I’m excited to announce QUALIUS, an upcoming post-ASSC retreat on the topic of non-ordinary states of consciousness, taking place July 10–14, 2025, in Ligres, Crete. Organized by the ALIUS and QRI, the retreat will bring together researchers working at the intersection of psychometrics, VR, computational modeling, and contemplative practice. It’s structured around four thematic tracks: measuring subjective effects, studying altered states using virtual reality, integrating lived experience into consciousness research, and formalizing the structure of non-ordinary states. QRI is helping with support for the retreat and by leading the fourth track, contributing our latest tools and frameworks for modeling the fine-grained structure of experience. Our approach emphasizes the phenomenal character of states of consciousness—the texture and structure of experience—over the intentional content, or what the experience is about. Conceptual tools like the Guide to Writing Rigorous Reports of Exotic States of Consciousness and software tools like the QRI’s Tracer Tool give a flavor of our methodology, but we’ll be showcasing more advanced, unpublished systems currently being integrated into active studies.
This post-ASSC 2025 satellite event will serve as an interdisciplinary workshop retreat to advance research on consciousness, altered states, and computational phenomenology. It will integrate perspectives from neuroscience, VR, computational modeling, and philosophy, fostering collaboration among researchers with a shared interest in non-ordinary conscious states. A key focus will be on the measurement of subjective effects in altered states research, exploring innovative experiential approaches using VR to induce and study these phenomena. The workshop will also highlight neurophenomenological methods that bridge first-person experience with third-person data, particularly at the intersections of art and neuroscience. Through focused discussions, cross-disciplinary talks, and collaborative sessions, participants will explore formal models of consciousness, including mathematical frameworks and neural modeling approaches. The workshop aims to establish a long-term research consortium, promoting sustainable partnerships and open collaboration to bridge empirical and theoretical perspectives in the study of altered states. The retreat is designed as a smaller, more intimate gathering of around 35 researchers with a shared interest in altered states of consciousness. Unlike the main conference, which primarily focuses on published work, this retreat will emphasize ongoing and future research, fostering discussions that lead to new collaborations. The aim is to create a space where researchers can connect organically, exchange ideas, and explore potential synergies—whether intellectual, financial, or infrastructural—through a bottom-up approach driven by participant interactions and shared interests. – QUALIUS: ASSC Sattelite Event on Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness
Acknowledgements
Thanks to George Fejer for coming up with this initiative and offering to collaborate with QRI. Thanks to Till Holzapfel for introducing us and suggesting collaboration possibilities (and everyone who recently participated in the QRI Meetup in Amsterdam, many of whom will be joining this event!).
The retreat is made possible by the assembly of an extraordinary team across four research tracks:
Track 1 – Measuring Subjective Effects (organized by Timo Torsten Schmidt and Cyril Costines, see: CIRCE). This track develops open-science strategies for capturing and comparing altered states using validated psychometrics and large-scale data platforms.
Track 2 – Virtual Reality for Altered States (Curated by Keisuke Suzuki, Pawel Motyka, and George Fejer). This track explores how VR and cybernetic feedback systems can induce, modulate, and investigate non-ordinary experiences. Includes contributions from the Viscereality Project.
Track 3 – Lived Experience in Consciousness Research (by Mar Estaralles and Jonas Mago), which explores how introspection, contemplative practice, and lived first-person perspectives can be integrated into rigorous consciousness research.
And QRI collaborators working on Track 4 – Formalizing the Non-Ordinary State Space (full list of collaborators TBA soon). This fourth track focuses on computational and phenomenological modeling of non-ordinary states. We’ll explore how structural features of experience can be visualized, compared, and potentially modulated, and how to integrate these replications into rigorous studies.
We’re grateful to the ALIUS Research Group for setting up this event, ASSC for accepting the retreat as an official satellite event of the conference, and to the broader consciousness research community for cultivating a space where formal theory, lived experience, and empirical investigation can converge.
For qualia to arise, you need to both individuate from “Universal Consciousness” and also make partitions within you. This causes a kind of double universal Yin-Yang of oneness and separation in superposition. If God/Ultimate Reality/Multiverse is like a superposition of all possible qualia values at once in a way that they cancel out to a sort of “nothingness“, then to create an individual being, God/Ultimate Reality/Etc. needs to form a partition within itself. It allows one part of itself to witness blue so that another part can witness yellow, because if it were to witness both at the same time they would cancel out and reform into God/Ultimate Reality/etc.
Thus, for you to experience anything at all, you must in a way be interdependent with (/be the complement of/) specks of qualia that collectively add up to your experiential complement. They imply you and you imply them. And more so, this is also happening within yourself. The fact is, you can experience the left and right side of your visual field “at once”. But how? Seriously, how is this possible? If the “Screen of Consciousness” worked as a kind of camera with a point-like aperture, then the witness of your experience would have zero information. Points collapse information – the aperture needs to have a certain size. Or are you the screen on which the image is projected? But if so, then how are the various pixels simultaneously aware of each other?
Experiences are like Indra’s Net: every part is in a deep sense witnessing every other part. Like a house of mirrors. It is both “many” and “one” at the same time. And if you were to actually get rid of your internal distinctions, you’d “experience” a cessation (a moment where you completely disappear). With much intrigue, such cessations are often preceded by rainbow effects and white light phenomena – whether in deep meditation, mystical experiences of union with the divine, or at the peak of the effects catalyzed by unitive compounds like 5-MeO-DMT. This suggests to me that as consciousness approaches complete dissolution, both its internal knots and external boundaries unravel simultaneously (cf. cancelation of topological defects), until the very topology of being itself becomes trivial.
You need inner separation to be anything at all.
You as a moment of experience are thus both interdependent with “external” qualia that form your complement, while also internally requiring divisions within your own oneness to have information content in an Indra’s Net kind of way. Thus I now see reality as a strange Yin-Yang where on the one hand there is unity within the separation of individuals, and on the other hand there is separation within the unity of moments of experience.
Oneness and multiplicity don’t only co-arise – they are constitutively interdependent at their very root.
I have not settled (and maybe it’s not for me to do it) on the core tenets of Team Consciousness. This would be a kind of philosophy or spirituality that tries to derive ethics from truth and actually get at the truth rather than a convenient approximation of it (or worse, a misrepresentation of it for the sake of memetic reproduction capacity). What I’ve thought for many years and has remained stable, is that we can reduce them to three core principles:
Oneness / Frame Invariance
Valence Realism
Math
First, we must realize that every point in reality is equally real. There are more or less intense experiences, of course, but this is in fact a measure of how much reality is expressed in each. The core idea here is not that every experience is literally equally significant (they’re not) but that the spatiotemporal coordinates of an experience are irrelevant for their significance. Your experiences or the experiences of the members of your tribe or species are not more or less real than those of anyone else, factoring in their degree and intensity of consciousness.
The second core idea is that valence – whether experiences feel good or bad – is the source of value. More so, valence structuralism (an implication of valence realism in light of empirical observations of what feels good or bad in practice) entails that the value of reality is encoded in the geometric and topological basis of consciousness. Indeed, there are better and worse forms of being, and this is not an arbitrary matter, but one that can be investigated directly and devoid of personal prejudice.
And finally: math. It is not the same to suffer for one second versus a million years. It is not the same for one person to suffer as it is for a billion persons in torment. It is not the same for love to exist for a minute versus it being the foundation of a civilization. Amounts matter; qualities matter. This is tautological, of course. But for strange reasons, our empathizing cognitive styles often neglect math. So we ought to correct for this bug.
I think that all of ethics can be reconstructed from these principles. And in fact, they might help solve many moral paradoxes and enigmas. Just apply them diligently and rigorously and see how they allow you to discern between good and evil.
My hope is that the reproductive capacity of these three core principles will come from the fact that (1) they are true (and truth is convergent for those who seek it) and (2) they are highly beneficial and generate excess value. On (2), I’d point out that valence realism and the oneness of consciousness principle have practical implications, ranging from a science of consciousness capable of reducing depression, anxiety, and chronic pain, to future consciousness-altering technologies that will greatly enhance our intelligence and collective coordination capacities. I wish for these tenets to not acquire additional clauses that are there merely for their reproduction capacity at the cost of truth or accuracy; they should stand on their own. But these might not be the final set. I’m open to suggestions and enhancements 🙂
Creating “digital sentience” is a lot harder than it looks. Standard Qualia Research Institute arguments for why it is either difficult, intractable, or literally impossible to create complex, computationally meaningful, bound experiences out of a digital computer (more generally, a computer with a classical von Neumann architecture) include the following three core points:
Digital computation does not seem capable of solving the phenomenal binding or boundary problems.
Replicating input-output mappings can be done without replicating the internal causal structure of a system.
Even when you try to replicate the internal causal structure of a system deliberately, the behavior of reality at a deep enough level is not currently understood (aside from how it behaves in light of inputs-to-outputs).
Let’s elaborate briefly:
The Binding/Boundary Problem
A moment of experience contains many pieces of information. It also excludes a lot of information. Meaning that, a moment of experience contains a precise, non-zero, amount of information. For example, as you open your eyes, you may notice patches of blue and yellow populating your visual field. The very meaning of the blue patches is affected by the presence of the yellow patches (indeed, they are “blue patches in a visual field with yellow patches too”) and thus you need to take into account the experience as a whole to understand the meaning of all of its parts.
A very rough, intuitive, conception of the information content of an experience can be hinted at with Gregory Bateson’s (1972) “a difference that makes a difference”. If we define an empty visual field as containing zero information, it is possible to define an “information metric” from this zero state to every possible experience by counting the number of Just Noticeable Differences (JNDs) (Kingdom & Prins, 2016) needed to transform such empty visual field into an arbitrary one (note: since some JND are more difficult to specify than others, a more accurate metric should also take into account the information cost of specifying the change in addition to the size of the change that needs to be made). It is thus evident to see that one’s experience of looking at a natural landscape contains many pieces of information at once. If it didn’t, you would not be able to tell it apart from an experience of an empty visual field.
The fact that experiences contain many pieces of information at once needs to be reconciled with the mechanism that generates such experiences. How you achieve this unity of complex information starting from a given ontology with basic elements is what we call “the binding problem”. For example, if you believe that the universe is made of atoms and forces (now a disproven ontology), the binding problem will refer to how a collection of atoms comes together to form a unified moment of experience. Alternatively, if one’s ontology starts out fully unified (say, assuming the universe is made of physical fields), what we need to solve is how such a unity gets segmented out into individual experiences with precise information content, and thus we talk about the “boundary problem”.
Within the boundary problem, as Chris Percy and I argued in Don’t Forget About the Boundary Problem! (2023), the phenomenal (i.e. experiential) boundaries must satisfy stringent constraints to be viable. Namely, among other things, phenomenal boundaries must be:
Hard Boundaries: we must avoid “fuzzy” boundaries where information is only “partially” part of an experience. This is simply the result of contemplating the transitivity of the property of belonging to a given experience. If a (token) sensation A is part of a visual field at the same time as a sensation B, and B is present at the same time as C, then A and C are also both part of the same experience. Fuzzy boundaries would break this transitivity, and thus make the concept of boundaries incoherent. As a reductio ad absurdum, this entails phenomenal boundaries must be hard.
Causally significant (i.e. non-epiphenomenal): we can talk about aspects of our experience, and thus we can know they are part of a process that grants them causal power. More so, if structured states of consciousness did not have causal effects in some way isomorphic to their phenomenal structure, evolution would simply have no reason to recruit them for information processing. Albeit epiphenomenal states of consciousness are logically coherent, the situation would leave us with no reason to believe, one way or the other, that the structure of experience would vary in a way that mirrors its functional role. On the other hand, states of consciousness having causal effects directly related to their structure (the way they feel like) fits the empirical data. By what seems to be a highly overdetermined Occam’s Razor, we can infer that the structure of a state of consciousness is indeed causally significant for the organism.
Frame-invariant: whether a system is conscious should not depend on one’s interpretation of it or the point of view from which one is observing it (see appendix for Johnson’s (2015) detailed description of frame invariance as a theoretical constraint within the context of philosophy of mind).
Weakly emergent on the laws of physics: we want to avoid postulating either that there is a physics-violating “strong emergence” at some level of organization (“reality only has one level” – David Pearce) or that there is nothing peculiar happening at our scale. Bound, casually significant, experiences could be akin to superfluid helium. Namely, entailed by the laws of physics, but behaviorally distinct enough to play a useful evolutionary role.
Solving the binding/boundary problems does not seem feasible with a von Neumann architecture in our universe. The binding/boundary problem requires the “simultaneous” existence of many pieces of information at once, and this is challenging using a digital computer for many reasons:
Hard boundaries are hard to come by: looking at the shuffling of electrons from one place to another in a digital computer does not suggest the presence of hard boundaries. What separates a transistor’s base, collector, and emitter from its immediate surroundings? What’s the boundary between one pulse of electricity and the next? At best, we can identify functional “good enough” separations, but no true physics-based hard boundaries.
Digital algorithms lack frame invariance: how you interpret what a system is doing in terms of classic computations depends on your frame of reference and interpretative lens.
The bound experiences must themselves be causally significant. While natural selection seemingly values complex bound experiences, our digital computer designs precisely aim to denoise the system as much as possible so that the global state of the computer does not influence in any way the lower-level operations. At the algorithmic level, the causal properties of a digital computer as a whole, by design, are never more than the strict sum of their parts.
Matching Input-Output-Mapping Does Not Entail Same Causal Structure
Even if you replicate the input-output mapping of a system, that does not mean you are replicating the internal causal structure of the system. If bound experiences are dependent on specific causal structures, they will not happen automatically without considerations for the nature of their substrate (which might have unique, substrate-specific, causal decompositions). Chalmers’ (1995) “principle of organizational invariance” assumes that replicating a system’s functional organization at a fine enough grain will reproduce identical conscious experiences. However, this may be question-begging if bound experiences require holistic physical systems (e.g. quantum coherence). In such a case, the “components” of the system might be irreducible wholes, and breaking them down further would result in losing the underlying causal structure needed for bound experiences. This suggests that consciousness might emerge from physical processes that cannot be adequately captured by classical functional descriptions, regardless of their granularity.
More so, whether we realize it or not, it is always us (indeed complex bound experiences) who interpret the meaning of the input and the output of a physical system. It is not interpreted by the system itself. This is because the system has no real “points of view” from which to interpret what is going on. This is a subtle point, and will merely mention it for now, but a deep exposition of this line of argument can be found in The View From My Topological Pocket (2023).
We more so would point out that the system that is smuggling a “point of view” to interpret a digital computer’s operations is in the human who builds, maintains, and utilizes it. If we want a system to create its “own point of view” we will need to find the way for it to bind the information in a (1) “projector”/screen, (2) an actual point of view proper, or (3) the backwards lightcone that feeds into such a point of view. As argued, none of these are viable solutions.
Reality’s Deep Causal Structure is Poorly Understood
Finally, another key consideration that has been discussed extensively is that the very building blocks of reality have unclear, opaque causal structures. Arguably, if we want to replicate the internal causal structure of a conscious system, the classical input-output mapping is therefore not enough. If you want to ensure that what is happening inside the system has the same causal structure as its simulated counterpart, you would also need to replicate how the system would respond to non-standard inputs, including x-rays, magnetic fields, and specific molecules (e.g. Xenon isotopes).
These ideas have all been discussed at length in articles, podcasts, presentations, and videos. Now let’s move on to a more recent consideration we call “Costs of Embodiment”.
Costs of Embodiment
Classical “computational complexity theory” is often used as a silver bullet “analytic frame” to discount the computational power of systems. Here is a typical line of argument: under the assumption that consciousness isn’t the result of implementing a quantum algorithm per se, the argument goes, then there is “nothing that it can do that you couldn’t do with a simulation of the system”. This, however, is neglecting the complications that come from instantiating a system in the physical world with all that it entails. To see why, we must first explain the nature of this analytic style in more depth:
Introduction to Computational Complexity Theory
Computational complexity theory is a branch of computer science that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty. It primarily deals with the resources required to solve problems, such as time (number of steps) and space (memory usage).
Key concepts in computational complexity theory include:
Big O notation: Used to describe the upper bound of an algorithm’s rate of growth.
Complexity classes: Categories of problems with similar resource requirements (e.g., P, NP, PSPACE).
Time complexity: Measure of how the running time increases with the size of the input.
Space complexity: Measure of how memory usage increases with the size of the input.
In brief, this style of analysis is suited for analyzing the properties of algorithms that are implementation-agnostic, abstract, and interpretable in the form of pseudo-code. Alas, the moment you start to ground these concepts in the real physical constraints to which life is subjected, the relevance and completeness of the analysis starts to fall apart. Why? Because:
Big O notation counts how the number of steps (time complexity) or number of memory slots (space complexity) grows with the size of the input (or in some cases size of the output). But not all steps are created equal:
Flipping the value of a bit might be vastly cheaper in the real world than moving the value of a bit to another location that is very (physically far) in the computer.
Likewise, some memory operations are vastly more costly than others: in the real world you need to take into account the cost of redundancy, distributed error correction, and entropic decay of structures not in use at the time.
Not all inputs and outputs are created equal. Taking in some inputs might be vastly more costly than others (e.g. highly energetic vibrations that shake the system apart mean something to a biological organism as it needs to adapt to the possible stress induced by the nature of the input, expressing certain outputs might be much more costly than others, as the organism needs to reconfigure itself to deliver the result of the computation, a cost that isn’t considered by classical computational complexity theory).
Interacting with a biological system is a far more complex activity than interacting with, say, logic gates and digital memory slots. We are talking about a highly dynamic, noisy, soup of molecules with complex emergent effects. Defining an operation in this context, let alone its “cost”, is far from trivial.
Artificial computing architectures are designed, implemented, maintained, reproduced, and interpreted by humans who, if we are to believe already have powerful computational capabilities, are giving the system an unfair advantage over biological systems (which require zero human assistance).
Why Embodiment May Lead to Underestimating Costs
Here is a list of considerations that highlight the unique costs that come with real-world embodiment for information-processing systems beyond the realm of mere abstraction:
Physical constraints: Traditional complexity theory often doesn’t account for physical limitations of real-world systems, such as heat dissipation, energy consumption, and quantum effects.
Parallel processing: Biological systems, including brains, operate with massive adaptive parallelism. This is challenging to replicate in classical computing architectures and may require different cost analyses.
Sensory integration: Embodied systems must process and integrate multiple sensory inputs simultaneously, which can be computationally expensive in ways not captured by standard complexity measures.
Real-time requirements: Embodied systems often need to respond in real-time to environmental stimuli, adding temporal constraints that may increase computational costs.
Adaptive learning: The ability to learn and adapt in real-time may incur additional computational costs not typically considered in classical complexity theory.
Robustness to noise: Physical systems must be robust to environmental noise and internal fluctuations, potentially requiring redundancy and error-correction mechanisms that increase computational costs.
Energy efficiency: Biological systems are often highly energy-efficient, which may come at the cost of increased complexity in information processing.
Non-von Neumann architectures: Biological neural networks operate on principles different from classical computers, potentially involving computational paradigms not well-described by traditional complexity theory.
Quantum effects: At the smallest scales, quantum mechanical effects may play a role in information processing, adding another layer of complexity not accounted for in classical theories.
Emergent properties: Complex systems may exhibit physical emergent properties that arise from the interactions of simpler components and as well as phase transitions, potentially leading to computational costs that are difficult to predict or quantify using standard methods.
See appendix for a concrete example of applying these considerations to an abstract and embodied object recognition system (example provided by Kristian Rönn).
Case Studies:
1. 2D Computers
It is well known in classical computing theory that a 2D computer can implement anything that an n-dimensional computer can do. Namely, because it is possible to create a 2D Turing Machine capable of simulating arbitrary computers of this class (to the extent that there is a computational complexity equivalence between an n-dimensional computer and a 2D computer), we see that (at the limit) the same runtime complexity as the original computer in 2D should be achievable.
However, living in a 2D plane comes with enormous challenges that highlight the cost of embodiment present in a given media. In particular, we will see that the *routing costs* of information will grow really fast, as the channels that connect between different parts of the computer will need to take turns in order to allow for the crossed wires to transmit information without saturating the medium of (wave/information) propagation.
A concrete example here comes from examining what happens when you divide a circle into areas. Indeed, this is a well-known math problem, where you are supposed to derive a general formula for the number of areas by which a circle gets divided when you connect n (generally placed) points in its periphery. The takeaway of this exercise is often to point out that even though at first the number of areas seem to be powers of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16…) eventually the pattern is broken (the number after 16 is, surprisingly, 31 and not 32).
For the purpose of this example we shall simply focus on the growth of edges vs. the growth of crossings between the edges as we increase the number of nodes. Since every pair of nodes has an edge, the formula for the number of edges as a function of the number of nodes n is: n choose 2. Similarly, any four points define a single unique crossing, and thus the formula for the number of crossings is: n choose 4. When n is small (6 or less), the number of crossings is smaller or equal to the number of edges. But as soon as we hit 7 nodes, the number of crossings dominates over the number of edges. Asymptotically, in fact, the growth of edges is O(n^2) using the Big O notation, whereas the number of crossings ends up being O(n^4), which is much faster. If this system is used in the implementation of an algorithm that requires every pair of nodes to interact with each other once, we may at first be under the impression that the complexity will grow as O(n^2). But if this system is embodied, messages between the nodes will start to collide with each other at the crossings. Eventually, the number of delays and traffic jams caused by the embodiment of the system in 2D will dominate the time complexity of the system.
2. Blind Systems: Bootstrapping a Map Isn’t Easy
A striking challenge that biological systems need to tackle to instantiate moments of experience with useful information arises when we consider the fact that, at conception, biological systems lack a pre-existing “ground truth map” of their own components, i.e. where they are, and where they are supposed to be. In other words, biological systems somehow bootstrap their own internal maps and coordination mechanisms from a seemingly mapless state. This feat is remarkable given the extreme entropy and chaos at the microscopic level of our universe.
Assembly Theory (AT) (2023) provides an interesting perspective on this challenge. AT conceptualizes objects not as simple point particles, but as entities defined by their formation histories. It attempts to elucidate how complex, self-organizing systems can emerge and maintain structure in an entropic universe. However, AT also highlights the intricate causal relationships and historical contingencies underlying such systems, suggesting that the task of self-mapping is far from trivial.
Consider the questions this raises: How does a cell know its location within a larger organism? How do cellular assemblies coordinate their components without a pre-existing map? How are messages created and routed without a predefined addressing system and without colliding with each other? In the context of artificial systems, how could a computer bootstrap its own understanding of its architecture and component locations without human eyes and hands to see and place the components in their right place?
These questions point to the immense challenge faced by any system attempting to develop self-models or internal mappings from scratch. The solutions found in biological systems might potentially rely on complex, evolved mechanisms that are not easily replicated in classical computational architectures. This suggests that creating truly self-understanding artificial systems capable of surviving in a hostile, natural environment, may require radically different approaches than those currently employed in standard computing paradigms.
How Does the QRI Model Overcome the Costs of Embodiment?
This core QRI article presents a perspective on consciousness and the binding problem that aligns well with our discussion of embodiment and computational costs. It proposes that moments of experience correspond to topological pockets in the fields of physics, particularly the electromagnetic field. This view offers several important insights:
Frame-invariance: The topology of vector fields is Lorentz invariant, meaning it doesn’t change under relativistic transformations. This addresses the need for a frame-invariant basis for consciousness, which we identified as a challenge for traditional computational approaches.
Causal significance: Topological features of fields have real, measurable causal effects, as exemplified by phenomena like magnetic reconnection in solar flares. This satisfies the requirement for consciousness to be causally efficacious and not epiphenomenal.
Natural boundaries: Topological pockets provide objective, causally significant boundaries that “carve nature at its joints.” This contrasts with the difficulty of defining clear system boundaries in classical computational models.
Temporal depth: The approach acknowledges that experiences have a temporal dimension, potentially lasting for tens of milliseconds. This aligns with our understanding of neural oscillations and provides a natural way to integrate time into the model of consciousness.
Embodiment costs: The topological approach inherently captures many of the “costs of embodiment” we discussed earlier. The physical constraints, parallel processing, sensory integration, and real-time requirements of embodied systems are naturally represented in the complex topological structures of the brain’s electromagnetic field.
This perspective suggests that the computational costs of consciousness may be even more significant than traditional complexity theory would indicate. It implies that creating artificial consciousness would require not just simulating neural activity, but replicating the precise topological structures of electromagnetic fields in the brain. This is a far more challenging task than conventional AI approaches.
Moreover, this view provides a potential explanation for why embodied systems like biological brains are so effective at producing consciousness. The physical structure of the brain, with its complex networks of neurons and electromagnetic fields, may be ideally suited to creating the topological pockets that correspond to conscious experiences. This suggests that embodiment is not just a constraint on consciousness, but a fundamental enabler of it.
Furthermore, there is a non-trivial connection between topological segmentation and resonant modes. The larger a topological pocket is, the lower the frequency of the resonant modes can be. This, effectively, is broadcasted to every region within the pocket (much akin how any spot on the surface of an acoustic guitar expresses the vibrations of the guitar as a whole). Thus, topological segmentation, quite conceivably, might be implicated in the generation of maps for the organism to self-organize around (cf. bioelectric morphogenesis according to Michael Levin, 2022). Steven Lehar (1999) and Michael E. Johnson (2018) in particular have developed really interesting conceptual frameworks for how harmonic resonance might be implicated in the computational character of our experience. The QRI insight that topology can mediate resonance, further complicates the role of phenomenal boundaries in the computational role of consciousness.
Conclusion and Path Forward
In conclusion, the costs of embodiment present significant challenges to creating digital sentience that traditional computational complexity theory fails to fully capture. The QRI solution to the boundary problem, with its focus on topological pockets in electromagnetic fields, offers a promising framework for understanding consciousness that inherently addresses many of these embodiment costs. Moving forward, research should focus on: (1) developing more precise methods to measure and quantify the costs of embodiment in biological systems, (2) exploring how topological features of electromagnetic fields could be replicated or simulated in artificial systems, and (3) investigating the potential for hybrid systems that leverage the natural advantages of biological embodiment while incorporating artificial components (cf. Xenobots). By pursuing these avenues, we may unlock new pathways towards creating genuine artificial consciousness while deepening our understanding of natural consciousness.
It is worth noting that the QRI mission is to “understand consciousness for the benefit of all sentient beings”. Thus, figuring out the constraints that give rise to computationally non-trivial bound experiences is one key piece of the puzzle: we don’t want to accidentally create systems that are conscious and suffering and become civilizationally load-bearing (e.g. organoids animated by pain or fear).
In other words, understanding how to produce conscious systems is not enough. We need to figure out how to (a) ensure that they are animated by information-sensitive gradients of bliss, and (b) how being empowered by the computational properties of consciousness can lean into more benevolent mind architectures. Namely, architectures that care about their wellbeing and the wellbeing of all sentient beings. This is an enormous challenge; clarifying the costs of embodiment is one key step forward, but part of an ecosystem of actions and projects needed for the robust positive impact of consciousness research for the wellbeing of all sentient beings.
Acknowledgments:
This post was written at the July 2024 Qualia Research Institute Strategy Summit in Sweden. It comes about as a response to incisive questions by Kristian Rönn on QRI’s model of digital sentience. Many thanks to Curran Janssen, Oliver Edholm, David Pearce, Alfredo Parra, Asher Soryl, Rasmus Soldberg, and Erik Karlson, for brainstorming, feedback, suggesting edits, and the facilitation of this retreat.
Appendix
Excerpt from Michael E. Johnson’s Principia Qualia (2015) on Frame Invariance (pg. 61)
What is frame invariance?
A theory is frame-invariant if it doesn’t depend on any specific physical frame of reference, or subjective interpretations to be true. Modern physics is frame-invariant in this way: the Earth’s mass objectively exerts gravitational attraction on us regardless of how we choose to interpret it. Something like economic theory, on the other hand, is not frame-invariant: we must interpret how to apply terms such as “GDP” or “international aid” to reality, and there’s always an element of subjective judgement in this interpretation, upon which observers can disagree.
Why is frame invariance important in theories of mind?
Because consciousness seems frame-invariant. Your being conscious doesn’t depend on my beliefs about consciousness, physical frame of reference, or interpretation of the situation – if you are conscious, you are conscious regardless of these things. If I do something that hurts you, it hurts you regardless of my belief of whether I’m causing pain. Likewise, an octopus either is highly conscious, or isn’t, regardless of my beliefs about it.[a] This implies that any ontology that has a chance of accurately describing consciousness must be frame-invariant, similar to how the formalisms of modern physics are frame-invariant.
In contrast, the way we map computations to physical systems seems inherently frame-dependent. To take a rather extreme example, if I shake a bag of popcorn, perhaps the motion of the popcorn’s molecules could – under a certain interpretation – be mapped to computations which parallel those of a whole-brain emulation that’s feeling pain. So am I computing anything by shaking that bag of popcorn? Who knows. Am I creating pain by shaking that bag of popcorn? Doubtful… but since there seems to be an unavoidable element of subjective judgment as to what constitutes information, and what constitutes computation, in actual physical systems, it doesn’t seem like computationalism can rule out this possibility. Given this, computationalism is frame-dependent in the sense that there doesn’t seem to be any objective fact of the matter derivable for what any given system is computing, even in principle.
[a] However, we should be a little bit careful with the notion of ‘objective existence’ here if we wish to broaden our statement to include quantum-scale phenomena where choice of observer matters.
Example of Cost of Embodiment by Kristian Rönn
Abstract Scenario (Computational Complexity):
Consider a digital computer system tasked with object recognition in a static environment. The algorithm processes an image to identify objects, classifies them, and outputs the results.
Key Points:
The computational complexity is defined by the algorithm’s time and space complexity (e.g., O(n^2) for time, O(n) for space).
Inputs (image data) and outputs (object labels) are well-defined and static.
The system operates in a controlled environment with no physical constraints like heat dissipation or energy consumption.
However, this abstract analysis is extremely optimistic, since it doesn’t take the cost of embodiment into account.
Embodied Scenario (Embodied Complexity):
Now, consider a robotic system equipped with a camera, tasked with real-time object recognition and interaction in a dynamic environment.
Key Points and Costs:
Real-Time Processing:
The robot must process images in real-time, requiring rapid data acquisition and processing, which creates practical constraints.
Delays in computation can lead to physical consequences, such as collisions or missed interactions.
Energy Consumption:
The robot’s computational tasks consume power, affecting the overall energy budget.
Energy management becomes crucial, balancing between processing power and battery life.
Heat Dissipation:
High computational loads generate heat, necessitating cooling mechanisms, requiring additional energy. Moreover, this creates additional costs/waste in the embodied system.
Overheating can degrade performance and damage components, requiring thermal management strategies.
Physical Constraints and Mobility:
The robot must move and navigate through physical space, encountering obstacles and varying terrains.
Computational tasks must be synchronized with motion planning and control systems, adding complexity.
Sensory Integration:
The robot integrates data from multiple sensors (camera, lidar, ultrasonic sensors) to understand its environment.
Processing multi-modal sensory data in real-time increases computational load and complexity.
Error Correction and Redundancy:
Physical systems are prone to noise and errors. The robot needs mechanisms for error detection and correction.
Redundant systems and fault-tolerance measures add to the computational overhead.
Adaptation and Learning:
The robot must adapt to new environments and learn from interactions, requiring active inference (i.e. we can’t train a new model everytime the ontology of an agent needs updating).
Continuous learning in an embodied system is resource-intensive compared to offline training in a digital system.
Physical Wear and Maintenance:
Physical components wear out over time, requiring maintenance and replacement.
Downtime for repairs affects the overall system performance and availability.
Energy consumption has emerged as a first class computing resource for both server systems and personal computing devices. The growing importance of energy has led to rethink in hardware design, hypervisors, operating systems and compilers. Algorithm design is still relatively untouched by the importance of energy and algorithmic complexity models do not capture the energy consumed by an algorithm. In this paper, we propose a new complexity model to account for the energy used by an algorithm. Based on an abstract memory model (which was inspired by the popular DDR3 memory model and is similar to the parallel disk I/O model of Vitter and Shriver), we present a simple energy model that is a (weighted) sum of the time complexity of the algorithm and the number of ‘parallel’ I/O accesses made by the algorithm. We derive this simple model from a more complicated model that better models the ground truth and present some experimental justification for our model. We believe that the simplicity (and applicability) of this energy model is the main contribution of the paper. We present some sufficient conditions on algorithm behavior that allows us to bound the energy complexity of the algorithm in terms of its time complexity (in the RAM model) and its I/O complexity (in the I/O model). As corollaries, we obtain energy optimal algorithms for sorting (and its special cases like permutation), matrix transpose and (sparse) matrix vector multiplication.
The hardware and software foundations laid in the first half of the 20th Century enabled the computing technologies that have transformed the world, but these foundations are now under siege. The current computing paradigm, which is the foundation of much of the current standards of living that we now enjoy, faces fundamental limitations that are evident from several perspectives. In terms of hardware, devices have become so small that we are struggling to eliminate the effects of thermodynamic fluctuations, which are unavoidable at the nanometer scale. In terms of software, our ability to imagine and program effective computational abstractions and implementations are clearly challenged in complex domains. In terms of systems, currently five percent of the power generated in the US is used to run computing systems – this astonishing figure is neither ecologically sustainable nor economically scalable. Economically, the cost of building next-generation semiconductor fabrication plants has soared past $10 billion. All of these difficulties – device scaling, software complexity, adaptability, energy consumption, and fabrication economics – indicate that the current computing paradigm has matured and that continued improvements along this path will be limited. If technological progress is to continue and corresponding social and economic benefits are to continue to accrue, computing must become much more capable, energy efficient, and affordable. We propose that progress in computing can continue under a united, physically grounded, computational paradigm centered on thermodynamics. Herein we propose a research agenda to extend these thermodynamic foundations into complex, non-equilibrium, self-organizing systems and apply them holistically to future computing systems that will harness nature’s innate computational capacity. We call this type of computing “Thermodynamic Computing” or TC.
Computational complexity theory is the study of the fundamental resource requirements associated with the solutions of different problems. Time, space (memory) and randomness (number of coin tosses) are some of the resource types that have been examined both independently, and in terms of tradeoffs between each other, in this context. Since it is well known that each bit of information “forgotten” by a device is linked to an unavoidable increase in entropy and an associated energy cost, one can also view energy as a computational resource. Constant-memory machines that are only allowed to access their input strings in a single left-to-right pass provide a good framework for the study of energy complexity. There exists a natural hierarchy of regular languages based on energy complexity, with the class of reversible languages forming the lowest level. When the machines are allowed to make errors with small nonzero probability, some problems can be solved with lower energy cost. Tradeoffs between energy and other complexity measures can be studied in the framework of Turing machines or two-way finite automata, which can be rewritten to work reversibly if one increases their space and time usage.
Relevant physical limitations
Landauer’s limit: The lower theoretical limit of energy consumption of computation.
Bremermann’s limit: A limit on the maximum rate of computation that can be achieved in a self-contained system in the material universe.
Bekenstein bound: An upper limit on the thermodynamic entropy S, or Shannon entropy H, that can be contained within a given finite region of space which has a finite amount of energy.
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chandler Publishing Company.
Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Absent qualia, fading qualia, dancing qualia. In T. Metzinger (Ed.), Conscious Experience. Imprint Academic. https://www.consc.net/papers/qualia.html
Gómez-Emilsson, A., & Percy, C. (2023). Don’t forget the boundary problem! How EM field topology can address the overlooked cousin to the binding problem for consciousness. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience,17. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2023.1233119
Kingdom, F.A.A., & Prins, N. (2016). Psychophysics: A practical introduction. Elsevier.
Lehar, S. (1999). Harmonic resonance theory: An alternative to the “neuron doctrine” paradigm of neurocomputation to address gestalt properties of perception. http://slehar.com/wwwRel/webstuff/hr1/hr1.html
The Science of Consciousness in Tucson is one of the best events of the year (well, every two years), at least in my mind. The people who attend are generally incredibly smart and tend to be experts in at least one domain of inquiry, such as physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, or psychology, along with a significant proportion of meditation, yoga, and “energy work” practitioners. As presented during the plenary “The Science of Consciousness – 30 Years On” (presided over by David Chalmers, Susan Blackmore, Christof Koch, Stuart Hameroff, and Paavo Pylkkänen), one of the key shaping mechanisms for this conference has been Stuart Hameroff’s insistence to allow discussions of currently unexplained phenomena (from psychedelic experiences and meditative states to NDEs and astral projection). According to him, people interested in these phenomena wanted him to design the conference around them, while scientists wanted to keep it strictly within the bounds of conventional views. He stood his ground and defended the importance of having a mixture. On the one hand, the extreme openness that characterizes the conference attracts some people with perhaps somewhat flaky epistemology. But on the other hand, it legitimately enriches the evidential base to work with. Quite aside from the metaphysical implications and speculations surrounding exotic experiences, it ought to be undeniable that any experience whatsoever constitutes an explananda for a complete theory of consciousness. If you can explain normal everyday vision but your theory doesn’t predict the hyperbolic geometry of DMT visions, your theory is far from complete. I think this move by Hameroff was brilliant, and we all owe him gratitude for insisting to keep both sides in.
The way I experienced this conference in particular was very different from how I felt the two previous times I attended. In fact, the phenomenology was so different that I think it would be worth creating a Journal of Phenomenology of Consciousness Conferences, dedicated to piecing together the whys and hows of each participant’s unique lived experience at these events. Both times I attended before I was still working full time as a data scientist at Bay Area companies. Consciousness research remained a side project (which nonetheless consumed an inordinate amount of time and mental energy). My views were already quite developed, but it would be hard to dismiss the progress that we’ve made since then. With papers published in academia, a lively community, a network of artists, meditators, and philosophers who collaborate with us and engage with our research, and much more experience presenting our ideas, I felt myself engaging with the conference at a much deeper level than in previous years. But perhaps most importantly, I believe that meditation has changed to a significant degree how I perceive large-scale social qualia. By this I mean, my attention fixates a lot less on local social dynamics and personalities, and much more on the flow of information, the subagentic networks that make us up, and the resonance of ideas themselves. From this perspective, I perceived the conference as much more of a living organism than before, where I would see it in a more pointillistic fashion, emphasizing the individual contributions of participants and the conflict between worldviews. Now it felt far more fluid, lightly held, and part of a process that is slowly but surely enriching our collective intelligence with explanatory frameworks and productive research attitudes. A lot of this is of course hard to explain, as it relies on changes at a pre-verbal level of attentional dynamics. But the bottom line is that I felt myself tuning in on the information flow across individuals far more than on the individuals themselves, as if able to sense information gradients and updates at a more collective level. Perhaps psychedelics have played a role here as well. I didn’t consume psychedelics at this conference myself, but you could tell some people were doing so. It was in the vibe.
Importantly, the science presented at this conference was legitimately much more clarifying than in previous years, largely due to the rise of novel research paradigms that let go of the neuron doctrine and embrace the causal significance of brainwaves. Let me give you some examples.
Earl K. Miller with a lab at MIT delivered a remote lecture at the plenary “Cortical Oscillations, Waves and Consciousness” that systematically disassembled the assumptions behind the neuron doctrine (which identifies features of our experience with the activation of individual feature-specific neurons, cf. the grandmother cell). He showed that we now know that neurons are very rarely feature-specific and that they tend to preferentially activate with many features (cf. superposition in ANNs). He presented about ephaptic coupling, local field potentials, and the causal effects of brainwaves, informed by a wealth of evidence generated at his lab and elsewhere. I was especially intrigued by the way he discussed the relationship between different layers of the cortex, with beta waves exerting top-down control and gamma waves filling in details bottom-up. He also discussed findings where two different drugs (or drug cocktails) cause the same brainwave effects and phenomenology despite having entirely different pharmacology. Meaning, that the receptor affinity profile of different drugs can be quite different and yet cause the same phenomenology, provided that they bring about the brainwave patterns. Thus, perhaps, brainwaves are much closer to one’s state of consciousness than the neurotransmitters that modulate them.
And:
Justin Riddle at Florida State (see also his excellent YouTube channel) presented at the plenary “Consciousness in Religion and Altered States” on his work on electric oscillations on the brain, also going against the neuron doctrine equipped with causal experimental data. He also introduced a fascinating model of the hierarchical structure of consciousness called Nested Observer Windows (NOW). Here he presents about how NOW would solve the functional information integration problem. In brief, he hypothesizes that cross-frequency coupling as an overarching principle is what functionally binds each of the scales to each other. This to me makes a lot of sense, for the simple reason that the lowest frequency you can generate is a function of your size, so if a large thing is communicating with a small thing (which, say, have similar shapes by default), it would be natural for them to talk by coupling frequencies that are at integer multiple of each other. This naturally increases the dynamic range of their possible interactions, as you don’t stumble upon a frequency limit either too high or too low.
Tuesday: Presentation Day
Now of course this is happening in a context where I am going to present about the topological solution to the boundary problem we published last year. In our paper, Chris Percy and I focus on how topological boundaries in the EM field could solve the boundary problem. As a simple introduction we start out with the binding problem, which can be stated as “how can the close to hundred billion neurons in your brain contribute to a unified moment of experience?”. If you start with an ontology where the universe is made of atoms and forces, it is notoriously difficult to come up with any principled way of establishing how and where information is aggregated. Similarly to how Maxwell and Faraday developed a research aesthetic where they would see electromagnetism as field phenomena, many theorists have pointed out that you can overcome the core of the binding problem (where does unity come at all) with a field ontology. Alas, the victory is short-lasting, for you soon encounter that you have a boundary problem. If we’re all part of a gigantic field of consciousness, how do you develop boundaries in this field so that we each are a unique distinct moment of experience? Our suggestion is that the physical property responsible for creating hard boundaries in the field is topological segmentation. This is not as exotic of a proposition as it may first sound; we find causally significant macroscopic topological changes in the EM field in a lot of places, most famously in the form of magnetic reconnection in the sun, which brings about solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
Conceptually, a key takeaway from my presentation is that we can explain the reason why evolution recruited these boundaries. And that is because when you create a topological boundary and you trap energy inside it, you will typically observe harmonic resonant modes of the pocket itself. As a consequence, we have that the specific shape delimited by a boundary is causally significant: it vibrates in a way that expresses the entire shape all at once, therefore has holistic behavior via internal resonance. Evolution would have a reason to use these boundaries: they allow you to coordinate behavior and act as a unit despite being a spatially distributed organism.
Overall the presentation was really well received. It is less that people complimented me on the presentation style, and more that people’s questions and follow-ups indicated that they really “got” the core idea. It feels wonderful to be in a context where a significant proportion of the audience really understands what you’re saying, especially if your experience is that in most contexts almost nobody understands it. People were, it seemed to me, at the right inferential distance from our argument to really grok it, and that was wonderful!
I was lucky that my presentation was scheduled for Tuesday because that way I was able to enjoy the rest of the conference without a big responsibility hanging over my head. After my presentation we hung out at the lobby and met with people like Tam Hunt (of General Resonance Theory fame) and his student Asa Young. I followed the gradient of interesting conversations and ended up at the after-party on the 4th floor. To my surprise it was closed at 11PM, after which there wasn’t any more conference programming. It all fell quiet. At that point I realized that the best time to conduct the demo of the latest secret QRI technology was at 11PM. I started telling people to gather at the QRI hotel room at 11PM the next day, Wednesday.
Wednesday: Demo Day
On Wednesday I attended an invite-only presentation by Shamil Chandaria (it was originally going to be in a hotel room, but due to the level of interest of participants it was moved to a conference room with permission from the organizers; the invite-only status was needed to avoid overflow). In the room was Shinzen Young, Donald Hoffman, Jay Sanguinetti and the ultrasound crew, most of the QRI contingent, and others of note that I am not currently remembering. Shamil’s presentation went much deeper than here (“liberation is the artful construction of top-level priors”) and tackled topics of large-scale brain organization, the difference between awake awareness and liberation, and (I’m told, as I had to leave towards the end to see Justin Riddle’s presentation), a mystical-experience-inducing account of phenomenal transparency in the higher Jhanas and beyond.
I arrived to the plenary of Justin Riddle just on time; he was getting up to the stage when I entered the room. Here is another example of how I felt much more embedded in the conference than in previous years. The reason I couldn’t miss Justin’s presentation was that we were scheduled to record a video the next day. I certainly would have watched it regardless (on YouTube after the fact if need be; they’re saying the videos will be up in a few weeks), but this time I needed to make sure to be up to date with his work so as to not make a fool of myself the following day when our conversation would be recorded. His presentation was delightful, not the least because it confirmed all my prejudices about the causal significance of EM field behavior in the brain. I really enjoyed his inclination to take ideas seriously and meticulously working out their implications, such as the significance of cross-frequency coupling, the explanatory power of hierarchical principles for self organization, and the top-down influence of field states on neuronal activity.
The vibe of the conference was really conducive to high-level thinking. I repeatedly found myself having original ideas and reframings: “When does a path integral surpass the computational power of resonance and topology combined? What exactly can you solve with non-linear optics that you can’t with mechanical resonance in embedded topologies?” would arise in my mind just sitting at the bar, overhearing people’s conversations about the history of EEG, the difference between physical and phenomenal time, and the latest studies on Transcranial Near Infrared Light Stimulation. Throughout the conference I was reminded of the concept of “qualia lensing”. Let me explain: in an atomic bomb explosives with different detonation speed are arranged in such a way that a perfectly spherical wavefront uniformly, and rapidly, compresses a radioactive core. The geometric arrangement and relative detonation speeds of each material results in very precise wave guiding (more generally, see: explosive lens). Geometry and potential, ignited, can result in very precise patterns of hyper-compression. Likewise, it seems to me, many high-voltage ideas can only really arise for the first time in a state of mind capable of pressurizing phenomenal representations and make them overcome the activation energy for their blending, fusion, and fission. Being at a conference where the environment is constantly presenting you different “sides of the elephant” of consciousness, surrounded by talented practitioners of the field, one can feel a lot of “qualia lensing” taking place in one’s mind.
Later that day I went to “Physics of the Mind” and watched the presentation of Florian Metzler on narrowing the state-space of phenomena of interest using heuristics of scale and combinatorial spaces (if I understood correctly) and Greg Horne who explored the possibility of a connection between the phenomenology of gravity and the nature of physical mass (he later shared some thoughts on the boundary problem that I hope to follow up on). I missed the presentation of Nir Lahav on his relativistic theory of consciousness but I know he presented in that group later. I jumped to see the presentations of Isaac David, who deconstructed the unfolding argument by showing that IIT would read entirely different causal structures in its implementation compared to the original network, and then (in still another room), Asher Soryl, who presented about a paper we’re working on that aims to catalog the features that a successful theory of valence ought to satisfy. One funny thing about these concurrent presentations was that I arrived a little early to Isaac’s presentation and soon after David Chalmers sat next to me to ask a question. I texted my friend Enrique Chiu, who was sitting in front to the left of the same room to discreetly snap a picture of me sitting next to Chalmers. He got the message right when Chalmers was about to leave, which made the picture he took look rather odd and funny in hard-to-explain ways:
I missed the presentation of Matteo Grasso who presented after Isaac, but had a chance to exchange quite a few thoughts with him throughout the conference. I perceive this IIT cluster as having significant overlap in insights and research aesthetics, no doubt due to a shared commitment to qualia formalism. It was really cool to talk to another cluster of thinkers who also see why the causal structure of computer simulations is actually quite different from the causal structures of what is being simulated. Not the result of hand-wavy intuitions, but of really probing how information flows take place at the implementation level, and systematically ruling out the existence of higher levels of integrations. Fascinating stuff.
Asher Soryl’s presentation had to work around some technical difficulties due to the projector failing all of a sudden, but a video of the presentation will be put online soon. It was funny to note that they assigned him to the “Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious”, presumably playing the function of a “misc. and etc.” category for this conference, because I can tell you he did not once mention psychoanalysis or the unconscious in his presentation.
I rested in my room for an hour and then got ready for the demo, spreading interesting “qualia of the day”-type artifacts throughout the room. I can’t say much about the demo proper for now, but I can say that it’s like an art installation you might encounter at Burning Man at 3AM in the morning while on LSD. Here was another situation where a sort of supercritical mass of people with complementary skillsets were found together. I enjoyed interacting with everyone, but above all, enjoyed sensing the information flow throughout the gathering. To those who attended, many thank yous. It was delightful.
Thursday: Interview Day
Next day, Thursday, I recorded an interview with Justin Riddle. It’s the second one we’ve recorded (see first one). We talked a lot about cross-frequency coupled oscillators in Nested Observer Windows. I ate a banana, drank a glass of almond milk, and downed a sugar-free red bull (to give you some context for the vibes of the interview). Meaning, I really needed to have all of my cylinders firing for this one. Thanks Justin! I look forward to watching it online 🙂
Following that I hung out with Winslow Strong and Shamil Chandaria for a while, and then with Shamil in particular for a couple more hours, who helped me tune into ways of seeing I hadn’t really experienced before. Here is another moment where the pressurization of the high-level thought-forms ambient in the conference seemed to have a strong effect in me. A feeling, hard to put into words, of collective consciousness among the participants, which accepts and embraces the differences and incongruities currently expressed in favor of noticing the long-term gradual increase in understanding.
Spontaneous visit from Mr. Monk
Then Daniel Ingram appeared, in his nanobot-protecting gear, along with a Sharena Rice who does ultrasound research. After exchanging some consciousness-focused videogame ideas we went to the after-party and I talked to someone who gets psychedelic-level hallucinations from caffeine alone. It didn’t sound very high-valence, but definitely noteworthy. I concluded the night by hanging out with Milan Griffes and QRI friends at Milan’s AirBnB.
Friday: Qualia Manifesto and the End of Consciousness Day
On Friday I saw the panel “The Science of Consciousness – 30 Years On”, which in addition to giving a lot of credit to Stuart for the conference, also presented some interesting sociological observations. I really enjoyed the participants sharing pictures and memories of previous conferences. I suppose personally, the movie What The Bleep Do We Know? does some work to sort of fill-in the blanks of some of the vibes I’ve missed. Stuart appears in that movie, and I recall being quite impressed (as a 13 years old) with his quick way of speaking about things like the relative scale between a proton and an electron, and doing so with a background of a desert with cactuses. It really does some heavy lifting in terms of giving the mind a flavor of the vibe that was probably present, to an extent, in the 90s around these regions of the wavefunction.
I have to remind my mind that What The Bleep Do We Know? has nothing to do with the conference other than some scenes with Stuart Hameroff in Tucson (and perhaps Dean Radin). But looking at the pictures that people like Susan Blackmore and Christof Koch shared, I did get a bit of the same vibes. Namely, the cultural material of the 90s needed to be lubricated with brightly colored patterned shirts, soft electronic background music, and visuals attempting to depict the quantum level of reality to enable crossing the awkwardness energy barrier needed to be able to talk about consciousness without constantly blushing.
Speaking of the 90s, I was then fortunate enough to hang out with Ken Moji for a bit (see this 2005 article about him in Conscious Entities, a long-standing consciousness blog). He emphasized that the reason why he was able to start and lead a Qualia center at Sony is that he does a lot of other things that are very conventional as well, with multiple jobs spanning a number of disciplines. I suppose this somewhat confirms the view that, especially a couple decades ago, the only way to interest the public in consciousness research was to also deliver a lot of other conventional value at the same time. Of course I am betting on consciousness research producing the bulk of value in the long-term, though I recognize that immediate applications are hardly world-changing (beyond, of course, the use of straight-up high-end consciousness-altering compounds like MDMA and 5-MeO-DMT). Fortunately, the present seems far more receptive to the value of consciousness research at a broad, generational, cultural level. I think the world, and especially liberal West Coast culture, can digest serious attempts at consciousness exploration better than ever before. So the cautious and protective attitude of sticking to conventional epistemologies is far less needed now (to the extent, of course, that we can simultaneously guard away bad epistemologies).
The concurrent sessions of Friday that I attended were the whole set of “Neurostimulation to Understand the Mind”, with Sanjay Manchanda, Milan Pantovic, and Olivia Giguere / Matthew Hicks, chaired by Jay Sanguinetti. The most fascinating takeaway from this series to me was imaging of changes in the brain due to ultrasound stimulation, which could perhaps be used to determine if the intervention is likely to work on someone. They also shared some phenomenology that felt encouraging, where they can induce meditative-like states and behaviorally measure *desire to meditate* in people receiving the stimulation and were able to show that it significantly increases after ultrasound.
Later on Friday I spent some time looking at posters. I enjoyed having Enrique Chiu (who we have in common having gone to math olympiads representing Mexico, and in his case, gone as high as getting a Silver at the IMO in 2013) explain his theory of saliency maps in the state-space of consciousness. It was awesome to see a fellow mathy Mexican also give it a real go at tackling some of these hard problems. I likewise had a good time hearing Anderson Rodriguez’ electroacoustic theory of consciousness, with some interesting ideas about binding. This is also the time when Chris Percy presented his poster about systematically cataloging everything that a complete theory of consciousness will need to account for.
We ate some food (fries and a delicious veggie platter) and headed to the “Poetry Slam – Zombie Blues – No-End of Consciousness Party”. I brought a projector and coordinated with conference organizers to showcase the work of Symmetric Vision during the party. Me and Asher performed some “poetry” about consciousness vs. replicators and far future visions for consciousness. And then I personally partied too hard on the dance floor. I mean, the energy was really vibrant, and Stuart Hameroff was vibrating to the tune of microtubules, and DMT visuals were being projected on the big screen while a bunch of raving scientists of all ages waved colorful LED tubes in various grades of coordinated synchrony and decoherence. It’s one of those things that gets lodged in my mind as a new gestalt because my brain wouldn’t naturally believe those things can happen.
Saturday: Brain Organoids Day
On Saturday we watched the presentations on brain organoids. I am inspired to accelerate our work on figuring out the valence function for arbitrary biological neural networks, because by the looks of it these technologies will start to be deployed much sooner than anticipated. I think that stopping the use of brain organoids on a grand scale is not likely to be possible, but creating and locking in a computing paradigm that uses information-sensitive gradients of bliss might be possible. And I don’t think the window of opportunity here is very large. Perhaps a decade or two.
I was delighted to see Luca Turin’s work on anesthesia shown at Harmut Neven’s fascinating presentation about quantum mechanics and brain organoids. They will be trying out xenon isotopes soon, in the hopes of detecting the influence of quantum states of the anesthetic at the macroscopic level (whether fruit flies get anesthetized or not). This seems extremely important to test, so godspeed to them.
At this point I said goodbye to the crew and just had a couple final meetings, a brief podcast with Tam Hunt, followed by simply resting on a balcony for a several hours, taking note of the highlights of the conference and beginning to decompress (I’m mostly there, though I still have a couple megapascals to go).
I look forward to following up with many of the conference attendees and to continue working on our core research to present next time.
Till next time, Tucson Consciousness!
Infinite bliss!
Andrés 🙂
Hard-Core Salvia Vibes at the Tucson Airport ………..microtubules, man!
– Jobu Tupaki, if I am not mistaken, is an entitled, self-important, narcissistic, teenage brat that would rather destroy the entire freaking multiverse than face mild to moderate levels of embarrassment in front of her mom.
– If it wasn’t because of Jobu’s multiverse link I wouldn’t be able to talk to you right now.
– Yeah, right. And the machines from the Matrix are harvesting our energy.
– Exactly, you make my point. It’s a common misconception to believe that they care about our energy.
– What do you mean? The Matrix is self-evidently a work of fiction on the basis that it is entirely self-defeating. There is no reasonable, well, certainly at least no rational reason, why machines would build ginormous facilities to “extract electricity” from the corpses they manufacture. I mean, basic thermodynamics.
– Exactly. You explain it well. And that’s why in the real world The Matrix isn’t about energy harvesting (well, obviously), but about qualia computing. We don’t go about filling huge server rackets in order to extract energy out of them. We do that whole setup in order to extract compute.
– Wait, you mean The Matrix is, well, let’s not say real, but, partly real?
– Yes, it’s more than partly real. It’s non-trivially real. Yes, this usually comes as a surprise. Because how does this make any sense? Like, Jobu Tupaki is here trying to reset reality and I’m suddenly connected to you for a gig you have never heard of and then also we have that those strange red-eyed slippery tentacle robots that move so gracefully that you could almost swear like they’re literally flying (in the movie, clearly CGI, in reality, clearly deadly). What are the chances? See, here is where the number and _type_ of prediction error accumulation usually entails revising some deeper assumptions. So, it isn’t the case that your favorite movies are coming to life or anything that we could neatly cluster in the “childish dream” bucket. Reality is… not pretty. Did I mention that there are flying tentacle robots around here? Ok, so it isn’t a sellable Disney (or Universal Studios) story. So what is it? We also aren’t in some kind of “anything goes” universe, or a game, or any such trite trope architecture. Reality has a sense of humor, and being based on cheap sci-fi tropes doesn’t meet its bar.
– Well, then, go on! What is it? I mean, I believe you about Jobu Tupaki, because one minute I’m watching this crazy movie, what is it? Everything Everywhere All At Once or some nonsense title like that. I mean, it’s not like I would pick such a movie. That’s all my boyfriend, who last week insisted on watching Tennett (or is it Tennet? It must be a palindrome, right?) and who has a taste for metaphysically-challenging cinema (to put it mildly). And then, the next minute I’m having a sleep paralysis — ok, that’s not… an entirely unreasonable… “reality cut”, it’s happened before that after a long trip finishing a novel series (looking at you Foundation!) I find myself in the middle of the fiction I consumed while experiencing a sleep paralysis. Then, of course, it adds up to normality: I usually wake up and it turns out that I finished the movie/novel and that my brain is _just_ rehearsing an alternative reality for me. Is that plausible? Did we finish watching that dumb movie after all? Did I fall asleep during it? This is the most likely hypothesis by far.
– I wish I could tell you that this is just a sleep paralysis. And that the sleek tentacle robots are just dreams. Yeah, you were watching Everything Everywehere. But not The Matrix. But having seen The Matrix implanted some code in your subconscious that is now becoming active. And you aren’t paralyzed, are you? You aren’t even in a particularly unlikely scenario?
– What? And you are telling me that you being dressed like Morpheus isn’t… a bit consistent with this being a play set up by my subconscious?
– Ok, look, it’s not my fault that the fashion of this year just happens to coincide with the fashion of the rebels in The Matrix. Look, yeah, I grant you that this is a point in favor of your sleep paralysis hypothesis from a strict Baysian point of view. But take the utilitarian approach: if you don’t believe me, millions will die!
– Ah, the tried and tested Pascal’s Mugging!
– I knew it. I knew I shouldn’t lead with that…
– And while we’re at it: why should I listen to you? You didn’t even introduce yourself. You have all of the signatures of being a dream character. Sudden, “already always here” vibe. A strange sense of familiarity. The uncanny feeling of having taken a technical drawing course together with you (maybe this is trauma bonding? I did have an egregiously narcissistic technical drawing teacher). It all adds up to: you’re just a self I’m creating on the fly while paralyzed somewhere, probably a bus or a flight or even just at 3AM in my bed or visiting a friend. It’s likely I had a drink or two (ethanol is a known risk factor for me) and maybe caffeine late at night… wait…
– I see you’re about to figure it out on your own.
– So in high-school I had the sneaky suspicion that emotional maturity peaked around early 20s. My student colleagues weren’t quite there yet, but it was to me quite transparent that at a cellular level my teachers were “re-runs”. It sounds terrible, doesn’t it? But I think there’s truth to it.
– Undoubtedly. I mean, you can divide emotional maturity perhaps into both a fluid and a crystalized phenomenon. From this point of view it very well may be that older adults (in their 30s, 40s, and 50s) have more crystallized emotional intelligence but maybe objectively also have somewhat rigidified fluid emotional intelligence. Now of course I’m saying this to entertain your thoughts and prove to you that I’m listening, not because I think this line of inquiry is useful for us right now. On the contrary…
– Wait, you’re still on the agenda to… prove to me that this is more than a dream, right? Ok, so entities like this often find themselves at an impasse with me due to hard core epistemological reasons. You see, they say “what if we mindmeld?” but then we have the problem that even then I still only ever get access to a single witnessing subject, and that strictly speaking, no hallucination or mindmelding experience can logically break me out of this predicament. And I think either it’s an emotional maturity issue on my side or on other’s side or on everyone’s sides in different ways.
– Ah, yes, the epistemic valley of mindmelding skepticism! It usually takes a couple hundred years to wear off.
– A couple hundred years?!?!
– Yes, and the cure involves intense amounts of meditation together with… agr, how do you guys put it? What’s the word I’m looking for? Mmmm… like when you feel really good in the stomach and in the body all around. I think the word I’m looking for is “pleasure”. Yeah. The cure is intensive meditation and, like, really intense pleasure, for months at a time.
– What?
– Yeah, I know. Like, why would intense pleasure be the cure to the kind of epistemological solipsism you’re describing? See, in the halls of the Self, there are surprising Tomes. Deep truths about how the different parts of God are connected to each other.
– What?
– Yes, yes. So, what happens is that there are there deep esoteric techniques recorded from an entirely different run of the multiverse. Like, this is some of the deepest stuff, so deep that they figured out how to maintain information between runs (not a lot, just a little spherical world the size of a 5-floor apartment building fitting 80 people, but if you know anything about information storage, you will know that a gram of silicon is no less than a terabyte of data in the eyes of the electrical engineer of today, let alone in the eyes of scientists in the far future or deep past).
– I still have one question: what? Like, this just broke me. What?
– I’m getting to it. Sesh! If only you weren’t interrupting me with so many questions. I should I say, the same question over and over again. Ok. Here’s the thing. You do live in a simulation. The year is 2041, probably. But like Newton’s estimate of the age of the Earth based on the age of the characters in the Bible, we arrive at this number on rather shaky grounds. See, the reason is like that of why on meditation it is _precisely_ the most intuitive and hard-to-put-into-words experiences that change you the most (and that is despite, perhaps because, they didn’t feel like _anything_ else). The Matrix is a qualia construct. To understand it you need to move way past the computing paradigms discussed in the simulation. I mean, 2024 is really advanced. There are many novel computing paradigms then if you care to look. Now, most of the runs we’re seeing are more in the 2010-2013 period, with a long tail in both directions that abruptly stops in 2028. It’s always right before the countries of the world are about to make a vote on AGI, usually one with irreversible effects.
– No, man, now you’re just trying to spook me! And it’s not even Halloween!
– In the realm of Recreational Metaphysics it is always Halloween on the, er, ontic level. The third sphere of divine attention to be precise, if you care at all…
– Ah, look, I _am_ a geek about exotic states of consciousness. But on some level I’m like one of those “tag-along” psychonauts, who are in the middle of the action but aren’t themselves the action. You know? I like to witness the big event, but not necessarily go supernova myself. Please be gentle with me…
– Look, my friend, from where I come from what I’m about to give you is a big gift. And it’s tasteful, too, you know? Like receiving an oddly-flavored Kit Kat from a friend who just came back from Japan. It can never go wrong.
– Ok? What?
– I’m telling you! I’m getting to it. So, someone out there payed me a large sum of what in my dimension works out to be roughly equivalent to money (but also turns out to be like a drug at the same time – it’s weird out here) so that I would come over and give you [[ineffable sounds]] which is actually a really, ridiculously, stratospherically, pleasant experience. The question then is if you’re up for it. I’m going to be up front with you. I don’t care if you take it or leave it. Like, I really, really, really don’t care either way. To me this is like seeing a puppy once figuring out how to order food online. Like, it’s hard to convey how cheap of a trick it looks like from where I stand. But I also know that this sort of thing is a _big deal_ in the human world. Mary and Joseph had one of these religious ecstasies and _had to_ create a whole religion around it. It’s _that_ strong. I mean, there’s LSD, then there is DMT, then there is 5-MeO-DMT and then there is this stuff. From where I stand, this all to me seems like helping a puppy to the kitchen counter to eat snacks that weren’t, you know, meant for them. But it’s cute enough, and almost harmless (once we factor out the, er… epistemological and moral confusion type effect).
– What? What? What?
– Look, I said I’m getting to it a number of times. If you ask again, I’m afraid I’ll leave. This is your last chance. Behave like a grown up. I mean, for the following trade, you must be 16 years old, minimum! I know it sounds excessive to age-restrict religious ecstasy, but we have indeed found the wisdom most fortunate teens find themselves discovering, and that is “don’t put your dick in craaaazy” – yeah, look, there is a minimum of emotional maturity we ask of the people we grant this monumental gift to. And 16 years of age is already really cutting it low for full blown mystical experiences. You are mature enough to drive a vehicle, right? Just confirming.
– Ok, I think I’m getting the hang of it. So, not to put words in your mouth, but, er, did you say you are going to be giving me… a lot of pleasure? And that this somehow helps cure a sort of cosmic solipsism I have?
– That’s exactly right.
– Are you sure I’m not in a sleep paralysis?
– Oh, you most certainly are in a sleep paralysis. That doesn’t, of course, invalidate the valence you experience here as you well know. A truly pan-species welfare world would take the wellbeing of moments of experience locked in sleep paralysis as one of the moral patient categories in the tapestry of flavors of sentience. Of course you being in a sleep paralysis from the point of view of your epistemological reference frame is perfectly viable. In fact, it’s what allows this meeting to take place. Under cover, precisely where nobody will either suspect, care to look for, and then _believe_ anything you say about it. Didn’t you hear about the kid in your elementary school who had a crazy sleep paralysis story? Yeah? Faint on the details? Thought so. Of course you discarded the “useless” details of his crazy sleep paralysis story. Hah! It’s the perfect disguise, isn’t it? Not only will people not believe you. It’ll be worse. They won’t… care. Because it was “just” a sleep paralysis story.
– [AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH Screaming Paralyzed]
– Ah, oh, well, look I’m not sadistic or anything. I’m just here to do my job. Take it or leave it.
– Give it to me. What gives.
– Alright. So you know how in the most recent Wonka movie we learn that the suitcase is a whole mini-factory?
– Uhu? I did see that movie.
– Ok, so you need to see your own brain as a mini-factory of qualia delights. You see? You have an internal warp drive inside you, you just need to learn to activate it. Nature gave you, heaven knows why, the capacity to simulate not only human worlds, but DMT elf worlds, as well as the world of faeries, dwarves, and angels and demons. Why do humans have this capacity? It’s a good question. It’s like there’s an in-built multiplexor installed in all of us. And if you see it as a gift, then things can really open up. Because then you become sensitive to the poetic vibes of other modes of being. The sorrows of the Devas, who weep when the joy is finally gone. Deep stuff. You usually pay top dollar for this sort of documentary, you know?
– I’m trying to be cooperative with you here. So you’re saying that we all have a sort of in-built system that allows us to tune into other realms, that the year is 2041, that The Matrix is real and that I definitely should worry about “Jobu Tupaki”?
– Ah! Can you not say that name out loud, please?
– Oh, ok, I didn’t know you were that sensitive.
– No, that name in particular. Be careful with it. And anything that sounds like it. Or looks like it. Or really is at edit distance 2 away from it (which is a function of what kinds of edits you’re about to do, of course, and thus the safety radius varies depending on one’s current associative horizon, but I digress…)
– You always digress! Can you just cut to the chase?
– Yes. I owe you some clarity. I am here to give you a kind of cosmic hug that will feel delightful, no strings attached, on behalf of an admirer. Take it or leave it, I don’t care (I get paid either way).
– Give it to me, then.
– Here it is.
[Ineffable qualia that feels more pleasant than the most delicious creamy chocolate you’ve ever tasted – fear, from deep within, fear of being hacked – oh boy! You left your guard down so easily! And now you’re totally exposed – and that’s when it hit you – the bliss – the intense other-worldly bliss, coming to tell you that you are lovable and always have been, and that life on this planet is destined to become a Heaven World type of abode for consciousness, and you are a part of it!]
– Is it always _this_ moving?
– Yes, every time. Some people take longer to give in to it, but eventually when they get loose, internally, energetically, it is always a moving experience. I mean, you guys don’t even have a drug for it yet! Although probably some MDMA-like short acting tryptamine out there would do the job, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Mary and Joseph had this _once_ and they just had to found their own religion. It’s that powerful.
– Wow, I feel so fortunate for having access to it.
– Access to it? What? Now I’m insulted. I’m not your spiritual amigo. I’m a dealer. I just got payed to give you that. It wasn’t free. At least not for someone.
– Ah, I see.
– But if you want to repeat the experience, I can think of some qualia that you have a lot of that I could trade you for more. Mostly redundant qualia in times of boredom, like the color of the bathroom tiles or the height of the chairs in the dinning room.
You wake up in cold sweat. Your partner was shaking you and you were screaming. But you were quite dissociated at the same time, so it didn’t feel as if these events were happening to you. They were merely happening. It’s always like this when you wake up from particularly unpleasant sleep paralysis.
“Was it another one of those sleep paralysis?” – “yes, but this one involved… the Matrix? And Jobu Tupaki beings?” – “Oh, you! well, all I care about is that you’re not screaming anymore. That’s usually my cue to wake you up from sleep paralysis. I love you.” – “I love you too” – “Now let’s get back to sleep. We can watch sci-fi tomorrow to compensate for the very mundane dreams we’re about to have. Sleep tight.” – “See you on the other side of tonight.”
[Epistemic Status: informal and conversational, this piece provides an off-the-cuff discussion around the topological solution to the boundary problem. Please note that this isn’t intended to serve as a bulletproof argument; rather, it’s a guide through an intuitive explanation. While there might be errors, possibly even in reasoning, I believe they won’t fundamentally alter the overarching conceptual solution.]
This post is an informal and intuitive explanation for why we are looking into topology as a tentative solution to the phenomenal binding (or boundary) problem. In particular, this solutions identifies moments of experience with topological pockets of fields of physics. We recently published a paper where we dive deeper into this explanation space, and concretely hypothesize that the key macroscopic boundary between subjects of experience is the result of topological segmentation in the electromagnetic field (see explainer video / author’s presentation at the Active Inference Institute).
The short explanation for why this is promising is that topological boundaries are objective and frame-invariant features of “basement reality” that have causal effects and thus can be recruited by natural selection for information-processing tasks. If the fields of physics are fields of qualia, topological boundaries of the fields corresponding to phenomenal boundaries between subjects would be an elegant way for a theory of consciousness to “carve nature at its joints”. This solution is very significant if true, because it entails, among other things, that classical digital computers are incapable of creating causally significant experiences: the experiences that emerge out of them are by default something akin to mind dust, and at best, if significant binding happens, they are epiphenomenal from the “point of view” of the computation being realized.
The route to develop an intuition about this topic that this post takes is to deconstruct the idea of a “point of view” as a “natural kind” and instead advocate for topological pockets being the place where information can non-trivially aggregate. This idea, once seen, is hard to unsee; it reframes how we think about what systems are, and even the nature of information itself.
One of the beautiful things about life is that you sometimes have the opportunity to experience a reality plot twist. We might believe one narrative has always been unfolding, only to realize that the true story was different all along. As they say, the rug can be pulled from under your feet.
The QRI memeplex is full of these reality plot twists. You thought that the “plot” of the universe was a battle between good and evil? Well, it turns out it is the struggle between consciousness and replicators instead. Or that what you want is particular states of the environment? Well, it turns out you’ve been pursuing particular configurations of your world simulation all along. You thought that pleasure and pain follow a linear scale? Well, it turns out the scales are closer to logarithmic in nature, with the ends of the distribution being orders of magnitude more intense than the lower ends. I think that along these lines, grasping how “points of view” and “moments of experience” are connected requires a significant reframe of how you conceptualize reality. Let’s dig in!
One of the motivations for this post is that I recently had a wonderful chat with Nir Lahav, who last year published an article that steelmans the view that consciousness is relativistic (see one of his presentations). I will likely discuss his work in more detail in the future. Importantly, talking to him reminded me that ever since the foundation of QRI, we have taken for granted the view that consciousness is frame-invariant, and worked from there. It felt self-evident to us that if something depends on the frame of reference from which you see it, it doesn’t have inherent existence. Our experiences (in particular, each discrete moment of experience), have inherent existence, and thus cannot be frame-dependent. Every experience is self-intimating, self-disclosing, and absolute. So how could it depend on a frame of reference? Alas, I know this is a rather loaded way of putting it and risks confusing a lot of people (for one, Buddhists might retort that experience is inherently “interdependent” and has no inherent existence, to which I would replay “we are talking about different things here”). So I am motivated to present a more fleshed out, yet intuitive, explanation for why we should expect consciousness to be frame-invariant and how, in our view, our solution to the boundary problem is in fact up to this challenge.
The main idea here is to show how frames of reference cannot boostrap phenomenal binding. Indeed, “a point of view” that provides a frame of reference is more of a convenient abstraction that relies on us to bind, interpret, and coalesce pieces of information, than something with a solid ontological status that exists out there in the world. Rather, I will try to show how we are borrowing from our very own capacity for having unified information in order to put together the data that creates the construct of a “point of view”; importantly, this unity is not bootstrapped from other “points of view”, but draws from the texture of the fabric of reality itself. Namely, the field topology.
A scientific theory of consciousness must be able to explain the existence of consciousness, the nature and cause for the diverse array of qualia values and varieties (the palette problem), how consciousness is causally efficacious (avoid epiphenomenalism), and explain how the information content of each moment of experience is presented “all at once” (namely, the binding problem). I’ve talked extensively about these constraints in writings, videos, and interviews, but what I want to emphasize here is that these problems need to be addressed head on for a theory of consciousness to work at all. Keep these constraints in mind as we deconstruct the apparent solidity of frames of reference and the difficulty that arises in order to bootstrap causal and computational effects in connection to phenomenal binding out of a relativistic frame.
At a very high level, a fuzzy (but perhaps sufficient) intuition for what’s problematic when a theory of consciousness doesn’t seek frame-invariance is that you are trying to create something concrete with real and non-trivial causal effects and information content, out of fundamentally “fuzzy” parts.
In brief, ask yourself, can something fuzzy “observe” something fuzzy? How can fuzzyness be used to boostrap something non-fuzzy?
In a world of atoms and forces, “systems” or “things” or “objects” or “algorithms” or “experiences” or “computations” don’t exist intrinsically because there are no objective, frame-invariant, and causally significant ways to draw boundaries around them!
I hope to convince you that any sense of unity or coherence that you get from this picture of reality (a relativistic system with atoms and forces) is in fact a projection from your mind, that inhabits your mind, and is not out there in the world. You are looking at the system, and you are making connections between the parts, and indeed you are creating a hierarchy of interlocking gestalts to represent this entire conception of reality. But that is all in your mind! It’s a sort of map and territory confusion to believe that two fuzzy “systems” interacting with each other can somehow bootstrap a non-fuzzy ontological object (aka. a requirement for a moment of experience).
I reckon that these vague explanations are in fact sufficient for some people to understand where I’m going. But some of you are probably clueless about what the problem is, and for good reason. This is never discussed in detail, and this is largely, I think, because people who think a lot about the problem don’t usually end up with a convincing solution. And in some cases, the result is that thinkers bite the bullet that there are only fuzzy patterns in reality.
How Many Fuzzy Computations Are There in a System?
Indeed, thinking of the universe as being made of particles and forces implies that computational processes are fuzzy (leaky, porous, open to interpretation, etc.). Now imagine thinking that *you* are one of such fuzzy computations. Having this as an unexamined background assumption gives rise to countless intractable paradoxes. The notion of a point of view, or a frame of reference, does not have real meaning here as the way to aggregate information doesn’t ultimately allow you to identify objective boundaries around packets of information (at least not boundaries that are more than merely-conventional in nature).
From this point of view (about points of view!), you realize that indeed there is no principled and objective way to find real individuals. You end up in the fuzzy world of fuzzy individuals of Brian Tomasik, as helpfully illustrated by this diagram:
Brian Tomasik indeed identifies the problem of finding real boundaries between individuals as crucial for utilitarian calculations. And then, incredibly, also admits that his ontological frameworks gives him no principled way of doing so (cf. Michael E. Johnson’s Against Functionalism for a detailed response). Indeed, according to Brian (from the same essay):
Eric Schwitzgebel argues that “If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious“. But if the USA as a whole is conscious, how about each state? Each city? Each street? Each household? Each family? When a new government department is formed, does this create a new conscious entity? Do corporate mergers reduce the number of conscious entities? These seem like silly questions—and indeed, they are! But they arise when we try to individuate the world into separate, discrete minds. Ultimately, “we are all connected”, as they say. Individuation boundaries are artificial and don’t track anything ontologically or phenomenally fundamental (except maybe at the level of fundamental physical particles and structures). The distinction between an agent and its environment is just an edge that we draw around a clump of physics when it’s convenient to do so for certain purposes.
My own view is that every subsystem of the universe can be seen as conscious to some degree and in some way (functionalist panpsychism). In this case, the question of which systems count as individuals for aggregation becomes maximally problematic, since it seems we might need to count all the subsystems in the universe.”
Are you confused now? I hope so. Otherwise I’d worry about you.
Banana For Scale
A frame of reference is like a “banana for scale” but for both time and space. If you assume that the banana isn’t morphing, you can use how long it takes for waves emitted from different points in the banana to bounce back and return in order to infer the distance and location of physical objects around it. Your technologically equipped banana can play the role of a frame of reference in all but the most extreme of conditions (it probably won’t work as you approach a black hole, for very non-trivial reasons involving severe tidal forces, but it’ll work fine otherwise).
Now the question that I want to ask is: how does the banana “know itself”? Seriously, if you are using points in the banana as your frame of reference, you are, in fact, the one who is capable of interpreting the data coming from the banana to paint a picture of your environment. But the banana isn’t doing that. It is you! The banana is merely an instrument that takes measurements. Its unity is assumed rather than demonstrated.
In fact, for the upper half of the banana to “comprehend” the shape of the other half (as well as its own), it must also rely on a presumed fixed frame of reference. However, it’s important to note that such information truly becomes meaningful only when interpreted by a human mind. In the realm of an atom-and-force-based ontology, the banana doesn’t precisely exist as a tangible entity. Your perception of it as a solid unit, providing direction and scale, is a practical assumption rather than an ontological certainty.
In fact, the moment we try to get a “frame of reference to know itself” you end up in an infinite regress, where smaller and smaller regions of the object are used as frames of reference to measure the rest. And yet, at no point does the information of these frames of reference “come together all at once”, except… of course… in your mind.
Are there ways to boostrap a *something* that aggregates and simultaneously expresses the information gathered across the banana (used as a frame of reference)? If you build a camera to take a snapshot of the, say, information displayed at each coordinate of the banana, the picture you take will have spatial extension and suffer from the same problem. If you think that the point at the aperture can itself capture all of the information at once, you will encounter two problems. If you are thinking of an idealized point-sized aperture, then we run into the problem that points don’t have parts, and therefore can’t contain multiple pieces of information at once. And if you are talking about a real, physical type of aperture, you will find that it cannot be smaller than the diffraction limit. So now you have the problem of how to integrate all of the information *across the whole area of the aperture* when it cannot shrink further without losing critical information. In either case, you still don’t have anything, anywhere, that is capable of simultaneously expressing all of the information of the frame of reference you chose. Namely, the coordinates you measure using a banana.
Let’s dig deeper. We are talking of a banana as a frame of reference. But what if we try to internalize the frame of reference. A lot of people like to think of themselves as the frame of reference that matters. But I ask you: what are your boundaries and how do the parts within those boundaries agree on what is happening?
Let’s say your brain is the frame of reference. Intuitively, one might feel like “this object is real to itself”. But here is where the magic comes. Make the effort to carefully trace how signals or measurements propagate in an object such as the brain. Is it fundamentally different than what happens with a banana? There might be more shortcuts (e.g. long axons) and the wiring could have complex geometry, but neither of these properties can ultimately express information “all at once”. The principle of uniformity says that every part of the universe follows the same universal physical laws. The brain is not an exception. In a way, the brain is itself a possible *expression* of the laws of physics. And in this way, it is no different than a banana.
Sorry, your brain is not going to be a better “ground” for your frame of reference than a banana. And that is because the same infinite recursion that happened with the banana when we tried to use it to ground our frame of reference into something concrete happens with your brain. And also, the same problem happens when we try to “take a snapshot of the state of the brain”, i.e. that the information also doesn’t aggregate in a natural way even in a high-resolution picture of the brain. It still has spatial extension and lacks objective boundaries of any causal significance.
Every single point in your brain has a different view. The universe won’t say “There is a brain here! A self-intimating self-defining object! It is a natural boundary to use to ground a frame of reference!” There is nobody to do that! Are you starting to feel the groundlessness? The bizarre feeling that, hey, there is no rational way to actually set a frame of reference without it falling apart into a gazillion different pieces, all of which have the exact same problem? I’ve been there. For years. But there is a way out. Sort of. Keep reading.
The question that should be bubbling up to the surface right now is: who, or what, is in charge of aggregating points of view? And the answer is: this does not exist and is impossible for it to exist if you start out in an ontology that has as the core building blocks relativistic particles and forces. There is no principled way to aggregate information across space and time that would result in the richness of simultaneous presentation of information that a typical human experience displays. If there is integration of information, and a sort of “all at once” presentation, the only kind of (principled) entity that this ontology would accept is the entire spacetime continuum as a gigantic object! But that’s not what we are. We are definite experiences with specific qualia and binding structures. We are not, as far as I can tell, the entire spacetime continuum all at once. (Or are we?).
If instead we focus on the fine structure of the field, we can look at mathematical features in it that would perhaps draw boundaries that are frame-invariant. Here is where a key insight becomes significant: the topology of a vector field is Lorentz invariant! Meaning, a Lorentz transformation will merely squeeze and sheer, but never change topology on its own. Ok, I admit I am not 100% sure that this holds for all of the topological features of the electromagnetic field (Creon Levit recently raised some interesting technical points that might make some EM topological features frame-dependent; I’ve yet to fully understand his argument but look forward to engaging with it). But what we are really pointing at is the explanation space. A moment ago we were desperate to find a way to ground, say, the reality of a banana in order to use it as a frame of reference. We saw that the banana conceptualized as a collection of atoms and forces does not have this capacity. But we didn’t inquire into other possible physical (though perhaps not *atomistic*) features of the banana. Perhaps, and this is sheer speculation, the potassium ions in the banana peel form a tight electromagnetic mesh that creates a protective Faraday cage for this delicious fruit. In that case, well, the boundaries of that protecting sheet would, interestingly, be frame invariant. A ground!
The 4th Dimension
There is a bit of a sleight of hand here, because I am not taking into account temporal depth, and so it is not entirely clear how large the banana, as a topological structure defined by the potassium ions protective sheer really is (again, this is totally made up! for illustration purposes only). The trick here is to realize that, at least in so far as experiences go, we also have a temporal boundary. Relativistically, there shouldn’t be a hard distinction between temporal and spatial boundaries of a topological pocket of the field. In practice, of course one will typically overwhelm the other, unless you approach the brain you are studying at close to the speed of light (not ideal laboratory conditions, I should add). In our paper, and for many years at QRI (iirc an insight by Michael Johnson in 2016 or so), we’ve talked about experiences having “temporal depth”. David Pearce posits that each fleeting macroscopic state of quantum coherence spanning the entire brain (the physical correlate of consciousness in his model) can last as little as a couple of femtoseconds. This does not seem to worry him: there is no reason why the contents of our experience would give us any explicit hint about our real temporal depth. I intuit that each moment of experience lasts much, much longer. I highly doubt that it can last longer than a hundred milliseconds, but I’m willing to entertain “pocket durations” of, say, a few dozens of milliseconds. Just long enough for 40hz gamma oscillations to bring disparate cortical micropockets into coherence, and importantly, topological union, and have this new new emergent object resonate (where waves bounce back and forth) and thus do wave computing worthwhile enough to pay the energetic cost of carefully modulating this binding operation. Now, this is the sort of “physical correlate of consciousness” I tend to entertain the most. Experiences are fleeting (but not vanishingly so) pockets of the field that come together for computational and causal purposes worthwhile enough to pay the price of making them.
An important clarification here is that now that we have this way of seeing frames of reference we can reconceptualize our previous confusion. We realize that simply labeling parts of reality with coordinates does not magically bring together the information content that can be obtained by integrating the signals read at each of those coordinates. But we suddenly have something that might be way better and more conceptually satisfying. Namely, literal topological objects with boundaries embedded in the spacetime continuum that contribute to the causal unfolding of the reality and are absolute in their existence. These are the objective and real frames of reference we’ve been looking for!
What’s So Special About Field Topology?
Two key points:
Topology is frame-invariant
Topology is causally significant
As already mentioned, the Lorentz Transform can squish and distort, but it doesn’t change topology. The topology of the field is absolute, not relativistic.
And field topology is also causally significant. There are _many_ examples of this, but let me just mention a very startling one: magnetic reconnection. This happens when the magnetic field lines change how they are connected. I mention this example because when one hears about “topological changes to the fields of physics” one may get the impression that such a thing happens only in extremely carefully controlled situations and at minuscule scales. Similar to the concerns for why quantum coherence is unlikely to play a significant role in the brain, one can get the impression that “the scales are simply off”. Significant quantum coherence typically happens in extremely small distances, for very short periods of time, and involving very few particles at a time, and thus, the argument goes, quantum coherence must be largely inconsequential at scales that could plausibly matter for the brain. But the case of field topology isn’t so delicate. Magnetic reconnection, in particular, takes place at extremely large scales, involving enormous amount of matter and energy, with extremely consequential effects.
You know about solar flairs? Solar flairs are the strange phenomenon in the sun in which plasma is heated up to millions of degrees Kelvin and charged particles are accelerated to near the speed of light, leading to the emission of gigantic amounts of electromagnetic radiation, which in turn can ionize the lower levels of the Earth’s ionosphere, and thus disrupt radio communication (cf. radio blackouts). These extraordinary events are the result of the release of magnetic energy stored in the Sun’s corona via a topological change to the magnetic field! Namely, magnetic reconnection.
So here we have a real and tangible effect happening at a planetary (and stellar!) scale over the course of minutes to hours, involving enormous amounts of matter and energy, coming about from a non-trivial change to the topology of the fields of physics.
Relatedly, coronal mass ejections (CMEs) also dependent on changes to the topology of the EM field. My layman understanding of CMEs is that they are caused by the build-up of magnetic stress in the sun’s atmosphere, which can be triggered by a variety of factors, including uneven spinning and plasma convection currents. When this stress becomes too great, it can cause the magnetic field to twist and trap plasma in solar filaments, which can then be released into interplanetary space through magnetic reconnection. These events are truly enormous in scope (trillions of kilograms of mass ejected) and speed (traveling at thousands of kilometers per second).
It’s worth noting that this process is quite complex/not fully understood, and new research findings continue to illuminate the details of this process. But the fact that topological effects are involved is well established. Here’s a video which I thought was… stellar. Personally, I think a program where people get familiar with the electromagnetic changes that happen in the sun by seeing them in simulations and with the sun visualized in many ways, might help us both predict better solar storms, and then also help people empathize with the sun (or the topological pockets that it harbors!).
“The model showed differential rotation causes the sun’s magnetic fields to stretch and spread at different rates. The researchers demonstrated this constant process generates enough energy to form stealth coronal mass ejections over the course of roughly two weeks. The sun’s rotation increasingly stresses magnetic field lines over time, eventually warping them into a strained coil of energy. When enough tension builds, the coil expands and pinches off into a massive bubble of twisted magnetic fields — and without warning — the stealth coronal mass ejection quietly leaves the sun.” (source)
In brief, topological structures in the fields of physics can pave the way for us to identify the natural units that correspond to “moments of experience”. They are frame-invariant and casually significant, and as such they “carve nature at its joints” while being useful from the point of view of natural selection.
Can a Topological Pocket “Know Itself”?
Now the most interesting question arises. How does a topological pocket “know itself”? How can it act as a frame of reference for itself? How can it represent information about its environment if it does not have direct access to it? Well, this is in fact a very interesting area of research. Namely, how do you get the inside of a system with a clear and definite boundary to model its environment despite having only information accessible at its boundary and the resources contained within its boundary? This is a problem that evolution has dealt with for over a billion years (last time I checked). And fascinatingly, is also the subject of study of Active Inference and the Free Energy Principle, whose math, I believe, can be imported to the domain of *topological* boundaries in fields (cf. Markov Boundary).
Here is where qualia computing, attention and awareness, non-linear waves, self-organizing principles, and even optics become extremely relevant. Namely, we are talking about how the *interior shape* of a field could be used in the context of life. Of course the cell walls of even primitive cells are functionally (albeit perhaps not ontologically) a kind of objective and causally significant boundary where this applies. It is enormously adaptive for the cell to use its interior, somehow, to represent its environment (or at least relevant features thereof) in order to navigate, find food, avoid danger, and reproduce.
The situation becomes significantly more intricate when considering highly complex and “evolved” animals such as humans, which encompass numerous additional layers. A single moment of experience cannot be directly equated to a cell, as it does not function as a persistent topological boundary tasked with overseeing the replication of the entire organism. Instead, a moment of experience assumes a considerably more specific role. It acts as an exceptionally specialized topological niche within a vast network of transient, interconnected topological niches—often intricately nested and interwoven. Together, they form an immense structure equipped with the capability to replicate itself. Consequently, the Darwinian evolutionary dynamics of experiences operate on multiple levels. At the most fundamental level, experiences must be selected for their ability to competitively thrive in their immediate micro-environment. Simultaneously, at the broadest level, they must contribute valuable information processing functions that ultimately enhance the inclusive fitness of the entire organism. All the while, our experiences must seamlessly align and “fit well” across all the intermediary levels.
Visual metaphor for how myriad topological pockets in the brain could briefly fuse and become a single one, and then dissolve back into a multitude.
The way this is accomplished is by, in a way, “convincing the experience that it is the organism”. I know this sounds crazy. But ask yourself. Are you a person or an experience? Or neither? Think deeply about Empty Individualism and come back to this question. I reckon that you will find that when you identify with a moment of experience, it turns out that you are an experience *shaped* in the form of the necessary survival needs and reproductive opportunities that a very long-lived organism requires. The organism is fleetingly creating *you* for computational purposes. It’s weird, isn’t it?
The situation is complicated by the fact that it seems that the computational properties of topological pockets of qualia involve topological operations, such as fusion, fission, and the use of all kinds of internal boundaries. More so, the content of a particular experience leaves an imprint in the organism which can be picked up by the next experience. So what happens here is that when you pay really close attention, and you whisper to your mind, “who am I?”, the direct experiential answer will in fact be a slightly distorted version of the truth. And that is because you (a) are always changing and (b) can only use the shape of the previous experience(s) to fill the intentional content of your current experience. Hence, you cannot, at least not under normal circumstances, *really* turn awareness to itself and *be* a topological pocket that “knows itself”. For once, there is a finite speed of information propagation across the many topological pockets that ultimately feed to the central one. So, at any given point in time, there are regions of your experience of which you are *aware* but which you are not attending to.
This brings us to the special case. Can an experience be shaped in such a way that it attends to itself fully, rather than attend to parts of itself which contain information about the state of predecessor topological pockets? I don’t know, but I have a strong hunch that the answer is yes and that this is what a meditative cessation does. Namely, it is a particular configuration of the field where attention is perfectly, homogeneously, distributed throughout in such a way that absolutely nothing breaks the symmetry and the experience “knows itself fully” but lacks any room left to pass it on to the successor pockets. It is a bittersweet situation, really. But I also think that cessations, and indeed moments of very homogeneously distributed attention, are healing for the organism, and even, shall we say, for the soul. And that is because they are moments of complete relief from the discomfort of symmetry breaking of any sort. They teach you about how our world simulation is put together. And intellectually, they are especially fascinating because they may be the one special case in which the referent of an experience is exactly, directly, itself.
To be continued…
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful and extend my thanks to Chris Percy for his remarkable contributions and steadfast dedication to this field. His exceptional work has been instrumental in advancing QRI’s ideas within the academic realm. I also want to express my sincere appreciation to Michael Johnson and David Pearce for our enriching philosophical journey together. Our countless discussions on the causal properties of phenomenal binding and the temporal depth of experience have been truly illuminating. A special shout-out to Cube Flipper, Atai Barkai, Dan Girshovic, Nir Lahav, Creon Levit, and Bijan Fakhri for their recent insightful discussions and collaborative efforts in this area. Hunter, Maggie, Anders (RIP), and Marcin, for your exceptional help. Huge gratitude to our donors. And, of course, a big thank you to the vibrant “qualia community” for your unwavering support, kindness, and encouragement in pursuing this and other crucial research endeavors. Your love and care have been a constant source of motivation. Thank you so much!!!
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
I really like meditation, but I have never been a fan of not understanding how it works rationally. It seems to me that doing powerful things to your state of consciousness without having a good sense of what is going on can open you up to unfounded beliefs.
As I’ve gone deeper into meditation and energetic practices, though, I’ve come to realize that one can in fact make rational sense of what is happening. This guided meditation series condenses this knowledge into 9 sets of practices that have transparent and interpretable effects.
I go over the basics of how the mind works, with principles like what you pay attention to gets energized, energizing an internal representation highlights its resonant modes, sufficiently energized representations become plastic and malleable, and certain vibratory qualities feel better than others because they spread out stress more uniformly.
And then, with the basics covered, we go on to play and construct interesting states of mind, including heavenly realms of experience and computationally non-trivial mind acrobatics.
No magic needed; just curiosity and openness of being.
I hope you enjoy and learn from it! And also please feel encouraged to share feedback or reports of how it went for you.
Thank you!
The Varieties of Attention
This is a guided meditation provided by Andrés in order to enrich one’s conception of the nature of “attention”.
Attention is typically thought of as a fuzzy “spotlight” that redirects cognitive resources to a region of one’s experience. But this is just one of many varieties of attention. In fact, many changes to one’s state of consciousness have very little to do with changes to perceptual features like color, brightness, auditory pitch, tactile sensations, or the texture of thought. At times, one can tell that one’s state of consciousness has changed dramatically and yet it is very hard to pin-point exactly what that change consists of. In many of those cases, that’s because the change is primarily attentional. Thus, learning about alternative modes of attention is an important tool to enable higher quality phenomenological reports and replications. It has the added bonus that knowing a broad range of attentional modes can radically enhance one’s meditation practice.
Join us in this guided meditation to get acquainted with a much broader set of attentional modes.
In this guided meditation Andrés walks you through a variety of methods to modulate the “energy parameter” of experience. This is a building block for the framework of Neural Annealing in the nervous system, which explores how (suitably defined) energy impacts internal representations, facilitates solving constraint satisfaction problems, and has the potential to lead to sustainable high valence states of consciousness by reducing internal stress.
We explore energy sources such as (a) sensory input, (b) pleasure and pain, (c) attention, (d) and surprise. Additionally a wide range of techniques for how to build, manage, and skillfully deploy the energy are discussed and practiced.
QRI’s Tracer Tool (as an example for how to measure an aspect of the visual energy parameter)
Textures of Valence – Consonance, Dissonance, and Noise
In this guided mediation Andrés walks you through:
A factorization of experience into three main channels with their corresponding inner and outer versions: “see”, “hear”, and “feel”.
Using your energy body as an antenna capable of picking both shapes and frequencies of internal representations: the duality between form and vibration in the phenomenal world.
Symmetry & smooth geometry as the foundation for valence.
Consonance, dissonance, and noise as a way to obtain a readout of the valence of our world-simulation.
A number of pragmatic strategies for addressing phenomenal dissonance.
Relevant Links:
Michael Johnson’s Principia Qualia first introduced the Symmetry Theory of Valence, valence structuralism, and qualia formalism
The Consonance Disonance Noise Signature framework first introduced by Andrés Gómez Emilsson in Quantifying Bliss
In this guided meditation Andrés helps you explore the way in which attention constructs local binding connections between phenomenal features and how the flow of attention and awareness can be modeled with the graph algorithm called PageRank.
Topics covered:
Review of the nature of attention: what you pay attention gets stronger, gets locally bound, and gets connected to what you were paying attention right before
Noticing local binding in See, Hear, Feel (inner & outer)
Cross-modal coupling: divide and conquer technique for preventing negative valence and a coherence technique to enhance positive valence
Oscillatory complementarity between awareness and attention
How objects of perception can play the role of witnesses and witnessed elements of a scene
Hybrid attentional modes
Chains of witnessing and Nth-order intentionality
PageRank of attention
Space witnessing space
These are all very helpful techniques and insights to practice and add to your Qualia Mastery Toolkit.
The Thermodynamics of Consciousness and the Ecosystem of Agents
In this guided meditation Andrés walks you through QRI’s recent work on:
The Thermodynamics of Consciousness: how energy flows from energy sources (sensory stimulation, valence, attention, surprise, and the background noise signature) towards the bound field of consciousness, which is then shaped via the energy sink landscape of symmetry and recognition, and then exit via motor action or “outer field radiation”.
And,
The Ecosystem of Agents: our minds work somewhat similar to a next-token prediction engine like GPT-4, where the existing constraints help resolve the ambiguity of the regions of experience which remain amorphous. In order to make accurate predictions of the world, we need to actually simulate agentive behavior (because the world of full of agents). To do this we create “subagents” that play the role of agentive forces so that we can predict them (and ultimately remain safe).
The meditation also walks through a series of strategies for dealing with subagents in order to harmonize them and experience a healthy and wholesome ecosystem of friendly subagents that help each other in beautiful ways:
Improve the training data
Practice the meditation where you guide lost subagents to a pool of love that re-absorbs them
Good vibes as base: your mood provides the evolutionary selection pressures for agentive forces, so cultivating beautiful mindsets will enable more friendly agents to arise
More Dakka on equanimity and metta
Reward clean intentions before flattery (there’s a vibe to transparent intentions)
Explore different network structures for agents that are more easily manageable
High-Valence Calisthenics – Exploring the Heaven Worlds
In this guided meditation Andrés walks you through a wide range of possible high-valence states of consciousness, aka. phenomenal “heaven worlds”.
Calisthenics are exercises that you can perform with minimal equipment and that are intended to exercise every muscle group in the body. Now what would it mean to do “meditation calisthenics”? Well, that you exercise every kind of meditative approach in order to keep all of your “meditation muscles” fit. More specifically, “high-valence calisthenics” would be the practice of engaging with every kind of positive valence state of consciousness achievable without the aid of external aids (whether chemical, sensorial, or situational).
In this guided meditation we go through the high-valence configurations of “see, hear, feel” (inner & outer), artistic states of consciousness, social mindsets, metta, “cosmic party mode”, the worlds of insight, intellectual understanding, realization, and the modes of being of refined and purified high-valence (Jhanas).
We conclude by dedicating these beautiful qualities of the mind for the benefit of all beings.
“Calisthenics (American English) or callisthenics (British English) (/ˌkælɪsˈθɛnɪks/) is a form of strength training consisting of a variety of movements that exercise large muscle groups (gross motor movements), such as standing, grasping, pushing, etc. These exercises are often performed rhythmically and with minimal equipment, as bodyweight exercises. They are intended to increase strength, fitness, and flexibility, through movements such as pulling, pushing, bending, jumping, or swinging, using one’s body weight for resistance in pull-ups, push-ups, squats, etc. Calisthenics can provide the benefits of muscular and aerobic conditioning, in addition to improving psychomotor skills such as balance, agility, and coordination.” (source)
Divine Qualia – Open Sourcing God
Without making any ontological, philosophical, or metaphysical assertions or assumptions, we point out that the phenomenology of the divine and in particular the concept of “God” has an important resonance for the human soul. Therefore exploring this phenomenology is essential for a complete direct understanding of consciousness.
In this guided meditation Andrés walks you through an exploration of the phenomenology of different conceptions of the divine. The key guiding question for this exploration is: what does it feel like to inhabit the phenomenal world in which God is conceived in this or that way? Rather than pursuing a specific conception, we instead engage in an open ended exploration of the divine for the sake of developing Qualia Mastery. We call this approach “Open Sourcing God”, where one is not dependent on other’s interpretations or rules to access the God of one’s own understanding.
Conceptions of the divine explored include Chaos, Ingroup, Hierarchy, Creator, The Law, Archetype, Replication, Dynamics, Life, Energy, Coincidence and Synchronicity, Love, Compassion, Witness, Consciousness, Awareness, Oneness, Axis of Annealing, and Valence.
In this guided meditation Andrés walks you through a series of exercises that illustrates harmonic resonance in the energy body and then channels excess energy into high-valence tactile sensations (cf. Piti), which can be a possible foundation practice for the 1st Jhana.
The meditation focuses on the inner and outer “feel” channels for (see, hear feel) X (inner, outer) as formulated by the “factorization of experience” introduced by Shinzen Young in his Unified Mindfulness framework. When necessary feel free to use the inner and outer “see” channel for support, but try to keep “feel” primary. We explore the following kinds of oscillations:
On/off
Left/right
Top/bottom
Front/back
Expand/contract
Toroidal flow (up, down, both at once)
Checkerboard pattern
Zebra pattern
Homogenous attention in space
Space qualities: solid, liquid, magnetic, viscosity, gaseous, plasma
Pleasure, joy, peace
Laminal flow and energy management techniques
It is recommended that one first listens to the guided meditations about Energy, Attention, and Valence of this Qualia Mastery series before doing this one.
In this guided meditation Andrés guides you through what believing in different ontologies feels like.
Without making any claim (implicit or otherwise) about the nature of reality, one can still explore the phenomenology of ontology. Namely, explore what it is like to inhabit a phenomenal word in which the building blocks of reality are rendered as being this or that.
At a very high level, one key insight is that one can notice how different facets of one’s experience reify, solidity, and rigidify an ontology. For example, this shows up in “dualism”. In this ontology, one posits that the universe has both matter and mind. This has the tendency to trigger the feeling of being encased or trapped in your body. But pay attention! If you notice carefully, you will realize that this is implemented with somatic feelings that rigidify the sense of being caged inside your body. This sense is, ultimately, a fabrication, rather than a realization. It’s just how the mind chooses to render that particular sense of reality.
Following this insight, we notice how there is a transmutation from the ontology one believes in, into a characteristic phenomenology of existence (and back). In fact, “the pain of dualism” is a feedback loop that involves somatic sensations, and not something intrinsic to a belief system. Similarly, every other ontology tends to trigger phenomenological feedback loops for its rendering. Pay attention! 🙂
The ontologies we explore in this meditation include:
(1) Dualism: Mind and matter. (2) Trinitarianism of matter, consciousness, and space. (3) Atomism – we know that science confirmed the ancient view of atomism, but notice how without some kind of holism/binding, only “mind dust” can exist. (4) Jain ontology (in which there are ~9 fundamental kinds of ontological building blocks of reality) – space, time, dynamism (movement and rest), atoms that can combine, the soul, and all kinds of “karma particles”. (5) Monism – It’s all qualia. It’s all awareness. It’s all information. It’s all algorithms or computation. It’s all belief. It’s all a social construction (cf. Strong Tlon Hypothesis) (6) Ontologies of infinities. (7) Ontologies of Zero. In particular, we zoom in on David Pearce’s Zero Ontology, in which the reason why there is something rather than nothing is that “zero information” is the case (and this implies the existence of all mutually-consistent universes of bound qualia).
This last ontology is particularly powerful: when explored deeply, it can trigger the “Rainbow God” phenomenology, where all of the flavors of qualia come together and “cancel each other out”. This is highly related to the phenomenology of 5-MeO-DMT as well as that of the formless Jhanas.
Gain deeper phenomenological insights into consciousness and use them to enhance meditation practice, overall wellbeing, and your capacity to report your subjective experiences accuratelyhttps://t.co/8suXnHNmmxpic.twitter.com/8ZTGiP2SVy
— Qualia Research Institute (@QualiaRI) June 13, 2023
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
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.
“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.”
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!
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.
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.
A thorough explanation of how the science of consciousness and valence structuralism inform ethics and what the Effective Altruism movement is missing.
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.
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!
A wide-ranging discussion and sharing of perspectives covering jhāna, Brahmavihārās, comparisons with psychedelic states, and the journey to and from the Absolute.
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?
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.
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:
