<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Jack Cowan hung around the office for a week after his lecture. We had a ping pong table in the break area at Bios and hebecame my partner. We beat all double challengers at the office for that full week (cc said challengers: Rich Harris, Keith Hunter, Brian Birk, Mohammed) :-) Stu later let me know Jack was on the Scottish Olympic Table Tennis Team in his youth). Stu was in a theoretical-biology group at the University of Chicago, run by Jack Cowan, that included people like Arthur Winfree, Leon Glass, and others.<br><br>Also, as I was searching for Jack's article referenced below, I came across Jack's actual quote of Stu:<br><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB902095959816268500">https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB902095959816268500</a><br><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px">Dr. Kauffman, now 58 years old, faces huge hurdles cashing in on his patent. But the controversial scientist considers it "a vindication." Like other theorists in biology, he hasn't earned the kind of acclaim that experimentalists get. He studied philosophy at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., and, after medical school, turned to fruit-fly genetics. But he never excelled at experimentation, colleagues say. What he did brilliantly was articulate an endless stream of abstract ideas.</blockquote><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><br><b>"He has the highest mouth-to-brain ratio of any one person I've ever met, but with a very high denominator," </b>says Jack Cowan, a University of Chicago professor of applied mathematics and theoretical biology, who was Dr. Kauffman's first boss. "If he had the math skills as well as the verbal ones, he would be amazing."<br><br></blockquote>I always only heard the first half of the quote by cynics like Horgan recounting it into an insult:<br><a href="http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/hogan.complexperplex.htm">http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/hogan.complexperplex.htm</a><br><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px">What Liddle does not say is that even some scientists associated with the institute are beginning to fret over the gap between such rhetoric and reality. Take Jack D. Cowan, a mathematical biologist from the University of Chicago who helped to found the institute and remains on its board. Cowan is no scientific prude; he has explored the neurochemical processes underlying the baroque visual patterns evoked by LSD. <b>But some Santa Fe theorists exhibit too high a "mouth-to-brain ratio" for his taste</b>. "There has been tremendous hype," he grumbles.</blockquote><br>-S<br clear="all"><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">_______________________________________________________________________<br><a href="mailto:stephen.guerin@simtable.com" target="_blank">Stephen.Guerin@Simtable.com</a><div>CEO, <a href="http://www.simtable.com/" target="_blank">https://www.simtable.com</a><br><div>1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505<div><div>office: (505)995-0206 <span style="font-size:12.8px">mobile: (505)577-5828</span></div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Aug 19, 2022 at 6:20 PM Stephen Guerin <<a href="mailto:stephen.guerin@simtable.com">stephen.guerin@simtable.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Steve Smith writes:<br>>
There is surely research into how much/which psychoactives get involved in modulating these processes. <br><br>Jack (not George) Cowan gave a great lecture at BiosGroup in 2000 on this very topic: <br><br>"
What geometric visual hallucinations tell
us about the visual cortex"<br><a href="https://www.math.uh.edu/~dynamics/reprints/papers/nc.pdf" target="_blank">https://www.math.uh.edu/~dynamics/reprints/papers/nc.pdf</a><br><br>Abstract: Geometric visual hallucinations are seen by many observers after taking hallucinogens such as LSD, cannabis, mescaline or psilocybin, on viewing bright<br>flickering lights, on waking up or falling asleep, in “near death” experiences, <br>and in many other syndromes. Kl¨uver organized the images into four groups<br>called “form constants”: (1) tunnels and funnels, (2) spirals, (3) lattices, including honeycombs and triangles, and (4) cobwebs. In general the images do<br>not move with the eyes. We interpret this to mean that they are generated<br>in the brain. Here we present a theory of their origin in visual cortex (area<br>V1), based on the assumption that the form of the retino–cortical map and the<br>architecture of V1 determine their geometry. We model V1 as the continuum<br>limit of a lattice of interconnected hypercolumns, each of which itself comprises<br>a number of interconnected iso-orientation columns. Based on anatomical evidence we assume that the lateral connectivity between hypercolumns exhibits<br>symmetries rendering it invariant under the action of the Euclidean group E(2),<br>composed of reflections and translations in the plane, and a (novel) shift–twist<br>action. Using this symmetry, we show that the various patterns of activity<br>that spontaneously emerge when V1’s spatially uniform resting state becomes<br>unstable, correspond to the form constants when transformed to the visual field<br>using the retino–cortical map. The results are sensitive to the detailed specification of the lateral connectivity and suggest that the cortical mechanisms<br>which generate geometric visual hallucinations are closely related to those used<br>to process edges, contours, textures and surfaces.<br><br clear="all"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">_______________________________________________________________________<br><a href="mailto:stephen.guerin@simtable.com" target="_blank">Stephen.Guerin@Simtable.com</a><div>CEO, <a href="http://www.simtable.com/" target="_blank">https://www.simtable.com</a><br><div>1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505<div><div>office: (505)995-0206 <span style="font-size:12.8px">mobile: (505)577-5828</span></div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Aug 19, 2022 at 10:40 AM Steve Smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com" target="_blank">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p>And the retina is not a simple pixel-camera... even one with a
non-uniform, non-rectangular distribution of
photon-integrators... there is plenty of processing going on
between rods/cones and optic-nerve. Do we suppose that *these*
layers are significantly short-circuited by (some) psychadelics?<br>
</p>
<p><img src="https://www.embl.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/20210820_Hiroki_Asari_Vision_updated_1000px72dpi.jpg" alt="" width="612" height="367"><br>
</p>
<p><a href="https://www.embl.org/news/science/vision-unveiled-new-roles-for-the-retina-in-visual-processing/#:~:text=Located%20at%20the%20back%20of,colour%2C%20contrast%2C%20and%20motion." target="_blank">Retinal
Processing Layers</a><br>
</p>
<p>There is surely research into how much/which psychoactives get
involved in modulating these processes. <br>
</p>
<p>I tend to believe (with no specific references to offer) that the
more interesting mediation/modulation DaveW gestures towards goes
on further down the chain of processing. Loosening up some of the
(over?) model-fitting going on downstream from
edge/contrast-enhanced perceptual info. For example, I don't
think that the military-industrial complex will have secret
psychoactive drugs which replace night-vision goggles anytime
soon. BUT I am more inclined to believe that cognition/perception
- *sharpening*/*widening* pharmacology is already in use .
Cigarettes and Coffee were in WWII/Korea/Vietnam Rations as well
as <a href="https://allthatsinteresting.com/amphetamine-use-world-war-2" target="_blank">Bennies</a>.
Good thing the Wermacht hadn't hit on <a href="https://drugabuse.com/drugs/hallucinogens/pcp/history-statistics/" target="_blank">PCP</a>
by then... already Jacked Ubermenchen on Hydrazine afterburners?<br>
</p>
<p>Are all our geriatric politicians on B12/Aderall cocktails? Oh
to see the pharmacological records for our most colorful
politicians today!<br>
</p>
<p><Cyberpunk Segue></p>
<blockquote>
<p>As is my habit, I refer to a Science Fiction Novel of
relevance: <a href="http://www.walterjonwilliams.net/excerpt-hardwired.html" target="_blank">Hard
Wired</a> - Walter Jon Williams. On the one hand, this early
cyberpunk novel is armatured around advanced tech facilitated by
earth-orbit near-zero-gravity, near-perfect-vacuum,
near-zero-regulation, and near-zero-distribution-challenges
(de-orbited bundles) supporting a florescence of pharmaceutical
research/development/production/use. On the other hand, the
protaganist (as I remember him) was wonderfully oldSkool, using
a 3 chamber insulin-pump style tool interfaced to his neural
interface to drive his Red/White/Blue drug-drip system. Red and
White are advanced forms of the conventional mapping
(downers/uppers) to support on-demand relaxation/rest and
on-demand energy/focus. Blue is an on-demand
perception-sharpening/broadening drug.</p>
<p><Strip City Segue></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Walter is one of a fascinating contingent of NM contemporary
writers nominally from ABQ (Belen I think) and HW published in
1987 was an early throwdown in the Cyberpunk Genre, and is set
in the near-future Flagstaff-Albuquerque "Strip City" (and
low-earth orbit). Considering the proliferation/existence of
strip-cities that have emerged along transportation (road,
river, etc) routes organically, the Saudi "Line" Glen recently
brought up here seems like an obvious ideation for an Arabic
architect jacked on too much "Spice" ("Dune "reference). <br>
</p>
<p>Even 20 years ago, Colorado Front Range residents were
referring to Ft-Pueblo to reference the (near) continuous
development of the I25 corridor from Ft. Collins to Pueblo.
I flew back from Europe into Denver and drove from my
daughter's place in Parker (south-south-Denver) to Pueblo on
the back "farm roads" further out in the plains and discovered
that the Ft-Pueblo stripmall-strip had grown out a good 10-20
miles East of I25 at several points (Castle-Rock, ColoSpgs,
Pueblo).</p>
</blockquote>
<p></Segue></p>
</blockquote>
<p></Segue><br>
</p>
<p>On 8/18/22 11:00 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>The retina isn't perfect by any means, and the visual cortex must fix its inputs to make vision seem better than the raw inputs. This is from memory, but I can look up references.
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com" target="_blank"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2022 8:56 PM
To: <a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam@redfish.com</a>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] dystopian vision(s)
An analogy that might clarify what was being conveyed in the original post:
A RAW image - no compression, no processing - is what the brain/mind can perceive.
JPEG is the image after going through the "survival filter" - both compression and adjustments to saturation, contrast, and sharpness. There are all kinds of advantages to JPEG, but "accuracy/fidelity" is not one of them. Consider all the consternation amateur photographers had a few months back with their phones failing to capture the redness of the sky in San Francisco and other parts of CA.
Drugs, so the advocates claim, are not an alternate transformation—not HEIF—but simply a removal of the compression/processing mechanism entirely.
Of course, even RAW is lossy: a few million pixels captured from the near infinity of discrete photons available. I suspect the brain/mind is less lossy, but to what degree?
And my own experiences, both chemical and meditative, suggest to me that some kind of patterned sense making is still going on because my 'mind/consciousness' still interprets things — I still see the Argus Goat (sometimess a ram instead of a goat, with multiple eyes, often conflated with Argus Panoptes) allbeit It and I might have a conversation.
davew
On Thu, Aug 18, 2022, at 2:15 PM, glen wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>I'm glad you softened it. Codependence *is* "organic to the nature of
one's existence". What I worry about are those that idealize
themselves as only codependent on some singular thing, which is what
you're calling out when you talk about identification with thrill
seeking or whatever. It's the single-ness that's the problem, not the codependence.
Marcus and Dave seem tightly analogous in their positive responses to
technological entheogens and physio-chemical ehtheogens, respectively.
And you, being a bit of an ehtheogen-teatotaler, if I've understood
correctly, align with Marcus. In contrast, I'm agnostic about the
origins and pathway of any entheogens I might become codependent upon.
Drugs, even very old ones brewed up by one-eyed witches in the outback
bush, *are* technology, nearly identical to the Mojo Lens or the
Neuralink. What's that stanza from Alice in Chains?
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9GAEFTeWko" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9GAEFTeWko</a>
"
What's my drug of choice?
Well, what have you got?
I don't go broke
And I do it a lot
"
On 8/18/22 11:36, Steve Smith wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>On 8/18/22 9:47 AM, glen wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Yeah. I'm not as concerned as you seem to be about the addictive nature of alternative perspectives. Obviously, because my whole schtick is about attempting to take alternative perspectives. The addict has to admit they have a problem before treatment will work, eh?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre>My use of the term "addictive" was unfortunate. I didn't mean it
particularly perjoratively. I mostly just meant the awareness that one can become "codependent" on substances/experiences which are not otherwise organic to the nature of one's existence in-context. Tarzan and his friends may have done something vaguely similar to bungee jumping and skydiving (vine swinging and cliff diving), but those who have made the high-tech equivalents of those experiences part of their very persona have "given over" in some way that may or may not be something to "worry about"... it is just in a practical sense a "commitment". I have known plenty of people who have made "commitments" to all kinds of things/substances (caffiene, nicotine, alcohol, thc, gucose, lipids, parkour, etc) which they are virtually symbiotic with (addicted to?). I have my own practical commitments to all kinds of behaviours and consumptions which are effectively now *part of who I am*. I might have been a somewhat different person today if I had never become "committed" to alcohol, caffiene, earning/spending $USD, driving planes, trains, automobiles, etc.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>But if we adopt the perspective of the "longtermists", "transhumansits", or similar, and believe that essentialist computation is the limit point, the thing just over the horizon toward which evolution works, then our *brain* is one of the first/best instantiations of such computers. (Maybe I need scare quotes, there, too ... "computers"?) Quantum comput[ers|ing] is a close second only because too many people are ignorant enough of current computing to think hard about its limitations.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre>FWIW I was just re-introduced to Bostrom's Astronomical Waste <a href="https://nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste" target="_blank"><https://nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste></a> arguement in the context of a New Yorker Article on Effective Altruism which I think you have referenced a few times here. A more computationally/entropic framed version of the Dyson Sphere <a href="https://nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste" target="_blank"><https://nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste></a> (or more originally the Stapledon Light Trap):
An excerpt from/Star Maker/which mentions Dyson spheres:
Not only was every solar system now surrounded by a gauze of light traps, which focused the escaping solar energy for intelligent use, so that the whole galaxy was dimmed, but many stars that were not suited to be suns were disintegrated, and rifled of their prodigious stores of subatomic energy.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>So another form of Dave's argument, still metaphysical, is this Smolin-esque (or even Schrödinger-esque ala negentropy?) concept that our objective(s) is tightly coupled pockets of deep computation. And *that*, given that our brains are fantastic computers, gives some weight to the idea that deep and broad introspection gets one closer to God, closer to the objective, closer to the real occult Purpose behind it all in much the same way as studying quantum mechanics and quantum computation.
My argument *against* that is that even if tightly coupled (coherent) pockets of computation are a crucial element, so is the interstitial space *between* the tight pockets ... like black holes orbiting each other or somesuch. It's not merely the individual pocket/computer that's interesting, it's the formation, dissolution, and interaction of the pockets that's more interesting. Actually, then, the *void* is more interesting than the non-void.
Tangentially:
Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy
Structure at z>3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field
<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.09428" target="_blank">https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.09428</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre>I appreciate having near-peers who are "peering" into the same general (vaguely familiar) areas of the fractal abyss that I am...
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>On 8/18/22 08:03, Steve Smith wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>The experience *I* have (or the way I have mostly interpreted it) with various ways of "playing around with my interface/membrane/boundary" is that alternatively addictive to the point of becoming "essential" and a "vertiginous stare into the abyss" at the same time. I'm not talking particularly or specifically about ingesting entheogens or any other substance known to acutely adjust reality. There are (obviously) many other ways to "play around with the boundary". For what it is worth, Pandora is playing Denver's iconic "Rocky Mountain High" in the background as I complete this paragraph.
I currently attribute this to the alone/all-one duality and the flexibility (elastic and plastic) nature of self-other boundaries (membranes?) as a conscious ego. (Sting - How Fragile we are on Pandora now, segueing into judy Collins' Both Sides Now).
If I take "the Uni/Multi-verse" to be nothing more/less than a single complex adaptive system which can(not) be reduced to a system of systems (only reduceable by an imperfectly isolated system (self) which has a compressed "model" of the universe as a system of systems of which it"self" is a perfectly isolated subsystem(self)) then the experience of self-other and "gaining insight/parallax into (R)reality" isn't all that puzzling (to this self's model of itself within the universal).
This of course still leaves (for this illusory "self") the "hard problem" of the fact (rather than the nature) of (subjective) experience itself...
I have a feeling (in my subjective experience as a self) that the "breath of consciousness" might be the compression/decompression cycle itself? Talking (linearly) about this stuff is a fractal/recursive minefield of rabbit-holes worthy of Alice tripping on Entheogens?
- Steve
On 8/18/22 8:34 AM, glen wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Parallax is an important technique for getting at things just *beyond* one's current representational power. So, were I to try to steelman your argument, I'd suggest that, yes, the process by which our bodies refine/focus/hone-down our attention to a smaller, compressed thing from a larger thing (whether the largess is "noise" or not is a tangent) is important. And the entheogens permute that honing down, that reduction, to create a different transformation.
It's reasonable to speculate that the transformation we execute under the influence of an entheogen might be *less* reductive than that we execute when "sober". But to argue that the transformation under the influence is a more accurate match to reality is fraught. Less reductive? Sure. More accurate? Well, that would require us to go into that tangent. What do we mean by more accurate? Does randomness exist? Etc.
So we might want to be careful with that crossing between relatively tame statements like "entheogens alter the cross-membrane transformation providing parallax toward the out there" versus more metaphysical statements like "entheogens provide a better transformation (or no tranformation) across the boundary to the out there".
Thanks for clarifying. I think I have a better understanding of the argument. Those of us who play around with our interface probably *do* have a better understanding of reality than those of us imprisoned by their one, sole interface. But we don't need to go so far as to say a drugged mind is more capable of perceiving the real reality.
On 8/16/22 17:16, Prof David West wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>If you assume, or believe, that the mind (body-brain-embodied mind-Atman) naturally processes 100% of the inputs and assume/believe that a survival enhancing mechanism filters that stream to create the illusionary subset that we call Reality, then entheogens work to dismantle the filtering mechanism and expose the Real Reality.
Missing in my first post was a hidden premise, that any augmentations (Neuralink, et. al.) are almost certainly based on whatever we think we understand of the filtering mechanism, not the Mind, and therefore would augment/enhance that mechanism and therefore lead to results opposite of what is desired.
The missing premise is pretty much conjecture on my part but is grounded in an advanced, but not expert, understanding of AI and neural network technologies; so it should be taken with a tablespoon (thousands of grains) of salt.
davew
On Tue, Aug 16, 2022, at 11:22 AM, glen wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Opposite of what? I don't understand how augmentation is the
opposite of the entheogens (drugs or meditation). Are you saying
that, e.g. the Mojo Lens or Neuralink further restrict, whereas
the entheogens lessen the restriction?
If so, then my guess is you could do the same sort of
restriction modulation with any augmentation device. E.g. if
there are 1 billion possible data feeds you could receive,
decreasing them is like an undrugged person self-censoring and
such, then increasing them is like taking a entheogen ... that is, assuming Church-Turing.
If we reject C-T, then it seems reasonable to argue that the
body "computes" something that any computer-based augmentation
would restrict, by definition, making it impossible to expand
beyond what the augment provides. Computer-based augmentaiton
would provide a hard limit ... an unavoidable abstraction/subset of reality.
On 8/15/22 19:04, Prof David West wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>The hallucino-philia (and Buddhist epistemologists) would argue that our brains (minds) already fully grasp / cognize / perceive our physical reality. But, for survival purposes, it self-censors and presents our consciousness/awareness/attention with a small abstract subset of that reality—an illusion.
Drugs and meditation are 'subtractive' in that they dismantle the abstraction/reduction apparatus that generates the illusion hiding our 'full-grasping'.
If such a belief were "true" then "augmenting our brains" would be the exact opposite, and exceedingly harmful, approach ...
... unless, the augmentation was a permanent [lsd | psylocibin | mescaline] drip.</pre></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
</blockquote>
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