The vasculature that thinks
Friends of Analogue
Episode 1 · May 8, 2025
Source: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4i26YQN7rIuLidvbTHYpgs
Canonical transcript: https://opentheory.net/transcripts/vasculature-that-thinks/
Machine-generated transcript · not human-reviewed

[00:00:00.000] I think research tastes is everything. That's 90% of the task. Have a good taste. You can create beauty through paintings, through music, through movies, but isn't it especially cool to uncover the beauty of reality?
[00:00:23.840] What I want my adult world to be. It's to live a beautiful life.
[00:00:33.660] Welcome to the Analogue Podcast, conversations with people who are reimagining the future
[00:00:38.380] of systems, science, and society. Each episode we bring on a new explorer we've backed,
[00:00:44.200] a researcher, or an architect, but we're all asking the same core question. What if
[00:00:50.280] we did things differently and meant it? This is about the new age of research and innovation,
[00:00:56.440] where we lead with problems first and progress follows. Enjoy.
[00:01:03.100] A couple just words of structure, and I think Carol and I both don't love having too much
[00:01:08.080] structure in the way that we do these. Firstly, starting off with kind of just a precursor to the
[00:01:13.160] way you think and understanding the natural evolution of your brain chemistry and the way
[00:01:20.280] you think about science, transition a little bit more into the basic computation stuff.
[00:01:23.800] And a lot of the work that you've described to people, some new elements maybe that you haven't,
[00:01:29.180] and ending off with kind of the values that are evident in the way you think about complexity and
[00:01:34.320] the way you combine elements and combine domains. Because really that's what analog is all about.
[00:01:38.900] And I think you are walking, living in volume and a lot of the values that we look for.
[00:01:43.780] One on one being, being able to cross disciplines and think about what's adjacent possible and what
[00:01:49.340] unfolds again. And I think that's what I'm really looking for. And I think that's what I'm really
[00:01:50.280] looking for. And I think everyone you just mentioned with evolution and how it's infinitely
[00:01:54.060] smarter than any human can be and understand that progress can't really be contained or measured in
[00:02:00.380] different domains. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm Michael Johnson. I've been
[00:02:11.020] working on these topics for quite some time. I originally moved to the bay in 2010 or 2011.
[00:02:19.320] Yeah.
[00:02:20.280] And my original intention was to work on AI safety.
[00:02:24.400] And then I got talking with the Les Ron crowd, and I just kind of bounced off.
[00:02:30.540] I was really surprised that I thought that the way that they were talking about minds was very interesting,
[00:02:40.780] but it didn't seem groundable to biology or to physics or to how I understood things.
[00:02:53.200] And I felt that it's this thing where you can kind of see into the future a little bit and see,
[00:03:03.820] okay, what's going to come of this line of thinking?
[00:03:07.340] And when I simulated that,
[00:03:09.340] I was like,
[00:03:10.780] Les Ron produced a lot of beautiful things,
[00:03:14.500] but a theory of minds is not among them.
[00:03:19.500] And I had the fork in the road of,
[00:03:23.320] do I try to convince people,
[00:03:27.560] or do I just try to start the party?
[00:03:30.960] And I felt that starting the party was the more sort of light choice,
[00:03:36.020] you could say,
[00:03:37.820] that if there's value,
[00:03:39.520] then, like,
[00:03:41.360] it's kind of on me to find it and to construct a way of thinking about things.
[00:03:46.960] So I ended up taking way more time than I thought to write The Principle of Equality,
[00:03:53.740] but then I would say that's been the basis for a lot of my other work.
[00:04:01.860] So, yeah, I guess in all of this, too,
[00:04:12.620] I would say that when I was young,
[00:04:14.400] I was thinking of the
[00:04:18.200] biological constraints as very bothersome,
[00:04:21.980] very annoying.
[00:04:24.160] Like,
[00:04:25.320] we're not perfect yet.
[00:04:27.580] And the weakness of the flesh, I guess, is the common phrase.
[00:04:31.880] And I think that
[00:04:34.300] this journey
[00:04:35.960] has really shown me
[00:04:38.080] how cool humans are.
[00:04:40.780] Just how...
[00:04:44.820] I think that as you peel back the system of how our bodies work and how our minds work,
[00:04:53.760] you just see this beautiful system where...
[00:04:59.740] there's always reasons for things and it's been really rewarding to reverse engineer bit by bit the reasons for the way things are.
[00:05:14.560] I mean, I think one thing that currently I also think a lot about is how innovation,
[00:05:23.260] even in science research, even beyond biology, there's this beauty that was always stripped
[00:05:28.540] away just in, you know, to sacrifice for progress.
[00:05:33.140] We think about every time there's been a war or even a traditional physics-based way of
[00:05:37.900] thinking about problems.
[00:05:38.980] It's always been, what are the principles?
[00:05:40.800] What are the formulas?
[00:05:42.580] What are the mathematical concepts that we can use to take what's abstract and the beauty
[00:05:47.340] of what's really immeasurable and boil it down?
[00:05:50.880] And I think what's interesting about your work too is we're coming back and we're almost
[00:05:55.260] seeing like a counterpulture of respecting and going back to these biological perspectives
[00:05:59.640] of seeing innovation problems in ways of embracing the uncertainty and embracing the unknown
[00:06:06.280] and understanding that things don't work in isolation.
[00:06:08.680] It's this kind of interconnected web of problems that influence each other.
[00:06:13.960] A large dynamic, blacker dynamic ways of seeing problems.
[00:06:17.560] I think what was beautiful too about the way that you just outlined all of that is a lot
[00:06:22.620] of it is about awareness, like awareness of the unknown, awareness of what comes to be.
[00:06:27.480] And this is something you talk about in your work as well a lot.
[00:06:30.700] So before we dive deeper into your work, I'm curious about your personal relationship with
[00:06:36.600] awareness.
[00:06:37.020] Like you mentioned that you were going to be entering AI safety.
[00:06:39.620] There's an element of awareness there, but how has that influenced your own contemplative
[00:06:45.100] practice?
[00:06:46.940] What informs or has informed your scientific inquiries, the background leading up to this?
[00:06:52.000] Sure.
[00:06:53.540] So that's a good question.
[00:06:55.260] It can go many different ways here.
[00:06:58.040] I think that I mean to your point about science sort of being being productive.
[00:07:08.460] I'm reminded of this famous quote from Hamlet that there are more things Horatio than are
[00:07:15.700] dreamt of.
[00:07:16.240] There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in philosophy.
[00:07:21.120] And this is the critique of science that science is often very good at carving out a little
[00:07:33.180] corner and saying, okay, here are the equations for this corner.
[00:07:36.660] Here's the systems, the components, the interactions.
[00:07:41.340] And it's a brilliant way to do things.
[00:07:44.820] It is.
[00:07:46.940] And very successful in many domains.
[00:07:48.740] And it's also very willfully blind, you can say.
[00:07:54.520] And that most things of interest include many more things than science can really cleanly
[00:08:03.500] point out.
[00:08:05.240] And then the question is, how do you navigate that?
[00:08:09.740] And I think that like you can always double down on.
[00:08:16.940] The reduction.
[00:08:18.740] You can also just kind of shrug and say, well, there's infinite complexity.
[00:08:23.040] Who are we to say anything?
[00:08:25.500] And I think that there's a middle path where you just look for, I would say new compressive
[00:08:33.400] frames that you know, maybe humans tend to have limited working memory capacity for understanding.
[00:08:46.320] And I think that's a good point.
[00:08:47.940] We are finite creatures, but we can get better and better and better at compressing important insights into simple terms.
[00:09:00.300] And I think that this is actually a big part of how science progresses.
[00:09:06.520] It's like the predictive hierarchy in the brain of simple things get fed into feature detectors, get summarized.
[00:09:17.940] That result gets fed into higher level feature detectors and so on.
[00:09:21.640] And this doesn't directly speak to your awareness question, but I think it's like an important thing.
[00:09:32.880] And in terms of awareness, interesting.
[00:09:43.220] Okay.
[00:09:44.520] I'll go there.
[00:09:46.460] So.
[00:09:48.340] I tend to, people tell me that I live in a different world.
[00:09:54.240] That I had some archetype reading that, and
[00:10:00.880] guy said, well, wow, you're like a rare archetype.
[00:10:04.060] You're the fae archetype.
[00:10:06.340] Like you live in the faerie, magical world.
[00:10:09.880] And I was like, really?
[00:10:12.680] Is that good?
[00:10:15.300] But actually, I think, okay, like, I'll own it.
[00:10:18.160] Yes.
[00:10:19.200] And then he said that my second archetype was kind of the scholar archetype.
[00:10:26.040] When you focus, when you concentrate, you try to really understand how it works.
[00:10:33.580] And I think that, like, so much of my awareness is focused on kind of a just a different kind of tilt or filter or whatever.
[00:10:49.060] Like, I think I see things that other people don't.
[00:10:54.600] I don't.
[00:10:55.060] And so on.
[00:10:56.120] But then I think if I'm a, if I'm a rare neurotype, we can say, then I can distill the most tasty parts of this role model and give them to other people.
[00:11:13.740] It's those abilities to be that rare archetype, though, that I think helps certain people navigate different ways of knowing better than what some traditional work does.
[00:11:24.220] A lot of pioneers who bridge scientific and contemplative traditions, there's a particular taste or essence of attention or presence that I think
[00:11:33.940] I'm a rare person.
[00:11:37.480] I'm a rare person.
[00:11:40.940] I'm a rare person.
[00:11:44.200] I'm a rare person.
[00:11:47.300] I'm a rare person.
[00:11:50.940] I'm a rare person.
[00:11:54.600] of the archetype or the way you approach this, it seems to be integrated.
[00:11:59.820] And that shows in the way that you're curious about questions and the kinds
[00:12:03.480] of questions that you're curious about.
[00:12:05.700] So I guess to kind of fill it off of that, when I'm thinking about your
[00:12:10.060] background, your way of thinking, the way you've developed this mindset,
[00:12:13.940] what experiences or insights led you to establish the Institute and to explore
[00:12:18.980] this specific intersection of consciousness and neuroscience in essence, like what
[00:12:24.600] drew you to such a niche and very challenging question that would be
[00:12:28.940] perhaps not to share others?
[00:12:31.440] Yeah.
[00:12:32.300] So I mean the core answer here is going to be for me, it's deeply personal.
[00:12:41.720] That there is no sort of boundary between my, my emotional life and the work that
[00:12:48.860] I'm doing, it's all kind of one, one thing.
[00:12:52.380] And
[00:12:54.760] in that sense it's a bit more like art than science.
[00:13:02.080] And yeah, that, that would be interesting to get into, but I think that
[00:13:10.540] as a young man and okay, I'm still young, but you know, in my twenties,
[00:13:21.440] I was a little angsty.
[00:13:23.060] I was
[00:13:24.600] depressed.
[00:13:25.020] I was like looking for a place to put my energy and and I just was you know, really, I mean,
[00:13:34.920] interested in okay you know what is pain and pleasure that feels important.
[00:13:43.080] And and my dad was struggling with depression and I love my dad and I wanted to help him.
[00:13:51.140] And I think that
[00:13:53.400] like,
[00:13:55.600] looking around
[00:14:00.480] consciousness felt like the biggest dragon and the biggest dragon to slay.
[00:14:07.780] And I completely didn't know what I was getting into.
[00:14:11.580] But I had enough intrinsic motivation and curiosity.
[00:14:16.660] And I felt I didn't need any immediate result.
[00:14:23.540] And I was willing.
[00:14:25.480] I was willing.
[00:14:27.020] to front the energy without expectation of a return, that I just went for it.
[00:14:36.420] And I think that over time, this motivation has changed a little bit.
[00:14:45.440] And it's not just getting aimed at a problem and trying to slay the dragon.
[00:14:56.200] It has historically been a substantial thing.
[00:14:58.920] But more
[00:15:00.000] more just seeing as we were talking before the show just kind of seeing the beauty in being human and I think that yeah I mean certain personal interactions our relationships have really opened my eyes to the beauty of it's good to be a human and it's good to be a man and a woman and all these things so
[00:15:28.000] I really I think for me it's now more well I'll say exploration appreciation and I guess just kind of looking into the future I expect that I have this tweet a few years ago that forms of beauty that are that we make legible are more likely to
[00:15:58.000] persist under transformation so the more we understand about what is beautiful about humans the more likely it is for that to both persist and also extend into the future and it's almost a freeing way to approach research and work to right not to have to be objective driven necessarily but to let things evolve and let things
[00:16:28.000] flourish and have just different networks of what's possible come and spring about as that happens how do you think you were able to come to this like obviously from the 20s to now I'm assuming that wasn't a linear process and it wasn't something that that came out without practice so what was that sort of navigation like well I mean at first it was just kind of letting go of other possibilities
[00:16:58.880] just this sense that okay like I'm I'm just gonna do the thing and you know at that point
[00:17:10.480] there was little I would say prior art in this research space or this like this lifestyle we can say
[00:17:21.120] and I think that
[00:17:26.660] perhaps one of
[00:17:27.760] the
[00:17:28.000] The challenges in any entrepreneurial work is, I guess, what might be called the valley of eligibility.
[00:17:38.380] Of, you know, you start, maybe you have a nice normal job.
[00:17:43.620] You know what's going on.
[00:17:46.000] And then you feel like, okay, there's this treasure a long ways away, but you can feel it.
[00:17:53.440] And then so you quit your job.
[00:17:55.520] You start kind of researching.
[00:17:58.000] You start exploring.
[00:17:58.940] And there's kind of this long valley where as you get further away from kind of what is simple and legible, you stop being able to explain to others what you're doing or why.
[00:18:18.540] And then perhaps much more significantly, you can't explain to yourself what you're doing or why.
[00:18:26.220] You just know it's important.
[00:18:29.380] I think that it just takes a lot of determination and self-belief that you, like, there is actually this treasure on the other side that you feel.
[00:18:43.780] That's a very strong way to put it.
[00:18:46.560] And I guess to kind of link back to your current work and how that's evolved over the years, how has that changed?
[00:18:53.620] So if you first started with the basic computation, I'm sure you described it, explored it in many different forms.
[00:18:59.940] I'm curious how that's evolved over time as your research has progressed and made new connections.
[00:19:06.680] And perhaps for someone who's encountering your ideas for the first time, maybe what are the stages that they need to understand, truly understand what basic computation theory is and what's most important?
[00:19:18.060] Right, right.
[00:19:19.500] Well, the rabbit hole here goes pretty deep.
[00:19:27.900] At QRI, when I was there, I would always say, you know, the project is a very long-term project.
[00:19:39.420] And the basic pattern is that if you actually, if we're doing better philosophy, then that should ultimately cash out in better neuroscience.
[00:19:52.460] And then if we're doing...
[00:19:53.620] If we're doing better neuroscience, that should ultimately cash out in some actual useful neurotech.
[00:20:01.080] And then some people will follow the breadcrumb trail back to the neuroscience and then to the philosophy. In that sense, it was kind of a very sort of ambitious layup that did prioritize the philosophy. And I would say that I guess I've had
[00:20:30.260] three major works at this point. The first is Principia Qualia, Symmetry Theory of Valence. So that was 2016. And like the basic sense of that is kind of laying out like how you could turn this consciousness research that's very much like alchemy right now into something closer to chemistry.
[00:20:59.360] And the symmetry theory of valence is saying, well, symmetry or emotional valence, the pleasantness of the experience is probably actually a natural kind. And in terms of setting up what is knowledge about consciousness, what is knowledge about qualia, then we kind of have two domains. And then if we have the math domain here, symmetry in the math domain maps
[00:21:28.000] to pleasantness in the domain of qualia. And I really like making these parallels between domains in basic computation. I think I line up three domains. Yeah, so that's kind of the first branch. The second branch would be neural annealing, just kind of taking a thermodynamic approach to the brain.
[00:22:00.620] I read Robin Carteris's Atropic Brain. And I thought, oh, yeah, like, you can go further. And so I actually sent him an update on that. I think that ultimately turned into Rebus too.
[00:22:18.620] So I think that there's a really rich metaphor of treating the brain as like in neural annealing.
[00:22:27.280] I'm excited.
[00:22:28.000] suggested basically treating it like a metal.
[00:22:30.540] Metals can get hard and brittle.
[00:22:32.140] To fix that, you heat them up.
[00:22:34.600] You get this entropic disintegration and then like things cool down.
[00:22:39.360] And then so the metaphor goes pretty deep with that.
[00:22:44.580] And then third, so all this is kind of backstory to the question of
[00:22:51.520] vessel computation and where did vessel computation come from?
[00:22:55.680] And and also how is, how has it evolved since I, I posted it?
[00:23:03.900] I think that like I, this sort of, this sort of proximate cause for vessel computation.
[00:23:17.560] I would describe there's this question of what is tension trying to do for us?
[00:23:28.900] And my sort of initial thesis was that it's the nervous system's immune system.
[00:23:37.760] That the body has an immune system if a virus or bacteria comes in and starts to cause trouble.
[00:23:45.540] We have these T-cells and killer cells and whatnot.
[00:23:50.140] And so we have an immune system for sort of friend and enemy distinction.
[00:23:56.680] But then, I mean, we have computer viruses as well.
[00:24:01.500] And they're just information.
[00:24:03.820] They're just code.
[00:24:04.720] And we can say viruses are just code, but they are a little bit more physical.
[00:24:11.420] And so my thesis was that just trying to understand how the nervous system shuts down rogue patterns, we could say.
[00:24:25.980] And so I was, you know, then, you know, did a bunch of permutations.
[00:24:32.420] Okay, like, how does this work?
[00:24:34.680] How does that work?
[00:24:36.100] And just kind of tension as stopping resonance, we could say.
[00:24:41.540] That if you have this vibrating system, you know, if you clamp your fingers over it, it'll stop vibrating.
[00:24:48.680] And maybe that's what the body is trying to do with tension.
[00:24:54.020] Then I got into the Tanha angle.
[00:25:00.000] And big props to both Romeo Stevens and Nick Camarata.
[00:25:05.920] They really laid it out in a way that was easy for me to then take and run with.
[00:25:14.080] So I think yeah, and then vasocomputation turned out to be this kind of very simple on-off thing where
[00:25:28.240] Clenching stabilizes patterns in a local sense.
[00:25:34.600] And then, but we can then kind of light up all these domains of where you have the Buddhist
[00:25:41.580] phenomenology and all the terms in Buddhism. Then you have the predictive coding active
[00:25:49.540] inference frame and all those terms. And then you have actual physical anatomy,
[00:25:57.940] neuroanatomy, but not only in the brain too. And the really exciting thing with finding these kind
[00:26:08.580] of domains to kind of line up is that any term in one domain should have an analog. And I appreciate
[00:26:18.760] your
[00:26:19.920] organizational name here. Should have an analog in all the other domains that you have lined up.
[00:26:26.000] And if it doesn't, well, that's interesting. Like you can say, okay, like maybe one of the
[00:26:31.820] domains is like different or maybe our models are wrong. And so it was exciting to say that, okay,
[00:26:41.480] mental tension is a prediction is vascular tension. And just being able to draw that line.
[00:26:52.020] So vessel computation launched in
[00:26:55.500] In kind of a minimum viable product way.
[00:26:59.460] And then has so I think it's gone through at least a 0.5 revision.
[00:27:08.760] So I'd say the talk that I gave at Siddhiana would be 1.5. And so that added so it's like
[00:27:19.440] tension is a prediction is vascular tension. It was like part of the foundation.
[00:27:25.500] And like latches, so on. I think I've since then really seen this in much better detail. And I see
[00:27:39.480] this as a very I think we very subtly adjust tension to think and this idea of so the 1.5 in my
[00:27:54.420] edge the
[00:27:55.500] line of talk kind of split this into two of well, there's this feeling that maybe the self
[00:28:04.620] is composed of latches, hard invariance, things being kept invariant. And this is a defensive
[00:28:14.460] thing. This is a it's in a sense, a necessary stage for us to survive in the world.
[00:28:25.500] And especially in a social world. If you don't have a self, you have no boundaries.
[00:28:33.180] The things are not going to go well with you or in interactions. But then the metaphor of
[00:28:42.860] if I posted this in response to one of the next few weeks ago, that this idea that kind of latches
[00:28:51.960] are tying the bonsai tree. And then the idea that kind of latches are tying the bonsai tree.
[00:28:56.680] into a certain pattern. And then it grows into that pattern. And then after it's grown into the
[00:29:04.860] pattern, you can actually release the latches. And it'll say like this. And it's a free upgrade.
[00:29:15.320] So yeah, a lot of deep stuff there. And then the other thing that I think came with 1.5 was
[00:29:25.360] having a lot more depth.
[00:29:26.500] or appreciation for the basal computation system as the hand of the mind.
[00:29:35.100] And I think that there's a lot of detail there in terms of what is aphantasia.
[00:29:42.820] Aphantasia as an inability to hold a certain class of patterns.
[00:29:48.260] It's just your hand of the mind just doesn't reach there, you can say.
[00:29:56.500] This would tell the story about how...
[00:30:00.000] we all have these weird deficits in terms of what we can say wise.
[00:30:08.620] And I think that this can be mapped to very physical deficits of, yeah, I literally can't clench in V1 and V2 in my visual system, whereas you can.
[00:30:24.040] So you can picture things better than I can.
[00:30:29.220] But I do think that ultimately this is a trainable thing.
[00:30:34.780] So I'm going to pause there and invite questions.
[00:30:39.080] Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think the beautiful thing about that explanation, too, is that it's not just domains that are analogs of each other, but humans to a certain extent are also analogs of each other.
[00:30:50.780] I think the way that you break it down makes it really clear.
[00:30:54.040] It comes from a computer engineering background or comes from a medical background, comes from a philosophical background.
[00:31:00.080] To see the different ways of thought and the lines that run parallel here, it just, I think this is a beautiful way of, we'll get back to this a little bit later, of explaining the science and the research in a way that isn't gatecapped behind just a biological mechanism, but to show that it transcends so many different boundaries.
[00:31:18.460] Peral, you look if you have a question.
[00:31:21.280] I do, yeah.
[00:31:23.400] I have a question.
[00:31:24.040] I have a question about stabilizing patterns and getting proper reference.
[00:31:29.400] So if I recall correctly, I've read you express narcissism, for example, as the ability to stabilize the self.
[00:31:40.840] And if the same goes for aphantasia and for many other ways of being.
[00:31:50.840] The question that comes to my mind is.
[00:31:55.520] If you don't have the reference that you try to stabilize, what would be, from the Vasa Computations framework perspective, what would be an actionable way to stabilize something you don't really have access to?
[00:32:12.100] I saw you tweet something about how thinking hurts if you attempt to stabilize unfamiliar mental processes.
[00:32:22.640] So.
[00:32:24.040] If gaining conscious command of one's nervous system requires techniques that can be difficult to develop without this reference, how can we solve this?
[00:32:36.160] Yeah.
[00:32:40.020] This is a big, huge problem, question, opportunity.
[00:32:47.980] I would say that.
[00:32:50.260] I mean, given that we all have big deficits.
[00:32:54.040] In the system.
[00:32:54.960] This is relevant for all of us.
[00:32:57.760] And I think it's especially relevant for sort of understanding.
[00:33:01.720] You know.
[00:33:03.220] I think that.
[00:33:07.020] Not all bad behavior in the world is due to suffering.
[00:33:10.840] But a lot of it is.
[00:33:13.840] So.
[00:33:15.360] I think that.
[00:33:16.800] Like.
[00:33:18.360] I'd start to tell the story.
[00:33:20.680] By talking about.
[00:33:24.560] Parental love.
[00:33:26.580] And.
[00:33:27.800] This is obviously.
[00:33:29.740] At the root of a lot of attachment dynamics.
[00:33:32.620] Attachment.
[00:33:33.340] Is very essential.
[00:33:34.640] For how we are.
[00:33:36.640] And I think that.
[00:33:37.920] You know.
[00:33:38.580] As kind of a simple scenario.
[00:33:40.500] You're born.
[00:33:41.540] And.
[00:33:42.860] Hopefully mom loves you.
[00:33:44.320] And when like.
[00:33:46.280] You're right there next to mom.
[00:33:47.880] You feel that.
[00:33:49.980] And then.
[00:33:50.960] Maybe you get.
[00:33:51.880] A little bit bigger.
[00:33:53.000] Mom leaves the room.
[00:33:54.420] You start crying.
[00:33:56.400] But you learn that.
[00:33:57.640] Oh.
[00:33:58.020] Even if mom is in the other room.
[00:34:00.380] Things are okay.
[00:34:02.220] Like mom still exists.
[00:34:04.440] You develop some.
[00:34:05.620] Object permanence.
[00:34:07.040] And then.
[00:34:08.400] You get.
[00:34:09.200] Bigger still.
[00:34:10.160] And then maybe.
[00:34:11.760] You start kindergarten.
[00:34:13.100] And you're away from mom for.
[00:34:15.000] Half a day.
[00:34:16.060] And.
[00:34:16.520] Oh my gosh.
[00:34:17.160] This is like.
[00:34:17.740] Super stressful.
[00:34:19.300] Or.
[00:34:19.860] You know.
[00:34:20.180] For some kids.
[00:34:21.380] But.
[00:34:21.880] But you kind of learn.
[00:34:22.900] Okay.
[00:34:23.300] You know.
[00:34:24.000] Mom's still at home.
[00:34:25.560] She still exists.
[00:34:27.660] Like.
[00:34:28.120] It's okay.
[00:34:29.160] And then.
[00:34:30.100] You know.
[00:34:30.620] You go to college.
[00:34:31.460] Maybe you call mom.
[00:34:32.980] You know.
[00:34:34.360] Some might call mom.
[00:34:35.560] You know.
[00:34:35.920] Once a day.
[00:34:37.040] Some.
[00:34:37.560] Once a week.
[00:34:38.400] Some once a month.
[00:34:39.260] Some never.
[00:34:40.040] You know.
[00:34:40.520] Who knows.
[00:34:41.380] But.
[00:34:42.140] Essentially.
[00:34:46.440] What is that feeling.
[00:34:48.000] That.
[00:34:48.640] Sort of.
[00:34:49.420] Comes.
[00:34:50.500] When you feel loved.
[00:34:51.880] When you feel safe.
[00:34:53.000] And.
[00:34:53.600] I think it is.
[00:34:54.420] Just this kind of.
[00:34:55.500] Feeling of security.
[00:34:57.080] Feeling of safety.
[00:34:58.680] Feeling that.
[00:35:00.200] unsurprising is going to happen.
[00:35:02.700] There's not going to be any sort of crazy large prediction errors, we can say.
[00:35:10.000] And I think basically attachment dynamics is some people learn how to give that to themselves, and some people don't.
[00:35:23.200] And I think that it's hard to summarize this in terms of like labels, narcissism, or whatever.
[00:35:36.820] But I do think that to some degree, this is a desire for a sort of safety that you don't know how to create.
[00:35:47.900] And so you think, okay, maybe if...
[00:35:51.940] Like, I need attention, and this is how I get it.
[00:35:57.680] And to some degree, I see that as a deficit of vasocomputation.
[00:36:05.540] And I talk about this in terms of we all have a default stance of how we hold ourselves.
[00:36:13.140] And like this has a...
[00:36:15.160] We can talk about it as a pattern of tension.
[00:36:18.960] And then we can take on different stances.
[00:36:21.940] For different situations.
[00:36:26.380] But I think that it's really wholesome if you integrate this feeling of safety, of security, of love into your default stance.
[00:36:39.340] And that whether you've learned how to do that or not is like a really big fork in the road in terms of life satisfaction.
[00:36:49.080] And I guess I would also say phenomenology.
[00:36:54.720] So I also...
[00:36:56.900] There's a friend that used to work for a different institute.
[00:37:02.520] She talked about how Emily is her name.
[00:37:07.180] And she shared that sometimes you get these...
[00:37:12.620] We can talk as if people have utility functions.
[00:37:16.560] And, you know, this is kind of...
[00:37:19.980] I was a little skeptical.
[00:37:22.940] I was like, I'm a little weak and whatnot.
[00:37:23.860] But now I'm like, okay.
[00:37:25.500] We can work with it.
[00:37:26.660] And so sometimes in these utility functions, it's like, you know, do I have a good place to sleep?
[00:37:35.000] Do I have enough food?
[00:37:36.220] Do I have enough status?
[00:37:37.380] Do I have enough, et cetera?
[00:37:38.660] It's kind of do I have my needs?
[00:37:40.680] And from a hierarchy needs perspective or something else.
[00:37:46.320] And sometimes some of these...
[00:37:50.260] Like this equation, we can say.
[00:37:53.680] Sometimes there are quote unquote divide by zero errors.
[00:37:59.260] Where some are multiplied by zero or whatever.
[00:38:03.260] But basically some terms are stuck.
[00:38:08.420] And oh, like my status feels low.
[00:38:11.880] I better get more status.
[00:38:14.160] Okay.
[00:38:15.000] I like worked hard, but I don't feel like I have more.
[00:38:20.120] Maybe I need to work.
[00:38:22.200] Even more.
[00:38:22.940] And even harder and even harder.
[00:38:24.690] And, you know, if you look at the motivations of the most accomplished people in the world,
[00:38:36.000] I think often you will find these sort of divide by zero or they're multiplied by zero errors.
[00:38:44.620] And with great accomplishment comes great desire to be successful.
[00:39:02.860] And, you know, we could try to dig into that in terms of like maybe some core pattern is latched.
[00:39:11.680] And fixing that would involve opening the latch.
[00:39:16.820] And then it's always a question of, well, do you want it to be fixed?
[00:39:20.560] So...
[00:39:23.060] Yeah, that's fascinating.
[00:39:25.280] Before we dive really deep into the framework,
[00:39:30.160] I wanted to go back to something you said before.
[00:39:34.600] You said two things that I think connect really well.
[00:39:38.420] So one was that you represent this rare archetype where you are different and right.
[00:39:47.580] And you translate what you see, what you think is true and offer it to other people.
[00:39:55.300] And the other thing was that what you do is...
[00:40:00.000] more like art than science. Could you elaborate on that?
[00:40:05.740] Yeah, so, I think that...
[00:40:16.920] I think the art versus science thing is a false distinction
[00:40:24.420] in terms of if you look what the great physicists were doing
[00:40:31.680] and why they were doing it, their sort of mental substructure
[00:40:36.660] or what they felt their role was.
[00:40:40.580] They were absolutely artists.
[00:40:44.500] And they would say so.
[00:40:46.620] And it was this systematic quest for beauty.
[00:40:54.420] And they felt they had this...
[00:40:57.480] They were, you know, maybe we could say uncovering the system that God created.
[00:41:03.420] And, like, you can create beauty through paintings, through music, through movies,
[00:41:15.460] but isn't it especially cool to uncover the beauty of reality?
[00:41:24.880] I think that...
[00:41:26.020] Yeah, I would call most of them artists.
[00:41:31.680] And I think that...
[00:41:36.200] It's like, what is the deliverable?
[00:41:39.540] And, like, this is always a question for researchers.
[00:41:43.880] This, you know, is the deliverable a paper?
[00:41:46.800] Is the deliverable...
[00:41:50.760] a new theory?
[00:41:52.280] Is the deliverable...
[00:41:54.420] a productive institute?
[00:41:55.440] What do you mean by productive?
[00:41:56.780] And so on.
[00:41:58.480] And, like, these are hard questions.
[00:42:02.200] You know, even a banger tweet is...
[00:42:07.200] a potential deliverable.
[00:42:09.800] And, yeah, I think that...
[00:42:16.240] this might sound...
[00:42:22.460] egotistical or haughty or unreal or whatever,
[00:42:28.220] but I think there's kind of this...
[00:42:32.360] this choice of...
[00:42:36.000] what I want my deliverable to be.
[00:42:38.780] And it's...
[00:42:41.840] to live a beautiful life.
[00:42:45.600] And I think...
[00:42:48.840] everyone has their gifts.
[00:42:50.610] And I think it's absolutely necessary to...
[00:42:56.650] if you want to live a beautiful life,
[00:42:58.380] to use your gifts.
[00:43:00.940] And, you know, there's this classic mathematician's apology that...
[00:43:06.600] talks about...
[00:43:07.800] yeah, you make what sacrifices you have to...
[00:43:10.640] to do that.
[00:43:12.760] And so...
[00:43:13.780] I guess...
[00:43:17.520] I'm trying to...
[00:43:19.560] become...
[00:43:20.080] the platonic version of myself.
[00:43:22.680] In terms of, okay...
[00:43:24.740] what are my gifts?
[00:43:25.920] And I'll level down and...
[00:43:27.680] make it work.
[00:43:32.180] I think, like...
[00:43:33.840] the beauty of...
[00:43:34.900] just going back to what you said is...
[00:43:36.920] this synergy of acknowledging what your gifts are,
[00:43:40.080] but also where the deficits might be.
[00:43:42.060] Right.
[00:43:42.580] And understanding that those come together in parallel.
[00:43:44.680] Both truths can exist.
[00:43:46.240] And there will be people who see those gifts...
[00:43:48.840] and there will be people who...
[00:43:49.940] don't love the fact that you don't have...
[00:43:52.680] deliverables.
[00:43:53.140] That there are deficits in the system.
[00:43:55.040] But reconciling the two.
[00:43:56.780] But I'll let Carol go into...
[00:43:58.480] his deeper deep dive before we go back into those.
[00:44:01.420] Yeah.
[00:44:03.020] One thing that...
[00:44:04.820] came up as you were...
[00:44:06.220] answering the question was...
[00:44:08.260] how...
[00:44:09.860] the nature of that work is...
[00:44:11.860] very...
[00:44:13.100] integrative.
[00:44:13.680] You know, like...
[00:44:14.680] I think it was Alan Watts who said that you cannot be a good...
[00:44:18.840] artist unless you are also...
[00:44:20.160] a philosopher and you cannot be a good philosopher...
[00:44:23.520] unless you are...
[00:44:24.560] something of a mystic.
[00:44:26.500] You know, these things aren't separate.
[00:44:29.660] They...
[00:44:30.000] inform one another and they develop at the same time...
[00:44:33.840] eventually converging...
[00:44:35.580] at a worldview that is...
[00:44:37.680] coherent and...
[00:44:38.820] integrated.
[00:44:39.600] So I wanted to ask...
[00:44:41.680] you know...
[00:44:42.340] your journey...
[00:44:43.800] as you are discovering new areas of interest...
[00:44:48.840] new ways of looking...
[00:44:50.700] how did you decide...
[00:44:52.120] what was worth...
[00:44:53.520] integrating?
[00:44:54.520] Do you have...
[00:44:55.480] like a North Star you used to...
[00:44:57.480] navigate these waters?
[00:44:59.320] Do you...
[00:45:00.000] tend to follow what seems to be interesting or maybe there is some other epistemic principle at play?
[00:45:11.520] I would say that one of my first moves in my twenties was to appreciate this idea of ruin value.
[00:45:28.280] This idea that, okay, you know, you have all these Roman ruins and they're actually beautiful.
[00:45:34.680] They might be more beautiful than they were when they were, you know, fully intact.
[00:45:40.460] And just to realize first that you can have all the beautiful ideas in the world and if you can't get them out, in a sense, it doesn't matter.
[00:45:57.800] For sure, like it's better to have beautiful ideas than not.
[00:46:02.180] Absolutely.
[00:46:03.400] But, you know, maybe tomorrow they'll be gone.
[00:46:10.800] And I think like I was very motivated to even just create one beautiful thing and one beautiful thing that sort of didn't require my experience.
[00:46:25.600] sort of continual energy we could say something that you know would have at least some small
[00:46:34.080] amount of room and what i realized is i simply had to learn to write
[00:46:44.440] and because the writing value of or ruin value of writing can be very substantial
[00:46:52.760] and if you don't know how to put things into words to crystallize things
[00:47:00.300] it's really hard to have substantial group value then so that was one big realization for me that
[00:47:11.280] words are very just so powerful and then just in terms of well so i i see myself as a very
[00:47:21.600] myself, like sometimes I want to almost retreat into mysticism or whatever and be like, okay,
[00:47:30.840] you know, guys, I gave you the ideas you figured out, but then it's okay.
[00:47:37.060] You know, that's not really the, the long-term play.
[00:47:42.840] And I think that so in there's this recent AI paper.
[00:47:52.600] And, you know, kicked off a bunch of controversy on, on Twitter.
[00:47:56.800] And I think that like one thing that really stuck out of me was this focus on research
[00:48:04.640] taste.
[00:48:06.660] And there's this, like, I think research taste is everything.
[00:48:11.660] It's really, I think it's this invisible thing.
[00:48:18.020] That's 90% of the task, like have good taste.
[00:48:24.250] And I think that yeah, I think that insofar as I have succeeded, it's because I have good
[00:48:35.760] research taste.
[00:48:36.950] Like I know what topics are important and I know what good answers look like.
[00:48:46.430] And I think that.
[00:48:47.590] A lot of the time.
[00:48:48.020] A lot of this is just kind of understanding what.
[00:48:53.900] One of my favorite phrases is to have knowledge, you need a place to put knowledge.
[00:49:01.480] And just appreciating kind of what shape of container is needed for different kinds of knowledge.
[00:49:10.380] Once you understand the shape, you know, the periodic, excuse me, periodic table is this beautiful example that
[00:49:19.020] If you like line up these all the elements by their electron shell you get this nice periodic structure and it might look a little weird because the shells jump.
[00:49:30.000] But then there's so much information here.
[00:49:33.320] And like you can tell so much about like where to put an element.
[00:49:38.440] You know how reactive it is.
[00:49:40.400] You know, it's other properties.
[00:49:42.920] And if there's a gap, you know that something will be found to fill that gap.
[00:49:48.240] It's like element.
[00:49:49.020] You know, 37 or 52 or whatever.
[00:49:52.200] It's going to be, it's going to be found.
[00:49:55.000] And so that's the typical example of a
[00:50:00.420] container for knowledge that we did really good at.
[00:50:05.280] And I think that for me, like, a lot of this, like, so much confusion is about people aren't
[00:50:16.320] clear what, like, people might have some kind of element of knowledge, but they're not clear
[00:50:23.360] about the container.
[00:50:28.320] So, yeah, I guess, like, part of my background is in the philosophy of science.
[00:50:32.900] And I feel like that's, like, most philosophy is bullshit.
[00:50:39.660] But and all philosophers would agree with that.
[00:50:42.840] It's just that they would disagree about the 5% that isn't BS.
[00:50:48.000] But I think that philosophy of science was very helpful for me just to kind of get a
[00:50:53.320] sense of, like, philosophy of science.
[00:50:55.620] How paradigms work, what kind of thing knowledge is, et cetera.
[00:51:00.500] And, and also just kind of what languages as well.
[00:51:03.840] Big fan of Wittgenstein.
[00:51:09.360] Speaking of people one can be a big fan of, I wanted to ask you about the ideas of Ray
[00:51:18.380] Pitt.
[00:51:19.180] And specifically, you know, many people are now discovering Ray Pitt.
[00:51:25.040] How do you see Ray Pitt?
[00:51:25.620] and his ideas and there is a substantial following of his online in social media.
[00:51:32.900] So some of the common reactions I'm seeing to his work, coming from someone who's new to it,
[00:51:41.560] is that his approach could be seen as cultish or overly reductive or maybe a little too radical in some aspects,
[00:51:51.740] you know, like the complete rejection of seed oils, stuff like this.
[00:51:56.460] So I'm curious, what convinced you personally that there is genuine value in Ray Pitt's theories?
[00:52:06.480] How do you see them connecting to fossil computation?
[00:52:10.530] Yeah, yeah. Great question.
[00:52:14.780] Before I start, I'll point out that I have my PD things here.
[00:52:20.300] I'm cooking an oil.
[00:52:22.600] Marmalade, vitamin.
[00:52:24.260] Yes.
[00:52:27.160] Yeah.
[00:52:29.700] I'm a big fan of Ray Pitt.
[00:52:32.900] And if I had to put that, put why into words,
[00:52:39.800] I mean, many ways to go here.
[00:52:43.340] One is,
[00:52:46.960] I think he really, like,
[00:52:51.800] there's this phrase that sounds derogatory, but it's totally a compliment.
[00:52:57.980] He was a schizovatist.
[00:53:02.480] And, you know, it's like he really felt things very viscerally.
[00:53:11.960] And then he tried to put it into a system.
[00:53:15.200] And that's a good recipe for either insanity or, you know,
[00:53:19.200] something really nice.
[00:53:21.820] And for Pete specifically, I think, like, he seems just like the base was just a man who was very curious.
[00:53:34.840] And of course, his thyroid got destroyed by a fluoroscopy when he was like six or whatever.
[00:53:41.700] So he had to figure out this sort of bioenergetics of the body.
[00:53:47.640] And, you know, I think that's a good thing.
[00:53:49.200] I mean,
[00:53:51.820] like a couple of his sort of core quotes would be that
[00:53:57.440] as energy flows through tissue, order accumulates.
[00:54:05.300] And energy and structure are interdependent at every level.
[00:54:10.760] And I think that this idea that we are at the core,
[00:54:19.200] to understand what is a human,
[00:54:22.200] we should understand this kind of structure just kind of built around our metabolism.
[00:54:30.120] And, you know, there are various metabolic pathways.
[00:54:33.420] Oxidative metabolism is particularly efficient and so on.
[00:54:38.180] And then as energy flows through this system, structure accumulates.
[00:54:45.560] It's a very sort of powerful model.
[00:54:49.560] And like then because it allows you to diagnose problems as metabolic problems,
[00:54:57.220] this structure is degrading
[00:55:00.000] because the metabolism is broken. And if you fix the metabolism, then you can regenerate the structure.
[00:55:09.180] He read very widely. I was reading about the effects of coconut oil on feeding pigs and how it made them like really lean and high energy and that wasn't what the farmers wanted and so on.
[00:55:23.360] He's known for the anti-seed oil stuff. And I think it's just correct.
[00:55:31.640] I think it's a very, very true and very important and very underappreciated thing that so many problems can be linked to the reactivity of these oils in our bodies and so on.
[00:55:48.680] In terms of connectivity.
[00:55:52.440] I think the most important thing is connecting peat and vasocomputation.
[00:55:55.480] So this I would say you're going to get a vasocomputation 2.0 beta 1.
[00:56:07.380] So I would say that first of all,
[00:56:13.740] I have some kind of meme posts on Twitter talking about metabolic enlightenment.
[00:56:22.980] You know, there's a guy in the Alps and he drank like 50 cups of coffee a day and he had this big spiritual breakthrough and a bunch of aspirin every day too.
[00:56:34.240] Could be related.
[00:56:36.800] And I guess there's the stick in the carrot here.
[00:56:43.840] The good part and the bad part.
[00:56:46.060] The good part is, yeah, like maybe if we rubbed our metabolisms up,
[00:56:52.440] it would be easier to, for example, like open latches.
[00:56:57.840] The bad part is like on average, our metabolisms tend to be on the low side.
[00:57:04.500] Historically speaking, that over the past 150 years or so, we've lost about a degree Fahrenheit.
[00:57:13.640] For body temperature and this being a pretty good proxy for metabolic rate.
[00:57:21.340] So like that would be one angle.
[00:57:23.900] And one thing that I'm extremely excited about in this space is like laying out.
[00:57:30.180] Okay.
[00:57:30.760] Like what would a repeat meditation retreat protocol would like?
[00:57:40.180] Like no seed oils, a lot of red light, CO2, like baking soda before bed and so on.
[00:57:47.080] And just like, you know,
[00:57:50.340] it's not going to do the work for you, but on the margin, it could be extremely powerful.
[00:57:57.700] Like certainly, you know, it could be the difference between, you know, if you do a 50 person retreat.
[00:58:07.660] How many people get breakthroughs?
[00:58:09.440] Is it zero or 10?
[00:58:13.100] And I, so I think it's really significant that way.
[00:58:17.060] So it's like, you know,
[00:58:18.600] what is the repeat meditation stack and so on.
[00:58:23.340] So it would be, you know, at some point I should really write that.
[00:58:29.720] The second thing gets into Gerald Pollack's work.
[00:58:37.660] He talked about aspects of the, of the cell and this idea that in particular,
[00:58:47.740] you know,
[00:58:48.600] the cell is the engine of life.
[00:58:49.440] So I think it's cells gels and the engine of life is like one of his three books.
[00:58:54.360] And he talks about how there's as much energy in the structure of the water in the cell
[00:59:09.480] as there is in all burning, all the ATP molecules in the cell.
[00:59:15.800] And that basically,
[00:59:18.600] and this is the, in the relaxed state of a muscle.
[00:59:23.980] So we can think, think of the, like a relaxed muscle cell as a plump hydro gel with a lot of structure in it.
[00:59:34.420] And then when it contracts, it expels a lot of the water and kind of crumples and it's the potential energy turns into useful work.
[00:59:49.860] This means that the contracted state of the cell is the low energy state.
[00:59:58.700] And in
[01:00:00.320] order to relax, a muscle has to get energy pumped back into it.
[01:00:07.520] And pushing the stone back up the hill, so then like the relaxed state is the high energy
[01:00:14.120] state.
[01:00:15.140] There's a lot of potential energy there.
[01:00:18.000] And I think that this is actually extremely relevant for vasocomputation.
[01:00:27.280] And this, this.
[01:00:34.400] And this, there's this kind of maybe kind of default intuition where like it takes energies
[01:00:41.720] or excuse me, it takes energy to clench.
[01:00:46.900] And this model kind of turns that around and says, no, it actually takes energy to
[01:00:53.360] sort of charge up a muscle into the relaxed state.
[01:00:57.800] And then the sort of default action is to clench.
[01:01:04.180] And so, I mean, this is sort of the observation that like, it's hard to relax.
[01:01:12.900] It's like hard work.
[01:01:15.660] And if you're, if you're not in a good metabolic state, like you can be laying in bed and you're
[01:01:23.720] just super tense.
[01:01:25.600] And I think the, the sort of status quo perspective of muscles would have trouble sort of telling
[01:01:36.200] that story.
[01:01:37.180] But the, the public version would be like, yeah, like it makes total sense.
[01:01:41.360] Like you, your, your muscles are not going to be able to do that.
[01:01:44.380] cells are locked into this low energy state. And one thing that seems particularly relevant is
[01:01:54.780] there seem to be kind of two
[01:01:56.660] two kinds of energy that sort of go into
[01:02:03.020] restructuring the cell and one is just kind of
[01:02:06.720] chemical energy and like ATP molecules
[01:02:09.860] not only can be burned
[01:02:12.440] for chemical energy but also they sort of are
[01:02:18.700] very crucial for this structure
[01:02:22.700] the other energetic input is
[01:02:26.900] something like red light or even heat
[01:02:30.420] or movement that sort of
[01:02:35.060] when like and like one example
[01:02:39.120] of like how I think this should be applied is
[01:02:43.120] make sure or like hold
[01:02:47.020] meditation retreats in like
[01:02:50.960] places with abundant light
[01:02:52.780] like make sure people get a lot of light throughout the day
[01:02:56.060] especially morning and evening
[01:03:01.280] so yeah rabbit hole goes pretty deep there but
[01:03:04.840] that's what I'd say
[01:03:06.620] and I think just to wrap that up
[01:03:09.460] I think this idea of what is a latch
[01:03:13.320] there's this you know
[01:03:15.320] I suspect that there's some like interesting stuff with like
[01:03:19.280] latches shutting down the cell and stuff like that
[01:03:20.880] and I think that there's a lot of
[01:03:22.940] I'm going to say the microtubule processing network
[01:03:25.100] so the rabbit hole there but
[01:03:27.500] I also think that it's sort of this like
[01:03:31.360] a latch is a very low energy state
[01:03:34.060] and
[01:03:37.120] opening latches will so latch being the
[01:03:40.720] latch bridge mechanism of
[01:03:41.940] smooth muscle is kind of this sort of
[01:03:44.840] locked tension in our vascular system
[01:03:48.480] and so I do think that um you know I think that
[01:03:50.880] opening latches will be like not just sort of creating the
[01:03:55.000] the information conditions but creating the biochemical conditions of sort of
[01:04:01.100] pushing energy into that region to sort of recharge the muscle cells
[01:04:13.840] yeah speaking about speaking of meditation retreats you know some meditation teacher
[01:04:20.880] and
[01:04:21.740] and uh reggie ray who wrote touching enlightenment
[01:04:26.000] would be a good example you know some of them
[01:04:29.020] warn about the futility of meditating in a disembodied state
[01:04:36.220] we really stress the somatic aspect of meditation and you mentioned you know
[01:04:41.980] was it eugene krishnamurti who was having 20 cups of coffee
[01:04:46.380] and aspirin you know high in the mountains before he attained what he was
[01:04:50.880] he would consider moksha so um the question here is
[01:04:58.800] would that be
[01:05:00.000] a good, would it be helpful if people who are, you know, serious about meditation shifted from, you know, meditating for many hours towards the quality of meditation and maybe if they looked into getting their metabolism up, you know, as opposed to just doing the reps?
[01:05:24.700] Would that be the constraining or the scars factor in that work?
[01:05:34.060] Right. So I would preface this just in terms of like, I want to be coming from a place of humility here.
[01:05:45.020] And I, there's a lot that I'm not sure about and so on.
[01:05:54.700] I do think that from, from my conversations with, with people, it does seem like quality does trump quantity and that, you know, one hour of good meditation is worth a day of mediocre meditation.
[01:06:17.160] And that a big, big thing too is
[01:06:24.700] does the meditation stop when you open your eyes and like one like you know are you still in a like
[01:06:35.640] high energy curious state and you're like you know just kind of exploring how things work
[01:06:42.820] throughout the day and then the next sit you just kind of pick up exactly there
[01:06:50.140] or you know the bell sounds you open your eyes you're finished you know and you just kind of
[01:07:00.260] enter normal life mode I think that this is probably like and this I credit Nick Camerata
[01:07:10.200] for this observation and I would also say that yeah like
[01:07:18.120] you know if you're in a state of like you know you're in a state of like you know you're in a state of like
[01:07:20.140] if you're in a low energy state it's just really hard and it's not like a personal failing it's not
[01:07:28.040] a character flaw it's just you might not have the energy to actually do the thing because meditation
[01:07:36.720] done right it's not relaxation in terms of cessation of effort it's
[01:07:44.460] you know really being very active in terms of trying to understand what's happening
[01:07:50.460] and so yeah I think that if the if the biochemical conditions are not there and you know if you know
[01:07:57.840] I read these crazy estimates of maybe 90 percent of people are hypothyroid or whatever and like wow
[01:08:07.020] and that makes me think that on the margin just kind of fixing your energy production
[01:08:17.180] is probably going to be a big deal.
[01:08:21.140] use of time and energy than like an extra you know switching from like an
[01:08:28.280] hour to two hours of meditation day or something like that thank you um the
[01:08:37.060] next question I wanted to ask is about insight and what actually is inside and
[01:08:41.580] what happens during the moments of insight I you read about this
[01:08:51.140] often inside that it's analogous to phase transitions in I think it's called
[01:08:57.940] self-organized criticality you know like if you have a sandpile avalanche model
[01:09:02.960] where you where small additions eventually trigger a substantial
[01:09:07.800] reorganization in the system so would that frame align with how you think
[01:09:15.580] about inside and what does as a computation have to say about inside
[01:09:21.700] yeah so I think this kind of gets to kind of what are the the most useful
[01:09:28.900] compressions here that sort of allow us to take a very sophisticated situation
[01:09:36.120] and sort of pack it down to something that's very manageable and and that we
[01:09:42.620] can get sort of play with and work with and I think this this idea of
[01:09:47.240] self-organized criticality is one of these really useful
[01:09:51.140] frames and this would be kind of a thermodynamics neural annealing energy
[01:09:58.340] parameter model
[01:10:00.000] where you basically if you add energy to a system you can get these phase transitions and sort of you get different emergent behavior you can sort of shift to a different attractor basin or local minima or whatnot I would say to bring
[01:10:22.300] vasocomputation in I do expect that both the the neural system and the
[01:10:30.480] vasomuscular system will each have an energy parameter so it's sort of there's
[01:10:38.160] neural annealing and there's vasomuscular annealing basically and I
[01:10:43.200] suspect that um like my like so an insight can be you know the shift
[01:10:52.300] in in neural dynamics such that you you sort of fall into a different attractor
[01:10:57.720] basin and maybe this basin like lets you feel different or see different things
[01:11:03.240] see new things etc you can also and I think that I do think that both
[01:11:09.700] meditation and psychedelics lead to this like both both states but
[01:11:15.260] especially this this second state that I'm going to explain where basically
[01:11:22.300] you might sort of at least temporarily reopen some latches and if if we think
[01:11:31.480] of a latch as this sort of hard constraint on on a systems range that in
[01:11:39.720] a certain range or like in a certain physical area there's sort of a pattern
[01:11:47.400] that's gotten frozen or locked in it's like what was a very
[01:11:52.380] intrinsically is sort of being held as a constant. then I think that in some meditation
[01:12:00.600] meditation and psychedelic effects, this sort of reopens and this constant becomes variable.
[01:12:12.320] This sort of circuit or like this neural network that has sort of been, we can say,
[01:12:18.220] pinched into a circuit, sort of unfolds back into a real network. And I think that, you know,
[01:12:26.340] in terms of, we can say, opening events or awakening milestones or whatnot, I do think that
[01:12:37.100] this plays a significant role and perhaps a causal role of, yeah, if there's a latch there and
[01:12:48.120] on the other side of opening that latch is a particularly deep feeling of freedom.
[01:12:57.500] And it's sort of, what does it feel when that latch opens, whether permanently or temporarily?
[01:13:07.280] Well, it tastes like an insight.
[01:13:15.440] Wow. Wow. Yeah. I think across, you know, very many people,
[01:13:26.340] various accounts of profound mystical experiences of, you know, cosmic consciousness,
[01:13:32.440] there appears to be a common element and that would be complete surrender or acceptance.
[01:13:41.900] And this could happen, you know, in war survivors who faced imminent death from bombing raids,
[01:13:49.880] or in John Blofeld's mescaline experiences where he identified
[01:13:56.340] total renunciation as the key insight.
[01:14:01.860] From your research, what neurological or physiological mechanisms might explain
[01:14:08.820] why this act of letting go seems to trigger or coincide, I know, with transformative states
[01:14:17.860] of consciousness? Yeah. So, I'm going to talk about
[01:14:26.340] cringe. And sort of cringe as the proto-reflex. That you cringe away from danger,
[01:14:39.920] away from uncertainty. You cringe into safety, to quote a friend of mine. And so I think that,
[01:14:48.520] like, this is kind of, this is what you do when you don't know what to do and there's danger around.
[01:14:54.240] And I think then letting
[01:15:00.120] go is kind of the opposite. It's kind of tuning down, deconditioning, giving up this cringe into safety response. And when you do that, like it can be the hardest thing in the world.
[01:15:23.640] It's like, you know, it may be the right move, but you have to sell it to your body. And that's not easy.
[01:15:34.020] But I think that basically, I mean, there's this beautiful quote from the Buddha, and it's something to the effect that,
[01:15:44.720] so is the sea has but one taste, the taste of salt. So too my teaching has but one taste, the taste of release.
[01:15:57.320] And I think Romeo has quipped that, you know, meditation is just like deeper and deeper layers of muscle relaxation.
[01:16:07.660] And it's also like,
[01:16:14.120] we can say meditation is progressively deconditioning cringe.
[01:16:20.240] Or like, yeah.
[01:16:22.400] And I think that, like, it does, it is like literally central because it is this reaction that sort of, we can say builds the self.
[01:16:37.860] And like builds our sort of,
[01:16:42.680] unhealthy relationship with the world too.
[01:16:45.740] When like bad sensations come in and we kind of cringe from the facts.
[01:16:51.360] And then we try to sort of control them.
[01:16:53.880] We sort of know there's like the sort of three to violence of greed and fear and delusion sort of attempts to sort of get away from what is real.
[01:17:07.380] And yeah, I think that basically,
[01:17:11.520] this is a muscular thing.
[01:17:13.100] This is a muscular reflex.
[01:17:14.700] It can be deconditioned.
[01:17:16.680] And what it like what that involves and what that feels like is release.
[01:17:26.620] Yeah.
[01:17:29.440] Users of certain psychoactive substances, such as MDMA or 2CB or some smaller extent, maybe also,
[01:17:39.840] natokinase, which also,
[01:17:41.520] I think it's been tweeted about.
[01:17:42.460] And then you report that under the influence,
[01:17:45.860] they feel qualitatively different in the body.
[01:17:51.300] And there is a sense of being more embodied,
[01:17:54.320] more coordinated perhaps.
[01:17:56.260] And there is also a sense of freedom that goes with it.
[01:17:59.760] I recall,
[01:18:02.380] Alan Walsh again mentioned that when you watch Zen monks,
[01:18:08.060] they have a different swing when they walk.
[01:18:13.540] And he compared it to watching a cat move.
[01:18:18.540] How does this work?
[01:18:20.060] How does this sense of freedom in the body and release go together?
[01:18:27.880] Yeah.
[01:18:30.960] I think it's probably very true.
[01:18:34.420] And I guess to sort of tell the story,
[01:18:38.060] I want to sort of tell the story about neurotransmitters.
[01:18:44.240] And sort of,
[01:18:45.460] you know,
[01:18:45.900] we have these simplistic stories about,
[01:18:48.760] okay,
[01:18:49.100] there's like receptors on neurons and then neurotransmitters fit the receptors.
[01:18:53.060] And like,
[01:18:53.640] they like change the firing patterns and whatnot.
[01:18:57.000] I think that's true.
[01:18:58.740] But there's maybe a more intuitive story to be had.
[01:19:05.360] And I would say that,
[01:19:08.060] most neurotransmitters,
[01:19:09.840] including those sort of hit by various psychedelics,
[01:19:15.880] they have effects on,
[01:19:17.580] like notable computational effects,
[01:19:20.280] both on our neural system and on our vessel muscular system.
[01:19:27.300] And I would say that,
[01:19:30.760] you know,
[01:19:31.360] we can think of the body as having kind of a control panel
[01:19:34.680] for you know there's there's like knobs to control neural activity like stochastic influences on
[01:19:44.980] neural activity we can say and then there's also knobs to control our vessel muscular system and
[01:19:52.320] like one example of this or like one analog of this would be peristalsis in the gut
[01:20:00.720] you have these slow waves in the gut and they just kind of slowly carry food through our bodies.
[01:20:08.180] But then, you know, we can sort of adjust the dials on this.
[01:20:13.180] And like if we jack the serotonin up, maybe like the waves get a lot more choppy and fast and the food kind of goes through quickly.
[01:20:23.420] And maybe if there's like food poisoning or something, the body says, okay, like, let's process this very quickly.
[01:20:30.880] And this is essentially a change in rhythm.
[01:20:35.760] And so I expect that, you know, things like meditation, psychedelics, etc.
[01:20:44.940] will very deeply or like powerfully change the rhythms of the body.
[01:20:53.420] And not necessarily in the gut, although I think it including in the gut in interesting ways.
[01:21:00.960] But I think especially in the vasomuscular system, that the rhythms of the vasomotion and whatnot will shift.
[01:21:12.300] And I think that, you know, you can get sort of, we can say, you know, temporary feelings of unity and oneness.
[01:21:21.040] And, you know, these.
[01:21:23.420] Amazing states.
[01:21:25.940] And then things go back to normal after the trip.
[01:21:30.360] And so.
[01:21:32.400] Part of this is sort of long term training of trying to become maybe a little bit more harmonious in your, your vasomuscular rhythms.
[01:21:47.180] And then some of this and like less, less twitchy, less reactive, less.
[01:21:52.760] Less.
[01:21:53.420] Likely to sort of.
[01:21:55.100] Clench or cringe as some kind of challenging sensation comes in.
[01:22:02.200] And then some of it will be opening latches.
[01:22:05.780] And like some latches will reclose after the trip.
[01:22:09.480] Some may stay open.
[01:22:11.880] And if it stays open, then it's going to be a permanent change.
[01:22:17.200] And I think that like.
[01:22:19.820] Part of both the.
[01:22:23.540] Side effects and bad side effects of psychedelics.
[01:22:26.680] Sort of may resolve to like which latches were open.
[01:22:31.180] And, you know, even.
[01:22:33.280] Strange side effects.
[01:22:34.360] Like there's this HPPD where.
[01:22:37.640] Even after a psychedelic experience, you know, you have like triangles and it's like, or like, you know, some, some feature detector in your visual hierarchy stays latched.
[01:22:50.000] And.
[01:22:50.560] I guess I see it as like very sort of.
[01:22:56.020] We're, we're going a little far field here.
[01:22:58.120] I hope you don't mind.
[01:22:59.960] Great.
[01:23:01.280] I see it as a, just this very interesting.
[01:23:05.400] Pretty central thing in terms of.
[01:23:08.500] There's this predictive hierarchy.
[01:23:10.660] In the brain.
[01:23:11.880] Where.
[01:23:13.620] The, the lowest.
[01:23:14.780] The lower levels.
[01:23:16.420] Kind of deal with.
[01:23:18.220] Kind of.
[01:23:19.100] Very sort of basic.
[01:23:20.560] Feature detectors on the stimulus.
[01:23:22.520] So like, is this a line?
[01:23:24.120] Is this curved?
[01:23:25.180] Is this bright?
[01:23:25.960] Is this dark?
[01:23:26.960] Is this red?
[01:23:28.200] And then.
[01:23:29.460] Every additional layer.
[01:23:31.760] Sort of has the results of the lower level.
[01:23:34.660] As input.
[01:23:35.780] And then runs.
[01:23:37.360] More abstract feature.
[01:23:38.980] Detecting.
[01:23:39.640] Excuse me.
[01:23:40.340] Future detection on that.
[01:23:43.420] And.
[01:23:45.620] Sometimes.
[01:23:46.980] I think.
[01:23:48.120] Like.
[01:23:48.800] With vascular attention.
[01:23:52.500] InScriptive.
[01:23:53.860] feature detectors can get stuck. And like I wonder to the degree that that happens without psychedelics as well. Like
[01:24:05.540] InScriptive.
[01:24:06.900] really obvious when, oh, you know, I took some
[01:24:10.600] InScriptive.
[01:24:13.040] InScriptive.
[01:24:15.460] InScriptive.
[01:24:16.760] or whatever that's kind of an obvious case um
[01:24:20.560] um but like how often does this happen just in normal course of operations and we don't
[01:24:26.580] really know it except that we just kind of get we we see a certain pattern everywhere
[01:24:33.900] would it be then correct to say that you know if let's say mdma may temporarily
[01:24:41.100] temporarily reduce or relax the latches um and some of them might persist
[01:24:49.880] beyond the experience after their substance is
[01:24:53.520] already metabolized could this explain why um some mdma users
[01:25:00.000] report diminished effects over time, but not exactly due to pharmacological tolerance, but because their baseline psychological state has shifted closer to the latch-free state they initially experienced under the influence.
[01:25:22.160] So, I mean, I think there's several, several factors that are worth paying attention to here.
[01:25:31.100] One is that some of these drugs are unfortunately neurotoxic and sort of
[01:25:40.000] some attenuation of effects over time could be sort of some bad sign of, well, you know, these,
[01:25:46.520] these classes of neurons are sort of getting killed or, or something.
[01:25:51.560] So,
[01:25:52.560] that's, that's worth noting. But I also think that the, the pattern that you're pointing to
[01:26:00.060] is very real. And it's like, if you have some sort of, you know,
[01:26:09.320] cobweb of latches, we can say, and then, you know, you, you do something kind of high entropy,
[01:26:15.600] and you like clear some latches out, then the next time you, you do,
[01:26:22.160] you do that same high entropy thing, you will clear fewer latches out.
[01:26:26.780] And like maybe you need to do a, like a different class of high entropy thing
[01:26:31.220] in order to sort of get a similar effect as the first time.
[01:26:37.100] And so one of the, generally speaking, things that are unhealthy for the brain do not feel good.
[01:26:50.720] Sometimes, you know, you get some edge cases, like, okay, maybe MDMA isn't like super healthy
[01:26:55.600] for the brain, but it does feel good. And that's, that's weird. One thing that is like,
[01:27:01.940] clearly bad for the brains is general anesthesia. But yet, general anesthesia has this
[01:27:14.760] very reliable and durable antidepressant effect.
[01:27:19.060] Mood lifting effect for weeks afterward. And I do expect that this effect to be driven by just
[01:27:30.380] kind of opening latches, just kind of dissolving latches, relaxing this, this muscle in kind of
[01:27:36.440] stochastic ways. And so I guess this would suggest that maybe if you like, get anesthesia over and
[01:27:45.580] over, you'd get less mood lifting effect. Although that would be a little bit more difficult.
[01:27:50.060] Not healthy.
[01:27:53.640] Interesting. And would you say that
[01:28:03.220] repetitive thoughts would represent a form of frozen physical sensation in the body?
[01:28:15.020] Yeah, I'm getting a little feedback here.
[01:28:21.960] Testing.
[01:28:25.120] I wonder who it's coming from? It's a little bit loud for me. Okay, that was, that was cool.
[01:28:35.160] Yeah, so I think, you know, there's this, this question of like, what does the latch feel like?
[01:28:41.140] And I think, like, it's sort of something held, being held constant,
[01:28:48.900] and like some,
[01:28:50.060] you know, as I was saying that, like, some kind of variable being held as a constant. And I think that,
[01:28:57.160] like, any, any sort of good theory of the nervous system or of the body is also
[01:29:09.600] tacitly sort of a theory of how things can go wrong, too. And we should be able to sort of
[01:29:16.360] reimagine like, this disorder, and then we should be able to sort of re-imagine like, this disorder,
[01:29:20.060] as a disorder of latches, or that disorder as a disorder of latches. And one thing that comes to
[01:29:26.180] mind is something like eating disorders, as like, there's something latch, and it should be. And so
[01:29:35.800] I have a good friend who took psychedelics, like was struggling with an eating disorder for a long
[01:29:44.500] time, took psychedelics, and it was just gone. Just, you know, after, after that experience,
[01:29:50.060] it was just not a, not a problem. And I think that, yeah, I, I do think that, like,
[01:30:00.300] Certain disorders of anxiety, we can say, of like, you can't get this out of your head, you have these recurring thoughts, you have this sensation that you can't seem to get rid of, or whatever. It could just be like, this specific thing is latched. And if you could open that latch, you would resolve the problem.
[01:30:21.080] This reminds me of something I read, and now we are entering what many would consider woo, but nevertheless, it's completely anecdotal. As far as I know, nobody has seriously studied it, but there have been accounts of people who claim to have cured their allergies under the influence of LSD.
[01:30:49.680] And one of the most famous stories, I think, was about a man who had an allergy to cats. And one time, he dropped acid, and a cat came to him, sat on his lap. He had a positive experience with that cat, and the allergy was long gone.
[01:31:16.040] Do you think there is validity to this?
[01:31:19.100] And if yes, then what is the point?
[01:31:19.680] Yes, then what's going on? Is it just updating priors? Is it reliving some kind of negative experience and healing it? How would you interpret this experience if you consider it valid?
[01:31:37.860] Right, right. I think I would come down on the woo side of this.
[01:31:45.720] I think that, obviously...
[01:31:51.060] Immunology is real. And toxicity is real. And you can't just choose to... I would simply not be damaged by the lead or something like that. Some things are sort of beyond the power of the mind, we can say.
[01:32:10.480] But an immune response is not that there's something intrinsically dangerous about something.
[01:32:19.680] I think that your reaction to something is improper and sort of is creating the damage.
[01:32:28.140] And it is this question of, like, can you sort of more directly interface with the system making these calls?
[01:32:34.920] And can, like, you know, whether it's some drug or introspection protocol or whatever, can you sort of get this under control, tame this response?
[01:32:48.580] Negotiate with the system.
[01:32:50.640] white list this thing, you know, many different ways to frame it.
[01:32:55.960] So, my friend Mark, meditation stuff on Twitter, says that he's gotten big effects on sort of introspection on various previous triggers.
[01:33:13.060] So, I don't think it's crazy at all.
[01:33:16.300] I do also think that, like, I'm pretty sure you can psychosomatically create an allergic reaction to something.
[01:33:30.460] And if you can create it, then likely you can resolve it.
[01:33:36.340] And in terms of what's happening,
[01:33:44.420] I guess one question is, to what degree do we have sort of, like, if we have, you know, a very still mind, we can say, and just like we sort of ramp the sensitivity up and the stillness up and just kind of feel as carefully as we can.
[01:34:03.840] To what degree do we have phenomenological access to what our immune system is doing?
[01:34:13.140] And I'm going to start with you.
[01:34:14.280] I'm going to say that there's probably huge individual variation on this.
[01:34:18.900] In terms of like, for some people, I don't expect that they could ever sort of, you know, manage this by phenomenology.
[01:34:27.680] But to some extent, I think that other people maybe could.
[01:34:33.260] I just don't know exactly, you know, how to tell that story yet.
[01:34:38.200] Yeah, fascinating.
[01:34:42.680] In the book, Therapy with Substance, there is a chapter about 2C-B and its qualities that apparently make it easier to work with psychosomatic issues.
[01:34:57.360] And the exact sentence goes,
[01:35:00.000] you will be able to identify the structure of resistance.
[01:35:05.400] You will notice what that which expresses itself in your psychosomatically.
[01:35:10.920] So I wanted to ask how this connects to things like trauma releasing exercise, tremors, shaking,
[01:35:20.600] and basically having to express something without averting your gaze.
[01:35:32.260] Or like you're having to face something and let it pass through you without clenching in defense against it.
[01:35:47.320] I think I'd sort of make one detail.
[01:35:50.600] I think I'd make a detour first and then touch on that.
[01:35:52.580] And the detour would be sort of, you know, with a very, extremely respectful nod to Michael
[01:35:59.980] Levin's work.
[01:36:01.020] There's this idea of like we're sort of these nested fields of bioelectricity.
[01:36:07.180] And I do think that a lot of decisions in the body are made by, through this system
[01:36:16.220] of nested fields.
[01:36:18.380] And I think that, you know, for example, if you're a biologist, you're going to have
[01:36:21.600] to think about how this system interaction may be sort of, you know, finding the lever
[01:36:25.020] of like, oh, like this is like the, this sort of part of the propagation of electric fields
[01:36:37.440] interfaces with this allergen.
[01:36:39.280] And like maybe if I feel differently about it, I can change the interaction or whatever.
[01:36:44.840] And so in that sense, like resistance would be a bioelectric thing.
[01:36:51.600] And I think that like how vessel computation would approach this, just like there is,
[01:37:00.740] there's something locked or like there are many things that are locked in your body.
[01:37:06.860] And like the Wu frame is referring to them as blocks.
[01:37:12.460] And I think this is actually a pretty good way to refer to them.
[01:37:16.440] And so it's this idea that like you can't really direct the energy of the body to the
[01:37:22.600] block.
[01:37:22.780] You can sort of only observe the dark matter, we can say.
[01:37:28.980] And, you know, the metaphor that I would give here is something like imagine that you were
[01:37:34.500] three years old and you accidentally slept on your foot and your foot went to sleep.
[01:37:42.740] That's happened to all of us.
[01:37:44.960] And then like in terms of like explaining the energy of the body, you know, the energy
[01:37:52.600] of the self or explaining a block, it's like, well, maybe instead of a foot, it's just
[01:38:00.040] a very small part of your nervous system.
[01:38:03.100] And instead of waking up in like 15 minutes or whatever, like, you know, takes 20 seconds
[01:38:10.160] after your stored circulation, maybe circulation never got restored.
[01:38:15.880] And it's just still asleep.
[01:38:20.900] So.
[01:38:22.940] Like the resistance isn't an active thing.
[01:38:27.840] But it is a real physical physiological lack of capacity, lack of capacity for feeling.
[01:38:38.360] And the shift that sort of undoes that will be a physical shift.
[01:38:45.800] But this physical shift can be catalyzed by attention.
[01:38:50.600] It's like attention is also a physical shift.
[01:38:52.600] It's like a physical thing.
[01:38:53.180] So if you can bring your attention there, you are tacitly like dramatically increasing
[01:38:59.760] the blood flow there.
[01:39:00.920] So it's kind of a chicken and egg thing.
[01:39:03.300] Like if something is clenched, you can't bring blood flow and attention there.
[01:39:07.260] But insofar as you succeed, then you succeed in.
[01:39:12.640] I mean, one thing that I think about just based on everything you've been talking about
[01:39:18.220] is.
[01:39:20.060] You mentioned at the start that a lot of your work is based on the fact that you're not
[01:39:23.600] around bridging what should be alchemy to chemistry. I think that is the parallel that I
[01:39:28.800] can still think about. And then a little bit after that, we talked about how there aren't any
[01:39:33.960] traditional deliverables that we can really present to really wrap up everything that we just talked
[01:39:39.400] about in a bow. I mean, we've been sitting here for two hours, and I think there's still so much
[01:39:42.980] to unpack here, right? I'm wondering, you know, as vasocompatition progresses, and there's still
[01:39:48.520] more to uncover and more to discover and more possibilities, what is evidence of promise to you?
[01:39:55.260] What is evidence that we're moving in a promising direction? I think it's a really good
[01:40:00.080] question. I mean, I think that, like, I can definitely see the deliverables, and it feels exciting. And it's this question of, at what point is it legible to others? And, like, okay, you know, really, principia qualia and STDs, and all of that stuff, I think it's a really good question.
[01:40:28.000] And, like, you know, a lot of, like, a lot of people were just kind of confused, and then some people were really excited. And vasocomputation, maybe I've gotten better at telling the stories. So, like, more people were excited. And I think that, so, okay, first of all, I do think that really, like, when it comes down to it,
[01:41:02.240] people are much more likely to believe you if they like you.
[01:41:10.020] And this, you know, we can rail against this and rant and whatever. Or we can just say, okay, you know, there's, like, a very human aspect to this.
[01:41:22.880] And so, I think that, but just in terms of
[01:41:31.960] in terms of deliverables, I think that there's always, like, there are thresholds where
[01:41:39.920] you can say they can no longer ignore you.
[01:41:44.160] And so, like,
[01:41:48.120] one example that I like to give just in terms of sort of metaphysics of, like,
[01:41:53.740] you know, in the, like, mid-1800s or late 1800s,
[01:41:58.000] it was still respectable to be an electromagnetic skeptic.
[01:42:08.140] You know, what is this, like, electricity?
[01:42:12.080] Like, you want to tie together, like, load stones and compasses and lightning and static?
[01:42:20.440] Like, that's too crazy for me.
[01:42:24.280] And then now, today,
[01:42:28.000] it's really no longer respectable to be an electromagnetic skeptic.
[01:42:32.020] Like, we're all, we're doing this on computers.
[01:42:35.520] We have iPhones.
[01:42:37.340] It's, like, no.
[01:42:38.440] That ship has sailed.
[01:42:40.720] And so you can kind of chart
[01:42:44.180] based on sort of the sort of theoretical arguments of, like, well, actually, you know, this, you know, Maxwell's equations can, like, explain X.
[01:42:57.460] And so you can kind of chart based on sort of the sort of theoretical arguments of, like, well, actually, you know, this, you know, Maxwell's equations can, like, explain X.
[01:42:58.000] and y and z and then you can also chart the sort of practical tech growth of well uh you know you
[01:43:06.320] we built um the the telegram and an electric motor and a light bulb and like pretty soon
[01:43:14.920] it becomes sort of harder and harder to doubt the power of those equations
[01:43:19.660] um now i guess the the question and you know we can apply this to to sort of any of any of my work
[01:43:28.880] um is like how close are we to like are are we at the stage where okay these are the equations
[01:43:37.760] and then like uh what else will they connect to and like if we plot out you know kind of the
[01:43:43.700] journey of of faraday and maxwell with his um with their
[01:43:47.860] um
[01:43:48.360] their work on electromagnetic uh phenomenon then like where are we in in the stage and like what's
[01:43:56.300] next um so that would be like a setup uh for this and i think that um like for me for vessel
[01:44:07.040] computation specifically um three of the big prizes uh are first of all can we make a map of
[01:44:17.300] letches
[01:44:18.640] so can we have this sort of objective like we did a scan and here are the latches in your body
[01:44:27.180] um and you know then we can kind of have you know be building a science of interpreting
[01:44:32.020] that data that's uh yeah like a latch here might be like you were bitten by a dog and you know
[01:44:37.100] whatnot and then uh second um can we make like can we use
[01:44:48.360] this thinking. Can we use sort of vessel computation theory and adjacent theory to reliably open latches?
[01:44:59.320] Like
[01:45:00.080] can we do like a an ultrasound with wide dispersal uh and like you get like a lot of opening events and you know uh or or can we even just explain you know the question was about uh previously uh about tre the trauma release exercises basically when you sort of exhaust your um your hip muscles um you can get release events um and then like uh obviously
[01:45:28.000] this would go well with the the scan that if we can make a map of latches um before tre and then we have a really amazing breakthrough tre session and then we have a lot map of latches after tre um that would be a very big deal um and so you know looking at various forms of mostly ultrasound uh but also like f-nears for for making these maps um and then i guess
[01:45:58.000] third uh this this is like a little bit less clean uh just in terms of um a type of a type of knowledge to to point at but i do i do think it's very important just kind of characterizing i want to say like reflexes um reactions capacities for flexing in your vessel muscular system and so
[01:46:28.000] like some some kind of example here would be like how twitchy are you um and like can we put a number on that uh can we say okay you know you have like um uh x amount of uh tanha uh and then like can we decrease that by by 10 or whatever and like obviously in different states of mind you will have different amounts of this um so you know
[01:46:57.760] you know
[01:46:58.000] after an amazing sauna, this might be lower,
[01:47:02.520] but can we lower the baseline?
[01:47:04.140] Can we measure the baseline?
[01:47:06.580] And I would also say that another big aspect of this
[01:47:12.520] is sort of this, how good is your coverage and your reach
[01:47:18.080] in terms of your mental hand?
[01:47:22.200] So I was speaking with Ethan Kuntz,
[01:47:28.000] and we were talking about how maybe we basically have
[01:47:32.840] sort of the capacity to sort of hold four chunks
[01:47:36.880] of working memory at a time.
[01:47:38.900] And I suspect this is like extremely a muscular thing.
[01:47:42.620] Like we can kind of multiplex the carrier signal,
[01:47:45.920] whatever that may be, into sort of four chunks.
[01:47:51.100] And then basically whatever thoughts we want to have,
[01:47:56.320] we have to construct.
[01:47:58.000] We have to construct them out of a maximum of these like four pieces
[01:48:00.580] of sort of stabilized structure,
[01:48:04.600] which is like a very interesting limitation,
[01:48:07.000] if you think about that.
[01:48:11.700] And also like we can also latch things,
[01:48:14.900] which sort of then doesn't take away from that cap,
[01:48:19.980] but makes everything a little bit less flexible.
[01:48:24.880] But just in terms of like,
[01:48:28.000] I guess I would say like,
[01:48:29.160] aphantasia is a great model organism here of like,
[01:48:35.080] if you, you know, can you imagine that?
[01:48:37.300] And like, can you imagine something that relies on like the lower levels
[01:48:42.080] of the predictive hierarchy, the sort of simple feature detectors?
[01:48:46.260] Can you imagine something in the middle?
[01:48:48.400] Can you imagine something very abstract?
[01:48:51.400] And like my claim would be like aphantasia is kind of,
[01:48:58.000] you know, a very obvious, you can kind of,
[01:49:00.440] you have these nice kind of scenarios of, well,
[01:49:02.880] if you close your eyes, can you imagine like a bright red apple?
[01:49:07.860] And what can you do with the apple?
[01:49:09.960] Can you rotate it?
[01:49:11.100] Can you like zoom in?
[01:49:12.160] Can you see the texture of the leaves, et cetera?
[01:49:15.200] And like this is a very like actionable sort of test for imagination,
[01:49:19.560] which I think is like test for vasomuscular access to that part of your nervous system.
[01:49:29.000] And I think that things much,
[01:49:30.560] much higher on the predictive hierarchy are less easy to test for.
[01:49:35.920] But I think, you know, we can also have deficits there.
[01:49:40.620] So I'm very bullish on sort of making a map of both latches,
[01:49:48.860] things that are held constant, cannot change,
[01:49:51.920] and also making a map of mental grasp,
[01:49:56.940] of things that we can't change,
[01:49:59.000] but can choose to
[01:50:00.060] flex or like hold open rather than just have it open or latch by default.
[01:50:10.000] And when you talk about hands and latches, I think about this not in terms of even just the
[01:50:16.400] vasocomputation but also in just adjacent domains. So I think one way to frame a lot of what you've
[01:50:21.920] been saying is that research and science is a collaborative process and I think historically
[01:50:28.140] we valued a lot of serendipitous discoveries and a lot of the value that we place, you know,
[01:50:33.000] obviously with the benefit of hindsight because so many of these research pieces were ridiculed.
[01:50:37.360] mRNA research, even calculators, people not wanting to derive from an abacus,
[01:50:42.950] all these little things that we can scoff and think are silly now
[01:50:47.180] really changed the game because of what they were able to unlock,
[01:50:51.920] adjacent possible, right? There are these fields of knowledge and domains that were so close and
[01:50:57.160] would just change the way that we exist as humans if we can remove one bottleneck, whatever that
[01:51:03.320] looks like. And so we've briefly talked about how these are competition, you know, if physiologically
[01:51:08.720] true could change the way we think about musculature and how we think about neurons.
[01:51:14.480] And I want to invite you to think about, you know, once this theory, whatever that end goal looks
[01:51:18.740] like is successful, is proven true. What do you think about the way that we think about neurons?
[01:51:21.540] And I want to invite you to think about, you know, once this theory, whatever that end goal looks like is successful, is proven true,
[01:51:21.920] what are other, I want to think like floating orbs in this constellation and this mental map of
[01:51:26.940] knowledge could just be revolutionized by your theory and your thesis being proven
[01:51:32.860] true. Like what else could be unlocked and what else is possible?
[01:51:35.880] Yeah, that's a great question. I think that a lot of it comes down to sort of
[01:51:42.820] how do you become skillful in using your nervous system? What does it mean to be skillful in using
[01:51:50.740] your nervous system? And then how do you become skillful in using your nervous system? And then
[01:51:51.920] you know, we talk about physical dexterity. You know, can you, like, twirl something on your wrist or,
[01:51:58.180] you know, can you, like, have a have a ball and, you know, move it that way or,
[01:52:02.860] like, can you balance on a slack line or, you know, many of these. It's obvious. I think that
[01:52:11.500] sort of the space of potential ways that you can be mentally dexterous is much, much bigger.
[01:52:21.000] And I think that sort of the space of potential ways that you can be mentally dexterous is much, Much bigger.
[01:52:21.920] But, you know, I am bullish on kind of, I mean, first of all, just kind of metrics for this.
[01:52:31.000] And like one thing that really, really comes to mind.
[01:52:34.760] So, OK, a few things.
[01:52:37.560] One thing is just kind of this idea of better mental compressions and that if we are actually somewhat limited by how much we can stabilize at a time,
[01:52:52.080] we get four chunks of concurrent stabilization and that's it.
[01:52:55.820] So all thoughts kind of have to be built out of four different regions.
[01:53:01.380] then
[01:53:05.100] Then there's like a dimension of scaling in terms of better knowledge representations.
[01:53:11.560] And so, you know, maybe you only get four sort of chunks of your nervous system that you can sort of stabilize at once.
[01:53:19.000] But if you.
[01:53:21.920] Get like better tools for thought, better compressions, this can scale very considerably.
[01:53:31.380] I also think that there's this this idea of I'm going to call it clench pleiotropy.
[01:53:38.120] So pleiotropy is is a concept in genetics and it's where one gene does many things.
[01:53:43.880] It's like and in the the the Siberian fox domestication trials where they like bred foxes to be.
[01:53:51.920] Very friendly and basically they domesticated fox in foxes in 50 generations.
[01:53:59.000] What they found was that the.
[01:54:03.200] When they basically they thought the causal factor here was delaying the foxes neural growth.
[01:54:09.900] Basically, the adult adrenal glands never fully grown in or grew in.
[01:54:15.100] So they just like felt fewer like less fear.
[01:54:19.440] And but these foxes had.
[01:54:22.580] Like weird things that went together like floppy ears and curly tails and patchy coats.
[01:54:31.880] And it's like often like a gene does many things.
[01:54:37.740] And so the idea of clench pleiotropy is this idea that by default.
[01:54:47.300] Muscles kind of often have like.
[01:54:51.920] Big impact clench patterns like you move a lot of stuff.
[01:54:57.000] And like.
[01:55:00.320] I had this thing with my hand where, okay, I can move this finger, I can move this finger,
[01:55:06.540] this finger, but if I try and move this, it goes together.
[01:55:11.440] It could be like a tendon thing, but it can also be muscular.
[01:55:16.340] Can you wiggle your eyebrows separately or whatever?
[01:55:22.320] These are very learned things.
[01:55:24.380] I think that, generally speaking, if we could look at mental muscles, this would be the
[01:55:33.440] rule, not the exception.
[01:55:35.660] This idea that it's actually very hard to ... The lesser-known crowd might call this
[01:55:43.500] decoupling and whatnot.
[01:55:45.200] I think that's a pretty good label for it.
[01:55:47.640] This idea of, can you stabilize here without also just automatically clenching?
[01:55:54.380] This other area.
[01:55:55.400] In that sense, becoming good at precision use of your nervous system is learning how
[01:56:08.280] to decouple and make the stabilization clenches very precise.
[01:56:15.480] Interestingly, this is ... The other side of this is sometimes you want to stabilize,
[01:56:24.380] stabilize a lot of stuff.
[01:56:25.860] You want this sort of clench of pleiotropy.
[01:56:28.820] If you have this big vision, then can you ... Are you strong enough to hold a bunch of
[01:56:37.020] stuff constant at once?
[01:56:39.840] These capacities kind of trade off each other.
[01:56:43.560] In some sense, I think that it's one reason why ... It's sometimes rare to get thinkers
[01:56:52.420] who are both ...
[01:56:53.300] Yeah.
[01:56:54.380] Big and precise.
[01:56:57.200] Much easier to only be big or only be precise.
[01:57:02.900] I'm not sure I directly answered your question, but maybe I answered an adjacent question.
[01:57:08.580] No, that's beautiful.
[01:57:09.480] I think another adjacent question that I want to flip onto you is, throughout this entire
[01:57:14.060] conversation you've referenced a lot of thinkers that have shaped the way that you do your
[01:57:18.120] research.
[01:57:18.940] You also gave us a nice roadmap of how the computation has evolved.
[01:57:24.380] I'm wondering if there were any areas of knowledge that you didn't expect to draw so much from?
[01:57:29.480] Nice.
[01:57:30.700] Yeah.
[01:57:31.400] That's a great question.
[01:57:33.100] I mean, the obvious would be Ray Peet.
[01:57:36.680] I didn't expect his perspectives on metabolism to be particularly relevant for understanding
[01:57:46.200] the mind, but I think it absolutely is.
[01:57:48.580] So definitely that.
[01:57:51.360] I think I would also credit ...
[01:57:55.100] I think I would also credit Romano Stevens and Nick Camerata for really sort of ... previous
[01:58:00.860] relationship, Pupana, Ibtiqobba, for kind of opening my mind on Buddhism and this idea
[01:58:08.940] that I ... It was a big pivot for me and yeah, I have a lot of respect for their help, I
[01:58:16.520] guess I would say.
[01:58:17.440] I think that one thing that I kind of started with and that maybe has like ... I think it's
[01:58:24.380] like, has been woven into my work much more than maybe it's apparent, is physics.
[01:58:35.800] I think that it's this just absolutely just amazing domain of like ... I'm writing a piece
[01:58:46.080] now, just talking about how physics is sort of a very ...
[01:58:52.360] Yeah, I think that's a really good point.
[01:58:54.380] I think that it's a shining example of the search for natural kinds and also how anything
[01:59:04.430] you build, if you're in consciousness research or researching the mind in any way, ultimately
[01:59:15.630] whatever you build has to compile to physics.
[01:59:20.540] If it doesn't compile to physics, then at best, it's not going to be a good thing.
[01:59:24.380] It's a mere metaphor, which can be useful, but it's still ... You're not going to get
[01:59:30.800] that sort of anchored type of knowledge.
[01:59:37.200] I think that physics has been just an enormous inspiration for me.
[01:59:43.000] I think that I feel very anchored to or respectful of or connected with the knowledge that I have
[01:59:54.360] sort of the the big picture physicists the the sort
[02:00:00.240] of the ones that were, you know, figuring out this whole like, I mean, the forces, the quantum stuff, the gravity stuff.
[02:00:09.780] It's like these are our modes of thought that I think are just absolutely beautiful.
[02:00:15.300] So I would say that most probably there's much more to be gleaned from kind of, you know, rating the goodies that physics has prepared for us.
[02:00:31.320] So yeah, I'm very bullish on that.
[02:00:34.120] Yeah. As we were going through your work, I think the one part that I was talking to Carol about this before this, comparing the neural links to collapsing a quantum superposition.
[02:00:44.100] Those heavy types.
[02:00:46.300] um but i guess the natural question that organically flows from that too is because
[02:00:51.120] you draw so heavily from let's say buddhism and neuroscience and physics and the metrics for each
[02:00:58.300] of these fields is so different um even within physics and biology and neuroscience the demands
[02:01:04.100] the scientific expectations what are some challenges you've experienced with grappling
[02:01:10.020] and kind of balancing and reconciling all those fields you lie in this intersection that draws
[02:01:16.300] together and the expectation of you know back to output um output and metrics and measurability
[02:01:21.640] are different what does it look like when you when you produce a piece when you write
[02:01:26.160] and different communities are almost asking different things of you what does that look
[02:01:30.160] like for you that's a good question um i think that uh like in terms of challenges uh one of the
[02:01:40.060] central quick challenges is that the ontologies of these fields are so different
[02:01:46.300] um i mean you you load up a neuroscience paper and it's talking about you know activity in the
[02:01:52.020] prefrontal cortex and uh like as measured by the bold response and and uh and then you load up you
[02:02:00.120] know uh some kind of uh like buddhism and it's talking about well there's like nama and rupa and
[02:02:07.080] there's tanha and there's defilements and and stuff and then you know you load up physics and
[02:02:12.080] it's like electrons and protons and valence shells and you know you know you know you know you know
[02:02:17.300] you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know
[02:02:18.460] i think um it's a very deep challenge to reconcile these different ontologies
[02:02:27.180] like that basically is the challenge uh and i think that you kind of have to get a um like
[02:02:36.960] being disagreeable uh helps uh being okay you have to be agreeable enough to really get the
[02:02:47.300] value of things you can't just dismiss them you you really have to sort of get okay like
[02:02:53.800] there's there's some deep logic here there's there's a reason why like all these really
[02:03:00.120] smart people are thinking in these terms and can you sort of extract the generator for and
[02:03:07.740] like i've been thinking in terms of lineages and and so on i should really update my my list but
[02:03:14.260] um i think that
[02:03:18.340] You have to be agreeable enough to get what people are talking about.
[02:03:24.040] There's value in everything.
[02:03:27.100] And then you have to be disagreeable enough to say,
[02:03:32.040] and they're wrong, in a certain way.
[02:03:37.060] It's like my objections to how neuroscience is done.
[02:03:44.000] Well, I think that people think of neuroscience as a science,
[02:03:49.320] but I actually think it's pretty paradigmatic.
[02:03:52.800] We sort of have dressed up these observations in very technical language
[02:03:59.420] revolving around methodology,
[02:04:01.400] and there's some brilliant work in neuroscience.
[02:04:07.800] But ultimately, it's not a science of the mind.
[02:04:12.400] And...
[02:04:14.080] Sadly, it often doesn't even try.
[02:04:18.160] And I think that it's sort of understanding...
[02:04:25.840] First of all, if you just kind of understand the research,
[02:04:29.820] that's very important.
[02:04:31.600] And then you need to understand what you can ignore.
[02:04:37.640] And then the final piece is sort of extracting...
[02:04:42.780] I'm going to say...
[02:04:44.000] Research aesthetics.
[02:04:46.750] And both using the best ones,
[02:04:53.990] from the greats, we can say,
[02:04:58.650] but also just kind of
[02:05:00.020] lining them up and just like trying to find answers that satisfy all the beautiful aesthetics of like, well, you know, what would Einstein think about this? And what would Bohr think about this? And what would Freud think about this? And William Reich and whatnot.
[02:05:20.880] And it's sort of this, so there's this question of what does it mean to be clever in different languages?
[02:05:34.820] And so I have some friends that are Russian and they say that, you know, given just like one sentence in Russian, you can tell everything about a person.
[02:05:46.020] Like if they're like poetic, then like, you know, by their word choice, you can tell everything about a person.
[02:05:56.020] And like that's what it means to be clever in Russian, to sort of load in all of that.
[02:06:04.800] And it's just like perfect, just the insight.
[02:06:12.480] And then there's this question of what does it mean to be clever in Russian?
[02:06:18.500] And I'm going to claim that it's much more this kind of superposition angle that you had mentioned.
[02:06:27.520] And this idea that, you know, English is famous or infamous for, you know, the double entendre and the triple entendre and whatnot.
[02:06:37.260] And I think it's the more general case is this situation where you can say one thing.
[02:06:46.400] And then you can say something else.
[02:06:47.020] And it makes sense from seven different angles.
[02:06:51.300] And all of those different angles are somehow meaningful.
[02:06:57.900] And I think that it sort of gets to it like it gets to the truth in a different way than something like Russian or any other language.
[02:07:11.580] But I like this way.
[02:07:14.680] It's my way.
[02:07:17.400] I think that and perhaps because it's very similar to what I see truth as that something is true or like something is more true, the more angles it makes sense from.
[02:07:33.980] So sort of a relativistic perspective.
[02:07:38.860] I think this is almost kind of back to your point on taste and being a tasteful researcher.
[02:07:45.920] Balancing the epistemic humility while navigating all these different epistemological frameworks.
[02:07:53.380] And I find that a lot of the interdisciplinary folks that we talk to, you have this coupled challenge of dealing with both of these truths, but also having to work in a field that, you know, like we talked about earlier, is inherently harder to measure because it's either novel or it's between things.
[02:08:13.200] Or that you just don't know.
[02:08:14.200] And so I think that it's just challenging dualistic thinking, which a lot of science is not comfortable with just yet.
[02:08:19.720] So I guess just to, you know, to double down on these challenges then.
[02:08:23.760] As you work through vasocomputation, were there any challenges you faced in finding the right ecosystem with the right people, the right communities to nurture your cross-domain research?
[02:08:34.400] And I'm thinking beyond just even financial resources, right?
[02:08:37.020] Like mentorship, intellectual stimulation, institutional support, social support, or even just the conceptual frameworks.
[02:08:44.120] Right.
[02:08:44.200] To accommodate the kind of work that you were doing.
[02:08:47.280] I think that I sort of, having been through the process before with symmetry theory of valence and neural annealing, I was able to sort of hit the ground running better this time.
[02:09:05.680] And I think that just sort of the triple domain setup really helped in terms of.
[02:09:12.740] I could tell.
[02:09:14.200] A very clean story.
[02:09:18.820] To the Buddhists, to the active inference people and the neuro anatomy people of what I was doing.
[02:09:26.880] And then could, you know, kind of more easily say, okay.
[02:09:30.780] And the active inference people, like they don't have an anatomical grounding for what a prediction is.
[02:09:36.520] And like, I do.
[02:09:37.740] And like, this is like something to that I can very cleanly point to.
[02:09:42.640] Or like the Buddhists.
[02:09:44.200] Like, how do you, how do you measure that?
[02:09:47.380] Like, how do you measure the self or, or like enlightenment and attainments, openings, et cetera.
[02:09:55.200] And so I think that, you know,
[02:10:01.360] Navigating this is sort of, if you can kind of build the map prior and then like think of it like a treasure map of, okay, like how many domains are there?
[02:10:18.740] And then if you think about this domain, what treasure is it missing?
[02:10:27.000] What does it like obviously need but doesn't know how to get?
[02:10:33.340] And then you can connect it to like this unrepresented term in this other domain that should actually be represented.
[02:10:45.400] And I think that just like, I mean, I think getting
[02:10:59.440] support is of course always a challenge.
[02:11:02.840] And I think this goes back to this idea of like so much of life is just starting the party.
[02:11:13.780] And there's no, like there's kind of the energetic taste of like,
[02:11:22.440] I did this really important thing and nobody cares.
[02:11:24.820] And I'm, I'm not going to do it.
[02:11:25.440] I'm so upset and whatever.
[02:11:26.780] And like, okay, you know, maybe that's true, but who cares?
[02:11:31.600] Like ultimately it's about like, you gotta be having fun.
[02:11:37.400] And when people, when you have fun, then people will come.
[02:11:42.420] And it's, it's also very growthful.
[02:11:45.280] I think to have that mindset.
[02:11:46.740] So I guess, you know, maybe I'm not super great at like chasing down support for the ideas,
[02:11:54.680] but I'm having a lot of fun so yeah that actually tied beautifully into the next thing
[02:11:59.780] I wanted to ask you, which was, you know, at the very beginning, you walked us through kind of
[02:12:03.620] three to four different arcs of how basic computation evolved. And I wanted to know
[02:12:08.360] kind of how the reception to that evolved. Like, was it the reception that changed? Or was it just
[02:12:11.960] your philosophy and your mindset and attitude towards it that changed? So if you want to just
[02:12:16.600] briefly go over that, I think you answered most of it quite nicely, just now.
[02:12:22.880] Yeah, yeah. I think that a lot of it sort of was sort of doing the work before.
[02:12:29.780] Of like, understanding that, like, you can have like, okay, I think the symmetry theory valence
[02:12:38.100] is huge. And, and like, I'm willing to make that argument. But I know that, to some degree, it's,
[02:12:47.640] it's an endurance thing. And like, I would rather create things than convince people.
[02:12:57.480] And I think then,
[02:12:59.940] it's more about, yeah, like, once again, having fun, knowing the domains that like, are most
[02:13:07.180] relevant, and like, kind of pre pitching each domain in a certain sense. And, and ultimately,
[02:13:15.980] just...
[02:13:20.120] just having fun, be like, not necessarily be chasing recognition, but also just be like,
[02:13:29.780] willing to step up when you get opportunities, that it's sort of like, I think it's easy for me to
[02:13:36.980] fall, sort of fall into the hermit philosopher mode. And like, you know, I'm just gonna,
[02:13:43.980] I'm gonna make my art, and think my ideas, and, you know, just kind of, you know, release them,
[02:13:51.760] and, you know, what will be, will be, etc. And I think there's, there are failure modes in that,
[02:13:58.440] that,
[02:13:59.780] and I think that, like, I've, I've been really grateful for,
[02:14:04.520] especially some friends, Justin and Janine, of, Janine from Edge City, has been, you know, just amazing at,
[02:14:12.580] at supporting my ideas. And I think that, like, there's definitely a shift of like, how do you create ideas?
[02:14:28.080] And then,
[02:14:31.340] I'm just going to say, like, the sausage factory is very messy.
[02:14:38.780] and
[02:14:40.140] And few people would sort of have the hardiness to sort of really, you know, dig into those details.
[02:14:48.340] And then, you know, after you create the idea, you polish it real nicely.
[02:14:54.680] And then you start telling the story.
[02:14:57.760] And there's
[02:15:00.000] there's a real art to telling the story.
[02:15:04.000] That, I mean, some people are sort of born pretty good at it.
[02:15:08.040] Some people have to learn. And I think that
[02:15:13.880] for me, I really want to
[02:15:18.140] connect with the most meaningful parts
[02:15:22.960] of the human experience, of the human condition,
[02:15:28.280] of human nature.
[02:15:31.800] And I really pick my topics
[02:15:35.320] such that I can do that.
[02:15:37.760] And if I'm not talking about the important stuff,
[02:15:41.680] why even?
[02:15:43.960] It's not worth suffering for, I guess I would say.
[02:15:47.340] And so I think that
[02:15:48.980] then it's just trying
[02:15:52.960] to feel through...
[02:15:57.860] Giving names to things
[02:16:00.560] is very powerful.
[02:16:03.820] And sort of
[02:16:06.820] telling the story is
[02:16:08.720] in a way that makes people feel
[02:16:13.400] that you get it,
[02:16:15.800] that you understand them,
[02:16:17.480] that there's this sort of common human feature
[02:16:22.960] that you're pointing directly toward.
[02:16:24.920] And it's not just something that I have,
[02:16:28.040] it's something that everyone has.
[02:16:32.520] And people really appreciate that
[02:16:34.680] when you try.
[02:16:35.980] And I think that
[02:16:38.280] insofar as the reception has been increasingly positive,
[02:16:42.900] it's because I've been able to sort of get better
[02:16:46.860] at telling that story.
[02:16:50.320] Who are other thinkers
[02:16:52.960] or researchers or, I don't know, bandits,
[02:16:55.140] however you want to name them,
[02:16:56.880] who you think reflect the same kinds of values that you admire?
[02:17:00.760] Or one thing that we try to do is hat-tip people
[02:17:02.920] who might be working in really
[02:17:04.980] thing-changing and just revolutionary domains
[02:17:07.100] but don't seek the credit.
[02:17:08.740] Or people who are underdogs in their fields.
[02:17:12.140] But show a lot of the same traits that we look for
[02:17:14.440] and that you, I think, also embody in your work.
[02:17:16.220] Who are some people that you want to acknowledge?
[02:17:18.700] Or just hat-tip to?
[02:17:19.740] Thank you.
[02:17:21.720] So, I mean,
[02:17:24.520] there are, I mean,
[02:17:26.580] there are so many beautiful people.
[02:17:28.560] And I think that, you know, it's,
[02:17:31.060] I was thinking about this this morning, like,
[02:17:34.080] some people,
[02:17:35.720] it's always like, what is the output artifact
[02:17:39.280] of, like, of beauty?
[02:17:40.940] And, like, sometimes it's a paper.
[02:17:43.440] Sometimes it's, you know, research.
[02:17:45.300] And sometimes it's,
[02:17:49.740] an apprentice.
[02:17:50.600] Or, like, another person.
[02:17:52.360] Or, like, so,
[02:17:54.820] and I think that,
[02:17:57.760] yeah, I mean, I have a lot of appreciation
[02:18:00.920] for the people who have
[02:18:03.980] have given me their,
[02:18:06.620] I would say, given me their,
[02:18:09.400] and I think that
[02:18:10.380] in terms of professional
[02:18:16.760] sort of hat-tips or,
[02:18:19.740] you know, formal appreciation,
[02:18:23.180] I have mentioned their names several times now.
[02:18:27.560] But I would really point to,
[02:18:31.680] first of all, Romeo Stevens.
[02:18:34.560] He's just a very
[02:18:37.880] high integrity and thoughtful person
[02:18:41.740] that has an unusual generator.
[02:18:44.640] And I've sort of,
[02:18:46.460] I've been, you know, feeling into that generator.
[02:18:49.740] And I feel like I get Romeo more.
[02:18:52.340] And, you know, certainly,
[02:18:54.520] I think that vessel computation
[02:18:56.820] wouldn't have happened
[02:18:59.420] without, like, certain hints
[02:19:01.320] from how he was thinking.
[02:19:03.800] So, big respect there.
[02:19:07.860] And then, Nick Camerata.
[02:19:10.640] I can't say that he's unknown.
[02:19:13.180] but...
[02:19:16.040] But he's great.
[02:19:17.440] And I think that, you know,
[02:19:20.480] oftentimes,
[02:19:22.960] being generative is sort of
[02:19:26.440] finding new ways to recompress things.
[02:19:30.360] And I feel like he's
[02:19:32.460] a really great recompressor.
[02:19:36.400] And just consistently also focused on important things.
[02:19:41.320] So, yeah, big, big respect there.
[02:19:48.260] And, you know, in terms of,
[02:19:51.680] like,
[02:19:55.200] less well-known people,
[02:19:57.440] I'd have to think,
[02:19:59.520] I
[02:20:00.340] that a lot of the Peters are underappreciated.
[02:20:04.880] That, you know, the things that they're doing are just centrally important for so many domains.
[02:20:14.380] And like they're kind of, you know, there's like the P to ghetto.
[02:20:20.560] And like, no, I think, you know, in five years, we're all going to be much more Peters than like the world will be much, much more beauty.
[02:20:34.240] So.
[02:20:38.540] Because part of what I think makes research worth doing even is the gratitude that you express while you're doing it.
[02:20:44.360] And understanding that nothing that each individual does is the be all end all.
[02:20:49.360] You know, eventually our time will be over.
[02:20:50.960] And I think that's what I think our time is going to end up or not, depending on how the longevity space goes.
[02:20:56.560] But a lot of the work that we do holds meaning to build and to add to future projects.
[02:21:02.460] And I think that's also kind of what we were trying to get at here, too.
[02:21:06.460] I think one of the last things I'm going to ask you, just because our time is coming up here, is back to a point that you said at the very beginning, which was the question that kind of catapulted all of this work and why we're here and the work you do.
[02:21:19.780] Is the thing that you're paying attention to.
[02:21:20.560] that we can go further and how can we push the bounce? So I guess for you, what's next and
[02:21:27.580] how are you gonna go further? What comes after this? Yeah, so just to, I think I originally had
[02:21:34.580] described this when the camera was not recording, so I'll just kind of recapitulate it. I think that
[02:21:41.060] so much of my sort of interest in this is just describing the beauty that is already there,
[02:21:51.620] that humans are beautiful and living things are beautiful. And I kind of want to honor
[02:21:58.320] the universe by pointing out, making that a little bit more legible. And then,
[02:22:06.100] and I think I mentioned that forms of beauty that
[02:22:11.060] are more legible are more likely to persist under transformation.
[02:22:14.940] But there's also something a little bit prescriptive in that
[02:22:23.620] evolution is sort of this blind process and it sort of does like the things that it makes
[02:22:31.040] are sort of as if it's sort of convergent toward some goal, but is it really that thing? Well,
[02:22:40.540] it's hard to tell. You know, it's all very complicated and complicated and complicated.
[02:22:41.060] hard to say and oftentimes it's sort of there will be transition periods too
[02:22:48.980] where it's like it's halfway to somewhere that's profoundly beautiful
[02:22:55.400] and I think that our the way that we we think through tension is kind of kind of
[02:23:03.020] that that it's it's amazing and like I'm I'm reminded of this Charles Pollock and
[02:23:12.120] stability always precedes power production and this sense that when we're able to sort of
[02:23:19.860] stabilize counterfactuals we can sort of project power into the world much more effectively and
[02:23:28.280] like the difference between a lion and a human is like we can project power into sort of Bayesian
[02:23:36.440] probabilities that that the lion just can't and I think that we are literally
[02:23:41.060] stronger than the lion because of that and I would say that yeah it's always like seeing okay like
[02:23:52.280] so okay there's there's I've been meaning to workshop a tweet about this for a while but
[02:23:59.880] there's this idea that like many of the the fruits that we eat or the foods that we eat in general
[02:24:08.060] have been sort of
[02:24:11.060] are domesticated wild plants and like a wild banana looks very different than the bananas we eat
[02:24:18.200] and like a wild avocado and even you know citrus and whatnot so I think that like part of my
[02:24:30.050] part of my expectation and sort of drive is that I do think that there's like I think humans are
[02:24:38.980] beautiful as we are and I think that's the thing that I think is really important to me is that I think humans are beautiful as we are
[02:24:41.060] there are also amazing forms of beauty that are sort of latent in our genomes in our possibility space and that you know if we think about like you know the most striking change of like a wild cucumber versus a domesticated
[02:25:00.000] domesticated cucumber or whatnot.
[02:25:03.660] We are totally on the cusp of that transformation for humans.
[02:25:11.840] Whether we talk about—I've been tossing around a couple of ideas here, one being universal
[02:25:19.980] basic enlightenment.
[02:25:21.460] I think it would be possible and really good.
[02:25:26.800] It's like we're so close to this area of mind space that's so good.
[02:25:34.360] Maybe something can be done there.
[02:25:39.040] Then the second frame that I've been talking about is this idea of a platonic biosingularity,
[02:25:49.240] which big words.
[02:25:51.400] But it's this idea that—
[02:25:53.040] I'm going to go ahead and stop.
[02:25:55.920] For example, if you have a good diet and you get enough sun and you're happy and healthy and well and whatnot, there's some kind of convergent vector where it's like you just look better, more healthy and ultimately more yourself.
[02:26:15.560] And it's this idea that maybe we could sort of define that vector for humans and maybe other beings as well and sort of go in that direction for a while.
[02:26:27.940] And this idea that, you know, could we, through, you know, some forms of technology, could we become closer to the platonic versions of ourselves?
[02:26:41.720] Is that a well-defined thing?
[02:26:44.740] Maybe you can't go in that vector forever, but maybe you can get a lot of mileage out of sort of, you know, maybe it gets you five standard deviations and that's enough for something profoundly beautiful.
[02:26:59.200] Or like, can you become the Greek demigod version of yourself?
[02:27:04.220] So I think a lot about this just in terms of like, basically.
[02:27:13.160] Everybody doing.
[02:27:14.640] Interesting things and like, especially I would say the.
[02:27:19.820] The tech elite.
[02:27:22.540] Tend to be based basically.
[02:27:25.860] They read some really cool sci-fi when they were teenagers and they got one shot by it and they're just like trying to make it real.
[02:27:35.400] And if you if you look at, you know, Elon, if you look at Bezos, etc.
[02:27:42.040] Like everybody is kind of following that pattern.
[02:27:44.640] And I think that a lot of this is just gated on the imagination of the people creating the idea space.
[02:27:53.740] And I guess like one thing that I feel like I find very, very important is just kind of putting these ideas out there because you never know, you know, what future Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Sam Altman or whatever will sort of imprint.
[02:28:14.160] Yeah.
[02:28:14.640] On something beautiful.
[02:28:18.760] Just ripple effects and those those things that transcend fine lines.
[02:28:23.600] One of the way that we think about innovation analog is almost as a garden and nurturing innovation rather than kind of trying to force it and crunch into numbers and formulas again.
[02:28:35.000] And so I think what you're saying, a lot of what I'm taking away from this is throwing your seeds into fertile ground and trusting that nature and the environment and the world and mother nature.
[02:28:45.120] Will take care of the rest.
[02:28:47.240] And I think every time, you know, I speak to someone like you, I'm reminded again that, you know, life really is beautiful.
[02:28:52.500] I think a lot of the thesis is that life is beautiful.
[02:28:54.900] And it's very easy to forget that.
[02:28:57.420] So I guess just before we end off with the last question is wanting to send a huge thank you to you.
[02:29:02.900] I think, as you might know, analog is a living experiment.
[02:29:06.660] It is a constellation of a lot of things of what we think that human flourishing and innovation could look like.
[02:29:13.520] And there's a lot of things that we can do.
[02:29:14.640] There's a lot of things revolving around this constellation.
[02:29:16.580] And we're still teasing this out as it evolves.
[02:29:19.300] But at the core of it is funding projects like yours that are interdisciplinary, that are evolutionary and follow the natural progression and not just progression, but respect of human nature and what what serendipity looks like.
[02:29:33.800] And I think you've done a beautiful job even just explaining everything to us in the short time that we had together.
[02:29:39.760] So, yeah, just before our last question.
[02:29:41.700] Thank you for not just being on the podcast.
[02:29:44.640] Thank you for being our first guest.
[02:29:45.760] But for the years and just time and effort that you've put into it, the new possibilities you're unlocking, the new researchers and next of kin that are going to pick up where you left off.
[02:29:57.700] And so the very last question that
[02:30:00.000] we're trying to increase a bit of a flair note into is for you to leave a question for our next guest. And the reason why is because Analogue funds a lot of people who are doing work and research in between the cracks. And there's a lot of nuances, a lot of questions that might get overlooked or certain details that you wish some podcasters somewhere out there would ask you about, but no one ever does.
[02:30:24.180] So as someone who works interdisciplinarily, what is the question that you would leave for our next guest?
[02:30:30.700] Nice. Beautiful. So perhaps I should also try to extrapolate and infer who the last guest will be and kind of take that around and try to answer that question too.
[02:30:49.360] But yeah, thank you.
[02:30:51.840] I think I would like to thank you for your time.
[02:30:54.180] I would also just say that I find the Analogue group just so fresh and with immaculate vibes.
[02:31:02.520] So it's a real pleasure to be here.
[02:31:07.580] So a question. So I'm going to say that one question that I think about a lot actually is this idea of, you know,
[02:31:26.480] super cooperation would be one frame or just kind of trusting and like planting seeds and trusting to the world that good things will come.
[02:31:39.580] And I get the sense that we are like in sort of like Roko's Basilisk.
[02:31:46.500] We're sort of hyperstitioning something into reality and like maybe good, maybe bad.
[02:31:53.100] You know.
[02:31:53.760] Yeah.
[02:31:54.180] We'll see.
[02:31:55.260] But I guess like my question is like how has and, you know, I think maybe like game theory is kind of the mid-wit way to talk about this.
[02:32:16.860] But, you know, it's functional for our purposes.
[02:32:21.380] How has kind of.
[02:32:24.320] How has playing the game at the highest level changed since the advent of real synthetic intelligence that we seem to be in a new era?
[02:32:39.100] And there seem to be new ways to cooperate and probably to defect.
[02:32:52.060] And how has.
[02:32:54.060] How has.
[02:32:54.180] You're.
[02:32:56.000] Playing of the game.
[02:32:58.100] Changed.
[02:32:59.540] Are you able to cooperate with the future.
[02:33:03.340] Better.
[02:33:05.980] I'm glad to.
[02:33:10.100] get a very clear and honest answer to that.
[02:33:14.200] Beautiful question.
[02:33:15.420] One that I would have to mull over as well.
[02:33:17.480] And I'm sure Carol is also turning his gears.
[02:33:20.980] But yeah, with that, that concludes our interview.
[02:33:23.320] Again, thank you so much for taking the time.
[02:33:25.540] I know it's beautiful and sunny in Sausalito.
[02:33:27.920] So really appreciate you sitting here for three hours with us.
[02:33:31.840] And once we get that answer, we will let you know.