The Future of Consciousness – Andrés Gómez Emilsson

Synopsis: In this talk we articulate a positive vision of the future that is both viable given what we know, and also utterly radical in its implications. We introduce two key insights that, when taken together, synergize in powerful ways. Namely, (a) the long-tails of pleasure and pain, and (b) the correlation between wellbeing, productivity, and intelligence. This informs us how to distribute resources if we want to maximize wellbeing. Given the weight of the extremes, it is important to take them into account. But because of the causal significance of more typical hedonic ranges, engineering our baseline is a key consideration. This makes it natural to break down the task of paradise engineering into three components:

(1) avoid negative extremes,
(2) increase hedonic baseline, and
(3) achieve new heights of experience.

With regards to (1): the future of consciousness is anodyne. It lacks extreme suffering in any of its guises. We will see how, if we aim right, a significant proportion of extreme suffering can be prevented with pragmatic technologies already available. Even just applying what we know today would be as significant for the reduction of suffering as the advent of anesthesia was in the context of surgery.

On (2): the future of consciousness is engaging. From novelty generation to Buddhist annealing, baseline-enhancing interventions will change the way we think of life. It is not only about making everyday fun, but also the economics of it.

And (3): the future of consciousness is ecstatic. A science of ecstasy will allow us to safely and reliably sample from a wide range of time-tested ultra-blissful peak experiences. A common cause with other sentient beings, and indeed with the interests of consciousness at large, can be forged in the knowledge of such deep experiences.

They give you a genuine, non-sentimental, reason to live. Together, action on these three levels can significantly advance the cause of eliminating suffering and engineering paradise. And our assessment is: there is a lot of low-hanging fruit in this space. Let’s pick it up!

Bio: Director of Research at Qualia Research Institute

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Kind regards,
Adam Ford

[metaRising]

Always fascinating to hear Andrés speak about these subjects. He is truly one of the great philosophers of our time.

[sedenions]

"Shiva, vishnu is not gonna help with understanding as much as valence, etc" This is why I like and support Andres.

[Robotwesley]

AMAZING talk! Thank you. Now let’s abolish the state and get on with the future :)

[tuckeroliver]

My mind is so blown. I can’t even describe it. This is incredible

[RazorbackPT]

Andrés, I've been engaging with your content for awhile now and find it absolutely fascinating and important. A have a few questions that I've been meaning to ask you.
I know you have arguments against the possibility of digital sentience. Is this bad news regarding the battle of consciousness vs replicators? I mean it in the sense that if we were able to make an AGI that was conscious, wouldn't its reward function be intrinsically tied to valence? And therefore it would be aligned by default? It might still make humans go extinct but the light of consciousness would be in the hands of a superintelligence. Maybe it's not the best possible future but it beats tiling the universe in paperclips.

Follow up question: Maybe traditional computation can't be conscious, but what kind of artificial system could we build that would be? And how hard would that be? Have you written anywhere about this or know of anyone who has?

Thanks!

[sedenions]

Happy to see the importance propagating a "Goldilocks Zone" and productivity curve. It's more nuanced than many hedonic qualia optimizers make it out to be. Though, I wonder why very few people talk about 'attentional qualia' engineering. Maybe because attention is a sort of meta-qualia?

[RandomAmbles]

Your description of self-organizing entities that are sometimes very good at something reminds me of Ramanujan, the great indian mathematician, who reported seeing a goddess in his dreams who gave him the answers to dizzyingly complex problems in pure number theory. I'm curious to hear more about the unique proficiencies of these entities.

The centerless state reminds me of Fuller's Omnidirectional Equilibrium.

The first individual's question about deception, and self deception, seems relevant to strategies of pure replicators.

The question of how to actually get team consciousness to be competitive seems... challenging, even in principle. There's an idealist vs realpolitik question here that gets deep and troubling. It's kind of a question of moral shortcuts and how to achieve victory at the minimal cost for the maximum expected value. Imagine, for example, lying to everyone for decades in order to gain political control/exceptional wealth/religious-populist power, only to turn around and use the consequential influence to advance valence-grounded consciousness-alligned altruistic policy change, fund v-gc-aa technological innovations, or popularize v-gc-aa mindsets and habits. Deception, if done well, can be a profoundly effective strategy in a social world like ours.

When it comes to decreasing extremely negative valence experiences, my first thought is abolishing factory farming and gearing things up way ahead of the global effort against wild animal suffering. I'm worried that, instead of being able to use a concentration of force to make this earliness count, (as in your asteroid example) being this early will mean I have practically no effect, like Pythagoras on animal rights. It's hard to know what the effects of my actions will be. It's hard to know how sensitive to initial conditions various socio historical forces are - or how much insensitive, redundant momentum historical events/patterns carry.

I'm confused about how hardline pro-sentient I should be in public, in private, and with my family. Rocking the boat can be turbulent and it can be destructive. Strict ethical perspectives told honestly and with a straight face often seem profoundly judgemental and insensitive. No-one likes to know that they're finding a continuous genocide. Large-scale, secretive, industrial sabotage of factory farming operations and corporations may save hundreds of thousands or millions of lives from horrific experience (being boiled, skinned, eviscerated, dehooved, and decapitated alive over several excruciating minutes) - but it might engender backlash and create industry resilience if done too soon or with insufficient secrecy.

How can we effectively reach people who, like me, are deeply distrustful of pleasure?

Buddhist annealing seems like it has the potential to be a near perfect means of brainwashing and indoctrinating people, for I'll or possibly even good. The promise of untold bliss ought to get absolutely every sane person's guard up.

I definitely sometimes have quazi-paranoid fears of extremely high IQ groups of people pursuing convergent instrumental goals toward controlling the world through various forms of deception and careful concentrations of force. Deception through misinformation seems to be a very popular and powerful way for people to gain control, even at the highest levels.

Unfortunately, it also seems like a non-sustainable social technology - a kind of sociological fossil fuel - that ruins the environment in the long run. In the case of misinformation ruining people's trust in reliable sources of accurate information makes them more likely to believe misinforming memeplexes initially created to further an agenda.

So, you see, valence-grounded consequentialist ethical systems - like my own - walk a very slippery slope, being aligned with the interests of consciousness but constantly feeling the need to do things, seemingly for the greater good, that perpetuate and give rise to the most viscous of nearly pure replicators. There's always this gradient, this selection pressure, towards using more powerful and consequential methods that then get co-opted and mutated into something extremely self-serving. I think this sort of thing happens in power structures *all the time*.

I'm trying, right now, to get lawmakers to abolish factory farming in the state of Massachusetts - but anything direct would be a fool's errand. What could be more of a pure darwinian breeding ground than state officials dependent on elections to keep their jobs?

[projekt]

You know it's a hedonic scale when you get plugged by 3 big Deltas and the universe starts to make sense.

[ャンティオカ]

Iwould love you to write a book that would be a crystallization of your knowledge and world model so I can run it on my biocomputer.

[gabefinalperigee]

this is a lot to take in at once. i'm trying to digest appropriately 38:53

[S.G.Wallner]

have you considered that minimizing suffering may not result in "paradise." the bliss felt when reaching the peak of a mountain only comes when suffering is present and overcome. teleporting to the top of the mountain will not result in the same experience as a climb which has included some suffering. suffering can induce change and development that does not occur without it. just a thought which is based on my own experiences.

[samuelandresdavilarivas]

Deberías hacer videos en español wey saludos

[ntrcnnctr]

he has the good drugs, no doubt. what he hasn’t realized yet is only thru suffering we „get rid“ of suffering. (that’s a hard one, for some it takes a whole lifetime…doesn’t matter if u intake some compounds or meditate). tough love is love too u know…

[boscovich]

Andres, has leido a c.castaneda? Teniamos conversaciones en fb hace años, pero me eliminaron mi fb por politicas de esa compañia.

[GNARGNARHEAD]

how disappointing; here's a question for ya, how does The Secret fit in your model?