@_laudiacay @QiaochuYuan If you have big spasms you probably have a lot of microspasms; three things I’d rec:
- Diet (no seed oils, don’t eat stuff you’re allergic to)
- Supplements (nattokinase, magnesium)
- Motion throughout the day

Imo spasms are a metabolism&clot thing, focus on keeping that healthy https://t.co/XHbGa3W08T

@_laudiacay @QiaochuYuan If you have big spasms you probably have a lot of microspasms; three things I’d rec:
- Diet (no seed oils, don’t eat stuff you’re allergic to)
- Supplements (nattokinase, magnesium)
- Motion throughout the day

Imo spasms are a metabolism&clot thing, focus on keeping that healthy https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1712112135424119295


@selentelechia This was amazing https://t.co/h2hLrGLQlH

@selentelechia This was amazing https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1713429697210531875/photo/1


@exgenesis This seems really cool https://t.co/aTzwMCQ8WK

@exgenesis This seems really cool https://x.com/exgenesis/status/1700458027000725666


@garybasin My guess is VSMC tension patterns — which I suspect are also socially transmissible (you merge tension patterns with those you interact with, weighted by social dominance) https://t.co/vzGxzCUWuY

@garybasin My guess is VSMC tension patterns — which I suspect are also socially transmissible (you merge tension patterns with those you interact with, weighted by social dominance) https://opentheory.net/2023/07/principles-of-vasocomputation-a-unification-of-buddhist-phenomenology-active-inference-and-physical-reflex-part-i/


@garybasin I think there’s probably decent consilience on similar vascular clamps resulting in similar changes to neural activity across brains…

this would be a roughly similar claim to similar words having similar representations in brains, although it’s a little different

Not sure if… https://t.co/fGDUMZ0OdH

@garybasin I think there’s probably decent consilience on similar vascular clamps resulting in similar changes to neural activity across brains…

this would be a roughly similar claim to similar words having similar representations in brains, although it’s a little different

Not sure if… https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1713371071502561621


@gh0st_w_o_sheII @liminal_warmth The two links above are my best intro pieces; I’ve cited a range of work in them, but as far as I know no one else is looking directly at the vasocomputation hypothesis. If circumstances allow I’ll write more pieces, discuss predictions, etc


@42irrationalist @QiaochuYuan Hoping to write about this in Part II; here are some initial thoughts https://t.co/tS5JzihLft

@42irrationalist @QiaochuYuan Hoping to write about this in Part II; here are some initial thoughts https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1704518623660798052


@_anantashesha I expect that sensation comes from microspasms in your vasomuscular system; could be a metabolism or clot issue. If it’s an acute sickness generating a lot of microclots I’d recommend trying out nattokinase https://t.co/3naNFAMleB

@_anantashesha I expect that sensation comes from microspasms in your vasomuscular system; could be a metabolism or clot issue. If it’s an acute sickness generating a lot of microclots I’d recommend trying out nattokinase https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1707079273608106375


@_anantashesha Awesome 😂


@punishdtriangls The partial yet incomplete overlap between intelligence and qualia will likely be the fault-line of the holy wars of the 2200s https://t.co/6nNVomfqbp

@punishdtriangls The partial yet incomplete overlap between intelligence and qualia will likely be the fault-line of the holy wars of the 2200s https://x.com/goth600/status/1713044912567169097


@Rares82 @danielbrottman Agreed; I see it as part of my third bucket (context desynchronization);

To restate this slightly — I expect the body has a clean built-in procedural logic for how long it has to hold tension-as-prediction; if some procedure doesn’t complete, the body doesn’t get clean feedback… https://t.co/oSTIbzrVS3

@Rares82 @danielbrottman Agreed; I see it as part of my third bucket (context desynchronization);

To restate this slightly — I expect the body has a clean built-in procedural logic for how long it has to hold tension-as-prediction; if some procedure doesn’t complete, the body doesn’t get clean feedback… https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1713856379784474878/photo/1


@Rares82 @danielbrottman Right; I’m reminded of the long-term mood effects from specific classes of drugs — I’ve thought of psychedelics as triggering an annealing process, but it’s unclear whether the effects of general anesthesia fit under that umbrella.

Perhaps GA involves effectively declaring…


@nopeyoutried If the vascular system is plumbing (among other things), flushing it with variable/high pressure seems really useful for clearing junk; HIIT might be especially good

Have also been thinking nattokinase might be useful for dissolving the sorts of tangles that lead to Alzheimer’s https://t.co/3naNFAMleB

@nopeyoutried If the vascular system is plumbing (among other things), flushing it with variable/high pressure seems really useful for clearing junk; HIIT might be especially good

Have also been thinking nattokinase might be useful for dissolving the sorts of tangles that lead to Alzheimer’s https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1707079273608106375


@nickcammarata @danfaggella’s Intelligence Trajectory Political Matrix is a great attempt at teasing out the structure of positions https://t.co/dY9AMO556N

@nickcammarata @danfaggella’s Intelligence Trajectory Political Matrix is a great attempt at teasing out the structure of positions https://x.com/danfaggella/status/1714578686136262873


@danfaggella @nickcammarata Awesome! And looking forward to chatting again


@nosilverv I think I’m both kinds; I tend to take things literally and love salt


@InquilineKea I think two variables would be worth exploring for bottled water:

1. is microplastic exposure significantly less if you buy water in big bottles? (My intuition is ‘yes’)
2. is microplastic exposure from bottled water correlated with how long the bottle is exposed to sunlight?


@BenAnderson421 Love to see this!


@relic_radiation Building AI systems with the same basic somatic architecture as the rest of the tree of life would be a profound unlock of so many things… I definitely appreciate the frame of “communion”


@cube_flipper @Shmojii My intuition is that part of this is vascular — your VSMCs clamp certain neural patterns to better map a specific problem space, but these clamps (constraints on neural resonance/dynamism) don’t always get garbage-collected https://t.co/kHvw7OtfkX

@cube_flipper @Shmojii My intuition is that part of this is vascular — your VSMCs clamp certain neural patterns to better map a specific problem space, but these clamps (constraints on neural resonance/dynamism) don’t always get garbage-collected https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1713856379784474878


@relic_radiation Ahaha I understand that very well… legitimately two different worlds


@fdousek Thank you!

I think of each major nerve ganglia as something like an ASIC, concerned with a few specific variables / survival drives / classes of predictions

Loosely speaking I think there’s decent functional validity to the body maps you mention


@fdousek I think it has real applications for both health and building more humanlike AI — hope to expand this at some point!


@fdousek Aha I’d say the way humans manage our dynamical space produces tanha when done unskillfully, but can be done skillfully, and there could be great alignment benefits to creating AIs which ‘share the basic somatic architecture as the rest of the tree of life’


@Shmojii @Rares82 @danielbrottman The FEP-AI framework suggests we make short-term sensory predictions in order to guide our bodies. Eg we make the (false) sensory prediction that we have ice cream in our mouth — then we move our hands in such a way that this becomes true


@RokoMijic Navigating these questions is a good justification for consciousness research

Conversely, good consciousness research will be of the type that can help us navigate these questions


@Ephi_BL @liminal_warmth Postural restoration has a positive association in my mind but I don’t know the details, can you say more?


@Andercot I often wonder whether, dollar-for-dollar, a cloning program wouldn’t be more likely to produce physics breakthroughs than supercollider n+1 https://t.co/YZ8dmLkoq2

@Andercot I often wonder whether, dollar-for-dollar, a cloning program wouldn’t be more likely to produce physics breakthroughs than supercollider n+1 https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1448647572785037329


@amyneurons @WiringTheBrain Two claims —
1. Beauty, elegance, and simplicity are ultimately downstream of symmetry;
2. We sometimes evaluate beauty/elegance through looking at symmetry directly, but the crucial factor is whether something elicits symmetry (harmony) in our minds

Via https://t.co/LxV5JNT6vU https://t.co/pH746kM1yS

@amyneurons @WiringTheBrain Two claims —
1. Beauty, elegance, and simplicity are ultimately downstream of symmetry;
2. We sometimes evaluate beauty/elegance through looking at symmetry directly, but the crucial factor is whether something elicits symmetry (harmony) in our minds

Via https://opentheory.net/2023/06/new-whitepaper-qualia-formalism-and-a-symmetry-theory-of-valence/ https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1717206792860561819/photo/1


@metaLulie Shared some thoughts on this here — https://t.co/2hNs2aHskY

@metaLulie Shared some thoughts on this here — https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1712468652585554376


@cube_flipper @cyberpunk_ass Appreciate the comment! It kinda seems like FW could be one of a larger class of “will” qualia, although I can’t really back that up at this time…

P.s. totally agree about “cymatic monism”


@Plinz @ArYoMo @tegmark I miss Max’s fantastic research on the possible physics of consciousness, which seems crucial for understanding the range of possible futures.


@rgblong @nickcammarata @Willrandship One of the stranger hypotheses in PQ is that the apparent fine-tuning of the Standard Model’s constants could be to maximize ‘total area under the curve’ of consciousness + positive valence. Should be testable! https://t.co/QEvWi9MwKs

@rgblong @nickcammarata @Willrandship One of the stranger hypotheses in PQ is that the apparent fine-tuning of the Standard Model’s constants could be to maximize ‘total area under the curve’ of consciousness + positive valence. Should be testable! https://opentheory.net/2019/02/simulation-argument/


To hold tension is to hold a Bayesian prior as to what areas of your full dynamic range are unsafe in your present circumstance. Tension is our mimetic immune system, our way to collapse wrong/dangerous answers until we’re left with appropriate thought, emotion, and action.… https://t.co/sbkdenZizD

To hold tension is to hold a Bayesian prior as to what areas of your full dynamic range are unsafe in your present circumstance. Tension is our mimetic immune system, our way to collapse wrong/dangerous answers until we’re left with appropriate thought, emotion, and action.… https://x.com/arielthemidwife/status/1718717531567849793


RT @vlad_neeka: this might be the most important revelation i’ve read about adhd. ever.


@Rares82 Strongly agree; language is a total outlier in terms of how general & extensible of an operator it is, how reliable it is, and how low-bitrate and repackageable it is — but high-proximity, high-bitrate somatic information touches a lot more surface area.

We seem wired to very…


@fdousek Right — if an AI’s computational subsystem was built around the logic of the human somatic system, it may or may not be ‘conscious’ (depending on the substrate) but it would follow the same harmonic grammar as mammals and we could interface with it at a more intuitive level https://t.co/vxxYpVjbIY

@fdousek Right — if an AI’s computational subsystem was built around the logic of the human somatic system, it may or may not be ‘conscious’ (depending on the substrate) but it would follow the same harmonic grammar as mammals and we could interface with it at a more intuitive level https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1715782307351593286


@IntuitMachine @garybasin I’d be curious whether one could build a diffusion model explicitly patterned off the human nervous system (ie with a “local tension” component which restricts eigenmodes) https://t.co/D5Oo6cOGpJ

@IntuitMachine @garybasin I’d be curious whether one could build a diffusion model explicitly patterned off the human nervous system (ie with a “local tension” component which restricts eigenmodes) https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1704390710177173987


@garybasin @IntuitMachine I think so! Would be interesting to dig into that


@danfaggella @ImprctclArchtct George David Birkhoff’s “Aesthetic measure” was cool, but even that’s from 90 years ago (1933)

Nowadays I think the most interesting work on sensory compositional analysis uses something like fractal dimensionality, which gets into why nature is beautiful but doesn’t really…


@itinerantfog Shinzen has a particular protocol for managing pain during and with meditation

https://t.co/kVUUVplBKt

@itinerantfog Shinzen has a particular protocol for managing pain during and with meditation

https://www.shinzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/art_synopsis-pain.pdf


@realpotofgreed @liminal_warmth I think people have less “canalized” nervous systems in general (see my autism piece), modern life isn’t structured to help us hold contexts, a lot more is being asked of our nervous systems, and metabolic health is often surprisingly bad. I’d start with diet


@realpotofgreed @liminal_warmth I really like this!


@eigenrobot Flexibility in body, flexibility in mind

Would expect marfan to correlate with schizoautism, network density, ADHD, openness to exp, & holding a lot of tension in the body to artificially reduce hyperflexibility. Imo lot of things that we think of as symptoms are compensatory


@eigenrobot Lincoln was my ancestor’s neighbor in Cook County, IL

He represented my ancestor in a lawsuit

It was a paternity suit. My ancestor was the defendant

He lost


@HannahFrankman Children need attention from high-quality nervous systems, freedom to explore, and contexts to integrate the patterns they absorb. And a practice of discipline, the shape of which varies by child. Literally everything else in education is trivial or detrimental


@sociaIrate Best advice I can give is
1. Seizures can be treated entirely through diet; a lot of people report the keto diet is a magic cure. Tons of resources out there
2. If you feel one coming on you can choose to “lean into it” or “lean away from it” — matters a lot

Good luck!


RT @palladiummag: What is sometimes called the international rules-based order is sometimes also called the American empire.

The most pow…


@JakeOrthwein The Adam & Eve story suggests a prion-like dynamic for metacognition;

It’s interesting to consider the degree to which a human raised by wild animals would lack this, vs the degree to which human pets / zoo animals have it

Probably a lot more nervous system prions out there


Excerpt of a short talk I gave at ZuConnect — “Why Neurotech Matters”

TL;DR: Neurotech, neuroscience, great literature, and philosophy are all the same thing — iterations of the process by which we understand what we are and what we could be

https://t.co/JRh2ceQhmU

Excerpt of a short talk I gave at ZuConnect — “Why Neurotech Matters”

TL;DR: Neurotech, neuroscience, great literature, and philosophy are all the same thing — iterations of the process by which we understand what we are and what we could be

https://app.streameth.org/zuzalu/zuconnect_istanbul__neurotech_track/session/why_neurotech_is_maybe_the_only_thing_that_matters


@2Philosophical_ I think consciousness-focused explanations for fine-tuning will be very generative; my inclination is “conscious agency” may be underdetermined though.

I consider the case for the universe being fine-tuned to optimize (consciousness*valence) here https://t.co/QEvWi9N4A0

@2Philosophical_ I think consciousness-focused explanations for fine-tuning will be very generative; my inclination is “conscious agency” may be underdetermined though.

I consider the case for the universe being fine-tuned to optimize (consciousness*valence) here https://opentheory.net/2019/02/simulation-argument/


@hormeze Very sorry to hear this. There is a reasonable chance nattokinase could be beneficial, although I don’t expect miracles https://t.co/UpEoilzNqi

@hormeze Very sorry to hear this. There is a reasonable chance nattokinase could be beneficial, although I don’t expect miracles https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1707081158289224132


RT @MarkEstefanos: This is great, and for some reason never mentioned as a cause of Japanese longevity


@RichDecibels Rich, you have great questions that motivate me to write. Apologies in advance for the length.

I’m looking at three qualities dealing with whether we intuitively grant “personhood” that overlap in humans but might not overlap in AIs:

1. Intelligence & internal complexity
2.…


@nosilverv For every drug there exists someone in the world who lives in that state naturally


@Meta_Celsus As I understand it, nattokinase is notorious for being named rather idiosyncratically, and isn’t particularly chemically similar to streptokinase. A quick search didn’t find evidence for or against commonly developing antibodies against NK


@Meta_Celsus The evidence for nattokinase retaining bioactivity is summarized here (which also notes your concern as a standing question in “Remaining Issues”) https://t.co/7BUjsEBHrr

@Meta_Celsus The evidence for nattokinase retaining bioactivity is summarized here (which also notes your concern as a standing question in “Remaining Issues”) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6043915/


@nosilverv What does “persuasive” mean when our audience is increasingly LLMs?

(Not a rhetorical question, I really don’t know)


@QiaochuYuan General anesthesia is toxic for the brain, but strangely it also seems to cause a long-term boost to mood. I think this is because it releases smooth muscle tension. Some of this tension regenerates over time, but some doesn’t.


@QiaochuYuan I bet there’s some cocktail of relatively safe substances that could do the same, without the toxicity or loss of consciousness. First $1t pharmaceutical

But better to get it from lifestyle tbh


@QiaochuYuan Ahah I was thinking sunshine and diet, but…

Tension as:
- frozen prediction (find what to complete)
- cognitive-emotional lock (find the key)
- physical block (get a high-quality massage)
- allocated but unlinked resources (run a general garbage collection process)


@nosilverv I think because it’s easier to condition a muscle twitch than decondition one…


@nosilverv A quirky thing about muscle physiology is that the relaxed state is the more energetically expensive state

“I need to relax to get more energy” no you need more energy in order to relax

Was a famous study where a corpse exhibiting rigor mortis was submersed into ATP, it relaxed


@nosilverv To nitpick myself, there’s a subtle difference between “relaxation is more energetically expensive” and “muscles contract when they’re out of ATP”

Although I think both are probably true

Anyway I think if you’re bumping up against metabolic insufficiency your phenomenology gets…


@slatestarcodex recently wrote about certain drugs (ketamine, general anaesthetics) having strange/unexpected antidepressant effects. A few thoughts on why I think vasocomputation predicts this, and some concrete predictions:
——

My very simple theory is that general anesthesia… https://t.co/cl2jSMHk3I

@slatestarcodex recently wrote about certain drugs (ketamine, general anaesthetics) having strange/unexpected antidepressant effects. A few thoughts on why I think vasocomputation predicts this, and some concrete predictions:
——

My very simple theory is that general anesthesia… https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1724292435877208493


@TrialByNitrogen @slatestarcodex Thanks for the comments! I do suspect there are particular pathways & mechanisms involved in releasing smooth muscle latches, and many things we think of as “muscle relaxants” or “vasodilators” will be less effective at releasing tension than things that target latches…


@SterlingCooley @slatestarcodex I’m familiar with the general outlines, but I should probably dig into the details — thanks


@hamzaiandafirst Interesting, can you say more?


@hormeze My sense is nattokinase is less potent (vs LK) but has a lot of nice secondary vascular benefits that the others may not. Part of this may be simply because NK has had more scientific attention though.

The most precise NK vs LK evaluation I could find was at the end of this:…


@hormeze I think our category of “blood thinner” is a little underdetermined, e.g. it’s used to refer both to drugs that prevent clots, and drugs that dissolve clots

They do sorta work together though; i.e. the danger with blood thinners (of either type) is if you take a really high…


@hamzaiandafirst That’s really interesting, thank you


@s_r_constantin My thesis on biofeedback is we don’t have good targets. We can point at people and say “I want to feel more like that” but we don’t really know how to quantify or image the ‘that’. Without a good target to aim toward, it’s difficult to define a vector toward it


@s_r_constantin I think my Symmetry Theory of Valence partially addresses this. I wrote a new paper (much shorter than PQ, slightly updated predictions) laying out the basic rationale and thesis: https://t.co/LxV5JNTEls

Tends to resonate more with postrats than rationalists for some reason

@s_r_constantin I think my Symmetry Theory of Valence partially addresses this. I wrote a new paper (much shorter than PQ, slightly updated predictions) laying out the basic rationale and thesis: https://opentheory.net/2023/06/new-whitepaper-qualia-formalism-and-a-symmetry-theory-of-valence/

Tends to resonate more with postrats than rationalists for some reason


@nosilverv Kind of — there’s ~3 definitions of energy at play
- neural activity
- muscle twitchiness
- metabolic sufficiency

Falling asleep is mostly a reduction of #1 and #2… but if you can’t give enough clean power to your cells (#3), your VSMCs will microspasm and prevent restful sleep


@paul__is__here @slatestarcodex That’s super interesting, seems like a good (plausible+testable) prediction


@paul__is__here @slatestarcodex Fwiw I think a lot of gaming “entertainment” is actually generalized garbage collection on tension — “I leveled up” “I completed the stage” “I got the treasure” etc — all of these just ‘happen’ to be exactly the sorts of process fragments that might close open Active Inference…


@nickcammarata @nosilverv Will look for one when I get home! I think the Peaters would have the details


@rgblong @EthanJPerez Appreciate your work as always!


@paul__is__here @slatestarcodex I’d expect both


As a brief public comment, I trust sama. https://t.co/169FjeAMgq

As a brief public comment, I trust sama. https://x.com/sama/status/1725631621511184771


@PrinceVogel I notice I don’t have a simple answer to this. But I’d feel better about OpenAI if Sam was at the helm.


@erikphoel The taste of coca-cola is notorious for avoiding acclimation/attenuation, which is not precisely the same nor precisely different


@enjooooyer @selentelechia I think nausea = too much neural dynamism in specific regions (wild activity patterns)

Vasoconstriction = reduce local dynamism


@ftlsid @yoltartar I think seed oils are pretty bad for both metabolism and thyroid, both of which add noise (and remove computational flexibility) from the vasomuscular system — Ray Peat is very opinionated but has some good arguments https://t.co/I3JTmMpnfr

@ftlsid @yoltartar I think seed oils are pretty bad for both metabolism and thyroid, both of which add noise (and remove computational flexibility) from the vasomuscular system — Ray Peat is very opinionated but has some good arguments https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml


@niplav_site I put a lot of stock in the symmetry aesthetic in physics; the following isn’t a direct argument but I think it’s indicative https://t.co/me9opesxIp

@niplav_site I put a lot of stock in the symmetry aesthetic in physics; the following isn’t a direct argument but I think it’s indicative https://opentheory.net/2022/04/emmy-noether-and-the-symmetry-aesthetic/


@niplav_site Frank Wilczek describes symmetry as “change without change” — there exists a symmetry if you can do an operation on an object and get the same result (this is formalized by the object’s ’symmetry group’)


@36_72541890 @dmt_quest 😬


@selentelechia I sometimes wonder if cancer is scale-free — ie it’s just one expression of a more general problem with alignment

One hypothesis: people who are particularly strict with themselves, and in general run their bodies as dictatorships, get cancer more often. Greedy people also


@selentelechia Absolutely great thread


@hastuc_dibtux All 18 chakras (7 original, 11 synthetic) in harmony


@hastuc_dibtux I made it up — but “how could you add a synthetic brain region / ganglion to the body, and what could you get from doing so” is an interesting question


@Conaw My take on caffeine/nicotine is their efficacy comes from combing neural and vasomuscular effects (kind of a deep rabbithole)

I believe the +IQ claim, which is weird because almost nothing is actually +IQ https://t.co/tS5Jziij51

@Conaw My take on caffeine/nicotine is their efficacy comes from combing neural and vasomuscular effects (kind of a deep rabbithole)

I believe the +IQ claim, which is weird because almost nothing is actually +IQ https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1704518623660798052


@profoundlyyyy @ESYudkowsky Lawrence Summers, one of the new board members, is functionally an avatar of the government

Or at least one core faction of the government

A similar convergence happened to Google


I think wild animal joy is extreme and underappreciated —

And just as there’s a wide range of hedonic set-points between humans, there will be an extreme range of hedonic set-points between species

Who are the winners? I think birds

Who are the losers? Maybe insects https://t.co/D1Whtzjfcg

I think wild animal joy is extreme and underappreciated —

And just as there’s a wide range of hedonic set-points between humans, there will be an extreme range of hedonic set-points between species

Who are the winners? I think birds

Who are the losers? Maybe insects https://x.com/PrinceVogel/status/1680716152626896898


I expect animals close to humans might pick up some of our metacognition motifs — exile from Eden may be contagious

We love dogs (because they serve us); we admire wolves (because they lack neuroticism — and perhaps tanha) https://t.co/cKKyOcTFME

I expect animals close to humans might pick up some of our metacognition motifs — exile from Eden may be contagious

We love dogs (because they serve us); we admire wolves (because they lack neuroticism — and perhaps tanha) https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1720684038703513925


@parafactual Birds are the product of intense sexual selection for happiness (birdsong), have great freedom of movement, and have low hitpoints (so they’re usual at full);

Insects are a broad class, but they seem subject to strong and strange compulsions


@parafactual Birdsong as a mating display is an honest signal of nervous system health — similar to dance, it’s a sufficiently high-dimensional projection of dynamics such that listeners can identify & avoid problems. Iterate over countless generations and you get very pure nervous systems


@markooooooo Some of the suffering the Buddha points at as due to type errors — trying to apply operations on sensations that don’t make sense

Animals as having fewer metacognition operations, less surface area for getting into trouble

Metacognition as built from vasocomputation clamps


@nosilverv People think emotional progress is about releasing tension

But imo its first about building enough virtue in your nervous system such that your vasomuscular system doesn’t need to jump in & micromanage

And then showing your body evidence of this virtue

Then you get the release


@realtimeai @parafactual I think this objection proves too much

Also happy to entertain other hypotheses


@KanizsaBoundary @Conaw Various meditation practices could be reframed as muscular (VSMC) conditioning/deconditioning practices, and I think this system is very flexible / can be conditioned/deconditioned in a lot of dimensions;

To finely recreate the effects of caffeine/nicotine you’d need to assemble…


@tylertrails @nosilverv Virtue could be framed as deeply adaptive habit

Mostly it seems habits get built by doing -> nervous system rewires such that habit becomes default (doesn’t need to be impelled via tension)

Meditation seems more about deconditioning unvirtuous habits


@tylertrails @nosilverv It may be simpler to talk about habits that don’t have to do with skeletal muscle positioning

“Brush your teeth before bed” is a virtuous habit

At first you implement it by holding (mental/VSMC) tension

Later it becomes the default, you don’t need the tension


@tylertrails @nosilverv Tension is like a cast, holding your neural patterns in place

Over time, your networks grow into that shape, like a Bonzai tree

Then you don’t need the container any more

Although your body may hold the tension anyway


@tylertrails @nosilverv VSMC tension can be inferred from skeletal muscle tension, and vice versa (due to the distributed stress minimization system they’re both a part of), but what it actually feels like is attention (“at-tension”)


@realtimeai @parafactual I see plenty of predictions that could be inferred from claims above

Either it’s a skill issue, or your comments aren’t really about me, and my sense is it’s the latter


@realtimeai @parafactual Best place to start is probably looking at cross-species sexual selection pressures; hypothesis is that birds are outliers on being selected for happiness and its proxies (nervous system health/dynamism). Can look specifically at incidence, type, and complexity of mating displays


@realtimeai @parafactual https://t.co/5a7WG39G3c


@realtimeai @parafactual You seem to be coming in pretty heavy, and I don’t get the sense you’re putting in much effort to understand me or have any skin in the game. Can you explain what kind of answer you’re looking for?


@realtimeai @parafactual The general philosophical framework I’m building off of with regard to happiness is described here; the most relevant may be Sections I and V. https://t.co/1rNw0zdReC

@realtimeai @parafactual The general philosophical framework I’m building off of with regard to happiness is described here; the most relevant may be Sections I and V. https://opentheory.net/Qualia_Formalism_and_a_Symmetry_Theory_of_Valence.pdf


@connor_holly1 Humans can experience novel sorts of pain because of our metacognitive capacities, definitely

In terms of total capacity for suffering/consciousness — children probably have more capacity than adults, cf Gopnik’s research https://t.co/7oYImdbpMj

@connor_holly1 Humans can experience novel sorts of pain because of our metacognitive capacities, definitely

In terms of total capacity for suffering/consciousness — children probably have more capacity than adults, cf Gopnik’s research https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1727674764603675119


@redqualia @markooooooo The brain applies a very simple and very “greedy” compression algorithm to sensations; this algorithm is a big part of why the brain is so efficient but the results are often also a little insane. The source of both the brain’s efficiency and insanity can be described as “lack of…


@redqualia @markooooooo (This is my steelman of “suffering/tanha as a type error”; it takes substantial liberties with Buddhism and should be considered speculation. Builds off of some posts by Romeo/Nick)


@Rares82 @markooooooo Right; evolution repurposed/extended a very ancient system


@Rares82 @redqualia @markooooooo A greedy compression is overly local, generally speaking


@Rares82 @redqualia @markooooooo Compression is mode collapse; the default state for the nervous system is, in William James’s terms, “blooming, buzzing confusion” — many harmonics active at once

The vasomuscular system listens to the EM field for such confusion, and activates to collapse the ambivalence.… https://t.co/BwrC37A03y

@Rares82 @redqualia @markooooooo Compression is mode collapse; the default state for the nervous system is, in William James’s terms, “blooming, buzzing confusion” — many harmonics active at once

The vasomuscular system listens to the EM field for such confusion, and activates to collapse the ambivalence.… https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1728921491683918146/photo/1


@QiaochuYuan @sonikudzu @paul__is__here @meditationstuff @edenisovan The expensive brand that I trust is Pure Encapsulations, the cheap brands I think are probably ok are NOW and Doctor’s Best


@QiaochuYuan @sonikudzu @paul__is__here @meditationstuff @edenisovan If anyone does a deep dive on nattokinase supplement quality I’m here for it


@boon_dLux Thank you!

I’d say (with a nod to @drmichaellevin’s work & some of the FEP + Cybernetic Bayesian brain work) that all cells are basically ‘doing the same kind of thing’ — running the same basic distributed algorithms that (emergently, tacitly) generate a predictive world-model.…


Bismarck Analysis is a one-of-a-kind company; great review thread of their work https://t.co/MNU2IjlvHw

Bismarck Analysis is a one-of-a-kind company; great review thread of their work https://x.com/bismarckanlys/status/1729158720976994708


@cube_flipper @redqualia @markooooooo GC is a subset — a big part of the brain’s type system is what information needs to be tracked and what the GC logic for this is


@x_snowfield @redqualia @markooooooo This is great


@kyleostboe @liminal_warmth I’d expect other sorts of interventions to offer a lot more expected return, but flexibility in one somatic domain is probably correlated with flexibility in others. Insofar as ADHD involves shards of tension/context, maybe it could help loosen things up?

But I’d focus on diet


@Willyintheworld If you haven’t read my thesis on autism I’d recommend it- https://t.co/WcaRfrtWZY

I don’t think differences are just brain size; network density varies significantly. Was a small autopsy study which found autists had 67% more neurons packed into the same pfc volume

@Willyintheworld If you haven’t read my thesis on autism I’d recommend it- https://opentheory.net/2023/05/autism-as-a-disorder-of-dimensionality/

I don’t think differences are just brain size; network density varies significantly. Was a small autopsy study which found autists had 67% more neurons packed into the same pfc volume


@Willyintheworld I recently added a bit at the end on “Network density psychometrics” that might be interesting for starting to put numbers on things


@QiaochuYuan Finding a safe food baseline really helped me

The two ‘safe baselines’ I would endorse are
1. Paleo (“Whole 30”)
2. Keto/carnivore (At the extreme the Jordon B. Peterson approach, literally meat+salt)

Easier interventions
3. No gluten/dairy
4. No PUFA (“seed oils” - Ray Peat)


@Plinz The challenge I see for computationalism is the lack of privileged mapping between bits and atoms

No fact of the matter what (Turing-level things) a physical system is computing

Can extend our definition of computation past TMs but then we’re just doing physics by another name


@Plinz Do you think subjective experience adheres to the semantics or background substrate dynamics?


@vincentweisser @raphaelmosaic Have been thinking about this! I respect the substrate-independent mind crew, although I view things much differently than they do.

Imo the central question in consciousness is whether it has to do what the bits of a system are doing, or the atoms. @plinz describes this as ‘the…


@PrinceVogel I was going to suggest “aerosolized organic microfilaments” but maybe there’s already some existing plant whose pollen would degrade certain kinds of rotors, turbines, etc


@JoshPurtell “Do you think tanha / strong vasocomputational priors + blockages represent social coordination mechanisms?” — great question, my answer is yes:
https://t.co/EliRvA3vfS

Re: your idea about “social status / influence / social freedom” I think that’s basically right, and we could…

@JoshPurtell “Do you think tanha / strong vasocomputational priors + blockages represent social coordination mechanisms?” — great question, my answer is yes:
https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1704639357183840337?s=61&t=5VQTNkNIZXWdL93vB-TH3A

Re: your idea about “social status / influence / social freedom” I think that’s basically right, and we could…


My biggest philosophical claim is that all value functions depend on and eventually converge on symmetry. I think the Symmetry Theory of Valence is unmatched and irreplaceable for dissolving philosophical confusion.

https://t.co/LxV5JNTEls https://t.co/VZ4smlxdpE

My biggest philosophical claim is that all value functions depend on and eventually converge on symmetry. I think the Symmetry Theory of Valence is unmatched and irreplaceable for dissolving philosophical confusion.

https://opentheory.net/2023/06/new-whitepaper-qualia-formalism-and-a-symmetry-theory-of-valence/ https://x.com/jd_pressman/status/1730844528113058205


@anabology I’ll boost some of my own work, e.g.
- Autism as a disorder of dimensionality (single-factor hypothesis)
https://t.co/WcaRfrtWZY

- Suffering as primarily a vasomuscular phenomenon
https://t.co/vzGxzCVukw
(See also Moore & Cao’s hemo-neural hypothesis)

@anabology I’ll boost some of my own work, e.g.
- Autism as a disorder of dimensionality (single-factor hypothesis)
https://opentheory.net/2023/05/autism-as-a-disorder-of-dimensionality/

- Suffering as primarily a vasomuscular phenomenon
https://opentheory.net/2023/07/principles-of-vasocomputation-a-unification-of-buddhist-phenomenology-active-inference-and-physical-reflex-part-i/
(See also Moore & Cao’s hemo-neural hypothesis)


@punishdtriangls @hastuc_dibtux I like these papers; what would you say your main takeaway from them is?


@punishdtriangls @hastuc_dibtux I’d agree with all that! Would be glad to get your impressions of my paper (linked above) if you have time. It’s a compression of a 2016 work that had a slightly broader focus;

Wilczek also had a great book (A Beautiful Question) about symmetry in fundamental physics, and I’ve…


@tedsteeen @Plinz @Rares82 @suchirbalaji Sometimes “proof” is about prediction, sometimes compression

There will come a time where we have good predictions about brains without needing to reference consciousness; at that point consciousness theories will need to pay rent by reducing the model complexity


@turchin Complicated question since it’s difficult to precisely define death; context also matters a lot.

In general I think life is beautiful (and even when it’s not, we can and must hyperstition this).

Having an aversion to the destruction of beauty is healthy.


@DaltonDEmery 1. STV is math that explains pleasure as harminy in the mind

2. Minds are like shapes, more pretty shapes feel better. We can talk about this with math

3. The more you can rotate and flip a sensational and leave it unchanged the more pleasant it is, and vice versa


@nickcammarata @RogerThisdell Strong agree that SToV is about “the structure of the whole phenomenological field”. We could approach symmetry perturbationally — “if this part was different how would this change the valence?”

The extent to which satisfyingness is a step function vs continuous is a super…


@Rares82 @DaltonDEmery There were some issues of proper attribution with this video unfortunately


What kind of thing is a human nervous system? Some notes from a conversation this fall https://t.co/wJ2CoivS1C

What kind of thing is a human nervous system? Some notes from a conversation this fall https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1731825339922624778/photo/1


@ejhong My best woo-ML crossover advice: “to make chatgpt into an agent, add chakras”


@ejhong This is really great!


A bit more on the idea of dissonance-based error codes https://t.co/5JDv1kXeXQ

A bit more on the idea of dissonance-based error codes https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1731832942060519652/photo/1


@exgenesis Thanks! I really liked how you put the system 1/2 & somatic work stuff

The basic thesis of ‘offloading problems to body morphology’ is that our body shape is optimized to turn very simple control signals into generally-useful actions

E.g. navigating terrain is a really complex…


@jonnym1ller @josephkelly @jwmares I’d absolutely love to!


@DorKonforty I like that frame


@Plinz My most recent speculation on this is here —

Multiscale resonance is the background frame but that’s still a big space to explore https://t.co/gQLMAaDnZR

@Plinz My most recent speculation on this is here —

Multiscale resonance is the background frame but that’s still a big space to explore https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1731825339922624778


@meaning_enjoyer Very relatable https://t.co/40PRZCBBPz

@meaning_enjoyer Very relatable https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1658170065953464325


@mnovendstern Weekly prize for the tweet that improved @grok’s loss function the most


@_brentbaum I think @BenAnderson421 has a business that does this; I haven’t used it but he’s fantastic, strong recommendation

https://t.co/vD85mryLS2

@_brentbaum I think @BenAnderson421 has a business that does this; I haven’t used it but he’s fantastic, strong recommendation

https://legacyinterviews.com/


@powerfultakes @woke8yearold Someone needs to meme the Uplift Institute (UI) into existence


@samswoora “High network density”

https://t.co/WcaRfrtWZY https://t.co/P3OdSnbi0X

@samswoora “High network density”

https://opentheory.net/2023/05/autism-as-a-disorder-of-dimensionality/ https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1734113609171829217/photo/1


Great thread. My sense is the basic (smooth muscle) logic of the gut was copied and repurposed to “digest” thoughts. These systems are still linked & if you update your mental priors via meditation, these recalibrated priors will propagate back to the gut

https://t.co/rabrbdDMo9 https://t.co/nDcbLRV1Bo

Great thread. My sense is the basic (smooth muscle) logic of the gut was copied and repurposed to “digest” thoughts. These systems are still linked & if you update your mental priors via meditation, these recalibrated priors will propagate back to the gut

https://psyche.co/ideas/to-grasp-how-serotonin-works-on-the-brain-look-to-the-gut https://x.com/nickcammarata/status/1734112673220976777


The strong version of this thesis is that multicellular life started as a big stomach; organs we’ve added since simply take this core logic of digestion, remix it, and apply it to novel sorts of objects. The brain treats information as the gut treats food (ht E.P.H. & R.S.)


This implies that there’s a near-duality between problems of digestion and problems of sensory metabolism. E.g. we should expect there to be a sensory analogue to constipation involving the same dynamics+neurotransmitters; rhythmic undulations move things along; etc


Objects in the gut are processed through muscular effort; same with the mind*. But the vipassana frame is that many “objects” in the mind are also unnecessary synthetic constructions that can untangle and self-metabolize when we relax

*https://t.co/vzGxzCVukw

Objects in the gut are processed through muscular effort; same with the mind*. But the vipassana frame is that many “objects” in the mind are also unnecessary synthetic constructions that can untangle and self-metabolize when we relax

*https://opentheory.net/2023/07/principles-of-vasocomputation-a-unification-of-buddhist-phenomenology-active-inference-and-physical-reflex-part-i/


“As you do anything, so you do everything” — switching your mind’s digestion algorithm may have echo effects in your gut. But the smooth muscle motifs for allowing things to self-metabolize won’t always work in the gut! It’ll sometimes produce type errors & the body gets upset


Lots and lots of implications / tacit predictions here; one simple prediction is that meditative attainments will correspond with digestive changes, and potentially vice-versa

Hope to write this up in more depth someday, time and resources permitting


Btw I think food sensitivities aren’t a foregone conclusion of meditation, just another type error to resolve; I think @meditationstuff has addressed a lot of his food sensitivities

(And as people say a lot of “problems” may just be higher sensory clarity)


@nickcammarata Anytime I have anything fried in unhealthy oil my phenomenology gets really “grabby” — quick onset, lasts for maybe an hour. Very strange


@SonnyWarmack That would be my sense— but that part is very speculative... I wouldn’t want people to over-update


@selentelechia Totally

Somewhat tangentially, I’m also sympathetic to the strategy of talking about various problems as “[psychological condition] of the [organ]” — eg someone was describing ED as “depression of the groin” etc


@meditationstuff I think a crucial question is the degree to which a successful meditation practice produces specific food sensitivities vs general changes in digestion. Curious what peoples’ experiences are


@meditationstuff QC collecting anecdotes here: https://t.co/CxZYtPN4X8

@meditationstuff QC collecting anecdotes here: https://x.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1734332350069342293


@selentelechia P.s. regarding autism, I ~recently added a section at the end of my autism piece on how autism & IQ may interact (last two screenshots)

Basically your network density writes a check that your metabolism needs to cash

Success = high-functioning asperger’s
Failure = low-f. autism https://t.co/5swvYrgWX3

@selentelechia P.s. regarding autism, I ~recently added a section at the end of my autism piece on how autism & IQ may interact (last two screenshots)

Basically your network density writes a check that your metabolism needs to cash

Success = high-functioning asperger’s
Failure = low-f. autism https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1734113609171829217


@goth600 State space of qualia is likely finite & enumerable; will make a killer NFT collection


@goth600 @violetcastles There’s a hard limit on the density of information in spacetime (Bekenstein bound) and my expectation is the speed of light & decoherence will lead to practical/statistical limits on the space & time extensions of phenomenologically-bound systems

Via https://t.co/Ppql0LToXK https://t.co/CqYcTEX5mi

@goth600 @violetcastles There’s a hard limit on the density of information in spacetime (Bekenstein bound) and my expectation is the speed of light & decoherence will lead to practical/statistical limits on the space & time extensions of phenomenologically-bound systems

Via https://opentheory.net/2022/04/it-from-bit-revisited/ https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1734460934993936735/photo/1


@goth600 @violetcastles This analysis does depend on whether black holes have internal structure (“hair”) and if so what degrees of freedom such structure could have


@violetcastles @goth600 Yeah the set of qualia is going to be very large, in the same way the possible arrangements of particles gets very large even with only a handful of particles

Also “how many bits does it take to encode the modal human experience” is a really interesting question


@the_aiju Much to agree with but ‘any reframe is pernicious in that it reinforces the frame used’ probably shuts down too much

Also curious if your comment is a sign people are pattern-matching me / my work as rationalist


@ileeksc @goth600 Thank you!


@IchorGrad Fwiw I suspect hair loss may be partly driven by VSMC clenches near the scalp cutting off circulation;

Happens more with analytic thinkers who extensively use VSMC contractions as clamps to stabilize context

This might also hinder glymphatic clearance

https://t.co/vzGxzCVukw

@IchorGrad Fwiw I suspect hair loss may be partly driven by VSMC clenches near the scalp cutting off circulation;

Happens more with analytic thinkers who extensively use VSMC contractions as clamps to stabilize context

This might also hinder glymphatic clearance

https://opentheory.net/2023/07/principles-of-vasocomputation-a-unification-of-buddhist-phenomenology-active-inference-and-physical-reflex-part-i/


@meekaale @carobcircuit @QiaochuYuan I think there’s often a divide between the effective dimensionality of a network and its optimal dimensionality… which would be really great to quantify

Higher network dimensionality = needs more energy to “fully inflate”


@mihir_0_ @Neuroelectrics @desigual @Wayra @starlabdf2 @Desigual_ES @WayraES Very cool;

I gather most EEG effort has gone into statistical analysis, and a little into source reconstruction of brain-wide activity

I don’t think much effort has gone into source reconstruction of the local EM field

I think this plus AR would be transformative


Wolf is one of the most original thinkers I know and this is a great shakeup of the AI accel/alignment frames.

TL;DR: we expect to be replaced by AI partly because modern life systematically drains our agency. Reclaiming humanity from this own-goal is a condition for good things https://t.co/aZTo7AuDH7

Wolf is one of the most original thinkers I know and this is a great shakeup of the AI accel/alignment frames.

TL;DR: we expect to be replaced by AI partly because modern life systematically drains our agency. Reclaiming humanity from this own-goal is a condition for good things https://x.com/wolftivy/status/1736903883967070629


@nosilverv @Tysenberg I expect the majority of live players have elevated network density vs peers, although the freedom to escape local maxima doesn’t necessarily give you 1) the courage to do so, 2) the metabolic health to power your extra cells, or 3) the social skills necessary to “play the game” https://t.co/ObPoCa06T9

@nosilverv @Tysenberg I expect the majority of live players have elevated network density vs peers, although the freedom to escape local maxima doesn’t necessarily give you 1) the courage to do so, 2) the metabolic health to power your extra cells, or 3) the social skills necessary to “play the game” https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1734404932261011466


@Anand_Venkatram @nosilverv @Tysenberg Thank you Anand! Appreciate your kind and thoughtful words as always. Let me think about these questions and get back to you


@aleksil79 @nosilverv @Tysenberg Seems likely & testable, although capacity for imagination (creation of synthetic data) likely also goes up

Would expect “slow life history,” +network density, and daydreaming to go together


@Tysenberg @nosilverv Brief partial origin story:

When I was 20 I had the very strong intuition that “music is to emotion as language is to thought.” I wanted to understand depression and valence and thought music theory was the key to cracking some code.

Postmodernism and most of neuroscience and…


@BishPlsOk @nosilverv @Tysenberg I think much of modernity is aimed at breaking the mind-body connection

The brain is a big hallucinating LLM, the body is ASICs that keep it on track

If the brain is alienated from its ASICs, it can be slurped up into some superorganism, which then provides the grounding


@nosilverv @aleksil79 @phantom_opus @Tysenberg This excellent paper perhaps https://t.co/pZ0BvmLFoW

@nosilverv @aleksil79 @phantom_opus @Tysenberg This excellent paper perhaps https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/uxmz6


@nosilverv @phantom_opus @aleksil79 @Tysenberg So good


RT @nosilverv: Beautiful story of how far you can get if you have the courage to follow your intuitions with a surprise twist ending


@meekaale @webmasterdave @Tysenberg @nosilverv I really like this. If I were to decompose this into research themes, the following come to mind: local vs global symmetry, austere vs natural, predictive coding, golden ratio

As a very brief comment on the last (“what is the physiological significance of the golden ratio?”): https://t.co/CfLorLFPDJ

@meekaale @webmasterdave @Tysenberg @nosilverv I really like this. If I were to decompose this into research themes, the following come to mind: local vs global symmetry, austere vs natural, predictive coding, golden ratio

As a very brief comment on the last (“what is the physiological significance of the golden ratio?”): https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1737541874305372365/photo/1


@nosilverv @Tysenberg There was a lot of hunting for the most general form of math/physics/music, and a realization that you can basically build all patterns out of which symmetries are present vs broken. Physicists talk symmetry up in a way that seems almost insane, until you check the reasoning https://t.co/EXYqGz2Csj

@nosilverv @Tysenberg There was a lot of hunting for the most general form of math/physics/music, and a realization that you can basically build all patterns out of which symmetries are present vs broken. Physicists talk symmetry up in a way that seems almost insane, until you check the reasoning https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1737562508926288180/photo/1


@connor_holly1 @zerfas33 I’m now expecting serotonin to generally reduce the dynamical range of the vasomuscular system, which I expect to negatively correlate with the ability to enter jhana


@connor_holly1 @zerfas33 I hope to detail reasoning in an upcoming post, but as a simple model serotonin is broadly vasoconstrictive. I expect the vasomuscular system to exhibit less flexibility but also more twitchiness in a high-serotonin state


@phantom_opus @meekaale @webmasterdave @Tysenberg @nosilverv I believe that’s correct — e.g. if the ratio of two waveforms can be approximated by e.g. 5/4 or 6/5 or something simple, they will interact much more than something without such an approximation. The paper I cite is here: https://t.co/zt6ReIDZ4I

@phantom_opus @meekaale @webmasterdave @Tysenberg @nosilverv I believe that’s correct — e.g. if the ratio of two waveforms can be approximated by e.g. 5/4 or 6/5 or something simple, they will interact much more than something without such an approximation. The paper I cite is here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20350536/


@Anand_Venkatram @nosilverv @Tysenberg Some thoughts on your questions:

1.I like Simon B-C’s work! I also suspect that his ‘empathizer-systematizer’ continuum would benefit from looking at mechanism. I also suspect that it’s possible to be high on both empathy and systematization (twitter likes to joke about the…


@qchurious Reframe: you won the game!


@robbensinger @danfaggella Do you think these questions are possible to navigate without a good theory of consciousness? (I don’t)


@hormeze @meekaale A lot going on here

Imo the term neurodivergent hits something important bc if you lack nervous system canalization (don’t have the standard set of ASICs) you have to create your own solutions. Take 10 autists and the particular way each has wired up their nervous system to…


@pmarca Current best hypothesis is that seed oils led to a general increase in growth and decrease in canalization starting around 1980, which opened the door to everything else https://t.co/WcaRfrtpaq

@pmarca Current best hypothesis is that seed oils led to a general increase in growth and decrease in canalization starting around 1980, which opened the door to everything else https://opentheory.net/2023/05/autism-as-a-disorder-of-dimensionality/


@pmarca Great thread summarizing what happened to grip strength in 1980- grip strength is a great proxy for nerve coherence. https://t.co/h30NizUibV

@pmarca Great thread summarizing what happened to grip strength in 1980- grip strength is a great proxy for nerve coherence. https://x.com/crimkadid/status/1312567390148931587


@ataiiam @pmarca Thanks Atai! Some thoughts —

I have high confidence that there has been a generational psycho-physical shift (ongoing), moderate-high confidence that grip strength is a good proxy for this shift, and low confidence it’s due to seed oils. Here’s how I’m calibrated:

*The… https://t.co/YDn5c5oV6B

@ataiiam @pmarca Thanks Atai! Some thoughts —

I have high confidence that there has been a generational psycho-physical shift (ongoing), moderate-high confidence that grip strength is a good proxy for this shift, and low confidence it’s due to seed oils. Here’s how I’m calibrated:

*The… https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1739176040159654260/photo/1


RT @RomeoStevens76: Some part of me seems to be looking for an excuse to expound on some overlaps between Christianity and Buddhism as I se…


@PrinceVogel Definitely interested!


@jazz_bard @_inju I don’t have anything specific to say right now but it’s a super great topic —

Ok as one side comment I think it’s telling how time passes more quickly as we age — I think this is very literal, and “phenomenological middle age” could be as early as 15-18yo


@danfaggella @AgiDoomerAnon @PeterDiamandis Appreciate it! I think real understanding is more important and closer than many realize


@danfaggella @AgiDoomerAnon @PeterDiamandis 1. Understanding consciousness is important and time-sensitive:
How do we protect the light of consciousness if we don’t know what consciousness is? How are we to understand AI sentience if we don’t understand what kind of thing human minds are? What do we do when AIs tell us… https://t.co/OdnjRuBsAX

@danfaggella @AgiDoomerAnon @PeterDiamandis 1. Understanding consciousness is important and time-sensitive:
How do we protect the light of consciousness if we don’t know what consciousness is? How are we to understand AI sentience if we don’t understand what kind of thing human minds are? What do we do when AIs tell us… https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1681329833404506115


@qchurious I started to mindfully use “girl” after traveling to Russia, where it’s considered a compliment (even grandmothers are “girls”). I understand the western leveling critique but imo it’s outweighed by youth, femininity, and honest compliments being objectively good things


@42irrationalist @eshear @cunha_tristan Thanks, appreciate the rep!


@eshear @42irrationalist Thanks! I speak about this some in my book (Principia Qualia), especially Appendix C https://t.co/bPds7OZOP6

I often sort my work into three branches — Principia Qualia is a blueprint for a ToE philosophy of mind/consciousness (of which STV is the crown jewel); Neural Annealing… https://t.co/gQLMAaCQaj

@eshear @42irrationalist Thanks! I speak about this some in my book (Principia Qualia), especially Appendix C https://opentheory.net/PrincipiaQualia.pdf

I often sort my work into three branches — Principia Qualia is a blueprint for a ToE philosophy of mind/consciousness (of which STV is the crown jewel); Neural Annealing… https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1731825339922624778


@42irrationalist @Austen @nateliason Thanks! There’s a lot of good technical work on brain harmonics if you know where to look (e.g. Selen Atasoy’s CSHW).

I think resonance is a great frame in general because it’s a functionally-significant phenomenon evolution has self-organized around across many levels, so it…


@ESYudkowsky I think it’s evident that brains and computers are equally real, but I do not believe that electrons and (Turing-level) bits are equally real. We generally speak of what happens within computers in terms of (Turing-level) bits; it’s thus reasonable to ontologically discount this


RT @johnsonmxe: @ESYudkowsky I think it’s evident that brains and computers are equally real, but I do not believe that electrons and (Turi…


@amasad My loose expectation is that hybridization with archaic populations (particularly Neanderthals) led to significantly more brain network density (more neurons+synapses per volume) and significantly less canalization. Made us clumsy but better able to learn https://t.co/WcaRfrtpaq

@amasad My loose expectation is that hybridization with archaic populations (particularly Neanderthals) led to significantly more brain network density (more neurons+synapses per volume) and significantly less canalization. Made us clumsy but better able to learn https://opentheory.net/2023/05/autism-as-a-disorder-of-dimensionality/


@nickcammarata One distinction I find useful is “lumpy vs smooth” — the more contractions you have, the more lumpy things feel


@cube_flipper @LillyBaeum @bayeslord @algekalipso @aaarataki Thank you! I think there’s room for many theories of valence at other levels of description. STV claims to be a tight bound (approaching a unique & exact solution) at the level of formal representation of qualia (Qualia Formalism). Insofar as we can find an exact mapping …


@cube_flipper @LillyBaeum @bayeslord @algekalipso @aaarataki … between QF and other domains, this should generate a unique definition of valence in these terms as well. In particular, I believe STV implies a unique physical definition of valence (we just haven’t found it yet).


@cube_flipper @LillyBaeum @bayeslord @algekalipso @aaarataki The degree to which STV can generate/inform practical neuroimaging proxies for valence is an open question, but I’m very optimistic.


Very interesting. I wouldn’t be surprised if a core difference between scarring & non-scarring healing is whether the local EM patterns are reconstituted along with the tissue. Basically: it’s easier to physically patch a wound than reconstitute the tissue’s original EM mesh … https://t.co/8nS4qZNSGj

Very interesting. I wouldn’t be surprised if a core difference between scarring & non-scarring healing is whether the local EM patterns are reconstituted along with the tissue. Basically: it’s easier to physically patch a wound than reconstitute the tissue’s original EM mesh … https://x.com/IchorGrad/status/1742351686226559017


I’d expect opioids would reduce EM integration of peripheral tissue, biasing the healing towards biochemical constraints (for which a scar is the simplest solution)

Freeform speculation:
⁃Menstruation is painful *because* it’s non-scarring?


⁃Cellulite forms when cells drop out of the local EM mesh (which enforces morphology & local smoothness)
⁃Cancer arises when the local EMF mesh bifurcates (“cancerous” = a cell has special mutations allowing it to lead a revolt against the body’s EMF regime)


I don’t think we have a clear picture of what “disorders of the body’s EM field” look like, but these would be my initial guesses. @drmichaellevin’s work has been wildly interesting here


@drmichaellevin I’m also curious about @JessicaGenetics’ research on grounding. The effect size seems huge. Does it replicate?

https://t.co/gOyOoO4gK0

@drmichaellevin I’m also curious about @JessicaGenetics’ research on grounding. The effect size seems huge. Does it replicate?

https://x.com/jessicagenetics/status/1712883743781015644?s=61&t=5VQTNkNIZXWdL93vB-TH3A


@drmichaellevin @JessicaGenetics Finally, there’s the question of whether we could create a scaffold EM field which could bias injuries toward full regrowth instead of scarring. Maybe someday?


@drmichaellevin @JessicaGenetics As a more practical intervention, if cellulite really does form from cells ‘dropping out’ of the body’s EM mesh, maybe it could be healed through attention on the tissue — taking 30m/day to lay down & feel that area. I’d love to see an experiment (with controls) on this


@punishdtriangls @drmichaellevin @JessicaGenetics Absolutely wild stuff


@solarfatalism @drmichaellevin Very possibly! My sense is FSM really cool tech but there’s a fundamental question about the natural grammar of the body’s EM field...


@danfaggella I think of the history of physics as “yes, and” — Einstein didn’t disprove Newtonian mechanics so much as identify it as a special case in a more general framework. Whatever future physics is, its first step will be to recreate the predictive power of the Standard Model


@danfaggella Since we don’t exactly know what time is, it seems likely our understanding of entropy is going to change radically. I tend to agree with you re: avoiding heat death being a skill issue


@danfaggella The symmetry aesthetic in physics suggests that physical reality consists of symmetries & perspectives under which these symmetries are preserved or broken. And that’s it! I expect this view of reality to only grow in power. But we may still be surprised by particular expressions https://t.co/dvy4MwKugn

@danfaggella The symmetry aesthetic in physics suggests that physical reality consists of symmetries & perspectives under which these symmetries are preserved or broken. And that’s it! I expect this view of reality to only grow in power. But we may still be surprised by particular expressions https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1742597571103633424/photo/1


@nosilverv @cremieuxrecueil (Autism intensifies)


@actually_lia It may be impossible to create a replicator that casts no shadow into consciousness. The universe is phenomenologically alive even if we can’t see it

But I do think there’s an important distinction between qualia sensitive processes (QSPs) vs qualia insensitive processes (QIPs)


@markooooooo The greatest pleasure in life is to have a place to put your love, such that it feeds wholesome things and some comes back to you


It would be very difficult to offer a formal theory of consciousness where megastructures like stars aren’t conscious. We speak about space as lifeless & empty — but it’s entirely plausible that we are not even our own solar system’s primary charismatic qualiafauna


@QiaochuYuan I haven’t, searching now!


@PashaKamyshev *tanha intensifies


@mayfer That sounds right — lots of interesting questions here. Here’s my loose typology from 2019: https://t.co/XkcplAf8YG

@mayfer That sounds right — lots of interesting questions here. Here’s my loose typology from 2019: https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1742642420171276599/photo/1


@mayfer I wonder what sorts of structure could self-organize in stars — on one hand it’s pretty difficult to see how hot plasma could exhibit durable patterns. On the other hand, the sun has had billions of years and an incredible energy gradient to work with. Tacit markov blankets?


@42irrationalist The ultimate autistic narrow-sense hedonic imperative is probably to create as many black holes as we can, or destroy as many as we can (unclear at this point)

But n-th order effects always dominate


@RogersBacon1 Great post! @tegmark has a memorable line, “it appears that we humans are a historical accident, and aren’t the optimal solution to any well-defined physics problem” https://t.co/tgK7uxkaHQ (fantastic AI safety paper that everybody’s forgotten about btw)

@RogersBacon1 Great post! @tegmark has a memorable line, “it appears that we humans are a historical accident, and aren’t the optimal solution to any well-defined physics problem” https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.0813.pdf (fantastic AI safety paper that everybody’s forgotten about btw)


@RogersBacon1 @tegmark Monism suggests that physical optimization problems are tacitly qualia optimization problems. And so if we want to find the most intense qualia, we should look for the most intense physical conditions. These are not found on Earth!

https://t.co/hdEh8dAvMR

@RogersBacon1 @tegmark Monism suggests that physical optimization problems are tacitly qualia optimization problems. And so if we want to find the most intense qualia, we should look for the most intense physical conditions. These are not found on Earth!

https://opentheory.net/2019/06/taking-monism-seriously/


@42irrationalist One possible endgame is a paper-rock-scissors battle between competing qualia wavefronts expanding near the speed of light. Imagine you crafted a hedonium shockwave, only to be trolled by aliens that calculated how to transmute your hedonium into the qualia of being rickrolled


@42irrationalist I have a lot of thoughts on this sitting in my drafts lol

At this point I both agree and disagree


@42irrationalist Aha, I’m sorta thinking about (1) how humanity is underrated in the current singularity meta, and (2) whether a lot of human suffering is due to recent adaptations around vasocomputation that evolution hasn’t had time to smooth the edges of


@42irrationalist Briefly — my sense is that animal qualia is by default really pleasant. NUs speak of the natural world as full of suffering, and there are likely extreme cases (insect parasites etc) — but the default experience of e.g. wild deer may be oddly similar to the non-dual experience of…


@webmasterdave Much does depend on binding! It’s difficult to make specific arguments at this point, but here’s a heuristic I think may apply:

(cf your “wavefunction monism … [t]he solutions to the equations of QFT or its generalization yield the values of qualia.”) https://t.co/ajR0uhJlr4

@webmasterdave Much does depend on binding! It’s difficult to make specific arguments at this point, but here’s a heuristic I think may apply:

(cf your “wavefunction monism … [t]he solutions to the equations of QFT or its generalization yield the values of qualia.”) https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1742658209926783284


@CRSegerie I’d be curious how to quantify the amount of integrated information in hot plasma…


@Aron_Adler Consciousness and intelligence may plausibly be separable quantities —

In general I think we should expect a lot of surprises when we dig into consciousness. Currently our definition is pre-paradigmatic, a mix of sometimes inconsistent constraints


@CRSegerie IIT 4.0 is a step in the right direction, although it may not yet allow full generalization to any physical system https://t.co/4xRJyrPNoh

@CRSegerie IIT 4.0 is a step in the right direction, although it may not yet allow full generalization to any physical system https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.14787


@danfaggella lol I was hoping people would enjoy that!


@Aron_Adler We can define consciousness as “an intelligent agent with a model of the self” but I think we’d be leaving something important on the table.

Thomas Nagel has a famous paper, “What is it like to be a bat?” which describes the kind of consciousness I want to talk about…


@ChrisJamesUSA Probably not — very little information flow from the earth to the sun, and the sun itself is very ‘loud’


@markooooooo @42irrationalist God-chicken maybe
https://t.co/v7WMyASUX1

Apparently there’s some theory
https://t.co/KO6Dr2NAIr

I have a sentimental attachment to the sun, though I wonder if it’s having a good time or would have a better time as something else

@markooooooo @42irrationalist God-chicken maybe
https://x.com/univrsw3th4rt/status/1742800040895107299?s=46&t=NEwLPfedwCow8EP9ExPZpw

Apparently there’s some theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine

I have a sentimental attachment to the sun, though I wonder if it’s having a good time or would have a better time as something else


@matthiasgiger All forms of knowledge seem to start out as philosophical questions; over time some become less real (elan vital), some become more (Maxwell’s equations)


@ahron_maline @RogersBacon1 @tegmark Empirically that seems to be what we see with psychedelics — cf Selen Atasoy’s work measuring energy buildup in connectome eigenmodes https://t.co/hCFoIrF6GA

@ahron_maline @RogersBacon1 @tegmark Empirically that seems to be what we see with psychedelics — cf Selen Atasoy’s work measuring energy buildup in connectome eigenmodes https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10340


@qchurious When I’m uncertain about food I fall back on a fruit+steak diet — it sounds restrictive but it can actually be quite pleasant

Also I find it nice to wake up to a fridge full of fruit, gives the day abundance vibes


@qchurious A big part of the rationale for this diet is most fruit ‘wants’ to be eaten, ie being eaten is part of the fruit’s reproductive cycle, so it’s not going to try to poison you w phytotoxins

Meat doesn’t want to be eaten but uses feet/claws/etc rather than toxins to protect itself


@qchurious “Safe mode” for me is steak cooked in coconut oil, and blueberries/papaya/mandarin oranges


@astraxstardust @BernardoKastrup I have not! Sounds very interesting


Plot for a SF novel: humanity rushes for the singularity, but physical constants start to change. Ultimately we find out we do live in a simulation and when we redline its compute, it enforces a local complexity cap by adjusting physical law away from anthropic optimal https://t.co/fa2l0fILZI

Plot for a SF novel: humanity rushes for the singularity, but physical constants start to change. Ultimately we find out we do live in a simulation and when we redline its compute, it enforces a local complexity cap by adjusting physical law away from anthropic optimal https://x.com/eshear/status/1744613411751923787


@powerfultakes Very cool; I’d expect bio systems would also be affected by such a change;

It would be most plot-dramatic if eg the speed of light was suddenly 10% what it is now, but that would probably break absolutely everything. Even tiny changes would likely be highly disruptive


@BotTachikoma This comment was definitely inspired by A Fire Upon The Deep


@mrgunn Will read!


@dwarkesh_sp @burny_tech I think cognition arises from FPGA-like networks, grounding arises from ASIC-like circuits — the combination produces intelligence https://t.co/gQLMAaDnZR

@dwarkesh_sp @burny_tech I think cognition arises from FPGA-like networks, grounding arises from ASIC-like circuits — the combination produces intelligence https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1731825339922624778


@erikphoel Fantastic piece (as usual)! Thinking about a response.


@PashaKamyshev I’ve heard several variants of Dyson Sphere — e.g. Dyson Cloud, Dyson Swarm. Presumably something in this space would be gravitationally stable, and perhaps “Dyson Sphere” can simply be a pointer to “the thing that maximizes the energy harvest from a star”


@PashaKamyshev “Do civilizations converge or diverge at the end of time?” is a really interesting question. My loose expectation is there’ll be a handful of attractors we could fall into. A Dyson Sphere would be instrumentally useful for many of these, if only to calculate the next steps


@PashaKamyshev But “build Dyson Spheres” is not coherent endgame teleology by itself. Ultimately we need a new theory of natural&synthetic megastructures — what goals are intelligent civilizations likely to converge upon & what megastructures most effectively support or instantiate these goals? https://t.co/nIr8RgwohQ

@PashaKamyshev But “build Dyson Spheres” is not coherent endgame teleology by itself. Ultimately we need a new theory of natural&synthetic megastructures — what goals are intelligent civilizations likely to converge upon & what megastructures most effectively support or instantiate these goals? https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1745182166290497849/photo/1


@PashaKamyshev Imo we now know (or suspect) enough about the universe that we could infer its eventual apex ecology. Or at least we should be creating wrong but entertaining theories about this :)


@mikolasan @dwarkesh_sp @burny_tech FPGA -> a very general system that can change programming for each task

ASIC -> a circuit that does a very narrow range of things and nothing else, but can do them very well


@mikolasan @dwarkesh_sp @burny_tech The software vs hardware distinction gets messy when we talk about the brain;

My hypothesis for how they combine is in my above comment


@TetraspaceWest I looked hard for a solution for enumerating (Turing-level) computations in a system; this from @davidad was the best I found. I discuss implications here: https://t.co/SuFE94mPGC https://t.co/HxV4e9Er6z

@TetraspaceWest I looked hard for a solution for enumerating (Turing-level) computations in a system; this from @davidad was the best I found. I discuss implications here: https://opentheory.net/2017/07/why-i-think-the-foundational-research-institute-should-rethink-its-approach/ https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1606443256115613697


@pwlot I really liked your writeup about this!


@iris_IGB @milliandtheband I’ve really enjoyed your posts (спасибо!) and I’m curious how you’d approach “phenomenological consciousness” as a scientist if you thought there was some undiscovered clean structure present

Ie if phenomenology is like alchemy before the periodic table,

Electrical theory…


RT @goth600: There’s a good chance you’re someone’s most confusing twitter account


@KordingLab A bit different angle, but I suspect network dimensionality is a core dimension of human variation and has predictable cognitive-emotional tradeoffs. You may enjoy my description here — https://t.co/WcaRfrtpaq

@KordingLab A bit different angle, but I suspect network dimensionality is a core dimension of human variation and has predictable cognitive-emotional tradeoffs. You may enjoy my description here — https://opentheory.net/2023/05/autism-as-a-disorder-of-dimensionality/


@meditationstuff Noting that Yohan John and others have a great paper on this: https://t.co/dFOzwdpY5m

@meditationstuff Noting that Yohan John and others have a great paper on this: https://x.com/DrYohanJohn/status/1745593109499748843


@frideswyth Sometimes I tag ideas in my notes by the GPT power level that could trivially create them — GPT5, GPT6, etc

Maybe it’s just a story for my subconscious, but helps give me the feeling I’m doing something valuable by writing ideas down

Then when new AI comes it’s like Christmas


RT @johnsonmxe: “Fear not the schizo who has 10,000 ideas, fear the schizo-autist who has one idea and tries to explain 10,000 things”

Bru…


@eshear Identity relations go two ways; this should allow us to flip the metaphor and claim that all information theory is built from the sort of harmonic structure that seems to define physics, no?


@danallison @QualiaRI Thank you! Neither I nor STV have any formal affiliation with QRI at this point, but they do very interesting work


@LaurenUba Would be super interesting to hear if you can release that tension and how that changes emotional stuff


@Andercot Intelligence is a fuzzy concept, consciousness might be fuzzy or crisp — I gave a talk about this (and other scenarios) here — https://t.co/Ppql0LToXK

TL;DR is the universe looks much different if we assume bits or atoms are the carrier of consciousness

@Andercot Intelligence is a fuzzy concept, consciousness might be fuzzy or crisp — I gave a talk about this (and other scenarios) here — https://opentheory.net/2022/04/it-from-bit-revisited/

TL;DR is the universe looks much different if we assume bits or atoms are the carrier of consciousness


RT @nosilverv: Notes = Godshatter https://t.co/M4cEJsQIn1

RT @nosilverv: Notes = Godshatter https://x.com/nosilverv/status/1750129856514277678/photo/1


In the beginning there was sensation

Humans developed the ability to freeze sensations, then used these frozen pieces to construct a grammar for thought (vasocomputation)

This led to words, magical spells that can conjure sensations in both caster and target

This led to foom https://t.co/KeLsCEUKP3

In the beginning there was sensation

Humans developed the ability to freeze sensations, then used these frozen pieces to construct a grammar for thought (vasocomputation)

This led to words, magical spells that can conjure sensations in both caster and target

This led to foom https://x.com/nosilverv/status/1751939550098726990


If a dolphin wants to explain there’s a school of fish nearby, it will send the sound of a sonar return from a phantom school of fish — literally the *sensation* of fish. I suspect this is a good model for early human language — “magic spells that involuntarily invoke sensations”


Sensation magic led to great cooperation, and also adversarial sensation magic which fooled and controlled. Dark magicians (wordcels) arose and culled the literal and the boundaryless

If you’ve seen The Invention of Lying (2009) it was probably like that except somewhat darker https://t.co/X9P0OZoJdp

Sensation magic led to great cooperation, and also adversarial sensation magic which fooled and controlled. Dark magicians (wordcels) arose and culled the literal and the boundaryless

If you’ve seen The Invention of Lying (2009) it was probably like that except somewhat darker https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1751995049083101456/photo/1


A lot of weird quirks about language and about humans are due to the fact that (1) language opens you up to lots of different mind-control attacks, but (2) you can’t opt-out of language. It’s just too important for connection and function

-> A rich ecosystem of move-countermove


The pinnacle defended-by-default is what we call the “normie”. An impressive set of solutions for hardening nervous systems against adversarial sensation magic — e.g. mental partitions, type safety on words, selective de-referencing. A tough nut to crack https://t.co/fIQ0zeOt4D

The pinnacle defended-by-default is what we call the “normie”. An impressive set of solutions for hardening nervous systems against adversarial sensation magic — e.g. mental partitions, type safety on words, selective de-referencing. A tough nut to crack https://x.com/eigenrobot/status/1189945171619614720


But the normie’s defenses make him less agile at addressing novel attacks — and the wordcel never sleeps. Because normies don’t feel the full force of words, they’re especially vulnerable to side-loading https://t.co/3sgme9nef1

But the normie’s defenses make him less agile at addressing novel attacks — and the wordcel never sleeps. Because normies don’t feel the full force of words, they’re especially vulnerable to side-loading https://x.com/nosilverv/status/1750451126359503267?s=61&t=5VQTNkNIZXWdL93vB-TH3A


Wittgenstein has always been my favorite philosopher but it took me a long time to understand his work as a unified moral project — BOTH his early and later works are about preventing predation of normies by wordcels https://t.co/G8tgFEATu1

Wittgenstein has always been my favorite philosopher but it took me a long time to understand his work as a unified moral project — BOTH his early and later works are about preventing predation of normies by wordcels https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1751996688128999795/photo/1


Over time, there’s selection pressure on individual words to naturally de-reference and refer to the pointer, not the sensation. This leads to novel capacities, novel superorganisms that these capacities allow, and novel forms of predation from these superorganisms


The dynamic I think tpot clued in on is that the modal egregore is actually pretty hostile to human flourishing and benefits when the mind-body connection is broken https://t.co/qkKCEH6QYd

The dynamic I think tpot clued in on is that the modal egregore is actually pretty hostile to human flourishing and benefits when the mind-body connection is broken https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1737437632336912696?s=61&t=5VQTNkNIZXWdL93vB-TH3A


I really love people who take ideas seriously. I also think eigen’s approach is hilarious
https://t.co/Y1tN2TX9mK https://t.co/GoybsYRkvm

I really love people who take ideas seriously. I also think eigen’s approach is hilarious
https://x.com/eigenrobot/status/1741474868388827324?s=61&t=5VQTNkNIZXWdL93vB-TH3A https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1751997155403825612/photo/1


Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Thread inspired by @nosilverv


@nosilverv To circle back to the beginning — here’s the system I believe we use to freeze sensations: https://t.co/vzGxzCUWuY

@nosilverv To circle back to the beginning — here’s the system I believe we use to freeze sensations: https://opentheory.net/2023/07/principles-of-vasocomputation-a-unification-of-buddhist-phenomenology-active-inference-and-physical-reflex-part-i/


@nosilverv It’s also interesting to consider reification as a sensory superstimulus — much like “a single doritos nacho chip contained more flavor than a 17th century feudal peasant would have experienced in an entire lifetime,” a frozen distillation can be more compelling than the reality https://t.co/p8BRzV82T0

@nosilverv It’s also interesting to consider reification as a sensory superstimulus — much like “a single doritos nacho chip contained more flavor than a 17th century feudal peasant would have experienced in an entire lifetime,” a frozen distillation can be more compelling than the reality https://x.com/nickcammarata/status/1751187794754781474


@PashaKamyshev @nosilverv Very interesting — lots of implications here


@BishPlsOk @nosilverv @Tysenberg LLM + ASIC model of the human nervous system https://t.co/gQLMAaCQaj

@BishPlsOk @nosilverv @Tysenberg LLM + ASIC model of the human nervous system https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1731825339922624778


@MaxsBigMove I’d be grateful if any Wittgenstein scholars weigh in; it’s been a while since I picked him up, so I’ll just write from my cached understanding here.

I take the Tractatus to be an effort to create a perfect linguistic system, and PI to be an effort to demonstrate why language…


@BenAnderson421 Let’s do it


@_ambigramm I think vipassana noting practice spans several levels of abstraction; I hope to write out something more substantial at some point but some items I’d briefly point at:

- the inner speech component helps summon the right predictive model,
- daily practice “cleans” and…


@stephen_zerfas Sure — there’s a general trend towards words de-referencing, because there’s less synchronization friction when words are floating signifiers and can mean a conveniently wide range of things. We see this with terms like “freedom” and “democracy”. Less friction means larger…


@phantom_opus Thank you! I hope to discuss physical mechanism further in a later piece, but you might enjoy references 31+32 — “The hemo-neural hypothesis” in particular lays out the plausibility case https://t.co/205pbA3nRw

@phantom_opus Thank you! I hope to discuss physical mechanism further in a later piece, but you might enjoy references 31+32 — “The hemo-neural hypothesis” in particular lays out the plausibility case https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17913979/


@xlr8harder Great questions. My sense is there’s a large place for humans in the future, if we can properly tell our story

But we do need to believe in ourselves https://t.co/OdnjRuC0qv

@xlr8harder Great questions. My sense is there’s a large place for humans in the future, if we can properly tell our story

But we do need to believe in ourselves https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1681329833404506115


@basileSportif @xlr8harder I buy that; what I want is a clean answer to “what kind of thing are we?” — i.e. what kind of thing is a human nervous system?

In the Feynman sense, “What I cannot create, I do not understand”

Imo the most interesting interventions are those that will make us even more human https://t.co/gNzpUpttZm

@basileSportif @xlr8harder I buy that; what I want is a clean answer to “what kind of thing are we?” — i.e. what kind of thing is a human nervous system?

In the Feynman sense, “What I cannot create, I do not understand”

Imo the most interesting interventions are those that will make us even more human https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1618061058777952257


@BernardJBaars I suspect elegance arguments may have to suffice in many cases. On the other hand, most types of falsifiability may essentially boil down to elegance


@nosilverv Not publicly, but… people generally focus on his thesis in the negative sense: language *doesn't* have magical power around intrinsic reference, because it's "merely" a game. The positive frame (which I think is also core Wittgenstein) is arguably a little underdeveloped--


@nosilverv If language is a set of games, I think it's really interesting to explore its ecology; what flavors of games are there? Which subgames are unusual, special, particularly well-defined? I can’t think of many richer and less (formally) explored ecologies


@nosilverv Following Wittgenstein, math and physics are language-games. But they seem like a special language-game, one which respects certain structures and invariances that most language games don't. Seems important


@connor_holly1 @nosilverv I don’t think it’s numbers, although it’s a good point; I think it’s that math and physics deal in what we might call “logic crystals” — lego-like crystallized chunks of structure that are precisely defined. Fields like psychology/sociology have structure which is more negotiable


@connor_holly1 @nosilverv Although to your point, each number would be a mini logic crystal — a self-contained chunk of structure that doesn’t change. Then you build what you want from the relationships between these chunks

And hope it reflects the real world


@connor_holly1 @nosilverv Clearly I’m rehashing set theory / category theory, but it would be cool to take this analogy seriously enough to try to sort out to what extent language games have specific mathematical structures embedded in them

Not unrelated to LLMs & data cleaning/distillation https://t.co/0d1Kj4jF3o

@connor_holly1 @nosilverv Clearly I’m rehashing set theory / category theory, but it would be cool to take this analogy seriously enough to try to sort out to what extent language games have specific mathematical structures embedded in them

Not unrelated to LLMs & data cleaning/distillation https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1754628476060230126/photo/1


@JurijJukic @nosilverv What are your biggest takeaways of Lacan & phenomenology, or surprising takeaways in general?


@JurijJukic @nosilverv Thanks for the remarks; hearing you boost him does make me update.


Had a great time doing a podcast with @dkazand — lots of great questions & conversation. We talked about the Symmetry Theory of Valence, vasocomputation, nervous system virtue, and what tension is trying to do for us. https://t.co/EfRPRaS9kS

Had a great time doing a podcast with @dkazand — lots of great questions & conversation. We talked about the Symmetry Theory of Valence, vasocomputation, nervous system virtue, and what tension is trying to do for us. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2rsYCbQO5fHU2csdyX2CWD?si=76cd3c4a579f405a&nd=1&dlsi=de16601121024900


@nosilverv @nickcammarata What I think is happening (from PQ): https://t.co/4JPu3ZObOq

@nosilverv @nickcammarata What I think is happening (from PQ): https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1755542302104408372/photo/1


@Plinz I suspect we’ll either degenerate, or loop back to a high symmetry state (“heal the godshatter”) or it’ll be frothy — no End of History https://t.co/4oOp73hxow

@Plinz I suspect we’ll either degenerate, or loop back to a high symmetry state (“heal the godshatter”) or it’ll be frothy — no End of History https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1742662901083631658


@Plinz A lot depends on what consciousness is

One flavor of degeneration is everything becomes a qualia fragger https://t.co/36gXJJPMef https://t.co/FQM9qzZN5W

@Plinz A lot depends on what consciousness is

One flavor of degeneration is everything becomes a qualia fragger https://opentheory.net/2019/09/whats-out-there/ https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1758086288627081669/photo/1


Everybody knows GPT5 is going to blow the top off. But I think most people have a bad model of why, and what’s happening behind the scenes (1/n) https://t.co/DokEKrCDah

Everybody knows GPT5 is going to blow the top off. But I think most people have a bad model of why, and what’s happening behind the scenes (1/n) https://x.com/sama/status/1758280295995089393


As far as I can tell, the LLM game is about data quality much moreso than anything else. We see that over and over in papers: all LLM architectures converge on the same answer (approximation of the data). But garbage in, garbage out — the data itself is centrally important


I expect that sometime around 2017, OpenAI launched a secret project to collect as much high-quality text as possible. Their position today reflects the success of this project — much moreso than how many GPUs they have


Competitors can’t easily run the same play, because (1) companies are more closely guarding their data against scraping, and (2) many sources of data today are contaminated with AI-generated text. Today, most AIs are trained off of GPT4 outputs


We don’t always see the “evolving meta” in AI development, just the results. My guess is the low-end meta is “get data parity with 2020-era OpenAI”. But at the high end, I suspect it’s shifted to “use AI to directly curate, distill, and synthesize a diamond-perfect dataset”


Modern LLMs are an effective method for transmuting high-quality data into synthetic intelligence — to extract the motifs of cognition and assemble them in new (although not arbitrarily novel!) ways. A very big result


Now the challenge is how to take LLM intelligence and apply it back to data. This is a matter of 1) understanding precisely what makes for the highest-quality training data, and 2) applying synthetic intelligence to turn high-quality human tokens into higher-quality synthetic tks


An example of this is getting an LLM to transform prose on a topic into a structured textbook, and then training a future AI on this synthetic textbook (either in addition to or instead of the prose)


Likewise, if you can apply current LLMs to identify the worst 10% of your training data and either discard or improve that, the next generation gets a lot better. And you can iterate this


If I was @sama I’d be thinking about novel ways to project and distill data — the more angles you can apply the easier it is to find and fix imperfections. Increasingly important in MoE systems which draw from diverse semantic basins — you want experts to be deeply compatible


@sama Such compatibility is ultimately is about mathematical projections and symmetry — each semantic basin is a language-game which respects certain mathematical structures. Distill the structures and play the language-game at a higher level https://t.co/HcNhYMfnUT

@sama Such compatibility is ultimately is about mathematical projections and symmetry — each semantic basin is a language-game which respects certain mathematical structures. Distill the structures and play the language-game at a higher level https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1737562508926288180?s=46&t=NEwLPfedwCow8EP9ExPZpw


@sama How far can you get by using AI to improve its training data, and using the improved data to train a new AI? I see some limitations, but I expect very far indeed


@RobertWringhim I think words are artifacts of our bodies; there are limits to what can be inferred from these artifacts https://t.co/f9s9oV53R0

@RobertWringhim I think words are artifacts of our bodies; there are limits to what can be inferred from these artifacts https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1718966722470768832


@danfaggella Glad to hear from you — just found this.

Paul Feyerabend famously remarked “Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be, and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty eyed: solemn because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty eyed…


@MichaelTanner_ @nosilverv @Tysenberg https://t.co/LxV5JNTEls

Specifically https://t.co/1rNw0zdReC

@MichaelTanner_ @nosilverv @Tysenberg https://opentheory.net/2023/06/new-whitepaper-qualia-formalism-and-a-symmetry-theory-of-valence/

Specifically https://opentheory.net/Qualia_Formalism_and_a_Symmetry_Theory_of_Valence.pdf


@sama An interesting project that makes similar points (with more numbers): https://t.co/vNmZQJOh4C

@sama An interesting project that makes similar points (with more numbers): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tza0OIdTZNNjTqhkWZLRC9ha9Sp7lumGF5ytthx_Ozw/edit


@tbd19985 @nosilverv @Tysenberg Profoundly great book


@tnosxr @sama I wonder if less compatible semantic basins lead to more friction from MoE parceling, or if MoE can be thought of as a way to minimize this friction by allowing multiple paths

Should be data on this somewhere… but again we need tools for exploring/quantifying these basins


@omanuel My sense is Google is subdivided into fiefdoms whose prerogatives and assets are jealously guarded


@selentelechia @GeneralAntilles @eigenrobot I’d second that this may be a sign of some upstream food-related thing

Tooth health is pretty linked to bone health

The peaters would recommend looking at calcium, thyroid function, d, k2

I’d also consider whether she could be celiac

Also — is she sneaking candy at night?


RT @johnsonmxe: Nattokinase saved my life a few years ago. You should probably consider taking it.

🧵
NK is a cheap, powerful, and easy to…


@gfodor All physical systems, including e.g. waterfalls and bags of popcorn, can be interpreted as Turing-complete systems. If we respect all Turing-complete systems as sentient, we cannot respect anything as such (because no differential). Problem goes away if we ground in physics


@taziksh @gfodor Describing consciousness (and moral patienthood) in terms of what the atoms (quarks, fields strings, etc) of a system are doing, rather than Turing-level bits


@RichDecibels @dkazand I dig it —

I get the feeling some people built behaviors out of neural patterns, and others out of combined neural patterns and vasomuscular corrections

The former seems a lot better… but needs more up-front intentional debugging to get there https://t.co/QOQPcrnrDy

@RichDecibels @dkazand I dig it —

I get the feeling some people built behaviors out of neural patterns, and others out of combined neural patterns and vasomuscular corrections

The former seems a lot better… but needs more up-front intentional debugging to get there https://x.com/johnsonmxe/status/1727839734695960902


@taziksh @gfodor This is a high-level overview of some of the considerations: https://t.co/Ppql0LToXK

“Sentience” is a concept that straddles the world of intelligence and of consciousness. For clarity, I think it’s best to address each separately

@taziksh @gfodor This is a high-level overview of some of the considerations: https://opentheory.net/2022/04/it-from-bit-revisited/

“Sentience” is a concept that straddles the world of intelligence and of consciousness. For clarity, I think it’s best to address each separately


@gfodor @taziksh A very interesting question.

I do expect us to create both false-negatives (systems which have moral patienthood but we don’t view as such) and false-positives (systems which claim moral patienthood, perhaps using characteristic human motifs, but actually aren’t conscious)


@asdrawingaf @crimkadid has a fantastic thread describing autism as a growth disorder — though we haven’t found the particular chemical or nutrient change that radically increased the prevalence of autism. Substituting folic acid for folate is a plausible candidate

+ https://t.co/WcaRfrtWZY https://t.co/TXbnOoubDn

@asdrawingaf @crimkadid has a fantastic thread describing autism as a growth disorder — though we haven’t found the particular chemical or nutrient change that radically increased the prevalence of autism. Substituting folic acid for folate is a plausible candidate

+ https://opentheory.net/2023/05/autism-as-a-disorder-of-dimensionality/ https://x.com/crimkadid/status/1414384029361745921