This is a lecture (very nicely filmed) I gave in Boulder earlier this summer on DMT. Certainly the longest and most detailed lecture I've given so far. Hopefully some might find interesting :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A10V_t95VfI

Thanks for sharing, great introduction and presentation overall.

Thanks for watching!!

Thanks,

very entertaining and thought-provoking

Thanks!

Thank you for all the work you do laughingcat.

Very interesting and inspiring models of thinking and perceiving reality, laughingcat.

If you are ever looking for some volunteers for your research. Give me a holler.

Very enjoyed your lecture! It is now a great resource.
I am very excited about your upcoming extended projects... I've been thinking about that possibility for a while now.

Very long lecture, so will have watch at some other time.

I do like the term "extradimensional intelligence". Very apt to the experience. The sentience is most enigmatic, and the primary reason why i continue to invest my energy end efforts into learning as much as possible about this strange, and yet omnipresent, molecule.

Great talk A few things come to mind and I haven't quite organized them into truly coherent thoughts, so please forgive any scatterbrainedness. And apologies in advance if I misquote or use incorrect terminologies for any of the concepts you laid forth, I'm trying my best to grab onto the unfamiliar terms.

I find myself very sympathetic to your points/positions and experiences, but a few issues came up for me.

1) A major point of the initial subject matter (everything preceding the experimental discussion) seems to be, in many ways, a(n) (re)articulation of the Sagan's take on the Flatland thought experiment. Given this approach (and my own neurobiological/physiological ignorance), it's unclear to me, from the context presented in the talk, how much of the "simplified" concepts actually support the assertions being made based on the evidence at hand vs how much is conjecture. They certainly line up well, but that's why I find my own ignorance and the (potential?) blurring of this line to be a bit to grapple with.

2) There is a bit of reductionism going on, which I think is fine in the name of grappling with complex topics, but at times it seems that there's too much certainty undergirding the assertions (especially when assertions are being made about "the fundamental nature of reality"), and in ways that, while apparently convenient to you advancing your theories (all well and good) kind of obfuscate how little we know (I think).

For example, your dichotomy of "the believers" vs the "non-believers" and the positions that either "dmt allows you to access an alternate universe...takes you, transports you to an alternate parallel alien reality" or "dmt is merely eliciting highly complex hallucinations." Sure, those are two takes, but hardly the only ones, even if they encompass or run into many others in various ways.

Or that DMT takes you any "where" or causes you meet any "thing." I've had plenty of experiences that support these assertions, and many of them were "realer than real" yet, just because "my subjective experience is valid (and I don't let anyone tell me otherwise)" doesn't mean that I necessarily "went anywhere" or "met anything." It's certainly a possibility, but based on a lifetime of experiences (waking realities, dreaming realities, psychedelic realities, etc) I find myself at odds with the certainty with which some of these statements seem to get plunked down as foundational components of the thought experiment (in the process potentially steamrolling viable alternative explanations that, experientially at least, may be just as plausible/non-testable as components of the theory being advanced, at least within my limited ability to understand).

3) I feel that there are some semantic games being played as well, particularly with regards to definitions of "real" and "information systems" and the "legitimacy of experience." I'm honestly not sure how meaningful the statement that "all subjective experience is valid" (the semi-unsaid part seems to be "in that it is subjective experience") actually is. It reminds me of McKenna's "A song is a song!" epiphany. And yes, while it's absolutely true, I'm not sure that it's particularly useful...or perhaps I'm just missing the utility? Whether my dmt experiences transport my consciousness a physically different realm has fundamentally different consensus-reality implications than if it's dropping me into a state akin to a fever delirium, which has fundamentally different implications than if I'm tapping into some collective unconscious, etc.

Not that each of those options doesn't bring a bunch of fascinating questions/territory to explore...I just don't feel particularly moved by the proclamation that I understand to mean "Every experience is a real experience." Well of course, what else could an experience be?

In the case of LSD or any other drug as "an information system" (I think that was the term) can you elaborate? Is this conceptualization and usage predicated on pre-existing bodies of work (especially related to biology/physiology/neurology)? I like how you employed the concept and found it very "slick" but despite my desire to nod my head in agreement, I once again find myself questioning the underlying foundations here.

The way that this is linked up with the assertion that "no matter how complex the world might appear...it's fundamentally all information processing," is, again, something I find myself highly sympathetic to, but I think that's a massive assertion/assumption and one that, ideally, should rest on a similarly massive body of evidence (does it?). And this is what I mean by "slick"...if the world can be said to be entirely information processing, and drugs are patterns of information, then it follows quite logically that drugs could function as gateways for interdimensional communication. But, beyond your DMT experiences, and mine, and everyone else's on this site and elsewhere, it feels like we've got remarkably little evidence (especially physical/material or externally-verifiable evidence) to go on, valid though all those experiences might be.

For me, this is very similar to the limits of current linguistics/cognitive science (no surprise there) in determining the mechanisms and developing understandings of pre-conscious thought that precedes voluntary actions...where as I understand it, very briefly before you're conscious of making the decision, the parts of your brain responsible for organizing the action are already active. We have incredibly limited tools for determining who/what is making those decisions...puppetmaster? Alien gamer? Simple, minuscule processes that have been running long enough to generate such massive apparent complexity that we identify as consciousness and even conceive of "free will?" The possibilities for speculation seem endless, especially given the lack of reliable/meaningful data/evidence. What we seem to be left with, fundamentally, is an experience. Further plausible comment beyond that seems, to me, incredibly difficult.

Actually, this reminds me of many of the points Gibran made in his second Improbability of Hyperspace thread

And as an aside, I'm not sure I would accept the assertion that all worlds are equally "valid" or "real", even with your caveat about having varying utility in pragmatic contexts. It sounds nice, but I'm not sure it's supportable, even resting everything upon information patterns. I have a lot of feelings on this, but difficulty articulating coherent thoughts at the moment, so I'll just leave it here in the event it sparks something

4) Two closing thoughts to try and bring this rambling to an end (for the moment):
a - A theory that makes repeated explicit/implicit assertions that it rests on understanding "the fundamental structure of reality" is both incredibly hard to swallow (given how little we appear know about reality) and appears to require mountains of evidence that aren't present (or that I missed references to, given my ignorance on the subject matter). I'd stress here, again, that I'm very much on board with your thoughts and find myself very seduced by them, but as Strassman and I went round and round on last time we engaged, just because a model is appealing/can get traction doesn't mean it's an accurate model.

b - Maybe I'm misunderstanding...but it also seems to me that if we substitute "information processing" with "consciousness" (is there a reason we couldn't make this substitution?) and state that "consciousness is the fundamental underpinning of reality," we wind up making the same assertions as numerous others throughout history (which gibran2 generally refers to as the "primacy of consciousness" paradigm, if I'm not mistaken), no? Not problematic, just trying to see where my own misunderstandings might lie.

It seems to me that the substitution of consciousness for "information" holds additional similarities if we compare your classification of drugs as "patterns of information that change the information generated by your brain" with Grof's quote about "psychedelics being nonspecific amplifiers of consciousness." I think that was the quote.

Again this feels good, but I still feel like I'm missing evidence, beyond the self-evident, for such a matter-of-fact presentation. Does that make sense?

Thanks!



There's a **lot** of conjecture admittedly, but it's certainly more than a rearticulation of Flatland - the informational nature of reality is pretty well-supported now, but the idea of dimensional slices is less so. There's a lot of conjecture there for sure...




I'd dispute that it's reductionist - complex systems, by definition, refuse to be reduced to their components, and I'm very much an emergentist. I spend much of the first hour talking about emergent complexity, which is very much anti-reductionist I would say. But you're right that I perhaps assert too much as matter of fact - it's my way of trying to be cogent and make sense of a complex topic to the audience, without qualifying everything with "it could be like this" or "this is possible but it's not yet known yet".



I couldn't agree more, but it's just not possible to examine all possibilities in an hour or two when there's a particular (rather complex) topic that you want to cover in detail.





My point really was that we cannot be definitive in saying which models of reality are valid and which are false or untrue, only which models are functional and adaptive (which we often confuse with "truth". See Don Hoffman's work on this...




I think the informational model of life and, by extension, the brain is by far the most reasonable. Everything is information processing - this is certainly true at the subcellular level, at the level of neurons and, according to many physicists, at the subatomic level and below (e.g. Ed Fredkin). It thus makes sense to regard all objects, including drugs, as patterns of information that interact with the highly complex pattern of information that is your brain. This is not kooky fringe science anymore - it's actually the most parsimonious way of thinking about life, brains, reality itself even (at least in my opinion and that of many other contemporary scientists).



Yes it does. It's a huge topic, but I've attached a useful paper that looks at life as information processing - there are many others that are looking at life this way.





I agree. I don't expect everyone to agree with my ideas, I'm just offering them up for consumption.



I think you lose all the explanatory power by making this substitution. Information processing according to a rule set has enormous explanatory power (emergence of complexity, structure of the world, how the brain works, how psychedelics work) - what do you expect to gain by just replacing "information processing" with "consciousness"? However, you perhaps inadvertently stumble on the important issue of the informational substrate (i.e. what exists in the different states to generate information?). Personally I am sympathetic to the idea that consciuosness itself may have that role, but that's a whole other topic of discussion.



Again, until consciousness is formally defined, it will always be unclear what amplification of consciousness even means... information, on the other hand, does have a precise quantitative meaning....




Sure it does! Hopefully the book I'm just finishing off will flesh out some of these missing parts.... anyway, thanks for your interest and thoughts!

My apologies, as I said, I was a bit scatterbrained/tired when I wrote this last night. A more accurate word for what I meant to express would have been oversimplified, rather than reductionist. I understand the "necessity" of simplification in the interest of giving a digestible presentation, I just struggle with the combination of apparent simplification and conjecture. I find it slightly disorienting when trying to listen critically and pick out the knowns from the unknowns. I do understand not wanting/needing to qualify every single statement, but I feel like maybe there can be a middle ground somewhere in between?




So, I've moved this section up here, to get it out of the way, before engaging with one of the papers you linked (I still have to read the other).

First, let me say that the reason I saw no problem with substituting consciousness for information is because I'm largely ignorant of "information" as being discussed here, and it all seemed metaphorical to me, whether consciousness or information, I, as a layperson, didn't have enough familiarity with the subject matter to draw meaningful distinctions at the point in time at which I watched your presentation. Did I miss the formal definition of information? Was that the discussion of bits? Even with a formal definition, it still seems like the application of the "information" concept to emergent complexity/life (although there doesn't seem to be a good consensus definition for life) or any other system is a bit metaphorical, or at least nebulous, much in the way consciousness seems to be, although again, this could just be my own lack of understanding or just a result of poor semantic hygiene on my part.


Now, as to the second reading (I'll try to get to the fist this evening)

Ok, so huge disclaimer, I'm completely ignorant of the subject matter at hand, beyond reading/watching the info presented by you in the past and linked here, and some tertiary materials I've encountered over the years, but it seems to me, again, that the linked papers point back to some of the "slick" substitutions/semantic/conceptual "games" that seem to be inherent in how the theory, conjectures, and evidence/lack of evidence relate within the presentation. Apologies in advance if this seems like I'm asking you to clear up my own confusion, I'm really just trying to work through your understandings/thinking

The paper you provided, "The world as evolving information" explicitly states that it is working with metaphors to present epistemological (rather than ontological) claims (I must admit I felt kind of relieved to discover the sensations of "metaphor" I'd been having throughout my earlier ideation were at least somewhat justified!):



It seems to me that your position is still relying on this metaphor, yet (at times) appears to shift from the epistemological into the ontological, no? I think that these were some of the most "jarring" moments of the presentation for me.

Also, to point back to my own confusion re: consciousness vs. information:



So, it seems to me, that here, the information metaphor is attributing awareness (perception requires awareness, no? Does this not also imply some form of consciousness?) to a molecule. Is that an incorrect interpretation? What does it mean for a molecule to "receive information"? Even if we skip the baggage of consciousness, I'm not sure I'm clear on what it means/implies for a molecule to perceive or have awareness. Or, as section 6 goes on to state, I'm not sure what it means for molecules to have cognition or:



Is that really knowledge? That feels akin to saying that a submarine swims or some such thing...sure...if you want to call that swimming. But as long as we're operating within the realm of metaphor, that fuzziness is an intrinsic component...it's there to facilitate the propagation of the concept, rather than to provide an explanation of the mechanisms.

For me, this metaphorical deployment is one that I feel sympathetic to, but also one which I feel strongly evidences the limitations/failings of relying on metaphor.

Additionally, at least in this moment/this type of usage, I fail to see how "information" is functioning in a more concretely-defined/understood way than "consciousness"...but maybe you can underscore if/what I'm missing?


Section 4.7 states:



Given the lack of citation, I assume that there isn't prior work this assertion is resting on, but rather, it's the author's own belief. Are you familiar with other work on this topic? I was intrigued by the assertion and disappointed not to be able to follow up on it.

I also think that this passage addresses some of my emotional reaction to the statements about all realities/experiences being equally valid:



I still feel some lack of resolution, even in the wake of your clarification re: validity, but I'm assuming that's my own baggage and will continue to mull it over

In reading the conclusion:



It seems as though the final thoughts of the author reiterate the epistemological/ontological dichotomy stated at the beginning of the paper. A language that allows for interdisciplinary communication across scientific fields is certainly of immense value, but using that language or its metaphorical devices as the foundation for fundamental assertions about the nature of reality seems to clash with Gershenson's explicit assertions about the utility of said metaphor. I know you've conceded that you're making a number of massive conjectures, and offering them up for consumption rather than expecting agreement, so I'm not trying to hammer you for that, I just can't get away from it, especially in light of some of Gershenson's explicit statements.

As a final thought, the third version of the paper seems to be 7 years old and mentions that the tentative laws needed testing as well as the need for grounding the conjectures in numerous other fields. Has any of this occurred? Is there a good "hub" for finding out more about this work and the broader field?

Looking forward to reading the other paper!

I understand your point - this was a lecture for a general audience, with the aim of changing the way they think about the structure of the world and the way psychedelics change the world you experience. If I tried to approach a middle ground, I might end up more strongly convincong a small section of the audience (maybe not!!) but would undoubtedly end up losing a much larger proportion... I had to make the judgement, wanting to cover a lot of ground in an hour or so whilst keeping as many on board as possible. Sadly, that means sacrificing a lot of detail...




Yes, the discussion on bits allowed me to connect to "patterns of information" as patterns of bits on an automaton that can form more and more complex, emergent patterns. There is then a direct link to the patterns of informatino generated by the pattern of activation of the cortex: this is the pattern of information that is your phenomenal world. So you see there's a **lot** of explanatory power by referring to information and we can take the simple formal idea of information and the interaction of pattrns of informatino by rules (hence the cellular automaon example) and extend it downwards to the ground of reality, and then up through to complexification and emergence of higher order structures (atoms, molecules, cells, brains) and to the highly information rich world that is built by your brain. This then leads us nicely to the idea that psychedelics change your world by changing the information generated by the brain. This is quite precise in my opinion. If I was to replace information with consciousness, it becomes extremely vague and unclear what I'm talking about.




OK, perhaps this paper was a bad choice from me - it was an afterthought. The other one is better.



No, I'm very much being ontological - information is fundamental. This is fairly mainstream now. The question is more about the substrate and whether there is such a thing as pure information. To me it doesn't matter, as long as everything can be explained in terms of information and its processing.




OK, I wish I'd not sent you that other paper now, it's only muddying the waters I feel. Information is "a difference that makes a difference". When an electron, which can exist in a finite number of states, interacts with another electron for example, then its state changes in some way (dictated by various rules/laws). The electron is fully defined by a finite amount of information (since information is implicit in the number of states of a system). In fact, everything can be fully defined by a finite amount of information. When its state changes, by interaction with the other electron, then we can say that information was received by the other electron and changed the information that defined the first electron. All that's happened is information has changed. This applies from the subatomic level all the way up to the level of molecules to cells to brains. When a drug binds a receptor, for example, the information that defines the receptor changes. Or, to put it equivalently, information is transmitted from the drug to the receptor. You can extend this to explain the function of highly complex subcellular networks of molecules in terms of the flow of information and its processing. And, of course, the brain is an information generator and processor and uses information to build your phenomenal world.





I'm not operating in the realm of metaphor. When I say reality is built from information, I mean it. And I fully define this information (in standard Shannon terms) before I use it to explain how information can complexify to form emergent structures including, ultimately, life. When I say that life is information processing, I mean life is information processing. Please read the other paper - Farnsworth - it does a much better job of explaining the idea that life is information processing. Hopefully this will make things clearer

This seems to me to contradict Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Information is incomplete and/or flawed, due to quantum uncertainty, especially at the scale of the electron.

This in no way detracts from the usefulness of the informational model. It may go some way towards explaining the 'reality glitches' noticeable from time to time.