Qualia Research Institute community meetup & unconference: Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain
Qualia Research Institute is non-profit building a science of consciousness to improve lives of sentient beings. This is an unofficial informal meetup for the community around QRI in London.
Come if you are interesting in understanding consciousness, psychedelics, meditation, neuroscience, neurotechnology, spirituality, the nature of pleasure and pain.
Schedule
19:00 Doors open, socialising
19:30 a 30 minutes talk with Q&A, "The Heavy Tail of Valence: New Strategies to Quantify and Reduce Extreme Suffering"
20:00: the talk ends, hanging out, socialising, preparing unconference sessions
20:30 till late: unconference & socialising. The discussions can be on any QRI-related topic, not just log scales of pleasure/pain.
Talk: “The Heavy Tail of Valence: New Strategies to Quantify and Reduce Extreme Suffering” by Alfredo Parra
Alfredo Parra is a researcher at the Qualia Research Institute focusing on the problem of extreme suffering. He previously worked in operations and management for two organizations focusing on reducing risks from artificial intelligence. He has a background in engineering physics and computational science.
The heavy-tailed valence (HTV) hypothesis is the notion that the accessible human capacity for emotional experiences of pleasure and pain spans a minimum of two orders of magnitude. If true, this means that the most intense human experiences (both positive and negative) are far more intense than most people can even imagine. Taking this idea seriously leads us, among others, to reconsider how to prioritize efforts to help those who suffer most. This idea is one of the guiding principles that informs QRI’s work.
This talk explores the idea of logarithmic scales in greater detail and its consequences, with a focus on the newest research emerging from QRI on this topic. The talk will highlight our recent research quantifying the global burden of cluster headaches—often called "suicide headaches" due to their extreme intensity—and what can be done about it. We’ll also explore QRI’s latest work investigating a promising, overlooked intervention to prevent and treat the excruciating pain of kidney stones. We’ll also share ongoing work and future plans.
Links
Unconference
The talk by Alfredo will be followed by unconference, a participant-driven conference with write-in schedule on the wall. Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion on a topic can claim a time and a space. We had several unconferences in the last 1.5 years, so might've been to one already — this one will have a similar format. The unconference topics don't have to be related to the HTV — they can be any of the general QRI topics: consciousness research, psychedelics, meditation, neuroscience, philosophy.
That said, you can also simply come and hang out with people — unconference is there to give some structure and help like-minded people find each other.