This is an interesting summary, and was basically what I guessed STV was getting at, but this is a hypothesis, not a theory. The hypothesis is: what if there is content in the symmetry encoded in various brain states?
I don’t understand is how symmetry in brain readings is supposed to really explain valence better than, say, neurons firing brain areas involved in attraction/repulsion. Is the claim that the symmetry is the qualia of valence? How would symmetries and resonance be exempt from the hard problem any more than neuronal activation?
> How compelling this feels (and just feels!) to investigate is something most readers won’t appreciate unless they’ve experienced altered states of consciousness themselves.
Do you think it should be compelling based on a trip? Is that real evidence? I’m not closed to the possibility in principle, but outside view it sounds like psychedelics just give you an attraction to certain shapes and ideas and give you a sense of insight. That might not be totally unrelated to a relevant observation about valence or qualia, but I don’t see any reason to think pschedelics give you more direct access to the nature of our brains.
Thanks Holly! I’m not advocating for STV, I’m just an interested layperson who’s followed QRI’s work for some time and felt frustrated with everyone here furiously talking past one another.
Is the claim that the symmetry is the qualia of valence? How would symmetries and resonance be exempt from the hard problem any more than neuronal activation?
Yep – if I understand it correctly, the reasoning goes something like “there’s nothing obviously special about biological neurons as a physical substrate, so maybe consciousness is fundamental to the universe but only emerges when physical systems interact with each other/themselves in particular ways”. IIT seems to have that flavour, and STV as well. I don’t know if it solves the hard problem per se, but I can see why a fundamental theory is more appealing than just a brain map of reward/aversion “centers” and the like.
Do you think it should be compelling based on a trip? Is that real evidence?
I wanted to be careful, that’s why I tried to emphasize the word “feels” :P
Trips are compelling evidence that the space of possible conscious experiences is vast and unspeakably weird, and that our “normal” consciousness is just what evolution optimized for to help us get through the day. And so in the endeavour of cataloguing, systematizing, and eventually trying to model qualia, I would trust someone who personally appreciates the vastness of this space, and who is rigorous and detailed about its weirdness.
This is dangerous territory, not just epistemically but politically. Drunk and stoned people’s “deep insights” tend to be dumb nonsense, so why should we trust other druggies’ claims? Sadly, academic psychedelics researchers struggle with this public perception, and their solution is to publish only on clinical applications, as if the changes in consciousness were an embarrassing side effect rather than central to the experience. QRI are the only team I know of who don’t implicitly privilege sobriety and instead explicitly talk about the space of possible qualia. That is something I really appreciate.
As for whether symmetries/harmonies in the qualia experienced on trips are a compelling enough reason to look for symmetries/harmonies in brain data – I really don’t know. But I do think gears-level models of qualia would be useful, and since neuroscience is mostly silent on the topic, symmetries are as good a place as any to start ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
This is an interesting summary, and was basically what I guessed STV was getting at, but this is a hypothesis, not a theory. The hypothesis is: what if there is content in the symmetry encoded in various brain states?
I don’t understand is how symmetry in brain readings is supposed to really explain valence better than, say, neurons firing brain areas involved in attraction/repulsion. Is the claim that the symmetry is the qualia of valence? How would symmetries and resonance be exempt from the hard problem any more than neuronal activation?
> How compelling this feels (and just feels!) to investigate is something most readers won’t appreciate unless they’ve experienced altered states of consciousness themselves.
Do you think it should be compelling based on a trip? Is that real evidence? I’m not closed to the possibility in principle, but outside view it sounds like psychedelics just give you an attraction to certain shapes and ideas and give you a sense of insight. That might not be totally unrelated to a relevant observation about valence or qualia, but I don’t see any reason to think pschedelics give you more direct access to the nature of our brains.
Thanks Holly! I’m not advocating for STV, I’m just an interested layperson who’s followed QRI’s work for some time and felt frustrated with everyone here furiously talking past one another.
Yep – if I understand it correctly, the reasoning goes something like “there’s nothing obviously special about biological neurons as a physical substrate, so maybe consciousness is fundamental to the universe but only emerges when physical systems interact with each other/themselves in particular ways”. IIT seems to have that flavour, and STV as well. I don’t know if it solves the hard problem per se, but I can see why a fundamental theory is more appealing than just a brain map of reward/aversion “centers” and the like.
I wanted to be careful, that’s why I tried to emphasize the word “feels” :P
Trips are compelling evidence that the space of possible conscious experiences is vast and unspeakably weird, and that our “normal” consciousness is just what evolution optimized for to help us get through the day. And so in the endeavour of cataloguing, systematizing, and eventually trying to model qualia, I would trust someone who personally appreciates the vastness of this space, and who is rigorous and detailed about its weirdness.
This is dangerous territory, not just epistemically but politically. Drunk and stoned people’s “deep insights” tend to be dumb nonsense, so why should we trust other druggies’ claims? Sadly, academic psychedelics researchers struggle with this public perception, and their solution is to publish only on clinical applications, as if the changes in consciousness were an embarrassing side effect rather than central to the experience. QRI are the only team I know of who don’t implicitly privilege sobriety and instead explicitly talk about the space of possible qualia. That is something I really appreciate.
As for whether symmetries/harmonies in the qualia experienced on trips are a compelling enough reason to look for symmetries/harmonies in brain data – I really don’t know. But I do think gears-level models of qualia would be useful, and since neuroscience is mostly silent on the topic, symmetries are as good a place as any to start ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯