WEBVTT

NOTE Machine-generated transcript; not human-reviewed.
NOTE Canonical transcript: https://opentheory.net/transcripts/vasculature-that-thinks/

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:22.480
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?

2
00:00:23.840 --> 00:00:31.540
What I want my adult world to be. It's to live a beautiful life.

3
00:00:33.660 --> 00:00:38.380
Welcome to the Analogue Podcast, conversations with people who are reimagining the future

4
00:00:38.380 --> 00:00:44.000
of systems, science, and society. Each episode we bring on a new explorer we've backed,

5
00:00:44.200 --> 00:00:50.280
a researcher, or an architect, but we're all asking the same core question. What if

6
00:00:50.280 --> 00:00:56.120
we did things differently and meant it? This is about the new age of research and innovation,

7
00:00:56.440 --> 00:01:01.500
where we lead with problems first and progress follows. Enjoy.

8
00:01:03.100 --> 00:01:08.080
A couple just words of structure, and I think Carol and I both don't love having too much

9
00:01:08.080 --> 00:01:13.160
structure in the way that we do these. Firstly, starting off with kind of just a precursor to the

10
00:01:13.160 --> 00:01:18.700
way you think and understanding the natural evolution of your brain chemistry and the way

11
00:01:20.280 --> 00:01:23.600
you think about science, transition a little bit more into the basic computation stuff.

12
00:01:23.800 --> 00:01:29.160
And a lot of the work that you've described to people, some new elements maybe that you haven't,

13
00:01:29.180 --> 00:01:34.320
and ending off with kind of the values that are evident in the way you think about complexity and

14
00:01:34.320 --> 00:01:38.720
the way you combine elements and combine domains. Because really that's what analog is all about.

15
00:01:38.900 --> 00:01:43.500
And I think you are walking, living in volume and a lot of the values that we look for.

16
00:01:43.780 --> 00:01:49.340
One on one being, being able to cross disciplines and think about what's adjacent possible and what

17
00:01:49.340 --> 00:01:50.260
unfolds again. And I think that's what I'm really looking for. And I think that's what I'm really

18
00:01:50.280 --> 00:01:54.060
looking for. And I think everyone you just mentioned with evolution and how it's infinitely

19
00:01:54.060 --> 00:01:59.720
smarter than any human can be and understand that progress can't really be contained or measured in

20
00:02:00.380 --> 00:02:10.040
different domains. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm Michael Johnson. I've been

21
00:02:11.020 --> 00:02:18.960
working on these topics for quite some time. I originally moved to the bay in 2010 or 2011.

22
00:02:19.320 --> 00:02:19.960
Yeah.

23
00:02:20.280 --> 00:02:23.040
And my original intention was to work on AI safety.

24
00:02:24.400 --> 00:02:30.380
And then I got talking with the Les Ron crowd, and I just kind of bounced off.

25
00:02:30.540 --> 00:02:40.780
I was really surprised that I thought that the way that they were talking about minds was very interesting,

26
00:02:40.780 --> 00:02:52.980
but it didn't seem groundable to biology or to physics or to how I understood things.

27
00:02:53.200 --> 00:03:03.660
And I felt that it's this thing where you can kind of see into the future a little bit and see,

28
00:03:03.820 --> 00:03:06.640
okay, what's going to come of this line of thinking?

29
00:03:07.340 --> 00:03:09.220
And when I simulated that,

30
00:03:09.340 --> 00:03:10.380
I was like,

31
00:03:10.780 --> 00:03:13.640
Les Ron produced a lot of beautiful things,

32
00:03:14.500 --> 00:03:17.460
but a theory of minds is not among them.

33
00:03:19.500 --> 00:03:23.280
And I had the fork in the road of,

34
00:03:23.320 --> 00:03:25.960
do I try to convince people,

35
00:03:27.560 --> 00:03:29.780
or do I just try to start the party?

36
00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:35.860
And I felt that starting the party was the more sort of light choice,

37
00:03:36.020 --> 00:03:36.540
you could say,

38
00:03:37.820 --> 00:03:39.400
that if there's value,

39
00:03:39.520 --> 00:03:40.640
then, like,

40
00:03:41.360 --> 00:03:46.220
it's kind of on me to find it and to construct a way of thinking about things.

41
00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:53.680
So I ended up taking way more time than I thought to write The Principle of Equality,

42
00:03:53.740 --> 00:04:00.180
but then I would say that's been the basis for a lot of my other work.

43
00:04:01.860 --> 00:04:06.180
So, yeah, I guess in all of this, too,

44
00:04:12.620 --> 00:04:14.260
I would say that when I was young,

45
00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:16.280
I was thinking of the

46
00:04:18.200 --> 00:04:21.360
biological constraints as very bothersome,

47
00:04:21.980 --> 00:04:22.980
very annoying.

48
00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:24.680
Like,

49
00:04:25.320 --> 00:04:26.520
we're not perfect yet.

50
00:04:27.580 --> 00:04:31.180
And the weakness of the flesh, I guess, is the common phrase.

51
00:04:31.880 --> 00:04:32.980
And I think that

52
00:04:34.300 --> 00:04:35.220
this journey

53
00:04:35.960 --> 00:04:37.180
has really shown me

54
00:04:38.080 --> 00:04:39.840
how cool humans are.

55
00:04:40.780 --> 00:04:42.480
Just how...

56
00:04:44.820 --> 00:04:53.600
I think that as you peel back the system of how our bodies work and how our minds work,

57
00:04:53.760 --> 00:04:59.740
you just see this beautiful system where...

58
00:04:59.740 --> 00:05:14.400
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.

59
00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:23.260
I mean, I think one thing that currently I also think a lot about is how innovation,

60
00:05:23.260 --> 00:05:28.540
even in science research, even beyond biology, there's this beauty that was always stripped

61
00:05:28.540 --> 00:05:32.900
away just in, you know, to sacrifice for progress.

62
00:05:33.140 --> 00:05:37.900
We think about every time there's been a war or even a traditional physics-based way of

63
00:05:37.900 --> 00:05:38.680
thinking about problems.

64
00:05:38.980 --> 00:05:40.580
It's always been, what are the principles?

65
00:05:40.800 --> 00:05:42.280
What are the formulas?

66
00:05:42.580 --> 00:05:47.340
What are the mathematical concepts that we can use to take what's abstract and the beauty

67
00:05:47.340 --> 00:05:50.880
of what's really immeasurable and boil it down?

68
00:05:50.880 --> 00:05:55.260
And I think what's interesting about your work too is we're coming back and we're almost

69
00:05:55.260 --> 00:05:59.640
seeing like a counterpulture of respecting and going back to these biological perspectives

70
00:05:59.640 --> 00:06:05.880
of seeing innovation problems in ways of embracing the uncertainty and embracing the unknown

71
00:06:06.280 --> 00:06:08.380
and understanding that things don't work in isolation.

72
00:06:08.680 --> 00:06:13.020
It's this kind of interconnected web of problems that influence each other.

73
00:06:13.960 --> 00:06:16.940
A large dynamic, blacker dynamic ways of seeing problems.

74
00:06:17.560 --> 00:06:22.620
I think what was beautiful too about the way that you just outlined all of that is a lot

75
00:06:22.620 --> 00:06:27.140
of it is about awareness, like awareness of the unknown, awareness of what comes to be.

76
00:06:27.480 --> 00:06:30.580
And this is something you talk about in your work as well a lot.

77
00:06:30.700 --> 00:06:36.600
So before we dive deeper into your work, I'm curious about your personal relationship with

78
00:06:36.600 --> 00:06:36.920
awareness.

79
00:06:37.020 --> 00:06:39.460
Like you mentioned that you were going to be entering AI safety.

80
00:06:39.620 --> 00:06:45.100
There's an element of awareness there, but how has that influenced your own contemplative

81
00:06:45.100 --> 00:06:45.480
practice?

82
00:06:46.940 --> 00:06:51.720
What informs or has informed your scientific inquiries, the background leading up to this?

83
00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:52.560
Sure.

84
00:06:53.540 --> 00:06:55.140
So that's a good question.

85
00:06:55.260 --> 00:06:57.040
It can go many different ways here.

86
00:06:58.040 --> 00:07:06.280
I think that I mean to your point about science sort of being being productive.

87
00:07:08.460 --> 00:07:15.700
I'm reminded of this famous quote from Hamlet that there are more things Horatio than are

88
00:07:15.700 --> 00:07:16.140
dreamt of.

89
00:07:16.240 --> 00:07:20.640
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in philosophy.

90
00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:33.180
And this is the critique of science that science is often very good at carving out a little

91
00:07:33.180 --> 00:07:36.500
corner and saying, okay, here are the equations for this corner.

92
00:07:36.660 --> 00:07:40.380
Here's the systems, the components, the interactions.

93
00:07:41.340 --> 00:07:44.720
And it's a brilliant way to do things.

94
00:07:44.820 --> 00:07:45.460
It is.

95
00:07:46.940 --> 00:07:48.300
And very successful in many domains.

96
00:07:48.740 --> 00:07:54.100
And it's also very willfully blind, you can say.

97
00:07:54.520 --> 00:08:03.500
And that most things of interest include many more things than science can really cleanly

98
00:08:03.500 --> 00:08:03.880
point out.

99
00:08:05.240 --> 00:08:09.060
And then the question is, how do you navigate that?

100
00:08:09.740 --> 00:08:16.380
And I think that like you can always double down on.

101
00:08:16.940 --> 00:08:17.380
The reduction.

102
00:08:18.740 --> 00:08:22.660
You can also just kind of shrug and say, well, there's infinite complexity.

103
00:08:23.040 --> 00:08:24.900
Who are we to say anything?

104
00:08:25.500 --> 00:08:33.400
And I think that there's a middle path where you just look for, I would say new compressive

105
00:08:33.400 --> 00:08:45.060
frames that you know, maybe humans tend to have limited working memory capacity for understanding.

106
00:08:46.320 --> 00:08:46.920
And I think that's a good point.

107
00:08:47.940 --> 00:08:59.300
We are finite creatures, but we can get better and better and better at compressing important insights into simple terms.

108
00:09:00.300 --> 00:09:05.300
And I think that this is actually a big part of how science progresses.

109
00:09:06.520 --> 00:09:16.120
It's like the predictive hierarchy in the brain of simple things get fed into feature detectors, get summarized.

110
00:09:17.940 --> 00:09:21.280
That result gets fed into higher level feature detectors and so on.

111
00:09:21.640 --> 00:09:31.420
And this doesn't directly speak to your awareness question, but I think it's like an important thing.

112
00:09:32.880 --> 00:09:42.280
And in terms of awareness, interesting.

113
00:09:43.220 --> 00:09:43.820
Okay.

114
00:09:44.520 --> 00:09:45.400
I'll go there.

115
00:09:46.460 --> 00:09:47.060
So.

116
00:09:48.340 --> 00:09:53.020
I tend to, people tell me that I live in a different world.

117
00:09:54.240 --> 00:10:00.000
That I had some archetype reading that, and

118
00:10:00.880 --> 00:10:03.980
guy said, well, wow, you're like a rare archetype.

119
00:10:04.060 --> 00:10:06.160
You're the fae archetype.

120
00:10:06.340 --> 00:10:09.660
Like you live in the faerie, magical world.

121
00:10:09.880 --> 00:10:10.800
And I was like, really?

122
00:10:12.680 --> 00:10:14.300
Is that good?

123
00:10:15.300 --> 00:10:18.100
But actually, I think, okay, like, I'll own it.

124
00:10:18.160 --> 00:10:18.540
Yes.

125
00:10:19.200 --> 00:10:24.600
And then he said that my second archetype was kind of the scholar archetype.

126
00:10:26.040 --> 00:10:33.000
When you focus, when you concentrate, you try to really understand how it works.

127
00:10:33.580 --> 00:10:48.940
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.

128
00:10:49.060 --> 00:10:53.460
Like, I think I see things that other people don't.

129
00:10:54.600 --> 00:10:55.060
I don't.

130
00:10:55.060 --> 00:10:55.800
And so on.

131
00:10:56.120 --> 00:11:11.680
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.

132
00:11:13.740 --> 00:11:23.340
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.

133
00:11:24.220 --> 00:11:33.940
A lot of pioneers who bridge scientific and contemplative traditions, there's a particular taste or essence of attention or presence that I think

134
00:11:33.940 --> 00:11:36.260
I'm a rare person.

135
00:11:37.480 --> 00:11:37.900
I'm a rare person.

136
00:11:40.940 --> 00:11:42.040
I'm a rare person.

137
00:11:44.200 --> 00:11:44.980
I'm a rare person.

138
00:11:47.300 --> 00:11:48.860
I'm a rare person.

139
00:11:50.940 --> 00:11:54.500
I'm a rare person.

140
00:11:54.600 --> 00:11:58.440
of the archetype or the way you approach this, it seems to be integrated.

141
00:11:59.820 --> 00:12:03.480
And that shows in the way that you're curious about questions and the kinds

142
00:12:03.480 --> 00:12:05.240
of questions that you're curious about.

143
00:12:05.700 --> 00:12:10.060
So I guess to kind of fill it off of that, when I'm thinking about your

144
00:12:10.060 --> 00:12:12.620
background, your way of thinking, the way you've developed this mindset,

145
00:12:13.940 --> 00:12:18.980
what experiences or insights led you to establish the Institute and to explore

146
00:12:18.980 --> 00:12:24.080
this specific intersection of consciousness and neuroscience in essence, like what

147
00:12:24.600 --> 00:12:28.940
drew you to such a niche and very challenging question that would be

148
00:12:28.940 --> 00:12:30.560
perhaps not to share others?

149
00:12:31.440 --> 00:12:31.740
Yeah.

150
00:12:32.300 --> 00:12:40.220
So I mean the core answer here is going to be for me, it's deeply personal.

151
00:12:41.720 --> 00:12:48.860
That there is no sort of boundary between my, my emotional life and the work that

152
00:12:48.860 --> 00:12:51.800
I'm doing, it's all kind of one, one thing.

153
00:12:52.380 --> 00:12:52.980
And

154
00:12:54.760 --> 00:12:59.880
in that sense it's a bit more like art than science.

155
00:13:02.080 --> 00:13:06.640
And yeah, that, that would be interesting to get into, but I think that

156
00:13:10.540 --> 00:13:19.340
as a young man and okay, I'm still young, but you know, in my twenties,

157
00:13:21.440 --> 00:13:22.960
I was a little angsty.

158
00:13:23.060 --> 00:13:23.460
I was

159
00:13:24.600 --> 00:13:24.900
depressed.

160
00:13:25.020 --> 00:13:34.920
I was like looking for a place to put my energy and and I just was you know, really, I mean,

161
00:13:34.920 --> 00:13:41.140
interested in okay you know what is pain and pleasure that feels important.

162
00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:49.740
And and my dad was struggling with depression and I love my dad and I wanted to help him.

163
00:13:51.140 --> 00:13:52.280
And I think that

164
00:13:53.400 --> 00:13:53.960
like,

165
00:13:55.600 --> 00:13:56.180
looking around

166
00:14:00.480 --> 00:14:06.900
consciousness felt like the biggest dragon and the biggest dragon to slay.

167
00:14:07.780 --> 00:14:11.300
And I completely didn't know what I was getting into.

168
00:14:11.580 --> 00:14:16.360
But I had enough intrinsic motivation and curiosity.

169
00:14:16.660 --> 00:14:23.220
And I felt I didn't need any immediate result.

170
00:14:23.540 --> 00:14:25.460
And I was willing.

171
00:14:25.480 --> 00:14:25.580
I was willing.

172
00:14:27.020 --> 00:14:35.320
to front the energy without expectation of a return, that I just went for it.

173
00:14:36.420 --> 00:14:44.360
And I think that over time, this motivation has changed a little bit.

174
00:14:45.440 --> 00:14:53.620
And it's not just getting aimed at a problem and trying to slay the dragon.

175
00:14:56.200 --> 00:14:58.540
It has historically been a substantial thing.

176
00:14:58.920 --> 00:14:59.840
But more

177
00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:27.860
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

178
00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:57.560
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

179
00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:27.740
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

180
00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:57.900
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

181
00:16:58.880 --> 00:17:08.200
just this sense that okay like I'm I'm just gonna do the thing and you know at that point

182
00:17:10.480 --> 00:17:19.880
there was little I would say prior art in this research space or this like this lifestyle we can say

183
00:17:21.120 --> 00:17:22.900
and I think that

184
00:17:26.660 --> 00:17:27.760
perhaps one of

185
00:17:27.760 --> 00:17:27.840
the

186
00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:36.760
The challenges in any entrepreneurial work is, I guess, what might be called the valley of eligibility.

187
00:17:38.380 --> 00:17:42.560
Of, you know, you start, maybe you have a nice normal job.

188
00:17:43.620 --> 00:17:45.720
You know what's going on.

189
00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:52.900
And then you feel like, okay, there's this treasure a long ways away, but you can feel it.

190
00:17:53.440 --> 00:17:55.500
And then so you quit your job.

191
00:17:55.520 --> 00:17:57.140
You start kind of researching.

192
00:17:58.000 --> 00:17:58.380
You start exploring.

193
00:17:58.940 --> 00:18:17.420
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.

194
00:18:18.540 --> 00:18:25.640
And then perhaps much more significantly, you can't explain to yourself what you're doing or why.

195
00:18:26.220 --> 00:18:27.480
You just know it's important.

196
00:18:29.380 --> 00:18:42.500
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.

197
00:18:43.780 --> 00:18:45.580
That's a very strong way to put it.

198
00:18:46.560 --> 00:18:53.620
And I guess to kind of link back to your current work and how that's evolved over the years, how has that changed?

199
00:18:53.620 --> 00:18:59.460
So if you first started with the basic computation, I'm sure you described it, explored it in many different forms.

200
00:18:59.940 --> 00:19:05.600
I'm curious how that's evolved over time as your research has progressed and made new connections.

201
00:19:06.680 --> 00:19:17.740
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?

202
00:19:18.060 --> 00:19:19.220
Right, right.

203
00:19:19.500 --> 00:19:23.600
Well, the rabbit hole here goes pretty deep.

204
00:19:27.900 --> 00:19:38.360
At QRI, when I was there, I would always say, you know, the project is a very long-term project.

205
00:19:39.420 --> 00:19:51.340
And the basic pattern is that if you actually, if we're doing better philosophy, then that should ultimately cash out in better neuroscience.

206
00:19:52.460 --> 00:19:53.600
And then if we're doing...

207
00:19:53.620 --> 00:20:00.000
If we're doing better neuroscience, that should ultimately cash out in some actual useful neurotech.

208
00:20:01.080 --> 00:20:27.300
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

209
00:20:30.260 --> 00:20:57.140
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.

210
00:20:59.360 --> 00:21:27.760
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

211
00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:57.480
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.

212
00:22:00.620 --> 00:22:16.780
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.

213
00:22:18.620 --> 00:22:27.200
So I think that there's a really rich metaphor of treating the brain as like in neural annealing.

214
00:22:27.280 --> 00:22:27.800
I'm excited.

215
00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:29.920
suggested basically treating it like a metal.

216
00:22:30.540 --> 00:22:31.940
Metals can get hard and brittle.

217
00:22:32.140 --> 00:22:33.780
To fix that, you heat them up.

218
00:22:34.600 --> 00:22:39.260
You get this entropic disintegration and then like things cool down.

219
00:22:39.360 --> 00:22:43.280
And then so the metaphor goes pretty deep with that.

220
00:22:44.580 --> 00:22:50.780
And then third, so all this is kind of backstory to the question of

221
00:22:51.520 --> 00:22:55.680
vessel computation and where did vessel computation come from?

222
00:22:55.680 --> 00:23:02.320
And and also how is, how has it evolved since I, I posted it?

223
00:23:03.900 --> 00:23:16.720
I think that like I, this sort of, this sort of proximate cause for vessel computation.

224
00:23:17.560 --> 00:23:24.500
I would describe there's this question of what is tension trying to do for us?

225
00:23:28.900 --> 00:23:36.220
And my sort of initial thesis was that it's the nervous system's immune system.

226
00:23:37.760 --> 00:23:45.440
That the body has an immune system if a virus or bacteria comes in and starts to cause trouble.

227
00:23:45.540 --> 00:23:49.720
We have these T-cells and killer cells and whatnot.

228
00:23:50.140 --> 00:23:56.420
And so we have an immune system for sort of friend and enemy distinction.

229
00:23:56.680 --> 00:24:00.880
But then, I mean, we have computer viruses as well.

230
00:24:01.500 --> 00:24:03.640
And they're just information.

231
00:24:03.820 --> 00:24:04.580
They're just code.

232
00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:10.260
And we can say viruses are just code, but they are a little bit more physical.

233
00:24:11.420 --> 00:24:24.020
And so my thesis was that just trying to understand how the nervous system shuts down rogue patterns, we could say.

234
00:24:25.980 --> 00:24:31.860
And so I was, you know, then, you know, did a bunch of permutations.

235
00:24:32.420 --> 00:24:34.640
Okay, like, how does this work?

236
00:24:34.680 --> 00:24:35.180
How does that work?

237
00:24:36.100 --> 00:24:40.740
And just kind of tension as stopping resonance, we could say.

238
00:24:41.540 --> 00:24:47.640
That if you have this vibrating system, you know, if you clamp your fingers over it, it'll stop vibrating.

239
00:24:48.680 --> 00:24:52.160
And maybe that's what the body is trying to do with tension.

240
00:24:54.020 --> 00:24:59.180
Then I got into the Tanha angle.

241
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:05.240
And big props to both Romeo Stevens and Nick Camarata.

242
00:25:05.920 --> 00:25:12.700
They really laid it out in a way that was easy for me to then take and run with.

243
00:25:14.080 --> 00:25:24.180
So I think yeah, and then vasocomputation turned out to be this kind of very simple on-off thing where

244
00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:33.200
Clenching stabilizes patterns in a local sense.

245
00:25:34.600 --> 00:25:41.580
And then, but we can then kind of light up all these domains of where you have the Buddhist

246
00:25:41.580 --> 00:25:49.540
phenomenology and all the terms in Buddhism. Then you have the predictive coding active

247
00:25:49.540 --> 00:25:56.980
inference frame and all those terms. And then you have actual physical anatomy,

248
00:25:57.940 --> 00:26:08.580
neuroanatomy, but not only in the brain too. And the really exciting thing with finding these kind

249
00:26:08.580 --> 00:26:18.760
of domains to kind of line up is that any term in one domain should have an analog. And I appreciate

250
00:26:18.760 --> 00:26:19.080
your

251
00:26:19.920 --> 00:26:25.700
organizational name here. Should have an analog in all the other domains that you have lined up.

252
00:26:26.000 --> 00:26:31.820
And if it doesn't, well, that's interesting. Like you can say, okay, like maybe one of the

253
00:26:31.820 --> 00:26:40.060
domains is like different or maybe our models are wrong. And so it was exciting to say that, okay,

254
00:26:41.480 --> 00:26:48.920
mental tension is a prediction is vascular tension. And just being able to draw that line.

255
00:26:52.020 --> 00:26:55.500
So vessel computation launched in

256
00:26:55.500 --> 00:26:58.120
In kind of a minimum viable product way.

257
00:26:59.460 --> 00:27:08.060
And then has so I think it's gone through at least a 0.5 revision.

258
00:27:08.760 --> 00:27:18.900
So I'd say the talk that I gave at Siddhiana would be 1.5. And so that added so it's like

259
00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:24.600
tension is a prediction is vascular tension. It was like part of the foundation.

260
00:27:25.500 --> 00:27:39.480
And like latches, so on. I think I've since then really seen this in much better detail. And I see

261
00:27:39.480 --> 00:27:54.420
this as a very I think we very subtly adjust tension to think and this idea of so the 1.5 in my

262
00:27:54.420 --> 00:27:54.760
edge the

263
00:27:55.500 --> 00:28:03.920
line of talk kind of split this into two of well, there's this feeling that maybe the self

264
00:28:04.620 --> 00:28:14.460
is composed of latches, hard invariance, things being kept invariant. And this is a defensive

265
00:28:14.460 --> 00:28:24.980
thing. This is a it's in a sense, a necessary stage for us to survive in the world.

266
00:28:25.500 --> 00:28:32.140
And especially in a social world. If you don't have a self, you have no boundaries.

267
00:28:33.180 --> 00:28:41.300
The things are not going to go well with you or in interactions. But then the metaphor of

268
00:28:42.860 --> 00:28:51.960
if I posted this in response to one of the next few weeks ago, that this idea that kind of latches

269
00:28:51.960 --> 00:28:55.480
are tying the bonsai tree. And then the idea that kind of latches are tying the bonsai tree.

270
00:28:56.680 --> 00:29:04.860
into a certain pattern. And then it grows into that pattern. And then after it's grown into the

271
00:29:04.860 --> 00:29:12.840
pattern, you can actually release the latches. And it'll say like this. And it's a free upgrade.

272
00:29:15.320 --> 00:29:23.940
So yeah, a lot of deep stuff there. And then the other thing that I think came with 1.5 was

273
00:29:25.360 --> 00:29:26.480
having a lot more depth.

274
00:29:26.500 --> 00:29:34.020
or appreciation for the basal computation system as the hand of the mind.

275
00:29:35.100 --> 00:29:41.760
And I think that there's a lot of detail there in terms of what is aphantasia.

276
00:29:42.820 --> 00:29:47.440
Aphantasia as an inability to hold a certain class of patterns.

277
00:29:48.260 --> 00:29:54.800
It's just your hand of the mind just doesn't reach there, you can say.

278
00:29:56.500 --> 00:29:58.920
This would tell the story about how...

279
00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:08.360
we all have these weird deficits in terms of what we can say wise.

280
00:30:08.620 --> 00:30:24.040
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.

281
00:30:24.040 --> 00:30:28.720
So you can picture things better than I can.

282
00:30:29.220 --> 00:30:32.580
But I do think that ultimately this is a trainable thing.

283
00:30:34.780 --> 00:30:38.000
So I'm going to pause there and invite questions.

284
00:30:39.080 --> 00:30:50.580
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.

285
00:30:50.780 --> 00:30:53.160
I think the way that you break it down makes it really clear.

286
00:30:54.040 --> 00:31:00.000
It comes from a computer engineering background or comes from a medical background, comes from a philosophical background.

287
00:31:00.080 --> 00:31:17.640
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.

288
00:31:18.460 --> 00:31:20.000
Peral, you look if you have a question.

289
00:31:21.280 --> 00:31:22.380
I do, yeah.

290
00:31:23.400 --> 00:31:24.020
I have a question.

291
00:31:24.040 --> 00:31:28.940
I have a question about stabilizing patterns and getting proper reference.

292
00:31:29.400 --> 00:31:39.920
So if I recall correctly, I've read you express narcissism, for example, as the ability to stabilize the self.

293
00:31:40.840 --> 00:31:49.480
And if the same goes for aphantasia and for many other ways of being.

294
00:31:50.840 --> 00:31:53.180
The question that comes to my mind is.

295
00:31:55.520 --> 00:32:11.880
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?

296
00:32:12.100 --> 00:32:22.140
I saw you tweet something about how thinking hurts if you attempt to stabilize unfamiliar mental processes.

297
00:32:22.640 --> 00:32:23.360
So.

298
00:32:24.040 --> 00:32:35.040
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?

299
00:32:36.160 --> 00:32:36.880
Yeah.

300
00:32:40.020 --> 00:32:46.740
This is a big, huge problem, question, opportunity.

301
00:32:47.980 --> 00:32:49.260
I would say that.

302
00:32:50.260 --> 00:32:53.640
I mean, given that we all have big deficits.

303
00:32:54.040 --> 00:32:54.620
In the system.

304
00:32:54.960 --> 00:32:56.960
This is relevant for all of us.

305
00:32:57.760 --> 00:33:01.320
And I think it's especially relevant for sort of understanding.

306
00:33:01.720 --> 00:33:02.320
You know.

307
00:33:03.220 --> 00:33:04.180
I think that.

308
00:33:07.020 --> 00:33:10.580
Not all bad behavior in the world is due to suffering.

309
00:33:10.840 --> 00:33:12.340
But a lot of it is.

310
00:33:13.840 --> 00:33:14.360
So.

311
00:33:15.360 --> 00:33:16.300
I think that.

312
00:33:16.800 --> 00:33:17.320
Like.

313
00:33:18.360 --> 00:33:20.160
I'd start to tell the story.

314
00:33:20.680 --> 00:33:21.880
By talking about.

315
00:33:24.560 --> 00:33:25.220
Parental love.

316
00:33:26.580 --> 00:33:27.080
And.

317
00:33:27.800 --> 00:33:29.020
This is obviously.

318
00:33:29.740 --> 00:33:32.060
At the root of a lot of attachment dynamics.

319
00:33:32.620 --> 00:33:33.120
Attachment.

320
00:33:33.340 --> 00:33:34.380
Is very essential.

321
00:33:34.640 --> 00:33:36.000
For how we are.

322
00:33:36.640 --> 00:33:37.660
And I think that.

323
00:33:37.920 --> 00:33:38.540
You know.

324
00:33:38.580 --> 00:33:39.940
As kind of a simple scenario.

325
00:33:40.500 --> 00:33:41.260
You're born.

326
00:33:41.540 --> 00:33:42.040
And.

327
00:33:42.860 --> 00:33:44.040
Hopefully mom loves you.

328
00:33:44.320 --> 00:33:45.660
And when like.

329
00:33:46.280 --> 00:33:47.640
You're right there next to mom.

330
00:33:47.880 --> 00:33:48.760
You feel that.

331
00:33:49.980 --> 00:33:50.720
And then.

332
00:33:50.960 --> 00:33:51.860
Maybe you get.

333
00:33:51.880 --> 00:33:52.500
A little bit bigger.

334
00:33:53.000 --> 00:33:54.180
Mom leaves the room.

335
00:33:54.420 --> 00:33:55.320
You start crying.

336
00:33:56.400 --> 00:33:57.600
But you learn that.

337
00:33:57.640 --> 00:33:57.760
Oh.

338
00:33:58.020 --> 00:33:59.940
Even if mom is in the other room.

339
00:34:00.380 --> 00:34:01.300
Things are okay.

340
00:34:02.220 --> 00:34:03.640
Like mom still exists.

341
00:34:04.440 --> 00:34:05.520
You develop some.

342
00:34:05.620 --> 00:34:06.380
Object permanence.

343
00:34:07.040 --> 00:34:07.740
And then.

344
00:34:08.400 --> 00:34:09.040
You get.

345
00:34:09.200 --> 00:34:09.860
Bigger still.

346
00:34:10.160 --> 00:34:11.140
And then maybe.

347
00:34:11.760 --> 00:34:12.700
You start kindergarten.

348
00:34:13.100 --> 00:34:14.780
And you're away from mom for.

349
00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:15.820
Half a day.

350
00:34:16.060 --> 00:34:16.440
And.

351
00:34:16.520 --> 00:34:17.100
Oh my gosh.

352
00:34:17.160 --> 00:34:17.680
This is like.

353
00:34:17.740 --> 00:34:18.320
Super stressful.

354
00:34:19.300 --> 00:34:19.780
Or.

355
00:34:19.860 --> 00:34:20.160
You know.

356
00:34:20.180 --> 00:34:20.700
For some kids.

357
00:34:21.380 --> 00:34:21.860
But.

358
00:34:21.880 --> 00:34:22.820
But you kind of learn.

359
00:34:22.900 --> 00:34:23.160
Okay.

360
00:34:23.300 --> 00:34:23.600
You know.

361
00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:24.940
Mom's still at home.

362
00:34:25.560 --> 00:34:26.500
She still exists.

363
00:34:27.660 --> 00:34:28.060
Like.

364
00:34:28.120 --> 00:34:28.520
It's okay.

365
00:34:29.160 --> 00:34:29.800
And then.

366
00:34:30.100 --> 00:34:30.580
You know.

367
00:34:30.620 --> 00:34:31.220
You go to college.

368
00:34:31.460 --> 00:34:32.280
Maybe you call mom.

369
00:34:32.980 --> 00:34:33.200
You know.

370
00:34:34.360 --> 00:34:35.380
Some might call mom.

371
00:34:35.560 --> 00:34:35.860
You know.

372
00:34:35.920 --> 00:34:36.620
Once a day.

373
00:34:37.040 --> 00:34:37.440
Some.

374
00:34:37.560 --> 00:34:38.200
Once a week.

375
00:34:38.400 --> 00:34:39.140
Some once a month.

376
00:34:39.260 --> 00:34:39.720
Some never.

377
00:34:40.040 --> 00:34:40.520
You know.

378
00:34:40.520 --> 00:34:40.920
Who knows.

379
00:34:41.380 --> 00:34:41.780
But.

380
00:34:42.140 --> 00:34:42.540
Essentially.

381
00:34:46.440 --> 00:34:47.560
What is that feeling.

382
00:34:48.000 --> 00:34:48.400
That.

383
00:34:48.640 --> 00:34:49.180
Sort of.

384
00:34:49.420 --> 00:34:49.820
Comes.

385
00:34:50.500 --> 00:34:51.680
When you feel loved.

386
00:34:51.880 --> 00:34:52.520
When you feel safe.

387
00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:53.440
And.

388
00:34:53.600 --> 00:34:54.380
I think it is.

389
00:34:54.420 --> 00:34:55.340
Just this kind of.

390
00:34:55.500 --> 00:34:56.480
Feeling of security.

391
00:34:57.080 --> 00:34:57.880
Feeling of safety.

392
00:34:58.680 --> 00:34:59.440
Feeling that.

393
00:35:00.200 --> 00:35:01.720
unsurprising is going to happen.

394
00:35:02.700 --> 00:35:08.680
There's not going to be any sort of crazy large prediction errors, we can say.

395
00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:21.940
And I think basically attachment dynamics is some people learn how to give that to themselves, and some people don't.

396
00:35:23.200 --> 00:35:36.680
And I think that it's hard to summarize this in terms of like labels, narcissism, or whatever.

397
00:35:36.820 --> 00:35:47.120
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.

398
00:35:47.900 --> 00:35:50.600
And so you think, okay, maybe if...

399
00:35:51.940 --> 00:35:55.920
Like, I need attention, and this is how I get it.

400
00:35:57.680 --> 00:36:04.320
And to some degree, I see that as a deficit of vasocomputation.

401
00:36:05.540 --> 00:36:12.900
And I talk about this in terms of we all have a default stance of how we hold ourselves.

402
00:36:13.140 --> 00:36:15.160
And like this has a...

403
00:36:15.160 --> 00:36:17.840
We can talk about it as a pattern of tension.

404
00:36:18.960 --> 00:36:21.920
And then we can take on different stances.

405
00:36:21.940 --> 00:36:24.920
For different situations.

406
00:36:26.380 --> 00:36:38.000
But I think that it's really wholesome if you integrate this feeling of safety, of security, of love into your default stance.

407
00:36:39.340 --> 00:36:49.060
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.

408
00:36:49.080 --> 00:36:50.940
And I guess I would also say phenomenology.

409
00:36:54.720 --> 00:36:56.240
So I also...

410
00:36:56.900 --> 00:37:01.700
There's a friend that used to work for a different institute.

411
00:37:02.520 --> 00:37:07.080
She talked about how Emily is her name.

412
00:37:07.180 --> 00:37:11.920
And she shared that sometimes you get these...

413
00:37:12.620 --> 00:37:16.120
We can talk as if people have utility functions.

414
00:37:16.560 --> 00:37:19.980
And, you know, this is kind of...

415
00:37:19.980 --> 00:37:21.380
I was a little skeptical.

416
00:37:22.940 --> 00:37:23.720
I was like, I'm a little weak and whatnot.

417
00:37:23.860 --> 00:37:25.060
But now I'm like, okay.

418
00:37:25.500 --> 00:37:26.440
We can work with it.

419
00:37:26.660 --> 00:37:34.520
And so sometimes in these utility functions, it's like, you know, do I have a good place to sleep?

420
00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:36.100
Do I have enough food?

421
00:37:36.220 --> 00:37:37.200
Do I have enough status?

422
00:37:37.380 --> 00:37:38.500
Do I have enough, et cetera?

423
00:37:38.660 --> 00:37:40.500
It's kind of do I have my needs?

424
00:37:40.680 --> 00:37:44.860
And from a hierarchy needs perspective or something else.

425
00:37:46.320 --> 00:37:49.360
And sometimes some of these...

426
00:37:50.260 --> 00:37:52.160
Like this equation, we can say.

427
00:37:53.680 --> 00:37:57.380
Sometimes there are quote unquote divide by zero errors.

428
00:37:59.260 --> 00:38:03.100
Where some are multiplied by zero or whatever.

429
00:38:03.260 --> 00:38:05.780
But basically some terms are stuck.

430
00:38:08.420 --> 00:38:11.620
And oh, like my status feels low.

431
00:38:11.880 --> 00:38:13.260
I better get more status.

432
00:38:14.160 --> 00:38:14.800
Okay.

433
00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.960
I like worked hard, but I don't feel like I have more.

434
00:38:20.120 --> 00:38:21.320
Maybe I need to work.

435
00:38:22.200 --> 00:38:22.920
Even more.

436
00:38:22.940 --> 00:38:24.000
And even harder and even harder.

437
00:38:24.690 --> 00:38:35.880
And, you know, if you look at the motivations of the most accomplished people in the world,

438
00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:44.060
I think often you will find these sort of divide by zero or they're multiplied by zero errors.

439
00:38:44.620 --> 00:38:52.920
And with great accomplishment comes great desire to be successful.

440
00:39:02.860 --> 00:39:10.200
And, you know, we could try to dig into that in terms of like maybe some core pattern is latched.

441
00:39:11.680 --> 00:39:14.600
And fixing that would involve opening the latch.

442
00:39:16.820 --> 00:39:20.320
And then it's always a question of, well, do you want it to be fixed?

443
00:39:20.560 --> 00:39:21.080
So...

444
00:39:23.060 --> 00:39:24.320
Yeah, that's fascinating.

445
00:39:25.280 --> 00:39:30.160
Before we dive really deep into the framework,

446
00:39:30.160 --> 00:39:33.820
I wanted to go back to something you said before.

447
00:39:34.600 --> 00:39:38.240
You said two things that I think connect really well.

448
00:39:38.420 --> 00:39:46.520
So one was that you represent this rare archetype where you are different and right.

449
00:39:47.580 --> 00:39:54.800
And you translate what you see, what you think is true and offer it to other people.

450
00:39:55.300 --> 00:40:00.000
And the other thing was that what you do is...

451
00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:05.040
more like art than science. Could you elaborate on that?

452
00:40:05.740 --> 00:40:12.780
Yeah, so, I think that...

453
00:40:16.920 --> 00:40:24.420
I think the art versus science thing is a false distinction

454
00:40:24.420 --> 00:40:31.680
in terms of if you look what the great physicists were doing

455
00:40:31.680 --> 00:40:36.660
and why they were doing it, their sort of mental substructure

456
00:40:36.660 --> 00:40:40.060
or what they felt their role was.

457
00:40:40.580 --> 00:40:42.240
They were absolutely artists.

458
00:40:44.500 --> 00:40:46.220
And they would say so.

459
00:40:46.620 --> 00:40:52.720
And it was this systematic quest for beauty.

460
00:40:54.420 --> 00:40:56.080
And they felt they had this...

461
00:40:57.480 --> 00:41:03.160
They were, you know, maybe we could say uncovering the system that God created.

462
00:41:03.420 --> 00:41:13.440
And, like, you can create beauty through paintings, through music, through movies,

463
00:41:15.460 --> 00:41:21.860
but isn't it especially cool to uncover the beauty of reality?

464
00:41:24.880 --> 00:41:26.020
I think that...

465
00:41:26.020 --> 00:41:30.520
Yeah, I would call most of them artists.

466
00:41:31.680 --> 00:41:32.920
And I think that...

467
00:41:36.200 --> 00:41:38.440
It's like, what is the deliverable?

468
00:41:39.540 --> 00:41:43.040
And, like, this is always a question for researchers.

469
00:41:43.880 --> 00:41:46.680
This, you know, is the deliverable a paper?

470
00:41:46.800 --> 00:41:48.560
Is the deliverable...

471
00:41:50.760 --> 00:41:51.820
a new theory?

472
00:41:52.280 --> 00:41:53.760
Is the deliverable...

473
00:41:54.420 --> 00:41:55.300
a productive institute?

474
00:41:55.440 --> 00:41:56.520
What do you mean by productive?

475
00:41:56.780 --> 00:41:57.440
And so on.

476
00:41:58.480 --> 00:42:00.740
And, like, these are hard questions.

477
00:42:02.200 --> 00:42:05.800
You know, even a banger tweet is...

478
00:42:07.200 --> 00:42:08.700
a potential deliverable.

479
00:42:09.800 --> 00:42:12.060
And, yeah, I think that...

480
00:42:16.240 --> 00:42:18.840
this might sound...

481
00:42:22.460 --> 00:42:28.080
egotistical or haughty or unreal or whatever,

482
00:42:28.220 --> 00:42:30.340
but I think there's kind of this...

483
00:42:32.360 --> 00:42:34.380
this choice of...

484
00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:38.560
what I want my deliverable to be.

485
00:42:38.780 --> 00:42:40.500
And it's...

486
00:42:41.840 --> 00:42:44.240
to live a beautiful life.

487
00:42:45.600 --> 00:42:47.280
And I think...

488
00:42:48.840 --> 00:42:49.700
everyone has their gifts.

489
00:42:50.610 --> 00:42:55.960
And I think it's absolutely necessary to...

490
00:42:56.650 --> 00:42:58.240
if you want to live a beautiful life,

491
00:42:58.380 --> 00:43:00.160
to use your gifts.

492
00:43:00.940 --> 00:43:04.940
And, you know, there's this classic mathematician's apology that...

493
00:43:06.600 --> 00:43:07.800
talks about...

494
00:43:07.800 --> 00:43:10.640
yeah, you make what sacrifices you have to...

495
00:43:10.640 --> 00:43:11.620
to do that.

496
00:43:12.760 --> 00:43:13.780
And so...

497
00:43:13.780 --> 00:43:15.020
I guess...

498
00:43:17.520 --> 00:43:18.720
I'm trying to...

499
00:43:19.560 --> 00:43:20.080
become...

500
00:43:20.080 --> 00:43:21.980
the platonic version of myself.

501
00:43:22.680 --> 00:43:24.120
In terms of, okay...

502
00:43:24.740 --> 00:43:25.840
what are my gifts?

503
00:43:25.920 --> 00:43:27.680
And I'll level down and...

504
00:43:27.680 --> 00:43:28.520
make it work.

505
00:43:32.180 --> 00:43:33.320
I think, like...

506
00:43:33.840 --> 00:43:34.900
the beauty of...

507
00:43:34.900 --> 00:43:36.920
just going back to what you said is...

508
00:43:36.920 --> 00:43:39.920
this synergy of acknowledging what your gifts are,

509
00:43:40.080 --> 00:43:41.980
but also where the deficits might be.

510
00:43:42.060 --> 00:43:42.400
Right.

511
00:43:42.580 --> 00:43:44.520
And understanding that those come together in parallel.

512
00:43:44.680 --> 00:43:45.980
Both truths can exist.

513
00:43:46.240 --> 00:43:48.340
And there will be people who see those gifts...

514
00:43:48.840 --> 00:43:49.940
and there will be people who...

515
00:43:49.940 --> 00:43:52.040
don't love the fact that you don't have...

516
00:43:52.680 --> 00:43:52.920
deliverables.

517
00:43:53.140 --> 00:43:54.800
That there are deficits in the system.

518
00:43:55.040 --> 00:43:56.360
But reconciling the two.

519
00:43:56.780 --> 00:43:58.480
But I'll let Carol go into...

520
00:43:58.480 --> 00:44:01.080
his deeper deep dive before we go back into those.

521
00:44:01.420 --> 00:44:01.900
Yeah.

522
00:44:03.020 --> 00:44:04.220
One thing that...

523
00:44:04.820 --> 00:44:06.220
came up as you were...

524
00:44:06.220 --> 00:44:07.780
answering the question was...

525
00:44:08.260 --> 00:44:08.740
how...

526
00:44:09.860 --> 00:44:11.860
the nature of that work is...

527
00:44:11.860 --> 00:44:12.540
very...

528
00:44:13.100 --> 00:44:13.580
integrative.

529
00:44:13.680 --> 00:44:14.280
You know, like...

530
00:44:14.680 --> 00:44:17.860
I think it was Alan Watts who said that you cannot be a good...

531
00:44:18.840 --> 00:44:20.160
artist unless you are also...

532
00:44:20.160 --> 00:44:23.080
a philosopher and you cannot be a good philosopher...

533
00:44:23.520 --> 00:44:24.560
unless you are...

534
00:44:24.560 --> 00:44:26.040
something of a mystic.

535
00:44:26.500 --> 00:44:28.580
You know, these things aren't separate.

536
00:44:29.660 --> 00:44:30.000
They...

537
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:33.280
inform one another and they develop at the same time...

538
00:44:33.840 --> 00:44:35.580
eventually converging...

539
00:44:35.580 --> 00:44:37.680
at a worldview that is...

540
00:44:37.680 --> 00:44:38.820
coherent and...

541
00:44:38.820 --> 00:44:39.300
integrated.

542
00:44:39.600 --> 00:44:41.200
So I wanted to ask...

543
00:44:41.680 --> 00:44:42.340
you know...

544
00:44:42.340 --> 00:44:43.800
your journey...

545
00:44:43.800 --> 00:44:47.540
as you are discovering new areas of interest...

546
00:44:48.840 --> 00:44:49.980
new ways of looking...

547
00:44:50.700 --> 00:44:52.120
how did you decide...

548
00:44:52.120 --> 00:44:53.520
what was worth...

549
00:44:53.520 --> 00:44:54.100
integrating?

550
00:44:54.520 --> 00:44:55.480
Do you have...

551
00:44:55.480 --> 00:44:57.480
like a North Star you used to...

552
00:44:57.480 --> 00:44:59.040
navigate these waters?

553
00:44:59.320 --> 00:44:59.980
Do you...

554
00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:07.380
tend to follow what seems to be interesting or maybe there is some other epistemic principle at play?

555
00:45:11.520 --> 00:45:26.980
I would say that one of my first moves in my twenties was to appreciate this idea of ruin value.

556
00:45:28.280 --> 00:45:34.280
This idea that, okay, you know, you have all these Roman ruins and they're actually beautiful.

557
00:45:34.680 --> 00:45:38.720
They might be more beautiful than they were when they were, you know, fully intact.

558
00:45:40.460 --> 00:45:55.600
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.

559
00:45:57.800 --> 00:46:02.080
For sure, like it's better to have beautiful ideas than not.

560
00:46:02.180 --> 00:46:02.880
Absolutely.

561
00:46:03.400 --> 00:46:08.360
But, you know, maybe tomorrow they'll be gone.

562
00:46:10.800 --> 00:46:25.580
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.

563
00:46:25.600 --> 00:46:34.080
sort of continual energy we could say something that you know would have at least some small

564
00:46:34.080 --> 00:46:41.040
amount of room and what i realized is i simply had to learn to write

565
00:46:44.440 --> 00:46:51.600
and because the writing value of or ruin value of writing can be very substantial

566
00:46:52.760 --> 00:46:58.740
and if you don't know how to put things into words to crystallize things

567
00:47:00.300 --> 00:47:11.280
it's really hard to have substantial group value then so that was one big realization for me that

568
00:47:11.280 --> 00:47:21.580
words are very just so powerful and then just in terms of well so i i see myself as a very

569
00:47:21.600 --> 00:47:30.760
myself, like sometimes I want to almost retreat into mysticism or whatever and be like, okay,

570
00:47:30.840 --> 00:47:36.880
you know, guys, I gave you the ideas you figured out, but then it's okay.

571
00:47:37.060 --> 00:47:41.440
You know, that's not really the, the long-term play.

572
00:47:42.840 --> 00:47:50.260
And I think that so in there's this recent AI paper.

573
00:47:52.600 --> 00:47:56.580
And, you know, kicked off a bunch of controversy on, on Twitter.

574
00:47:56.800 --> 00:48:04.640
And I think that like one thing that really stuck out of me was this focus on research

575
00:48:04.640 --> 00:48:05.000
taste.

576
00:48:06.660 --> 00:48:10.920
And there's this, like, I think research taste is everything.

577
00:48:11.660 --> 00:48:18.020
It's really, I think it's this invisible thing.

578
00:48:18.020 --> 00:48:23.100
That's 90% of the task, like have good taste.

579
00:48:24.250 --> 00:48:35.760
And I think that yeah, I think that insofar as I have succeeded, it's because I have good

580
00:48:35.760 --> 00:48:36.380
research taste.

581
00:48:36.950 --> 00:48:44.420
Like I know what topics are important and I know what good answers look like.

582
00:48:46.430 --> 00:48:47.300
And I think that.

583
00:48:47.590 --> 00:48:48.000
A lot of the time.

584
00:48:48.020 --> 00:48:52.260
A lot of this is just kind of understanding what.

585
00:48:53.900 --> 00:48:59.940
One of my favorite phrases is to have knowledge, you need a place to put knowledge.

586
00:49:01.480 --> 00:49:09.400
And just appreciating kind of what shape of container is needed for different kinds of knowledge.

587
00:49:10.380 --> 00:49:17.360
Once you understand the shape, you know, the periodic, excuse me, periodic table is this beautiful example that

588
00:49:19.020 --> 00:49:29.720
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.

589
00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:32.880
But then there's so much information here.

590
00:49:33.320 --> 00:49:37.740
And like you can tell so much about like where to put an element.

591
00:49:38.440 --> 00:49:40.300
You know how reactive it is.

592
00:49:40.400 --> 00:49:41.560
You know, it's other properties.

593
00:49:42.920 --> 00:49:48.120
And if there's a gap, you know that something will be found to fill that gap.

594
00:49:48.240 --> 00:49:48.940
It's like element.

595
00:49:49.020 --> 00:49:51.440
You know, 37 or 52 or whatever.

596
00:49:52.200 --> 00:49:53.940
It's going to be, it's going to be found.

597
00:49:55.000 --> 00:50:00.000
And so that's the typical example of a

598
00:50:00.420 --> 00:50:04.240
container for knowledge that we did really good at.

599
00:50:05.280 --> 00:50:16.320
And I think that for me, like, a lot of this, like, so much confusion is about people aren't

600
00:50:16.320 --> 00:50:23.360
clear what, like, people might have some kind of element of knowledge, but they're not clear

601
00:50:23.360 --> 00:50:25.620
about the container.

602
00:50:28.320 --> 00:50:32.660
So, yeah, I guess, like, part of my background is in the philosophy of science.

603
00:50:32.900 --> 00:50:38.020
And I feel like that's, like, most philosophy is bullshit.

604
00:50:39.660 --> 00:50:42.740
But and all philosophers would agree with that.

605
00:50:42.840 --> 00:50:46.500
It's just that they would disagree about the 5% that isn't BS.

606
00:50:48.000 --> 00:50:53.320
But I think that philosophy of science was very helpful for me just to kind of get a

607
00:50:53.320 --> 00:50:55.600
sense of, like, philosophy of science.

608
00:50:55.620 --> 00:51:00.320
How paradigms work, what kind of thing knowledge is, et cetera.

609
00:51:00.500 --> 00:51:03.720
And, and also just kind of what languages as well.

610
00:51:03.840 --> 00:51:05.520
Big fan of Wittgenstein.

611
00:51:09.360 --> 00:51:18.380
Speaking of people one can be a big fan of, I wanted to ask you about the ideas of Ray

612
00:51:18.380 --> 00:51:18.780
Pitt.

613
00:51:19.180 --> 00:51:24.440
And specifically, you know, many people are now discovering Ray Pitt.

614
00:51:25.040 --> 00:51:25.600
How do you see Ray Pitt?

615
00:51:25.620 --> 00:51:32.620
and his ideas and there is a substantial following of his online in social media.

616
00:51:32.900 --> 00:51:41.480
So some of the common reactions I'm seeing to his work, coming from someone who's new to it,

617
00:51:41.560 --> 00:51:51.740
is that his approach could be seen as cultish or overly reductive or maybe a little too radical in some aspects,

618
00:51:51.740 --> 00:51:55.620
you know, like the complete rejection of seed oils, stuff like this.

619
00:51:56.460 --> 00:52:05.380
So I'm curious, what convinced you personally that there is genuine value in Ray Pitt's theories?

620
00:52:06.480 --> 00:52:09.220
How do you see them connecting to fossil computation?

621
00:52:10.530 --> 00:52:12.260
Yeah, yeah. Great question.

622
00:52:14.780 --> 00:52:19.820
Before I start, I'll point out that I have my PD things here.

623
00:52:20.300 --> 00:52:21.520
I'm cooking an oil.

624
00:52:22.600 --> 00:52:23.640
Marmalade, vitamin.

625
00:52:24.260 --> 00:52:24.780
Yes.

626
00:52:27.160 --> 00:52:27.680
Yeah.

627
00:52:29.700 --> 00:52:31.280
I'm a big fan of Ray Pitt.

628
00:52:32.900 --> 00:52:38.560
And if I had to put that, put why into words,

629
00:52:39.800 --> 00:52:42.220
I mean, many ways to go here.

630
00:52:43.340 --> 00:52:44.140
One is,

631
00:52:46.960 --> 00:52:49.200
I think he really, like,

632
00:52:51.800 --> 00:52:56.740
there's this phrase that sounds derogatory, but it's totally a compliment.

633
00:52:57.980 --> 00:52:59.980
He was a schizovatist.

634
00:53:02.480 --> 00:53:11.140
And, you know, it's like he really felt things very viscerally.

635
00:53:11.960 --> 00:53:14.680
And then he tried to put it into a system.

636
00:53:15.200 --> 00:53:19.180
And that's a good recipe for either insanity or, you know,

637
00:53:19.200 --> 00:53:20.180
something really nice.

638
00:53:21.820 --> 00:53:34.480
And for Pete specifically, I think, like, he seems just like the base was just a man who was very curious.

639
00:53:34.840 --> 00:53:41.580
And of course, his thyroid got destroyed by a fluoroscopy when he was like six or whatever.

640
00:53:41.700 --> 00:53:47.120
So he had to figure out this sort of bioenergetics of the body.

641
00:53:47.640 --> 00:53:49.180
And, you know, I think that's a good thing.

642
00:53:49.200 --> 00:53:49.500
I mean,

643
00:53:51.820 --> 00:53:57.440
like a couple of his sort of core quotes would be that

644
00:53:57.440 --> 00:54:02.920
as energy flows through tissue, order accumulates.

645
00:54:05.300 --> 00:54:09.460
And energy and structure are interdependent at every level.

646
00:54:10.760 --> 00:54:17.300
And I think that this idea that we are at the core,

647
00:54:19.200 --> 00:54:21.480
to understand what is a human,

648
00:54:22.200 --> 00:54:28.300
we should understand this kind of structure just kind of built around our metabolism.

649
00:54:30.120 --> 00:54:32.940
And, you know, there are various metabolic pathways.

650
00:54:33.420 --> 00:54:37.740
Oxidative metabolism is particularly efficient and so on.

651
00:54:38.180 --> 00:54:45.560
And then as energy flows through this system, structure accumulates.

652
00:54:45.560 --> 00:54:49.240
It's a very sort of powerful model.

653
00:54:49.560 --> 00:54:57.040
And like then because it allows you to diagnose problems as metabolic problems,

654
00:54:57.220 --> 00:54:59.880
this structure is degrading

655
00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:07.300
because the metabolism is broken. And if you fix the metabolism, then you can regenerate the structure.

656
00:55:09.180 --> 00:55:22.440
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.

657
00:55:23.360 --> 00:55:31.320
He's known for the anti-seed oil stuff. And I think it's just correct.

658
00:55:31.640 --> 00:55:48.440
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.

659
00:55:48.680 --> 00:55:52.380
In terms of connectivity.

660
00:55:52.440 --> 00:55:54.980
I think the most important thing is connecting peat and vasocomputation.

661
00:55:55.480 --> 00:56:05.440
So this I would say you're going to get a vasocomputation 2.0 beta 1.

662
00:56:07.380 --> 00:56:12.000
So I would say that first of all,

663
00:56:13.740 --> 00:56:20.760
I have some kind of meme posts on Twitter talking about metabolic enlightenment.

664
00:56:22.980 --> 00:56:32.740
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.

665
00:56:34.240 --> 00:56:35.240
Could be related.

666
00:56:36.800 --> 00:56:42.660
And I guess there's the stick in the carrot here.

667
00:56:43.840 --> 00:56:45.780
The good part and the bad part.

668
00:56:46.060 --> 00:56:51.760
The good part is, yeah, like maybe if we rubbed our metabolisms up,

669
00:56:52.440 --> 00:56:56.460
it would be easier to, for example, like open latches.

670
00:56:57.840 --> 00:57:04.280
The bad part is like on average, our metabolisms tend to be on the low side.

671
00:57:04.500 --> 00:57:11.620
Historically speaking, that over the past 150 years or so, we've lost about a degree Fahrenheit.

672
00:57:13.640 --> 00:57:18.600
For body temperature and this being a pretty good proxy for metabolic rate.

673
00:57:21.340 --> 00:57:23.640
So like that would be one angle.

674
00:57:23.900 --> 00:57:29.980
And one thing that I'm extremely excited about in this space is like laying out.

675
00:57:30.180 --> 00:57:30.700
Okay.

676
00:57:30.760 --> 00:57:39.480
Like what would a repeat meditation retreat protocol would like?

677
00:57:40.180 --> 00:57:46.480
Like no seed oils, a lot of red light, CO2, like baking soda before bed and so on.

678
00:57:47.080 --> 00:57:48.580
And just like, you know,

679
00:57:50.340 --> 00:57:57.000
it's not going to do the work for you, but on the margin, it could be extremely powerful.

680
00:57:57.700 --> 00:58:05.460
Like certainly, you know, it could be the difference between, you know, if you do a 50 person retreat.

681
00:58:07.660 --> 00:58:09.440
How many people get breakthroughs?

682
00:58:09.440 --> 00:58:11.940
Is it zero or 10?

683
00:58:13.100 --> 00:58:16.960
And I, so I think it's really significant that way.

684
00:58:17.060 --> 00:58:18.580
So it's like, you know,

685
00:58:18.600 --> 00:58:23.340
what is the repeat meditation stack and so on.

686
00:58:23.340 --> 00:58:28.080
So it would be, you know, at some point I should really write that.

687
00:58:29.720 --> 00:58:35.460
The second thing gets into Gerald Pollack's work.

688
00:58:37.660 --> 00:58:47.120
He talked about aspects of the, of the cell and this idea that in particular,

689
00:58:47.740 --> 00:58:48.420
you know,

690
00:58:48.600 --> 00:58:49.440
the cell is the engine of life.

691
00:58:49.440 --> 00:58:53.500
So I think it's cells gels and the engine of life is like one of his three books.

692
00:58:54.360 --> 00:59:08.560
And he talks about how there's as much energy in the structure of the water in the cell

693
00:59:09.480 --> 00:59:14.560
as there is in all burning, all the ATP molecules in the cell.

694
00:59:15.800 --> 00:59:17.120
And that basically,

695
00:59:18.600 --> 00:59:21.980
and this is the, in the relaxed state of a muscle.

696
00:59:23.980 --> 00:59:33.340
So we can think, think of the, like a relaxed muscle cell as a plump hydro gel with a lot of structure in it.

697
00:59:34.420 --> 00:59:47.980
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.

698
00:59:49.860 --> 00:59:57.440
This means that the contracted state of the cell is the low energy state.

699
00:59:58.700 --> 01:00:00.000
And in

700
01:00:00.320 --> 01:00:05.440
order to relax, a muscle has to get energy pumped back into it.

701
01:00:07.520 --> 01:00:14.120
And pushing the stone back up the hill, so then like the relaxed state is the high energy

702
01:00:14.120 --> 01:00:14.480
state.

703
01:00:15.140 --> 01:00:16.900
There's a lot of potential energy there.

704
01:00:18.000 --> 01:00:25.700
And I think that this is actually extremely relevant for vasocomputation.

705
01:00:27.280 --> 01:00:28.380
And this, this.

706
01:00:34.400 --> 01:00:41.720
And this, there's this kind of maybe kind of default intuition where like it takes energies

707
01:00:41.720 --> 01:00:45.560
or excuse me, it takes energy to clench.

708
01:00:46.900 --> 01:00:53.360
And this model kind of turns that around and says, no, it actually takes energy to

709
01:00:53.360 --> 01:00:56.860
sort of charge up a muscle into the relaxed state.

710
01:00:57.800 --> 01:01:02.480
And then the sort of default action is to clench.

711
01:01:04.180 --> 01:01:12.380
And so, I mean, this is sort of the observation that like, it's hard to relax.

712
01:01:12.900 --> 01:01:14.380
It's like hard work.

713
01:01:15.660 --> 01:01:23.720
And if you're, if you're not in a good metabolic state, like you can be laying in bed and you're

714
01:01:23.720 --> 01:01:24.800
just super tense.

715
01:01:25.600 --> 01:01:36.200
And I think the, the sort of status quo perspective of muscles would have trouble sort of telling

716
01:01:36.200 --> 01:01:36.740
that story.

717
01:01:37.180 --> 01:01:41.260
But the, the public version would be like, yeah, like it makes total sense.

718
01:01:41.360 --> 01:01:44.360
Like you, your, your muscles are not going to be able to do that.

719
01:01:44.380 --> 01:01:54.400
cells are locked into this low energy state. And one thing that seems particularly relevant is

720
01:01:54.780 --> 01:01:56.660
there seem to be kind of two

721
01:01:56.660 --> 01:02:02.020
two kinds of energy that sort of go into

722
01:02:03.020 --> 01:02:06.720
restructuring the cell and one is just kind of

723
01:02:06.720 --> 01:02:09.860
chemical energy and like ATP molecules

724
01:02:09.860 --> 01:02:12.440
not only can be burned

725
01:02:12.440 --> 01:02:18.700
for chemical energy but also they sort of are

726
01:02:18.700 --> 01:02:20.880
very crucial for this structure

727
01:02:22.700 --> 01:02:26.900
the other energetic input is

728
01:02:26.900 --> 01:02:30.420
something like red light or even heat

729
01:02:30.420 --> 01:02:35.060
or movement that sort of

730
01:02:35.060 --> 01:02:39.120
when like and like one example

731
01:02:39.120 --> 01:02:43.120
of like how I think this should be applied is

732
01:02:43.120 --> 01:02:47.020
make sure or like hold

733
01:02:47.020 --> 01:02:50.040
meditation retreats in like

734
01:02:50.960 --> 01:02:52.780
places with abundant light

735
01:02:52.780 --> 01:02:56.060
like make sure people get a lot of light throughout the day

736
01:02:56.060 --> 01:02:58.520
especially morning and evening

737
01:03:01.280 --> 01:03:04.840
so yeah rabbit hole goes pretty deep there but

738
01:03:04.840 --> 01:03:05.760
that's what I'd say

739
01:03:06.620 --> 01:03:09.460
and I think just to wrap that up

740
01:03:09.460 --> 01:03:12.060
I think this idea of what is a latch

741
01:03:13.320 --> 01:03:14.640
there's this you know

742
01:03:15.320 --> 01:03:19.280
I suspect that there's some like interesting stuff with like

743
01:03:19.280 --> 01:03:20.860
latches shutting down the cell and stuff like that

744
01:03:20.880 --> 01:03:22.940
and I think that there's a lot of

745
01:03:22.940 --> 01:03:25.100
I'm going to say the microtubule processing network

746
01:03:25.100 --> 01:03:27.500
so the rabbit hole there but

747
01:03:27.500 --> 01:03:31.360
I also think that it's sort of this like

748
01:03:31.360 --> 01:03:33.380
a latch is a very low energy state

749
01:03:34.060 --> 01:03:34.340
and

750
01:03:37.120 --> 01:03:40.720
opening latches will so latch being the

751
01:03:40.720 --> 01:03:41.940
latch bridge mechanism of

752
01:03:41.940 --> 01:03:44.840
smooth muscle is kind of this sort of

753
01:03:44.840 --> 01:03:47.760
locked tension in our vascular system

754
01:03:48.480 --> 01:03:50.860
and so I do think that um you know I think that

755
01:03:50.880 --> 01:03:54.760
opening latches will be like not just sort of creating the

756
01:03:55.000 --> 01:03:59.940
the information conditions but creating the biochemical conditions of sort of

757
01:04:01.100 --> 01:04:08.080
pushing energy into that region to sort of recharge the muscle cells

758
01:04:13.840 --> 01:04:20.660
yeah speaking about speaking of meditation retreats you know some meditation teacher

759
01:04:20.880 --> 01:04:21.740
and

760
01:04:21.740 --> 01:04:25.060
and uh reggie ray who wrote touching enlightenment

761
01:04:26.000 --> 01:04:28.200
would be a good example you know some of them

762
01:04:29.020 --> 01:04:35.200
warn about the futility of meditating in a disembodied state

763
01:04:36.220 --> 01:04:41.320
we really stress the somatic aspect of meditation and you mentioned you know

764
01:04:41.980 --> 01:04:45.840
was it eugene krishnamurti who was having 20 cups of coffee

765
01:04:46.380 --> 01:04:50.860
and aspirin you know high in the mountains before he attained what he was

766
01:04:50.880 --> 01:04:57.000
he would consider moksha so um the question here is

767
01:04:58.800 --> 01:04:59.740
would that be

768
01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:24.700
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?

769
01:05:24.700 --> 01:05:33.120
Would that be the constraining or the scars factor in that work?

770
01:05:34.060 --> 01:05:44.300
Right. So I would preface this just in terms of like, I want to be coming from a place of humility here.

771
01:05:45.020 --> 01:05:53.760
And I, there's a lot that I'm not sure about and so on.

772
01:05:54.700 --> 01:06:15.840
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.

773
01:06:17.160 --> 01:06:22.540
And that a big, big thing too is

774
01:06:24.700 --> 01:06:35.640
does the meditation stop when you open your eyes and like one like you know are you still in a like

775
01:06:35.640 --> 01:06:42.120
high energy curious state and you're like you know just kind of exploring how things work

776
01:06:42.820 --> 01:06:50.140
throughout the day and then the next sit you just kind of pick up exactly there

777
01:06:50.140 --> 01:07:00.260
or you know the bell sounds you open your eyes you're finished you know and you just kind of

778
01:07:00.260 --> 01:07:10.200
enter normal life mode I think that this is probably like and this I credit Nick Camerata

779
01:07:10.200 --> 01:07:18.120
for this observation and I would also say that yeah like

780
01:07:18.120 --> 01:07:20.120
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

781
01:07:20.140 --> 01:07:28.040
if you're in a low energy state it's just really hard and it's not like a personal failing it's not

782
01:07:28.040 --> 01:07:36.020
a character flaw it's just you might not have the energy to actually do the thing because meditation

783
01:07:36.720 --> 01:07:44.460
done right it's not relaxation in terms of cessation of effort it's

784
01:07:44.460 --> 01:07:49.700
you know really being very active in terms of trying to understand what's happening

785
01:07:50.460 --> 01:07:57.840
and so yeah I think that if the if the biochemical conditions are not there and you know if you know

786
01:07:57.840 --> 01:08:04.960
I read these crazy estimates of maybe 90 percent of people are hypothyroid or whatever and like wow

787
01:08:07.020 --> 01:08:15.740
and that makes me think that on the margin just kind of fixing your energy production

788
01:08:17.180 --> 01:08:20.120
is probably going to be a big deal.

789
01:08:21.140 --> 01:08:27.620
use of time and energy than like an extra you know switching from like an

790
01:08:28.280 --> 01:08:37.060
hour to two hours of meditation day or something like that thank you um the

791
01:08:37.060 --> 01:08:41.580
next question I wanted to ask is about insight and what actually is inside and

792
01:08:41.580 --> 01:08:50.120
what happens during the moments of insight I you read about this

793
01:08:51.140 --> 01:08:57.940
often inside that it's analogous to phase transitions in I think it's called

794
01:08:57.940 --> 01:09:02.960
self-organized criticality you know like if you have a sandpile avalanche model

795
01:09:02.960 --> 01:09:06.780
where you where small additions eventually trigger a substantial

796
01:09:07.800 --> 01:09:15.580
reorganization in the system so would that frame align with how you think

797
01:09:15.580 --> 01:09:20.200
about inside and what does as a computation have to say about inside

798
01:09:21.700 --> 01:09:28.900
yeah so I think this kind of gets to kind of what are the the most useful

799
01:09:28.900 --> 01:09:35.180
compressions here that sort of allow us to take a very sophisticated situation

800
01:09:36.120 --> 01:09:42.620
and sort of pack it down to something that's very manageable and and that we

801
01:09:42.620 --> 01:09:47.240
can get sort of play with and work with and I think this this idea of

802
01:09:47.240 --> 01:09:50.900
self-organized criticality is one of these really useful

803
01:09:51.140 --> 01:09:58.340
frames and this would be kind of a thermodynamics neural annealing energy

804
01:09:58.340 --> 01:09:59.620
parameter model

805
01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:22.300
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

806
01:10:22.300 --> 01:10:30.480
vasocomputation in I do expect that both the the neural system and the

807
01:10:30.480 --> 01:10:38.160
vasomuscular system will each have an energy parameter so it's sort of there's

808
01:10:38.160 --> 01:10:43.200
neural annealing and there's vasomuscular annealing basically and I

809
01:10:43.200 --> 01:10:52.040
suspect that um like my like so an insight can be you know the shift

810
01:10:52.300 --> 01:10:57.720
in in neural dynamics such that you you sort of fall into a different attractor

811
01:10:57.720 --> 01:11:03.240
basin and maybe this basin like lets you feel different or see different things

812
01:11:03.240 --> 01:11:09.700
see new things etc you can also and I think that I do think that both

813
01:11:09.700 --> 01:11:15.260
meditation and psychedelics lead to this like both both states but

814
01:11:15.260 --> 01:11:20.820
especially this this second state that I'm going to explain where basically

815
01:11:22.300 --> 01:11:31.480
you might sort of at least temporarily reopen some latches and if if we think

816
01:11:31.480 --> 01:11:39.720
of a latch as this sort of hard constraint on on a systems range that in

817
01:11:39.720 --> 01:11:47.400
a certain range or like in a certain physical area there's sort of a pattern

818
01:11:47.400 --> 01:11:52.220
that's gotten frozen or locked in it's like what was a very

819
01:11:52.380 --> 01:12:00.600
intrinsically is sort of being held as a constant. then I think that in some meditation

820
01:12:00.600 --> 01:12:11.480
meditation and psychedelic effects, this sort of reopens and this constant becomes variable.

821
01:12:12.320 --> 01:12:18.180
This sort of circuit or like this neural network that has sort of been, we can say,

822
01:12:18.220 --> 01:12:26.340
pinched into a circuit, sort of unfolds back into a real network. And I think that, you know,

823
01:12:26.340 --> 01:12:37.100
in terms of, we can say, opening events or awakening milestones or whatnot, I do think that

824
01:12:37.100 --> 01:12:47.420
this plays a significant role and perhaps a causal role of, yeah, if there's a latch there and

825
01:12:48.120 --> 01:12:56.040
on the other side of opening that latch is a particularly deep feeling of freedom.

826
01:12:57.500 --> 01:13:06.860
And it's sort of, what does it feel when that latch opens, whether permanently or temporarily?

827
01:13:07.280 --> 01:13:10.860
Well, it tastes like an insight.

828
01:13:15.440 --> 01:13:26.320
Wow. Wow. Yeah. I think across, you know, very many people,

829
01:13:26.340 --> 01:13:32.040
various accounts of profound mystical experiences of, you know, cosmic consciousness,

830
01:13:32.440 --> 01:13:41.080
there appears to be a common element and that would be complete surrender or acceptance.

831
01:13:41.900 --> 01:13:49.660
And this could happen, you know, in war survivors who faced imminent death from bombing raids,

832
01:13:49.880 --> 01:13:55.660
or in John Blofeld's mescaline experiences where he identified

833
01:13:56.340 --> 01:13:58.900
total renunciation as the key insight.

834
01:14:01.860 --> 01:14:08.040
From your research, what neurological or physiological mechanisms might explain

835
01:14:08.820 --> 01:14:17.860
why this act of letting go seems to trigger or coincide, I know, with transformative states

836
01:14:17.860 --> 01:14:26.040
of consciousness? Yeah. So, I'm going to talk about

837
01:14:26.340 --> 01:14:39.000
cringe. And sort of cringe as the proto-reflex. That you cringe away from danger,

838
01:14:39.920 --> 01:14:48.520
away from uncertainty. You cringe into safety, to quote a friend of mine. And so I think that,

839
01:14:48.520 --> 01:14:54.240
like, this is kind of, this is what you do when you don't know what to do and there's danger around.

840
01:14:54.240 --> 01:15:00.000
And I think then letting

841
01:15:00.120 --> 01:15:23.640
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.

842
01:15:23.640 --> 01:15:32.840
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.

843
01:15:34.020 --> 01:15:44.720
But I think that basically, I mean, there's this beautiful quote from the Buddha, and it's something to the effect that,

844
01:15:44.720 --> 01:15:55.340
so is the sea has but one taste, the taste of salt. So too my teaching has but one taste, the taste of release.

845
01:15:57.320 --> 01:16:07.080
And I think Romeo has quipped that, you know, meditation is just like deeper and deeper layers of muscle relaxation.

846
01:16:07.660 --> 01:16:11.520
And it's also like,

847
01:16:14.120 --> 01:16:18.380
we can say meditation is progressively deconditioning cringe.

848
01:16:20.240 --> 01:16:21.780
Or like, yeah.

849
01:16:22.400 --> 01:16:36.600
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.

850
01:16:37.860 --> 01:16:40.540
And like builds our sort of,

851
01:16:42.680 --> 01:16:45.300
unhealthy relationship with the world too.

852
01:16:45.740 --> 01:16:51.040
When like bad sensations come in and we kind of cringe from the facts.

853
01:16:51.360 --> 01:16:53.800
And then we try to sort of control them.

854
01:16:53.880 --> 01:17:05.380
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.

855
01:17:07.380 --> 01:17:09.560
And yeah, I think that basically,

856
01:17:11.520 --> 01:17:13.000
this is a muscular thing.

857
01:17:13.100 --> 01:17:14.180
This is a muscular reflex.

858
01:17:14.700 --> 01:17:16.540
It can be deconditioned.

859
01:17:16.680 --> 01:17:25.140
And what it like what that involves and what that feels like is release.

860
01:17:26.620 --> 01:17:27.280
Yeah.

861
01:17:29.440 --> 01:17:38.380
Users of certain psychoactive substances, such as MDMA or 2CB or some smaller extent, maybe also,

862
01:17:39.840 --> 01:17:41.240
natokinase, which also,

863
01:17:41.520 --> 01:17:42.080
I think it's been tweeted about.

864
01:17:42.460 --> 01:17:45.040
And then you report that under the influence,

865
01:17:45.860 --> 01:17:51.160
they feel qualitatively different in the body.

866
01:17:51.300 --> 01:17:53.720
And there is a sense of being more embodied,

867
01:17:54.320 --> 01:17:55.840
more coordinated perhaps.

868
01:17:56.260 --> 01:17:59.660
And there is also a sense of freedom that goes with it.

869
01:17:59.760 --> 01:18:01.220
I recall,

870
01:18:02.380 --> 01:18:08.060
Alan Walsh again mentioned that when you watch Zen monks,

871
01:18:08.060 --> 01:18:13.340
they have a different swing when they walk.

872
01:18:13.540 --> 01:18:16.420
And he compared it to watching a cat move.

873
01:18:18.540 --> 01:18:19.880
How does this work?

874
01:18:20.060 --> 01:18:27.060
How does this sense of freedom in the body and release go together?

875
01:18:27.880 --> 01:18:28.560
Yeah.

876
01:18:30.960 --> 01:18:34.000
I think it's probably very true.

877
01:18:34.420 --> 01:18:37.760
And I guess to sort of tell the story,

878
01:18:38.060 --> 01:18:42.920
I want to sort of tell the story about neurotransmitters.

879
01:18:44.240 --> 01:18:45.460
And sort of,

880
01:18:45.460 --> 01:18:45.900
you know,

881
01:18:45.900 --> 01:18:48.720
we have these simplistic stories about,

882
01:18:48.760 --> 01:18:49.080
okay,

883
01:18:49.100 --> 01:18:52.860
there's like receptors on neurons and then neurotransmitters fit the receptors.

884
01:18:53.060 --> 01:18:53.640
And like,

885
01:18:53.640 --> 01:18:56.520
they like change the firing patterns and whatnot.

886
01:18:57.000 --> 01:18:58.560
I think that's true.

887
01:18:58.740 --> 01:19:04.120
But there's maybe a more intuitive story to be had.

888
01:19:05.360 --> 01:19:07.620
And I would say that,

889
01:19:08.060 --> 01:19:09.780
most neurotransmitters,

890
01:19:09.840 --> 01:19:14.560
including those sort of hit by various psychedelics,

891
01:19:15.880 --> 01:19:17.500
they have effects on,

892
01:19:17.580 --> 01:19:19.980
like notable computational effects,

893
01:19:20.280 --> 01:19:26.020
both on our neural system and on our vessel muscular system.

894
01:19:27.300 --> 01:19:30.100
And I would say that,

895
01:19:30.760 --> 01:19:31.360
you know,

896
01:19:31.360 --> 01:19:34.680
we can think of the body as having kind of a control panel

897
01:19:34.680 --> 01:19:44.980
for you know there's there's like knobs to control neural activity like stochastic influences on

898
01:19:44.980 --> 01:19:51.240
neural activity we can say and then there's also knobs to control our vessel muscular system and

899
01:19:52.320 --> 01:19:59.460
like one example of this or like one analog of this would be peristalsis in the gut

900
01:20:00.720 --> 01:20:06.800
you have these slow waves in the gut and they just kind of slowly carry food through our bodies.

901
01:20:08.180 --> 01:20:12.640
But then, you know, we can sort of adjust the dials on this.

902
01:20:13.180 --> 01:20:23.420
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.

903
01:20:23.420 --> 01:20:30.120
And maybe if there's like food poisoning or something, the body says, okay, like, let's process this very quickly.

904
01:20:30.880 --> 01:20:34.320
And this is essentially a change in rhythm.

905
01:20:35.760 --> 01:20:44.640
And so I expect that, you know, things like meditation, psychedelics, etc.

906
01:20:44.940 --> 01:20:53.300
will very deeply or like powerfully change the rhythms of the body.

907
01:20:53.420 --> 01:21:00.840
And not necessarily in the gut, although I think it including in the gut in interesting ways.

908
01:21:00.960 --> 01:21:11.480
But I think especially in the vasomuscular system, that the rhythms of the vasomotion and whatnot will shift.

909
01:21:12.300 --> 01:21:21.040
And I think that, you know, you can get sort of, we can say, you know, temporary feelings of unity and oneness.

910
01:21:21.040 --> 01:21:22.980
And, you know, these.

911
01:21:23.420 --> 01:21:24.300
Amazing states.

912
01:21:25.940 --> 01:21:28.560
And then things go back to normal after the trip.

913
01:21:30.360 --> 01:21:31.320
And so.

914
01:21:32.400 --> 01:21:45.920
Part of this is sort of long term training of trying to become maybe a little bit more harmonious in your, your vasomuscular rhythms.

915
01:21:47.180 --> 01:21:52.720
And then some of this and like less, less twitchy, less reactive, less.

916
01:21:52.760 --> 01:21:53.400
Less.

917
01:21:53.420 --> 01:21:54.600
Likely to sort of.

918
01:21:55.100 --> 01:22:00.360
Clench or cringe as some kind of challenging sensation comes in.

919
01:22:02.200 --> 01:22:05.340
And then some of it will be opening latches.

920
01:22:05.780 --> 01:22:09.300
And like some latches will reclose after the trip.

921
01:22:09.480 --> 01:22:10.780
Some may stay open.

922
01:22:11.880 --> 01:22:16.060
And if it stays open, then it's going to be a permanent change.

923
01:22:17.200 --> 01:22:18.520
And I think that like.

924
01:22:19.820 --> 01:22:21.420
Part of both the.

925
01:22:23.540 --> 01:22:26.660
Side effects and bad side effects of psychedelics.

926
01:22:26.680 --> 01:22:30.780
Sort of may resolve to like which latches were open.

927
01:22:31.180 --> 01:22:32.620
And, you know, even.

928
01:22:33.280 --> 01:22:34.280
Strange side effects.

929
01:22:34.360 --> 01:22:37.140
Like there's this HPPD where.

930
01:22:37.640 --> 01:22:48.300
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.

931
01:22:50.000 --> 01:22:50.560
And.

932
01:22:50.560 --> 01:22:54.880
I guess I see it as like very sort of.

933
01:22:56.020 --> 01:22:58.040
We're, we're going a little far field here.

934
01:22:58.120 --> 01:22:58.960
I hope you don't mind.

935
01:22:59.960 --> 01:23:00.440
Great.

936
01:23:01.280 --> 01:23:04.440
I see it as a, just this very interesting.

937
01:23:05.400 --> 01:23:07.200
Pretty central thing in terms of.

938
01:23:08.500 --> 01:23:10.060
There's this predictive hierarchy.

939
01:23:10.660 --> 01:23:11.500
In the brain.

940
01:23:11.880 --> 01:23:12.360
Where.

941
01:23:13.620 --> 01:23:14.660
The, the lowest.

942
01:23:14.780 --> 01:23:15.620
The lower levels.

943
01:23:16.420 --> 01:23:18.040
Kind of deal with.

944
01:23:18.220 --> 01:23:18.720
Kind of.

945
01:23:19.100 --> 01:23:20.460
Very sort of basic.

946
01:23:20.560 --> 01:23:22.320
Feature detectors on the stimulus.

947
01:23:22.520 --> 01:23:24.060
So like, is this a line?

948
01:23:24.120 --> 01:23:25.000
Is this curved?

949
01:23:25.180 --> 01:23:25.820
Is this bright?

950
01:23:25.960 --> 01:23:26.600
Is this dark?

951
01:23:26.960 --> 01:23:27.840
Is this red?

952
01:23:28.200 --> 01:23:28.940
And then.

953
01:23:29.460 --> 01:23:30.800
Every additional layer.

954
01:23:31.760 --> 01:23:34.640
Sort of has the results of the lower level.

955
01:23:34.660 --> 01:23:35.340
As input.

956
01:23:35.780 --> 01:23:36.700
And then runs.

957
01:23:37.360 --> 01:23:38.740
More abstract feature.

958
01:23:38.980 --> 01:23:39.500
Detecting.

959
01:23:39.640 --> 01:23:40.320
Excuse me.

960
01:23:40.340 --> 01:23:41.560
Future detection on that.

961
01:23:43.420 --> 01:23:43.940
And.

962
01:23:45.620 --> 01:23:46.140
Sometimes.

963
01:23:46.980 --> 01:23:47.800
I think.

964
01:23:48.120 --> 01:23:48.640
Like.

965
01:23:48.800 --> 01:23:49.980
With vascular attention.

966
01:23:52.500 --> 01:23:53.860
InScriptive.

967
01:23:53.860 --> 01:24:05.540
feature detectors can get stuck. And like I wonder to the degree that that happens without psychedelics as well. Like

968
01:24:05.540 --> 01:24:06.900
InScriptive.

969
01:24:06.900 --> 01:24:10.440
really obvious when, oh, you know, I took some

970
01:24:10.600 --> 01:24:11.960
InScriptive.

971
01:24:13.040 --> 01:24:13.720
InScriptive.

972
01:24:15.460 --> 01:24:16.720
InScriptive.

973
01:24:16.760 --> 01:24:20.560
or whatever that's kind of an obvious case um

974
01:24:20.560 --> 01:24:26.580
um but like how often does this happen just in normal course of operations and we don't

975
01:24:26.580 --> 01:24:30.880
really know it except that we just kind of get we we see a certain pattern everywhere

976
01:24:33.900 --> 01:24:41.100
would it be then correct to say that you know if let's say mdma may temporarily

977
01:24:41.100 --> 01:24:49.100
temporarily reduce or relax the latches um and some of them might persist

978
01:24:49.880 --> 01:24:53.520
beyond the experience after their substance is

979
01:24:53.520 --> 01:24:59.860
already metabolized could this explain why um some mdma users

980
01:25:00.000 --> 01:25:20.160
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.

981
01:25:22.160 --> 01:25:29.760
So, I mean, I think there's several, several factors that are worth paying attention to here.

982
01:25:31.100 --> 01:25:38.460
One is that some of these drugs are unfortunately neurotoxic and sort of

983
01:25:40.000 --> 01:25:46.400
some attenuation of effects over time could be sort of some bad sign of, well, you know, these,

984
01:25:46.520 --> 01:25:51.460
these classes of neurons are sort of getting killed or, or something.

985
01:25:51.560 --> 01:25:52.000
So,

986
01:25:52.560 --> 01:26:00.060
that's, that's worth noting. But I also think that the, the pattern that you're pointing to

987
01:26:00.060 --> 01:26:08.440
is very real. And it's like, if you have some sort of, you know,

988
01:26:09.320 --> 01:26:15.520
cobweb of latches, we can say, and then, you know, you, you do something kind of high entropy,

989
01:26:15.600 --> 01:26:22.040
and you like clear some latches out, then the next time you, you do,

990
01:26:22.160 --> 01:26:25.780
you do that same high entropy thing, you will clear fewer latches out.

991
01:26:26.780 --> 01:26:31.220
And like maybe you need to do a, like a different class of high entropy thing

992
01:26:31.220 --> 01:26:34.660
in order to sort of get a similar effect as the first time.

993
01:26:37.100 --> 01:26:49.060
And so one of the, generally speaking, things that are unhealthy for the brain do not feel good.

994
01:26:50.720 --> 01:26:55.600
Sometimes, you know, you get some edge cases, like, okay, maybe MDMA isn't like super healthy

995
01:26:55.600 --> 01:27:01.920
for the brain, but it does feel good. And that's, that's weird. One thing that is like,

996
01:27:01.940 --> 01:27:12.040
clearly bad for the brains is general anesthesia. But yet, general anesthesia has this

997
01:27:14.760 --> 01:27:18.800
very reliable and durable antidepressant effect.

998
01:27:19.060 --> 01:27:30.380
Mood lifting effect for weeks afterward. And I do expect that this effect to be driven by just

999
01:27:30.380 --> 01:27:36.440
kind of opening latches, just kind of dissolving latches, relaxing this, this muscle in kind of

1000
01:27:36.440 --> 01:27:45.580
stochastic ways. And so I guess this would suggest that maybe if you like, get anesthesia over and

1001
01:27:45.580 --> 01:27:49.040
over, you'd get less mood lifting effect. Although that would be a little bit more difficult.

1002
01:27:50.060 --> 01:27:51.000
Not healthy.

1003
01:27:53.640 --> 01:27:57.180
Interesting. And would you say that

1004
01:28:03.220 --> 01:28:11.340
repetitive thoughts would represent a form of frozen physical sensation in the body?

1005
01:28:15.020 --> 01:28:17.520
Yeah, I'm getting a little feedback here.

1006
01:28:21.960 --> 01:28:22.440
Testing.

1007
01:28:25.120 --> 01:28:32.180
I wonder who it's coming from? It's a little bit loud for me. Okay, that was, that was cool.

1008
01:28:35.160 --> 01:28:40.480
Yeah, so I think, you know, there's this, this question of like, what does the latch feel like?

1009
01:28:41.140 --> 01:28:48.060
And I think, like, it's sort of something held, being held constant,

1010
01:28:48.900 --> 01:28:49.880
and like some,

1011
01:28:50.060 --> 01:28:57.080
you know, as I was saying that, like, some kind of variable being held as a constant. And I think that,

1012
01:28:57.160 --> 01:29:08.860
like, any, any sort of good theory of the nervous system or of the body is also

1013
01:29:09.600 --> 01:29:16.360
tacitly sort of a theory of how things can go wrong, too. And we should be able to sort of

1014
01:29:16.360 --> 01:29:20.040
reimagine like, this disorder, and then we should be able to sort of re-imagine like, this disorder,

1015
01:29:20.060 --> 01:29:26.180
as a disorder of latches, or that disorder as a disorder of latches. And one thing that comes to

1016
01:29:26.180 --> 01:29:34.980
mind is something like eating disorders, as like, there's something latch, and it should be. And so

1017
01:29:35.800 --> 01:29:44.500
I have a good friend who took psychedelics, like was struggling with an eating disorder for a long

1018
01:29:44.500 --> 01:29:49.860
time, took psychedelics, and it was just gone. Just, you know, after, after that experience,

1019
01:29:50.060 --> 01:29:58.600
it was just not a, not a problem. And I think that, yeah, I, I do think that, like,

1020
01:30:00.300 --> 01:30:19.680
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.

1021
01:30:21.080 --> 01:30:49.600
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.

1022
01:30:49.680 --> 01:31:15.060
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.

1023
01:31:16.040 --> 01:31:19.000
Do you think there is validity to this?

1024
01:31:19.100 --> 01:31:19.660
And if yes, then what is the point?

1025
01:31:19.680 --> 01:31:36.760
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?

1026
01:31:37.860 --> 01:31:45.240
Right, right. I think I would come down on the woo side of this.

1027
01:31:45.720 --> 01:31:48.180
I think that, obviously...

1028
01:31:51.060 --> 01:32:09.900
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.

1029
01:32:10.480 --> 01:32:18.120
But an immune response is not that there's something intrinsically dangerous about something.

1030
01:32:19.680 --> 01:32:26.660
I think that your reaction to something is improper and sort of is creating the damage.

1031
01:32:28.140 --> 01:32:34.440
And it is this question of, like, can you sort of more directly interface with the system making these calls?

1032
01:32:34.920 --> 01:32:46.900
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?

1033
01:32:48.580 --> 01:32:49.660
Negotiate with the system.

1034
01:32:50.640 --> 01:32:55.400
white list this thing, you know, many different ways to frame it.

1035
01:32:55.960 --> 01:33:11.320
So, my friend Mark, meditation stuff on Twitter, says that he's gotten big effects on sort of introspection on various previous triggers.

1036
01:33:13.060 --> 01:33:16.300
So, I don't think it's crazy at all.

1037
01:33:16.300 --> 01:33:29.780
I do also think that, like, I'm pretty sure you can psychosomatically create an allergic reaction to something.

1038
01:33:30.460 --> 01:33:35.460
And if you can create it, then likely you can resolve it.

1039
01:33:36.340 --> 01:33:39.040
And in terms of what's happening,

1040
01:33:44.420 --> 01:34:03.180
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.

1041
01:34:03.840 --> 01:34:11.520
To what degree do we have phenomenological access to what our immune system is doing?

1042
01:34:13.140 --> 01:34:14.260
And I'm going to start with you.

1043
01:34:14.280 --> 01:34:17.760
I'm going to say that there's probably huge individual variation on this.

1044
01:34:18.900 --> 01:34:27.100
In terms of like, for some people, I don't expect that they could ever sort of, you know, manage this by phenomenology.

1045
01:34:27.680 --> 01:34:31.480
But to some extent, I think that other people maybe could.

1046
01:34:33.260 --> 01:34:36.660
I just don't know exactly, you know, how to tell that story yet.

1047
01:34:38.200 --> 01:34:39.220
Yeah, fascinating.

1048
01:34:42.680 --> 01:34:56.980
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.

1049
01:34:57.360 --> 01:34:59.600
And the exact sentence goes,

1050
01:35:00.000 --> 01:35:05.140
you will be able to identify the structure of resistance.

1051
01:35:05.400 --> 01:35:10.100
You will notice what that which expresses itself in your psychosomatically.

1052
01:35:10.920 --> 01:35:20.600
So I wanted to ask how this connects to things like trauma releasing exercise, tremors, shaking,

1053
01:35:20.600 --> 01:35:32.000
and basically having to express something without averting your gaze.

1054
01:35:32.260 --> 01:35:43.440
Or like you're having to face something and let it pass through you without clenching in defense against it.

1055
01:35:47.320 --> 01:35:50.520
I think I'd sort of make one detail.

1056
01:35:50.600 --> 01:35:52.480
I think I'd make a detour first and then touch on that.

1057
01:35:52.580 --> 01:35:59.980
And the detour would be sort of, you know, with a very, extremely respectful nod to Michael

1058
01:35:59.980 --> 01:36:00.500
Levin's work.

1059
01:36:01.020 --> 01:36:07.060
There's this idea of like we're sort of these nested fields of bioelectricity.

1060
01:36:07.180 --> 01:36:16.220
And I do think that a lot of decisions in the body are made by, through this system

1061
01:36:16.220 --> 01:36:17.560
of nested fields.

1062
01:36:18.380 --> 01:36:20.580
And I think that, you know, for example, if you're a biologist, you're going to have

1063
01:36:21.600 --> 01:36:25.020
to think about how this system interaction may be sort of, you know, finding the lever

1064
01:36:25.020 --> 01:36:36.280
of like, oh, like this is like the, this sort of part of the propagation of electric fields

1065
01:36:37.440 --> 01:36:39.260
interfaces with this allergen.

1066
01:36:39.280 --> 01:36:43.260
And like maybe if I feel differently about it, I can change the interaction or whatever.

1067
01:36:44.840 --> 01:36:49.680
And so in that sense, like resistance would be a bioelectric thing.

1068
01:36:51.600 --> 01:36:59.300
And I think that like how vessel computation would approach this, just like there is,

1069
01:37:00.740 --> 01:37:04.620
there's something locked or like there are many things that are locked in your body.

1070
01:37:06.860 --> 01:37:11.920
And like the Wu frame is referring to them as blocks.

1071
01:37:12.460 --> 01:37:15.800
And I think this is actually a pretty good way to refer to them.

1072
01:37:16.440 --> 01:37:21.580
And so it's this idea that like you can't really direct the energy of the body to the

1073
01:37:22.600 --> 01:37:22.760
block.

1074
01:37:22.780 --> 01:37:27.560
You can sort of only observe the dark matter, we can say.

1075
01:37:28.980 --> 01:37:34.500
And, you know, the metaphor that I would give here is something like imagine that you were

1076
01:37:34.500 --> 01:37:41.360
three years old and you accidentally slept on your foot and your foot went to sleep.

1077
01:37:42.740 --> 01:37:44.300
That's happened to all of us.

1078
01:37:44.960 --> 01:37:52.580
And then like in terms of like explaining the energy of the body, you know, the energy

1079
01:37:52.600 --> 01:38:00.040
of the self or explaining a block, it's like, well, maybe instead of a foot, it's just

1080
01:38:00.040 --> 01:38:02.080
a very small part of your nervous system.

1081
01:38:03.100 --> 01:38:10.160
And instead of waking up in like 15 minutes or whatever, like, you know, takes 20 seconds

1082
01:38:10.160 --> 01:38:14.420
after your stored circulation, maybe circulation never got restored.

1083
01:38:15.880 --> 01:38:18.540
And it's just still asleep.

1084
01:38:20.900 --> 01:38:21.460
So.

1085
01:38:22.940 --> 01:38:26.340
Like the resistance isn't an active thing.

1086
01:38:27.840 --> 01:38:37.000
But it is a real physical physiological lack of capacity, lack of capacity for feeling.

1087
01:38:38.360 --> 01:38:45.140
And the shift that sort of undoes that will be a physical shift.

1088
01:38:45.800 --> 01:38:50.340
But this physical shift can be catalyzed by attention.

1089
01:38:50.600 --> 01:38:52.580
It's like attention is also a physical shift.

1090
01:38:52.600 --> 01:38:53.040
It's like a physical thing.

1091
01:38:53.180 --> 01:38:59.760
So if you can bring your attention there, you are tacitly like dramatically increasing

1092
01:38:59.760 --> 01:39:00.480
the blood flow there.

1093
01:39:00.920 --> 01:39:03.200
So it's kind of a chicken and egg thing.

1094
01:39:03.300 --> 01:39:07.120
Like if something is clenched, you can't bring blood flow and attention there.

1095
01:39:07.260 --> 01:39:11.700
But insofar as you succeed, then you succeed in.

1096
01:39:12.640 --> 01:39:18.220
I mean, one thing that I think about just based on everything you've been talking about

1097
01:39:18.220 --> 01:39:18.740
is.

1098
01:39:20.060 --> 01:39:22.580
You mentioned at the start that a lot of your work is based on the fact that you're not

1099
01:39:23.600 --> 01:39:28.800
around bridging what should be alchemy to chemistry. I think that is the parallel that I

1100
01:39:28.800 --> 01:39:33.960
can still think about. And then a little bit after that, we talked about how there aren't any

1101
01:39:33.960 --> 01:39:39.400
traditional deliverables that we can really present to really wrap up everything that we just talked

1102
01:39:39.400 --> 01:39:42.980
about in a bow. I mean, we've been sitting here for two hours, and I think there's still so much

1103
01:39:42.980 --> 01:39:48.520
to unpack here, right? I'm wondering, you know, as vasocompatition progresses, and there's still

1104
01:39:48.520 --> 01:39:54.940
more to uncover and more to discover and more possibilities, what is evidence of promise to you?

1105
01:39:55.260 --> 01:40:00.000
What is evidence that we're moving in a promising direction? I think it's a really good

1106
01:40:00.080 --> 01:40:27.980
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.

1107
01:40:28.000 --> 01:40:57.900
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,

1108
01:41:02.240 --> 01:41:08.300
people are much more likely to believe you if they like you.

1109
01:41:10.020 --> 01:41:20.740
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.

1110
01:41:22.880 --> 01:41:27.560
And so, I think that, but just in terms of

1111
01:41:31.960 --> 01:41:38.800
in terms of deliverables, I think that there's always, like, there are thresholds where

1112
01:41:39.920 --> 01:41:43.060
you can say they can no longer ignore you.

1113
01:41:44.160 --> 01:41:46.740
And so, like,

1114
01:41:48.120 --> 01:41:53.080
one example that I like to give just in terms of sort of metaphysics of, like,

1115
01:41:53.740 --> 01:41:57.980
you know, in the, like, mid-1800s or late 1800s,

1116
01:41:58.000 --> 01:42:07.100
it was still respectable to be an electromagnetic skeptic.

1117
01:42:08.140 --> 01:42:11.340
You know, what is this, like, electricity?

1118
01:42:12.080 --> 01:42:20.160
Like, you want to tie together, like, load stones and compasses and lightning and static?

1119
01:42:20.440 --> 01:42:23.440
Like, that's too crazy for me.

1120
01:42:24.280 --> 01:42:26.720
And then now, today,

1121
01:42:28.000 --> 01:42:31.920
it's really no longer respectable to be an electromagnetic skeptic.

1122
01:42:32.020 --> 01:42:35.300
Like, we're all, we're doing this on computers.

1123
01:42:35.520 --> 01:42:36.840
We have iPhones.

1124
01:42:37.340 --> 01:42:38.300
It's, like, no.

1125
01:42:38.440 --> 01:42:39.580
That ship has sailed.

1126
01:42:40.720 --> 01:42:42.840
And so you can kind of chart

1127
01:42:44.180 --> 01:42:57.420
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.

1128
01:42:57.460 --> 01:42:57.980
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.

1129
01:42:58.000 --> 01:43:06.320
and y and z and then you can also chart the sort of practical tech growth of well uh you know you

1130
01:43:06.320 --> 01:43:14.300
we built um the the telegram and an electric motor and a light bulb and like pretty soon

1131
01:43:14.920 --> 01:43:18.360
it becomes sort of harder and harder to doubt the power of those equations

1132
01:43:19.660 --> 01:43:28.880
um now i guess the the question and you know we can apply this to to sort of any of any of my work

1133
01:43:28.880 --> 01:43:37.760
um is like how close are we to like are are we at the stage where okay these are the equations

1134
01:43:37.760 --> 01:43:43.700
and then like uh what else will they connect to and like if we plot out you know kind of the

1135
01:43:43.700 --> 01:43:47.860
journey of of faraday and maxwell with his um with their

1136
01:43:47.860 --> 01:43:48.260
um

1137
01:43:48.360 --> 01:43:56.300
their work on electromagnetic uh phenomenon then like where are we in in the stage and like what's

1138
01:43:56.300 --> 01:44:07.040
next um so that would be like a setup uh for this and i think that um like for me for vessel

1139
01:44:07.040 --> 01:44:17.300
computation specifically um three of the big prizes uh are first of all can we make a map of

1140
01:44:17.300 --> 01:44:17.620
letches

1141
01:44:18.640 --> 01:44:26.080
so can we have this sort of objective like we did a scan and here are the latches in your body

1142
01:44:27.180 --> 01:44:32.020
um and you know then we can kind of have you know be building a science of interpreting

1143
01:44:32.020 --> 01:44:37.100
that data that's uh yeah like a latch here might be like you were bitten by a dog and you know

1144
01:44:37.100 --> 01:44:47.800
whatnot and then uh second um can we make like can we use

1145
01:44:48.360 --> 01:44:58.900
this thinking. Can we use sort of vessel computation theory and adjacent theory to reliably open latches?

1146
01:44:59.320 --> 01:45:00.000
Like

1147
01:45:00.080 --> 01:45:27.480
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

1148
01:45:28.000 --> 01:45:57.920
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

1149
01:45:58.000 --> 01:46:27.940
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

1150
01:46:28.000 --> 01:46:57.760
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

1151
01:46:57.760 --> 01:46:57.980
you know

1152
01:46:58.000 --> 01:47:02.360
after an amazing sauna, this might be lower,

1153
01:47:02.520 --> 01:47:03.940
but can we lower the baseline?

1154
01:47:04.140 --> 01:47:05.040
Can we measure the baseline?

1155
01:47:06.580 --> 01:47:12.520
And I would also say that another big aspect of this

1156
01:47:12.520 --> 01:47:18.080
is sort of this, how good is your coverage and your reach

1157
01:47:18.080 --> 01:47:20.120
in terms of your mental hand?

1158
01:47:22.200 --> 01:47:26.960
So I was speaking with Ethan Kuntz,

1159
01:47:28.000 --> 01:47:32.840
and we were talking about how maybe we basically have

1160
01:47:32.840 --> 01:47:36.880
sort of the capacity to sort of hold four chunks

1161
01:47:36.880 --> 01:47:38.300
of working memory at a time.

1162
01:47:38.900 --> 01:47:42.500
And I suspect this is like extremely a muscular thing.

1163
01:47:42.620 --> 01:47:45.720
Like we can kind of multiplex the carrier signal,

1164
01:47:45.920 --> 01:47:49.960
whatever that may be, into sort of four chunks.

1165
01:47:51.100 --> 01:47:56.120
And then basically whatever thoughts we want to have,

1166
01:47:56.320 --> 01:47:57.940
we have to construct.

1167
01:47:58.000 --> 01:48:00.580
We have to construct them out of a maximum of these like four pieces

1168
01:48:00.580 --> 01:48:03.260
of sort of stabilized structure,

1169
01:48:04.600 --> 01:48:06.740
which is like a very interesting limitation,

1170
01:48:07.000 --> 01:48:08.640
if you think about that.

1171
01:48:11.700 --> 01:48:14.680
And also like we can also latch things,

1172
01:48:14.900 --> 01:48:19.640
which sort of then doesn't take away from that cap,

1173
01:48:19.980 --> 01:48:23.160
but makes everything a little bit less flexible.

1174
01:48:24.880 --> 01:48:26.920
But just in terms of like,

1175
01:48:28.000 --> 01:48:29.160
I guess I would say like,

1176
01:48:29.160 --> 01:48:35.000
aphantasia is a great model organism here of like,

1177
01:48:35.080 --> 01:48:37.240
if you, you know, can you imagine that?

1178
01:48:37.300 --> 01:48:42.080
And like, can you imagine something that relies on like the lower levels

1179
01:48:42.080 --> 01:48:45.760
of the predictive hierarchy, the sort of simple feature detectors?

1180
01:48:46.260 --> 01:48:48.180
Can you imagine something in the middle?

1181
01:48:48.400 --> 01:48:50.900
Can you imagine something very abstract?

1182
01:48:51.400 --> 01:48:57.760
And like my claim would be like aphantasia is kind of,

1183
01:48:58.000 --> 01:48:59.780
you know, a very obvious, you can kind of,

1184
01:49:00.440 --> 01:49:02.780
you have these nice kind of scenarios of, well,

1185
01:49:02.880 --> 01:49:07.560
if you close your eyes, can you imagine like a bright red apple?

1186
01:49:07.860 --> 01:49:09.780
And what can you do with the apple?

1187
01:49:09.960 --> 01:49:11.020
Can you rotate it?

1188
01:49:11.100 --> 01:49:12.060
Can you like zoom in?

1189
01:49:12.160 --> 01:49:14.740
Can you see the texture of the leaves, et cetera?

1190
01:49:15.200 --> 01:49:19.180
And like this is a very like actionable sort of test for imagination,

1191
01:49:19.560 --> 01:49:26.060
which I think is like test for vasomuscular access to that part of your nervous system.

1192
01:49:29.000 --> 01:49:30.440
And I think that things much,

1193
01:49:30.560 --> 01:49:34.880
much higher on the predictive hierarchy are less easy to test for.

1194
01:49:35.920 --> 01:49:40.240
But I think, you know, we can also have deficits there.

1195
01:49:40.620 --> 01:49:48.300
So I'm very bullish on sort of making a map of both latches,

1196
01:49:48.860 --> 01:49:51.720
things that are held constant, cannot change,

1197
01:49:51.920 --> 01:49:56.860
and also making a map of mental grasp,

1198
01:49:56.940 --> 01:49:58.980
of things that we can't change,

1199
01:49:59.000 --> 01:50:00.000
but can choose to

1200
01:50:00.060 --> 01:50:07.440
flex or like hold open rather than just have it open or latch by default.

1201
01:50:10.000 --> 01:50:16.400
And when you talk about hands and latches, I think about this not in terms of even just the

1202
01:50:16.400 --> 01:50:21.920
vasocomputation but also in just adjacent domains. So I think one way to frame a lot of what you've

1203
01:50:21.920 --> 01:50:28.140
been saying is that research and science is a collaborative process and I think historically

1204
01:50:28.140 --> 01:50:32.980
we valued a lot of serendipitous discoveries and a lot of the value that we place, you know,

1205
01:50:33.000 --> 01:50:37.080
obviously with the benefit of hindsight because so many of these research pieces were ridiculed.

1206
01:50:37.360 --> 01:50:42.480
mRNA research, even calculators, people not wanting to derive from an abacus,

1207
01:50:42.950 --> 01:50:46.020
all these little things that we can scoff and think are silly now

1208
01:50:47.180 --> 01:50:50.240
really changed the game because of what they were able to unlock,

1209
01:50:51.920 --> 01:50:57.160
adjacent possible, right? There are these fields of knowledge and domains that were so close and

1210
01:50:57.160 --> 01:51:03.320
would just change the way that we exist as humans if we can remove one bottleneck, whatever that

1211
01:51:03.320 --> 01:51:08.720
looks like. And so we've briefly talked about how these are competition, you know, if physiologically

1212
01:51:08.720 --> 01:51:13.460
true could change the way we think about musculature and how we think about neurons.

1213
01:51:14.480 --> 01:51:18.740
And I want to invite you to think about, you know, once this theory, whatever that end goal looks

1214
01:51:18.740 --> 01:51:21.540
like is successful, is proven true. What do you think about the way that we think about neurons?

1215
01:51:21.540 --> 01:51:21.740
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,

1216
01:51:21.920 --> 01:51:26.940
what are other, I want to think like floating orbs in this constellation and this mental map of

1217
01:51:26.940 --> 01:51:32.860
knowledge could just be revolutionized by your theory and your thesis being proven

1218
01:51:32.860 --> 01:51:35.520
true. Like what else could be unlocked and what else is possible?

1219
01:51:35.880 --> 01:51:41.040
Yeah, that's a great question. I think that a lot of it comes down to sort of

1220
01:51:42.820 --> 01:51:50.740
how do you become skillful in using your nervous system? What does it mean to be skillful in using

1221
01:51:50.740 --> 01:51:51.900
your nervous system? And then how do you become skillful in using your nervous system? And then

1222
01:51:51.920 --> 01:51:58.120
you know, we talk about physical dexterity. You know, can you, like, twirl something on your wrist or,

1223
01:51:58.180 --> 01:52:02.840
you know, can you, like, have a have a ball and, you know, move it that way or,

1224
01:52:02.860 --> 01:52:10.860
like, can you balance on a slack line or, you know, many of these. It's obvious. I think that

1225
01:52:11.500 --> 01:52:19.880
sort of the space of potential ways that you can be mentally dexterous is much, much bigger.

1226
01:52:21.000 --> 01:52:21.900
And I think that sort of the space of potential ways that you can be mentally dexterous is much, Much bigger.

1227
01:52:21.920 --> 01:52:30.540
But, you know, I am bullish on kind of, I mean, first of all, just kind of metrics for this.

1228
01:52:31.000 --> 01:52:34.680
And like one thing that really, really comes to mind.

1229
01:52:34.760 --> 01:52:36.420
So, OK, a few things.

1230
01:52:37.560 --> 01:52:50.120
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,

1231
01:52:52.080 --> 01:52:55.740
we get four chunks of concurrent stabilization and that's it.

1232
01:52:55.820 --> 01:53:01.380
So all thoughts kind of have to be built out of four different regions.

1233
01:53:01.380 --> 01:53:03.820
then

1234
01:53:05.100 --> 01:53:10.280
Then there's like a dimension of scaling in terms of better knowledge representations.

1235
01:53:11.560 --> 01:53:18.900
And so, you know, maybe you only get four sort of chunks of your nervous system that you can sort of stabilize at once.

1236
01:53:19.000 --> 01:53:21.840
But if you.

1237
01:53:21.920 --> 01:53:30.500
Get like better tools for thought, better compressions, this can scale very considerably.

1238
01:53:31.380 --> 01:53:37.160
I also think that there's this this idea of I'm going to call it clench pleiotropy.

1239
01:53:38.120 --> 01:53:43.720
So pleiotropy is is a concept in genetics and it's where one gene does many things.

1240
01:53:43.880 --> 01:53:51.820
It's like and in the the the Siberian fox domestication trials where they like bred foxes to be.

1241
01:53:51.920 --> 01:53:57.680
Very friendly and basically they domesticated fox in foxes in 50 generations.

1242
01:53:59.000 --> 01:54:01.480
What they found was that the.

1243
01:54:03.200 --> 01:54:09.600
When they basically they thought the causal factor here was delaying the foxes neural growth.

1244
01:54:09.900 --> 01:54:14.580
Basically, the adult adrenal glands never fully grown in or grew in.

1245
01:54:15.100 --> 01:54:18.420
So they just like felt fewer like less fear.

1246
01:54:19.440 --> 01:54:21.600
And but these foxes had.

1247
01:54:22.580 --> 01:54:31.580
Like weird things that went together like floppy ears and curly tails and patchy coats.

1248
01:54:31.880 --> 01:54:37.340
And it's like often like a gene does many things.

1249
01:54:37.740 --> 01:54:45.120
And so the idea of clench pleiotropy is this idea that by default.

1250
01:54:47.300 --> 01:54:51.040
Muscles kind of often have like.

1251
01:54:51.920 --> 01:54:55.680
Big impact clench patterns like you move a lot of stuff.

1252
01:54:57.000 --> 01:54:58.020
And like.

1253
01:55:00.320 --> 01:55:06.420
I had this thing with my hand where, okay, I can move this finger, I can move this finger,

1254
01:55:06.540 --> 01:55:10.640
this finger, but if I try and move this, it goes together.

1255
01:55:11.440 --> 01:55:15.560
It could be like a tendon thing, but it can also be muscular.

1256
01:55:16.340 --> 01:55:22.120
Can you wiggle your eyebrows separately or whatever?

1257
01:55:22.320 --> 01:55:24.380
These are very learned things.

1258
01:55:24.380 --> 01:55:33.440
I think that, generally speaking, if we could look at mental muscles, this would be the

1259
01:55:33.440 --> 01:55:34.500
rule, not the exception.

1260
01:55:35.660 --> 01:55:43.500
This idea that it's actually very hard to ... The lesser-known crowd might call this

1261
01:55:43.500 --> 01:55:44.840
decoupling and whatnot.

1262
01:55:45.200 --> 01:55:47.000
I think that's a pretty good label for it.

1263
01:55:47.640 --> 01:55:54.360
This idea of, can you stabilize here without also just automatically clenching?

1264
01:55:54.380 --> 01:55:55.060
This other area.

1265
01:55:55.400 --> 01:56:08.280
In that sense, becoming good at precision use of your nervous system is learning how

1266
01:56:08.280 --> 01:56:13.760
to decouple and make the stabilization clenches very precise.

1267
01:56:15.480 --> 01:56:24.360
Interestingly, this is ... The other side of this is sometimes you want to stabilize,

1268
01:56:24.380 --> 01:56:25.620
stabilize a lot of stuff.

1269
01:56:25.860 --> 01:56:28.640
You want this sort of clench of pleiotropy.

1270
01:56:28.820 --> 01:56:37.020
If you have this big vision, then can you ... Are you strong enough to hold a bunch of

1271
01:56:37.020 --> 01:56:38.640
stuff constant at once?

1272
01:56:39.840 --> 01:56:42.380
These capacities kind of trade off each other.

1273
01:56:43.560 --> 01:56:52.420
In some sense, I think that it's one reason why ... It's sometimes rare to get thinkers

1274
01:56:52.420 --> 01:56:53.300
who are both ...

1275
01:56:53.300 --> 01:56:54.360
Yeah.

1276
01:56:54.380 --> 01:56:55.760
Big and precise.

1277
01:56:57.200 --> 01:57:00.780
Much easier to only be big or only be precise.

1278
01:57:02.900 --> 01:57:08.300
I'm not sure I directly answered your question, but maybe I answered an adjacent question.

1279
01:57:08.580 --> 01:57:09.180
No, that's beautiful.

1280
01:57:09.480 --> 01:57:14.060
I think another adjacent question that I want to flip onto you is, throughout this entire

1281
01:57:14.060 --> 01:57:18.120
conversation you've referenced a lot of thinkers that have shaped the way that you do your

1282
01:57:18.120 --> 01:57:18.500
research.

1283
01:57:18.940 --> 01:57:22.840
You also gave us a nice roadmap of how the computation has evolved.

1284
01:57:24.380 --> 01:57:28.840
I'm wondering if there were any areas of knowledge that you didn't expect to draw so much from?

1285
01:57:29.480 --> 01:57:30.040
Nice.

1286
01:57:30.700 --> 01:57:31.260
Yeah.

1287
01:57:31.400 --> 01:57:32.380
That's a great question.

1288
01:57:33.100 --> 01:57:36.060
I mean, the obvious would be Ray Peet.

1289
01:57:36.680 --> 01:57:46.200
I didn't expect his perspectives on metabolism to be particularly relevant for understanding

1290
01:57:46.200 --> 01:57:48.400
the mind, but I think it absolutely is.

1291
01:57:48.580 --> 01:57:51.020
So definitely that.

1292
01:57:51.360 --> 01:57:53.980
I think I would also credit ...

1293
01:57:55.100 --> 01:58:00.860
I think I would also credit Romano Stevens and Nick Camerata for really sort of ... previous

1294
01:58:00.860 --> 01:58:08.940
relationship, Pupana, Ibtiqobba, for kind of opening my mind on Buddhism and this idea

1295
01:58:08.940 --> 01:58:16.520
that I ... It was a big pivot for me and yeah, I have a lot of respect for their help, I

1296
01:58:16.520 --> 01:58:16.980
guess I would say.

1297
01:58:17.440 --> 01:58:24.360
I think that one thing that I kind of started with and that maybe has like ... I think it's

1298
01:58:24.380 --> 01:58:34.920
like, has been woven into my work much more than maybe it's apparent, is physics.

1299
01:58:35.800 --> 01:58:46.080
I think that it's this just absolutely just amazing domain of like ... I'm writing a piece

1300
01:58:46.080 --> 01:58:52.360
now, just talking about how physics is sort of a very ...

1301
01:58:52.360 --> 01:58:54.360
Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

1302
01:58:54.380 --> 01:59:03.300
I think that it's a shining example of the search for natural kinds and also how anything

1303
01:59:04.430 --> 01:59:14.600
you build, if you're in consciousness research or researching the mind in any way, ultimately

1304
01:59:15.630 --> 01:59:18.840
whatever you build has to compile to physics.

1305
01:59:20.540 --> 01:59:24.360
If it doesn't compile to physics, then at best, it's not going to be a good thing.

1306
01:59:24.380 --> 01:59:30.800
It's a mere metaphor, which can be useful, but it's still ... You're not going to get

1307
01:59:30.800 --> 01:59:36.220
that sort of anchored type of knowledge.

1308
01:59:37.200 --> 01:59:42.640
I think that physics has been just an enormous inspiration for me.

1309
01:59:43.000 --> 01:59:54.360
I think that I feel very anchored to or respectful of or connected with the knowledge that I have

1310
01:59:54.360 --> 02:00:00.240
sort of the the big picture physicists the the sort

1311
02:00:00.240 --> 02:00:09.620
of the ones that were, you know, figuring out this whole like, I mean, the forces, the quantum stuff, the gravity stuff.

1312
02:00:09.780 --> 02:00:15.300
It's like these are our modes of thought that I think are just absolutely beautiful.

1313
02:00:15.300 --> 02:00:31.200
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.

1314
02:00:31.320 --> 02:00:33.740
So yeah, I'm very bullish on that.

1315
02:00:34.120 --> 02:00:43.760
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.

1316
02:00:44.100 --> 02:00:45.280
Those heavy types.

1317
02:00:46.300 --> 02:00:51.120
um but i guess the natural question that organically flows from that too is because

1318
02:00:51.120 --> 02:00:58.300
you draw so heavily from let's say buddhism and neuroscience and physics and the metrics for each

1319
02:00:58.300 --> 02:01:04.100
of these fields is so different um even within physics and biology and neuroscience the demands

1320
02:01:04.100 --> 02:01:10.020
the scientific expectations what are some challenges you've experienced with grappling

1321
02:01:10.020 --> 02:01:14.820
and kind of balancing and reconciling all those fields you lie in this intersection that draws

1322
02:01:16.300 --> 02:01:21.640
together and the expectation of you know back to output um output and metrics and measurability

1323
02:01:21.640 --> 02:01:26.160
are different what does it look like when you when you produce a piece when you write

1324
02:01:26.160 --> 02:01:30.160
and different communities are almost asking different things of you what does that look

1325
02:01:30.160 --> 02:01:40.060
like for you that's a good question um i think that uh like in terms of challenges uh one of the

1326
02:01:40.060 --> 02:01:45.620
central quick challenges is that the ontologies of these fields are so different

1327
02:01:46.300 --> 02:01:52.020
um i mean you you load up a neuroscience paper and it's talking about you know activity in the

1328
02:01:52.020 --> 02:02:00.120
prefrontal cortex and uh like as measured by the bold response and and uh and then you load up you

1329
02:02:00.120 --> 02:02:07.080
know uh some kind of uh like buddhism and it's talking about well there's like nama and rupa and

1330
02:02:07.080 --> 02:02:12.080
there's tanha and there's defilements and and stuff and then you know you load up physics and

1331
02:02:12.080 --> 02:02:16.280
it's like electrons and protons and valence shells and you know you know you know you know you know

1332
02:02:17.300 --> 02:02:18.460
you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know

1333
02:02:18.460 --> 02:02:26.520
i think um it's a very deep challenge to reconcile these different ontologies

1334
02:02:27.180 --> 02:02:36.960
like that basically is the challenge uh and i think that you kind of have to get a um like

1335
02:02:36.960 --> 02:02:46.940
being disagreeable uh helps uh being okay you have to be agreeable enough to really get the

1336
02:02:47.300 --> 02:02:52.420
value of things you can't just dismiss them you you really have to sort of get okay like

1337
02:02:53.800 --> 02:03:00.120
there's there's some deep logic here there's there's a reason why like all these really

1338
02:03:00.120 --> 02:03:07.740
smart people are thinking in these terms and can you sort of extract the generator for and

1339
02:03:07.740 --> 02:03:14.260
like i've been thinking in terms of lineages and and so on i should really update my my list but

1340
02:03:14.260 --> 02:03:16.320
um i think that

1341
02:03:18.340 --> 02:03:22.340
You have to be agreeable enough to get what people are talking about.

1342
02:03:24.040 --> 02:03:25.440
There's value in everything.

1343
02:03:27.100 --> 02:03:30.760
And then you have to be disagreeable enough to say,

1344
02:03:32.040 --> 02:03:35.900
and they're wrong, in a certain way.

1345
02:03:37.060 --> 02:03:44.000
It's like my objections to how neuroscience is done.

1346
02:03:44.000 --> 02:03:49.240
Well, I think that people think of neuroscience as a science,

1347
02:03:49.320 --> 02:03:52.180
but I actually think it's pretty paradigmatic.

1348
02:03:52.800 --> 02:03:59.420
We sort of have dressed up these observations in very technical language

1349
02:03:59.420 --> 02:04:01.100
revolving around methodology,

1350
02:04:01.400 --> 02:04:06.660
and there's some brilliant work in neuroscience.

1351
02:04:07.800 --> 02:04:11.560
But ultimately, it's not a science of the mind.

1352
02:04:12.400 --> 02:04:13.120
And...

1353
02:04:14.080 --> 02:04:16.660
Sadly, it often doesn't even try.

1354
02:04:18.160 --> 02:04:24.420
And I think that it's sort of understanding...

1355
02:04:25.840 --> 02:04:29.580
First of all, if you just kind of understand the research,

1356
02:04:29.820 --> 02:04:31.440
that's very important.

1357
02:04:31.600 --> 02:04:35.660
And then you need to understand what you can ignore.

1358
02:04:37.640 --> 02:04:42.320
And then the final piece is sort of extracting...

1359
02:04:42.780 --> 02:04:43.520
I'm going to say...

1360
02:04:44.000 --> 02:04:45.780
Research aesthetics.

1361
02:04:46.750 --> 02:04:52.280
And both using the best ones,

1362
02:04:53.990 --> 02:04:57.660
from the greats, we can say,

1363
02:04:58.650 --> 02:05:00.000
but also just kind of

1364
02:05:00.020 --> 02:05:20.880
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.

1365
02:05:20.880 --> 02:05:32.980
And it's sort of this, so there's this question of what does it mean to be clever in different languages?

1366
02:05:34.820 --> 02:05:46.020
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.

1367
02:05:46.020 --> 02:05:55.000
Like if they're like poetic, then like, you know, by their word choice, you can tell everything about a person.

1368
02:05:56.020 --> 02:06:04.580
And like that's what it means to be clever in Russian, to sort of load in all of that.

1369
02:06:04.800 --> 02:06:11.520
And it's just like perfect, just the insight.

1370
02:06:12.480 --> 02:06:16.000
And then there's this question of what does it mean to be clever in Russian?

1371
02:06:18.500 --> 02:06:27.300
And I'm going to claim that it's much more this kind of superposition angle that you had mentioned.

1372
02:06:27.520 --> 02:06:36.980
And this idea that, you know, English is famous or infamous for, you know, the double entendre and the triple entendre and whatnot.

1373
02:06:37.260 --> 02:06:45.760
And I think it's the more general case is this situation where you can say one thing.

1374
02:06:46.400 --> 02:06:47.000
And then you can say something else.

1375
02:06:47.020 --> 02:06:50.840
And it makes sense from seven different angles.

1376
02:06:51.300 --> 02:06:56.440
And all of those different angles are somehow meaningful.

1377
02:06:57.900 --> 02:07:10.180
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.

1378
02:07:11.580 --> 02:07:14.280
But I like this way.

1379
02:07:14.680 --> 02:07:16.060
It's my way.

1380
02:07:17.400 --> 02:07:33.240
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.

1381
02:07:33.980 --> 02:07:37.340
So sort of a relativistic perspective.

1382
02:07:38.860 --> 02:07:44.200
I think this is almost kind of back to your point on taste and being a tasteful researcher.

1383
02:07:45.920 --> 02:07:52.980
Balancing the epistemic humility while navigating all these different epistemological frameworks.

1384
02:07:53.380 --> 02:08:11.800
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.

1385
02:08:13.200 --> 02:08:14.180
Or that you just don't know.

1386
02:08:14.200 --> 02:08:18.580
And so I think that it's just challenging dualistic thinking, which a lot of science is not comfortable with just yet.

1387
02:08:19.720 --> 02:08:23.060
So I guess just to, you know, to double down on these challenges then.

1388
02:08:23.760 --> 02:08:34.120
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?

1389
02:08:34.400 --> 02:08:36.960
And I'm thinking beyond just even financial resources, right?

1390
02:08:37.020 --> 02:08:43.980
Like mentorship, intellectual stimulation, institutional support, social support, or even just the conceptual frameworks.

1391
02:08:44.120 --> 02:08:44.180
Right.

1392
02:08:44.200 --> 02:08:46.460
To accommodate the kind of work that you were doing.

1393
02:08:47.280 --> 02:09:03.660
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.

1394
02:09:05.680 --> 02:09:12.300
And I think that just sort of the triple domain setup really helped in terms of.

1395
02:09:12.740 --> 02:09:13.660
I could tell.

1396
02:09:14.200 --> 02:09:15.800
A very clean story.

1397
02:09:18.820 --> 02:09:26.320
To the Buddhists, to the active inference people and the neuro anatomy people of what I was doing.

1398
02:09:26.880 --> 02:09:30.720
And then could, you know, kind of more easily say, okay.

1399
02:09:30.780 --> 02:09:36.440
And the active inference people, like they don't have an anatomical grounding for what a prediction is.

1400
02:09:36.520 --> 02:09:37.640
And like, I do.

1401
02:09:37.740 --> 02:09:41.960
And like, this is like something to that I can very cleanly point to.

1402
02:09:42.640 --> 02:09:44.180
Or like the Buddhists.

1403
02:09:44.200 --> 02:09:47.260
Like, how do you, how do you measure that?

1404
02:09:47.380 --> 02:09:54.800
Like, how do you measure the self or, or like enlightenment and attainments, openings, et cetera.

1405
02:09:55.200 --> 02:09:59.580
And so I think that, you know,

1406
02:10:01.360 --> 02:10:18.380
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?

1407
02:10:18.740 --> 02:10:25.440
And then if you think about this domain, what treasure is it missing?

1408
02:10:27.000 --> 02:10:32.400
What does it like obviously need but doesn't know how to get?

1409
02:10:33.340 --> 02:10:42.080
And then you can connect it to like this unrepresented term in this other domain that should actually be represented.

1410
02:10:45.400 --> 02:10:53.980
And I think that just like, I mean, I think getting

1411
02:10:59.440 --> 02:11:02.460
support is of course always a challenge.

1412
02:11:02.840 --> 02:11:11.700
And I think this goes back to this idea of like so much of life is just starting the party.

1413
02:11:13.780 --> 02:11:22.340
And there's no, like there's kind of the energetic taste of like,

1414
02:11:22.440 --> 02:11:24.700
I did this really important thing and nobody cares.

1415
02:11:24.820 --> 02:11:25.420
And I'm, I'm not going to do it.

1416
02:11:25.440 --> 02:11:26.560
I'm so upset and whatever.

1417
02:11:26.780 --> 02:11:31.380
And like, okay, you know, maybe that's true, but who cares?

1418
02:11:31.600 --> 02:11:36.960
Like ultimately it's about like, you gotta be having fun.

1419
02:11:37.400 --> 02:11:41.120
And when people, when you have fun, then people will come.

1420
02:11:42.420 --> 02:11:44.960
And it's, it's also very growthful.

1421
02:11:45.280 --> 02:11:46.680
I think to have that mindset.

1422
02:11:46.740 --> 02:11:54.680
So I guess, you know, maybe I'm not super great at like chasing down support for the ideas,

1423
02:11:54.680 --> 02:11:59.780
but I'm having a lot of fun so yeah that actually tied beautifully into the next thing

1424
02:11:59.780 --> 02:12:03.620
I wanted to ask you, which was, you know, at the very beginning, you walked us through kind of

1425
02:12:03.620 --> 02:12:08.360
three to four different arcs of how basic computation evolved. And I wanted to know

1426
02:12:08.360 --> 02:12:11.960
kind of how the reception to that evolved. Like, was it the reception that changed? Or was it just

1427
02:12:11.960 --> 02:12:16.600
your philosophy and your mindset and attitude towards it that changed? So if you want to just

1428
02:12:16.600 --> 02:12:20.500
briefly go over that, I think you answered most of it quite nicely, just now.

1429
02:12:22.880 --> 02:12:29.280
Yeah, yeah. I think that a lot of it sort of was sort of doing the work before.

1430
02:12:29.780 --> 02:12:38.100
Of like, understanding that, like, you can have like, okay, I think the symmetry theory valence

1431
02:12:38.100 --> 02:12:47.640
is huge. And, and like, I'm willing to make that argument. But I know that, to some degree, it's,

1432
02:12:47.640 --> 02:12:56.360
it's an endurance thing. And like, I would rather create things than convince people.

1433
02:12:57.480 --> 02:12:58.760
And I think then,

1434
02:12:59.940 --> 02:13:07.180
it's more about, yeah, like, once again, having fun, knowing the domains that like, are most

1435
02:13:07.180 --> 02:13:15.800
relevant, and like, kind of pre pitching each domain in a certain sense. And, and ultimately,

1436
02:13:15.980 --> 02:13:17.700
just...

1437
02:13:20.120 --> 02:13:29.560
just having fun, be like, not necessarily be chasing recognition, but also just be like,

1438
02:13:29.780 --> 02:13:36.980
willing to step up when you get opportunities, that it's sort of like, I think it's easy for me to

1439
02:13:36.980 --> 02:13:42.720
fall, sort of fall into the hermit philosopher mode. And like, you know, I'm just gonna,

1440
02:13:43.980 --> 02:13:51.600
I'm gonna make my art, and think my ideas, and, you know, just kind of, you know, release them,

1441
02:13:51.760 --> 02:13:57.680
and, you know, what will be, will be, etc. And I think there's, there are failure modes in that,

1442
02:13:58.440 --> 02:13:58.840
that,

1443
02:13:59.780 --> 02:14:03.280
and I think that, like, I've, I've been really grateful for,

1444
02:14:04.520 --> 02:14:12.580
especially some friends, Justin and Janine, of, Janine from Edge City, has been, you know, just amazing at,

1445
02:14:12.580 --> 02:14:26.500
at supporting my ideas. And I think that, like, there's definitely a shift of like, how do you create ideas?

1446
02:14:28.080 --> 02:14:29.020
And then,

1447
02:14:31.340 --> 02:14:36.300
I'm just going to say, like, the sausage factory is very messy.

1448
02:14:38.780 --> 02:14:40.140
and

1449
02:14:40.140 --> 02:14:47.880
And few people would sort of have the hardiness to sort of really, you know, dig into those details.

1450
02:14:48.340 --> 02:14:54.580
And then, you know, after you create the idea, you polish it real nicely.

1451
02:14:54.680 --> 02:14:57.760
And then you start telling the story.

1452
02:14:57.760 --> 02:15:00.000
And there's

1453
02:15:00.000 --> 02:15:02.540
there's a real art to telling the story.

1454
02:15:04.000 --> 02:15:07.960
That, I mean, some people are sort of born pretty good at it.

1455
02:15:08.040 --> 02:15:12.080
Some people have to learn. And I think that

1456
02:15:13.880 --> 02:15:18.140
for me, I really want to

1457
02:15:18.140 --> 02:15:22.960
connect with the most meaningful parts

1458
02:15:22.960 --> 02:15:26.960
of the human experience, of the human condition,

1459
02:15:28.280 --> 02:15:29.580
of human nature.

1460
02:15:31.800 --> 02:15:35.320
And I really pick my topics

1461
02:15:35.320 --> 02:15:37.420
such that I can do that.

1462
02:15:37.760 --> 02:15:41.460
And if I'm not talking about the important stuff,

1463
02:15:41.680 --> 02:15:42.140
why even?

1464
02:15:43.960 --> 02:15:46.500
It's not worth suffering for, I guess I would say.

1465
02:15:47.340 --> 02:15:48.980
And so I think that

1466
02:15:48.980 --> 02:15:52.620
then it's just trying

1467
02:15:52.960 --> 02:15:55.180
to feel through...

1468
02:15:57.860 --> 02:16:00.560
Giving names to things

1469
02:16:00.560 --> 02:16:03.300
is very powerful.

1470
02:16:03.820 --> 02:16:05.460
And sort of

1471
02:16:06.820 --> 02:16:08.720
telling the story is

1472
02:16:08.720 --> 02:16:12.160
in a way that makes people feel

1473
02:16:13.400 --> 02:16:15.700
that you get it,

1474
02:16:15.800 --> 02:16:17.360
that you understand them,

1475
02:16:17.480 --> 02:16:22.100
that there's this sort of common human feature

1476
02:16:22.960 --> 02:16:24.540
that you're pointing directly toward.

1477
02:16:24.920 --> 02:16:27.900
And it's not just something that I have,

1478
02:16:28.040 --> 02:16:29.720
it's something that everyone has.

1479
02:16:32.520 --> 02:16:34.680
And people really appreciate that

1480
02:16:34.680 --> 02:16:35.560
when you try.

1481
02:16:35.980 --> 02:16:37.660
And I think that

1482
02:16:38.280 --> 02:16:42.660
insofar as the reception has been increasingly positive,

1483
02:16:42.900 --> 02:16:46.860
it's because I've been able to sort of get better

1484
02:16:46.860 --> 02:16:47.620
at telling that story.

1485
02:16:50.320 --> 02:16:51.680
Who are other thinkers

1486
02:16:52.960 --> 02:16:54.860
or researchers or, I don't know, bandits,

1487
02:16:55.140 --> 02:16:56.420
however you want to name them,

1488
02:16:56.880 --> 02:17:00.500
who you think reflect the same kinds of values that you admire?

1489
02:17:00.760 --> 02:17:02.920
Or one thing that we try to do is hat-tip people

1490
02:17:02.920 --> 02:17:04.980
who might be working in really

1491
02:17:04.980 --> 02:17:07.100
thing-changing and just revolutionary domains

1492
02:17:07.100 --> 02:17:08.160
but don't seek the credit.

1493
02:17:08.740 --> 02:17:11.220
Or people who are underdogs in their fields.

1494
02:17:12.140 --> 02:17:14.440
But show a lot of the same traits that we look for

1495
02:17:14.440 --> 02:17:16.100
and that you, I think, also embody in your work.

1496
02:17:16.220 --> 02:17:18.180
Who are some people that you want to acknowledge?

1497
02:17:18.700 --> 02:17:19.740
Or just hat-tip to?

1498
02:17:19.740 --> 02:17:19.820
Thank you.

1499
02:17:21.720 --> 02:17:22.960
So, I mean,

1500
02:17:24.520 --> 02:17:25.580
there are, I mean,

1501
02:17:26.580 --> 02:17:28.240
there are so many beautiful people.

1502
02:17:28.560 --> 02:17:31.060
And I think that, you know, it's,

1503
02:17:31.060 --> 02:17:33.400
I was thinking about this this morning, like,

1504
02:17:34.080 --> 02:17:34.900
some people,

1505
02:17:35.720 --> 02:17:38.060
it's always like, what is the output artifact

1506
02:17:39.280 --> 02:17:40.840
of, like, of beauty?

1507
02:17:40.940 --> 02:17:43.320
And, like, sometimes it's a paper.

1508
02:17:43.440 --> 02:17:45.080
Sometimes it's, you know, research.

1509
02:17:45.300 --> 02:17:47.800
And sometimes it's,

1510
02:17:49.740 --> 02:17:50.260
an apprentice.

1511
02:17:50.600 --> 02:17:52.220
Or, like, another person.

1512
02:17:52.360 --> 02:17:54.100
Or, like, so,

1513
02:17:54.820 --> 02:17:55.900
and I think that,

1514
02:17:57.760 --> 02:18:00.920
yeah, I mean, I have a lot of appreciation

1515
02:18:00.920 --> 02:18:03.980
for the people who have

1516
02:18:03.980 --> 02:18:06.000
have given me their,

1517
02:18:06.620 --> 02:18:08.080
I would say, given me their,

1518
02:18:09.400 --> 02:18:10.380
and I think that

1519
02:18:10.380 --> 02:18:15.120
in terms of professional

1520
02:18:16.760 --> 02:18:18.420
sort of hat-tips or,

1521
02:18:19.740 --> 02:18:21.260
you know, formal appreciation,

1522
02:18:23.180 --> 02:18:27.400
I have mentioned their names several times now.

1523
02:18:27.560 --> 02:18:30.720
But I would really point to,

1524
02:18:31.680 --> 02:18:33.040
first of all, Romeo Stevens.

1525
02:18:34.560 --> 02:18:35.840
He's just a very

1526
02:18:37.880 --> 02:18:41.160
high integrity and thoughtful person

1527
02:18:41.740 --> 02:18:43.900
that has an unusual generator.

1528
02:18:44.640 --> 02:18:46.460
And I've sort of,

1529
02:18:46.460 --> 02:18:49.180
I've been, you know, feeling into that generator.

1530
02:18:49.740 --> 02:18:51.700
And I feel like I get Romeo more.

1531
02:18:52.340 --> 02:18:54.400
And, you know, certainly,

1532
02:18:54.520 --> 02:18:56.820
I think that vessel computation

1533
02:18:56.820 --> 02:18:57.900
wouldn't have happened

1534
02:18:59.420 --> 02:19:01.320
without, like, certain hints

1535
02:19:01.320 --> 02:19:03.560
from how he was thinking.

1536
02:19:03.800 --> 02:19:06.380
So, big respect there.

1537
02:19:07.860 --> 02:19:09.980
And then, Nick Camerata.

1538
02:19:10.640 --> 02:19:12.860
I can't say that he's unknown.

1539
02:19:13.180 --> 02:19:15.460
but...

1540
02:19:16.040 --> 02:19:17.440
But he's great.

1541
02:19:17.440 --> 02:19:20.480
And I think that, you know,

1542
02:19:20.480 --> 02:19:21.060
oftentimes,

1543
02:19:22.960 --> 02:19:25.700
being generative is sort of

1544
02:19:26.440 --> 02:19:29.220
finding new ways to recompress things.

1545
02:19:30.360 --> 02:19:32.460
And I feel like he's

1546
02:19:32.460 --> 02:19:35.680
a really great recompressor.

1547
02:19:36.400 --> 02:19:41.120
And just consistently also focused on important things.

1548
02:19:41.320 --> 02:19:45.800
So, yeah, big, big respect there.

1549
02:19:48.260 --> 02:19:49.980
And, you know, in terms of,

1550
02:19:51.680 --> 02:19:52.120
like,

1551
02:19:55.200 --> 02:19:56.580
less well-known people,

1552
02:19:57.440 --> 02:19:58.580
I'd have to think,

1553
02:19:59.520 --> 02:19:59.960
I

1554
02:20:00.340 --> 02:20:04.540
that a lot of the Peters are underappreciated.

1555
02:20:04.880 --> 02:20:13.540
That, you know, the things that they're doing are just centrally important for so many domains.

1556
02:20:14.380 --> 02:20:20.560
And like they're kind of, you know, there's like the P to ghetto.

1557
02:20:20.560 --> 02:20:34.080
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.

1558
02:20:34.240 --> 02:20:34.560
So.

1559
02:20:38.540 --> 02:20:44.200
Because part of what I think makes research worth doing even is the gratitude that you express while you're doing it.

1560
02:20:44.360 --> 02:20:49.240
And understanding that nothing that each individual does is the be all end all.

1561
02:20:49.360 --> 02:20:50.540
You know, eventually our time will be over.

1562
02:20:50.960 --> 02:20:54.940
And I think that's what I think our time is going to end up or not, depending on how the longevity space goes.

1563
02:20:56.560 --> 02:21:02.340
But a lot of the work that we do holds meaning to build and to add to future projects.

1564
02:21:02.460 --> 02:21:05.600
And I think that's also kind of what we were trying to get at here, too.

1565
02:21:06.460 --> 02:21:19.440
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.

1566
02:21:19.780 --> 02:21:20.540
Is the thing that you're paying attention to.

1567
02:21:20.560 --> 02:21:27.580
that we can go further and how can we push the bounce? So I guess for you, what's next and

1568
02:21:27.580 --> 02:21:34.580
how are you gonna go further? What comes after this? Yeah, so just to, I think I originally had

1569
02:21:34.580 --> 02:21:41.060
described this when the camera was not recording, so I'll just kind of recapitulate it. I think that

1570
02:21:41.060 --> 02:21:50.920
so much of my sort of interest in this is just describing the beauty that is already there,

1571
02:21:51.620 --> 02:21:58.320
that humans are beautiful and living things are beautiful. And I kind of want to honor

1572
02:21:58.320 --> 02:22:05.020
the universe by pointing out, making that a little bit more legible. And then,

1573
02:22:06.100 --> 02:22:11.040
and I think I mentioned that forms of beauty that

1574
02:22:11.060 --> 02:22:13.820
are more legible are more likely to persist under transformation.

1575
02:22:14.940 --> 02:22:20.420
But there's also something a little bit prescriptive in that

1576
02:22:23.620 --> 02:22:31.040
evolution is sort of this blind process and it sort of does like the things that it makes

1577
02:22:31.040 --> 02:22:40.480
are sort of as if it's sort of convergent toward some goal, but is it really that thing? Well,

1578
02:22:40.540 --> 02:22:41.040
it's hard to tell. You know, it's all very complicated and complicated and complicated.

1579
02:22:41.060 --> 02:22:48.980
hard to say and oftentimes it's sort of there will be transition periods too

1580
02:22:48.980 --> 02:22:55.400
where it's like it's halfway to somewhere that's profoundly beautiful

1581
02:22:55.400 --> 02:23:03.020
and I think that our the way that we we think through tension is kind of kind of

1582
02:23:03.020 --> 02:23:09.720
that that it's it's amazing and like I'm I'm reminded of this Charles Pollock and

1583
02:23:12.120 --> 02:23:19.860
stability always precedes power production and this sense that when we're able to sort of

1584
02:23:19.860 --> 02:23:28.280
stabilize counterfactuals we can sort of project power into the world much more effectively and

1585
02:23:28.280 --> 02:23:36.440
like the difference between a lion and a human is like we can project power into sort of Bayesian

1586
02:23:36.440 --> 02:23:40.920
probabilities that that the lion just can't and I think that we are literally

1587
02:23:41.060 --> 02:23:50.640
stronger than the lion because of that and I would say that yeah it's always like seeing okay like

1588
02:23:52.280 --> 02:23:59.300
so okay there's there's I've been meaning to workshop a tweet about this for a while but

1589
02:23:59.880 --> 02:24:08.060
there's this idea that like many of the the fruits that we eat or the foods that we eat in general

1590
02:24:08.060 --> 02:24:10.540
have been sort of

1591
02:24:11.060 --> 02:24:18.200
are domesticated wild plants and like a wild banana looks very different than the bananas we eat

1592
02:24:18.200 --> 02:24:28.840
and like a wild avocado and even you know citrus and whatnot so I think that like part of my

1593
02:24:30.050 --> 02:24:38.980
part of my expectation and sort of drive is that I do think that there's like I think humans are

1594
02:24:38.980 --> 02:24:41.040
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

1595
02:24:41.060 --> 02:25:00.000
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

1596
02:25:00.000 --> 02:25:02.440
domesticated cucumber or whatnot.

1597
02:25:03.660 --> 02:25:10.940
We are totally on the cusp of that transformation for humans.

1598
02:25:11.840 --> 02:25:19.980
Whether we talk about—I've been tossing around a couple of ideas here, one being universal

1599
02:25:19.980 --> 02:25:20.800
basic enlightenment.

1600
02:25:21.460 --> 02:25:24.920
I think it would be possible and really good.

1601
02:25:26.800 --> 02:25:33.280
It's like we're so close to this area of mind space that's so good.

1602
02:25:34.360 --> 02:25:37.380
Maybe something can be done there.

1603
02:25:39.040 --> 02:25:48.300
Then the second frame that I've been talking about is this idea of a platonic biosingularity,

1604
02:25:49.240 --> 02:25:50.740
which big words.

1605
02:25:51.400 --> 02:25:53.040
But it's this idea that—

1606
02:25:53.040 --> 02:25:54.900
I'm going to go ahead and stop.

1607
02:25:55.920 --> 02:26:14.640
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.

1608
02:26:15.560 --> 02:26:27.420
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.

1609
02:26:27.940 --> 02:26:40.640
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?

1610
02:26:41.720 --> 02:26:43.240
Is that a well-defined thing?

1611
02:26:44.740 --> 02:26:58.640
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.

1612
02:26:59.200 --> 02:27:02.960
Or like, can you become the Greek demigod version of yourself?

1613
02:27:04.220 --> 02:27:11.620
So I think a lot about this just in terms of like, basically.

1614
02:27:13.160 --> 02:27:14.120
Everybody doing.

1615
02:27:14.640 --> 02:27:17.600
Interesting things and like, especially I would say the.

1616
02:27:19.820 --> 02:27:21.120
The tech elite.

1617
02:27:22.540 --> 02:27:24.640
Tend to be based basically.

1618
02:27:25.860 --> 02:27:34.460
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.

1619
02:27:35.400 --> 02:27:41.880
And if you if you look at, you know, Elon, if you look at Bezos, etc.

1620
02:27:42.040 --> 02:27:43.920
Like everybody is kind of following that pattern.

1621
02:27:44.640 --> 02:27:52.900
And I think that a lot of this is just gated on the imagination of the people creating the idea space.

1622
02:27:53.740 --> 02:28:14.020
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.

1623
02:28:14.160 --> 02:28:14.620
Yeah.

1624
02:28:14.640 --> 02:28:16.220
On something beautiful.

1625
02:28:18.760 --> 02:28:23.340
Just ripple effects and those those things that transcend fine lines.

1626
02:28:23.600 --> 02:28:34.680
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.

1627
02:28:35.000 --> 02:28:44.620
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.

1628
02:28:45.120 --> 02:28:46.440
Will take care of the rest.

1629
02:28:47.240 --> 02:28:52.460
And I think every time, you know, I speak to someone like you, I'm reminded again that, you know, life really is beautiful.

1630
02:28:52.500 --> 02:28:54.440
I think a lot of the thesis is that life is beautiful.

1631
02:28:54.900 --> 02:28:56.500
And it's very easy to forget that.

1632
02:28:57.420 --> 02:29:02.840
So I guess just before we end off with the last question is wanting to send a huge thank you to you.

1633
02:29:02.900 --> 02:29:06.080
I think, as you might know, analog is a living experiment.

1634
02:29:06.660 --> 02:29:12.340
It is a constellation of a lot of things of what we think that human flourishing and innovation could look like.

1635
02:29:13.520 --> 02:29:14.620
And there's a lot of things that we can do.

1636
02:29:14.640 --> 02:29:16.360
There's a lot of things revolving around this constellation.

1637
02:29:16.580 --> 02:29:18.680
And we're still teasing this out as it evolves.

1638
02:29:19.300 --> 02:29:33.640
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.

1639
02:29:33.800 --> 02:29:38.960
And I think you've done a beautiful job even just explaining everything to us in the short time that we had together.

1640
02:29:39.760 --> 02:29:41.640
So, yeah, just before our last question.

1641
02:29:41.700 --> 02:29:43.840
Thank you for not just being on the podcast.

1642
02:29:44.640 --> 02:29:45.300
Thank you for being our first guest.

1643
02:29:45.760 --> 02:29:56.520
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.

1644
02:29:57.700 --> 02:29:59.820
And so the very last question that

1645
02:30:00.000 --> 02:30:24.180
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.

1646
02:30:24.180 --> 02:30:29.760
So as someone who works interdisciplinarily, what is the question that you would leave for our next guest?

1647
02:30:30.700 --> 02:30:46.800
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.

1648
02:30:49.360 --> 02:30:51.740
But yeah, thank you.

1649
02:30:51.840 --> 02:30:54.160
I think I would like to thank you for your time.

1650
02:30:54.180 --> 02:31:02.240
I would also just say that I find the Analogue group just so fresh and with immaculate vibes.

1651
02:31:02.520 --> 02:31:05.860
So it's a real pleasure to be here.

1652
02:31:07.580 --> 02:31:22.880
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,

1653
02:31:26.480 --> 02:31:38.480
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.

1654
02:31:39.580 --> 02:31:46.380
And I get the sense that we are like in sort of like Roko's Basilisk.

1655
02:31:46.500 --> 02:31:53.000
We're sort of hyperstitioning something into reality and like maybe good, maybe bad.

1656
02:31:53.100 --> 02:31:53.760
You know.

1657
02:31:53.760 --> 02:31:54.160
Yeah.

1658
02:31:54.180 --> 02:31:55.140
We'll see.

1659
02:31:55.260 --> 02:32:16.720
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.

1660
02:32:16.860 --> 02:32:19.880
But, you know, it's functional for our purposes.

1661
02:32:21.380 --> 02:32:23.060
How has kind of.

1662
02:32:24.320 --> 02:32:38.320
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?

1663
02:32:39.100 --> 02:32:48.740
And there seem to be new ways to cooperate and probably to defect.

1664
02:32:52.060 --> 02:32:54.060
And how has.

1665
02:32:54.060 --> 02:32:54.160
How has.

1666
02:32:54.180 --> 02:32:55.100
You're.

1667
02:32:56.000 --> 02:32:57.140
Playing of the game.

1668
02:32:58.100 --> 02:32:58.660
Changed.

1669
02:32:59.540 --> 02:33:02.720
Are you able to cooperate with the future.

1670
02:33:03.340 --> 02:33:03.900
Better.

1671
02:33:05.980 --> 02:33:07.540
I'm glad to.

1672
02:33:10.100 --> 02:33:13.900
get a very clear and honest answer to that.

1673
02:33:14.200 --> 02:33:15.180
Beautiful question.

1674
02:33:15.420 --> 02:33:17.380
One that I would have to mull over as well.

1675
02:33:17.480 --> 02:33:19.980
And I'm sure Carol is also turning his gears.

1676
02:33:20.980 --> 02:33:23.240
But yeah, with that, that concludes our interview.

1677
02:33:23.320 --> 02:33:24.980
Again, thank you so much for taking the time.

1678
02:33:25.540 --> 02:33:27.840
I know it's beautiful and sunny in Sausalito.

1679
02:33:27.920 --> 02:33:31.200
So really appreciate you sitting here for three hours with us.

1680
02:33:31.840 --> 02:33:34.160
And once we get that answer, we will let you know.