In September 2020 I gave a presentation for Johannes Kleiner’s Mathematical Consciousness Science series. The recording turned out a bit quiet; here are my slides with brief commentary (from an April 2022 perspective). Beautiful philosophy takes the messy and complicated, […]
Emmy Noether and the symmetry aesthetic
Note: I originally wrote this for the QRI website. It can be thought of both as context for the intuitions which generated the Symmetry Theory of Valence (original; condensed primer), and offering Noether’s work as a generally promising research thread […]
A Primer on the Symmetry Theory of Valence
May 2023 note: in May 2022 I stepped down from the QRI board and left the organization. I wish them well and intend on continuing to pursue my research. I have updated several parts of this document to speak only […]
Shinzen Young interview: stress, equanimity, & sensory clarity
The following is the transcript of a July 12, 2019 interview with Shinzen Young during a Supertribe retreat on the science of longevity, along with my co-hosts Ivanna Evtukhova and Anastasia Safronova. Shinzen is a noted meditation teacher and author […]
Neural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything
Michael Edward Johnson, 11-28-19; mike@opentheory.net Context: follow-up to The Neuroscience of Meditation and A Future For Neuroscience; a unification of (1) the Entropic Brain & REBUS (Carhart-Harris et al. 2014; 2018; 2019), (2) the Free Energy Principle (Friston 2010), (3) […]
State of the Qualia, Fall 2019
Qualia Research Institute’s inaugural newsletter. What is QRI trying to do? Our long-term vision is to end suffering. To destroy hell, and to build tools for exploring all the bright futures which come after. To take the Buddha’s vision of […]
What’s out there?
We think of the great unknowns of cosmology in terms of physics (what was the Big Bang? Why does our physics have the constants it does? What are dark energy and dark matter?) and xenobiology (are there aliens out there? […]
Future of Life interview on AI alignment
Andrés and I were interviewed by the Future of Life Institute (FLI) for their AI alignment podcast back in May. I thought Lucas’s questions were excellent and the whole interview turned out very well. Lucas: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the […]
Taking Monism Seriously
On weak vs strong dual-aspect monism Sometimes, the solutions to the hardest problems are embarrassingly simple, and all that’s lacking is a few dedicated people actually trying to solve things. I often feel this way about formalizing consciousness. Thus far, […]
Recent interviews: Allen Saakyan and Adam Ford
I had the pleasure of being on Allen Saakyan’s The Simulation show along with my colleague Andrés. Very nice interview format, looking forward to the next round. Adam Ford also interviewed me about the Templeton Foundation’s new “Advancing Research into […]