The vasculature that thinks

Transcript

00:00:00I think research tastes is everything. That's 90% of the task. Have a good taste. You can create beauty through paintings, through music, through movies, but isn't it especially cool to uncover the beauty of reality?

00:00:23What I want my adult world to be. It's to live a beautiful life.

00:00:33Welcome to the Analogue Podcast, conversations with people who are reimagining the future

00:00:38of systems, science, and society. Each episode we bring on a new explorer we've backed,

00:00:44a researcher, or an architect, but we're all asking the same core question. What if

00:00:50we did things differently and meant it? This is about the new age of research and innovation,

00:00:56where we lead with problems first and progress follows. Enjoy.

00:01:03A couple just words of structure, and I think Carol and I both don't love having too much

00:01:08structure in the way that we do these. Firstly, starting off with kind of just a precursor to the

00:01:13way you think and understanding the natural evolution of your brain chemistry and the way

00:01:20you think about science, transition a little bit more into the basic computation stuff.

00:01:23And a lot of the work that you've described to people, some new elements maybe that you haven't,

00:01:29and ending off with kind of the values that are evident in the way you think about complexity and

00:01:34the way you combine elements and combine domains. Because really that's what analog is all about.

00:01:38And I think you are walking, living in volume and a lot of the values that we look for.

00:01:43One on one being, being able to cross disciplines and think about what's adjacent possible and what

00:01:49unfolds again. And I think that's what I'm really looking for. And I think that's what I'm really

00:01:50looking for. And I think everyone you just mentioned with evolution and how it's infinitely

00:01:54smarter than any human can be and understand that progress can't really be contained or measured in

00:02:00different domains. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm Michael Johnson. I've been

00:02:11working on these topics for quite some time. I originally moved to the bay in 2010 or 2011.

00:02:19Yeah.

00:02:20And my original intention was to work on AI safety.

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

00:02:30I was really surprised that I thought that the way that they were talking about minds was very interesting,

00:02:40but it didn't seem groundable to biology or to physics or to how I understood things.

00:02:53And I felt that it's this thing where you can kind of see into the future a little bit and see,

00:03:03okay, what's going to come of this line of thinking?

00:03:07And when I simulated that,

00:03:09I was like,

00:03:10Les Ron produced a lot of beautiful things,

00:03:14but a theory of minds is not among them.

00:03:19And I had the fork in the road of,

00:03:23do I try to convince people,

00:03:27or do I just try to start the party?

00:03:30And I felt that starting the party was the more sort of light choice,

00:03:36you could say,

00:03:37that if there's value,

00:03:39then, like,

00:03:41it's kind of on me to find it and to construct a way of thinking about things.

00:03:46So I ended up taking way more time than I thought to write The Principle of Equality,

00:03:53but then I would say that's been the basis for a lot of my other work.

00:04:01So, yeah, I guess in all of this, too,

00:04:12I would say that when I was young,

00:04:14I was thinking of the

00:04:18biological constraints as very bothersome,

00:04:21very annoying.

00:04:24Like,

00:04:25we're not perfect yet.

00:04:27And the weakness of the flesh, I guess, is the common phrase.

00:04:31And I think that

00:04:34this journey

00:04:35has really shown me

00:04:38how cool humans are.

00:04:40Just how...

00:04:44I think that as you peel back the system of how our bodies work and how our minds work,

00:04:53you just see this beautiful system where...

00:04:59there's always reasons for things and it's been really rewarding to reverse engineer bit by bit the reasons for the way things are.

00:05:14I mean, I think one thing that currently I also think a lot about is how innovation,

00:05:23even in science research, even beyond biology, there's this beauty that was always stripped

00:05:28away just in, you know, to sacrifice for progress.

00:05:33We think about every time there's been a war or even a traditional physics-based way of

00:05:37thinking about problems.

00:05:38It's always been, what are the principles?

00:05:40What are the formulas?

00:05:42What are the mathematical concepts that we can use to take what's abstract and the beauty

00:05:47of what's really immeasurable and boil it down?

00:05:50And I think what's interesting about your work too is we're coming back and we're almost

00:05:55seeing like a counterpulture of respecting and going back to these biological perspectives

00:05:59of seeing innovation problems in ways of embracing the uncertainty and embracing the unknown

00:06:06and understanding that things don't work in isolation.

00:06:08It's this kind of interconnected web of problems that influence each other.

00:06:13A large dynamic, blacker dynamic ways of seeing problems.

00:06:17I think what was beautiful too about the way that you just outlined all of that is a lot

00:06:22of it is about awareness, like awareness of the unknown, awareness of what comes to be.

00:06:27And this is something you talk about in your work as well a lot.

00:06:30So before we dive deeper into your work, I'm curious about your personal relationship with

00:06:36awareness.

00:06:37Like you mentioned that you were going to be entering AI safety.

00:06:39There's an element of awareness there, but how has that influenced your own contemplative

00:06:45practice?

00:06:46What informs or has informed your scientific inquiries, the background leading up to this?

00:06:52Sure.

00:06:53So that's a good question.

00:06:55It can go many different ways here.

00:06:58I think that I mean to your point about science sort of being being productive.

00:07:08I'm reminded of this famous quote from Hamlet that there are more things Horatio than are

00:07:15dreamt of.

00:07:16There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in philosophy.

00:07:21And this is the critique of science that science is often very good at carving out a little

00:07:33corner and saying, okay, here are the equations for this corner.

00:07:36Here's the systems, the components, the interactions.

00:07:41And it's a brilliant way to do things.

00:07:44It is.

00:07:46And very successful in many domains.

00:07:48And it's also very willfully blind, you can say.

00:07:54And that most things of interest include many more things than science can really cleanly

00:08:03point out.

00:08:05And then the question is, how do you navigate that?

00:08:09And I think that like you can always double down on.

00:08:16The reduction.

00:08:18You can also just kind of shrug and say, well, there's infinite complexity.

00:08:23Who are we to say anything?

00:08:25And I think that there's a middle path where you just look for, I would say new compressive

00:08:33frames that you know, maybe humans tend to have limited working memory capacity for understanding.

00:08:46And I think that's a good point.

00:08:47We are finite creatures, but we can get better and better and better at compressing important insights into simple terms.

00:09:00And I think that this is actually a big part of how science progresses.

00:09:06It's like the predictive hierarchy in the brain of simple things get fed into feature detectors, get summarized.

00:09:17That result gets fed into higher level feature detectors and so on.

00:09:21And this doesn't directly speak to your awareness question, but I think it's like an important thing.

00:09:32And in terms of awareness, interesting.

00:09:43Okay.

00:09:44I'll go there.

00:09:46So.

00:09:48I tend to, people tell me that I live in a different world.

00:09:54That I had some archetype reading that, and

00:10:00guy said, well, wow, you're like a rare archetype.

00:10:04You're the fae archetype.

00:10:06Like you live in the faerie, magical world.

00:10:09And I was like, really?

00:10:12Is that good?

00:10:15But actually, I think, okay, like, I'll own it.

00:10:18Yes.

00:10:19And then he said that my second archetype was kind of the scholar archetype.

00:10:26When you focus, when you concentrate, you try to really understand how it works.

00:10:33And I think that, like, so much of my awareness is focused on kind of a just a different kind of tilt or filter or whatever.

00:10:49Like, I think I see things that other people don't.

00:10:54I don't.

00:10:55And so on.

00:10:56But then I think if I'm a, if I'm a rare neurotype, we can say, then I can distill the most tasty parts of this role model and give them to other people.

00:11:13It's those abilities to be that rare archetype, though, that I think helps certain people navigate different ways of knowing better than what some traditional work does.

00:11:24A lot of pioneers who bridge scientific and contemplative traditions, there's a particular taste or essence of attention or presence that I think

00:11:33I'm a rare person.

00:11:37I'm a rare person.

00:11:40I'm a rare person.

00:11:44I'm a rare person.

00:11:47I'm a rare person.

00:11:50I'm a rare person.

00:11:54of the archetype or the way you approach this, it seems to be integrated.

00:11:59And that shows in the way that you're curious about questions and the kinds

00:12:03of questions that you're curious about.

00:12:05So I guess to kind of fill it off of that, when I'm thinking about your

00:12:10background, your way of thinking, the way you've developed this mindset,

00:12:13what experiences or insights led you to establish the Institute and to explore

00:12:18this specific intersection of consciousness and neuroscience in essence, like what

00:12:24drew you to such a niche and very challenging question that would be

00:12:28perhaps not to share others?

00:12:31Yeah.

00:12:32So I mean the core answer here is going to be for me, it's deeply personal.

00:12:41That there is no sort of boundary between my, my emotional life and the work that

00:12:48I'm doing, it's all kind of one, one thing.

00:12:52And

00:12:54in that sense it's a bit more like art than science.

00:13:02And yeah, that, that would be interesting to get into, but I think that

00:13:10as a young man and okay, I'm still young, but you know, in my twenties,

00:13:21I was a little angsty.

00:13:23I was

00:13:24depressed.

00:13:25I was like looking for a place to put my energy and and I just was you know, really, I mean,

00:13:34interested in okay you know what is pain and pleasure that feels important.

00:13:43And and my dad was struggling with depression and I love my dad and I wanted to help him.

00:13:51And I think that

00:13:53like,

00:13:55looking around

00:14:00consciousness felt like the biggest dragon and the biggest dragon to slay.

00:14:07And I completely didn't know what I was getting into.

00:14:11But I had enough intrinsic motivation and curiosity.

00:14:16And I felt I didn't need any immediate result.

00:14:23And I was willing.

00:14:25I was willing.

00:14:27to front the energy without expectation of a return, that I just went for it.

00:14:36And I think that over time, this motivation has changed a little bit.

00:14:45And it's not just getting aimed at a problem and trying to slay the dragon.

00:14:56It has historically been a substantial thing.

00:14:58But more

00:15:00more just seeing as we were talking before the show just kind of seeing the beauty in being human and I think that yeah I mean certain personal interactions our relationships have really opened my eyes to the beauty of it's good to be a human and it's good to be a man and a woman and all these things so

00:15:28I really I think for me it's now more well I'll say exploration appreciation and I guess just kind of looking into the future I expect that I have this tweet a few years ago that forms of beauty that are that we make legible are more likely to

00:15:58persist under transformation so the more we understand about what is beautiful about humans the more likely it is for that to both persist and also extend into the future and it's almost a freeing way to approach research and work to right not to have to be objective driven necessarily but to let things evolve and let things

00:16:28flourish and have just different networks of what's possible come and spring about as that happens how do you think you were able to come to this like obviously from the 20s to now I'm assuming that wasn't a linear process and it wasn't something that that came out without practice so what was that sort of navigation like well I mean at first it was just kind of letting go of other possibilities

00:16:58just this sense that okay like I'm I'm just gonna do the thing and you know at that point

00:17:10there was little I would say prior art in this research space or this like this lifestyle we can say

00:17:21and I think that

00:17:26perhaps one of

00:17:27the

00:17:28The challenges in any entrepreneurial work is, I guess, what might be called the valley of eligibility.

00:17:38Of, you know, you start, maybe you have a nice normal job.

00:17:43You know what's going on.

00:17:46And then you feel like, okay, there's this treasure a long ways away, but you can feel it.

00:17:53And then so you quit your job.

00:17:55You start kind of researching.

00:17:58You start exploring.

00:17:58And there's kind of this long valley where as you get further away from kind of what is simple and legible, you stop being able to explain to others what you're doing or why.

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

00:18:26You just know it's important.

00:18:29I think that it just takes a lot of determination and self-belief that you, like, there is actually this treasure on the other side that you feel.

00:18:43That's a very strong way to put it.

00:18:46And I guess to kind of link back to your current work and how that's evolved over the years, how has that changed?

00:18:53So if you first started with the basic computation, I'm sure you described it, explored it in many different forms.

00:18:59I'm curious how that's evolved over time as your research has progressed and made new connections.

00:19:06And perhaps for someone who's encountering your ideas for the first time, maybe what are the stages that they need to understand, truly understand what basic computation theory is and what's most important?

00:19:18Right, right.

00:19:19Well, the rabbit hole here goes pretty deep.

00:19:27At QRI, when I was there, I would always say, you know, the project is a very long-term project.

00:19:39And the basic pattern is that if you actually, if we're doing better philosophy, then that should ultimately cash out in better neuroscience.

00:19:52And then if we're doing...

00:19:53If we're doing better neuroscience, that should ultimately cash out in some actual useful neurotech.

00:20:01And then some people will follow the breadcrumb trail back to the neuroscience and then to the philosophy. In that sense, it was kind of a very sort of ambitious layup that did prioritize the philosophy. And I would say that I guess I've had

00:20:30three major works at this point. The first is Principia Qualia, Symmetry Theory of Valence. So that was 2016. And like the basic sense of that is kind of laying out like how you could turn this consciousness research that's very much like alchemy right now into something closer to chemistry.

00:20:59And the symmetry theory of valence is saying, well, symmetry or emotional valence, the pleasantness of the experience is probably actually a natural kind. And in terms of setting up what is knowledge about consciousness, what is knowledge about qualia, then we kind of have two domains. And then if we have the math domain here, symmetry in the math domain maps

00:21:28to pleasantness in the domain of qualia. And I really like making these parallels between domains in basic computation. I think I line up three domains. Yeah, so that's kind of the first branch. The second branch would be neural annealing, just kind of taking a thermodynamic approach to the brain.

00:22:00I read Robin Carteris's Atropic Brain. And I thought, oh, yeah, like, you can go further. And so I actually sent him an update on that. I think that ultimately turned into Rebus too.

00:22:18So I think that there's a really rich metaphor of treating the brain as like in neural annealing.

00:22:27I'm excited.

00:22:28suggested basically treating it like a metal.

00:22:30Metals can get hard and brittle.

00:22:32To fix that, you heat them up.

00:22:34You get this entropic disintegration and then like things cool down.

00:22:39And then so the metaphor goes pretty deep with that.

00:22:44And then third, so all this is kind of backstory to the question of

00:22:51vessel computation and where did vessel computation come from?

00:22:55And and also how is, how has it evolved since I, I posted it?

00:23:03I think that like I, this sort of, this sort of proximate cause for vessel computation.

00:23:17I would describe there's this question of what is tension trying to do for us?

00:23:28And my sort of initial thesis was that it's the nervous system's immune system.

00:23:37That the body has an immune system if a virus or bacteria comes in and starts to cause trouble.

00:23:45We have these T-cells and killer cells and whatnot.

00:23:50And so we have an immune system for sort of friend and enemy distinction.

00:23:56But then, I mean, we have computer viruses as well.

00:24:01And they're just information.

00:24:03They're just code.

00:24:04And we can say viruses are just code, but they are a little bit more physical.

00:24:11And so my thesis was that just trying to understand how the nervous system shuts down rogue patterns, we could say.

00:24:25And so I was, you know, then, you know, did a bunch of permutations.

00:24:32Okay, like, how does this work?

00:24:34How does that work?

00:24:36And just kind of tension as stopping resonance, we could say.

00:24:41That if you have this vibrating system, you know, if you clamp your fingers over it, it'll stop vibrating.

00:24:48And maybe that's what the body is trying to do with tension.

00:24:54Then I got into the Tanha angle.

00:25:00And big props to both Romeo Stevens and Nick Camarata.

00:25:05They really laid it out in a way that was easy for me to then take and run with.

00:25:14So I think yeah, and then vasocomputation turned out to be this kind of very simple on-off thing where

00:25:28Clenching stabilizes patterns in a local sense.

00:25:34And then, but we can then kind of light up all these domains of where you have the Buddhist

00:25:41phenomenology and all the terms in Buddhism. Then you have the predictive coding active

00:25:49inference frame and all those terms. And then you have actual physical anatomy,

00:25:57neuroanatomy, but not only in the brain too. And the really exciting thing with finding these kind

00:26:08of domains to kind of line up is that any term in one domain should have an analog. And I appreciate

00:26:18your

00:26:19organizational name here. Should have an analog in all the other domains that you have lined up.

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

00:26:31domains is like different or maybe our models are wrong. And so it was exciting to say that, okay,

00:26:41mental tension is a prediction is vascular tension. And just being able to draw that line.

00:26:52So vessel computation launched in

00:26:55In kind of a minimum viable product way.

00:26:59And then has so I think it's gone through at least a 0.5 revision.

00:27:08So I'd say the talk that I gave at Siddhiana would be 1.5. And so that added so it's like

00:27:19tension is a prediction is vascular tension. It was like part of the foundation.

00:27:25And like latches, so on. I think I've since then really seen this in much better detail. And I see

00:27:39this as a very I think we very subtly adjust tension to think and this idea of so the 1.5 in my

00:27:54edge the

00:27:55line of talk kind of split this into two of well, there's this feeling that maybe the self

00:28:04is composed of latches, hard invariance, things being kept invariant. And this is a defensive

00:28:14thing. This is a it's in a sense, a necessary stage for us to survive in the world.

00:28:25And especially in a social world. If you don't have a self, you have no boundaries.

00:28:33The things are not going to go well with you or in interactions. But then the metaphor of

00:28:42if I posted this in response to one of the next few weeks ago, that this idea that kind of latches

00:28:51are tying the bonsai tree. And then the idea that kind of latches are tying the bonsai tree.

00:28:56into a certain pattern. And then it grows into that pattern. And then after it's grown into the

00:29:04pattern, you can actually release the latches. And it'll say like this. And it's a free upgrade.

00:29:15So yeah, a lot of deep stuff there. And then the other thing that I think came with 1.5 was

00:29:25having a lot more depth.

00:29:26or appreciation for the basal computation system as the hand of the mind.

00:29:35And I think that there's a lot of detail there in terms of what is aphantasia.

00:29:42Aphantasia as an inability to hold a certain class of patterns.

00:29:48It's just your hand of the mind just doesn't reach there, you can say.

00:29:56This would tell the story about how...

00:30:00we all have these weird deficits in terms of what we can say wise.

00:30:08And I think that this can be mapped to very physical deficits of, yeah, I literally can't clench in V1 and V2 in my visual system, whereas you can.

00:30:24So you can picture things better than I can.

00:30:29But I do think that ultimately this is a trainable thing.

00:30:34So I'm going to pause there and invite questions.

00:30:39Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think the beautiful thing about that explanation, too, is that it's not just domains that are analogs of each other, but humans to a certain extent are also analogs of each other.

00:30:50I think the way that you break it down makes it really clear.

00:30:54It comes from a computer engineering background or comes from a medical background, comes from a philosophical background.

00:31:00To see the different ways of thought and the lines that run parallel here, it just, I think this is a beautiful way of, we'll get back to this a little bit later, of explaining the science and the research in a way that isn't gatecapped behind just a biological mechanism, but to show that it transcends so many different boundaries.

00:31:18Peral, you look if you have a question.

00:31:21I do, yeah.

00:31:23I have a question.

00:31:24I have a question about stabilizing patterns and getting proper reference.

00:31:29So if I recall correctly, I've read you express narcissism, for example, as the ability to stabilize the self.

00:31:40And if the same goes for aphantasia and for many other ways of being.

00:31:50The question that comes to my mind is.

00:31:55If you don't have the reference that you try to stabilize, what would be, from the Vasa Computations framework perspective, what would be an actionable way to stabilize something you don't really have access to?

00:32:12I saw you tweet something about how thinking hurts if you attempt to stabilize unfamiliar mental processes.

00:32:22So.

00:32:24If gaining conscious command of one's nervous system requires techniques that can be difficult to develop without this reference, how can we solve this?

00:32:36Yeah.

00:32:40This is a big, huge problem, question, opportunity.

00:32:47I would say that.

00:32:50I mean, given that we all have big deficits.

00:32:54In the system.

00:32:54This is relevant for all of us.

00:32:57And I think it's especially relevant for sort of understanding.

00:33:01You know.

00:33:03I think that.

00:33:07Not all bad behavior in the world is due to suffering.

00:33:10But a lot of it is.

00:33:13So.

00:33:15I think that.

00:33:16Like.

00:33:18I'd start to tell the story.

00:33:20By talking about.

00:33:24Parental love.

00:33:26And.

00:33:27This is obviously.

00:33:29At the root of a lot of attachment dynamics.

00:33:32Attachment.

00:33:33Is very essential.

00:33:34For how we are.

00:33:36And I think that.

00:33:37You know.

00:33:38As kind of a simple scenario.

00:33:40You're born.

00:33:41And.

00:33:42Hopefully mom loves you.

00:33:44And when like.

00:33:46You're right there next to mom.

00:33:47You feel that.

00:33:49And then.

00:33:50Maybe you get.

00:33:51A little bit bigger.

00:33:53Mom leaves the room.

00:33:54You start crying.

00:33:56But you learn that.

00:33:57Oh.

00:33:58Even if mom is in the other room.

00:34:00Things are okay.

00:34:02Like mom still exists.

00:34:04You develop some.

00:34:05Object permanence.

00:34:07And then.

00:34:08You get.

00:34:09Bigger still.

00:34:10And then maybe.

00:34:11You start kindergarten.

00:34:13And you're away from mom for.

00:34:15Half a day.

00:34:16And.

00:34:16Oh my gosh.

00:34:17This is like.

00:34:17Super stressful.

00:34:19Or.

00:34:19You know.

00:34:20For some kids.

00:34:21But.

00:34:21But you kind of learn.

00:34:22Okay.

00:34:23You know.

00:34:24Mom's still at home.

00:34:25She still exists.

00:34:27Like.

00:34:28It's okay.

00:34:29And then.

00:34:30You know.

00:34:30You go to college.

00:34:31Maybe you call mom.

00:34:32You know.

00:34:34Some might call mom.

00:34:35You know.

00:34:35Once a day.

00:34:37Some.

00:34:37Once a week.

00:34:38Some once a month.

00:34:39Some never.

00:34:40You know.

00:34:40Who knows.

00:34:41But.

00:34:42Essentially.

00:34:46What is that feeling.

00:34:48That.

00:34:48Sort of.

00:34:49Comes.

00:34:50When you feel loved.

00:34:51When you feel safe.

00:34:53And.

00:34:53I think it is.

00:34:54Just this kind of.

00:34:55Feeling of security.

00:34:57Feeling of safety.

00:34:58Feeling that.

00:35:00unsurprising is going to happen.

00:35:02There's not going to be any sort of crazy large prediction errors, we can say.

00:35:10And I think basically attachment dynamics is some people learn how to give that to themselves, and some people don't.

00:35:23And I think that it's hard to summarize this in terms of like labels, narcissism, or whatever.

00:35:36But I do think that to some degree, this is a desire for a sort of safety that you don't know how to create.

00:35:47And so you think, okay, maybe if...

00:35:51Like, I need attention, and this is how I get it.

00:35:57And to some degree, I see that as a deficit of vasocomputation.

00:36:05And I talk about this in terms of we all have a default stance of how we hold ourselves.

00:36:13And like this has a...

00:36:15We can talk about it as a pattern of tension.

00:36:18And then we can take on different stances.

00:36:21For different situations.

00:36:26But I think that it's really wholesome if you integrate this feeling of safety, of security, of love into your default stance.

00:36:39And that whether you've learned how to do that or not is like a really big fork in the road in terms of life satisfaction.

00:36:49And I guess I would also say phenomenology.

00:36:54So I also...

00:36:56There's a friend that used to work for a different institute.

00:37:02She talked about how Emily is her name.

00:37:07And she shared that sometimes you get these...

00:37:12We can talk as if people have utility functions.

00:37:16And, you know, this is kind of...

00:37:19I was a little skeptical.

00:37:22I was like, I'm a little weak and whatnot.

00:37:23But now I'm like, okay.

00:37:25We can work with it.

00:37:26And so sometimes in these utility functions, it's like, you know, do I have a good place to sleep?

00:37:35Do I have enough food?

00:37:36Do I have enough status?

00:37:37Do I have enough, et cetera?

00:37:38It's kind of do I have my needs?

00:37:40And from a hierarchy needs perspective or something else.

00:37:46And sometimes some of these...

00:37:50Like this equation, we can say.

00:37:53Sometimes there are quote unquote divide by zero errors.

00:37:59Where some are multiplied by zero or whatever.

00:38:03But basically some terms are stuck.

00:38:08And oh, like my status feels low.

00:38:11I better get more status.

00:38:14Okay.

00:38:15I like worked hard, but I don't feel like I have more.

00:38:20Maybe I need to work.

00:38:22Even more.

00:38:22And even harder and even harder.

00:38:24And, you know, if you look at the motivations of the most accomplished people in the world,

00:38:36I think often you will find these sort of divide by zero or they're multiplied by zero errors.

00:38:44And with great accomplishment comes great desire to be successful.

00:39:02And, you know, we could try to dig into that in terms of like maybe some core pattern is latched.

00:39:11And fixing that would involve opening the latch.

00:39:16And then it's always a question of, well, do you want it to be fixed?

00:39:20So...

00:39:23Yeah, that's fascinating.

00:39:25Before we dive really deep into the framework,

00:39:30I wanted to go back to something you said before.

00:39:34You said two things that I think connect really well.

00:39:38So one was that you represent this rare archetype where you are different and right.

00:39:47And you translate what you see, what you think is true and offer it to other people.

00:39:55And the other thing was that what you do is...

00:40:00more like art than science. Could you elaborate on that?

00:40:05Yeah, so, I think that...

00:40:16I think the art versus science thing is a false distinction

00:40:24in terms of if you look what the great physicists were doing

00:40:31and why they were doing it, their sort of mental substructure

00:40:36or what they felt their role was.

00:40:40They were absolutely artists.

00:40:44And they would say so.

00:40:46And it was this systematic quest for beauty.

00:40:54And they felt they had this...

00:40:57They were, you know, maybe we could say uncovering the system that God created.

00:41:03And, like, you can create beauty through paintings, through music, through movies,

00:41:15but isn't it especially cool to uncover the beauty of reality?

00:41:24I think that...

00:41:26Yeah, I would call most of them artists.

00:41:31And I think that...

00:41:36It's like, what is the deliverable?

00:41:39And, like, this is always a question for researchers.

00:41:43This, you know, is the deliverable a paper?

00:41:46Is the deliverable...

00:41:50a new theory?

00:41:52Is the deliverable...

00:41:54a productive institute?

00:41:55What do you mean by productive?

00:41:56And so on.

00:41:58And, like, these are hard questions.

00:42:02You know, even a banger tweet is...

00:42:07a potential deliverable.

00:42:09And, yeah, I think that...

00:42:16this might sound...

00:42:22egotistical or haughty or unreal or whatever,

00:42:28but I think there's kind of this...

00:42:32this choice of...

00:42:36what I want my deliverable to be.

00:42:38And it's...

00:42:41to live a beautiful life.

00:42:45And I think...

00:42:48everyone has their gifts.

00:42:50And I think it's absolutely necessary to...

00:42:56if you want to live a beautiful life,

00:42:58to use your gifts.

00:43:00And, you know, there's this classic mathematician's apology that...

00:43:06talks about...

00:43:07yeah, you make what sacrifices you have to...

00:43:10to do that.

00:43:12And so...

00:43:13I guess...

00:43:17I'm trying to...

00:43:19become...

00:43:20the platonic version of myself.

00:43:22In terms of, okay...

00:43:24what are my gifts?

00:43:25And I'll level down and...

00:43:27make it work.

00:43:32I think, like...

00:43:33the beauty of...

00:43:34just going back to what you said is...

00:43:36this synergy of acknowledging what your gifts are,

00:43:40but also where the deficits might be.

00:43:42Right.

00:43:42And understanding that those come together in parallel.

00:43:44Both truths can exist.

00:43:46And there will be people who see those gifts...

00:43:48and there will be people who...

00:43:49don't love the fact that you don't have...

00:43:52deliverables.

00:43:53That there are deficits in the system.

00:43:55But reconciling the two.

00:43:56But I'll let Carol go into...

00:43:58his deeper deep dive before we go back into those.

00:44:01Yeah.

00:44:03One thing that...

00:44:04came up as you were...

00:44:06answering the question was...

00:44:08how...

00:44:09the nature of that work is...

00:44:11very...

00:44:13integrative.

00:44:13You know, like...

00:44:14I think it was Alan Watts who said that you cannot be a good...

00:44:18artist unless you are also...

00:44:20a philosopher and you cannot be a good philosopher...

00:44:23unless you are...

00:44:24something of a mystic.

00:44:26You know, these things aren't separate.

00:44:29They...

00:44:30inform one another and they develop at the same time...

00:44:33eventually converging...

00:44:35at a worldview that is...

00:44:37coherent and...

00:44:38integrated.

00:44:39So I wanted to ask...

00:44:41you know...

00:44:42your journey...

00:44:43as you are discovering new areas of interest...

00:44:48new ways of looking...

00:44:50how did you decide...

00:44:52what was worth...

00:44:53integrating?

00:44:54Do you have...

00:44:55like a North Star you used to...

00:44:57navigate these waters?

00:44:59Do you...

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

00:45:11I would say that one of my first moves in my twenties was to appreciate this idea of ruin value.

00:45:28This idea that, okay, you know, you have all these Roman ruins and they're actually beautiful.

00:45:34They might be more beautiful than they were when they were, you know, fully intact.

00:45:40And just to realize first that you can have all the beautiful ideas in the world and if you can't get them out, in a sense, it doesn't matter.

00:45:57For sure, like it's better to have beautiful ideas than not.

00:46:02Absolutely.

00:46:03But, you know, maybe tomorrow they'll be gone.

00:46:10And I think like I was very motivated to even just create one beautiful thing and one beautiful thing that sort of didn't require my experience.

00:46:25sort of continual energy we could say something that you know would have at least some small

00:46:34amount of room and what i realized is i simply had to learn to write

00:46:44and because the writing value of or ruin value of writing can be very substantial

00:46:52and if you don't know how to put things into words to crystallize things

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

00:47:11words are very just so powerful and then just in terms of well so i i see myself as a very

00:47:21myself, like sometimes I want to almost retreat into mysticism or whatever and be like, okay,

00:47:30you know, guys, I gave you the ideas you figured out, but then it's okay.

00:47:37You know, that's not really the, the long-term play.

00:47:42And I think that so in there's this recent AI paper.

00:47:52And, you know, kicked off a bunch of controversy on, on Twitter.

00:47:56And I think that like one thing that really stuck out of me was this focus on research

00:48:04taste.

00:48:06And there's this, like, I think research taste is everything.

00:48:11It's really, I think it's this invisible thing.

00:48:18That's 90% of the task, like have good taste.

00:48:24And I think that yeah, I think that insofar as I have succeeded, it's because I have good

00:48:35research taste.

00:48:36Like I know what topics are important and I know what good answers look like.

00:48:46And I think that.

00:48:47A lot of the time.

00:48:48A lot of this is just kind of understanding what.

00:48:53One of my favorite phrases is to have knowledge, you need a place to put knowledge.

00:49:01And just appreciating kind of what shape of container is needed for different kinds of knowledge.

00:49:10Once you understand the shape, you know, the periodic, excuse me, periodic table is this beautiful example that

00:49:19If you like line up these all the elements by their electron shell you get this nice periodic structure and it might look a little weird because the shells jump.

00:49:30But then there's so much information here.

00:49:33And like you can tell so much about like where to put an element.

00:49:38You know how reactive it is.

00:49:40You know, it's other properties.

00:49:42And if there's a gap, you know that something will be found to fill that gap.

00:49:48It's like element.

00:49:49You know, 37 or 52 or whatever.

00:49:52It's going to be, it's going to be found.

00:49:55And so that's the typical example of a

00:50:00container for knowledge that we did really good at.

00:50:05And I think that for me, like, a lot of this, like, so much confusion is about people aren't

00:50:16clear what, like, people might have some kind of element of knowledge, but they're not clear

00:50:23about the container.

00:50:28So, yeah, I guess, like, part of my background is in the philosophy of science.

00:50:32And I feel like that's, like, most philosophy is bullshit.

00:50:39But and all philosophers would agree with that.

00:50:42It's just that they would disagree about the 5% that isn't BS.

00:50:48But I think that philosophy of science was very helpful for me just to kind of get a

00:50:53sense of, like, philosophy of science.

00:50:55How paradigms work, what kind of thing knowledge is, et cetera.

00:51:00And, and also just kind of what languages as well.

00:51:03Big fan of Wittgenstein.

00:51:09Speaking of people one can be a big fan of, I wanted to ask you about the ideas of Ray

00:51:18Pitt.

00:51:19And specifically, you know, many people are now discovering Ray Pitt.

00:51:25How do you see Ray Pitt?

00:51:25and his ideas and there is a substantial following of his online in social media.

00:51:32So some of the common reactions I'm seeing to his work, coming from someone who's new to it,

00:51:41is that his approach could be seen as cultish or overly reductive or maybe a little too radical in some aspects,

00:51:51you know, like the complete rejection of seed oils, stuff like this.

00:51:56So I'm curious, what convinced you personally that there is genuine value in Ray Pitt's theories?

00:52:06How do you see them connecting to fossil computation?

00:52:10Yeah, yeah. Great question.

00:52:14Before I start, I'll point out that I have my PD things here.

00:52:20I'm cooking an oil.

00:52:22Marmalade, vitamin.

00:52:24Yes.

00:52:27Yeah.

00:52:29I'm a big fan of Ray Pitt.

00:52:32And if I had to put that, put why into words,

00:52:39I mean, many ways to go here.

00:52:43One is,

00:52:46I think he really, like,

00:52:51there's this phrase that sounds derogatory, but it's totally a compliment.

00:52:57He was a schizovatist.

00:53:02And, you know, it's like he really felt things very viscerally.

00:53:11And then he tried to put it into a system.

00:53:15And that's a good recipe for either insanity or, you know,

00:53:19something really nice.

00:53:21And for Pete specifically, I think, like, he seems just like the base was just a man who was very curious.

00:53:34And of course, his thyroid got destroyed by a fluoroscopy when he was like six or whatever.

00:53:41So he had to figure out this sort of bioenergetics of the body.

00:53:47And, you know, I think that's a good thing.

00:53:49I mean,

00:53:51like a couple of his sort of core quotes would be that

00:53:57as energy flows through tissue, order accumulates.

00:54:05And energy and structure are interdependent at every level.

00:54:10And I think that this idea that we are at the core,

00:54:19to understand what is a human,

00:54:22we should understand this kind of structure just kind of built around our metabolism.

00:54:30And, you know, there are various metabolic pathways.

00:54:33Oxidative metabolism is particularly efficient and so on.

00:54:38And then as energy flows through this system, structure accumulates.

00:54:45It's a very sort of powerful model.

00:54:49And like then because it allows you to diagnose problems as metabolic problems,

00:54:57this structure is degrading

00:55:00because the metabolism is broken. And if you fix the metabolism, then you can regenerate the structure.

00:55:09He read very widely. I was reading about the effects of coconut oil on feeding pigs and how it made them like really lean and high energy and that wasn't what the farmers wanted and so on.

00:55:23He's known for the anti-seed oil stuff. And I think it's just correct.

00:55:31I think it's a very, very true and very important and very underappreciated thing that so many problems can be linked to the reactivity of these oils in our bodies and so on.

00:55:48In terms of connectivity.

00:55:52I think the most important thing is connecting peat and vasocomputation.

00:55:55So this I would say you're going to get a vasocomputation 2.0 beta 1.

00:56:07So I would say that first of all,

00:56:13I have some kind of meme posts on Twitter talking about metabolic enlightenment.

00:56:22You know, there's a guy in the Alps and he drank like 50 cups of coffee a day and he had this big spiritual breakthrough and a bunch of aspirin every day too.

00:56:34Could be related.

00:56:36And I guess there's the stick in the carrot here.

00:56:43The good part and the bad part.

00:56:46The good part is, yeah, like maybe if we rubbed our metabolisms up,

00:56:52it would be easier to, for example, like open latches.

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

00:57:04Historically speaking, that over the past 150 years or so, we've lost about a degree Fahrenheit.

00:57:13For body temperature and this being a pretty good proxy for metabolic rate.

00:57:21So like that would be one angle.

00:57:23And one thing that I'm extremely excited about in this space is like laying out.

00:57:30Okay.

00:57:30Like what would a repeat meditation retreat protocol would like?

00:57:40Like no seed oils, a lot of red light, CO2, like baking soda before bed and so on.

00:57:47And just like, you know,

00:57:50it's not going to do the work for you, but on the margin, it could be extremely powerful.

00:57:57Like certainly, you know, it could be the difference between, you know, if you do a 50 person retreat.

00:58:07How many people get breakthroughs?

00:58:09Is it zero or 10?

00:58:13And I, so I think it's really significant that way.

00:58:17So it's like, you know,

00:58:18what is the repeat meditation stack and so on.

00:58:23So it would be, you know, at some point I should really write that.

00:58:29The second thing gets into Gerald Pollack's work.

00:58:37He talked about aspects of the, of the cell and this idea that in particular,

00:58:47you know,

00:58:48the cell is the engine of life.

00:58:49So I think it's cells gels and the engine of life is like one of his three books.

00:58:54And he talks about how there's as much energy in the structure of the water in the cell

00:59:09as there is in all burning, all the ATP molecules in the cell.

00:59:15And that basically,

00:59:18and this is the, in the relaxed state of a muscle.

00:59:23So we can think, think of the, like a relaxed muscle cell as a plump hydro gel with a lot of structure in it.

00:59:34And then when it contracts, it expels a lot of the water and kind of crumples and it's the potential energy turns into useful work.

00:59:49This means that the contracted state of the cell is the low energy state.

00:59:58And in

01:00:00order to relax, a muscle has to get energy pumped back into it.

01:00:07And pushing the stone back up the hill, so then like the relaxed state is the high energy

01:00:14state.

01:00:15There's a lot of potential energy there.

01:00:18And I think that this is actually extremely relevant for vasocomputation.

01:00:27And this, this.

01:00:34And this, there's this kind of maybe kind of default intuition where like it takes energies

01:00:41or excuse me, it takes energy to clench.

01:00:46And this model kind of turns that around and says, no, it actually takes energy to

01:00:53sort of charge up a muscle into the relaxed state.

01:00:57And then the sort of default action is to clench.

01:01:04And so, I mean, this is sort of the observation that like, it's hard to relax.

01:01:12It's like hard work.

01:01:15And if you're, if you're not in a good metabolic state, like you can be laying in bed and you're

01:01:23just super tense.

01:01:25And I think the, the sort of status quo perspective of muscles would have trouble sort of telling

01:01:36that story.

01:01:37But the, the public version would be like, yeah, like it makes total sense.

01:01:41Like you, your, your muscles are not going to be able to do that.

01:01:44cells are locked into this low energy state. And one thing that seems particularly relevant is

01:01:54there seem to be kind of two

01:01:56two kinds of energy that sort of go into

01:02:03restructuring the cell and one is just kind of

01:02:06chemical energy and like ATP molecules

01:02:09not only can be burned

01:02:12for chemical energy but also they sort of are

01:02:18very crucial for this structure

01:02:22the other energetic input is

01:02:26something like red light or even heat

01:02:30or movement that sort of

01:02:35when like and like one example

01:02:39of like how I think this should be applied is

01:02:43make sure or like hold

01:02:47meditation retreats in like

01:02:50places with abundant light

01:02:52like make sure people get a lot of light throughout the day

01:02:56especially morning and evening

01:03:01so yeah rabbit hole goes pretty deep there but

01:03:04that's what I'd say

01:03:06and I think just to wrap that up

01:03:09I think this idea of what is a latch

01:03:13there's this you know

01:03:15I suspect that there's some like interesting stuff with like

01:03:19latches shutting down the cell and stuff like that

01:03:20and I think that there's a lot of

01:03:22I'm going to say the microtubule processing network

01:03:25so the rabbit hole there but

01:03:27I also think that it's sort of this like

01:03:31a latch is a very low energy state

01:03:34and

01:03:37opening latches will so latch being the

01:03:40latch bridge mechanism of

01:03:41smooth muscle is kind of this sort of

01:03:44locked tension in our vascular system

01:03:48and so I do think that um you know I think that

01:03:50opening latches will be like not just sort of creating the

01:03:55the information conditions but creating the biochemical conditions of sort of

01:04:01pushing energy into that region to sort of recharge the muscle cells

01:04:13yeah speaking about speaking of meditation retreats you know some meditation teacher

01:04:20and

01:04:21and uh reggie ray who wrote touching enlightenment

01:04:26would be a good example you know some of them

01:04:29warn about the futility of meditating in a disembodied state

01:04:36we really stress the somatic aspect of meditation and you mentioned you know

01:04:41was it eugene krishnamurti who was having 20 cups of coffee

01:04:46and aspirin you know high in the mountains before he attained what he was

01:04:50he would consider moksha so um the question here is

01:04:58would that be

01:05:00a good, would it be helpful if people who are, you know, serious about meditation shifted from, you know, meditating for many hours towards the quality of meditation and maybe if they looked into getting their metabolism up, you know, as opposed to just doing the reps?

01:05:24Would that be the constraining or the scars factor in that work?

01:05:34Right. So I would preface this just in terms of like, I want to be coming from a place of humility here.

01:05:45And I, there's a lot that I'm not sure about and so on.

01:05:54I do think that from, from my conversations with, with people, it does seem like quality does trump quantity and that, you know, one hour of good meditation is worth a day of mediocre meditation.

01:06:17And that a big, big thing too is

01:06:24does the meditation stop when you open your eyes and like one like you know are you still in a like

01:06:35high energy curious state and you're like you know just kind of exploring how things work

01:06:42throughout the day and then the next sit you just kind of pick up exactly there

01:06:50or you know the bell sounds you open your eyes you're finished you know and you just kind of

01:07:00enter normal life mode I think that this is probably like and this I credit Nick Camerata

01:07:10for this observation and I would also say that yeah like

01:07:18you know if you're in a state of like you know you're in a state of like you know you're in a state of like

01:07:20if you're in a low energy state it's just really hard and it's not like a personal failing it's not

01:07:28a character flaw it's just you might not have the energy to actually do the thing because meditation

01:07:36done right it's not relaxation in terms of cessation of effort it's

01:07:44you know really being very active in terms of trying to understand what's happening

01:07:50and so yeah I think that if the if the biochemical conditions are not there and you know if you know

01:07:57I read these crazy estimates of maybe 90 percent of people are hypothyroid or whatever and like wow

01:08:07and that makes me think that on the margin just kind of fixing your energy production

01:08:17is probably going to be a big deal.

01:08:21use of time and energy than like an extra you know switching from like an

01:08:28hour to two hours of meditation day or something like that thank you um the

01:08:37next question I wanted to ask is about insight and what actually is inside and

01:08:41what happens during the moments of insight I you read about this

01:08:51often inside that it's analogous to phase transitions in I think it's called

01:08:57self-organized criticality you know like if you have a sandpile avalanche model

01:09:02where you where small additions eventually trigger a substantial

01:09:07reorganization in the system so would that frame align with how you think

01:09:15about inside and what does as a computation have to say about inside

01:09:21yeah so I think this kind of gets to kind of what are the the most useful

01:09:28compressions here that sort of allow us to take a very sophisticated situation

01:09:36and sort of pack it down to something that's very manageable and and that we

01:09:42can get sort of play with and work with and I think this this idea of

01:09:47self-organized criticality is one of these really useful

01:09:51frames and this would be kind of a thermodynamics neural annealing energy

01:09:58parameter model

01:10:00where you basically if you add energy to a system you can get these phase transitions and sort of you get different emergent behavior you can sort of shift to a different attractor basin or local minima or whatnot I would say to bring

01:10:22vasocomputation in I do expect that both the the neural system and the

01:10:30vasomuscular system will each have an energy parameter so it's sort of there's

01:10:38neural annealing and there's vasomuscular annealing basically and I

01:10:43suspect that um like my like so an insight can be you know the shift

01:10:52in in neural dynamics such that you you sort of fall into a different attractor

01:10:57basin and maybe this basin like lets you feel different or see different things

01:11:03see new things etc you can also and I think that I do think that both

01:11:09meditation and psychedelics lead to this like both both states but

01:11:15especially this this second state that I'm going to explain where basically

01:11:22you might sort of at least temporarily reopen some latches and if if we think

01:11:31of a latch as this sort of hard constraint on on a systems range that in

01:11:39a certain range or like in a certain physical area there's sort of a pattern

01:11:47that's gotten frozen or locked in it's like what was a very

01:11:52intrinsically is sort of being held as a constant. then I think that in some meditation

01:12:00meditation and psychedelic effects, this sort of reopens and this constant becomes variable.

01:12:12This sort of circuit or like this neural network that has sort of been, we can say,

01:12:18pinched into a circuit, sort of unfolds back into a real network. And I think that, you know,

01:12:26in terms of, we can say, opening events or awakening milestones or whatnot, I do think that

01:12:37this plays a significant role and perhaps a causal role of, yeah, if there's a latch there and

01:12:48on the other side of opening that latch is a particularly deep feeling of freedom.

01:12:57And it's sort of, what does it feel when that latch opens, whether permanently or temporarily?

01:13:07Well, it tastes like an insight.

01:13:15Wow. Wow. Yeah. I think across, you know, very many people,

01:13:26various accounts of profound mystical experiences of, you know, cosmic consciousness,

01:13:32there appears to be a common element and that would be complete surrender or acceptance.

01:13:41And this could happen, you know, in war survivors who faced imminent death from bombing raids,

01:13:49or in John Blofeld's mescaline experiences where he identified

01:13:56total renunciation as the key insight.

01:14:01From your research, what neurological or physiological mechanisms might explain

01:14:08why this act of letting go seems to trigger or coincide, I know, with transformative states

01:14:17of consciousness? Yeah. So, I'm going to talk about

01:14:26cringe. And sort of cringe as the proto-reflex. That you cringe away from danger,

01:14:39away from uncertainty. You cringe into safety, to quote a friend of mine. And so I think that,

01:14:48like, this is kind of, this is what you do when you don't know what to do and there's danger around.

01:14:54And I think then letting

01:15:00go is kind of the opposite. It's kind of tuning down, deconditioning, giving up this cringe into safety response. And when you do that, like it can be the hardest thing in the world.

01:15:23It's like, you know, it may be the right move, but you have to sell it to your body. And that's not easy.

01:15:34But I think that basically, I mean, there's this beautiful quote from the Buddha, and it's something to the effect that,

01:15:44so is the sea has but one taste, the taste of salt. So too my teaching has but one taste, the taste of release.

01:15:57And I think Romeo has quipped that, you know, meditation is just like deeper and deeper layers of muscle relaxation.

01:16:07And it's also like,

01:16:14we can say meditation is progressively deconditioning cringe.

01:16:20Or like, yeah.

01:16:22And I think that, like, it does, it is like literally central because it is this reaction that sort of, we can say builds the self.

01:16:37And like builds our sort of,

01:16:42unhealthy relationship with the world too.

01:16:45When like bad sensations come in and we kind of cringe from the facts.

01:16:51And then we try to sort of control them.

01:16:53We sort of know there's like the sort of three to violence of greed and fear and delusion sort of attempts to sort of get away from what is real.

01:17:07And yeah, I think that basically,

01:17:11this is a muscular thing.

01:17:13This is a muscular reflex.

01:17:14It can be deconditioned.

01:17:16And what it like what that involves and what that feels like is release.

01:17:26Yeah.

01:17:29Users of certain psychoactive substances, such as MDMA or 2CB or some smaller extent, maybe also,

01:17:39natokinase, which also,

01:17:41I think it's been tweeted about.

01:17:42And then you report that under the influence,

01:17:45they feel qualitatively different in the body.

01:17:51And there is a sense of being more embodied,

01:17:54more coordinated perhaps.

01:17:56And there is also a sense of freedom that goes with it.

01:17:59I recall,

01:18:02Alan Walsh again mentioned that when you watch Zen monks,

01:18:08they have a different swing when they walk.

01:18:13And he compared it to watching a cat move.

01:18:18How does this work?

01:18:20How does this sense of freedom in the body and release go together?

01:18:27Yeah.

01:18:30I think it's probably very true.

01:18:34And I guess to sort of tell the story,

01:18:38I want to sort of tell the story about neurotransmitters.

01:18:44And sort of,

01:18:45you know,

01:18:45we have these simplistic stories about,

01:18:48okay,

01:18:49there's like receptors on neurons and then neurotransmitters fit the receptors.

01:18:53And like,

01:18:53they like change the firing patterns and whatnot.

01:18:57I think that's true.

01:18:58But there's maybe a more intuitive story to be had.

01:19:05And I would say that,

01:19:08most neurotransmitters,

01:19:09including those sort of hit by various psychedelics,

01:19:15they have effects on,

01:19:17like notable computational effects,

01:19:20both on our neural system and on our vessel muscular system.

01:19:27And I would say that,

01:19:30you know,

01:19:31we can think of the body as having kind of a control panel

01:19:34for you know there's there's like knobs to control neural activity like stochastic influences on

01:19:44neural activity we can say and then there's also knobs to control our vessel muscular system and

01:19:52like one example of this or like one analog of this would be peristalsis in the gut

01:20:00you have these slow waves in the gut and they just kind of slowly carry food through our bodies.

01:20:08But then, you know, we can sort of adjust the dials on this.

01:20:13And like if we jack the serotonin up, maybe like the waves get a lot more choppy and fast and the food kind of goes through quickly.

01:20:23And maybe if there's like food poisoning or something, the body says, okay, like, let's process this very quickly.

01:20:30And this is essentially a change in rhythm.

01:20:35And so I expect that, you know, things like meditation, psychedelics, etc.

01:20:44will very deeply or like powerfully change the rhythms of the body.

01:20:53And not necessarily in the gut, although I think it including in the gut in interesting ways.

01:21:00But I think especially in the vasomuscular system, that the rhythms of the vasomotion and whatnot will shift.

01:21:12And I think that, you know, you can get sort of, we can say, you know, temporary feelings of unity and oneness.

01:21:21And, you know, these.

01:21:23Amazing states.

01:21:25And then things go back to normal after the trip.

01:21:30And so.

01:21:32Part of this is sort of long term training of trying to become maybe a little bit more harmonious in your, your vasomuscular rhythms.

01:21:47And then some of this and like less, less twitchy, less reactive, less.

01:21:52Less.

01:21:53Likely to sort of.

01:21:55Clench or cringe as some kind of challenging sensation comes in.

01:22:02And then some of it will be opening latches.

01:22:05And like some latches will reclose after the trip.

01:22:09Some may stay open.

01:22:11And if it stays open, then it's going to be a permanent change.

01:22:17And I think that like.

01:22:19Part of both the.

01:22:23Side effects and bad side effects of psychedelics.

01:22:26Sort of may resolve to like which latches were open.

01:22:31And, you know, even.

01:22:33Strange side effects.

01:22:34Like there's this HPPD where.

01:22:37Even after a psychedelic experience, you know, you have like triangles and it's like, or like, you know, some, some feature detector in your visual hierarchy stays latched.

01:22:50And.

01:22:50I guess I see it as like very sort of.

01:22:56We're, we're going a little far field here.

01:22:58I hope you don't mind.

01:22:59Great.

01:23:01I see it as a, just this very interesting.

01:23:05Pretty central thing in terms of.

01:23:08There's this predictive hierarchy.

01:23:10In the brain.

01:23:11Where.

01:23:13The, the lowest.

01:23:14The lower levels.

01:23:16Kind of deal with.

01:23:18Kind of.

01:23:19Very sort of basic.

01:23:20Feature detectors on the stimulus.

01:23:22So like, is this a line?

01:23:24Is this curved?

01:23:25Is this bright?

01:23:25Is this dark?

01:23:26Is this red?

01:23:28And then.

01:23:29Every additional layer.

01:23:31Sort of has the results of the lower level.

01:23:34As input.

01:23:35And then runs.

01:23:37More abstract feature.

01:23:38Detecting.

01:23:39Excuse me.

01:23:40Future detection on that.

01:23:43And.

01:23:45Sometimes.

01:23:46I think.

01:23:48Like.

01:23:48With vascular attention.

01:23:52InScriptive.

01:23:53feature detectors can get stuck. And like I wonder to the degree that that happens without psychedelics as well. Like

01:24:05InScriptive.

01:24:06really obvious when, oh, you know, I took some

01:24:10InScriptive.

01:24:13InScriptive.

01:24:15InScriptive.

01:24:16or whatever that's kind of an obvious case um

01:24:20um but like how often does this happen just in normal course of operations and we don't

01:24:26really know it except that we just kind of get we we see a certain pattern everywhere

01:24:33would it be then correct to say that you know if let's say mdma may temporarily

01:24:41temporarily reduce or relax the latches um and some of them might persist

01:24:49beyond the experience after their substance is

01:24:53already metabolized could this explain why um some mdma users

01:25:00report diminished effects over time, but not exactly due to pharmacological tolerance, but because their baseline psychological state has shifted closer to the latch-free state they initially experienced under the influence.

01:25:22So, I mean, I think there's several, several factors that are worth paying attention to here.

01:25:31One is that some of these drugs are unfortunately neurotoxic and sort of

01:25:40some attenuation of effects over time could be sort of some bad sign of, well, you know, these,

01:25:46these classes of neurons are sort of getting killed or, or something.

01:25:51So,

01:25:52that's, that's worth noting. But I also think that the, the pattern that you're pointing to

01:26:00is very real. And it's like, if you have some sort of, you know,

01:26:09cobweb of latches, we can say, and then, you know, you, you do something kind of high entropy,

01:26:15and you like clear some latches out, then the next time you, you do,

01:26:22you do that same high entropy thing, you will clear fewer latches out.

01:26:26And like maybe you need to do a, like a different class of high entropy thing

01:26:31in order to sort of get a similar effect as the first time.

01:26:37And so one of the, generally speaking, things that are unhealthy for the brain do not feel good.

01:26:50Sometimes, you know, you get some edge cases, like, okay, maybe MDMA isn't like super healthy

01:26:55for the brain, but it does feel good. And that's, that's weird. One thing that is like,

01:27:01clearly bad for the brains is general anesthesia. But yet, general anesthesia has this

01:27:14very reliable and durable antidepressant effect.

01:27:19Mood lifting effect for weeks afterward. And I do expect that this effect to be driven by just

01:27:30kind of opening latches, just kind of dissolving latches, relaxing this, this muscle in kind of

01:27:36stochastic ways. And so I guess this would suggest that maybe if you like, get anesthesia over and

01:27:45over, you'd get less mood lifting effect. Although that would be a little bit more difficult.

01:27:50Not healthy.

01:27:53Interesting. And would you say that

01:28:03repetitive thoughts would represent a form of frozen physical sensation in the body?

01:28:15Yeah, I'm getting a little feedback here.

01:28:21Testing.

01:28:25I wonder who it's coming from? It's a little bit loud for me. Okay, that was, that was cool.

01:28:35Yeah, so I think, you know, there's this, this question of like, what does the latch feel like?

01:28:41And I think, like, it's sort of something held, being held constant,

01:28:48and like some,

01:28:50you know, as I was saying that, like, some kind of variable being held as a constant. And I think that,

01:28:57like, any, any sort of good theory of the nervous system or of the body is also

01:29:09tacitly sort of a theory of how things can go wrong, too. And we should be able to sort of

01:29:16reimagine like, this disorder, and then we should be able to sort of re-imagine like, this disorder,

01:29:20as a disorder of latches, or that disorder as a disorder of latches. And one thing that comes to

01:29:26mind is something like eating disorders, as like, there's something latch, and it should be. And so

01:29:35I have a good friend who took psychedelics, like was struggling with an eating disorder for a long

01:29:44time, took psychedelics, and it was just gone. Just, you know, after, after that experience,

01:29:50it was just not a, not a problem. And I think that, yeah, I, I do think that, like,

01:30:00Certain disorders of anxiety, we can say, of like, you can't get this out of your head, you have these recurring thoughts, you have this sensation that you can't seem to get rid of, or whatever. It could just be like, this specific thing is latched. And if you could open that latch, you would resolve the problem.

01:30:21This reminds me of something I read, and now we are entering what many would consider woo, but nevertheless, it's completely anecdotal. As far as I know, nobody has seriously studied it, but there have been accounts of people who claim to have cured their allergies under the influence of LSD.

01:30:49And one of the most famous stories, I think, was about a man who had an allergy to cats. And one time, he dropped acid, and a cat came to him, sat on his lap. He had a positive experience with that cat, and the allergy was long gone.

01:31:16Do you think there is validity to this?

01:31:19And if yes, then what is the point?

01:31:19Yes, then what's going on? Is it just updating priors? Is it reliving some kind of negative experience and healing it? How would you interpret this experience if you consider it valid?

01:31:37Right, right. I think I would come down on the woo side of this.

01:31:45I think that, obviously...

01:31:51Immunology is real. And toxicity is real. And you can't just choose to... I would simply not be damaged by the lead or something like that. Some things are sort of beyond the power of the mind, we can say.

01:32:10But an immune response is not that there's something intrinsically dangerous about something.

01:32:19I think that your reaction to something is improper and sort of is creating the damage.

01:32:28And it is this question of, like, can you sort of more directly interface with the system making these calls?

01:32:34And can, like, you know, whether it's some drug or introspection protocol or whatever, can you sort of get this under control, tame this response?

01:32:48Negotiate with the system.

01:32:50white list this thing, you know, many different ways to frame it.

01:32:55So, my friend Mark, meditation stuff on Twitter, says that he's gotten big effects on sort of introspection on various previous triggers.

01:33:13So, I don't think it's crazy at all.

01:33:16I do also think that, like, I'm pretty sure you can psychosomatically create an allergic reaction to something.

01:33:30And if you can create it, then likely you can resolve it.

01:33:36And in terms of what's happening,

01:33:44I guess one question is, to what degree do we have sort of, like, if we have, you know, a very still mind, we can say, and just like we sort of ramp the sensitivity up and the stillness up and just kind of feel as carefully as we can.

01:34:03To what degree do we have phenomenological access to what our immune system is doing?

01:34:13And I'm going to start with you.

01:34:14I'm going to say that there's probably huge individual variation on this.

01:34:18In terms of like, for some people, I don't expect that they could ever sort of, you know, manage this by phenomenology.

01:34:27But to some extent, I think that other people maybe could.

01:34:33I just don't know exactly, you know, how to tell that story yet.

01:34:38Yeah, fascinating.

01:34:42In the book, Therapy with Substance, there is a chapter about 2C-B and its qualities that apparently make it easier to work with psychosomatic issues.

01:34:57And the exact sentence goes,

01:35:00you will be able to identify the structure of resistance.

01:35:05You will notice what that which expresses itself in your psychosomatically.

01:35:10So I wanted to ask how this connects to things like trauma releasing exercise, tremors, shaking,

01:35:20and basically having to express something without averting your gaze.

01:35:32Or like you're having to face something and let it pass through you without clenching in defense against it.

01:35:47I think I'd sort of make one detail.

01:35:50I think I'd make a detour first and then touch on that.

01:35:52And the detour would be sort of, you know, with a very, extremely respectful nod to Michael

01:35:59Levin's work.

01:36:01There's this idea of like we're sort of these nested fields of bioelectricity.

01:36:07And I do think that a lot of decisions in the body are made by, through this system

01:36:16of nested fields.

01:36:18And I think that, you know, for example, if you're a biologist, you're going to have

01:36:21to think about how this system interaction may be sort of, you know, finding the lever

01:36:25of like, oh, like this is like the, this sort of part of the propagation of electric fields

01:36:37interfaces with this allergen.

01:36:39And like maybe if I feel differently about it, I can change the interaction or whatever.

01:36:44And so in that sense, like resistance would be a bioelectric thing.

01:36:51And I think that like how vessel computation would approach this, just like there is,

01:37:00there's something locked or like there are many things that are locked in your body.

01:37:06And like the Wu frame is referring to them as blocks.

01:37:12And I think this is actually a pretty good way to refer to them.

01:37:16And so it's this idea that like you can't really direct the energy of the body to the

01:37:22block.

01:37:22You can sort of only observe the dark matter, we can say.

01:37:28And, you know, the metaphor that I would give here is something like imagine that you were

01:37:34three years old and you accidentally slept on your foot and your foot went to sleep.

01:37:42That's happened to all of us.

01:37:44And then like in terms of like explaining the energy of the body, you know, the energy

01:37:52of the self or explaining a block, it's like, well, maybe instead of a foot, it's just

01:38:00a very small part of your nervous system.

01:38:03And instead of waking up in like 15 minutes or whatever, like, you know, takes 20 seconds

01:38:10after your stored circulation, maybe circulation never got restored.

01:38:15And it's just still asleep.

01:38:20So.

01:38:22Like the resistance isn't an active thing.

01:38:27But it is a real physical physiological lack of capacity, lack of capacity for feeling.

01:38:38And the shift that sort of undoes that will be a physical shift.

01:38:45But this physical shift can be catalyzed by attention.

01:38:50It's like attention is also a physical shift.

01:38:52It's like a physical thing.

01:38:53So if you can bring your attention there, you are tacitly like dramatically increasing

01:38:59the blood flow there.

01:39:00So it's kind of a chicken and egg thing.

01:39:03Like if something is clenched, you can't bring blood flow and attention there.

01:39:07But insofar as you succeed, then you succeed in.

01:39:12I mean, one thing that I think about just based on everything you've been talking about

01:39:18is.

01:39:20You mentioned at the start that a lot of your work is based on the fact that you're not

01:39:23around bridging what should be alchemy to chemistry. I think that is the parallel that I

01:39:28can still think about. And then a little bit after that, we talked about how there aren't any

01:39:33traditional deliverables that we can really present to really wrap up everything that we just talked

01:39:39about in a bow. I mean, we've been sitting here for two hours, and I think there's still so much

01:39:42to unpack here, right? I'm wondering, you know, as vasocompatition progresses, and there's still

01:39:48more to uncover and more to discover and more possibilities, what is evidence of promise to you?

01:39:55What is evidence that we're moving in a promising direction? I think it's a really good

01:40:00question. I mean, I think that, like, I can definitely see the deliverables, and it feels exciting. And it's this question of, at what point is it legible to others? And, like, okay, you know, really, principia qualia and STDs, and all of that stuff, I think it's a really good question.

01:40:28And, like, you know, a lot of, like, a lot of people were just kind of confused, and then some people were really excited. And vasocomputation, maybe I've gotten better at telling the stories. So, like, more people were excited. And I think that, so, okay, first of all, I do think that really, like, when it comes down to it,

01:41:02people are much more likely to believe you if they like you.

01:41:10And this, you know, we can rail against this and rant and whatever. Or we can just say, okay, you know, there's, like, a very human aspect to this.

01:41:22And so, I think that, but just in terms of

01:41:31in terms of deliverables, I think that there's always, like, there are thresholds where

01:41:39you can say they can no longer ignore you.

01:41:44And so, like,

01:41:48one example that I like to give just in terms of sort of metaphysics of, like,

01:41:53you know, in the, like, mid-1800s or late 1800s,

01:41:58it was still respectable to be an electromagnetic skeptic.

01:42:08You know, what is this, like, electricity?

01:42:12Like, you want to tie together, like, load stones and compasses and lightning and static?

01:42:20Like, that's too crazy for me.

01:42:24And then now, today,

01:42:28it's really no longer respectable to be an electromagnetic skeptic.

01:42:32Like, we're all, we're doing this on computers.

01:42:35We have iPhones.

01:42:37It's, like, no.

01:42:38That ship has sailed.

01:42:40And so you can kind of chart

01:42:44based on sort of the sort of theoretical arguments of, like, well, actually, you know, this, you know, Maxwell's equations can, like, explain X.

01:42:57And so you can kind of chart based on sort of the sort of theoretical arguments of, like, well, actually, you know, this, you know, Maxwell's equations can, like, explain X.

01:42:58and y and z and then you can also chart the sort of practical tech growth of well uh you know you

01:43:06we built um the the telegram and an electric motor and a light bulb and like pretty soon

01:43:14it becomes sort of harder and harder to doubt the power of those equations

01:43:19um now i guess the the question and you know we can apply this to to sort of any of any of my work

01:43:28um is like how close are we to like are are we at the stage where okay these are the equations

01:43:37and then like uh what else will they connect to and like if we plot out you know kind of the

01:43:43journey of of faraday and maxwell with his um with their

01:43:47um

01:43:48their work on electromagnetic uh phenomenon then like where are we in in the stage and like what's

01:43:56next um so that would be like a setup uh for this and i think that um like for me for vessel

01:44:07computation specifically um three of the big prizes uh are first of all can we make a map of

01:44:17letches

01:44:18so can we have this sort of objective like we did a scan and here are the latches in your body

01:44:27um and you know then we can kind of have you know be building a science of interpreting

01:44:32that data that's uh yeah like a latch here might be like you were bitten by a dog and you know

01:44:37whatnot and then uh second um can we make like can we use

01:44:48this thinking. Can we use sort of vessel computation theory and adjacent theory to reliably open latches?

01:44:59Like

01:45:00can we do like a an ultrasound with wide dispersal uh and like you get like a lot of opening events and you know uh or or can we even just explain you know the question was about uh previously uh about tre the trauma release exercises basically when you sort of exhaust your um your hip muscles um you can get release events um and then like uh obviously

01:45:28this would go well with the the scan that if we can make a map of latches um before tre and then we have a really amazing breakthrough tre session and then we have a lot map of latches after tre um that would be a very big deal um and so you know looking at various forms of mostly ultrasound uh but also like f-nears for for making these maps um and then i guess

01:45:58third uh this this is like a little bit less clean uh just in terms of um a type of a type of knowledge to to point at but i do i do think it's very important just kind of characterizing i want to say like reflexes um reactions capacities for flexing in your vessel muscular system and so

01:46:28like some some kind of example here would be like how twitchy are you um and like can we put a number on that uh can we say okay you know you have like um uh x amount of uh tanha uh and then like can we decrease that by by 10 or whatever and like obviously in different states of mind you will have different amounts of this um so you know

01:46:57you know

01:46:58after an amazing sauna, this might be lower,

01:47:02but can we lower the baseline?

01:47:04Can we measure the baseline?

01:47:06And I would also say that another big aspect of this

01:47:12is sort of this, how good is your coverage and your reach

01:47:18in terms of your mental hand?

01:47:22So I was speaking with Ethan Kuntz,

01:47:28and we were talking about how maybe we basically have

01:47:32sort of the capacity to sort of hold four chunks

01:47:36of working memory at a time.

01:47:38And I suspect this is like extremely a muscular thing.

01:47:42Like we can kind of multiplex the carrier signal,

01:47:45whatever that may be, into sort of four chunks.

01:47:51And then basically whatever thoughts we want to have,

01:47:56we have to construct.

01:47:58We have to construct them out of a maximum of these like four pieces

01:48:00of sort of stabilized structure,

01:48:04which is like a very interesting limitation,

01:48:07if you think about that.

01:48:11And also like we can also latch things,

01:48:14which sort of then doesn't take away from that cap,

01:48:19but makes everything a little bit less flexible.

01:48:24But just in terms of like,

01:48:28I guess I would say like,

01:48:29aphantasia is a great model organism here of like,

01:48:35if you, you know, can you imagine that?

01:48:37And like, can you imagine something that relies on like the lower levels

01:48:42of the predictive hierarchy, the sort of simple feature detectors?

01:48:46Can you imagine something in the middle?

01:48:48Can you imagine something very abstract?

01:48:51And like my claim would be like aphantasia is kind of,

01:48:58you know, a very obvious, you can kind of,

01:49:00you have these nice kind of scenarios of, well,

01:49:02if you close your eyes, can you imagine like a bright red apple?

01:49:07And what can you do with the apple?

01:49:09Can you rotate it?

01:49:11Can you like zoom in?

01:49:12Can you see the texture of the leaves, et cetera?

01:49:15And like this is a very like actionable sort of test for imagination,

01:49:19which I think is like test for vasomuscular access to that part of your nervous system.

01:49:29And I think that things much,

01:49:30much higher on the predictive hierarchy are less easy to test for.

01:49:35But I think, you know, we can also have deficits there.

01:49:40So I'm very bullish on sort of making a map of both latches,

01:49:48things that are held constant, cannot change,

01:49:51and also making a map of mental grasp,

01:49:56of things that we can't change,

01:49:59but can choose to

01:50:00flex or like hold open rather than just have it open or latch by default.

01:50:10And when you talk about hands and latches, I think about this not in terms of even just the

01:50:16vasocomputation but also in just adjacent domains. So I think one way to frame a lot of what you've

01:50:21been saying is that research and science is a collaborative process and I think historically

01:50:28we valued a lot of serendipitous discoveries and a lot of the value that we place, you know,

01:50:33obviously with the benefit of hindsight because so many of these research pieces were ridiculed.

01:50:37mRNA research, even calculators, people not wanting to derive from an abacus,

01:50:42all these little things that we can scoff and think are silly now

01:50:47really changed the game because of what they were able to unlock,

01:50:51adjacent possible, right? There are these fields of knowledge and domains that were so close and

01:50:57would just change the way that we exist as humans if we can remove one bottleneck, whatever that

01:51:03looks like. And so we've briefly talked about how these are competition, you know, if physiologically

01:51:08true could change the way we think about musculature and how we think about neurons.

01:51:14And I want to invite you to think about, you know, once this theory, whatever that end goal looks

01:51:18like is successful, is proven true. What do you think about the way that we think about neurons?

01:51:21And I want to invite you to think about, you know, once this theory, whatever that end goal looks like is successful, is proven true,

01:51:21what are other, I want to think like floating orbs in this constellation and this mental map of

01:51:26knowledge could just be revolutionized by your theory and your thesis being proven

01:51:32true. Like what else could be unlocked and what else is possible?

01:51:35Yeah, that's a great question. I think that a lot of it comes down to sort of

01:51:42how do you become skillful in using your nervous system? What does it mean to be skillful in using

01:51:50your nervous system? And then how do you become skillful in using your nervous system? And then

01:51:51you know, we talk about physical dexterity. You know, can you, like, twirl something on your wrist or,

01:51:58you know, can you, like, have a have a ball and, you know, move it that way or,

01:52:02like, can you balance on a slack line or, you know, many of these. It's obvious. I think that

01:52:11sort of the space of potential ways that you can be mentally dexterous is much, much bigger.

01:52:21And I think that sort of the space of potential ways that you can be mentally dexterous is much, Much bigger.

01:52:21But, you know, I am bullish on kind of, I mean, first of all, just kind of metrics for this.

01:52:31And like one thing that really, really comes to mind.

01:52:34So, OK, a few things.

01:52:37One thing is just kind of this idea of better mental compressions and that if we are actually somewhat limited by how much we can stabilize at a time,

01:52:52we get four chunks of concurrent stabilization and that's it.

01:52:55So all thoughts kind of have to be built out of four different regions.

01:53:01then

01:53:05Then there's like a dimension of scaling in terms of better knowledge representations.

01:53:11And so, you know, maybe you only get four sort of chunks of your nervous system that you can sort of stabilize at once.

01:53:19But if you.

01:53:21Get like better tools for thought, better compressions, this can scale very considerably.

01:53:31I also think that there's this this idea of I'm going to call it clench pleiotropy.

01:53:38So pleiotropy is is a concept in genetics and it's where one gene does many things.

01:53:43It's like and in the the the Siberian fox domestication trials where they like bred foxes to be.

01:53:51Very friendly and basically they domesticated fox in foxes in 50 generations.

01:53:59What they found was that the.

01:54:03When they basically they thought the causal factor here was delaying the foxes neural growth.

01:54:09Basically, the adult adrenal glands never fully grown in or grew in.

01:54:15So they just like felt fewer like less fear.

01:54:19And but these foxes had.

01:54:22Like weird things that went together like floppy ears and curly tails and patchy coats.

01:54:31And it's like often like a gene does many things.

01:54:37And so the idea of clench pleiotropy is this idea that by default.

01:54:47Muscles kind of often have like.

01:54:51Big impact clench patterns like you move a lot of stuff.

01:54:57And like.

01:55:00I had this thing with my hand where, okay, I can move this finger, I can move this finger,

01:55:06this finger, but if I try and move this, it goes together.

01:55:11It could be like a tendon thing, but it can also be muscular.

01:55:16Can you wiggle your eyebrows separately or whatever?

01:55:22These are very learned things.

01:55:24I think that, generally speaking, if we could look at mental muscles, this would be the

01:55:33rule, not the exception.

01:55:35This idea that it's actually very hard to ... The lesser-known crowd might call this

01:55:43decoupling and whatnot.

01:55:45I think that's a pretty good label for it.

01:55:47This idea of, can you stabilize here without also just automatically clenching?

01:55:54This other area.

01:55:55In that sense, becoming good at precision use of your nervous system is learning how

01:56:08to decouple and make the stabilization clenches very precise.

01:56:15Interestingly, this is ... The other side of this is sometimes you want to stabilize,

01:56:24stabilize a lot of stuff.

01:56:25You want this sort of clench of pleiotropy.

01:56:28If you have this big vision, then can you ... Are you strong enough to hold a bunch of

01:56:37stuff constant at once?

01:56:39These capacities kind of trade off each other.

01:56:43In some sense, I think that it's one reason why ... It's sometimes rare to get thinkers

01:56:52who are both ...

01:56:53Yeah.

01:56:54Big and precise.

01:56:57Much easier to only be big or only be precise.

01:57:02I'm not sure I directly answered your question, but maybe I answered an adjacent question.

01:57:08No, that's beautiful.

01:57:09I think another adjacent question that I want to flip onto you is, throughout this entire

01:57:14conversation you've referenced a lot of thinkers that have shaped the way that you do your

01:57:18research.

01:57:18You also gave us a nice roadmap of how the computation has evolved.

01:57:24I'm wondering if there were any areas of knowledge that you didn't expect to draw so much from?

01:57:29Nice.

01:57:30Yeah.

01:57:31That's a great question.

01:57:33I mean, the obvious would be Ray Peet.

01:57:36I didn't expect his perspectives on metabolism to be particularly relevant for understanding

01:57:46the mind, but I think it absolutely is.

01:57:48So definitely that.

01:57:51I think I would also credit ...

01:57:55I think I would also credit Romano Stevens and Nick Camerata for really sort of ... previous

01:58:00relationship, Pupana, Ibtiqobba, for kind of opening my mind on Buddhism and this idea

01:58:08that I ... It was a big pivot for me and yeah, I have a lot of respect for their help, I

01:58:16guess I would say.

01:58:17I think that one thing that I kind of started with and that maybe has like ... I think it's

01:58:24like, has been woven into my work much more than maybe it's apparent, is physics.

01:58:35I think that it's this just absolutely just amazing domain of like ... I'm writing a piece

01:58:46now, just talking about how physics is sort of a very ...

01:58:52Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

01:58:54I think that it's a shining example of the search for natural kinds and also how anything

01:59:04you build, if you're in consciousness research or researching the mind in any way, ultimately

01:59:15whatever you build has to compile to physics.

01:59:20If it doesn't compile to physics, then at best, it's not going to be a good thing.

01:59:24It's a mere metaphor, which can be useful, but it's still ... You're not going to get

01:59:30that sort of anchored type of knowledge.

01:59:37I think that physics has been just an enormous inspiration for me.

01:59:43I think that I feel very anchored to or respectful of or connected with the knowledge that I have

01:59:54sort of the the big picture physicists the the sort

02:00:00of the ones that were, you know, figuring out this whole like, I mean, the forces, the quantum stuff, the gravity stuff.

02:00:09It's like these are our modes of thought that I think are just absolutely beautiful.

02:00:15So I would say that most probably there's much more to be gleaned from kind of, you know, rating the goodies that physics has prepared for us.

02:00:31So yeah, I'm very bullish on that.

02:00:34Yeah. As we were going through your work, I think the one part that I was talking to Carol about this before this, comparing the neural links to collapsing a quantum superposition.

02:00:44Those heavy types.

02:00:46um but i guess the natural question that organically flows from that too is because

02:00:51you draw so heavily from let's say buddhism and neuroscience and physics and the metrics for each

02:00:58of these fields is so different um even within physics and biology and neuroscience the demands

02:01:04the scientific expectations what are some challenges you've experienced with grappling

02:01:10and kind of balancing and reconciling all those fields you lie in this intersection that draws

02:01:16together and the expectation of you know back to output um output and metrics and measurability

02:01:21are different what does it look like when you when you produce a piece when you write

02:01:26and different communities are almost asking different things of you what does that look

02:01:30like for you that's a good question um i think that uh like in terms of challenges uh one of the

02:01:40central quick challenges is that the ontologies of these fields are so different

02:01:46um i mean you you load up a neuroscience paper and it's talking about you know activity in the

02:01:52prefrontal cortex and uh like as measured by the bold response and and uh and then you load up you

02:02:00know uh some kind of uh like buddhism and it's talking about well there's like nama and rupa and

02:02:07there's tanha and there's defilements and and stuff and then you know you load up physics and

02:02:12it's like electrons and protons and valence shells and you know you know you know you know you know

02:02:17you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know

02:02:18i think um it's a very deep challenge to reconcile these different ontologies

02:02:27like that basically is the challenge uh and i think that you kind of have to get a um like

02:02:36being disagreeable uh helps uh being okay you have to be agreeable enough to really get the

02:02:47value of things you can't just dismiss them you you really have to sort of get okay like

02:02:53there's there's some deep logic here there's there's a reason why like all these really

02:03:00smart people are thinking in these terms and can you sort of extract the generator for and

02:03:07like i've been thinking in terms of lineages and and so on i should really update my my list but

02:03:14um i think that

02:03:18You have to be agreeable enough to get what people are talking about.

02:03:24There's value in everything.

02:03:27And then you have to be disagreeable enough to say,

02:03:32and they're wrong, in a certain way.

02:03:37It's like my objections to how neuroscience is done.

02:03:44Well, I think that people think of neuroscience as a science,

02:03:49but I actually think it's pretty paradigmatic.

02:03:52We sort of have dressed up these observations in very technical language

02:03:59revolving around methodology,

02:04:01and there's some brilliant work in neuroscience.

02:04:07But ultimately, it's not a science of the mind.

02:04:12And...

02:04:14Sadly, it often doesn't even try.

02:04:18And I think that it's sort of understanding...

02:04:25First of all, if you just kind of understand the research,

02:04:29that's very important.

02:04:31And then you need to understand what you can ignore.

02:04:37And then the final piece is sort of extracting...

02:04:42I'm going to say...

02:04:44Research aesthetics.

02:04:46And both using the best ones,

02:04:53from the greats, we can say,

02:04:58but also just kind of

02:05:00lining them up and just like trying to find answers that satisfy all the beautiful aesthetics of like, well, you know, what would Einstein think about this? And what would Bohr think about this? And what would Freud think about this? And William Reich and whatnot.

02:05:20And it's sort of this, so there's this question of what does it mean to be clever in different languages?

02:05:34And so I have some friends that are Russian and they say that, you know, given just like one sentence in Russian, you can tell everything about a person.

02:05:46Like if they're like poetic, then like, you know, by their word choice, you can tell everything about a person.

02:05:56And like that's what it means to be clever in Russian, to sort of load in all of that.

02:06:04And it's just like perfect, just the insight.

02:06:12And then there's this question of what does it mean to be clever in Russian?

02:06:18And I'm going to claim that it's much more this kind of superposition angle that you had mentioned.

02:06:27And this idea that, you know, English is famous or infamous for, you know, the double entendre and the triple entendre and whatnot.

02:06:37And I think it's the more general case is this situation where you can say one thing.

02:06:46And then you can say something else.

02:06:47And it makes sense from seven different angles.

02:06:51And all of those different angles are somehow meaningful.

02:06:57And I think that it sort of gets to it like it gets to the truth in a different way than something like Russian or any other language.

02:07:11But I like this way.

02:07:14It's my way.

02:07:17I think that and perhaps because it's very similar to what I see truth as that something is true or like something is more true, the more angles it makes sense from.

02:07:33So sort of a relativistic perspective.

02:07:38I think this is almost kind of back to your point on taste and being a tasteful researcher.

02:07:45Balancing the epistemic humility while navigating all these different epistemological frameworks.

02:07:53And I find that a lot of the interdisciplinary folks that we talk to, you have this coupled challenge of dealing with both of these truths, but also having to work in a field that, you know, like we talked about earlier, is inherently harder to measure because it's either novel or it's between things.

02:08:13Or that you just don't know.

02:08:14And so I think that it's just challenging dualistic thinking, which a lot of science is not comfortable with just yet.

02:08:19So I guess just to, you know, to double down on these challenges then.

02:08:23As you work through vasocomputation, were there any challenges you faced in finding the right ecosystem with the right people, the right communities to nurture your cross-domain research?

02:08:34And I'm thinking beyond just even financial resources, right?

02:08:37Like mentorship, intellectual stimulation, institutional support, social support, or even just the conceptual frameworks.

02:08:44Right.

02:08:44To accommodate the kind of work that you were doing.

02:08:47I think that I sort of, having been through the process before with symmetry theory of valence and neural annealing, I was able to sort of hit the ground running better this time.

02:09:05And I think that just sort of the triple domain setup really helped in terms of.

02:09:12I could tell.

02:09:14A very clean story.

02:09:18To the Buddhists, to the active inference people and the neuro anatomy people of what I was doing.

02:09:26And then could, you know, kind of more easily say, okay.

02:09:30And the active inference people, like they don't have an anatomical grounding for what a prediction is.

02:09:36And like, I do.

02:09:37And like, this is like something to that I can very cleanly point to.

02:09:42Or like the Buddhists.

02:09:44Like, how do you, how do you measure that?

02:09:47Like, how do you measure the self or, or like enlightenment and attainments, openings, et cetera.

02:09:55And so I think that, you know,

02:10:01Navigating this is sort of, if you can kind of build the map prior and then like think of it like a treasure map of, okay, like how many domains are there?

02:10:18And then if you think about this domain, what treasure is it missing?

02:10:27What does it like obviously need but doesn't know how to get?

02:10:33And then you can connect it to like this unrepresented term in this other domain that should actually be represented.

02:10:45And I think that just like, I mean, I think getting

02:10:59support is of course always a challenge.

02:11:02And I think this goes back to this idea of like so much of life is just starting the party.

02:11:13And there's no, like there's kind of the energetic taste of like,

02:11:22I did this really important thing and nobody cares.

02:11:24And I'm, I'm not going to do it.

02:11:25I'm so upset and whatever.

02:11:26And like, okay, you know, maybe that's true, but who cares?

02:11:31Like ultimately it's about like, you gotta be having fun.

02:11:37And when people, when you have fun, then people will come.

02:11:42And it's, it's also very growthful.

02:11:45I think to have that mindset.

02:11:46So I guess, you know, maybe I'm not super great at like chasing down support for the ideas,

02:11:54but I'm having a lot of fun so yeah that actually tied beautifully into the next thing

02:11:59I wanted to ask you, which was, you know, at the very beginning, you walked us through kind of

02:12:03three to four different arcs of how basic computation evolved. And I wanted to know

02:12:08kind of how the reception to that evolved. Like, was it the reception that changed? Or was it just

02:12:11your philosophy and your mindset and attitude towards it that changed? So if you want to just

02:12:16briefly go over that, I think you answered most of it quite nicely, just now.

02:12:22Yeah, yeah. I think that a lot of it sort of was sort of doing the work before.

02:12:29Of like, understanding that, like, you can have like, okay, I think the symmetry theory valence

02:12:38is huge. And, and like, I'm willing to make that argument. But I know that, to some degree, it's,

02:12:47it's an endurance thing. And like, I would rather create things than convince people.

02:12:57And I think then,

02:12:59it's more about, yeah, like, once again, having fun, knowing the domains that like, are most

02:13:07relevant, and like, kind of pre pitching each domain in a certain sense. And, and ultimately,

02:13:15just...

02:13:20just having fun, be like, not necessarily be chasing recognition, but also just be like,

02:13:29willing to step up when you get opportunities, that it's sort of like, I think it's easy for me to

02:13:36fall, sort of fall into the hermit philosopher mode. And like, you know, I'm just gonna,

02:13:43I'm gonna make my art, and think my ideas, and, you know, just kind of, you know, release them,

02:13:51and, you know, what will be, will be, etc. And I think there's, there are failure modes in that,

02:13:58that,

02:13:59and I think that, like, I've, I've been really grateful for,

02:14:04especially some friends, Justin and Janine, of, Janine from Edge City, has been, you know, just amazing at,

02:14:12at supporting my ideas. And I think that, like, there's definitely a shift of like, how do you create ideas?

02:14:28And then,

02:14:31I'm just going to say, like, the sausage factory is very messy.

02:14:38and

02:14:40And few people would sort of have the hardiness to sort of really, you know, dig into those details.

02:14:48And then, you know, after you create the idea, you polish it real nicely.

02:14:54And then you start telling the story.

02:14:57And there's

02:15:00there's a real art to telling the story.

02:15:04That, I mean, some people are sort of born pretty good at it.

02:15:08Some people have to learn. And I think that

02:15:13for me, I really want to

02:15:18connect with the most meaningful parts

02:15:22of the human experience, of the human condition,

02:15:28of human nature.

02:15:31And I really pick my topics

02:15:35such that I can do that.

02:15:37And if I'm not talking about the important stuff,

02:15:41why even?

02:15:43It's not worth suffering for, I guess I would say.

02:15:47And so I think that

02:15:48then it's just trying

02:15:52to feel through...

02:15:57Giving names to things

02:16:00is very powerful.

02:16:03And sort of

02:16:06telling the story is

02:16:08in a way that makes people feel

02:16:13that you get it,

02:16:15that you understand them,

02:16:17that there's this sort of common human feature

02:16:22that you're pointing directly toward.

02:16:24And it's not just something that I have,

02:16:28it's something that everyone has.

02:16:32And people really appreciate that

02:16:34when you try.

02:16:35And I think that

02:16:38insofar as the reception has been increasingly positive,

02:16:42it's because I've been able to sort of get better

02:16:46at telling that story.

02:16:50Who are other thinkers

02:16:52or researchers or, I don't know, bandits,

02:16:55however you want to name them,

02:16:56who you think reflect the same kinds of values that you admire?

02:17:00Or one thing that we try to do is hat-tip people

02:17:02who might be working in really

02:17:04thing-changing and just revolutionary domains

02:17:07but don't seek the credit.

02:17:08Or people who are underdogs in their fields.

02:17:12But show a lot of the same traits that we look for

02:17:14and that you, I think, also embody in your work.

02:17:16Who are some people that you want to acknowledge?

02:17:18Or just hat-tip to?

02:17:19Thank you.

02:17:21So, I mean,

02:17:24there are, I mean,

02:17:26there are so many beautiful people.

02:17:28And I think that, you know, it's,

02:17:31I was thinking about this this morning, like,

02:17:34some people,

02:17:35it's always like, what is the output artifact

02:17:39of, like, of beauty?

02:17:40And, like, sometimes it's a paper.

02:17:43Sometimes it's, you know, research.

02:17:45And sometimes it's,

02:17:49an apprentice.

02:17:50Or, like, another person.

02:17:52Or, like, so,

02:17:54and I think that,

02:17:57yeah, I mean, I have a lot of appreciation

02:18:00for the people who have

02:18:03have given me their,

02:18:06I would say, given me their,

02:18:09and I think that

02:18:10in terms of professional

02:18:16sort of hat-tips or,

02:18:19you know, formal appreciation,

02:18:23I have mentioned their names several times now.

02:18:27But I would really point to,

02:18:31first of all, Romeo Stevens.

02:18:34He's just a very

02:18:37high integrity and thoughtful person

02:18:41that has an unusual generator.

02:18:44And I've sort of,

02:18:46I've been, you know, feeling into that generator.

02:18:49And I feel like I get Romeo more.

02:18:52And, you know, certainly,

02:18:54I think that vessel computation

02:18:56wouldn't have happened

02:18:59without, like, certain hints

02:19:01from how he was thinking.

02:19:03So, big respect there.

02:19:07And then, Nick Camerata.

02:19:10I can't say that he's unknown.

02:19:13but...

02:19:16But he's great.

02:19:17And I think that, you know,

02:19:20oftentimes,

02:19:22being generative is sort of

02:19:26finding new ways to recompress things.

02:19:30And I feel like he's

02:19:32a really great recompressor.

02:19:36And just consistently also focused on important things.

02:19:41So, yeah, big, big respect there.

02:19:48And, you know, in terms of,

02:19:51like,

02:19:55less well-known people,

02:19:57I'd have to think,

02:19:59I

02:20:00that a lot of the Peters are underappreciated.

02:20:04That, you know, the things that they're doing are just centrally important for so many domains.

02:20:14And like they're kind of, you know, there's like the P to ghetto.

02:20:20And like, no, I think, you know, in five years, we're all going to be much more Peters than like the world will be much, much more beauty.

02:20:34So.

02:20:38Because part of what I think makes research worth doing even is the gratitude that you express while you're doing it.

02:20:44And understanding that nothing that each individual does is the be all end all.

02:20:49You know, eventually our time will be over.

02:20:50And I think that's what I think our time is going to end up or not, depending on how the longevity space goes.

02:20:56But a lot of the work that we do holds meaning to build and to add to future projects.

02:21:02And I think that's also kind of what we were trying to get at here, too.

02:21:06I think one of the last things I'm going to ask you, just because our time is coming up here, is back to a point that you said at the very beginning, which was the question that kind of catapulted all of this work and why we're here and the work you do.

02:21:19Is the thing that you're paying attention to.

02:21:20that we can go further and how can we push the bounce? So I guess for you, what's next and

02:21:27how are you gonna go further? What comes after this? Yeah, so just to, I think I originally had

02:21:34described this when the camera was not recording, so I'll just kind of recapitulate it. I think that

02:21:41so much of my sort of interest in this is just describing the beauty that is already there,

02:21:51that humans are beautiful and living things are beautiful. And I kind of want to honor

02:21:58the universe by pointing out, making that a little bit more legible. And then,

02:22:06and I think I mentioned that forms of beauty that

02:22:11are more legible are more likely to persist under transformation.

02:22:14But there's also something a little bit prescriptive in that

02:22:23evolution is sort of this blind process and it sort of does like the things that it makes

02:22:31are sort of as if it's sort of convergent toward some goal, but is it really that thing? Well,

02:22:40it's hard to tell. You know, it's all very complicated and complicated and complicated.

02:22:41hard to say and oftentimes it's sort of there will be transition periods too

02:22:48where it's like it's halfway to somewhere that's profoundly beautiful

02:22:55and I think that our the way that we we think through tension is kind of kind of

02:23:03that that it's it's amazing and like I'm I'm reminded of this Charles Pollock and

02:23:12stability always precedes power production and this sense that when we're able to sort of

02:23:19stabilize counterfactuals we can sort of project power into the world much more effectively and

02:23:28like the difference between a lion and a human is like we can project power into sort of Bayesian

02:23:36probabilities that that the lion just can't and I think that we are literally

02:23:41stronger than the lion because of that and I would say that yeah it's always like seeing okay like

02:23:52so okay there's there's I've been meaning to workshop a tweet about this for a while but

02:23:59there's this idea that like many of the the fruits that we eat or the foods that we eat in general

02:24:08have been sort of

02:24:11are domesticated wild plants and like a wild banana looks very different than the bananas we eat

02:24:18and like a wild avocado and even you know citrus and whatnot so I think that like part of my

02:24:30part of my expectation and sort of drive is that I do think that there's like I think humans are

02:24:38beautiful as we are and I think that's the thing that I think is really important to me is that I think humans are beautiful as we are

02:24:41there are also amazing forms of beauty that are sort of latent in our genomes in our possibility space and that you know if we think about like you know the most striking change of like a wild cucumber versus a domesticated

02:25:00domesticated cucumber or whatnot.

02:25:03We are totally on the cusp of that transformation for humans.

02:25:11Whether we talk about—I've been tossing around a couple of ideas here, one being universal

02:25:19basic enlightenment.

02:25:21I think it would be possible and really good.

02:25:26It's like we're so close to this area of mind space that's so good.

02:25:34Maybe something can be done there.

02:25:39Then the second frame that I've been talking about is this idea of a platonic biosingularity,

02:25:49which big words.

02:25:51But it's this idea that—

02:25:53I'm going to go ahead and stop.

02:25:55For example, if you have a good diet and you get enough sun and you're happy and healthy and well and whatnot, there's some kind of convergent vector where it's like you just look better, more healthy and ultimately more yourself.

02:26:15And it's this idea that maybe we could sort of define that vector for humans and maybe other beings as well and sort of go in that direction for a while.

02:26:27And this idea that, you know, could we, through, you know, some forms of technology, could we become closer to the platonic versions of ourselves?

02:26:41Is that a well-defined thing?

02:26:44Maybe you can't go in that vector forever, but maybe you can get a lot of mileage out of sort of, you know, maybe it gets you five standard deviations and that's enough for something profoundly beautiful.

02:26:59Or like, can you become the Greek demigod version of yourself?

02:27:04So I think a lot about this just in terms of like, basically.

02:27:13Everybody doing.

02:27:14Interesting things and like, especially I would say the.

02:27:19The tech elite.

02:27:22Tend to be based basically.

02:27:25They read some really cool sci-fi when they were teenagers and they got one shot by it and they're just like trying to make it real.

02:27:35And if you if you look at, you know, Elon, if you look at Bezos, etc.

02:27:42Like everybody is kind of following that pattern.

02:27:44And I think that a lot of this is just gated on the imagination of the people creating the idea space.

02:27:53And I guess like one thing that I feel like I find very, very important is just kind of putting these ideas out there because you never know, you know, what future Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Sam Altman or whatever will sort of imprint.

02:28:14Yeah.

02:28:14On something beautiful.

02:28:18Just ripple effects and those those things that transcend fine lines.

02:28:23One of the way that we think about innovation analog is almost as a garden and nurturing innovation rather than kind of trying to force it and crunch into numbers and formulas again.

02:28:35And so I think what you're saying, a lot of what I'm taking away from this is throwing your seeds into fertile ground and trusting that nature and the environment and the world and mother nature.

02:28:45Will take care of the rest.

02:28:47And I think every time, you know, I speak to someone like you, I'm reminded again that, you know, life really is beautiful.

02:28:52I think a lot of the thesis is that life is beautiful.

02:28:54And it's very easy to forget that.

02:28:57So I guess just before we end off with the last question is wanting to send a huge thank you to you.

02:29:02I think, as you might know, analog is a living experiment.

02:29:06It is a constellation of a lot of things of what we think that human flourishing and innovation could look like.

02:29:13And there's a lot of things that we can do.

02:29:14There's a lot of things revolving around this constellation.

02:29:16And we're still teasing this out as it evolves.

02:29:19But at the core of it is funding projects like yours that are interdisciplinary, that are evolutionary and follow the natural progression and not just progression, but respect of human nature and what what serendipity looks like.

02:29:33And I think you've done a beautiful job even just explaining everything to us in the short time that we had together.

02:29:39So, yeah, just before our last question.

02:29:41Thank you for not just being on the podcast.

02:29:44Thank you for being our first guest.

02:29:45But for the years and just time and effort that you've put into it, the new possibilities you're unlocking, the new researchers and next of kin that are going to pick up where you left off.

02:29:57And so the very last question that

02:30:00we're trying to increase a bit of a flair note into is for you to leave a question for our next guest. And the reason why is because Analogue funds a lot of people who are doing work and research in between the cracks. And there's a lot of nuances, a lot of questions that might get overlooked or certain details that you wish some podcasters somewhere out there would ask you about, but no one ever does.

02:30:24So as someone who works interdisciplinarily, what is the question that you would leave for our next guest?

02:30:30Nice. Beautiful. So perhaps I should also try to extrapolate and infer who the last guest will be and kind of take that around and try to answer that question too.

02:30:49But yeah, thank you.

02:30:51I think I would like to thank you for your time.

02:30:54I would also just say that I find the Analogue group just so fresh and with immaculate vibes.

02:31:02So it's a real pleasure to be here.

02:31:07So a question. So I'm going to say that one question that I think about a lot actually is this idea of, you know,

02:31:26super cooperation would be one frame or just kind of trusting and like planting seeds and trusting to the world that good things will come.

02:31:39And I get the sense that we are like in sort of like Roko's Basilisk.

02:31:46We're sort of hyperstitioning something into reality and like maybe good, maybe bad.

02:31:53You know.

02:31:53Yeah.

02:31:54We'll see.

02:31:55But I guess like my question is like how has and, you know, I think maybe like game theory is kind of the mid-wit way to talk about this.

02:32:16But, you know, it's functional for our purposes.

02:32:21How has kind of.

02:32:24How has playing the game at the highest level changed since the advent of real synthetic intelligence that we seem to be in a new era?

02:32:39And there seem to be new ways to cooperate and probably to defect.

02:32:52And how has.

02:32:54How has.

02:32:54You're.

02:32:56Playing of the game.

02:32:58Changed.

02:32:59Are you able to cooperate with the future.

02:33:03Better.

02:33:05I'm glad to.

02:33:10get a very clear and honest answer to that.

02:33:14Beautiful question.

02:33:15One that I would have to mull over as well.

02:33:17And I'm sure Carol is also turning his gears.

02:33:20But yeah, with that, that concludes our interview.

02:33:23Again, thank you so much for taking the time.

02:33:25I know it's beautiful and sunny in Sausalito.

02:33:27So really appreciate you sitting here for three hours with us.

02:33:31And once we get that answer, we will let you know.