Comment by bglazer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bglazer | Hacker News Reader

I'm having a really hard time making sense of the whole enterprise of Qualia Computing/Qualia Research Institute. Like this particular subject (the nature of conciousness!) is rife with cranks, so they're starting at a disadvantage. They cite some real research published in Nature Communications, that seems at least somewhat related to their ideas, so that's promising. But then they're really (really!) focused on DMT and other hallucinogenic drugs. That's not crank-ish in and of itself, there's plenty of real research to be done on altered mental states. But, they seem a bit too excited about the altered states themselves. My general impression of the research focus and the way they write is a bit too close to like the overly excited tripping guy in your dorm room. Then the simulation is of a standing wave on a square plate, which is plainly so far from what's happening in the brain that it's a bit baffling why this would be considered relevant. Also the QRI page is really well designed and organized, which is generally not a feature of people who aren't thinking straight.

I'll concede that maybe I'm being too harsh and there's something real but unconventional here. That said, the whole presentation is like the perfect uncanny valley for real scientific inquiry. Very unsettling.

It has a very Monroe Institute / Esalen at the peak of its history when Terrence McKenna and Timothy Leary were around vibe. Think of it as smart people with wide interests and often heterodox views shooting the shit but with some funding and a quasi-academic structure.

I don’t know a ton about it but I’ve followed it for a while and that’s what it looks like to me.

We should have more of this. Much of what this kind of place generates is kooky or art rather than science, but it’s also the kind of mountain stream that feeds into things like the 1990s Santa Fe Institute that in turn helps give us modern agent based simulation — to pick one random example.

I also don’t get the sense this place has been turned into a vehicle to inject race science or other “heterodox” “just asking questions” fashy on-ramp stuff into the discourse like some other forums for free thinking.

Yeah it seems pretty harmless. I like the comparison to the Santa Fe precursors, and I definitely agree that a certain degree of more or less sanctioned weirdness is good for the environment. I think what I was trying to convey (a bit harshly) was just a sense of like “what is this??” that I got from looking through their sites.

I think your first paragraph nails it. I find the "Satori to Silicon Valley" concept plausible in the sense that when experts (who study their subject for years without psychedelics) use psychedelics it could accelerate lateral/outside-the-box thinking. The rub is that I've seen a lot of people talk a lot but achieve nothing while doing much larger amounts of psychedelics over much longer periods of time. To me this clearly shows that psychedelics are at best a minor tool (and only to those that dedicate themselves to a specific endeavor). I agree there's a place for it, but the annoying thing about funding it as research is that laymen will run with it as if psychedelics by themselves simply improves life. I don't think this is true.

I don't think you're being too harsh. If you look at the archives, it's pretty easy to see the crankism. Also why there's only 4 comments (2 top level) in the whole discussion. They are mixing the languages of science and psychedelics so thoroughly that it's hard to even comment. I agree with the current sibling reply. It doesn't seem like they have an ulterior motive, but the science is very thin. That said, I do hope they find something interesting.

> That's not crank-ish in and of itself, there's plenty of real research to be done on altered mental states. But, they seem a bit too excited about the altered states themselves.

How so?

> Also the QRI page is really well designed and organized, which is generally not a feature of people who aren't thinking straight.

In my experience, LSD/DMT doesn't necessarily cause one to "not think straight", especially if they're a regular / long-term user. It absolutely depends on the person though.

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