Welcome to my research garden.

New theory on why dreams evolved, deeply informed by artificial neural network research. Models get 'overtrained' on particular datasets, leaving them over-indexed on patterns contained therein. When they encounter novel data sets, they're less agile, less able to generalize away from their old data patterns. Dreams are proposed as the brain's way of introducing 'noise' into the experiential data set, assisting the brain in generalizing away from its experiences.

Brilliant reframing of the data debate. Critiques individual 'data ownership' & dividends as an extension of neoliberal emphasis on extending property rights. Also critiques the 'humanist critique' which seeks to resist datafication on the grounds of dehumanization. Instead, she emphasizes the relational imperative: how data productions seeks to create demographic cohorts that generate value only at population-level scales, and thus require population level governance institutions to moderate.

More support for what appears obvious: controlled mushroom trips appear a more effective treatment for depression than anything else we currently have.

Using orthodox economic theory, Falkinger suggests that under conditions of information abundance, 'laissez faire' equilibriums are inefficient. Where attention scarcity exists (meaning any informationally abundant context), "an efficient solution can be implemented by imposing a linear tax on attention-seeking activities and distributing the raise revenue to the buyers."

Uses predictive processing / free energy principle to propose a theory where 'moods' are basically hyperpriors about emotional states, "or confidence about the consequences of action." Scott Alexander comments: "I think they’re saying that mood – long-lasting states like being depressed or being a generally carefree person – are second-level priors about emotions, which themselves are first-level priors about actions."

MDMA increases cooperation rates. Implications for connecting consciousness research to economic coordination problems. Raising hedonic baselines generally (of which MDMA is one temporary instantiation) may be a good strategy for evolving human coordination towards more cooperative games.

Psychedelics, like MDMA & psilocybin, appear to increase prosocial behavior. Implications for global coordination strategies; if the mechanism of action here is raising hedonic set-points, then improving the conscious experience of agents could be seen as a directive for economic development & global coordination problems.

Ultrasonic stimulation is becoming a thing - appears to replicate certain benefits of meditation related to emotional regulation and functional connectivity.

Levin writes up his theory on how sub-agents mesh into a singular agent we take ourselves to be, what he described in his Aeon essay with Dan Dennett as "cognitive horizons". "How do coherent biological Individuals result from the activity of smaller sub-agents? To understand the evolution and function of metazoan creatures’ bodies and minds, it is essential to conceptually explore the origin of multicellularity and the scaling of the basal cognition of individual cells into a coherent larger organism."

Introduces the concept of "harmonic brain modes", which "show how harmonic brain modes can explain the relationship between neurophysiological, temporal, and network-level changes in the brain across different mental states (wakefulness, sleep, anesthesia, psychedelic)." A fundamental building block for QRI's Symmetry Theory of Valence.

Experienced meditators can intentionally evoke seizure-like brain activity, but phenomenologically, it's experienced as highly pleasant (jhanas).

Jackson models the efficacy of three separate measures - a graduated income tax, tax on capital, and UBI - under two sets of conditions: one where institutions favor capital over labor, and another where institutions favor wage labor. Under the first, no measure is particularly effective in controlling inequality. In the second, however, they look much better. Suggests institutions leaning more towards labor is a key to help unlock the transformative potential of policies like UBI or taxes on capital.

Schweickart's condensed blueprint for 'Economic Democracy', including worker self-management, markets, and social control of investment (capital assets tax, where revenues are disbursed through a network of public investment banks).

Proposes the Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI), which is among the first empirical measures of a subject's 'level of consciousness'.

Anesthesia works on plants, too, which is funky since plants don't have neurons, which we tend to associate with consciousness.

"We propose that the scope of our potential relationship with, and so also our moral duty toward, any being can be considered in the light of Care—a robust, practical, and dynamic lynchpin that formalizes the concepts of goal-directedness, stress, and the scaling of intelligence; it provides a rubric that, unlike other current concepts, is likely to not only survive but thrive in the coming advances of AI and bioengineering. We review relevant concepts in basal cognition and Buddhist thought, focusing on the size of an agent’s goal space (its cognitive light cone) as an invariant that tightly links intelligence and compassion."

I. Evolution raises complexity*, integrating entities into higher-level systems. II. Integrated entities experience "complexity drain", perhaps as their parts become "useless" in light of the higher-level. III. Should we be concerned about becoming parts of a planetary system?

Proposes the SAGE framework (solidarity, agency, GDP per capita, environmental sustainability), a dashboard approach to measuring human well-being.

Annaka's solution to the combination problem, written as a response to Phillip Goff's book, Galileo's Error.

Propose the 'primordial biological structure & source of value', and argues for an 'immanent teleology' that is organically present in biology itself (before this kind of thing was cool).

A theory that creates categories to understand when markets are appropriate mechanisms for provisioning goods and services, and when alternative methods, like commons, might be better.

Metzinger's magnum opus. Highly technical, nearly unreadable, but still has the aroma of brilliance. Substantiates terms like 'self-model' that have become highly popular in cognitive science. Probably the most complete theory of consciousness I know of.

Popular version of his difficult book, Being No One. Easier to read, still gets major points across. Nice call for a 'consciousness culture' towards the end.

My favorite holistic critique of the prevailing economic rationality to date, connecting abstracted critique to a concrete program of reducing working hours + filling the wage gap with a basic income.

Details on how it's possible that Denmark has no minimum wage, and yet their lowest paid employees make nearly double their US counterparts who have minimum wage protections. It's all about labor power.

Mankiw, a significant & conventional economist, emphasizes how UBI and its means-tested cousin, NIT, are the same policy with the same effects in net distributional terms.

Michael Johnson's magnum opus - purports to lay the blueprint for a new science of consciousness. I have no idea if he's right, wrong, or nuts. But it's interesting as heck, and feels worth getting familiar with.

Really good, simple, easy-to-understand summary of the Symmetry Theory of Valence, which is itself a super interesting theory of consciousness (more specifically, of "valence").

Paul Romer (bigwig economist) outlines a (modest, actually) tax on digital advertising. Would only target what he considers the largest threats to democracy.

Wright's manifesto for the Real Utopias Project.

Wonderful overview of both the existing precedents, and present possibilities for building digital public infrastructure.

Actionable items to address root causes of the student debt crisis.

Jain Family Institute - one of the best research organizations working on basic income - publishes a position paper where they lay out their case for a sort-of-UBI of $250 per person under 65, as a *starting point* for guaranteed income policy.

Proposal to establish a public institution to direct investment funds; sort of but not exactly like a public investment bank.

A symposium on alternatives to the marginal theory of value.

Great table of solutions for climate change, ranked & sortable.

Presentation of the Symmetry Theory of Valence, and specifically, how brain harmonics (patterns of consonance, dissonance, and noise) can be measured to, literally, "quantify bliss". Really provocative, creating stuff!

Lehar gives a presentation to the Harvard science of psychedelics club on his views of indirect realism. Lehar was recently added to QRI's research lineage, and thus occupies that funny space between institutional and fringe, which some nicely provocative challenges to mainstream neuroscience of consciousness.

Andres' take on solving the phenomenal binding problem, which seems like one of the most substantial issues in developing panpsychism, or just broader theories of mind & matter today.

"Mental autonomy" is a category that Metzinger does a lot of work to develop. Useful to have a systematic definition of what otherwise gets glossed over with ambiguities like "agency", "freedom", "autonomy", etc.

In European countries, where workers already have strong institutions and decent bargaining power, codetermination may have no economic impact at all. For those interested in codetermination from a non-consequentialist perspective, this is good news. If codetermination doesn't hurt the economy, but it does further our instantiation of the principles of democracy, it's a good idea without any observable consequences, or cost.

Shinzen Young's rigorous novella on mindfulness practice