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Our research collective has been doing a lot of work touching on brain dynamics, resonance, and symmetry: see here and here (video). Increasingly, a new implicit working ontology I'm calling 'Neuroacoustics' is taking shape. This is a quick outline of that new ontology. What is […]
Why do we seek out pleasure what Freud called the "pleasure principle)"? More accurately: why do we seem to seek out pleasure most of the time, but occasionally seem indifferent to it or even averse to it, e.g. in conditions such as anhedonia & depression? My answer in a […]
When someone on Reddit says “ELI5”, it means “I’m having a hard time understanding this, could you explain it to me like I’m 5 years old?” Here’s my attempt at an "ELI5" for the Symmetry Theory of Valence (Part II of Principia Qualia). We can think of conscious experiences as […]
Put simply, Principia Qualia (click for full version) is a blueprint for building a new Science of Qualia. PQ begins by considering a rather modest question: what is emotional valence? What makes some things feel better than others? This sounds like the sort of clear cut puzzle […]
Read the converted full web text of Principia Qualia . I'm proud to announce the immediate availability of Principia Qualia (download link) . I started this project over six years ago, when trying to understand the problem of valence , or what makes some things feel better than […]
The two topics I've been thinking the most about lately: What makes some patterns of consciousness feel better than others? I.e. can we crisply reverse engineer what makes certain areas of mind space pleasant, and other areas unpleasant? If we make a smarter than human […]
This originally started as a write up for my friend James, but since it may be of general interest I decided to blog it here. Effective Altruism (EA) is a progressive social movement that says altruism is good, but provably effective altruism is way better. According to EA this […]
I went to Spark Weekend SF last weekend, a ‘lifehacking conference’. I had never been to a lifehacking conference, and expected it to maybe be a little bit fun, but a little bit hokey. It wasn’t hokey at all: it was pretty darn great, with high quality people and really […]
Anders Sandberg has a new article out, "Ethics of brain emulations". http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0952813X.2014.895113 He discusses the uncertainties inherent in whether emulations are 'sentient' (i.e., whether WBEs are conscious and can feel pain) and moral […]
Last week I had the opportunity (thanks Alton!) to attend the launch event for the Palo Alto Longevity Prize. In short, it's a $1m prize for substantial progress on "hacking the code of aging". The Washington Post has more. $1m is not a lot of money for this. But the hope is […]
