videos

7 Recent Videos: Cognitive Sovereignty, Phenomenology of Scent, Solution to the Problem of Other Minds, Novel Qualia Research Methods, Higher Dimensions, Solution to the Binding Problem, and Qualia Computing

Posted on by algekalipso

[Context: 4th in a series of 7-video packages. See the previous three packages: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd]

Cognitive Sovereignty: How Do You Incentivize Genuinely New Thoughts? (link)

Genuinely new thoughts are actually very rare. Why is that? And how can we incentivize the good side of smart people to focus their energies on having genuinely new thoughts for the benefit of all? In order to create the conditions for that we need to strike the right balance between many complementary forces.

I offer a new ideal we call “Cognitive Sovereignty”. This ideal consists of three principles working together in synergy: (1) Freedom of Thought and Feeling, (2) Idea Ownership, and (3) Information Responsibility.

(1) Freedom of Thought and Feeling is the cultivation of a child-like wonder and positive attitude towards the ideas of one another. A “Yes And” approach to idea sharing.

As QRI advisors Anders Amelin and Margareta “Maggie” Wassinge write on the topic:

“On the topic of liberty of mind, we may reflect that inhibitory mechanisms are typically strong within groups of people. As is the case within minds of individuals. In minds it’s this tip of the iceberg which gets rendered as qualia and is the end result of unexperienced hierarchies of powerfully constraining filters. It’s really practical for life forms to function this way and for teams made up of life forms to function similarly, but for making grand improvements to the very foundations of life itself, you need maximum creativity instead of the default self-organizing consensus emergence.

“There is creativity-limiting pressure to conform to ‘correctness’ everywhere. Paradigmatic correctness in science, corporate correctness in business, social correctness, political correctness, and so on. As antidotes to chaos these can serve a purpose but for exceptional intellectual work to blossom they are quite counterproductive. There is something to be said for Elon Musk’s assertion that ‘excellence is the only passing grade’.

“The difference to the future wellbeing of sentient entities between the QRI becoming something pretty much overall OK-ish, and the QRI becoming something of great excellence, is probably bigger than between the corresponding outcomes for Tesla Motors.

“The creativity of the team is down to this exact thing: The qualia computing of the gut feeling getting to enjoy a haven of liberty all too rare elsewhere.”

On (2) we can say that to “be the adult in the room” is also equally important. As Michael Johnson puts it, “it’s important to keep track of the metadata of ideas.” One cannot incentivize smart people to share ideas if they don’t feel like others will recognize who came up with them. While not everyone pays close attention to who says what in conversation, we think that a reasonable level of attention on this is necessary to align incentives. Obviously too much emphasis on Idea Ownership can be stifling and generate excessive overhead. So having open conversations about (failed) attribution while assuming the best from others is also a key practice to make Idea Ownership good for everyone.

And finally, (3) is the principle of “Information Responsibility”. This is the “wise old person” energy and attitude that deeply cares about the effects that information has on the world. Simple heuristics like “information wants to be free” and the ideal of a fully “open science” are pleasant to think about, but in practice they may lead to disasters on a grand scale. From gain of function research in virology to analysis of water pipes in cities, cutting-edge research can at times encounter novel ways of causing great harm. It’s imperative that one resists the urge to share them with the world for the sake of signaling how smart one is (which is the default path for the vast majority of people and institutions!). One needs to cultivate the wisdom to consider the long-term vision and only share ideas one knows are safe for the world. Here, of course, we need a balance: too much emphasis on information security can be a tactic to thwart other’s work and may be undully onerous and stifling. Striking the right balance is the goal.

The full synergy between these three principles of Cognitive Sovereignty, I think, is what allows people to think new thoughts.

I also cover two new key ideas: (a) Canceling Paradise and (b) Multi-level Selection and how it interacts with Organizational Freedom.

~Qualia of the Day: Long Walks on the Beach~

Relevant links:

Towards an Enlightened Phenomenology of Scent: What’s an Aromatic Fougère at the Deepest Level? (link)

In this talk we analyze the perfume category called “Aromatic Fougère” in order to illustrate the aesthetic of “Qualiacore” in its myriad manifestations.

Definition: The Qualiacore Aesthetic is the practice and aspiration to describe experiences in new, meaningful, and non-trivial ways that are illuminating for our understanding of the nature of consciousness.

At a high-level, we must note that the classic ways of describing the phenomenology of scents tend to “miss the target”. Learning about the history, cultural imports, associations, and similarities between perfumes can be fun to do but it does not advance an accurate phenomenological impression of what it is that we are talking about. And while reading about the “perfume notes” of a composition can place it in a certain location relative to other perfumes, such note descriptions usually give you a false sense of understanding and familiarity far removed from the complex subtleties of the state-space of scent. So how can we say new, meaningful, and non-trivial things about a smell?

Note-wise, Aromatic Fougères are typically described as the combination of herbs and spices (the aromatic part) with the core Fougère accord of oak moss, lavender/bergamot, geranium, and coumarin. In this video I offer a qualiacore-style analysis of how these “notes” interact with one another in order to form emergent gestalts. Here we will focus on the phenomenal character of these effects with an emphasis on bringing analogies from dynamic system behavior and energy-management techniques within the purview of the Symmetry Theory of Valence.

In the end, we arrive at a phenomenological fingerprint that cashes out in a comparison to the psychoactive effect of “Calvin Klein” (cocaine + ketamine*), which blends both stimulation and dissociation at the same time – a rather interesting effect that can be used to help you overcome awkwardness barriers in everyday life. “Smooth out the awkwardness landscape with Drakkar Noir!”

I also discuss the art of perfumery in light of QRI’s 8 models of art:

  1. Art as family resemblance (Semantic Deflation)
  2. Art as Signaling (Cool Kid Theory)
  3. Art as Schelling-point creation (a few Hipster-theoretical considerations)
  4. Art as cultivating sacred experiences (self-transcendence and highest values)
  5. Art as exploring the state-space of consciousness (ϡ☀♘🏳️‍🌈♬♠ヅ)
  6. Art as something that messes with the energy parameter of your mind (ꙮ)
  7. Art as puzzling valence effects (emotional salience and annealing as key ingredients)
  8. Art as a system of affective communication: a protolanguage to communicate information about worthwhile qualia (which culminates in Harmonic Society).

~Qualia of the Day: Aromatic Fougères~

* Extremely ill-advised.

Relevant links:

Are Others Conscious? Solving the Problem of Other Minds with Mindmelding and Phenomenal Puzzles (link)

How do you know for sure that other people (and non-human animals) are conscious?

The so-called “problem of other minds” asks us to consider whether we truly have any solid basis for believing that “we are not alone”. In this talk I provide a new, meaningful, and non-trivial solution to the problem of other minds using a combination of mindmelding and phenomenal puzzles in the right sequence such that one can gain confidence that others are indeed “solving problems with qualia computing” and in turn infer that they are independently conscious.

This explanatory style contrasts with typical “solutions” to the problem of other minds that focus on either historical, behavioral, or algorithmic similarities between oneself and others (e.g. “passing a Turing test”). Here we explore what the space of possible solutions looks like and show that qualia formalism can be a key to unlock new kinds of understanding currently out of reach within the prevailing paradigms in philosophy of mind. But even with qualia formalism, the radical skeptic solipsist will not be convinced. Direct experience and “proof” is necessary to convince a hardcore solipsist since intellectual “inferential” arguments can always be mere “figments of one’s own imagination”. We thus explore how mindmelding can greatly increase our certainty of other’s consciousness. However, skeptical worries may still linger: how do you know that the source of consciousness during mindmelding is not your brain alone? How do you know that the other brain is conscious while you are not connected to it? We thus introduce “phenomenal puzzles” into the picture: these are puzzles that require the use of “qualia comparisons” to be solved. In conjunction with a specific mindmelding information sharing protocol, such phenomenal puzzles can, we argue, actually fully address the problem of other minds in ways even strong skeptics will be satisfied with. You be the judge! 🙂

~Qualia of the Day: Wire Puzzles~

Many thanks to: Everyone who has encouraged the development of the field of qualia research over the years. David Pearce for encouraging me to actually write out my thoughts and share them online, Michael Johnson for our multi-year deep collaboration at QRI, and Murphy-Shigematsu for pushing me over the edge to start working on “what I had been putting off” back in 2014 (which was the trigger to actually write the first Qualia Computing post). In addition, I’d like to thank everyone at the Stanford Transhumanist Association for encouraging me so much over the years (Faust, Karl, Juan-Carlos, Blue, Todor, Keetan, Alan, etc.). Duncan Wilson for the beautiful times discussing these matters. Romeo Stevens for the amazing vibes and high-level thoughts. And of course everyone at QRI, especially Quintin Frerichs, Andrew Zuckerman, Anders and Maggie, and the list goes on (Mackenzie, Sean, Hunter, Elin, Wendi, etc.). Likewise, everyone at Qualia Computing Networking (the closed facebook group where we discuss a lot of these ideas), our advisors, donors, readers, and of course those watching these videos. Much love to all of you!

Relevant links:

“Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner” – To understand all is to forgive all.

Paradigm-Shifting Qualia Research Methods: How to Take Exotic States of Consciousness Seriously (link)

“New scientific paradigms essentially begin life as conspiracy theories, noticing the inconsistencies the previous paradigm is suppressing. Early adopters undergo a process that Kuhn likens to religious deconversion.” – Romeo Stevens

The field of consciousness research lacks a credible synthesis of what we already know about the mind. One key thing that is holding back the science of consciousness is that it’s currently missing an adequate set of methods to “take seriously” the implications of exotic states of consciousness. Imagine a physicist saying that “there is nothing about water that we can learn from studying ice”. Silly as it may be, the truth is that this is the typical attitude about exotic consciousness in modern neuroscience. And even with the ongoing resurgence of scientific interest in psychedelics, outside of QRI and Ingram’s EPRC there is no real serious attempt at mapping the state-space of consciousness in detail. This is to a large extent because we lack the vocabulary, tools, concepts, and focus at a paradigmatic level to do so. But a new paradigm is arriving, and the following 8 new research methods and others in the works will help bring it about:

  1. Taking Exotic States of Consciousness Seriously (e.g. when a world-class phenomenologist says that 3D-printed Poincaré projections of hyperbolic honeycombs make the visual system “glitch” when on DMT the rational response is to listen and ask questions rather than ignore and ridicule).
  2. High-Quality Phenomenology: Precise descriptions of the phenomenal character of experience. Core strategy: useful taxonomies of experience, a language to describe generalized synesthesia (multi-modal coherence), and a rich vocabulary to convey the statistical regularities of textures of qualia (cf. generalizing the concept of “mongrels” in the neuroscience of visual perception to all other modalities).
  3. Phenomenology Club: Critical mass of smart and rational psychonauts.
  4. Psychedelic Turk for Psychophysics: Real-time psychedelic task completion.
  5. Generalized Wada Test: What happens when half of your brain is on LSD and the other half is on ketamine?
  6. Resonance-Based Hedonic Mapping: You are a network of coupled oscillators. Act like it!
  7. Pair Qualia Cartography: Like pair programming but for exploring the state-space of consciousness with non-invasive neurostimulation.
  8. Cognitive Sovereignty: Furthering a culture that has a “Yes &” approach to creativity, keeps track of meta-data, and takes responsibility for the information it puts out.

~Qualia of the Day: Being Taken Seriously~

Relevant links:

Are Higher Dimensions Real? From Numerology to Precision Xenovalence – 4 5 6 8 10 12 16 20 24 32 (link)

Many people report experiencing “higher dimensions” during deep meditation and/or psychedelic experiences. Vaporized DMT in particular reliably produces this effect in a large percentage of users. But is this an illusion? Is there anything meaningful to it? What could possibly be going on?

In this video we provide a steel man (or titanium man?) of the idea that higher dimensions are *real* in a new, meaningful, and non-trivial sense. 

We must emphasize that most people who believe that DMT experiences are “higher dimensional” interpret their experiences within a direct realist framework. Meaning that they think they are “tuning in” to other dimensions, that some secret sense organ capable of perceiving the etheric realm was “activated”, that awareness into divine realms became available to their soul, or something along those lines. In brief, such interpretations operate under the notion that we can perceive the world directly somehow. In this video, we instead work under the premise that we live in a compact world-simulation generated by our nervous system. If DMT gives rise to “higher dimensional experiences”, then such dimensions will be phenomenological in nature.

We thus try to articulate how it can be possible for an *experience* to acquire higher dimensions. An important idea here is that there is a trade-off between degrees of freedom and geometric dimensions. We present a model where degrees of freedom can become interlocked in such a way that they functionally emulate the behavior of a *virtual* higher dimension. As exemplified by the “harmonograph”, one can indeed couple and interlock multiple oscillators in such a way that one generates paths of a point in a space that is higher-dimensional than the space inhabited by any of the oscillators on their own. More so, with a long qualia decay, one can use such technique to “paint” entire images in a *virtual* high dimensional canvas!

High-quality detailed phenomenology of DMT by rational psychonauts strongly suggests that higher virtual dimensions are widely present in the state. Also, the unique valence properties of the state seem to follow what we could call a “generalized music theory” where the “vibe” of the space is the net consonance between all of the metronomes in it. We indeed see a duality between spatial symmetry and temporal synchrony with modality-specific symmetries (equivariance maps) constraining the dynamic behavior.

This, together with the Symmetry Theory of Valence (Johnson), makes the search for “special divine numbers” suddenly meaningful: numerological correspondences can illuminate the underlying makeup of “heaven worlds” and other hedonically-loaded states of mind!

I conclude with a discussion about the nature of “highly-meaningful experiences”. In light of all of these frameworks, meaning can be understood as a valence effect that arises when you have strong consonance between abstract (narrative and symbolic), emotional, and sensory fields all at once. A key turning point in your life combined with the right emotion and the right “sacred space” can thus give rise to “peak meaning”. The key to infinite bliss!

~Qualia of the Day: Numerology~

Relevant links:

Thumbnail Image Source: Petri G., Expert P., Turkheimer F., Carhart-Harris R., Nutt D., Hellyer P. J. and Vaccarino F. 2014 Homological scaffolds of brain functional networks J. R. Soc. Interface.112014087320140873 – https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2014.0873

Solving the Phenomenal Binding Problem: Topological Segmentation as the Correct Explanation Space (link)

How can a bundle of atoms form a unified mind? This is far from a trivial question, and it demands an answer.

The phenomenal binding problem asks us to consider exactly that. How can spatially and temporally distributed patterns of neural activity contribute to the contents of a unified experience? How can various cognitive modules interlock to produce coherent mental activity that stands as a whole?

To address this problem we first need to break down “the hard problem of consciousness” into manageable subcomponents. In particular, we follow Pearce’s breakdown of the problem where we posit that any scientific theory of consciousness must answer: (1) why consciousness exists at all, (2) what are the set of qualia variety and values, and what is the nature of their interrelationships, (3) the binding problem, i.e. why are we not “mind dust”?, and (4) what are the causal properties of consciousness (how could natural selection recruit experience for information processing purposes, and why is it that we can talk about it). We discuss how trying to “solve consciousness” without addressing each of these subproblems is like trying to go to the Moon without taking into account air drag, or the Moon’s own gravitational field, or the fact that most of outer space is an air vacuum. Illusionism, in particular, seems to claim “the Moon is an optical illusion” (which would be true for rainbows – but not for the Moon, or consciousness).

Zooming in on (3), we suggest that any solution to the binding problem must: (a) avoid strong emergence, (b) side-step the hard problem of consciousness, (c) circumvent epiphenomenalism, and (d) be compatible with the modern scientific word picture, namely the Standard Model of physics (or whichever future version achieves full causal closure).

Given this background, we then explain that “the binding problem” as stated is in fact conceptually insoluble. Rather, we ought to reformulate it as the “boundary problem”: reality starts out unified, and the real question is how it develops objective and frame invariant boundaries. Additionally, we explain that “classic vs. quantum” is a false dichotomy, at least in so far as “classical explanations” are assumed to involve particles and forces. Field behavior is in fact ubiquitous in conscious experience, and it need not be quantum to be computationally relevant! In fact, we argue that nothing in experience makes sense except in light of holistic field behavior.

We then articulate exactly why all of the previously proposed solutions to the binding problem fail to meet the criteria we outlined. Among them, we cover:

  1. Cellular Automata
  2. Complexity
  3. Synchrony
  4. Integrated Information
  5. Causality
  6. Spatial Proximity
  7. Behavioral Coherence
  8. Mach Principle
  9. Resonance

Finally, we present what we believe is an actual plausible solution to the phenomenal binding problem that satisfies all of the necessary key constraints:

10. Topological segmentation

The case for (10) is far from trivial, which is why it warrants a detailed explanation. It results from realizing that topological segmentation allows us to simultaneously obtain holistic field behavior useful for computation and new and natural regions of fields that we could call “emergent separate beings”. This presents a completely new paradigm, which is testable using elements of the cohomology of electromagnetic fields.

We conclude by speculating about the nature of multiple personality disorder and extreme meditation and psychedelic states of consciousness in light of a topological solution to the boundary problem. Finally, we articulate the fact that, unlike many other theories, this explanation space is in principle completely testable.

~Qualia of the Day: Acqua di Gio by Giorgio Armani and Ambroxan~

Relevant links:

Qualia Computing: How Conscious States Are Used For Efficient And Non-Trivial Information Processing (link)

Why are we conscious?

The short answer is that bound moments of experience have useful causal and computational properties that can speed up information processing in a nervous system.

But what are these properties, exactly? And how do we know? In this video I unpack this answer in order to explain (or at least provide a proof of concept explanation for) how bound conscious states accomplish non-trivial speedups in computational problems (e.g. such as the problem of visual reification).

In order to tackle this question we first need to (a) enrich our very conception of computation, and (b) also enrich our conception of intelligence.

(a) Computation: We must realize that the Church-Turing Thesis conception of computation only cares about computing in terms of functions. That is, how inputs get mapped to outputs. But a much more general conception of computation also considers how the substrate allows for computational speed-ups via interacting inner states with intrinsic information. More so, if reality is made of “monads” that have non-zero intrinsic information and interact with one another, then our conception of “computation” must also consider monad networks. And in particular, the “output” of a computation may in fact be an inner bound state rather than just a sequence of discrete outputs (!).

(b) Intelligence: currently this is a folk concept poorly formalized by the instruments with which we measure it (primarily in terms of sequential logics-linguistic processing). But, alas, intelligence is a function of one’s entire world-simulation: even the shading of the texture of the table in front of you is contributing to the way you “see the world” and thus reason about it. So, an enriched conception of intelligence must also take into account: (1) binding, (2) the presence of a self, (3) perspective-taking, (4) distinguishing between the trivial and significant, and (5) state-space of consciousness navigation.

Now that we have these enriched conceptions, we are ready to make sense of the computational role of consciousness: in a way, the whole point of “intelligence” is to avoid brute force solutions by instead recruiting an adequate “self-organizing principle” that can run on the universe’s inherent massively parallel nature. Hence, the “clever” way in which our world-simulation is used: as shown by visual illusions, meditative states, psychedelic experiences, and psychophysics, perception is the result of a balance of field forces that is “just right”. Case in point: our nervous system utilizes the holistic behavior of the field of awareness in order to quickly find symmetry elements (cf. Reverse Grassfire Algorithm).

As a concrete example, I articulate the theoretical synthesis QRI has championed that combines Friston’s Free Energy Principle, Atasoy’s Connectome-Specific Harmonic Waves, Carhart-Harris’ Entropic Disintegration, and QRI’s Symmetry Theory of Valence and Neural Annealing to shows that the nervous system is recruiting the self-organizing principle of annealing to solve a wide range of computational problems. Other principles to be discussed at a later time.

To summarize: the reason we are conscious is because being conscious allows you to recruit self-organizing principles that can run on a massively parallel fashion in order to find solutions to problems at [wave propagation] speed. Importantly, this predicts it’s possible to use e.g. a visual field on DMT in order to quickly find the “energy minima” of a physical state that has been properly calibrated to correspond to the dynamics of a worldsheet in that state. This is falsifiable and exciting.

I conclude with a description of the Goldilock’s Zone of Oneness and why to experience it.

~Qualia of the Day: Dior’s Eau Sauvage (EDT)~

Relevant links:

7 Recent Videos: Buddhist Annealing, Is This a Simulation?, The Purple Pill, DMT vs. 5-MeO-DMT, Digital Sentience, Psychedelics and the Free Energy Principle, and Advanced Visions of Paradise

Posted on by algekalipso

[Context: 3rd in a series of 7-video packages. See the previous two packages: 1st and 2nd]

[Featured image by Wendi Yan.]

Buddhist Annealing: Wireheading Done Right with the Seven Factors of Awakening (link)

This video discusses the connections between meditative flow (any feeling of change) and the two QRI paradigms of “Wireheading Done Right” and “Neural Annealing”. To do so, I explore how each of the “seven factors of awakening” can be interpreted as operations that you do to flow. In a nutshell: the factors are “energy management techniques”, which when used in the right sequences and dosages, tend to result in wholesome neural annealing.

I then go on to discuss two fascinating dualities: (1) The dual relationship between standing wave patterns and vibratory frequencies. And (2) the dual correspondence between annealing at the computational level (REBUS) and annealing in resonance networks.

(1) Describes how the crazy patterns that come out of meditation and psychedelics are not irrelevant. They are, in a way, the dual counterpart to the emotional processing that you are undergoing. Hence why ugly emotions manifest as discordant structures whereas blissful feelings come together with beautiful geometries.

(2) Articulates how simulated annealing methods in probabilistic graphical models such as those that underlie the synthesis of entropic disintegration and the free energy principle (Friston’s and Carhart-Harris’ REBUS model) describe belief updating. Whereas annealing at the implementation level refers to a dissonance-minimization technique in resonance networks. In turn, if these are “two sides of the same coin”, we can expect to find that operations in one domain will translate to operations in the other domain. In particular, I discuss how resisting information (“denial”, “cognitive dissonance”) has a corresponding subjective texture associated with muscle tension, “resistance”, viscosity, and hardness. Equanimity, in turn, allows the propagation of both waves of dissonance, consonance, and noise as well as bundles of information. This has major implications for how to maximize the therapeutic benefit of psychedelics.

Finally, I explain how we could start formalizing Shinzen Young’s observation that you can, not only “read the contents of your subconscious”, but indeed also “heal your subconscious by greeting it with enough concentration, clarity, and equanimity”. Negentropy in the resonance network (patches of highly-ordered “combed” coherent resonance across levels of the hierarchy) can be used to heal patches of dissonance. This is why clean high-valence meditative objects (e.g. metta) can absorb and dissipate the internal dissonance stored in patterns of habitual responses. In turn, this might ultimately allow us to explain why, speaking poetically, it is true that love can heal all wounds. 🙂

~Qualia of the Day: Nirvana Rose~

(Skip to ~10:00 if you don’t need a recap of Wireheading Done Right and Neural Annealing)

[ps. correction – I wrote a 30 page document about my retreat, not a 50 word document]

Relevant Links:

Is This a Simulation? (link)

Will You Take the Simulation Pill?

Warning: Once You Take It There Is No Going Back.

Apologies for the Clickbait. I Can’t Say More Unless You Take the Pill With Me. 🙂

~Qualia of the Day: The Red Pill – With Your Consent, We Will Take It Together~

Relevant Links:

The Purple Pill: What Happens When You Take the Blue and the Red Pill at the Same Time? (link)

“The Purple Pill is the pill that gives you both high hedonic tone and an unprejudiced open-ended approach to the pursuit of truth. For losing truth is to lose it all, but to lose it all is only bad because it makes you and others suffer in the wider universe.” – The Purple Pill (Qualia Computing)

In this talk I explain that the “Blue vs. Red Pill” trope relies on a false dichotomy. You don’t need to choose between depressive realism and comforting illusions. Put differently, you don’t need to choose between truth and happiness. High hedonic tone is not incompatible with one’s representational accuracy of causal structures. The world, and the existence of experiential heaven and hell, can be understood without curling into a ball and crying your way to sleep. More so, effective and persistent action towards the good requires that you don’t believe in this false dichotomy, for sustainable altruistic productivity necessitates both accurate models and positive motivations. Thus, the aspiring paradise engineer ought to be willing to take the Purple Pill to move onwards.

I advocate having a balanced portfolio of (1) efforts to minimize experiential hell, (2) techniques to increase the hedonic baseline sustainably, and (3) methods to reliably experience peak states of consciousness in a sane way.

I do not think that spending 100% of one’s time in “destroying hell” is a sustainable approach to life because it does not allow you to “reinvest” in the conditions that gave rise to one’s goodness to begin with (otherwise you become more of a martyr than an effective player in the field!). More so, the relationship between suffering and productivity is non-trivial, which means that to just helping people who suffer extremely does not generally pay off in terms of productive action towards the cause in the future. Hence, improving baseline is just as important: it is precisely what allows people to go from near zero productivity to a high level of productivity. Finally, the benefits of having access to reliable, pro-social ultra-blissful states of consciousness should not be underestimated. They are an important piece of the puzzle because they motivate the “animal self” and are deeply reassuring. Thus, as a “package”, I see a lot of potential in simultaneously reducing negative extremes, improving the baseline, and achieving new heights of bliss. This, to me, is what I see as the path forward.

Topics I cover span: Trungpa’s “Spiritual Materialism” (the attitude of using exalted states of consciousness to “decorate our ego”), optimization problems/reinvesting in the good, sane in-group/out-group dynamics, the game theory of virtue signaling, and the importance of having an explicit commitment to the wellbeing of all sentient beings (to prevent value drift).

~Qualia of the Day: Spiritual Materialism~

Relevant Links:

Thanks Mike Johnson and David Pearce for many conversations on this topic.

DMT vs. 5-MeO-DMT: 12 Key Differences (link)

What are the differences between DMT and 5-MeO-DMT? And what gives rise to those differences? In this video we discuss 12 different ways to analyze the strange and unique effects of these substances. We go over the 9 lenses already discussed in Qualia Computing* and add three more.

Starting with three new lenses (5-MeO-DMT left/DMT right):

A) Global Coherence vs. Competing Clusters of Coherence: 5-MeO-DMT gives rise to a global coherent state (the so-called “unified energy field”), whereas DMT gives rise to an ecosystem of time-loops, each trying to capture as much of your attention as possible, which in turn results in coalition-building and evolution of patterns in the direction of being very “attention grabbing” (cf. reddit.com/r/place).

B) Really Positive or Really Negative Valence vs. Highly-Mixed Valence: 5-MeO-DMT gives rise to either a globally coherent state (high-valence) or two competing coherent states (negative-valence), whereas DMT tends to generate complex consonance/dissonance relationships between the clusters of coherence.

C) How they are different according the the Free Energy Principle: On 5-MeO-DMT the entire experience has to reinforce itself, whereas each cluster of coherence needs to model the rest of the experience in order to be reinforced by it on DMT. Thus 5-MeO-DMT makes experiences that express “the whole as the whole” whereas DMT makes each part of the experience represent the whole yet remains distinct.

And the original 9 lenses:

1) Space vs. Form: 5-MeO is more space-like than DMT.
2) Crystals vs. Quasi-Crystals: 5-MeO generates more perfectly repeating rhythms and hallucinations than DMT.
3) Non-Attachment vs. Attachment: 5-MeO seems to enable detachment from the craving of both existence and non-existence, whereas DMT enhances the craving.
4) Underfitting vs. Overfitting: 5-MeO reduces one’s model complexity whereas DMT radically increases it.
5) Fixed Points and Limit Cycles vs. Chaotic Attractors: 5-MeO’s effect on feedback leads to stable and predictable attractors while DMT’s attractors are inherently chaotic.
6) Modulation of Lateral Inhibition: 5-MeO may reduce lateral inhibition while DMT may enhance it.
7) Diffuse Attention vs. Focused Attention: 5-MeO diffuses attention uniformly over large regions of one’s experiential field, while DMT seems to focus it.
8) Big Chunks and Tiny Chunks vs. A Power Law of Chunks: 5-MeO creates a few huge phases of experience (as in phases of matter) with a few remaining specks, while DMT produces a more organic power law distribution of chunk sizes.
9) Integration vs. Fragmentation: 5-MeO seems to give rise to “neural integration” involving the entrainment of any two arbitrary subnetworks (even when they usually do not talk to each other), while DMT fragments communication between most networks but massively enhances it between some specific kinds of networks.

I also explain what is going on with the “Megaminx DMT worlds” and when DMT entities bully you into believing in their independent existence.

~Qualia of the Day: Rheoscopic Fluid~

Relevant Links:

Digital Sentience: Can Digital Computers Ever “Wake Up”? (link)

I start by acknowledging that most smart and well-informed people today believe that digital computers can be conscious. More so, they believe this for good reasons.

In general, 99.99% of the times when someone says that digital computers cannot be conscious they do so equipped with very bad arguments. This, of course, does not mean that all of these smart people who believe in digital sentience are right. In fact, I argue that they are making a critical yet entirely non-obvious mistake: they are not taking into account a sufficiently detailed set of constraints that any scientific theory of consciousness must satisfy. In this video I go over what those constraints are, and in what way they actually entail that digital sentience is literally impossible.

The talk is divided into three parts: (1) my philosophical journey, which I share in order to establish credibility, (2) classic issues in philosophy of mind, and (3) how we can solve all those issues with QRI’s theory of consciousness.

(Skip to 31:00 if you are not interested in my philosophical journey and you want to jump into the philosophy of mind right away).

(1) I’ve been hyper-philosophical all my life and have dedicated thousands of hours working on this topic: having discussions with people in the field, writings essays, studying qualia in all manners of exotic states of consciousness, and working through the implications of different philosophical background assumptions. I claim that QRI’s views here are indeed much more informed than anyone would assume if they just heard that we think digital computers cannot be conscious. In fact, most of us started out as hard-core computationalists and only switched sides once we fully grokked the limitations of that view! Until the age of 20 I was a huge proponent of digital sentience, and I planned my life around that very issue. So it was a big blow to find out that I was neglecting key pieces of the puzzle that David Pearce, and later Mike Johnson, brought up when I met them in person. In particular, they made me aware of the importance of the “phenomenal binding/boundary problem”; once I finally understood it, everything unraveled from there.

(2) We go over: Marr’s levels of analysis (and “interactions between levels”). The difference between functionalism, computationalism, causal structure, and physicalist theories of consciousness. The Chinese Room. Multiple Realizability. Epiphenomenalism. Why synchrony is not enough for binding. Multiple Drafts Theory of consciousness. And the difference between awareness and attention.

(3) We solve the boundary problem with topological segmentation: this allows us to also provide an explanation for what the causal properties of experience are. The integrated nature of fields can be recruited for computation. Topological boundaries are neither epiphenomenal nor frame-dependent. Thus, evolution stumbling upon holistic field behavior of topological pockets of the fields of physics would solve a lot of puzzles in philosophy of mind. In turn, since digital computers don’t use fields of physics for computation, they will never be unified subjects of experience no matter how you program them.

I also discuss issues with IIT’s solution to the binding problem (despite IIT’s whole aesthetic of irreducible causality, their solution makes binding epiphenomenal! The devil’s in the details: IIT says the Minimum Information Partition has “the highest claim of existence” but this leaves all non-minimal partitions untouched. It’s epiphenomenal and thus not actually useful for computation).

Thanks also to Andrew Zuckerman and other QRI folks for great recent discussions on this topic.

~Qualia of the Day: Dennett’s Intentional Stance~

Relevant Links/References:

Psychedelics and the Free Energy Principle: From REBUS to Indra’s Net (link)

Friston’s Free Energy Principle (FEP) is one of those ideas that seem to offer new perspectives on almost anything you point it at.

It seems to synthesize already very high-level ideas into an incredibly general and flexible conceptual framework. It brings together thermodynamics, probabilistic graphical models, information theory, evolution, and psychology. We could say that trying to apply the FEP to literally everything is not a bad idea: it may not explain it all, but we are bound to learn a lot from seeing when it fails.

So what is the FEP? In the words of Friston: “In short, the long-term (distal) imperative — of maintaining states within physiological bounds — translates into a short-term (proximal) avoidance of surprise. Surprise here relates not just to the current state, which cannot be changed, but also to movement from one state to another, which can change. This motion can be complicated and itinerant (wandering) provided that it revisits a small set of states, called a global random attractor, that are compatible with survival (for example, driving a car within a small margin of error). It is this motion that the free-energy principle optimizes.“

Organisms that survive over time must minimize entropy injections from their environment, which means they need to minimize surprise, which unfortunately is computationally intractable, but the information theoretic construct of variational free-energy provides an upper bound on this ground truth surprise, meaning that minimizing it will indirectly minimize surprise. This cashes out in the need to maximize “accuracy – complexity” which prevents both overfitting and underfitting. In the video we go over some of the classical ideas surrounding the FEP: the dark room, active inference, explicit vs. implicit representations, and whether real dynamic systems can be decomposed into Markov blankets. Finally, we cover how the FEP naturally gives rise to predictive coding via hierarchical Bayesian models.

We then talk about Reduced BEliefs Under pSychedelics (REBUS) and explain how Carhart-Harris and Friston interpret psychedelics and the Anarchic Brain in light of the FEP. We then discuss Safron’s countermodel of Strengthened BEliefs Under pSychedelics (SEBUS) and the work coming out of Seth’s lab.

So, that’s how the FEP shows up in the literature today. But what about explaining not only belief changes and perceptual effects, but perhaps also getting into the actual weeds of the ultra bizarre things that happen on psychedelics?

I provide three novel ideas for how the FEP can explain features of exotic experiences:

(1) Dissonance-minimizing resonance networks would naturally balance model complexity due to an inherent “complexity cost” that shows up as dissonance and prediction error minimization when prediction errors give rise to out-of-phase interactions between the layers.

(2) Bayesian Energy Sinks: What you can recognize lowers the (physical) energy of one’s world-sheet. I then blend this with an analysis of symmetrical psychedelic thought-forms as energy-minimizing configurations. On net, we thus experience hybrid “semantic + symmetric” hallucinations.

(3) Indra’s Net: Each “competing cluster of coherence” needs to model its environment in order to synch up with it in a reinforcing way. This leads to attractor states where “everything reflects everything else”.

~Qualia of the Day: Indra’s Net~

Relevant Links:

Advanced Visions of Paradise: From Basic Hedonism to Paradise Engineering (link)

This video was recorded as a way for me to prepare for the speech I gave at the “QRI Summer Party 2021: Advanced Visions of Paradise” (see livestream here). You can think of it as the significantly more in-depth (and higher audio quality!) version of that speech.

The core message of this video is: thinking wholesome, genuinely useful, and novel thoughts about how to build paradise is hard. Doing so without getting caught up in low-dimensional aesthetics and pre-conceptions is very challenging. Most of the “visions of paradise” we find in our culture, media, and art are projections of implicit aesthetics used for human coordination, rather than deeply thought-out and high-dimensional perspectives truly meant to elevate our understanding and inspire us to investigate the Mystery of reality. Aesthetics tend to put the cart before the horse: they tacitly come with a sense of what is good and what is real. Aesthetics are fast, parallel, and collective ways of judging the goodness or badness of images, ideas, and archetypes. They give rise to internal dissonance when you present to them things that don’t fit well with their previous judgements. And due to naïve realism about perception, these judgements are often experienced as “divine revelations”.

To disentangle ourselves from tacit low-dimensional aesthetics, and inspired by the work of Rob Burbea (cf. Soulmaking), I go over what aesthetics consist of: Eros, Psyche, and Logos. Then, to explore high-quality aesthetics relevant to paradise engineering, I go over 7 camps of a hypothetical “Superhappiness Festival”, each representing a different advanced aesthetic: Hedonism, Psychiatry, Wholesome, Paleo, Energy, Self-Organization, and Paradise Engineering. For didactic purposes I also assign a Buddhist Realm (cf. “Opening the Heart of Compassion” by Short & Lowenthal) to each of the camps.

Note: the Buddhist realms are a very general lens, so a more detailed exposition would point out how each of the camps manifests in each of the Buddhist realms. Don’t put too much stock on the precise mapping I present in this video.

~Qualia of the Day: Pure Lands~

Picture by Wendi Yan (wendiyan.com) “The Tower of Paradise Engineering” (also the featured image of this post / image to appear in the forthcoming QRI Book)

For context, here is the party invite/description:

Dear Everyone!

Science fiction and futurism have failed us. Simply put, there is a remarkable lack of exploration when it comes to the role that consciousness (and its exotic states) will play in the unfolding of intelligent agency on Earth. This, of course, is largely understandable: we simply lack adequate conceptual frameworks to make sense of the state-space of consciousness and its myriad properties. Alas, any vision of the future that neglects what we already know about the state-space of consciousness and its potential is, in the final analysis, “missing the point” entirely.

Exotic states of consciousness are consequential for two reasons: (1) they may provide unique computational benefits, and (2) they may have orders of magnitude more bliss, love, and feelings of inherent value.
As Nick Bostrom puts it in Letter From Utopia:

(1) “Mind is a means: for without insight you will get bogged down or lose your way, and your journey will fail.

(2) “Mind is also an end: for it is in the spacetime of awareness that Utopia will exist. May the measure of your mind be vast and expanding.”

In light of the above, let us for once try to be serious consciousness-aware futurists. Then, we must ask, what does paradise look like? What does it feel like? What kinds of exotic synesthetic thought-forms and hyper-dimensional gems populate and imbue the spacetime of awareness that makes up paradise?

Come and join us for an evening of qualia delights and great company: experience and make curious smells, try multi-sensory art installations, and listen to a presentation about what we call “Advanced Visions of Paradise”. Equipped with an enriched experience base and a novel conceptual toolkit, we look forward to have you share your own visions of paradise and discuss ways to bring them into reality.

Infinite Bliss!

Ps. If you are being invited to this event, that means that we value you as a friend of QRI ❤

Pss. Only come if you are fully vaccinated, please!

Key Links:

~Music: People were asking me about the playlist of yesterday’s party. The core idea behind this playlist was to emulate the sequence of aesthetics I talked about in the speech. Namely, the songs are ordered roughly so that each of the 7 camps gets about 1 hour, starting in camp Hedonism and going all the way to camp Paradise Engineering: QRI Summer Party 2021: Advanced Visions of Paradise~

And that’s it for now!

Thank you for tuning in!

Infinite Bliss For All!