framework. This gathering will bring together researchers studying psychedelics from multiple angles – from phenomenology to neuroscience – to discuss how coupling kernels might serve as a bridge between subjective experience and neural mechanisms. Recent work on divisive normalization has shown how local neural responses are regulated by their surrounding activity, providing a potential mechanistic basis for how psychedelics modify these coupling patterns. By understanding psychedelic states through the lens of coupling kernels, we may finally have a mathematical framework that unifies the seemingly disparate effects of these compounds, much like how understanding heat transfer helps us predict how a fire will affect an entire building – from its structural integrity to its airflow patterns.
Simulation comparing different coupling kernels (DMT-like vs 5-MeO-DMT-like) applied to a 1.5D fractal branching network, showing how modified coupling parameters affect phase coherence and signal propagation. The DMT-like kernel produces competing clusters of coherence at bifurcation points, while the 5-MeO-DMT kernel drives the system toward global phase synchronization – patterns that could explain how these compounds differently affect branching biological systems like the vasculature or peripheral nervous system. Source: Internal QRI tool (public release forthcoming)
Event Details & Amsterdam Visit
The meetup will be held on the 25th of January (location: Generator Amsterdam – event page; time: 1-8PM), featuring presentations from myself and Marco Aqil, whose groundbreaking work on divisive normalization and graph neural fields provides a compelling neuroscientific foundation for the Coupling Kernels paradigm. Marco’s research demonstrates how spatial coupling dynamics can bridge microscopic neural activity and macroscopic brain-wide effects: a perfect complement to our phenomenological investigations.
Additionally, I’ll be in Amsterdam throughout the last third of January and available to meet with academics, artists, recreational metaphysicians, and qualia researchers. If you’re interested in deep discussions about consciousness, psychedelic states, and mathematical frameworks for understanding subjective experience, please reach out.
Much love and may your New Year be filled with awesome and inspiring experiences as well as solid paradigm-building enterprises!
I’m currently staying at the very core of Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s “Old Town”, getting my jetlag-ruffled bearings straight before I proceed onto Borderland to deliver a couple workshops on QRI topics (esp. visualizing phenomenology, mapping qualia, and philosophy of mind). I will then be participating in a low-key research retreat with influential figures in the field of consciousness for a few days, and finally on the 3rd of August, we shall host the very 1st Swedish QRI Meetup!
QRI Meetup in Sweden
Date: August 3rd 2024, 2PM onwards.
Location: Riddargatan 18, Östermalm (please greet us outside, the place is on the 3rd floor*)
Schedule:
2-3PM Casual Hangout
3PM Welcome Speech and Introductions
3:30-4:30PM Andrés will deliver a presentation on a surprise QRI topic
4:30 Participants will have an opportunity to share with the group who they are, what they are interested in, and what kinds of collaborations (if any) they would like to pursue
6PM Latest QRI Technology Demos
7PM onwards: returning to casual hangout until the end
QRI Meetups are excellent places to connect with other people interested in consciousness, meditation, psychedelics, AI, math/physics, and reducing suffering at scale. We’ve hosted meetups in many cities and countries already**, and we consistently get the feedback that they play the role of a Schelling Point for “qualia people” to meet one another. You can think of it as a way to “activate latent connections” in a city and kickstart a community of like-minded individuals.
Qualia of the Day: Please feel encouraged to bring an interesting experience to share with others. This could be a perfume, a candy, a toy, a gadget, a poem, or a brief (couple minutes) activity. One of the long-term goals of the Qualia Research Institute is to map out the state-space of consciousness. Qualia of the Day activities are a great way to enrich our evidential base in the pursuit of this quest.
Note: We will provide drinks, snacks, and catered dinner. Donations optional. Also, if you are planning on attending, please RSVP on the Partiful event page so that we have a sense of how many people will come. Thank you!
*If you arrive after 2:30 and don’t see anyone at the door, there will be a phone number posted at the door that you can text/call
**In the USA: we’ve held meetups in San Francisco, LA, New York, Austin, Denver. Other countries: Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, Brazil, Germany, and the UK. We will continue growing the community and activating latent connections for the foreseeable future. Please feel free to reach out if you are a fan of our research and would like to host a QRI Meetup in your city 🙂
El evento empieza a las 11AM. Las primeras dos horas son casuales. A la 1PM Andrés, el presidente y co-fundador de la organización, va a dar una presentación con preguntas y respuestas. Luego, de las 2 a las 4PM haremos una actividad tipo “unconference” en donde los participantes pueden proponer temas de qué platicar con otros en grupos pequeños, y finalmente a las 4 pondremos música y baile para quien quiera disfrutar de la compañía de otros qualianautas en México.
Este donativo sugerido incluye comida vegetariana/vegana, y bebidas sin alcohol ilimitadas. Para recuperar el costo del evento también se les agradecería aportar con un donativo adicional (totalmente opcional).
Se les recomienda traer una “experiencia” para compartir con otros (la “qualia del día”). Ésta puede ser un perfume, una sensación táctil, un poema, un sonido interesante, o lo que se les ocurra.
Contexto:
QRI es una organización no gubernamental que tiene como misión:
1. Desarrollar un lenguaje matemático preciso para describir la experiencia subjetiva.
2. Entender la naturaleza de la valencia emocional (felicidad y sufrimiento).
3. Mapear el espacio completo de las posibles experiencias conscientes.
4. Construir tecnologías para mejorar las vidas de los seres sintientes.
Con este fin, estamos desarrollando modelos matemáticos y psicofísicos para mapear estados exóticos de la conciencia (ej. meditación y psicodélicos), analizando datos empíricos del sistema nervioso con algoritmos novedosos, identificando intervenciones pragmáticas para reducir el sufrimiento intenso, y explicando las condiciones necesarias para que un sistema pueda tener experiencia propia. Si estos temas te interesan, estás en el lugar indicado!
Los invito a aprender lo que hemos desarrollado, conocer a “los otros” en este canal de la mente, y disfrutar de las vibras de la iluminación de la naturaleza de la conciencia para beneficiar a todos los seres sintientes.
It will take place on Friday the 23rd, from noon to 2PM, in front of “The Dancers”.
This is right outside the conference venue, on the side of Champa street.
Please feel free to come whether you’re attending Psychedelic Science or not, whether you identify as someone who is QRI-adjacent or not, and whether you agree with QRI ideas or not.
If you’re reading this, you and your friends are invited.
Address: 1185-1245 Champa St, Denver, CO 80204
See you there!
Ps. There is a good chance (*crossing fingers*) that we will get a space at the conference venue to project Psychedelic Cryptography videos. If this happens, it will probably take place sometime Thursday or Friday afternoon.
I am delighted to say that I will be delivering a workshop at Vibe Camp on Saturday the 17th of June:
Time: 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Location: Fire Circle
Title: Explore the State-Space of Consciousness with QRI – GET YOUR VIBE CAMP RECORDER (scent)
Description: Come to learn useful techniques to navigate the state-space of consciousness and pick up your VCR (Vibe Camp Recorder), a scent created in honor of this event, which will “record” this day forever in your memory. It is both pleasant and very distinctive, so that every time you smell it again you will vividly remember this day.
Thank you Hunter for designing this sticker. cf. Scents by QRI.
I will be arriving on the 19th of June and staying until the 26th. If you see me, don’t be shy! Please say hi.
#PS23 will be a moment in time. People will say “were you there?” It is a celebration of MAPS’ and the field’s accomplishments. #Excited
— Robin Carhart-Harris (@RCarhartHarris) June 7, 2023
We are going to host a QRI Meetup (cf. London, Valenciaga) on the 23rd or 24th, place TBD but near the conference. Please reach out if you want to volunteer. Stay tuned 🙂
PhilaDelic 2023
I will be delivering the following talk. Please come say hi!
Talk Abstract: The paradigm of Neural Annealing developed at the Qualia Research Institute (QRI) by Andrés Gómez Emilsson and Michael E. Johnson has a lot of explanatory power in the context of meditation and exotic states of consciousness such as those induced by psychedelic agents. The theory posits that there is a sense in which each state of consciousness has an associated level of energy, that there are specific energy sinks and sources in the nervous system, and that internal representations can be modified (and indeed “internal stress” released) with an appropriate heating and cooling schedule (aka. neural annealing). More recently, the theory has been enriched with “non-linear wave computing“, which might be capable of formalizing the concept of a (phenomenal) “vibe” for internal representations. Of special interest for the scientific community studying psychedelics and meditation is the recent QRI model of Neural Field Annealing, which combines Hebbian learning with Neural Annealing in order to explain why “highly annealed brains” can instantiate harmonic field behavior (such as the Jhanas). In this talk Andrés will provide an overview of the theory, share empirical findings, and discuss its testability based on its unique predictions.
The first time I discussed this approach to the boundary problem was for a presentation I was going to give at The Science of Consciousness 2020 (see: Qualia Computing at: TSC 2020, IPS 2020, unSCruz 2020, and Ephemerisle 2020). Alas, COVID happened. Now, thanks to the amazing Chris Percy, who joined QRI as a visiting scholar in 2022 and has been killing it as a collaborator, we have a thoroughly researched paper we can point to for this solution. Please send us feedback, cite it, and join the conversation. I believe this is one of the most significant contributions of QRI to philosophy of mind to date, and I hope high-quality engagement with it by physicists will only make it better. Thank you!
Abstract:
The boundary problem is related to the binding problem, part of a family of puzzles and phenomenal experiences that theories of consciousness (ToC) must either explain or eliminate. By comparison with the phenomenal binding problem, the boundary problem has received very little scholarly attention since first framed in detail by Rosengard in 1998, despite discussion by Chalmers in his widely cited 2016 work on the combination problem. However, any ToC that addresses the binding problem must also address the boundary problem. The binding problem asks how a unified first person perspective (1PP) can bind experiences across multiple physically distinct activities, whether billions of individual neurons firing or some other underlying phenomenon. To a first approximation, the boundary problem asks why we experience hard boundaries around those unified 1PPs and why the boundaries operate at their apparent spatiotemporal scale. We review recent discussion of the boundary problem, identifying several promising avenues but none that yet address all aspects of the problem. We set out five specific boundary problems to aid precision in future efforts. We also examine electromagnetic (EM) field theories in detail, given their previous success with the binding problem, and introduce a feature with the necessary characteristics to address the boundary problem at a conceptual level. Topological segmentation can, in principle, create exactly the hard boundaries desired, enclosing holistic, frame-invariant units capable of effecting downward causality. The conclusion outlines a programme for testing this concept, describing how it might also differentiate between competing EM ToCs.
QRI’s Consciousness Art Contests: Immerse, Innovate, and Inspire
Congratulations to the winners of QRI’s Art Contests! (contest announcement). Many thanks to all of the participants! You guys did really great! We will share all of the submissions for which the artists gave us permission to post in the near future; and in my opinion, there were simply too many amazing submissions that didn’t get a prize. We asked the community for awesome content, and they delivered!
In 2015 I wrote a blogpost in Qualia Computing titled "How to Secretly Communicate with People on LSD" where I introduced the idea of Psychedelic Cryptography.
This is the idea of using encoding schemes to hide messages by using the unique information processing advantages of… https://t.co/ECvIBO1IdH
— Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@algekalipso) June 2, 2023
Psychedelic Epistemology: The Think Tank Approach
I want to express gratitude to the panel of judges who diligently worked to evaluate each of the submissions along key dimensions in agreement with the contest specifications. To provide a little background about the panel, I should mention that since early 2020 QRI has been periodically hosting a “Phenomenology Club” by invitation only which gathers top scientists, philosophers, artists, meditators, and psychonauts. We usually choose a particular topic to discuss (e.g. comparing specific kinds of pains or pleasures), or otherwise interview someone with extensive experience with a particular facet of consciousness. For example, we once interviewed three people all of whom have tried taking 5-MeO-DMT in high doses every day for at least a month (i.e. Leo Gura isn’t the only one who has done this!). Really, we are able to do this because QRI has functioned as a beacon to attract highly experienced rational psychonauts and people seriously interested about the nature of consciousness since ~2017. It is out of this pool of world-class phenomenologists from which the panel of judges was formed. The panel includes people who have had over 1,000 high-dose experiences with LSD, psilocybin, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, dissociatives, and a vast experience with meditative practices like the Jhanas and the process of insight. More so, in order to evaluate the PsyCrypto submission, some of the judges took psilocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca in a place where it is legal to do so. They all gathered to look at and discuss the submissions sober, then while on mushrooms, then sober again, then while on ayahuasca, and then sober again, and only then they were told about the “encryption key” the contestants submitted, and then they had yet another chance to look at them on either mushrooms or ayahuasca while knowing what it is that they were supposed to see. Most of the judges reported that the winning submissions did in fact work. So I am fairly confident that they do.
Similarly, for the Replications contest, the judges looked at the submissions before, during, and after mushrooms and ayahuasca so that they would have a very fresh impression of what these states are like in order to make accurate and technically precise judgements. Hence the detailed and object-level feedback for the top 10 submissions we were able to provide.
Importantly, at QRI we believe that this is the kind of “facing up to the empirical facts” of psychedelic states of consciousness that will actually advance the science of consciousness (aka. the “think tank approach“). This approach stands in stark contrast with, just to give an example: giving surveys to drug-naïve individuals (exclusion criteria incl. “lifetime prevalence of hallucinogens or MDMA use >20 times”) and having them blindly try either LSD or “candy flipping” [MDMA + LSD], a methodology that apparently allows you to conclude that MDMA doesn’t add anything noteworthy to the experience:
As a simple metaphor, imagine what would it take to make genuine progress in the science of electromagnetism. Would you approach the problem of figuring out how magnets work by putting people who have never seen magnets in a room to play with them for a few minutes and then asking them to fill out a questionnaire about their experience? Or… would it perhaps be more fruitful to gather a team of top mathematicians and visual artists who are very experienced magnet-users and allow them to play with them in any way they want, talk extensively with one another, and generate models, predictions, and visualizations of the phenomenon at hand? Which approach do you think would have better chances of arriving at a derivation of Maxwell’s Equations?
Well, you probably know my answer to that question, as QRI is “Psychedelic Think Tank Approach Central”, and we are damn proud of it 🙂
See: 5-MeO-DMT vs. N,N-DMT: The 9 Lenses (video), which is the sort of content that could only ever be generated with a Think Tank Approach to exotic states of consciousness.
It’s amazing to me how people feel, at times, in a hurry to try to explain away anything interesting involving psychedelics with catch-all ideas like “it’s just slower processing” or “it’s just the result of messing with feedback, nothing to see here” (cf. Need For Closure Scale).
The winners of the PsyCrypto contest used the lowest hanging fruit idea for how to do PsyCrypto. It’s amazing that it works, and it does show a computational advantage that isn’t present in normal states of consciousness. And this isn’t trivial! In fact tracers in general affect how you think at a deep level, allowing for thoughts and feelings that never overlap in everyday life to actually show up together in your experiential field at once. This lingering effect increases the internal cross-pollination of information categories in one’s mind. This allows you to make completely new connections in your mind; hooking tracers with field computing is computationally non-trivial. More on this later.
But… also there is a plethora of more sophisticated approaches. I won’t say much more right now, but essentially PsyCrypto can be done in entirely different ways than using tracers. This includes things like pareidolia, color gradients, and detection of movement. And it is these novel approaches that will show the even more interesting computational advantages to the state.
We ain’t seen nothing yet. We’re at the dawn of a new era 🙂
Now, in the wake of our announcement of the PsyCrypto winners, as I very much anticipated, I got an email from Vice:
Dear Andrés,
I’m a science reporter for VICE. Great to be in touch.I’m reaching out about the results of the Qualia Research Institute’s Psychedelic Cryptography Contest, which is a story we’d love to share with our readers.
I was hoping you could answer a few questions about the contest. I wrote them out here in case it’s more convenient to respond over email, but I’m also available for a phone or Zoom call anytime before 3:30pm Eastern Daylight Time today if that works better. Thanks so much and hope to connect.
1. First, I’d love to know what inspired this contest. What are you and your colleagues at QRI hoping to learn and achieve with the Psychedelic Cryptography Contest?
2. On the page announcing the results, you note that “only three submissions seemed to have any promising psychedelic cryptography effects” and that “to decode these pieces you do require a substantial level of tracers.” Why were these three submissions so much more effective than the rest of entries to this contest? Were they the only ones to use the “first classic PsyCrypto encoding method” that is described in your recent blog post, or was there another reason they stood out from the rest?
3. You note that these PsyCrypto experiments can open up new avenues of research in the fields of neuroscience and consciousness. What are some of the open questions in these fields that you think PsyCrypto encoding could help to constrain or resolve?
4. Last, do you and your colleagues QRI have any plans to build on these findings about PsyCrypto with other future studies, contests, or related projects?
Much appreciated! Best, XXXX
Sent June 6 at 9:05 AM
And my response:
Dear XXXX,
Awesome! Science reporter? It sounds like we’re getting an upgrade 🙂 QRI, that is. Mom, I’m on Vice!
Ok, forgive that. I’m just very stoked about the warm reception that PsyCrypto has been getting in the last couple of days. We made it into the front page of Hacker News and I’ve been receiving emails from neuroscientists and artists. […]. So I’m in a good mood 🙂
[…]
I’m more than happy to answer your questions here.
1. I first came up with the idea of PsyCrypto over 10 years ago, while in grad school. I was throwing into the air some spinning glow sticks in the darkness and noticing the patterns that would arise from their trajectory in space. I realized that the lighting conditions were ideal for me to actually make sense of their movement, and wondered if it would be in fact easier to see that path while on psychedelics, given their well-known tracer effects. I immediately coded up some experiments to hide letters using that idea and gave the code to some friends, who then reported some mild but noticeable improved ability to read them while on LSD. After that, I brainstormed a number of alternative encoding methods, coined the term Psychedelic Cryptography, and a couple of years later wrote the Qualia Computing article you saw.
Now, this didn’t happen in a vacuum. Already in 2011 I was a fan of David Pearce and his philosophy of mind (see physicalism.com). In essence, his view is that consciousness evolved because it has information processing advantages. In particular, phenomenal binding, he believes, is not a classical phenomenon. It is in fact enormously computationally beneficial, as we can learn from disorders of consciousness where binding partially breaks down.
So even then I was actively in the lookout for ways to demonstrate how consciousness actually confers an information processing advantage. And psychedelics, to me, felt like very fertile territory to explore this idea. In essence, people have reported all sorts of information processing benefits from psychedelics (e.g. the classic study of Harman and Fadiman of psychedelics for problem solving). But this is still controversial, so to me PsyCrypto is a way to show the undeniable benefits (and tradeoffs!) in terms of information processing that different states of consciousness confer.
The more PsyCrypto encoding schemes are identified and developed, the more this research direction is advanced. It is the emerging field of “Qualia Computing”. Namely, the study of the ways in which consciousness is computationally non-trivial. 🙂
We believe that the contest furthers this mission, and that opening up the project to a broader audience, with prizes and recognition for winning, can drastically accelerate this research direction.
2. The top three submissions were the only ones that worked at all according to our team of expect phenomenologists. They tried really, really hard to find messages in every submission while on mushrooms and ayahuasca (at places where these substances are perfectly legal) and none of the other submissions had anything worth commenting on (sorry!). I think many people misunderstood the task, tried something random without checking if it works first, or simply crossed their fingers and hoped.that their images would look different enough on psychedelics to contain new and meaningful information. But alas, no. Only the three winners had anything resembling PsyCrypto in them. And to top it off, they were also very aesthetically pleasing. So they are, in my mind, real rockstars 🙂
I do expect a dramatic improvement in the quality of submissions next time we run this contest, though.
Very importantly, based on recent work at QRI, I am convinced that there are at least 3-4 completely new and mind-blowing ways to achieve PsyCrypto that do not use tracers at all. The tracers are, in a way, the trivial case. The new PsyCrypto encoding schemes are… Far more surprising and non-trivial. We will publish more information about them in the near future.
3. Yes, absolutely. In essence, I believe that novel PsyCrypto encoding schemes are a window into the actual information processing algorithms of the visual system. At the risk of sounding fringe, I am not impressed with the current mainstream neuroscience models of how psychedelics work or how they alter visual perception. Yes, one can see tunnels and 2D symmetrical tessellations while on psychedelics. But actually… One can *also* experience hyperbolic honeycombs, 4D projective transformations, and fast spatiotemporal Fourier transforms of non-linear resonance. I am sorry, but no current neuroscientific theory *predicts* this. So we are currently in what David Pearce calls the pre-Galilean era for theories of consciousness. Like the (apocryphal) story of the priests not wanting to look through the telescope of Galileo because “the Bible already tells you the truth about the heavens”, similarly right now most theories of how the visual system work are not taking into account the facts of what happens on, say, DMT. Don’t ever let the theory dictate the facts! Instead, let the facts dictate the theory (see: my presentation about psychedelic epistemology).
Therefore we think that by developing encryption schemes that use *phenomenological facts* such as hyperbolic geometry on DMT (https://youtu.be/loCBvaj4eSg) we will radically transform the conversation about how consciousness works and what its information processing properties are. Once you show that those geometries can be used for information processing, and that humans in the right state of consciousness display such advantages, then it becomes undeniable that they are in fact using such exotic geometry for computation. I believe this will set the trajectory of the history of consciousness in very unexpected ways. Indeed, superintelligence won’t be achieved with AI, but with consciousness engineering.
4. Yes. Now, please note that PsyCrypto and in fact psychedelic phenomenology research is only a part of what the Qualia Research Institute does. We have serious work in philosophy of mind, ethics, valence, neurotechnology, and neuroscience, to name a few. We are extremely prolific given our shoestring budget, tiny number of members, and relatively low profile in academia. But I am confident that as we keep producing world class outputs in all of these fields, QRI will become far more influential and mainstream 🙂
Ultimately, my mission is to prevent all future suffering (see my TEDx talk) and figure out how to enable all sentient beings to experience long-term sustainable blissful states at will. This mission is enormously ambitious, but hey, that’s what I want to do with this one life I have. And so is the mission of the other members of QRI. Let’s get to work! 🙂
Thank you! And please let me know if I can clarify anything.
Infinite bliss!
Sent via email June 6 at 4:30PM
And given this, I really thought that the resulting Vice post was actually really stellar. Thank you! 🙂
We titled the series Qualia Mastery – Building Your Toolkit for Navigating the State-Space of Consciousness.
Qualia Mastery, a concept I introduced in a review of a Jhana meditation retreat, is, in a nutshell, the self-organizing vector that cultivates the tools and practices needed to achieve the following three goals:
1) Explore the state-space of consciousness because you want to know it for yourself
2) Study it from many points of view because you want to understand it intellectually at a deep level
3) Intend to apply it for the benefit of all beings
May this be of benefit to you and all sentient beings! And also, have fun!
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.
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
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 exclusiveQRI 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
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 Jhanaphenomenology 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.
I’m currently in the UK. London, more precisely. I was invited to participate in this year’s instance of the Tyrinham Initiative (my review) and, naturally, I couldn’t miss it. I’m _very_ happy I went. I will share more about it and other recent DMT insights soon. But in the meantime, I just want to announce that there will be a QRI meetup on October 8th (2022) in Arch1 (West Ham Arches, Cranberry Ln, London E16 4BJ).
2022 Tyrinham Initiative attendees
QRI Meetup Schedule
2PM: Space Opens.
3PM: Snacks*.
4PM: Experience Sharing Activity (bring an interesting experience to share with others!).
7PM: Audience participation – there will be an Open Mic for people to introduce themselves, share their thoughts about QRI, and (optionally) make the case for a given Cause X (5 minutes per person)***.
8PM: Food*.
8PM–9:30PM: Andrés available for short 1-1s. Please feel free to share your candid feedback. I’ll be all ears! (There will be a signup list).
10:30PM: Wrap-up.
What to bring?
You don’t need to bring anything. Your presence is more than enough. That said, please feel free to bring with you an experience to share (think “Qualia of the Day“). This can range from perfumes, to spices, to books, to boardgames, to stim toys, to puzzles, to jokes, to nootropics, to pieces of art.
What to wear?
Please come in an attire that brings you joy. Bring at least one item (even if just a detail, like a pin or a scarf) that symbolizes the victory of consciousness over pure replicators. Be creative and open minded.
* Bring vegetarian snacks, drinks, and food to share with others, if you are so inclined. Please do not bring alcoholic drinks as the space has a full bar and they don’t allow outside drinks into the venue, which extends to the garden area.
** Please do what you can to be there before 5:50PM if you intent to see the speech so that your arrival doesn’t interrupt or distract anyone. If you arrive between 6PM and 7PM, please make a quiet entrance.
