Andrés (Qualia Computing) here. Let me briefly connect your article with some work that QRI has done.
First, we take seriously the view of a “moment of experience” and study the contents of such entities. In Empty Individualism, every observer is a “moment of experience” and there is no continuity from one moment to the next; the illusion is caused by the recursive and referential way the content of experience is constructed in brains. We also certainly agree that you can be aware of something without being aware of being aware of it. As we I will get to, this is an essential ingredient in the way subjective time is constructed
The concept of blending is related to our concept of “The Tyranny of the Intentional Object”. Indeed, some people are far more prone to confusing logical or emotional thoughts for revealed truth; introspective ability (which can be explained as the rate at which awareness of a having being aware before happens) varies between people and is trainable to an extent. People who are systematizers can develop logical ontologies of the world that feel inherently true, just as empathizers can experience a made-up world of interpersonal references as revealed true. You could describe this difference in terms of whether blending is happening more frequently with logical or emotional structures. But empathizers and systematizers (and people high on both traits!) can, in addition, be highly introspective, meaning that they recognize those sensations as aspects of their own mind.
The fact that each moment of experience can incorporate informational traces of previous ones allows the brain to construct moments of experience with all kinds of interesting structures. Of particular note is what happens when you take a psychedelic drug. The “rate of qualia decay” lowers due to a generalization of what in visual phenomenology is called “tracers”. The disruption of inhibitory control signals from the cortex leads to the cyclical activation of the thalamus* and thus the “re-living” of previous contents of experience in high-frequency repeating patterns (see “tracers” section of this article). On psychedelics, each moment of experience is “bigger”. You can formalize this by representing each moment of experience as a connected network, where each node is a quale and each edge is a local binding relationship of some sort (whether one is blending or not, may depend on the local topology of the network). In the structure of the network you can encode the information pertaining to many constructed subagents; phenomenal objects that feel like “distinct objects/realities/channels” would be explained in terms of clusters of nodes in the network (e.g. subsets of nodes such that the clustering coefficient within them is much larger than the average clustering coefficient of different subsets of nodes of similar size). As an aside, dissociatives, in particular, drastically change the size of clusters, which phenomenally is experienced as “being aware of more than one reality at once”.
You can encode time-structure into the network by looking at the implicit causality of the network, which gives rise to what we call a pseudo-time arrow. This model can account for all of the bizarre and seemingly unphysical experiences of time people report on psychedelics. As the linked article explains in detail, how e.g. thought-loops, moments of eternity, and time branching can be expressed in the network, and emerge recursively from calls to previous clusters of sensations (as information traces).
Even more strange, perhaps, is the fact that a long rate of qualia decay can give rise to unusual geometry. In particular, if you saturate the recursive calls and bind together a network with a very high branching factor, you get a hyperbolic space (cf. The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes).
That said, perhaps the most important aspect of the investigation has been to encounter a deep connection between felt sense of wellbeing (i.e. “emotional valence”) and the structure of the network. From your article:
For instance, you might notice sensations in your body that were associated with the emotion, and let your mind generate a mental image of what the physical form of those sensations might look like. Then this set of emotions, thoughts, sensations, and visual images becomes “packaged together” in your mind, unambiguously designating it as a mental object.
The claim we would make is that the very way in which this packaging happens gives rise to pleasant or unpleasant mental objects, and this is determined by the structure (rather than “semantic content”) of the experience. Evolution made it such that thoughts that refer to things that are good for the inclusive fitness of our genes get packaged in more symmetrical harmonious ways.
The above is, however, just a partial explanation. In order to grasp the valence effects of meditation and psychedelics, however, it will be important to take into account a number of additional paradigms of neuroscience. I recommend Mike Johnson’s articles: A Future for Neuroscience and The Neuroscience of Meditation. The topic is too broad and complex for me to cover here right now, but I would advance the claim that (1) when you “harmonize” the introspective calls of previously-experienced qualia you up the valence, and (2) the process can lead to “annealing” where the internal structure of the moments of experience are highly-symmetrical, and for reasons we currently don’t understand, this appears to co-occur in a 1-1 fashion with high valence.
I look forward to seeing more of your thoughts on meditation (and hopefully psychedelics, too, if you have personal experience with them).
*The specific brain regions mentioned is a likely mechanism of action but may turn out to be wrong upon learning further empirical facts. The general algorithmic structure of psychedelic effects, though, where every sensation “feels like it lasts longer” will have the downstream implications on the construction of the structure of moments experience either way.
Sure! It is “invariance under an active transformation”. The more energy is trapped in phenomenal spaces that are invariant under active transformations, the more blissful the state seems to be (see “analysis” section of this article).
Definitely. I’ll probably be quoting some of your text in articles on Qualia Computing soon, in order to broaden the bridge between LessWrong-consumable media and consciousness research.
Of all the articles linked, perhaps the best place to start would be the Pseudo-time Arrow. Very curious to hear your thoughts about it.
Really great post!
Andrés (Qualia Computing) here. Let me briefly connect your article with some work that QRI has done.
First, we take seriously the view of a “moment of experience” and study the contents of such entities. In Empty Individualism, every observer is a “moment of experience” and there is no continuity from one moment to the next; the illusion is caused by the recursive and referential way the content of experience is constructed in brains. We also certainly agree that you can be aware of something without being aware of being aware of it. As we I will get to, this is an essential ingredient in the way subjective time is constructed
The concept of blending is related to our concept of “The Tyranny of the Intentional Object”. Indeed, some people are far more prone to confusing logical or emotional thoughts for revealed truth; introspective ability (which can be explained as the rate at which awareness of a having being aware before happens) varies between people and is trainable to an extent. People who are systematizers can develop logical ontologies of the world that feel inherently true, just as empathizers can experience a made-up world of interpersonal references as revealed true. You could describe this difference in terms of whether blending is happening more frequently with logical or emotional structures. But empathizers and systematizers (and people high on both traits!) can, in addition, be highly introspective, meaning that they recognize those sensations as aspects of their own mind.
The fact that each moment of experience can incorporate informational traces of previous ones allows the brain to construct moments of experience with all kinds of interesting structures. Of particular note is what happens when you take a psychedelic drug. The “rate of qualia decay” lowers due to a generalization of what in visual phenomenology is called “tracers”. The disruption of inhibitory control signals from the cortex leads to the cyclical activation of the thalamus* and thus the “re-living” of previous contents of experience in high-frequency repeating patterns (see “tracers” section of this article). On psychedelics, each moment of experience is “bigger”. You can formalize this by representing each moment of experience as a connected network, where each node is a quale and each edge is a local binding relationship of some sort (whether one is blending or not, may depend on the local topology of the network). In the structure of the network you can encode the information pertaining to many constructed subagents; phenomenal objects that feel like “distinct objects/realities/channels” would be explained in terms of clusters of nodes in the network (e.g. subsets of nodes such that the clustering coefficient within them is much larger than the average clustering coefficient of different subsets of nodes of similar size). As an aside, dissociatives, in particular, drastically change the size of clusters, which phenomenally is experienced as “being aware of more than one reality at once”.
You can encode time-structure into the network by looking at the implicit causality of the network, which gives rise to what we call a pseudo-time arrow. This model can account for all of the bizarre and seemingly unphysical experiences of time people report on psychedelics. As the linked article explains in detail, how e.g. thought-loops, moments of eternity, and time branching can be expressed in the network, and emerge recursively from calls to previous clusters of sensations (as information traces).
Even more strange, perhaps, is the fact that a long rate of qualia decay can give rise to unusual geometry. In particular, if you saturate the recursive calls and bind together a network with a very high branching factor, you get a hyperbolic space (cf. The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences: Symmetries, Sheets, and Saddled Scenes).
That said, perhaps the most important aspect of the investigation has been to encounter a deep connection between felt sense of wellbeing (i.e. “emotional valence”) and the structure of the network. From your article:
The claim we would make is that the very way in which this packaging happens gives rise to pleasant or unpleasant mental objects, and this is determined by the structure (rather than “semantic content”) of the experience. Evolution made it such that thoughts that refer to things that are good for the inclusive fitness of our genes get packaged in more symmetrical harmonious ways.
The above is, however, just a partial explanation. In order to grasp the valence effects of meditation and psychedelics, however, it will be important to take into account a number of additional paradigms of neuroscience. I recommend Mike Johnson’s articles: A Future for Neuroscience and The Neuroscience of Meditation. The topic is too broad and complex for me to cover here right now, but I would advance the claim that (1) when you “harmonize” the introspective calls of previously-experienced qualia you up the valence, and (2) the process can lead to “annealing” where the internal structure of the moments of experience are highly-symmetrical, and for reasons we currently don’t understand, this appears to co-occur in a 1-1 fashion with high valence.
I look forward to seeing more of your thoughts on meditation (and hopefully psychedelics, too, if you have personal experience with them).
*The specific brain regions mentioned is a likely mechanism of action but may turn out to be wrong upon learning further empirical facts. The general algorithmic structure of psychedelic effects, though, where every sensation “feels like it lasts longer” will have the downstream implications on the construction of the structure of moments experience either way.
Could you elaborate on how you’re using the word “symmetrical” here?
Also see: The Symmetry Theory of Valence: 2020 Presentation
Sure! It is “invariance under an active transformation”. The more energy is trapped in phenomenal spaces that are invariant under active transformations, the more blissful the state seems to be (see “analysis” section of this article).
Thanks, glad to hear you liked it! I didn’t have a chance to look at your linked stuff yet, but will. :)
Definitely. I’ll probably be quoting some of your text in articles on Qualia Computing soon, in order to broaden the bridge between LessWrong-consumable media and consciousness research.
Of all the articles linked, perhaps the best place to start would be the Pseudo-time Arrow. Very curious to hear your thoughts about it.