Qualia Formalism & The Symmetry Theory of Valence
The Metagame
Transcript
00:00:01Okay, 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.
00:00:27And 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?
00:00:42Qualia 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?
00:01:11What 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.
00:01:41Or 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,
00:02:12pleasure is good, good valence is harmony in the mind.
00:02:18And 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?
00:02:42Right. 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.
00:03:11And so I've sort of dug into that as, as time goes on.
00:03:18And 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.
00:03:39And that's associated with positive valence.
00:03:41But then there's also harmony with like neuroimaging or EEGs. Can you maybe give us some more examples of that?
00:03:53Sure. 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.
00:04:11Yeah.
00:04:11So 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.
00:04:28So then like one, one way to, to frame symmetry is symmetry is order. Symmetry is sort of lack.
00:04:41of noise, lack of complexity. Frank Wilczek defined symmetry as change without change.
00:04:50And so the more ways that you can sort of shift an object and get the same result, the more symmetries it has.
00:04:58And this is, this can be framed
00:05:00in a very formal way. So, production issues here.
00:05:10His air pod just fell out.
00:05:11Yeah. Nice. And we're back. So one, it's this big question, this grand question of
00:05:20how do we connect what's happening in our neuroimaging that we can apply EEG, we can
00:05:30apply fMRI, we can apply MEG. We have many, many different tools, but how in the world do we
00:05:38connect that to experience? And this is a pretty central question for neuroscience. And my answer
00:05:47is it might actually not be that hard. There might actually be some sort of clever things we can do.
00:05:57For example, if we're trying to approximate the harmony in the mind or the symmetry of this
00:06:07mathematical representation that right now we can't measure directly, but if we want to say, okay,
00:06:16what neuroimaging techniques could give us an estimation of how much symmetry there is in the mind,
00:06:24this is the way that we can do it, then one thing that I'm looking at is compressibility.
00:06:30That you can apply this to any sort of neuroimaging data, to EEG, to fMRI or whatnot.
00:06:40And it's just more pleasant states should be more compressible in kind of a very basic information
00:06:49theoretic sense. And can you define that? What would you mean by compressibility?
00:06:56Yeah. So if we have a file size that's a gigabyte, how low can we get it if we apply
00:07:03compression? So if we can compress it 20% versus if we can compress it 40%, maybe the 40%
00:07:12is a more pleasant state. We can infer that it has more symmetry.
00:07:19Okay. My mind's going in all sorts of places now, but I guess I want to tie this in with,
00:07:24an experience I had recently with meditation where I realized that a big part of meditation
00:07:32for me was about unpacking abstractions in my field of experience. Something
00:07:39that previously felt like pain. When I really look closely to it, it's actually something a
00:07:46lot more nuanced and complex. I had a compression on that side of the map that said, this is pain,
00:07:53avoid it. But really it's a compScriptive compScriptive compScriptive compScriptive
00:07:54is like textured with all sorts of other stuff and i i like unpack it and then the pain turns
00:08:00into something else and so this made me have almost like um like a like self-consciousness or
00:08:07um an unstable relationship with like compression algorithms you know where so much of life is about
00:08:14creating like adequate compression algorithms to um offload a lot of like cognitive processes
00:08:21so you can navigate things a little more like uh skill um and i was like well maybe maybe that's
00:08:27the problem you know maybe that's creating all sorts of unnecessary suffering and so i need to
00:08:32unpack those compressions or maybe i need to i did them the wrong way or something like that so
00:08:38um it feels like that's related to what you're saying i'm just curious to hear you riff on that
00:08:44yes yeah uh so i that definitely matches my experience um i think that like i i tend to
00:08:51metaphor for the brain that we can talk about unpacking an experience or or like a feeling um
00:08:59we can also talk about sort of unfolding it and then metabolizing it
00:09:05we're sort of made to digest these things and uh when they just kind of sit um when when a bunch of
00:09:12complexity sits there um we can't really digest it until we we can look at it right
00:09:20right and so
00:09:21just to draw a thread with a few things um symmetry is like change without change
00:09:28which i can get how that relates to compression because it you know you compress a one gigabyte
00:09:33file to like half its size you've changed it it's taking up less space but for it to be a
00:09:40successful compression something essential about it is still true you know like the image still
00:09:45looks good it looks like the image um and then this metaphor of
00:09:52digestion it's like breaking something down to its constituent parts and then
00:09:58reorganizing them in like a
00:10:00more harmonious or more useful or more something more beautiful
00:10:04structure. Am I getting that right? Yeah, yeah, I would say so. And I mean, I would say that that's
00:10:10kind of the, and my friend Johan, John, and some others have a good paper on this metaphor of
00:10:18sort of cognition as digestion. And it's the sense that, like, as a system, we try to stay
00:10:28clean and simple. And so if there's food, we eat the food, we digest it, we extract nutrients,
00:10:34we get rid of the waste, and leaving room for the next thing that we eat. And I think that
00:10:42often sensations, feelings, thoughts are the same way, that we have some sort of nugget of complexity,
00:10:51and we need to sort of internalize it, digest it, extract the good stuff, and then
00:10:58jettison the stuff that we don't need. And if we do it right, then the outcome, the result,
00:11:08is simplicity. It's harmony. It's symmetry.
00:11:12Right. Can you give like a very basic example of, you know, like two people having an interaction,
00:11:20and then some sort of complexity arises? What would it look like if you went through the whole,
00:11:24you know, digestive tract for that complexity?
00:11:28Sure, sure. So if I, if I like, if we're having a conversation, and, and we talk about
00:11:42like, I don't know, like the molecular structure of water or something, and like,
00:11:48we talk about chemical bond, and you're like, what exactly is a chemical bond? And like, there's,
00:11:54there are some words that, okay, I said chemical bond, and now they're, they're sort of,
00:12:00they're in your head, you're wondering, okay, what, what exactly is this thing?
00:12:05And you're kind of looking at it from different angles. And maybe it's hard to digest.
00:12:12Hard to sort of metabolize, hard to sort of get the nutrients out and move on to the next thing.
00:12:20And so that, that complexity is sort of sitting in your mind, and breaking symmetries, we can say.
00:12:28And then, you know, as we say, okay, well, they're like these valence shells, and
00:12:35the electrons fit in them in such a way, then it gives you sort of the reagent,
00:12:42or the frame to digest this concept. And you're like, oh, yeah, like, that makes total sense.
00:12:48And we can, we can move on.
00:12:51It's funny, because this actually, it's very self referencing,
00:12:54but this matches my experience with encountering your work, and also, you know, QRI stuff, where
00:12:59I think in part, because it's so ambitious, in the beginning, it felt like I was discovering these,
00:13:04like, isolated, self contained, you know, theories that I couldn't really incorporate or connect with
00:13:11other aspects of the world.
00:13:12My, you know, experience, until I, you know, read a bunch, and then I was able to,
00:13:17like, hold all of it in the context window or something, and then find a way to, to put it
00:13:22together. And I think what helped me, and it might help the listeners, is that, and, you know,
00:13:29correct me if I'm wrong, and this is just my understanding, but there's this,
00:13:34words like symmetry and harmony, they bring all the metaphors of music to mind for me.
00:13:43And just, and music and math also have a really beautiful relationship, you know, music theory,
00:13:48and even if you get down to the physics, like, why are certain intervals, like, pleasant sounding,
00:13:53and why are some of them not? And it almost seems like the thread that connects a lot of your work
00:14:00is, is something like the music of consciousness. And I know that's, like, very vague, but that
00:14:07helped as, like, an anchor for me to make sense of some of the stuff you were saying.
00:14:12Totally. That makes a lot of sense. And I think that, like, oftentimes, progress is
00:14:19sort of connecting different domains. And, you know, if we can connect, you know, the domain of
00:14:26consciousness or phenomenology of, you know, this blooming buzzing confusion, in James's terms,
00:14:34with, with math, and especially with music, which is in, in some sense, normative mathematics,
00:14:41I want to say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:43then that gives us a lot more tools to approach things.
00:14:47Right.
00:14:49So coming back to the symmetry theory of valence,
00:14:52is it, am I right in saying that the thesis or like,
00:14:59or
00:15:00an 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.
00:15:22Um 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.
00:15:40Hmm.
00:15:41And this is not necessarily the same as symmetry in these stimulus.
00:15:47So now we we don't have a whole lot of symmetry in the mind.
00:15:49We don't you know uh hear one one major chord and then just pass out from pleasure.
00:15:55Um 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.
00:16:06But I guess like I tend to describe this in terms of a lock and key system.
00:16:13Hmm.
00:16:14That uh the brain is is this very complicated lock.
00:16:19Um and then we were always looking around for keys uh that will sort of combine with this lock to create harmony.
00:16:28And 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.
00:16:38Um if I'm not thirsty then it probably won't.
00:16:41Um but the like the symmetry theory of valence uh argues that.
00:16:47Hmm.
00:16:49The the goal condition is always the same.
00:16:53It's always symmetry uh in the brain symmetry in the mind.
00:16:58Um and technically symmetry in this mathematical representation of experience.
00:17:04Um and then of course naturally uh you know we don't stay happy.
00:17:09We we um we get bored of what we're doing.
00:17:14We're looking for something new and the lock shifts.
00:17:16And it takes a different sort of key to to fit.
00:17:21Right.
00:17:22I'm I'm reminded here of actually the stuff Jordan Peterson old school Jordan Peterson would say about chaos and order.
00:17:29Yeah.
00:17:30And 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.
00:17:44And 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.
00:17:57Um does that connect with the symmetry theory of valence at all?
00:18:00Have you thought of that framing?
00:18:04I I think yeah I'm I'm a big fan of of the chaos and order frame of Peterson as well.
00:18:10And 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.
00:18:33Um so I do think that like the the part where I would sort of uh
00:18:40depart from this chaos versus order frame is that
00:18:48the sort of the success state in the brain and in the mind is always the same.
00:18:55And like this this gets into uh sort of effective neuroscience study this in terms of um uh brain regions and um and whatnot.
00:19:06But the the findings they have is like.
00:19:10Um.
00:19:11Regardless of whether you get there by eating a candy bar or listening to this beautiful profound symphony.
00:19:19Uh the same regions light up.
00:19:22Um and I think in in an even more general sense like it's all symmetry.
00:19:29It's all it's all harmony.
00:19:34What what do you mean by that by it's all symmetry it's all harmony.
00:19:39Oh yeah um anything that feels good is creating symmetry in the mind.
00:19:44Um anything that feels bad is creating uh broken symmetries in the mind.
00:19:50And is that um is that like just certain brain regions are are pulsing in some sort of like periodic
00:20:00does that look like? And I know these are proxies, but what does that actually look like in a neuroscientific sense?
00:20:10Yeah, 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.
00:20:23And 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.
00:20:43And so part of my argument is that this isn't grounded. This is a good explanation on one level, but not all levels.
00:20:55And another theory that neuroscience has put forth is that pleasure is very localized to certain brain regions.
00:21:07That 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.
00:21:20And again, my claim is that pleasure is a very local thing.
00:21:23These 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.
00:21:37And I guess I would say a slightly different story in Principia Qualia, where I introduced the symmetry theory of balance.
00:21:48I suggest that we can think of brain regions or pleasure centers of the brain as a central part of the brain.
00:21:53As tuning knobs of the brain.
00:21:57So these, you know, quote unquote pleasure centers, they're not intrinsically creating pleasure.
00:22:04They're retuning the brain towards harmony.
00:22:09And a similar argument with sort of opioids. They're sort of adjusting the neuroacoustics of the brain, you could say.
00:22:19So what would that, how would that map onto like maybe stimuli?
00:22:23Or like someone's first person experience?
00:22:28Sure.
00:22:30So if you eat something that you really like, then maybe there's some activation of nucleus accumbens as a pleasure center.
00:22:43And maybe it sort of pulses out harmony.
00:22:48It sort of synchronizes other regions to it.
00:22:51And like there's a lot of different ways of doing that.
00:22:53There'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.
00:23:02Or we can say your nervous system starts to hum.
00:23:06And so it may look like the pleasure center is causing that, but it's actually the whole brain that's involved.
00:23:15Okay. 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.
00:23:27Sure. 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.
00:23:41And one, like they're each maybe harmonious to themselves, but together they produce dissonance.
00:23:56So 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.
00:24:08Totally.
00:24:09So this is kind of exciting to me.
00:24:11Because 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.
00:24:29And then try to structure my life, my day, my actions, my practices, so that I'm in integrity with those values.
00:24:38And that requires like having some self-awareness about what those values are.
00:24:41And 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.
00:24:52And my life is just better when I am in integrity.
00:24:55And then my life just feels worse when I'm not.
00:24:58And I try to
00:25:00almost like make this as legible to myself as possible by like articulating, you know, what it is that I value.
00:25:09And 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.
00:25:21Right? 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.
00:25:32Am I, am I getting it? Does that make sense? Yeah.
00:25:37Totally. 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.
00:25:46And some lead to,
00:25:51internal conflict, internal dissonance, et cetera, much more so than others.
00:25:57And maybe a very simple model is like, you know, you have your values and then you have your, your behavior.
00:26:08And so to the degree that your behavior corresponds with your values, you are in integrity.
00:26:14But then your values might not actually correspond to reality. Like you might have the wrong values.
00:26:19And then you're going to get,
00:26:21you might have to have a different.
00:26:22Feedback from reality that you know you're, you're doing things wrong or something's off.
00:26:27And so there's that kind of, there's different places where you can have dissonance, I guess.
00:26:35One, one interesting angle in this.
00:26:38I'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.
00:26:48And, and there's different, different.
00:26:51frames about parts work and like internal family systems and whatnot and curating therapy and i
00:26:58think that uh like oftentimes literally different parts of your nervous system can be in conflict
00:27:05and um and like that conflict sort of leads to you know literal dissonance in your nervous system
00:27:13and literal broken symmetries in your experience uh and it's sort of a tug of war and like
00:27:21different organs fight differently and they have different carrots and sticks
00:27:27and so i don't know we know a lot of people on twitter talk uh talk about ai alignment um and
00:27:34i think that's that's a fascinating topic and i think that like somatic alignment is also just
00:27:40super interesting what are some um interesting implications of the symmetry theory of valence
00:27:48when it comes to therapeutic practice
00:27:51for somatic alignment or even just you know personal practices in order to achieve more
00:27:58symmetry yeah yeah so i would say that um there's this idea that um there can be competing and i'm
00:28:09going to use this term again um uh harmonic regimes um and that can like they sort of have
00:28:19coherence and harmony
00:28:21harmony when taken solo but then when combined they can create distance and i think that a lot of
00:28:29like
00:28:32a lot of improving that and like this this is kind of a human condition to be you know this sort of
00:28:40uh somatic parliament that it doesn't always fully get along um and then i think that uh
00:28:48um like there's
00:28:51there's there's like stuff that i can say about sort of symmetry and and harmony and mathematics
00:28:56and there's also this stuff that i can say about just like when you have several
00:29:03periodic systems that each have harmonic structure like how do you make them play well together um
00:29:10how do you sort of harmonize that harmonic structure and like i um in my expectation and in
00:29:18my experience um it's it's about listening
00:29:21it'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
00:29:45in terms of like having harmony in your body
00:29:52just kind of
00:29:53make sure it's it's talking listening
00:29:58and practically is that
00:30:00just, you know, having equanimity and bringing attention to all these different parts?
00:30:06Yeah, so, I mean, this kind of gets into semantic practices and whatnot.
00:30:13I think, like, the most important thing is just to set aside time to give yourself attention.
00:30:24To give different parts of you attention.
00:30:27And, like, the parts that need the most attention feel the worst to give attention.
00:30:33Because 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.
00:30:39But, like, it'll only hurt when you resist giving it attention.
00:30:45And then once you kind of apply attention, you let, again, touching back on your previous example,
00:30:53you kind of let that part of you expand and unfold.
00:30:58And then you can sort of metabolize whatever's there.
00:31:06And does that just look like sitting?
00:31:10Yeah, I mean, it can be in meditation.
00:31:15But I get the feeling that a lot of people are sometimes a little…
00:31:21They find meditation a little intimidating.
00:31:25Like, this practice can just literally be just lie down in bed, shut your eyes, and, like, give yourself attention.
00:31:35And it seems like there's a general direction, I guess, for most people.
00:31:41Depends on your starting point.
00:31:42But for that attention to be in the body and not in terms of, you know, your thoughts about the body.
00:31:49And so, you know, I guess that's the whole thing.
00:31:53Right.
00:31:53And I think that's the whole point of somatic work.
00:31:54It'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.
00:32:01But actually paying attention to the raw sensory experience of it.
00:32:06Right.
00:32:07Yeah.
00:32:08So, my apostolic teacher suggests this, I don't know if I want to call it a mantra or just kind of framework.
00:32:20Present, internal, centered.
00:32:23So much of our experience, we're thinking about the future, we're thinking about the past.
00:32:29And to sort of be present, we have to be in the present.
00:32:38And then internal, like, we can kind of put our attention outside, you know, thinking about other things.
00:32:45But we should be putting our attention, like, if we're trying to sort of give ourselves attention, we should put it inside.
00:32:53And centered, he means it in terms of not trying to chase after or judge anything.
00:33:02It's just taking things neutrally as they are.
00:33:07Right.
00:33:07And that gives you the space to actually listen to it.
00:33:11Yeah.
00:33:13What comes to mind here is, you know, as by hydrating all these harmonic regimes with attention and, you know,
00:33:23and listening to them, we can create the opportunity for them to reorganize with, like, more harmony.
00:33:33And I think that's true internally, but it's also true externally with people.
00:33:38Like, 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.
00:33:49Do you think about the way human beings coordinate?
00:33:53Are they all in the same terms?
00:33:54Are there notable differences in the way this shows up externally as opposed to internally?
00:34:01Yeah.
00:34:01I mean, I think it's all the same stuff.
00:34:05And there's this one of my favorite sayings is, as you do anything, so you do everything.
00:34:14Yeah.
00:34:15And I mean, this, it's clear that, like, we have the same kind of interactions with others as we do, like, inside our body.
00:34:23and like uh we're sort of fractal harmonic computers and uh like a lot of
00:34:33a lot of effective practice is sort of learning how to um how to be a good harmonic computer i
00:34:41guess i would say um okay this reminds me of a quote of yours that i really liked i'm just going
00:34:48to read it uh he said people think emotional progress is about releasing tension but in my
00:34:54opinion it's first about building enough virtue in your nervous system
00:34:57such that your vasomuscular
00:35:00system doesn't need to jump in and micromanage and then showing your
00:35:05body evidence of this virtue and then you get release can you can you explain that nice uh yeah
00:35:12would be would be happy to um so this gets into my my latest piece um it's called principles of
00:35:19vasocomputation and um it uh it talks about it sort of it combines three domains one domain is
00:35:30buddhist phenomenology um another domain it's called um active inference it's part of the
00:35:37predictive coding pre-energy principle uh cluster and then the third domain is neuroanatomy um
00:35:45and so uh
00:35:48the
00:35:49the rabbit hole goes pretty deep uh i'd recommend people uh people read my thing
00:35:54uh it's it's the top post right now on opentheory.net um uh but i would say that uh
00:36:01like the the important thing uh for explaining this quote is that you know we we think of
00:36:08um computation as happening in the nervous system that okay you have the brain you have some nerves
00:36:18and they
00:36:19send electrical pulses around and the magic happens. And principles of vasocomputation
00:36:27says, yes, and. Like that is absolutely true. But there's also a parallel system that is
00:36:37very computationally relevant. And that's actually the vasomuscular system. So the vasomuscular
00:36:46system is it has a ring of muscle around it. All our veins and arteries and whatnot.
00:36:55It has a ring of smooth muscle. They're called VSMC, vascular smooth muscle cells. And so
00:37:03they can contract our blood vessels. And I think that the contractions of this system
00:37:16are.
00:37:16Are actually really important to understand, like how humans work, how humans think, how
00:37:21humans feel, how humans move. So.
00:37:29The vasomuscular system is a helper system. When the neural system is, you know, doing
00:37:38good things, it just hangs out. But when the neural system gets into trouble, when
00:37:46you have to figure out how to get them to understand how to understand how to understand
00:37:48how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand
00:38:06how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand
00:38:06how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand how to understand
00:38:16patterns as unsafe, it sort of blocks those out.
00:38:21So if we have tension in the body, it's because our body thinks that some parts of our full
00:38:30dynamic range are unsafe.
00:38:33And this tension is trying to help us.
00:38:36And I think of it like, I don't know if you know what a caladny plate is.
00:38:41It's like a vibrating metal plate and you can sprinkle sand on it and it can make cool
00:38:47geometric patterns.
00:38:49Like that's kind of what our nervous system is in terms of it has harmonics or like eigenmodes
00:38:56and whatnot.
00:38:58But then like having tension in the body is sort of like putting a clamp on the body,
00:39:09putting a clamp on the resonances.
00:39:11Yes.
00:39:11And it can block off certain patterns.
00:39:13You just say, okay, we're not going to resonate in that way because it got us in trouble.
00:39:21And to some degree, like this is, I think, a pretty clean generative definition of trauma.
00:39:32It's this sort of clamp put on the nervous system that prevents certain classes of resonance.
00:39:40It prevents certain.
00:39:41areas of our dynamic range from being used.
00:39:46um and so uh and i once again i i think that this is a this is a muscular thing it's it's the
00:39:54the the vasomuscular uh tissue is it's just
00:40:00of 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.
00:40:28For 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.
00:40:59Um, 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.
00:41:26Mm-hmm.
00:41:28Like 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.
00:41:47So, um, I think like one of the, one of the frames that, uh, I think we should generally put more attention.
00:41:58on is like can we make our nervous systems better more virtuous uh better able to handle things by
00:42:09themselves so that this vasomuscular system doesn't have to get it doesn't have to clench
00:42:16it doesn't have to hold tension that um you know it's like uh we we talk uh about how how great
00:42:24flow state is and it's a great thing uh and that's just when the neural system can do its thing
00:42:30and the vasomuscular system doesn't even have to get involved then then we get flow and it's
00:42:36beautiful but it's this question of what is the prerequisite there and it's it's having a neural
00:42:44system with good defaults and you build those defaults through good habits and so i i almost
00:42:53think that like one
00:42:54one underappreciated um thing about okay if you want to feel less tension if you want to feel less
00:43:01stressed etc uh build better habits and then uh your system and like you you might also have to
00:43:12you know do do something to to unclench that that tissue um sometimes
00:43:25i'm having trouble with my earbuds here uh sometimes we we hold a clench much longer than
00:43:31we need to but i think step one is uh make sure that like uh your your nervous system your your
00:43:44neural system can be trusted to just go into flow and and like uh perform its its defaults
00:43:53and I think of that as like
00:43:57tension sort of holds patterns into place
00:44:00and then over time these patterns grow into being the defaults
00:44:05and kind of like a wrapped bonsai tree or something
00:44:09and then over time then we don't need the tension
00:44:12like the defaults are in a good state
00:44:17what sort of habits are you talking about when you say build better habits
00:44:22sure um so
00:44:27if I always get nervous about something if I'm like
00:44:35nervous about going into the grocery store and what then
00:44:38you know something like that uh then like just breaking down okay like why
00:44:45why am I nervous what bad thing uh do I am I concerned about
00:44:51you know what I'm doing and then I'm like okay I'm gonna build better habits
00:44:52and like
00:44:53is there a habit that I can put into place that would just
00:44:57block up the possibility of that bad thing happening
00:45:00And then, you know, you apply that habit and then you don't need to feel nervous.
00:45:05Like, you might still feel nervous, but it can just kind of fade away.
00:45:12I'm imagining almost like a skill tree, you know, of like a series of, there's probably
00:45:19a set of habits or a set of practices that generalize quite well to giving, I guess,
00:45:25like safety to the system.
00:45:28So it's like, okay, the bad thing isn't going to happen anymore.
00:45:30And then that, maybe that's also what you mean by like virtue, building virtue in your
00:45:35nervous system.
00:45:36And one of the ones that came up is actually stoicism or CBT or the ability to disambiguate
00:45:47your interpretations of events and then from the events themselves and realizing that,
00:45:56you know, like people can't really hurt you with their words.
00:46:02It's your interpretation of their words and the implications and all the metadata that
00:46:06comes along with the words that lead to the feelings of hurt and having the skill of disambiguating
00:46:13that would probably give you a lot more resilience and safety when it comes to potential conflict
00:46:18or tense situations with people.
00:46:21So having good habits around that, which, you know, is CBT, stoicism, virtue, and virtue.
00:46:25I'm curious to hear how you feel about how stoicism and similar practices would give you
00:46:29safety in these situations.
00:46:30Is that kind of what you're talking about when you say building virtue in the nervous
00:46:35system?
00:46:37Yeah, I think so.
00:46:38I mean, there's also this sort of getting into stoicism and Buddhism and whatnot.
00:46:45There's this idea that usually the bad thing isn't the thing itself.
00:46:52It's our reaction to the thing.
00:46:54The second arrow.
00:46:55Yeah.
00:46:55Right, 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.
00:47:21And 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.
00:47:40And that to some degree, there's sort of two tracks on the path.
00:47:50And one track is, it's literally muscle deconditioning.
00:47:55It'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.
00:48:10And I do think that in very experienced meditators, their cringe reflex is very, very soft.
00:48:19And it's something that they've successfully deconditioned.
00:48:26Now, on the other hand, it's about also about sort of building up your nervous system so that you don't need that.
00:48:35That, I mean, this sort of reflex that, you know, something happens, whether it's, you know, a sensation or a situation or something.
00:48:47Kind of, you know.
00:48:49we react to it in in this sort of instinctual uh simple way but it's also about not needing
00:49:00that reflex that reflex is trying to help us and maybe it creates more trouble than
00:49:06it solves many times but um if you can absolutely remove the need for that reflex
00:49:15then it's a lot easier to decondition so this would be like getting triggered by something
00:49:24somebody says and then through contemplative practice and meditation you can kind of see
00:49:31that happening in slow motion and then realize you don't need to get triggered and then that
00:49:35gives you the space to better dance with the situation totally as opposed to like clenching
00:49:41up again yeah and it seems like
00:49:45at least practically speaking there's the habits the good habits to give yourself a sense of safety
00:49:53so that you you don't you don't need to get triggered but then there's also this like
00:50:00second 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.
00:50:25And then kind of giving yourself evidence that, okay, we don't, we don't need to do that anymore.
00:50:28Is that how you think about it as well?
00:50:31Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right.
00:50:33And I also think that like, this is something that can be viewed from many, many different angles.
00:50:39And like something like sauna, especially where like breathwork or psychedelics, I almost think of like as a garbage collection mechanism.
00:50:54So we go through our day and, you know, basically, so the principles of vessel computation hypothesis suggests that we hold predictions as tension.
00:51:11And we sort of commit to holding this tension until these predictions come true.
00:51:17And this can be done in skillful or unskillful ways.
00:51:22Yeah.
00:51:23But 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.
00:51:40And sometimes you don't give it back.
00:51:43It just kind of hangs out and becomes kind of this sort of overhead that
00:51:53you you're not using it, but you haven't given it back to the system.
00:51:57So it's just three sources that are kind of frozen.
00:52:00And 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.
00:52:22And so I have to stove on and I need to remember this.
00:52:25And then, okay, I turn the stove off, I can release tension.
00:52:30You know, everything's clean again.
00:52:32But a lot of you know, modern life is just so complicated.
00:52:37And it's so fragmented.
00:52:39And 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.
00:52:48And and so you slide little fragments of of you know, you have to figure out how to get them back.
00:52:53uncollected garbage, we can say, um, just kind of pile up and, you know, it's not that, uh,
00:53:02it needs to be there. It's just that your body is facing this incredibly hard computational
00:53:08problem of keeping track of everything. And, uh, you know, better to, to be a little sticky
00:53:15with tension than to just, you know, let everything go, uh, at the first hint that you can.
00:53:22Like people vary a lot in this dimension. I know for some people things are very sticky and for
00:53:29some people they're not, but, um, like this, this sort of garbage can build up and then it can be
00:53:36very useful to have some sort of, um, some sort of practice that can sort of clean this stuff.
00:53:43And like sauna would be a great example. Um, you know, uh, psychedelics may also work for this.
00:53:50Um, and like,
00:53:52yeah, just any, any high energy state and this gets into the general.
00:53:58Yeah. Um, just to kind of connect this with some of my own experiences, um, definitely
00:54:07high energy states, like really intense workouts, really intense sauna sessions, uh, cold plunge.
00:54:13One thing I noticed, so I do sauna then cold, and then I sit in like a normal room until I shiver.
00:54:22Um, and then I take the body temperature back up to something stable and then go back to the sauna.
00:54:26And that shivering period is actually way harder than the cold plunge for me.
00:54:31Yeah.
00:54:31And that's often when a bunch of like emotional stuff comes up too. And like the body's shaking
00:54:35and it kind of feels like some of these patterns are being released. Um, and just to kind of,
00:54:41I guess, bring in the neural annealing bit. Um, my understanding of that theory is that
00:54:47the body's like almost, um, or the nervous system gets into like a local maximum. Um,
00:54:52and, uh, by adding disorder or variance or energy to the system,
00:54:59things 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?
00:55:15I think it's sort of, I like the metaphor of the brain is like a metal.
00:55:24And 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.
00:55:32And if you do that a lot to some metal, it'll get hard and brittle.
00:55:37You 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.
00:55:47And 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.
00:56:13You can and should do that to the brain as well.
00:56:16And not let it cool down.
00:56:17Yeah, I mean, it's not just literal heat, but just like...
00:56:19Sometimes.
00:56:20Emotional.
00:56:20Yeah, I mean, sometimes, yeah, sometimes it's great.
00:56:24But like, we need emotional intense experiences.
00:56:31Yeah.
00:56:31And if we don't get them, then our psyches get hardened at all.
00:56:37Yeah, that makes complete sense to me.
00:56:39It's like once a quarter, you got to do something really intense.
00:56:43One other thing this reminds me of.
00:56:47We're coming up on the hour mark.
00:56:49So I got a couple questions left for you.
00:56:50But I wanted to share that.
00:56:53So I do coaching for founders and a lot of stuff that we do is like bread and butter productivity type stuff.
00:57:00And they're inundated with all sorts of responsibilities and like potentially distracting things.
00:57:07And they have to really focus on, you know, a couple of really important things and say no.
00:57:12And that, I guess, creates a lot of tension.
00:57:14A lot of like garbage gets collected.
00:57:17And then you have to really see things emerge out of that.
00:57:20And one framework that works really well is GTD, getting things done.
00:57:25I don't know how familiar you are with that.
00:57:27But 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.
00:57:40And it's very, very basic and mundane.
00:57:43Like you just get a sheet of paper and you write things down or you do it in a Google Doc.
00:57:46But...
00:57:47It's almost as if it makes a lot of that...
00:57:51Those things like, you know, the stove is on or whatever, like the equivalents for of those of that category of stuff, very legible.
00:57:59And I call it like collecting open loops.
00:58:02And 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.
00:58:13And I bring that in because that's a lot more mundane and straightforward.
00:58:17And, you know, day to day than, you know, doing a psychedelic trip or doing sauna and cold plunge.
00:58:23But it seems like it would help with the clenching, cringing patterns that you're describing.
00:58:29Yeah.
00:58:30No, absolutely.
00:58:31And I think that these open loops take a lot more resources than we realize.
00:58:36And like if we're these sort of harmonic computers and we just have a bunch of clamps on our...
00:58:46On our...
00:58:47On our ability to resonate, then that really does reduce our capacity quite a bit.
00:58:54And so the more free the body and the mind will follow, I guess is the frame there.
00:59:01And also free the mind and the body will follow.
00:59:03Right.
00:59:04I think it's connected.
00:59:07Yeah.
00:59:07So two more questions.
00:59:11The first is, and this is kind of a selfish question.
00:59:13This is something I was curious about when...
00:59:15Just for my own life.
00:59:19Yeah.
00:59:20Basically, 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.
00:59:39Like 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.
00:59:46You 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.
01:00:01And the more I've talked about this openly with people, and especially with clients,
01:00:05I've realized it's actually a big, big problem that a lot of people face.
01:00:07And I think some of it has to do with our overwhelming information environment and digital environment.
01:00:13But I was curious how this fits with your ideas of symmetry.
01:00:19Because one of the things you alluded to in the beginning is that it's not enough that you just have a singular symmetrical experience.
01:00:25Like 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.
01:00:31And boredom and salience seem to be related.
01:00:35So I wonder if you have any thoughts on how you might frame those concepts from the lens of your work.
01:00:43Sure. That's a great question.
01:00:46I think that's a...
01:00:48I mean, I'd first put it in the metaphor that, I mean, if the body is a song,
01:00:55the song changes over time.
01:00:57Keeping something in mind, keeping something prominent and salient and constant,
01:01:04is like when you have...
01:01:08When you're playing the same note throughout this changing song,
01:01:13like it's hard.
01:01:14It's hard to write a beautiful song that always has the same note playing.
01:01:20So it's somehow understandable that it's...
01:01:24It's hard.
01:01:26And I think that when...
01:01:30Like we can look at what happens when this...
01:01:35When we can't do this, when we fail at this task.
01:01:39And like one kind of failure is, you know, things just drop out of our salience list.
01:01:44And you're like, yeah, it was important yesterday, but it's not important today.
01:01:48But another failure I would say is ADHD.
01:01:52It's sort of trying, you know, the...
01:01:55The ADHD state is trying to hold many different, very disparate things.
01:02:03And you're like, well, I have to keep hold of this.
01:02:07And it's in, you know, the context of my work.
01:02:10And I have to keep hold of this.
01:02:11And this is in the context of my relationship.
01:02:13I have to keep hold of this.
01:02:15This is in the context of like taking care of my dog or something like that.
01:02:20And it's just too much.
01:02:22And you get paralyzed because, well,
01:02:25I know you have to hang on to these things,
01:02:27but you can't make it into a song.
01:02:34I have so many follow-ups, but I know we're coming up on time.
01:02:37Do you have a hard stop in five minutes?
01:02:41No hard stop.
01:02:42Okay.
01:02:42Well, let's ask a couple more questions then.
01:02:49Any suggestions for how to make music with that kind of stuff?
01:02:53Like how do you...
01:02:55How do you make that all into a song?
01:02:57Yeah.
01:02:59I mean, it's, it's the hardest thing and it's, it's kind of the problem of modernity.
01:03:05So it's not an easy problem, but I do think that like really, I mean, we hang on to these
01:03:13things through instinct.
01:03:14We, because we fear we might lose something important in reality.
01:03:21If we let it go, it'll probably come back.
01:03:24Hmm.
01:03:25And that if, if we're less sticky, it's good on the margin.
01:03:31I mean, it's, it's not great to, you know, just let go of everything and, you know, you
01:03:36know, responsibilities and memories and, you know, it'll all work out.
01:03:41Well, sometimes it doesn't work out.
01:03:42But on the margin, it's probably great advice to, to let, just be more willing to let go
01:03:49because if something is important, you don't have to hold it with tension.
01:03:54Like you could, you know, you could, you know, you could, you know, you could, you could
01:03:55rely on your, your neural patterns to, to hold it as well.
01:04:00Um, and like we can really only do one thing at a time.
01:04:03So if you're holding things in many domains, um, it's just, it's just nice.
01:04:09Right.
01:04:10This is why I like, um, learning, you know, systems for processing all the open loops
01:04:17like GTD, um, and having almost being like a martial artist when it comes to navigating
01:04:24all that.
01:04:25You know, life complexity and then focusing on what's immediately before you.
01:04:31And then the other thing this reminds me of, and this is a huge topic, but it does seem
01:04:36like the fact that we don't have shared cosmic narratives, you know, like a shared religious
01:04:42worldview with the same set of values or, um, big, big stories to like hold us together
01:04:50in modern life is one of the reasons why this is really hard.
01:04:56Because basically your paradigms can constantly be refactored
01:05:00and 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
01:05:09So, I think that's part of the diagnosis.
01:05:15I also think that there are really cool social technologies that we've kind of let fall into
01:05:25to disrepair.
01:05:26I mean, for example, if we think about effective garbage collection technologies, and that
01:05:35has a negative connotation, but it's actually like, no, this is really important.
01:05:39It's like cleaning yourself of all these shards of context.
01:05:44Like confession at church.
01:05:46Holy cow.
01:05:48How powerful is that as a garbage collection technology?
01:05:53Like you can just kind of close a lot of different sorts of loops every week.
01:05:59Right.
01:06:01Okay, last question.
01:06:03This is more of a personal one.
01:06:06When I look at all your work, and as I said, it strikes me as very intellectually ambitious.
01:06:13And I think part of the reason why it was kind of hard to penetrate from the outside
01:06:17is that generally, I'm not used to people being that ambitious.
01:06:23Like for even the idea of qualia formalism, that there is like a mathematical object that
01:06:27corresponds to every subjective state or state of consciousness.
01:06:32That's like a very bold, ambitious idea.
01:06:35And it seems like you're following through and rigorously trying to make sense of it.
01:06:41And I just think that's very rare.
01:06:43That's even rare in like intellectuals.
01:06:46So, yeah.
01:06:47Why do you think you had the intuition or courage to go down that path while it seems
01:06:54like most other people don't?
01:06:58Yeah.
01:07:01I guess the honest appraisal there is I just get obsessed with curiosity of things.
01:07:08And it's like you do what you need to do to get clarity.
01:07:15But I guess I'm...
01:07:17Yeah.
01:07:17I'm a big fan as a philosopher about finding binary philosophical questions.
01:07:26Like either we live in a universe where X is true or we live in a universe where X is false.
01:07:33And I mean, it's easy to spend a life in philosophy just thinking about things and like wondering
01:07:41things and being curious.
01:07:42And that can be beautiful, but it can produce nothing.
01:07:47And I always want to sort of try to compile things into this binary frame of like, well,
01:07:56either this is true and that would be super interesting to know.
01:08:01Like that would be very big news.
01:08:03Or this is false.
01:08:04And that would also be very, very big news.
01:08:07And whenever I find a question like that, I get really excited.
01:08:12And like this sort of leads into like...
01:08:17I think it's like the idea of formalism and valence-trualism and valence-formalism and so on.
01:08:22So it's just I guess I'd credit that instinct or heuristic for a lot of those.
01:08:33Mike Johnson, it was very nice talking to you.
01:08:35Where can people find more about you and what's something you'd like to draw their attention to in particular?
01:08:43My pleasure.
01:08:43Thanks for having me.
01:08:46My work is on OpenTheory.net.
01:08:51And I'm especially proud of the last three posts.
01:08:55And yeah, just want to thank you for the invite.
01:09:00I'll put all those articles in the show notes as well.
01:09:03Awesome.