drugs

i was just reading experience reports on erowid about mirtazapine. it reminded me of how TOTALLY AWESOME drugs are. there is so much SPACE to explore in the dimensions of interior consciousness. not diving into this is like being color-blind.

intelligence

when jeff hawkins spoke at sfn, he made the point that humans receive a lot of training before they can do anything intelligent. there's just so much stuff in the world that you have to be exposed to a lot before you can start to sort it out. i looked at the numenta website just now and i saw that they still haven't made any significant progress on AI. their program can recognize a sailboat, as long as the sail is up and it's oriented the right way and so forth. then i thought, to recognize other configurations, the program would have to have some deep knowledge about sailboats and how they work, not just pixels. so it would probably have to be trained on other kinds of data besides pictures of sailboats. then i wondered if this could actually be an advantage in some way, because of the repeating nature and scale-invariance of patterns in the universe. for example, you can attach a mast to a sailboat like you attach a methyl group to a carbon ring.

the more direct the experience, the harder to talk about... why?

i was thinking about "brain freeze", an expression people sometimes use when they can't think of something. i wanted to ask, when people use that expression, what is the actual experience they're describing? is it just applied rhetorically in retrospect if you happen to not be on the ball? or is there some really distinct feeling, like a brain-state movement? i was thinking that it's kind of hard to phrase this question in a way so someone could understand what i'm trying to ask. how do you talk about "brain-state movements"? "now it feels like this...."

and then i was thinking that, paradoxically, the most abstract (distanced from direct experience) things are the easiest to talk about. in the limit, you have formal systems that can be perfectly described with no ambiguity, and no one has ever experienced a formal system. on the other end of the spectrum, looking at a block of wood. it's pretty hard to describe the essence of that experience.

self-image

if you have a fantasy image of yourself being an awesome person, then you have to defend that image if something suggests it might be false. if you have a fantasy image of yourself being worthless, then everything bad confirms this image. what if you have no real image of yourself?

using abstract information to update concretely-learned rules

For more than two years, I regularly drank the tap water in lab. Then I learned from the building management that it is not potable because in some other labs the same water system is hooked up to equipment that can potentially create backflow (although there are guards against this, it's considered a significant risk). So I stopped drinking the water.

I probably drank the water a thousand times, and I never suffered any ill effects. Just going by my experience, I'd have to infer a very small probability that continuing to drink the water would cause harm (leaving aside the possibility of a cumulative health hazard- e.g. increased cancer risk). If I were a cave-man king drinking from a mountain stream, I would have long ago stopped requesting my servant to test the water for me.

But I incorporated the abstract knowledge of an invisible threat into my behavior. It's as if I were watching someone play Russian roulette. They pull the trigger fifty times and no bang. I shouldn't be too worried about squeezing one on myself. On the other hand, if someone shows me a schematic of the gun, and on the inside there's a digital counter ticking down from fifty-one, I will be more worried.

In particular, the abstract information gave me a new Markov model of the world. Before I heard from building management, my belief was that contaminants in the water would either always or never be present. Therefore, each incident of not being poisoned reinforced my belief that I would never be poisoned. However, the new information revealed that there was always a small but finite chance of toxic backflow.

I wonder how this kind of learning fits into our learning processes in general. It's always seemed mysterious to me how we can extract deep Markov structure from essentially binary environmental feedback.

binding rhythms and the realms of being

1. EEG rhythms change in concentration, wakefulness, REM, and dreamless sleep.
2. The states of consciousness- waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep- correspond to the realms of being- gross, subtle, causal.
3. Representation in the brain may be at least partly implemented by "binding rhythms", where a set of neurons (which may be distributed over a large physical space in the brain) become synchronized and thereby act as a functional unit.

So if delta sort of corresponds to the witness, maybe that's just the pure fact of representation (which is what creates subject/object), a slow rhythm involving many neurons that would in waking be separately representing various forms.

static/dynamic

i wonder if self/other is related to static/dynamic.

drugs and mental rigidity

In 2002, I started having anxiety attacks. Their most potent trigger was drugs. I had my first one after combining Wellbutrin, Ritalin, codeine, Benadryl, and marijuana. My second one was from yohimbine. Then a caffeine pill. I finally figured out that the drugs were triggering these things after the fourth attack (from smoking pot). After that, I would sometimes have spontaneous attacks without any drugs, but drugs were the best trigger.

Why did the drugs start to have this effect on me? Before 2002, I was convinced that I could take any amount of any mind-altering drug, short of a physically toxic dose, without ill effects. I didn't respect people who "freaked out" on hallucinogens. I had taken insane combinations, like 700mg of dextromethorphan, 500mg of diphenhydramine, and as many balloons of nitrous as I could stay conscious for. At worst, I would have some restless energy toward the end of the trip.

I still have no idea what changed biologically. But subjectively, I realized that one cause of my anxiety was an increase in my mental rigidity. As a drug starts to kick in, it puts pressure on your mind-state on many levels. In the old days, before anxiety, coming up was a great feeling, and I would melt into it. In a lot of ways, I wouldn't even be the same person while tripping. The entire framework of my mind could be pulled fluidly by the drug.

When I was 19, my mind started resisting the pull. I don't know why exactly, but it was related to my social development. I feel like I have a lot more to say about this, but it's not coming to me now.

being normal

benoit vs basal ganglia

I just had an idea that is too amazingly simple.

I was reading more in Supreme Doctrine. One of Benoit's metaphors is "training". He imagines the mind as a horse being ridden by a horseman. The horse is sort of like "subconscious", although not exactly. It's more like what you do. The horseman periodically (every other moment, or with long stretches in between) interrupts the horse and evaluates it, good or bad. This training is motivated by the idea that "heaven is just around the corner" -- if I can just get/change/accomplish whatever image, my fundamental distress will be solved. Benoit points out that the training itself isn't bad; for example, training your horse is what lets you develop the understanding that leads to enlightenment. In fact, if you try to eliminate the training, thinking that it is the root of your distress (which is, in a sense, true), then you're just training yourself not to train, which is at least as bad!

Anyway, my thought was, what if that is the basal ganglia loop?!? The brain is training itself through the dopamine signal (and probably lots of other signals). Maybe the horseman is cortical control or something else, but the key is that idea of the online training loop. That would suggest that this system is close to whatever in the brain actually is the root of distress. I know I'm getting way ahead of myself and this isn't well-formed at all. There's got to be something here, though.

don't lay a finger on life

another thing with the cognitive scaffolding

I just thought of another purpose for cognitive scaffolding. Cognitive is periodically going to ask, "what's up?", and if it doesn't get a satisfactory answer, it will get agitated and start messing around. For cognitive to keep quiet, it needs an explanation of the situation in its own terms.

Participled out?

Noun yourself.

cognitive scaffolding for non-cognitive development

Here is another idea.

Not all personal development is cognitive. But maybe cognitive processes can facilitate non-cognitive development in some cases. An example would be where cognitive simply knows that it's not the whole picture. Or cognitive can get feedback and learn which of its patterns are leading into good transcognitive states.

Because cognitive is doing this stuff, it either stops itself from fucking up other processes, or actively helps growth, maybe by remembering to "do" a spiritual practice. (I love how cognitive thinks it is "doing" :-) ... not that it's not :-) ...)

This might be related to good kid's stories, which have deep messages whose motivation can't be understood by the kids; yet the pithy statement of the message sticks with the kid and guides them to absorb experiences that help to flesh out the motivation.

this is normal

i just had a weird thought. i don't know if it will make any sense if i try to explain it. i was staring at my lab computer box and not really thinking anything. i drifted into the mental situation where i "feel my mind" for any drug effects. that part is hard to explain, too, but it's sort of like a particular "location" in my mind that i can probe to check out what my overall state is like. it feels almost tangible. this whole explanation makes the process sound very concrete, but it's really normally pretty subtle, and it's maybe even something i'm doing without thinking about it sometimes. anyway, the weird thought was, "no, i'm not on any drugs; this is normal". this is what normal feels like.

email to abolitionist-society.com

I was reading through the objections to the Hedonistic Imperative (http://hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon4.htm), and I thought of one that isn't listed.

To preface this, I am really excited about your ideas. I'm so glad that there are people thinking like this and working to make substantive changes in the world. I'd just like to hear your take on the following issue.

What is suffering? Drugs like opiates or MDMA can make me feel great, warm, comfortable, loved. But in the back of my mind there can still be some "existential distress", like the "big problem" of my existence is still unanswered. [You might reply that solving this big problem just requires a more thorough re-engineering of my brain, but please keep reading...]

What if what we normally call suffering is actually part of the development/evolution process, and it's not intrinsically bad, but rather one side of a yin/yang-type dualism in the manifest world? A lot of times when I force myself to closely examine subjective experiences that I thought were "bad", I find out that they aren't actually bad; it was mostly my fear or avoidance that was causing me distress.

Sometimes it's when I feel most "existentially distressed" that I make the most internal progress. The distress forces me to address and open myself to parts of myself/reality that I otherwise wouldn't.

States of happiness or well-being are states of the self. Buddhism claims that suffering is caused by attachment, or wanting. When you feel an emptiness and you try to solve it by seeking the thing you think will cure it, you distract your mind. This process is actually what generates the self. But if you feel the emptiness and let it be what it is, then part of the self dissipates, and what's left is more enlightened. If we anesthetize ourselves against what is "bad" on the relative plane, then our selfs are reinforced.

Some people say "Love has no opposite". I think that means that although there are "good" and "bad" in the manifest world, the superior principle through which the universe is unfolding is neither "good" nor "bad" and has no dualism or opposite. If this is true, then in some sense the abolitionist project is already complete!

Now, to be fair, bad experiences clearly exist nowadays, and I think most people would agree that we should work to reduce suffering in the world. But I wonder about the difference between "working to reduce suffering" and "working to reduce the capacity for suffering". If someone has a broken leg, you set the bone, but if someone lost a family member, you support them and show them compassion as they heal. Through the healing process, you and that person both grow, and you grow closer to each other.

One more thought. "Bad" subjective experiences may actually be a constitutive part of development and growth. Just to throw out a crazy idea, suppose a network of neurons has learned a certain set of inputs pretty well. Now the network is exposed to new inputs and wants to change itself so it can generalize to both the old and the new. There may be an unsettled period between stably representing the old and stably representing both. (Something like an increased temperature parameter for the network.) What if that unsettled period *is* the material correlate of the subjective experience of negativity?

out of addiction (a hopeful hypothesis)

say you're addicted to doing X (X could be an external or internal behavior).

stages:
1. you "believe" that X will make you feel better. believe is in quotes because you haven't really looked at it yet; it's more of a reflexive belief.
2. you recognize that X actually doesn't satisfy that deep craving for something that it was supposed to satisfy. in fact, you may recognize that X even makes you feel bad. but you keep doing X because on some level you don't apprehend how it is hurting you.
3. you internalize and integrate the realization that X makes you feel bad and doesn't relieve your emptiness.

I love the ontology of the universe, including appointment-scheduling people!!