You begin by saying of drug-induced hallucinations that the "other obvious explanation is that the entities are real", but the rest of your piece doesn't seem to follow this. I take "real" to mean "existing in a place and time, and able to be objectively interacted with by mutually agreeing observers." But your piece instead suggests drug-induced hallucinations are actually still hallucinations, just with a distorted context. I am assuming you don't mean we should take faces in clouds to be as real as faces on a human, so I am confused why drug-induced hallucinations should be taken as real?
You say: "So what happens when you disturb the interface — for instance, by taking a psychedelic drug? Probably the same thing that happens to Levin’s frog cells, sorting algorithms, and gene regulatory networks when you mess with them. They point somewhere else in the Platonic space and draw down another kind of mind."
Here you are talking about alteration of subjectivity and that seems reasonable. But you then extend into creation of new minds:
"I think this is why psychedelics trigger encounters with otherworldly entities. Perturbed by these compounds, your brain doesn’t just collapse into a seething mass; it points back into Platonic space and instantiates new minds that can best organize the system under its new conditions."
When you see a face in the clouds, do you instantiate a new mind? If not, why should seeing fairies while high as a kite create anything more real than that face in the clouds? You say "your brain doesn’t just collapse into a seething mass", but I would disagree. Take more than the (usually microscopic) advised dose, and the mind _does_ collapse into a seething mass, utter black out with no memories to recall.
I would be interested in if you have taken psychedelic drugs yourself. My experience is that there is a predictability to the hallucinations which make it clear that nothing is made, it is merely sensory processing and temporal inference becoming disturbed or omitted, and the brain filling the gaps with a wider and wilder palette to draw from. Some people have spiritual moments. Some people have a bad time and vomit a lot. I wouldn't want to take opportunities away from people to experience either of those things! But I would want to caution away from anyone thinking their visions are real, or (as I think you are saying) are viable alternative mind states. The elves, fairies and space entities are just cloud-pareidolia maxed out.
You say: "If I’m right, then psychedelics ... can help us peer into and detail the space of possible minds". Subjectively, I think maybe: go for it, but don't hope to communicate your findings back to us in any meaningful way. Objectively, the idea feels hampered by the difficulty (if not impossibility) of studying even normal consciousness. Besides, have you ever spoken to someone with an acid habit? In my experience, there is no insight, wisdom or intelligence to be found there, only confusion.
I think I am curious what you feel is new here? Most of it seems well-established. The brain is a hallucination machine, it sounds like you agree with that. Most of the time, that hallucination reliably correlates closely with reality (and aligns with the co-hallucination of other people), and the beholder doesn't die. We can chemically alter the hallucination so it doesn't align with reality. That is interesting, fun at a rave, and highlights that what we thought was reality while not on LSD was _also_ a hallucination, just a consistent one useful for not dying.
Regarding the definition of real, I don't mean that they exist in an independent place outside of the psychedelic state. In retrospect, I wish I had used Whitehead's "eternal forms" as the analogy rather than the "Platonic space." Whitehead defined those as something like "pure, unchanging potentials that characterize the specific ways actual entities experience the changing world." The idea here is that under the influence of psychedelics, our brains temporarily actualize those potentials -- like a computer running a new piece of software -- and then stop actualizing them once the drugs have worn off.
A key piece of Levin's argument is that there is a range of such forms that qualify as minds, and that these forms can ingress into physical reality under the right conditions.
A face in the clouds would perhaps represent one of those eternal forms being instantiated, but not one that we would characterize as a mind in the traditional sense. A separate intelligent agent (i.e. machine elf), however, would represent a more complex eternal form that constitutes a mind. (Or that's what I'm arguing at least)
I've taken psychedelics, but perhaps we've had different experiences! I've entered states where it absolutely feels as if I'm interacting with another mind. Hence the motivation for this piece -- if you check out some of my other pieces, you'll see that I don't hide this bias :) And I do think it's possible for people to report back scientifically interesting experiences in this vein from psychedelic states. We simply underestimate the expertise required to do so -- imagine trying to investigate the plant species in rainforests by sending a random untrained person into the Amazon. If we can find/train botanists of the mind (psychonauts), I think there's a lot they could explore and tell us about these other agents.
So the novelty here, imo, Is that these entities are not hallucinations in anything like the usual sense -- temporarily, your brain simulates them in the same way that it simulates you. Two species in the same forest.
While I approve of psychedelics for research, I still struggle to believe that much cognitive or psychological insight is to be gained. While there are few of them, "psychonauts" (cringe!) have told us little. Alexander Shulgin, probably the most famous of them all, didn't say much in the vein of what you are saying. As for those who habitually take recreational trips, they seem even worse "botanists of the mind", and for the most part there seems to be a correlation between exposure and incoherence of thought, if not psychiatric pathology. So, the acid-heads don't have anything to tell us.
And, in my view, neither do the rare meditators who can reach a psychedelic state. Humans have been doing that since prehistory, but have not provided much insight, created meaningful hypotheses, or had any findings seriously taught. I don't deny meditation can be a healthy practice. But deep, lifelong meditators, "psychonauts" if you like, can't tell us anything useful about the mind that we don't know already. The profound thing they know is that the profound is not communicable, as thinkers throughout history (for me, notably Wittgenstein and the Buddha) knew.
Yes I have experienced the old "communications with another mind" trip, but I see that as an amplification of the mundane experience we have when sober, of having antagonist centres of reasoning cohabiting the same brain. When straight, I see those thought processes as unified, the standard back-and-forth of pre-frontal thought, of predicting outcomes through spatial and social forecasting, and the resulting decision making. When tripping, communication channels are distorted and I believe we hallucinate that other parts of the mind are other entities, extravagantly embellished just as the visuals and the time dilations are.
Anyway, I am still not convinced there is anything here to guide us, but thanks for the interesting piece and links.
For sure, I appreciate the skepticism — this is all speculative and there is of course a ton of bullshittery (historically and now) around this topic! Fwiw, I think a program applying better phenomenological approach to Shulgin’s work seems like it could be really useful for mapping the state space of consciousness. Putting aside the reality of entities, we don’t have a good sense of the core dimensions that structure variation across conscious states, and something Shulgin-esque seems like a good way to figure that out. I’d venture that as another kind of useful natural history that involves psychedelics without depending on the belief in psychedelic entities.
Really great explanation of Levin's theory and how it relates to Platonic forms, and I LOVE this totally creative yet (maybe) plausible account of why psychedelics do what they do, and how we can use them (and need them) to understand reality.
"His lab has already shown that certain mathematical objects — like sorting algorithms and simple gene regulatory networks — behave like intelligent beings when you put them in the right conditions"
Although Levin's work is truly remarkable in many ways, we should strive to understand this correctly.
He investigates the path that a number takes from its original state to the sorted state. After introducing obstacles (like frozen cells), he observes that an iteration of the algorithm may look less sorted than the previous one, yet still lead to the final sorted target. This observation leads to the inference of ‘delayed gratification’. Yet he fails to realize that ‘less sorted’ and ‘more sorted’ depend on the metric we use, and that metric is entirely coupled to the sorting algorithm itself. A metric can be seen as the number of steps we are from the final result. However, when we mix different algotypes, freeze some cells, etc., we build a NEW hybrid sorting algorithm. If this algorithm works at all, each iteration gets one step closer to the final sorted result. And here’s the critical point: this step may look less sorted *under the original sorting metric*. Under the hybrid algorithm we built and its own metric, there’s no ‘going around a barrier’. Every step of the hybrid algorithm (assuming it works) gets us one step closer to the final result. Nothing more, nothing less.
I wanted to ask ARTanner's question, but include the possibility that becoming instantiated as either stuff or mind stuff is not the rigid dichotomy that we think, and Levin's idea gives us materialists a way to understand that without endorsing Woo. It goes beyond "Is this just in my mind or not?" I see promise in the idea but it will take a long time to unstick ourselves from the mind/matter separation. Other approaches, like panpsychism or idealism, just seem off (to me as a physical *and* mental being).
We are definitely at a time when we need new kinds of natural historians.
Thanks for this post, thought provoking.
You begin by saying of drug-induced hallucinations that the "other obvious explanation is that the entities are real", but the rest of your piece doesn't seem to follow this. I take "real" to mean "existing in a place and time, and able to be objectively interacted with by mutually agreeing observers." But your piece instead suggests drug-induced hallucinations are actually still hallucinations, just with a distorted context. I am assuming you don't mean we should take faces in clouds to be as real as faces on a human, so I am confused why drug-induced hallucinations should be taken as real?
You say: "So what happens when you disturb the interface — for instance, by taking a psychedelic drug? Probably the same thing that happens to Levin’s frog cells, sorting algorithms, and gene regulatory networks when you mess with them. They point somewhere else in the Platonic space and draw down another kind of mind."
Here you are talking about alteration of subjectivity and that seems reasonable. But you then extend into creation of new minds:
"I think this is why psychedelics trigger encounters with otherworldly entities. Perturbed by these compounds, your brain doesn’t just collapse into a seething mass; it points back into Platonic space and instantiates new minds that can best organize the system under its new conditions."
When you see a face in the clouds, do you instantiate a new mind? If not, why should seeing fairies while high as a kite create anything more real than that face in the clouds? You say "your brain doesn’t just collapse into a seething mass", but I would disagree. Take more than the (usually microscopic) advised dose, and the mind _does_ collapse into a seething mass, utter black out with no memories to recall.
I would be interested in if you have taken psychedelic drugs yourself. My experience is that there is a predictability to the hallucinations which make it clear that nothing is made, it is merely sensory processing and temporal inference becoming disturbed or omitted, and the brain filling the gaps with a wider and wilder palette to draw from. Some people have spiritual moments. Some people have a bad time and vomit a lot. I wouldn't want to take opportunities away from people to experience either of those things! But I would want to caution away from anyone thinking their visions are real, or (as I think you are saying) are viable alternative mind states. The elves, fairies and space entities are just cloud-pareidolia maxed out.
You say: "If I’m right, then psychedelics ... can help us peer into and detail the space of possible minds". Subjectively, I think maybe: go for it, but don't hope to communicate your findings back to us in any meaningful way. Objectively, the idea feels hampered by the difficulty (if not impossibility) of studying even normal consciousness. Besides, have you ever spoken to someone with an acid habit? In my experience, there is no insight, wisdom or intelligence to be found there, only confusion.
I think I am curious what you feel is new here? Most of it seems well-established. The brain is a hallucination machine, it sounds like you agree with that. Most of the time, that hallucination reliably correlates closely with reality (and aligns with the co-hallucination of other people), and the beholder doesn't die. We can chemically alter the hallucination so it doesn't align with reality. That is interesting, fun at a rave, and highlights that what we thought was reality while not on LSD was _also_ a hallucination, just a consistent one useful for not dying.
Thanks for the comment! A few thoughts:
Regarding the definition of real, I don't mean that they exist in an independent place outside of the psychedelic state. In retrospect, I wish I had used Whitehead's "eternal forms" as the analogy rather than the "Platonic space." Whitehead defined those as something like "pure, unchanging potentials that characterize the specific ways actual entities experience the changing world." The idea here is that under the influence of psychedelics, our brains temporarily actualize those potentials -- like a computer running a new piece of software -- and then stop actualizing them once the drugs have worn off.
A key piece of Levin's argument is that there is a range of such forms that qualify as minds, and that these forms can ingress into physical reality under the right conditions.
A face in the clouds would perhaps represent one of those eternal forms being instantiated, but not one that we would characterize as a mind in the traditional sense. A separate intelligent agent (i.e. machine elf), however, would represent a more complex eternal form that constitutes a mind. (Or that's what I'm arguing at least)
I've taken psychedelics, but perhaps we've had different experiences! I've entered states where it absolutely feels as if I'm interacting with another mind. Hence the motivation for this piece -- if you check out some of my other pieces, you'll see that I don't hide this bias :) And I do think it's possible for people to report back scientifically interesting experiences in this vein from psychedelic states. We simply underestimate the expertise required to do so -- imagine trying to investigate the plant species in rainforests by sending a random untrained person into the Amazon. If we can find/train botanists of the mind (psychonauts), I think there's a lot they could explore and tell us about these other agents.
So the novelty here, imo, Is that these entities are not hallucinations in anything like the usual sense -- temporarily, your brain simulates them in the same way that it simulates you. Two species in the same forest.
Thanks.
While I approve of psychedelics for research, I still struggle to believe that much cognitive or psychological insight is to be gained. While there are few of them, "psychonauts" (cringe!) have told us little. Alexander Shulgin, probably the most famous of them all, didn't say much in the vein of what you are saying. As for those who habitually take recreational trips, they seem even worse "botanists of the mind", and for the most part there seems to be a correlation between exposure and incoherence of thought, if not psychiatric pathology. So, the acid-heads don't have anything to tell us.
And, in my view, neither do the rare meditators who can reach a psychedelic state. Humans have been doing that since prehistory, but have not provided much insight, created meaningful hypotheses, or had any findings seriously taught. I don't deny meditation can be a healthy practice. But deep, lifelong meditators, "psychonauts" if you like, can't tell us anything useful about the mind that we don't know already. The profound thing they know is that the profound is not communicable, as thinkers throughout history (for me, notably Wittgenstein and the Buddha) knew.
Yes I have experienced the old "communications with another mind" trip, but I see that as an amplification of the mundane experience we have when sober, of having antagonist centres of reasoning cohabiting the same brain. When straight, I see those thought processes as unified, the standard back-and-forth of pre-frontal thought, of predicting outcomes through spatial and social forecasting, and the resulting decision making. When tripping, communication channels are distorted and I believe we hallucinate that other parts of the mind are other entities, extravagantly embellished just as the visuals and the time dilations are.
Anyway, I am still not convinced there is anything here to guide us, but thanks for the interesting piece and links.
For sure, I appreciate the skepticism — this is all speculative and there is of course a ton of bullshittery (historically and now) around this topic! Fwiw, I think a program applying better phenomenological approach to Shulgin’s work seems like it could be really useful for mapping the state space of consciousness. Putting aside the reality of entities, we don’t have a good sense of the core dimensions that structure variation across conscious states, and something Shulgin-esque seems like a good way to figure that out. I’d venture that as another kind of useful natural history that involves psychedelics without depending on the belief in psychedelic entities.
Really great explanation of Levin's theory and how it relates to Platonic forms, and I LOVE this totally creative yet (maybe) plausible account of why psychedelics do what they do, and how we can use them (and need them) to understand reality.
"His lab has already shown that certain mathematical objects — like sorting algorithms and simple gene regulatory networks — behave like intelligent beings when you put them in the right conditions"
Although Levin's work is truly remarkable in many ways, we should strive to understand this correctly.
He investigates the path that a number takes from its original state to the sorted state. After introducing obstacles (like frozen cells), he observes that an iteration of the algorithm may look less sorted than the previous one, yet still lead to the final sorted target. This observation leads to the inference of ‘delayed gratification’. Yet he fails to realize that ‘less sorted’ and ‘more sorted’ depend on the metric we use, and that metric is entirely coupled to the sorting algorithm itself. A metric can be seen as the number of steps we are from the final result. However, when we mix different algotypes, freeze some cells, etc., we build a NEW hybrid sorting algorithm. If this algorithm works at all, each iteration gets one step closer to the final sorted result. And here’s the critical point: this step may look less sorted *under the original sorting metric*. Under the hybrid algorithm we built and its own metric, there’s no ‘going around a barrier’. Every step of the hybrid algorithm (assuming it works) gets us one step closer to the final result. Nothing more, nothing less.
Same, excited to see Mike Levin's work inspiring so many folks!
I wanted to ask ARTanner's question, but include the possibility that becoming instantiated as either stuff or mind stuff is not the rigid dichotomy that we think, and Levin's idea gives us materialists a way to understand that without endorsing Woo. It goes beyond "Is this just in my mind or not?" I see promise in the idea but it will take a long time to unstick ourselves from the mind/matter separation. Other approaches, like panpsychism or idealism, just seem off (to me as a physical *and* mental being).
We are definitely at a time when we need new kinds of natural historians.
.
The Hindus have millions of gods, they must have the best drugs