WEBVTT NOTE Machine-generated transcript; not human-reviewed. NOTE Canonical transcript: https://opentheory.net/transcripts/qualia-formalism-symmetry-theory-valence/ 1 00:00:01.040 --> 00:00:27.500 Okay, so I'm going to give like a little menu of some of the novel paradigm shifting ideas that I associate with you. And some of these will be familiar to the listeners because I think they've become common terms in certain spaces. But neural annealing, autism as a disorder of dimensionality, the neuroscience of meditation, and also qualia formalism and the symmetry theory of valence. 2 00:00:27.500 --> 00:00:39.420 And I'd like to start with that last one because that's what's been blowing my mind in the last two weeks. So like, what would be the one sentence summary of that thesis about qualia formalism? 3 00:00:42.100 --> 00:01:10.440 Qualia formalism is this idea that math is the right approach to understanding consciousness, and that you can have an exact representation of an experience. And like, yeah, once again, this is a big deal if true, it wouldn't be a big deal if false. And then the symmetry theory of valence sort of takes this idea and then says, Okay, so where do we even start to reverse engineering experience? 4 00:01:11.740 --> 00:01:41.720 What is the simplest quality? And, and I chose pain and pleasure to try to reverse engineer. And the symmetry theory of valence, the hypothesis is sort of in the name, by design. And it's that given a mathematical object that represents an experience, for example, what it feels like to be you, what it feels like to me, what, excuse me, what, what it feels like to be some dog, what it feels like to be a dog. 5 00:01:41.740 --> 00:02:11.220 Or for some bird, then if we, if we evaluate this mathematical object for symmetry, that's how pleasant the experience is. And so we can get into what, what symmetry is, or whatever. But I think that like, one, one way I like to describe this is, this is a formal mathematical way to say, 6 00:02:12.060 --> 00:02:17.640 pleasure is good, good valence is harmony in the mind. 7 00:02:18.600 --> 00:02:41.320 And so if I'm feeling happy, then that's going to be associated with more harmony in the mind or symmetry in, in what, in like neuroscientific readouts in some sort of mathematical set of objects that we haven't fully articulated in all of the above. Where is the symmetry? 8 00:02:42.820 --> 00:03:11.340 Right. So the symmetry theory of valence suggests that the symmetry that matters is the symmetry of this mathematical representation of, of what it feels like to be of your experience. And then the question is, well, can we, can we proxy that with various neuroimaging techniques? Can we measure this with EEG? Can we measure this with fMRI? And so on. 9 00:03:11.740 --> 00:03:16.640 And so I've sort of dug into that as, as time goes on. 10 00:03:18.240 --> 00:03:38.440 And I know this because I, I saw some presentations and read the paper, but it does seem like those proxies all correspond. So there's like the proxy for your physiology. So things like heart rate variability and your breathing patterns, and then they kind of get into like a harmonious structure. 11 00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:41.560 And that's associated with positive valence. 12 00:03:41.740 --> 00:03:51.460 But then there's also harmony with like neuroimaging or EEGs. Can you maybe give us some more examples of that? 13 00:03:53.520 --> 00:04:10.880 Sure. So yeah, there, there are many ways to, to measure what's happening in the body and like the, the ways that we would be most interested in are sort of the, the most closely linked to the mind. 14 00:04:11.060 --> 00:04:11.580 Yeah. 15 00:04:11.740 --> 00:04:26.300 So like heart rate variability would be cool to, to measure. But like EEG or fMRI might be a better, better proxy for what's going on in, in phenomenology. 16 00:04:28.640 --> 00:04:41.480 So then like one, one way to, to frame symmetry is symmetry is order. Symmetry is sort of lack. 17 00:04:41.740 --> 00:04:49.620 of noise, lack of complexity. Frank Wilczek defined symmetry as change without change. 18 00:04:50.160 --> 00:04:57.860 And so the more ways that you can sort of shift an object and get the same result, the more symmetries it has. 19 00:04:58.240 --> 00:05:00.000 And this is, this can be framed 20 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:09.920 in a very formal way. So, production issues here. 21 00:05:10.140 --> 00:05:11.420 His air pod just fell out. 22 00:05:11.940 --> 00:05:20.720 Yeah. Nice. And we're back. So one, it's this big question, this grand question of 23 00:05:20.720 --> 00:05:30.060 how do we connect what's happening in our neuroimaging that we can apply EEG, we can 24 00:05:30.060 --> 00:05:38.160 apply fMRI, we can apply MEG. We have many, many different tools, but how in the world do we 25 00:05:38.160 --> 00:05:47.560 connect that to experience? And this is a pretty central question for neuroscience. And my answer 26 00:05:47.560 --> 00:05:55.320 is it might actually not be that hard. There might actually be some sort of clever things we can do. 27 00:05:57.240 --> 00:06:07.300 For example, if we're trying to approximate the harmony in the mind or the symmetry of this 28 00:06:07.300 --> 00:06:16.040 mathematical representation that right now we can't measure directly, but if we want to say, okay, 29 00:06:16.140 --> 00:06:24.120 what neuroimaging techniques could give us an estimation of how much symmetry there is in the mind, 30 00:06:24.980 --> 00:06:28.700 this is the way that we can do it, then one thing that I'm looking at is compressibility. 31 00:06:30.030 --> 00:06:39.340 That you can apply this to any sort of neuroimaging data, to EEG, to fMRI or whatnot. 32 00:06:40.230 --> 00:06:49.740 And it's just more pleasant states should be more compressible in kind of a very basic information 33 00:06:49.740 --> 00:06:54.420 theoretic sense. And can you define that? What would you mean by compressibility? 34 00:06:56.180 --> 00:07:03.400 Yeah. So if we have a file size that's a gigabyte, how low can we get it if we apply 35 00:07:03.400 --> 00:07:12.140 compression? So if we can compress it 20% versus if we can compress it 40%, maybe the 40% 36 00:07:12.140 --> 00:07:16.080 is a more pleasant state. We can infer that it has more symmetry. 37 00:07:19.300 --> 00:07:24.600 Okay. My mind's going in all sorts of places now, but I guess I want to tie this in with, 38 00:07:24.620 --> 00:07:32.900 an experience I had recently with meditation where I realized that a big part of meditation 39 00:07:32.900 --> 00:07:39.300 for me was about unpacking abstractions in my field of experience. Something 40 00:07:39.730 --> 00:07:46.220 that previously felt like pain. When I really look closely to it, it's actually something a 41 00:07:46.220 --> 00:07:52.940 lot more nuanced and complex. I had a compression on that side of the map that said, this is pain, 42 00:07:53.080 --> 00:07:54.600 avoid it. But really it's a compScriptive compScriptive compScriptive compScriptive 43 00:07:54.620 --> 00:08:00.040 is like textured with all sorts of other stuff and i i like unpack it and then the pain turns 44 00:08:00.040 --> 00:08:07.600 into something else and so this made me have almost like um like a like self-consciousness or 45 00:08:07.600 --> 00:08:14.860 um an unstable relationship with like compression algorithms you know where so much of life is about 46 00:08:14.860 --> 00:08:21.720 creating like adequate compression algorithms to um offload a lot of like cognitive processes 47 00:08:21.720 --> 00:08:27.620 so you can navigate things a little more like uh skill um and i was like well maybe maybe that's 48 00:08:27.620 --> 00:08:32.620 the problem you know maybe that's creating all sorts of unnecessary suffering and so i need to 49 00:08:32.620 --> 00:08:37.260 unpack those compressions or maybe i need to i did them the wrong way or something like that so 50 00:08:38.820 --> 00:08:43.300 um it feels like that's related to what you're saying i'm just curious to hear you riff on that 51 00:08:44.260 --> 00:08:50.940 yes yeah uh so i that definitely matches my experience um i think that like i i tend to 52 00:08:51.720 --> 00:08:58.780 metaphor for the brain that we can talk about unpacking an experience or or like a feeling um 53 00:08:59.520 --> 00:09:03.560 we can also talk about sort of unfolding it and then metabolizing it 54 00:09:05.480 --> 00:09:12.380 we're sort of made to digest these things and uh when they just kind of sit um when when a bunch of 55 00:09:12.380 --> 00:09:20.080 complexity sits there um we can't really digest it until we we can look at it right 56 00:09:20.080 --> 00:09:21.680 right and so 57 00:09:21.720 --> 00:09:27.680 just to draw a thread with a few things um symmetry is like change without change 58 00:09:28.300 --> 00:09:33.820 which i can get how that relates to compression because it you know you compress a one gigabyte 59 00:09:33.820 --> 00:09:40.420 file to like half its size you've changed it it's taking up less space but for it to be a 60 00:09:40.420 --> 00:09:45.040 successful compression something essential about it is still true you know like the image still 61 00:09:45.040 --> 00:09:51.060 looks good it looks like the image um and then this metaphor of 62 00:09:52.460 --> 00:09:57.800 digestion it's like breaking something down to its constituent parts and then 63 00:09:58.420 --> 00:09:59.620 reorganizing them in like a 64 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:04.700 more harmonious or more useful or more something more beautiful 65 00:10:04.700 --> 00:10:10.520 structure. Am I getting that right? Yeah, yeah, I would say so. And I mean, I would say that that's 66 00:10:10.520 --> 00:10:18.540 kind of the, and my friend Johan, John, and some others have a good paper on this metaphor of 67 00:10:18.540 --> 00:10:28.040 sort of cognition as digestion. And it's the sense that, like, as a system, we try to stay 68 00:10:28.040 --> 00:10:34.480 clean and simple. And so if there's food, we eat the food, we digest it, we extract nutrients, 69 00:10:34.960 --> 00:10:42.600 we get rid of the waste, and leaving room for the next thing that we eat. And I think that 70 00:10:42.600 --> 00:10:51.300 often sensations, feelings, thoughts are the same way, that we have some sort of nugget of complexity, 71 00:10:51.400 --> 00:10:57.620 and we need to sort of internalize it, digest it, extract the good stuff, and then 72 00:10:58.900 --> 00:11:06.460 jettison the stuff that we don't need. And if we do it right, then the outcome, the result, 73 00:11:08.260 --> 00:11:11.020 is simplicity. It's harmony. It's symmetry. 74 00:11:12.580 --> 00:11:20.080 Right. Can you give like a very basic example of, you know, like two people having an interaction, 75 00:11:20.240 --> 00:11:24.700 and then some sort of complexity arises? What would it look like if you went through the whole, 76 00:11:24.700 --> 00:11:27.300 you know, digestive tract for that complexity? 77 00:11:28.220 --> 00:11:41.360 Sure, sure. So if I, if I like, if we're having a conversation, and, and we talk about 78 00:11:42.600 --> 00:11:47.140 like, I don't know, like the molecular structure of water or something, and like, 79 00:11:48.380 --> 00:11:53.180 we talk about chemical bond, and you're like, what exactly is a chemical bond? And like, there's, 80 00:11:54.160 --> 00:11:59.880 there are some words that, okay, I said chemical bond, and now they're, they're sort of, 81 00:12:00.420 --> 00:12:04.620 they're in your head, you're wondering, okay, what, what exactly is this thing? 82 00:12:05.140 --> 00:12:11.040 And you're kind of looking at it from different angles. And maybe it's hard to digest. 83 00:12:12.600 --> 00:12:18.660 Hard to sort of metabolize, hard to sort of get the nutrients out and move on to the next thing. 84 00:12:20.040 --> 00:12:26.720 And so that, that complexity is sort of sitting in your mind, and breaking symmetries, we can say. 85 00:12:28.360 --> 00:12:34.600 And then, you know, as we say, okay, well, they're like these valence shells, and 86 00:12:35.140 --> 00:12:42.580 the electrons fit in them in such a way, then it gives you sort of the reagent, 87 00:12:42.600 --> 00:12:47.880 or the frame to digest this concept. And you're like, oh, yeah, like, that makes total sense. 88 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:49.140 And we can, we can move on. 89 00:12:51.100 --> 00:12:54.540 It's funny, because this actually, it's very self referencing, 90 00:12:54.660 --> 00:12:59.220 but this matches my experience with encountering your work, and also, you know, QRI stuff, where 91 00:12:59.220 --> 00:13:04.740 I think in part, because it's so ambitious, in the beginning, it felt like I was discovering these, 92 00:13:04.800 --> 00:13:10.800 like, isolated, self contained, you know, theories that I couldn't really incorporate or connect with 93 00:13:11.520 --> 00:13:12.580 other aspects of the world. 94 00:13:12.600 --> 00:13:16.440 My, you know, experience, until I, you know, read a bunch, and then I was able to, 95 00:13:17.300 --> 00:13:22.060 like, hold all of it in the context window or something, and then find a way to, to put it 96 00:13:22.060 --> 00:13:29.240 together. And I think what helped me, and it might help the listeners, is that, and, you know, 97 00:13:29.240 --> 00:13:32.480 correct me if I'm wrong, and this is just my understanding, but there's this, 98 00:13:34.300 --> 00:13:41.740 words like symmetry and harmony, they bring all the metaphors of music to mind for me. 99 00:13:43.420 --> 00:13:48.440 And just, and music and math also have a really beautiful relationship, you know, music theory, 100 00:13:48.540 --> 00:13:53.120 and even if you get down to the physics, like, why are certain intervals, like, pleasant sounding, 101 00:13:53.240 --> 00:13:59.440 and why are some of them not? And it almost seems like the thread that connects a lot of your work 102 00:14:00.180 --> 00:14:07.480 is, is something like the music of consciousness. And I know that's, like, very vague, but that 103 00:14:07.480 --> 00:14:11.300 helped as, like, an anchor for me to make sense of some of the stuff you were saying. 104 00:14:12.760 --> 00:14:19.040 Totally. That makes a lot of sense. And I think that, like, oftentimes, progress is 105 00:14:19.040 --> 00:14:26.580 sort of connecting different domains. And, you know, if we can connect, you know, the domain of 106 00:14:26.580 --> 00:14:33.400 consciousness or phenomenology of, you know, this blooming buzzing confusion, in James's terms, 107 00:14:34.380 --> 00:14:41.340 with, with math, and especially with music, which is in, in some sense, normative mathematics, 108 00:14:41.620 --> 00:14:42.580 I want to say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 109 00:14:43.720 --> 00:14:47.460 then that gives us a lot more tools to approach things. 110 00:14:47.820 --> 00:14:48.280 Right. 111 00:14:49.400 --> 00:14:52.500 So coming back to the symmetry theory of valence, 112 00:14:52.580 --> 00:14:59.660 is it, am I right in saying that the thesis or like, 113 00:14:59.700 --> 00:15:00.000 or 114 00:15:00.200 --> 00:15:19.700 an implication of it is that like all things being equal symmetry like as a as in the broadest terms is just good like everything we like as human beings is fundamentally associated with symmetry. 115 00:15:22.500 --> 00:15:40.540 Um directly or indirectly uh so I think that uh like I I would um you know put forth the the pretty strong assertion that all positive valence all a good feeling um comes from symmetry in the mind. 116 00:15:40.720 --> 00:15:41.220 Hmm. 117 00:15:41.320 --> 00:15:46.420 And this is not necessarily the same as symmetry in these stimulus. 118 00:15:47.040 --> 00:15:49.680 So now we we don't have a whole lot of symmetry in the mind. 119 00:15:49.700 --> 00:15:55.300 We don't you know uh hear one one major chord and then just pass out from pleasure. 120 00:15:55.760 --> 00:16:06.120 Um you know and and some of us like uh you know noise music or you know rock music or or whatever that uh that does have some distance. 121 00:16:06.360 --> 00:16:13.080 But I guess like I tend to describe this in terms of a lock and key system. 122 00:16:13.220 --> 00:16:13.600 Hmm. 123 00:16:14.300 --> 00:16:18.760 That uh the brain is is this very complicated lock. 124 00:16:19.700 --> 00:16:27.920 Um and then we were always looking around for keys uh that will sort of combine with this lock to create harmony. 125 00:16:28.840 --> 00:16:38.340 And so if if I'm thirsty then uh a drink of water will combine with the the state of my brain uh to create more harmony. 126 00:16:38.800 --> 00:16:41.420 Um if I'm not thirsty then it probably won't. 127 00:16:41.980 --> 00:16:47.800 Um but the like the symmetry theory of valence uh argues that. 128 00:16:47.880 --> 00:16:48.480 Hmm. 129 00:16:49.700 --> 00:16:53.300 The the goal condition is always the same. 130 00:16:53.460 --> 00:16:58.120 It's always symmetry uh in the brain symmetry in the mind. 131 00:16:58.280 --> 00:17:03.460 Um and technically symmetry in this mathematical representation of experience. 132 00:17:04.440 --> 00:17:09.380 Um and then of course naturally uh you know we don't stay happy. 133 00:17:09.520 --> 00:17:13.880 We we um we get bored of what we're doing. 134 00:17:14.060 --> 00:17:16.820 We're looking for something new and the lock shifts. 135 00:17:16.820 --> 00:17:20.200 And it takes a different sort of key to to fit. 136 00:17:21.620 --> 00:17:22.160 Right. 137 00:17:22.540 --> 00:17:29.500 I'm I'm reminded here of actually the stuff Jordan Peterson old school Jordan Peterson would say about chaos and order. 138 00:17:29.920 --> 00:17:30.460 Yeah. 139 00:17:30.540 --> 00:17:44.240 And like cleaning your room and um that it's almost like everyone's in a game that's like perfectly matched for their particular subjectivity of finding like that boundary between chaos and order. 140 00:17:44.240 --> 00:17:56.720 And then when you when you do that when you're have one foot in chaos and one foot in order your your meaning instincts and all this other stuff just kind of uh support you and you feel good you get into flow. 141 00:17:57.720 --> 00:18:00.720 Um does that connect with the symmetry theory of valence at all? 142 00:18:00.780 --> 00:18:02.980 Have you thought of that framing? 143 00:18:04.700 --> 00:18:10.720 I I think yeah I'm I'm a big fan of of the chaos and order frame of Peterson as well. 144 00:18:10.720 --> 00:18:31.220 And I think that um like we we sort of it's about the the nature of keys that we seek out and like how challenging like how challenging we we seek out uh like we don't want something too challenging and we don't want something too easy. 145 00:18:33.160 --> 00:18:40.060 Um so I do think that like the the part where I would sort of uh 146 00:18:40.800 --> 00:18:45.220 depart from this chaos versus order frame is that 147 00:18:48.020 --> 00:18:55.160 the sort of the success state in the brain and in the mind is always the same. 148 00:18:55.800 --> 00:19:06.780 And like this this gets into uh sort of effective neuroscience study this in terms of um uh brain regions and um and whatnot. 149 00:19:06.980 --> 00:19:10.440 But the the findings they have is like. 150 00:19:10.580 --> 00:19:10.700 Um. 151 00:19:11.340 --> 00:19:18.760 Regardless of whether you get there by eating a candy bar or listening to this beautiful profound symphony. 152 00:19:19.460 --> 00:19:21.340 Uh the same regions light up. 153 00:19:22.020 --> 00:19:28.720 Um and I think in in an even more general sense like it's all symmetry. 154 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:30.480 It's all it's all harmony. 155 00:19:34.380 --> 00:19:38.080 What what do you mean by that by it's all symmetry it's all harmony. 156 00:19:39.120 --> 00:19:44.380 Oh yeah um anything that feels good is creating symmetry in the mind. 157 00:19:44.860 --> 00:19:49.660 Um anything that feels bad is creating uh broken symmetries in the mind. 158 00:19:50.120 --> 00:20:00.000 And is that um is that like just certain brain regions are are pulsing in some sort of like periodic 159 00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:08.860 does that look like? And I know these are proxies, but what does that actually look like in a neuroscientific sense? 160 00:20:10.120 --> 00:20:23.760 Yeah, that's a really great question. And just kind of to give a little background, neuroscience has approached this question of what makes some things feel better than others in several ways. 161 00:20:23.760 --> 00:20:42.340 And one way that it's sort of put forward is that maybe they're pleasure neurochemicals. There's dopamine and there's opioids. And these things create pleasure in some way. 162 00:20:43.040 --> 00:20:53.080 And so part of my argument is that this isn't grounded. This is a good explanation on one level, but not all levels. 163 00:20:55.700 --> 00:21:07.380 And another theory that neuroscience has put forth is that pleasure is very localized to certain brain regions. 164 00:21:07.720 --> 00:21:19.720 That the nucleus accumbens is kind of the pleasure center of the brain. And there are several others. And that they sort of intrinsically create pleasure. 165 00:21:20.120 --> 00:21:23.740 And again, my claim is that pleasure is a very local thing. 166 00:21:23.760 --> 00:21:36.620 These sorts of explanations that neuroscience has put forth that pleasure is this, or these things create pleasure, they kind of fall apart when you poke at them. 167 00:21:37.760 --> 00:21:47.780 And I guess I would say a slightly different story in Principia Qualia, where I introduced the symmetry theory of balance. 168 00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:53.740 I suggest that we can think of brain regions or pleasure centers of the brain as a central part of the brain. 169 00:21:53.760 --> 00:21:56.640 As tuning knobs of the brain. 170 00:21:57.800 --> 00:22:04.200 So these, you know, quote unquote pleasure centers, they're not intrinsically creating pleasure. 171 00:22:04.960 --> 00:22:07.800 They're retuning the brain towards harmony. 172 00:22:09.640 --> 00:22:18.060 And a similar argument with sort of opioids. They're sort of adjusting the neuroacoustics of the brain, you could say. 173 00:22:19.340 --> 00:22:23.720 So what would that, how would that map onto like maybe stimuli? 174 00:22:23.760 --> 00:22:27.420 Or like someone's first person experience? 175 00:22:28.740 --> 00:22:29.540 Sure. 176 00:22:30.620 --> 00:22:43.600 So if you eat something that you really like, then maybe there's some activation of nucleus accumbens as a pleasure center. 177 00:22:43.920 --> 00:22:48.600 And maybe it sort of pulses out harmony. 178 00:22:48.720 --> 00:22:51.500 It sort of synchronizes other regions to it. 179 00:22:51.600 --> 00:22:53.740 And like there's a lot of different ways of doing that. 180 00:22:53.760 --> 00:23:01.860 There's sort of the, then the reflections and there's constructive interference and sort of your brain starts to hum when you eat something nice. 181 00:23:02.480 --> 00:23:05.000 Or we can say your nervous system starts to hum. 182 00:23:06.480 --> 00:23:14.460 And so it may look like the pleasure center is causing that, but it's actually the whole brain that's involved. 183 00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:23.740 Okay. Now what if I eat something that tastes really good, but there's this other part of me that knows it's not in line with my taste. 184 00:23:27.220 --> 00:23:41.660 Sure. So then you're going to have some cognitive dissonance and literal dissonance. There may be sort of two, I would call them frequency regimes that are sort of fighting. 185 00:23:41.660 --> 00:23:54.720 And one, like they're each maybe harmonious to themselves, but together they produce dissonance. 186 00:23:56.300 --> 00:24:07.020 So they're like, there's localized pockets of harmony, but they're like totally different genres of music or something, or they're in different keys. And then when they encounter each other, there's disharmony at like a higher level. 187 00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:08.640 Totally. 188 00:24:09.220 --> 00:24:11.460 So this is kind of exciting to me. 189 00:24:11.660 --> 00:24:29.420 Because I've had like a personal philosophy, like a minimum viable philosophy that just works really well for me, which is like I playfully call it integrity maxing, which is just start with the values that I believe I have. 190 00:24:29.800 --> 00:24:38.580 And then try to structure my life, my day, my actions, my practices, so that I'm in integrity with those values. 191 00:24:38.780 --> 00:24:41.640 And that requires like having some self-awareness about what those values are. 192 00:24:41.660 --> 00:24:52.020 And then having the appropriate amount of self-discipline and also compassion to like understand how to do things and skill to have integrity with those values. 193 00:24:52.440 --> 00:24:55.780 And my life is just better when I am in integrity. 194 00:24:55.900 --> 00:24:58.840 And then my life just feels worse when I'm not. 195 00:24:58.920 --> 00:24:59.600 And I try to 196 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:07.900 almost like make this as legible to myself as possible by like articulating, you know, what it is that I value. 197 00:25:09.760 --> 00:25:21.040 And it just, just taking the thing you just presented, it makes me think that it's, that's just a practice of resolving cognitive dissonance across time. 198 00:25:21.660 --> 00:25:32.120 Right? Because that subjective feeling of integrity is when I guess different regions of my brain like find a way to strike a deal with each other or something and then harmonize. 199 00:25:32.980 --> 00:25:36.700 Am I, am I getting it? Does that make sense? Yeah. 200 00:25:37.260 --> 00:25:46.240 Totally. And I mean, I think in a, in sort of a deep philosophical, psychological way, I think we can construct ourselves in many different ways. 201 00:25:46.340 --> 00:25:49.720 And some lead to, 202 00:25:51.840 --> 00:25:56.120 internal conflict, internal dissonance, et cetera, much more so than others. 203 00:25:57.740 --> 00:26:07.380 And maybe a very simple model is like, you know, you have your values and then you have your, your behavior. 204 00:26:08.700 --> 00:26:13.540 And so to the degree that your behavior corresponds with your values, you are in integrity. 205 00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:18.820 But then your values might not actually correspond to reality. Like you might have the wrong values. 206 00:26:19.300 --> 00:26:20.580 And then you're going to get, 207 00:26:21.040 --> 00:26:21.660 you might have to have a different. 208 00:26:22.020 --> 00:26:27.560 Feedback from reality that you know you're, you're doing things wrong or something's off. 209 00:26:27.660 --> 00:26:31.740 And so there's that kind of, there's different places where you can have dissonance, I guess. 210 00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:37.440 One, one interesting angle in this. 211 00:26:38.960 --> 00:26:47.700 I'm a big fan of this idea that emotions are embodied and there's so much intelligence, not only in the brain, but also in the body. 212 00:26:48.820 --> 00:26:50.980 And, and there's different, different. 213 00:26:51.040 --> 00:26:58.300 frames about parts work and like internal family systems and whatnot and curating therapy and i 214 00:26:58.300 --> 00:27:04.620 think that uh like oftentimes literally different parts of your nervous system can be in conflict 215 00:27:05.900 --> 00:27:13.380 and um and like that conflict sort of leads to you know literal dissonance in your nervous system 216 00:27:13.380 --> 00:27:20.520 and literal broken symmetries in your experience uh and it's sort of a tug of war and like 217 00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:26.240 different organs fight differently and they have different carrots and sticks 218 00:27:27.260 --> 00:27:34.620 and so i don't know we know a lot of people on twitter talk uh talk about ai alignment um and 219 00:27:34.620 --> 00:27:40.220 i think that's that's a fascinating topic and i think that like somatic alignment is also just 220 00:27:40.220 --> 00:27:48.220 super interesting what are some um interesting implications of the symmetry theory of valence 221 00:27:48.220 --> 00:27:50.880 when it comes to therapeutic practice 222 00:27:51.040 --> 00:27:58.980 for somatic alignment or even just you know personal practices in order to achieve more 223 00:27:58.980 --> 00:28:09.800 symmetry yeah yeah so i would say that um there's this idea that um there can be competing and i'm 224 00:28:09.800 --> 00:28:19.220 going to use this term again um uh harmonic regimes um and that can like they sort of have 225 00:28:19.220 --> 00:28:21.020 coherence and harmony 226 00:28:21.040 --> 00:28:28.580 harmony when taken solo but then when combined they can create distance and i think that a lot of 227 00:28:29.620 --> 00:28:30.140 like 228 00:28:32.340 --> 00:28:38.260 a lot of improving that and like this this is kind of a human condition to be you know this sort of 229 00:28:40.300 --> 00:28:46.420 uh somatic parliament that it doesn't always fully get along um and then i think that uh 230 00:28:48.740 --> 00:28:50.460 um like there's 231 00:28:51.040 --> 00:28:56.260 there's there's like stuff that i can say about sort of symmetry and and harmony and mathematics 232 00:28:56.260 --> 00:29:02.120 and there's also this stuff that i can say about just like when you have several 233 00:29:03.540 --> 00:29:10.740 periodic systems that each have harmonic structure like how do you make them play well together um 234 00:29:10.740 --> 00:29:18.100 how do you sort of harmonize that harmonic structure and like i um in my expectation and in 235 00:29:18.100 --> 00:29:20.420 my experience um it's it's about listening 236 00:29:21.200 --> 00:29:44.160 it's about like uh getting the getting the integration getting the information to flow um and then like over time these systems will will figure it they'll figure it out um it might be a somewhat painful process uh during you know during that time but um yeah i think like 237 00:29:45.960 --> 00:29:50.420 in terms of like having harmony in your body 238 00:29:52.040 --> 00:29:52.380 just kind of 239 00:29:53.440 --> 00:29:55.760 make sure it's it's talking listening 240 00:29:58.360 --> 00:29:59.960 and practically is that 241 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:05.160 just, you know, having equanimity and bringing attention to all these different parts? 242 00:30:06.860 --> 00:30:13.400 Yeah, so, I mean, this kind of gets into semantic practices and whatnot. 243 00:30:13.680 --> 00:30:23.460 I think, like, the most important thing is just to set aside time to give yourself attention. 244 00:30:24.960 --> 00:30:27.100 To give different parts of you attention. 245 00:30:27.360 --> 00:30:32.460 And, like, the parts that need the most attention feel the worst to give attention. 246 00:30:33.340 --> 00:30:38.920 Because it's like, oh, you know, I have a pain in my stomach and I don't want to put my attention there because it hurts. 247 00:30:39.140 --> 00:30:45.000 But, like, it'll only hurt when you resist giving it attention. 248 00:30:45.540 --> 00:30:52.960 And then once you kind of apply attention, you let, again, touching back on your previous example, 249 00:30:53.460 --> 00:30:58.040 you kind of let that part of you expand and unfold. 250 00:30:58.880 --> 00:31:03.460 And then you can sort of metabolize whatever's there. 251 00:31:06.120 --> 00:31:08.440 And does that just look like sitting? 252 00:31:10.640 --> 00:31:13.000 Yeah, I mean, it can be in meditation. 253 00:31:15.400 --> 00:31:19.680 But I get the feeling that a lot of people are sometimes a little… 254 00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:23.440 They find meditation a little intimidating. 255 00:31:25.260 --> 00:31:32.780 Like, this practice can just literally be just lie down in bed, shut your eyes, and, like, give yourself attention. 256 00:31:35.160 --> 00:31:41.340 And it seems like there's a general direction, I guess, for most people. 257 00:31:41.560 --> 00:31:42.720 Depends on your starting point. 258 00:31:42.780 --> 00:31:49.000 But for that attention to be in the body and not in terms of, you know, your thoughts about the body. 259 00:31:49.680 --> 00:31:53.300 And so, you know, I guess that's the whole thing. 260 00:31:53.320 --> 00:31:53.440 Right. 261 00:31:53.460 --> 00:31:53.960 And I think that's the whole point of somatic work. 262 00:31:54.080 --> 00:32:00.840 It's about feeling what wants to be felt and not, you know, telling a story about it or describing it and then paying attention to the description. 263 00:32:01.560 --> 00:32:05.420 But actually paying attention to the raw sensory experience of it. 264 00:32:06.160 --> 00:32:06.600 Right. 265 00:32:07.520 --> 00:32:07.960 Yeah. 266 00:32:08.780 --> 00:32:19.080 So, my apostolic teacher suggests this, I don't know if I want to call it a mantra or just kind of framework. 267 00:32:20.520 --> 00:32:22.100 Present, internal, centered. 268 00:32:23.920 --> 00:32:28.820 So much of our experience, we're thinking about the future, we're thinking about the past. 269 00:32:29.140 --> 00:32:36.740 And to sort of be present, we have to be in the present. 270 00:32:38.120 --> 00:32:44.880 And then internal, like, we can kind of put our attention outside, you know, thinking about other things. 271 00:32:45.620 --> 00:32:52.460 But we should be putting our attention, like, if we're trying to sort of give ourselves attention, we should put it inside. 272 00:32:53.460 --> 00:33:00.600 And centered, he means it in terms of not trying to chase after or judge anything. 273 00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:05.300 It's just taking things neutrally as they are. 274 00:33:07.250 --> 00:33:07.580 Right. 275 00:33:07.620 --> 00:33:10.580 And that gives you the space to actually listen to it. 276 00:33:11.020 --> 00:33:11.680 Yeah. 277 00:33:13.780 --> 00:33:23.440 What comes to mind here is, you know, as by hydrating all these harmonic regimes with attention and, you know, 278 00:33:23.460 --> 00:33:31.460 and listening to them, we can create the opportunity for them to reorganize with, like, more harmony. 279 00:33:33.160 --> 00:33:38.320 And I think that's true internally, but it's also true externally with people. 280 00:33:38.680 --> 00:33:48.300 Like, there's a way in which you can show up with someone that you have dissonance with that creates the opportunity for harmony across, you know, that relationship. 281 00:33:49.300 --> 00:33:52.840 Do you think about the way human beings coordinate? 282 00:33:53.460 --> 00:33:54.320 Are they all in the same terms? 283 00:33:54.340 --> 00:33:59.660 Are there notable differences in the way this shows up externally as opposed to internally? 284 00:34:01.260 --> 00:34:01.780 Yeah. 285 00:34:01.860 --> 00:34:04.160 I mean, I think it's all the same stuff. 286 00:34:05.460 --> 00:34:14.200 And there's this one of my favorite sayings is, as you do anything, so you do everything. 287 00:34:14.520 --> 00:34:14.920 Yeah. 288 00:34:15.060 --> 00:34:23.340 And I mean, this, it's clear that, like, we have the same kind of interactions with others as we do, like, inside our body. 289 00:34:23.460 --> 00:34:31.740 and like uh we're sort of fractal harmonic computers and uh like a lot of 290 00:34:33.160 --> 00:34:41.880 a lot of effective practice is sort of learning how to um how to be a good harmonic computer i 291 00:34:41.880 --> 00:34:48.340 guess i would say um okay this reminds me of a quote of yours that i really liked i'm just going 292 00:34:48.340 --> 00:34:54.780 to read it uh he said people think emotional progress is about releasing tension but in my 293 00:34:54.780 --> 00:34:57.840 opinion it's first about building enough virtue in your nervous system 294 00:34:57.840 --> 00:35:00.000 such that your vasomuscular 295 00:35:00.480 --> 00:35:05.180 system doesn't need to jump in and micromanage and then showing your 296 00:35:05.180 --> 00:35:12.820 body evidence of this virtue and then you get release can you can you explain that nice uh yeah 297 00:35:12.820 --> 00:35:19.920 would be would be happy to um so this gets into my my latest piece um it's called principles of 298 00:35:19.920 --> 00:35:30.040 vasocomputation and um it uh it talks about it sort of it combines three domains one domain is 299 00:35:30.040 --> 00:35:37.320 buddhist phenomenology um another domain it's called um active inference it's part of the 300 00:35:37.320 --> 00:35:45.220 predictive coding pre-energy principle uh cluster and then the third domain is neuroanatomy um 301 00:35:45.220 --> 00:35:48.400 and so uh 302 00:35:48.400 --> 00:35:49.800 the 303 00:35:49.920 --> 00:35:54.540 the rabbit hole goes pretty deep uh i'd recommend people uh people read my thing 304 00:35:54.540 --> 00:36:01.240 uh it's it's the top post right now on opentheory.net um uh but i would say that uh 305 00:36:01.980 --> 00:36:08.700 like the the important thing uh for explaining this quote is that you know we we think of 306 00:36:08.700 --> 00:36:18.040 um computation as happening in the nervous system that okay you have the brain you have some nerves 307 00:36:18.040 --> 00:36:19.000 and they 308 00:36:19.920 --> 00:36:27.320 send electrical pulses around and the magic happens. And principles of vasocomputation 309 00:36:27.320 --> 00:36:37.140 says, yes, and. Like that is absolutely true. But there's also a parallel system that is 310 00:36:37.140 --> 00:36:46.460 very computationally relevant. And that's actually the vasomuscular system. So the vasomuscular 311 00:36:46.460 --> 00:36:55.120 system is it has a ring of muscle around it. All our veins and arteries and whatnot. 312 00:36:55.660 --> 00:37:03.820 It has a ring of smooth muscle. They're called VSMC, vascular smooth muscle cells. And so 313 00:37:03.820 --> 00:37:16.140 they can contract our blood vessels. And I think that the contractions of this system 314 00:37:16.140 --> 00:37:16.440 are. 315 00:37:16.460 --> 00:37:21.880 Are actually really important to understand, like how humans work, how humans think, how 316 00:37:21.880 --> 00:37:25.800 humans feel, how humans move. So. 317 00:37:29.420 --> 00:37:38.280 The vasomuscular system is a helper system. When the neural system is, you know, doing 318 00:37:38.280 --> 00:37:45.680 good things, it just hangs out. But when the neural system gets into trouble, when 319 00:37:46.460 --> 00:37:48.260 you have to figure out how to get them to understand how to understand how to understand 320 00:37:48.260 --> 00:38:04.740 how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand 321 00:38:06.460 --> 00:38:06.680 how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand 322 00:38:06.900 --> 00:38:15.040 how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand 323 00:38:16.820 --> 00:38:21.160 patterns as unsafe, it sort of blocks those out. 324 00:38:21.480 --> 00:38:30.340 So if we have tension in the body, it's because our body thinks that some parts of our full 325 00:38:30.340 --> 00:38:32.260 dynamic range are unsafe. 326 00:38:33.540 --> 00:38:35.980 And this tension is trying to help us. 327 00:38:36.480 --> 00:38:41.940 And I think of it like, I don't know if you know what a caladny plate is. 328 00:38:41.940 --> 00:38:47.320 It's like a vibrating metal plate and you can sprinkle sand on it and it can make cool 329 00:38:47.320 --> 00:38:48.120 geometric patterns. 330 00:38:49.660 --> 00:38:56.180 Like that's kind of what our nervous system is in terms of it has harmonics or like eigenmodes 331 00:38:56.180 --> 00:38:58.240 and whatnot. 332 00:38:58.720 --> 00:39:07.820 But then like having tension in the body is sort of like putting a clamp on the body, 333 00:39:09.060 --> 00:39:11.080 putting a clamp on the resonances. 334 00:39:11.120 --> 00:39:11.560 Yes. 335 00:39:11.940 --> 00:39:13.000 And it can block off certain patterns. 336 00:39:13.800 --> 00:39:20.060 You just say, okay, we're not going to resonate in that way because it got us in trouble. 337 00:39:21.680 --> 00:39:30.400 And to some degree, like this is, I think, a pretty clean generative definition of trauma. 338 00:39:32.340 --> 00:39:39.640 It's this sort of clamp put on the nervous system that prevents certain classes of resonance. 339 00:39:40.060 --> 00:39:41.480 It prevents certain. 340 00:39:41.480 --> 00:39:45.020 areas of our dynamic range from being used. 341 00:39:46.380 --> 00:39:54.900 um and so uh and i once again i i think that this is a this is a muscular thing it's it's the 342 00:39:54.900 --> 00:40:00.000 the the vasomuscular uh tissue is it's just 343 00:40:00.360 --> 00:40:27.780 of crunched. Um, so if, if no somatic people talk about blocks, uh, this is what I think a block is. And, uh, and these clenches can last for a long time. They can, uh, they can undergo what, or like they can engage what's called the latch bridge mechanism, which basically glues, uh, glues muscle shut. Like it glues it into a contracted state and it can stay that way. 344 00:40:28.000 --> 00:40:57.740 For seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. Um, it can be that way for the rest of your life if, if you're unlucky. So, um, so the question is, um, how do you, like, how do you get rid of tension? And there are so many different ways. Uh, you know, there's, you know, nutrition and like, you know, making those things. Magnesium is a, not, not a bad idea. 345 00:40:59.280 --> 00:41:26.660 Um, and you know, you can, you can go to sauna and you can go, you know, uh, do, do yoga. You know, just the menu on this is just, uh, huge and there's no wrong answer. Um, but I would also say that, uh, like back to the, the quote that you, uh, you brought up, our nervous systems were like, uh, I take that back. Our bodies are trying to help us. 346 00:41:26.860 --> 00:41:27.540 Mm-hmm. 347 00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:46.260 Like it's, it's not that your body is trying to be a big jerk. And so it's holding this tension. Um, it actually thinks that there's something unsafe there, that part of the range that is blocking off, it needs to block off. Um, otherwise something bad would happen. 348 00:41:47.700 --> 00:41:57.800 So, um, I think like one of the, one of the frames that, uh, I think we should generally put more attention. 349 00:41:58.000 --> 00:42:09.960 on is like can we make our nervous systems better more virtuous uh better able to handle things by 350 00:42:09.960 --> 00:42:16.280 themselves so that this vasomuscular system doesn't have to get it doesn't have to clench 351 00:42:16.280 --> 00:42:24.660 it doesn't have to hold tension that um you know it's like uh we we talk uh about how how great 352 00:42:24.660 --> 00:42:30.680 flow state is and it's a great thing uh and that's just when the neural system can do its thing 353 00:42:30.680 --> 00:42:36.740 and the vasomuscular system doesn't even have to get involved then then we get flow and it's 354 00:42:36.740 --> 00:42:44.760 beautiful but it's this question of what is the prerequisite there and it's it's having a neural 355 00:42:44.760 --> 00:42:53.700 system with good defaults and you build those defaults through good habits and so i i almost 356 00:42:53.700 --> 00:42:54.540 think that like one 357 00:42:54.660 --> 00:43:01.000 one underappreciated um thing about okay if you want to feel less tension if you want to feel less 358 00:43:01.000 --> 00:43:12.980 stressed etc uh build better habits and then uh your system and like you you might also have to 359 00:43:12.980 --> 00:43:20.560 you know do do something to to unclench that that tissue um sometimes 360 00:43:25.460 --> 00:43:31.500 i'm having trouble with my earbuds here uh sometimes we we hold a clench much longer than 361 00:43:31.500 --> 00:43:44.900 we need to but i think step one is uh make sure that like uh your your nervous system your your 362 00:43:44.900 --> 00:43:52.260 neural system can be trusted to just go into flow and and like uh perform its its defaults 363 00:43:53.380 --> 00:43:55.280 and I think of that as like 364 00:43:57.400 --> 00:43:59.680 tension sort of holds patterns into place 365 00:44:00.520 --> 00:44:04.560 and then over time these patterns grow into being the defaults 366 00:44:05.120 --> 00:44:08.720 and kind of like a wrapped bonsai tree or something 367 00:44:09.300 --> 00:44:12.080 and then over time then we don't need the tension 368 00:44:12.080 --> 00:44:15.520 like the defaults are in a good state 369 00:44:17.500 --> 00:44:20.900 what sort of habits are you talking about when you say build better habits 370 00:44:22.260 --> 00:44:25.160 sure um so 371 00:44:27.560 --> 00:44:33.900 if I always get nervous about something if I'm like 372 00:44:35.160 --> 00:44:38.620 nervous about going into the grocery store and what then 373 00:44:38.620 --> 00:44:45.100 you know something like that uh then like just breaking down okay like why 374 00:44:45.520 --> 00:44:51.680 why am I nervous what bad thing uh do I am I concerned about 375 00:44:51.680 --> 00:44:52.240 you know what I'm doing and then I'm like okay I'm gonna build better habits 376 00:44:52.260 --> 00:44:52.880 and like 377 00:44:53.360 --> 00:44:57.000 is there a habit that I can put into place that would just 378 00:44:57.740 --> 00:44:59.740 block up the possibility of that bad thing happening 379 00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:05.380 And then, you know, you apply that habit and then you don't need to feel nervous. 380 00:45:05.540 --> 00:45:10.520 Like, you might still feel nervous, but it can just kind of fade away. 381 00:45:12.400 --> 00:45:19.340 I'm imagining almost like a skill tree, you know, of like a series of, there's probably 382 00:45:19.340 --> 00:45:25.960 a set of habits or a set of practices that generalize quite well to giving, I guess, 383 00:45:25.960 --> 00:45:27.660 like safety to the system. 384 00:45:28.040 --> 00:45:30.400 So it's like, okay, the bad thing isn't going to happen anymore. 385 00:45:30.760 --> 00:45:35.540 And then that, maybe that's also what you mean by like virtue, building virtue in your 386 00:45:35.540 --> 00:45:36.300 nervous system. 387 00:45:36.880 --> 00:45:46.760 And one of the ones that came up is actually stoicism or CBT or the ability to disambiguate 388 00:45:47.800 --> 00:45:54.520 your interpretations of events and then from the events themselves and realizing that, 389 00:45:56.360 --> 00:46:00.800 you know, like people can't really hurt you with their words. 390 00:46:02.720 --> 00:46:06.260 It's your interpretation of their words and the implications and all the metadata that 391 00:46:06.260 --> 00:46:13.180 comes along with the words that lead to the feelings of hurt and having the skill of disambiguating 392 00:46:13.180 --> 00:46:18.920 that would probably give you a lot more resilience and safety when it comes to potential conflict 393 00:46:18.920 --> 00:46:20.620 or tense situations with people. 394 00:46:21.820 --> 00:46:25.940 So having good habits around that, which, you know, is CBT, stoicism, virtue, and virtue. 395 00:46:25.960 --> 00:46:29.540 I'm curious to hear how you feel about how stoicism and similar practices would give you 396 00:46:29.540 --> 00:46:30.500 safety in these situations. 397 00:46:30.680 --> 00:46:35.540 Is that kind of what you're talking about when you say building virtue in the nervous 398 00:46:35.540 --> 00:46:35.880 system? 399 00:46:37.100 --> 00:46:38.320 Yeah, I think so. 400 00:46:38.860 --> 00:46:45.260 I mean, there's also this sort of getting into stoicism and Buddhism and whatnot. 401 00:46:45.860 --> 00:46:52.140 There's this idea that usually the bad thing isn't the thing itself. 402 00:46:52.380 --> 00:46:54.100 It's our reaction to the thing. 403 00:46:54.420 --> 00:46:55.380 The second arrow. 404 00:46:55.460 --> 00:46:55.940 Yeah. 405 00:46:55.960 --> 00:47:19.720 Right, right. And, you know, Buddhism, you know, there are Buddhists who claim that, you know, it's like 95% of suffering is our reaction. And I guess I'd want to sort of touch back on the vasocomputation angle that I actually think that this is a literally a muscle reflex. 406 00:47:21.560 --> 00:47:37.580 And so, I'm kind of playing around with this idea that, and no, I can't fully explain it at this point, but the phrase that comes to mind is enlightenment is muscular. 407 00:47:40.320 --> 00:47:48.520 And that to some degree, there's sort of two tracks on the path. 408 00:47:50.120 --> 00:47:54.720 And one track is, it's literally muscle deconditioning. 409 00:47:55.640 --> 00:48:10.380 It's sort of taking this natural reflex, and you can call it the cringe reflex, and turning it down, making it sort of less of a default, softening it. 410 00:48:10.540 --> 00:48:19.700 And I do think that in very experienced meditators, their cringe reflex is very, very soft. 411 00:48:19.720 --> 00:48:24.360 And it's something that they've successfully deconditioned. 412 00:48:26.100 --> 00:48:35.160 Now, on the other hand, it's about also about sort of building up your nervous system so that you don't need that. 413 00:48:35.980 --> 00:48:47.860 That, I mean, this sort of reflex that, you know, something happens, whether it's, you know, a sensation or a situation or something. 414 00:48:47.880 --> 00:48:49.440 Kind of, you know. 415 00:48:49.720 --> 00:49:00.460 we react to it in in this sort of instinctual uh simple way but it's also about not needing 416 00:49:00.460 --> 00:49:06.820 that reflex that reflex is trying to help us and maybe it creates more trouble than 417 00:49:06.820 --> 00:49:15.980 it solves many times but um if you can absolutely remove the need for that reflex 418 00:49:15.980 --> 00:49:24.940 then it's a lot easier to decondition so this would be like getting triggered by something 419 00:49:24.940 --> 00:49:31.120 somebody says and then through contemplative practice and meditation you can kind of see 420 00:49:31.120 --> 00:49:35.200 that happening in slow motion and then realize you don't need to get triggered and then that 421 00:49:35.200 --> 00:49:41.480 gives you the space to better dance with the situation totally as opposed to like clenching 422 00:49:41.480 --> 00:49:45.920 up again yeah and it seems like 423 00:49:45.980 --> 00:49:52.820 at least practically speaking there's the habits the good habits to give yourself a sense of safety 424 00:49:53.580 --> 00:49:59.900 so that you you don't you don't need to get triggered but then there's also this like 425 00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:25.120 second category of, you know, the somatic work, like doing the sauna and cold plunge, like doing the yoga and stuff like that, where it almost seems like you're bringing yourself to these like places where you would otherwise cringe or where there's like a clamp in the network and then realizing that it's safe and you don't have to do that anymore. 426 00:50:25.120 --> 00:50:28.460 And then kind of giving yourself evidence that, okay, we don't, we don't need to do that anymore. 427 00:50:28.580 --> 00:50:30.500 Is that how you think about it as well? 428 00:50:31.460 --> 00:50:33.420 Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. 429 00:50:33.520 --> 00:50:39.060 And I also think that like, this is something that can be viewed from many, many different angles. 430 00:50:39.880 --> 00:50:52.520 And like something like sauna, especially where like breathwork or psychedelics, I almost think of like as a garbage collection mechanism. 431 00:50:54.380 --> 00:51:11.040 So we go through our day and, you know, basically, so the principles of vessel computation hypothesis suggests that we hold predictions as tension. 432 00:51:11.520 --> 00:51:16.820 And we sort of commit to holding this tension until these predictions come true. 433 00:51:17.920 --> 00:51:22.080 And this can be done in skillful or unskillful ways. 434 00:51:22.220 --> 00:51:22.500 Yeah. 435 00:51:23.480 --> 00:51:39.760 But it's also the case that sometimes, like, I don't know if people are fully familiar with the garbage collection metaphor, but like in programming, you know, you can allocate a bunch of memory, you can say, okay, I need access to this memory, and then you can use it. 436 00:51:40.180 --> 00:51:42.860 And sometimes you don't give it back. 437 00:51:43.540 --> 00:51:51.880 It just kind of hangs out and becomes kind of this sort of overhead that 438 00:51:53.780 --> 00:51:57.880 you you're not using it, but you haven't given it back to the system. 439 00:51:57.960 --> 00:51:59.900 So it's just three sources that are kind of frozen. 440 00:52:00.640 --> 00:52:22.500 And I think that in day to day experience, this actually happens a lot with tension that, you know, we can think of, okay, you know, I'm going to light the stove and okay, I have the burner on and I'm going to hold like I have a tension in my body, some tension that sort of represents the tension. 441 00:52:22.520 --> 00:52:24.860 And so I have to stove on and I need to remember this. 442 00:52:25.460 --> 00:52:29.580 And then, okay, I turn the stove off, I can release tension. 443 00:52:30.140 --> 00:52:31.700 You know, everything's clean again. 444 00:52:32.980 --> 00:52:36.960 But a lot of you know, modern life is just so complicated. 445 00:52:37.420 --> 00:52:39.060 And it's so fragmented. 446 00:52:39.140 --> 00:52:47.080 And it's so we don't always have the cues that while actually you can release that tension, you don't need to worry any more. 447 00:52:48.780 --> 00:52:52.500 And and so you slide little fragments of of you know, you have to figure out how to get them back. 448 00:52:53.420 --> 00:53:01.920 uncollected garbage, we can say, um, just kind of pile up and, you know, it's not that, uh, 449 00:53:02.160 --> 00:53:08.300 it needs to be there. It's just that your body is facing this incredibly hard computational 450 00:53:08.300 --> 00:53:15.020 problem of keeping track of everything. And, uh, you know, better to, to be a little sticky 451 00:53:15.020 --> 00:53:20.980 with tension than to just, you know, let everything go, uh, at the first hint that you can. 452 00:53:22.520 --> 00:53:29.220 Like people vary a lot in this dimension. I know for some people things are very sticky and for 453 00:53:29.220 --> 00:53:36.600 some people they're not, but, um, like this, this sort of garbage can build up and then it can be 454 00:53:36.600 --> 00:53:43.600 very useful to have some sort of, um, some sort of practice that can sort of clean this stuff. 455 00:53:43.700 --> 00:53:50.760 And like sauna would be a great example. Um, you know, uh, psychedelics may also work for this. 456 00:53:50.840 --> 00:53:52.000 Um, and like, 457 00:53:52.640 --> 00:53:56.000 yeah, just any, any high energy state and this gets into the general. 458 00:53:58.180 --> 00:54:06.680 Yeah. Um, just to kind of connect this with some of my own experiences, um, definitely 459 00:54:07.320 --> 00:54:13.200 high energy states, like really intense workouts, really intense sauna sessions, uh, cold plunge. 460 00:54:13.220 --> 00:54:21.400 One thing I noticed, so I do sauna then cold, and then I sit in like a normal room until I shiver. 461 00:54:22.520 --> 00:54:26.180 Um, and then I take the body temperature back up to something stable and then go back to the sauna. 462 00:54:26.480 --> 00:54:31.280 And that shivering period is actually way harder than the cold plunge for me. 463 00:54:31.380 --> 00:54:31.780 Yeah. 464 00:54:31.840 --> 00:54:35.280 And that's often when a bunch of like emotional stuff comes up too. And like the body's shaking 465 00:54:35.280 --> 00:54:41.720 and it kind of feels like some of these patterns are being released. Um, and just to kind of, 466 00:54:41.720 --> 00:54:46.960 I guess, bring in the neural annealing bit. Um, my understanding of that theory is that 467 00:54:47.860 --> 00:54:52.500 the body's like almost, um, or the nervous system gets into like a local maximum. Um, 468 00:54:52.520 --> 00:54:59.860 and, uh, by adding disorder or variance or energy to the system, 469 00:54:59.860 --> 00:55:14.340 things can like have the possibility to reorganize at like a higher level of organization and that's why these uh practices like physical practices that are really intense can be associated with a lot of release. Is that right? 470 00:55:15.200 --> 00:55:24.460 I think it's sort of, I like the metaphor of the brain is like a metal. 471 00:55:24.460 --> 00:55:31.860 And if it's sort of cold worked a lot, so if you cold work metal, it's like you bend it into place without heating it up. 472 00:55:32.960 --> 00:55:37.620 And if you do that a lot to some metal, it'll get hard and brittle. 473 00:55:37.960 --> 00:55:47.340 You know, if you think of like taking a paperclip and you bend it, you bend it back, you bend it, you bend it back, pretty soon like that metal is going to get really, really hard and brittle. 474 00:55:47.340 --> 00:56:11.740 And so the neural annealing model says that, yeah, like, just like you can, you can heal a metal by sort of heating it up past a certain critical threshold, letting the atoms self-organize into a new default microstructure, and then letting it cool down. 475 00:56:13.140 --> 00:56:15.660 You can and should do that to the brain as well. 476 00:56:16.160 --> 00:56:17.320 And not let it cool down. 477 00:56:17.340 --> 00:56:19.660 Yeah, I mean, it's not just literal heat, but just like... 478 00:56:19.660 --> 00:56:19.880 Sometimes. 479 00:56:20.300 --> 00:56:20.740 Emotional. 480 00:56:20.880 --> 00:56:23.220 Yeah, I mean, sometimes, yeah, sometimes it's great. 481 00:56:24.740 --> 00:56:30.680 But like, we need emotional intense experiences. 482 00:56:31.140 --> 00:56:31.580 Yeah. 483 00:56:31.620 --> 00:56:37.140 And if we don't get them, then our psyches get hardened at all. 484 00:56:37.900 --> 00:56:39.700 Yeah, that makes complete sense to me. 485 00:56:39.800 --> 00:56:42.480 It's like once a quarter, you got to do something really intense. 486 00:56:43.900 --> 00:56:45.800 One other thing this reminds me of. 487 00:56:47.340 --> 00:56:49.020 We're coming up on the hour mark. 488 00:56:49.140 --> 00:56:50.820 So I got a couple questions left for you. 489 00:56:50.880 --> 00:56:52.180 But I wanted to share that. 490 00:56:53.360 --> 00:57:00.500 So I do coaching for founders and a lot of stuff that we do is like bread and butter productivity type stuff. 491 00:57:00.640 --> 00:57:06.860 And they're inundated with all sorts of responsibilities and like potentially distracting things. 492 00:57:07.600 --> 00:57:11.960 And they have to really focus on, you know, a couple of really important things and say no. 493 00:57:12.100 --> 00:57:14.800 And that, I guess, creates a lot of tension. 494 00:57:14.900 --> 00:57:16.420 A lot of like garbage gets collected. 495 00:57:17.340 --> 00:57:19.480 And then you have to really see things emerge out of that. 496 00:57:20.440 --> 00:57:25.080 And one framework that works really well is GTD, getting things done. 497 00:57:25.680 --> 00:57:27.260 I don't know how familiar you are with that. 498 00:57:27.400 --> 00:57:40.240 But the first step of that is basically like a major like mind dump where you walk people through listing all the different things in their life that they're avoiding or resisting or responsible for. 499 00:57:40.680 --> 00:57:43.000 And it's very, very basic and mundane. 500 00:57:43.080 --> 00:57:45.900 Like you just get a sheet of paper and you write things down or you do it in a Google Doc. 501 00:57:46.340 --> 00:57:46.780 But... 502 00:57:47.500 --> 00:57:50.160 It's almost as if it makes a lot of that... 503 00:57:51.360 --> 00:57:58.460 Those things like, you know, the stove is on or whatever, like the equivalents for of those of that category of stuff, very legible. 504 00:57:59.580 --> 00:58:02.320 And I call it like collecting open loops. 505 00:58:02.860 --> 00:58:12.540 And then once you see them in front of you, you can actually close them or decide that these ones aren't important or figure out like the 20% that's responsible for 80% of the outcomes. 506 00:58:13.080 --> 00:58:17.200 And I bring that in because that's a lot more mundane and straightforward. 507 00:58:17.340 --> 00:58:23.680 And, you know, day to day than, you know, doing a psychedelic trip or doing sauna and cold plunge. 508 00:58:23.760 --> 00:58:28.960 But it seems like it would help with the clenching, cringing patterns that you're describing. 509 00:58:29.900 --> 00:58:30.400 Yeah. 510 00:58:30.520 --> 00:58:31.360 No, absolutely. 511 00:58:31.860 --> 00:58:36.120 And I think that these open loops take a lot more resources than we realize. 512 00:58:36.640 --> 00:58:46.480 And like if we're these sort of harmonic computers and we just have a bunch of clamps on our... 513 00:58:46.480 --> 00:58:47.320 On our... 514 00:58:47.340 --> 00:58:54.380 On our ability to resonate, then that really does reduce our capacity quite a bit. 515 00:58:54.920 --> 00:59:01.320 And so the more free the body and the mind will follow, I guess is the frame there. 516 00:59:01.380 --> 00:59:03.680 And also free the mind and the body will follow. 517 00:59:03.960 --> 00:59:04.440 Right. 518 00:59:04.480 --> 00:59:05.700 I think it's connected. 519 00:59:07.020 --> 00:59:07.500 Yeah. 520 00:59:07.580 --> 00:59:10.320 So two more questions. 521 00:59:11.080 --> 00:59:13.620 The first is, and this is kind of a selfish question. 522 00:59:13.780 --> 00:59:15.660 This is something I was curious about when... 523 00:59:15.660 --> 00:59:16.700 Just for my own life. 524 00:59:19.340 --> 00:59:19.740 Yeah. 525 00:59:20.110 --> 00:59:38.920 Basically, something I've been quite interested in just to understand myself is the problem of salience or like keeping certain things salient across time and why it seems so difficult for many personalities, including my own. 526 00:59:39.000 --> 00:59:46.700 Like I've had to come up with all sorts of practices and systems in order to maintain the salience of things that I know are valuable to me. 527 00:59:46.700 --> 00:59:59.880 You know, something I'm excited about on Monday, I like totally forget about on Thursday, unless I follow some of these practices to basically narrow my focus and, you know, remind myself of things. 528 01:00:01.380 --> 01:00:04.860 And the more I've talked about this openly with people, and especially with clients, 529 01:00:05.000 --> 01:00:07.260 I've realized it's actually a big, big problem that a lot of people face. 530 01:00:07.360 --> 01:00:13.040 And I think some of it has to do with our overwhelming information environment and digital environment. 531 01:00:13.840 --> 01:00:18.720 But I was curious how this fits with your ideas of symmetry. 532 01:00:19.840 --> 01:00:25.560 Because one of the things you alluded to in the beginning is that it's not enough that you just have a singular symmetrical experience. 533 01:00:25.560 --> 01:00:31.300 Like if you play a beautiful major seventh chord on the piano, it might feel good for the moment, but it's going to get boring. 534 01:00:31.780 --> 01:00:34.280 And boredom and salience seem to be related. 535 01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:42.080 So I wonder if you have any thoughts on how you might frame those concepts from the lens of your work. 536 01:00:43.640 --> 01:00:45.320 Sure. That's a great question. 537 01:00:46.820 --> 01:00:48.060 I think that's a... 538 01:00:48.580 --> 01:00:54.580 I mean, I'd first put it in the metaphor that, I mean, if the body is a song, 539 01:00:55.560 --> 01:00:56.760 the song changes over time. 540 01:00:57.740 --> 01:01:04.140 Keeping something in mind, keeping something prominent and salient and constant, 541 01:01:04.920 --> 01:01:07.480 is like when you have... 542 01:01:08.320 --> 01:01:12.080 When you're playing the same note throughout this changing song, 543 01:01:13.100 --> 01:01:14.100 like it's hard. 544 01:01:14.420 --> 01:01:18.760 It's hard to write a beautiful song that always has the same note playing. 545 01:01:20.660 --> 01:01:24.620 So it's somehow understandable that it's... 546 01:01:24.620 --> 01:01:25.540 It's hard. 547 01:01:26.980 --> 01:01:30.000 And I think that when... 548 01:01:30.700 --> 01:01:35.000 Like we can look at what happens when this... 549 01:01:35.000 --> 01:01:38.580 When we can't do this, when we fail at this task. 550 01:01:39.040 --> 01:01:44.520 And like one kind of failure is, you know, things just drop out of our salience list. 551 01:01:44.680 --> 01:01:47.320 And you're like, yeah, it was important yesterday, but it's not important today. 552 01:01:48.160 --> 01:01:51.260 But another failure I would say is ADHD. 553 01:01:52.760 --> 01:01:55.420 It's sort of trying, you know, the... 554 01:01:55.560 --> 01:02:03.000 The ADHD state is trying to hold many different, very disparate things. 555 01:02:03.560 --> 01:02:06.460 And you're like, well, I have to keep hold of this. 556 01:02:07.200 --> 01:02:10.040 And it's in, you know, the context of my work. 557 01:02:10.120 --> 01:02:11.520 And I have to keep hold of this. 558 01:02:11.640 --> 01:02:13.500 And this is in the context of my relationship. 559 01:02:13.920 --> 01:02:15.620 I have to keep hold of this. 560 01:02:15.660 --> 01:02:18.800 This is in the context of like taking care of my dog or something like that. 561 01:02:20.420 --> 01:02:22.000 And it's just too much. 562 01:02:22.180 --> 01:02:24.640 And you get paralyzed because, well, 563 01:02:25.560 --> 01:02:27.060 I know you have to hang on to these things, 564 01:02:27.200 --> 01:02:30.000 but you can't make it into a song. 565 01:02:34.800 --> 01:02:37.680 I have so many follow-ups, but I know we're coming up on time. 566 01:02:37.840 --> 01:02:40.460 Do you have a hard stop in five minutes? 567 01:02:41.140 --> 01:02:41.900 No hard stop. 568 01:02:42.160 --> 01:02:42.460 Okay. 569 01:02:42.580 --> 01:02:45.720 Well, let's ask a couple more questions then. 570 01:02:49.500 --> 01:02:53.120 Any suggestions for how to make music with that kind of stuff? 571 01:02:53.280 --> 01:02:54.060 Like how do you... 572 01:02:55.560 --> 01:02:56.720 How do you make that all into a song? 573 01:02:57.500 --> 01:02:57.980 Yeah. 574 01:02:59.340 --> 01:03:04.240 I mean, it's, it's the hardest thing and it's, it's kind of the problem of modernity. 575 01:03:05.260 --> 01:03:13.060 So it's not an easy problem, but I do think that like really, I mean, we hang on to these 576 01:03:13.060 --> 01:03:14.320 things through instinct. 577 01:03:14.500 --> 01:03:19.860 We, because we fear we might lose something important in reality. 578 01:03:21.280 --> 01:03:24.020 If we let it go, it'll probably come back. 579 01:03:24.120 --> 01:03:24.580 Hmm. 580 01:03:25.560 --> 01:03:31.400 And that if, if we're less sticky, it's good on the margin. 581 01:03:31.780 --> 01:03:36.740 I mean, it's, it's not great to, you know, just let go of everything and, you know, you 582 01:03:36.740 --> 01:03:41.120 know, responsibilities and memories and, you know, it'll all work out. 583 01:03:41.180 --> 01:03:42.220 Well, sometimes it doesn't work out. 584 01:03:42.660 --> 01:03:49.200 But on the margin, it's probably great advice to, to let, just be more willing to let go 585 01:03:49.200 --> 01:03:54.660 because if something is important, you don't have to hold it with tension. 586 01:03:54.780 --> 01:03:55.540 Like you could, you know, you could, you know, you could, you know, you could, you could 587 01:03:55.560 --> 01:03:59.480 rely on your, your neural patterns to, to hold it as well. 588 01:04:00.800 --> 01:04:03.820 Um, and like we can really only do one thing at a time. 589 01:04:03.880 --> 01:04:08.840 So if you're holding things in many domains, um, it's just, it's just nice. 590 01:04:09.080 --> 01:04:09.520 Right. 591 01:04:10.220 --> 01:04:17.780 This is why I like, um, learning, you know, systems for processing all the open loops 592 01:04:17.780 --> 01:04:24.540 like GTD, um, and having almost being like a martial artist when it comes to navigating 593 01:04:24.540 --> 01:04:25.120 all that. 594 01:04:25.560 --> 01:04:30.640 You know, life complexity and then focusing on what's immediately before you. 595 01:04:31.280 --> 01:04:36.140 And then the other thing this reminds me of, and this is a huge topic, but it does seem 596 01:04:36.140 --> 01:04:42.520 like the fact that we don't have shared cosmic narratives, you know, like a shared religious 597 01:04:42.520 --> 01:04:50.740 worldview with the same set of values or, um, big, big stories to like hold us together 598 01:04:50.740 --> 01:04:55.120 in modern life is one of the reasons why this is really hard. 599 01:04:56.560 --> 01:05:00.000 Because basically your paradigms can constantly be refactored 600 01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:09.000 and re-evaluated and things are going to fall out and like other things are going to come back. And I just imagine it'd be way easier if, you know, everybody was Christian or something, or, you know, we 601 01:05:09.020 --> 01:05:14.080 So, I think that's part of the diagnosis. 602 01:05:15.860 --> 01:05:25.980 I also think that there are really cool social technologies that we've kind of let fall into 603 01:05:25.980 --> 01:05:26.820 to disrepair. 604 01:05:26.880 --> 01:05:35.000 I mean, for example, if we think about effective garbage collection technologies, and that 605 01:05:35.000 --> 01:05:39.160 has a negative connotation, but it's actually like, no, this is really important. 606 01:05:39.360 --> 01:05:42.640 It's like cleaning yourself of all these shards of context. 607 01:05:44.520 --> 01:05:45.980 Like confession at church. 608 01:05:46.380 --> 01:05:47.240 Holy cow. 609 01:05:48.320 --> 01:05:53.440 How powerful is that as a garbage collection technology? 610 01:05:53.440 --> 01:05:58.840 Like you can just kind of close a lot of different sorts of loops every week. 611 01:05:59.060 --> 01:05:59.420 Right. 612 01:06:01.740 --> 01:06:02.820 Okay, last question. 613 01:06:03.780 --> 01:06:05.100 This is more of a personal one. 614 01:06:06.660 --> 01:06:13.360 When I look at all your work, and as I said, it strikes me as very intellectually ambitious. 615 01:06:13.620 --> 01:06:17.580 And I think part of the reason why it was kind of hard to penetrate from the outside 616 01:06:17.580 --> 01:06:23.500 is that generally, I'm not used to people being that ambitious. 617 01:06:23.600 --> 01:06:27.900 Like for even the idea of qualia formalism, that there is like a mathematical object that 618 01:06:27.900 --> 01:06:31.860 corresponds to every subjective state or state of consciousness. 619 01:06:32.080 --> 01:06:35.000 That's like a very bold, ambitious idea. 620 01:06:35.600 --> 01:06:41.100 And it seems like you're following through and rigorously trying to make sense of it. 621 01:06:41.600 --> 01:06:43.660 And I just think that's very rare. 622 01:06:43.760 --> 01:06:45.740 That's even rare in like intellectuals. 623 01:06:46.540 --> 01:06:47.560 So, yeah. 624 01:06:47.580 --> 01:06:54.380 Why do you think you had the intuition or courage to go down that path while it seems 625 01:06:54.380 --> 01:06:56.000 like most other people don't? 626 01:06:58.140 --> 01:06:58.780 Yeah. 627 01:07:01.920 --> 01:07:08.240 I guess the honest appraisal there is I just get obsessed with curiosity of things. 628 01:07:08.520 --> 01:07:14.940 And it's like you do what you need to do to get clarity. 629 01:07:15.540 --> 01:07:17.240 But I guess I'm... 630 01:07:17.240 --> 01:07:17.560 Yeah. 631 01:07:17.580 --> 01:07:26.440 I'm a big fan as a philosopher about finding binary philosophical questions. 632 01:07:26.720 --> 01:07:33.040 Like either we live in a universe where X is true or we live in a universe where X is false. 633 01:07:33.740 --> 01:07:41.420 And I mean, it's easy to spend a life in philosophy just thinking about things and like wondering 634 01:07:41.420 --> 01:07:42.920 things and being curious. 635 01:07:42.980 --> 01:07:46.540 And that can be beautiful, but it can produce nothing. 636 01:07:47.800 --> 01:07:56.180 And I always want to sort of try to compile things into this binary frame of like, well, 637 01:07:56.900 --> 01:08:01.320 either this is true and that would be super interesting to know. 638 01:08:01.420 --> 01:08:03.280 Like that would be very big news. 639 01:08:03.420 --> 01:08:04.820 Or this is false. 640 01:08:04.960 --> 01:08:07.120 And that would also be very, very big news. 641 01:08:07.360 --> 01:08:11.840 And whenever I find a question like that, I get really excited. 642 01:08:12.080 --> 01:08:15.800 And like this sort of leads into like... 643 01:08:17.580 --> 01:08:21.900 I think it's like the idea of formalism and valence-trualism and valence-formalism and so on. 644 01:08:22.040 --> 01:08:31.260 So it's just I guess I'd credit that instinct or heuristic for a lot of those. 645 01:08:33.020 --> 01:08:35.160 Mike Johnson, it was very nice talking to you. 646 01:08:35.260 --> 01:08:41.880 Where can people find more about you and what's something you'd like to draw their attention to in particular? 647 01:08:43.120 --> 01:08:43.800 My pleasure. 648 01:08:43.800 --> 01:08:45.140 Thanks for having me. 649 01:08:46.680 --> 01:08:50.520 My work is on OpenTheory.net. 650 01:08:51.220 --> 01:08:55.380 And I'm especially proud of the last three posts. 651 01:08:55.720 --> 01:08:59.280 And yeah, just want to thank you for the invite. 652 01:09:00.200 --> 01:09:02.800 I'll put all those articles in the show notes as well. 653 01:09:03.420 --> 01:09:04.020 Awesome.