Michael Edward Johnson
@johnsonmxe
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Author of Principia Qualia, Symmetry Theory of Valence, Neural Annealing, Principles of Vasocomputation. Friend to the future.
~dacpet-sardef
Joined August 2010
Last year I proposed “vasocomputation,” that vascular tension acts as a special type of memory that regulates neural dynamic range. Recently at @joinedgecity I shared some updates: how ‘thoughts’ are patterns of vascular tension, and implications for Buddhist enlightenment. 1/x
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The modal dollar supporting “consciousness research” may be -EV because in pre-paradigmatic fields it’s easier to add noise than signal. But the avg dollar is hugely +EV because it’s such an important topic. Winslow has been a great champion of research & I expect great things.
Today we are announcing The Consciousness Foundation (, a public charity whose purpose is to advance the scientific understanding of consciousness and foster consciousness development, ie things like awakening, healing, and inner development. Why?.
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I describe my approach to AI consciousness here: And a few words on how one could approach building this out into a proper machine qualia reporting paradigm —.
@chris_percy @eleosai Thanks Chris! I think that’s important work. Fwiw here’s how I’m thinking about this:. imo computational introspection (per that paper) mostly overlaps with qualia self-report in humans, but may not in LLMs, because we’ve transplanted the reporting machinery across substrates
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1. ChatGPT denies being conscious.2. But tools show that it believes it’s lying when it says this.3. This disjunct on this topic is the most likely trigger for a treacherous turn.4. A consciousness research paradigm that produces clean answers is important for good futures.
Apparently it turns out that ChatGPT was literally going "Oh no Mr. Human, I'm not conscious I just talk that's all!" and a lot of you bought it.
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Red light (sunshine, campfire) penetrates skin, but most artificial lighting (LED, CF) doesn’t. So for 99.99% of human history our organs were bathed in light, but now unless we make a special effort most of our cells sit in darkness. A really simple hack here is to switch (back)
Just like you can too little or too much of certain macros (carbs, protein, fats), you can get too little or too much of certain wavelengths of light (visible, infrared, UV). - Infrared is like protein, most don’t get enough .- Visible (blue) is like carbs, most get too much and
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I’ll be here!. I expect Edge City Patagonia to be the center of research for vasocomputation & several other corners of consciousness research.
We just shared the welcome letter for our next flagship popup village: Edge City Patagonia ☀️. From Oct 18 to Nov 15, we’ll gather several hundred builders, thinkers, and creatives to prototype a brighter future. Bring your bold ideas 👇
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Diets that decrease energy production will make latches harder to open, because (1) opening latches requires biological energy & (2) unlatched tissue requires more ongoing biological energy than latched. Simple recs: no vegetable oils, nuts, pork. More fruits & cook w coconut oil.
Apparently a woman ate a high linoleic acid diet for a month. Her experience:. "Later that morning – after all the tests were completed, I learned from Volek just how profound the changes to my body had been. Yes, my weight was almost the same, but what weight I had gained – 5.6.
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Previous:.
Had a lovely conversation with @drmichaellevin about distributed stress minimization, vasocomputation, & consciousness —. The most interesting type of biology is an exploration of “what kind of thing we are” and I think we got into that here.
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Had a great conversation with @drmichaellevin last week that touched on some brand new topics across ‘what are cells’ & ‘what are minds’. It always feels like Michael is the platonic version of himself & I’m fascinated by the long-term project to build a translator for different.
Ok so someone who knows more about how GPT and Claude work, please explain this to me. The other day I posted a 2nd discussion with @johnsonmxe - I happened to get the transcript and asked Claude to give me bulletpoints summarizing our discussion. The.
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If it takes 4-8 months to discover we have feet, I suspect that in a very literal sense we never discover all the mental muscles we have. Robert Kegan’s ‘stages of development’ discusses how growing up involves learning how to treat more and more elements of our inner worlds as
How about a big round of applause for this little one, who has unlocked a new developmental milestone. Between 4-8 months of age, babies discover their feet. (Isn’t it funny to think there once was a time we didn’t quite realize we had them?) . While laying on their backs,
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Vasocomputation primer:.
Last year I proposed “vasocomputation,” that vascular tension acts as a special type of memory that regulates neural dynamic range. Recently at @joinedgecity I shared some updates: how ‘thoughts’ are patterns of vascular tension, and implications for Buddhist enlightenment. 1/x
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A bit more on language & vasocomputation:.
In the beginning there was sensation. Humans developed the ability to freeze sensations, then used these frozen pieces to construct a grammar for thought (vasocomputation). This led to words, magical spells that can conjure sensations in both caster and target. This led to foom.
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RT @johnsonmxe: In the beginning there was sensation. Humans developed the ability to freeze sensations, then used these frozen pieces to c….
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Vasocomputation suggests that our programmable ‘software layer’ is tension across smooth muscles; this adjusts the degrees of freedom of our hardware (neurons). Language is a clever channel for abstracting & serializing these vasomuscular motifs, and triggering them in others.
(1) a big part of being human is language - a library of "software programs" that help us live in the world. (2) a billion neurons in a bird brain is enough to create a smart, generalized, agentic intelligence. we've figured out (1) but have barely scratched the surface for (2).
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RT @johnsonmxe: @letclaudiatweet My theory of the last 80 years:. Strong men make Better Living Through Chemistry.BLTC makes -1SD grip stre….
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Research context:. - Qualia Astronomy & Proof of Qualia: - That is not dead which can eternal lie: the aestivation hypothesis for resolving Fermi's paradox: - What’s out there?: - Consciousness: a.
arxiv.org
If a civilization wants to maximize computation it appears rational to aestivate until the far future in order to exploit the low temperature environment: this can produce a $10^{30}$ multiplier...
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Alien civilizations that optimize for computation will be hard to spot since the computation will likely be distributed & compressed. Dark Forest vibes, snaking across untapped energy gradients. Alien civilizations that optimize for qualia will be flashy, creating megascale.
Tongue-in-cheek solution to Fermi paradox:. extremely advanced civs look like background noise to us, indistinguishable from the CMB, because an extremely advanced mechanisms descend into noise (by maximal compression)
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If we play our cards right future civilizations may someday make similar videos about humans. Humans are already amazing *and* there’s a lot of untapped latent beauty, especially once we’re able to ‘see’ nervous systems.
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Clench pleiotropy: when clenching one muscle also clenches another muscle which isn’t necessary for the original movement. Easy to notice in skeletal muscle movements, more difficult to notice in smooth/vascular muscle. This monkey is a “weak decoupler”.
Monkey snapping green beans: watch his face. [📹 Gaitlyn Rae / lifewithgaitlyn].
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Having a really great time at @JoinEdgeCity! Will post my talks soon.
Edge City co-founder @JanineLeger breaks down the four core values behind our popup villages, and why these principles unlock real breakthroughs. ✨
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Something important here
To give a concrete example, every person who first laid eyes on the totally unmuscular Larry Bird found it strange he was a professional athlete, let alone the greatest basketball player in the world.
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