Qualia Research Institute Community Meetup
Qualia Research Institute is non-profit building a science of consciousness to improve lives of sentient beings.
Come if you are interesting in understanding consciousness, psychedelics, meditation, neuroscience, neurotechnology, spirituality, the nature of pleasure and pain.
This meetup will have Ethan Kuntz, QRI's visiting scholar, as our guest start. At QRI Ethan worked on visualizing tactile sensations and mettanealing — a meditation technique that combines Neural Field Annealing principles with metta (loving-kindness) meditation.
At the meetup Ethan will give a 20-minute talk "The thermodynamics of consciousness". Then we'll have a Q&A with him on the topic of the talk, his work with QRI in general, as well as any other relevant topics.
We'll have soft drinks and snacks. We'll also have food upstairs on the floor above for Newspeak House's regular community dinner Ration Club — feel free to move between these events at any time.
Schedule
7:00 PM. The doors open. Socializing
7:30 PM. Ethan gives a talk "The thermodynamics of consciousness", Q&A and discussion with Ethan on stage
8:45..11:30 PM. Socializing, more informal Q&A with Ethan
Potential topics for discussion
— Psychedelics. What do exotic states of consciousness can tell us about it? From models of how they work (e. g. QRI's neural annealing) to writing rigorous trip reports to personal experiences.
— Meditation. Why does it work? What does it say about the consciousness? What does Buddhism get right?
— AI consciousness and sentience. The binding (boundary) problem.
— Valence. The nature of pleasure and pain. Why do some experiences feel better than others? Symmetry Theory of Valence.
— Logarithmic scales of pleasure and pain. How much worse are the worst experiences? How much better are the best experiences?
— Formal theories of consciousness. How do we create one? What do we want from a theory of consciousness? Is IIT a pseudoscience?
— Whatever you come up with!
PS: this is a unofficial community meetup