Astral Codex Ten

Andres

6 min read

Andres

Article

Andres is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between September 13, 2022 and November 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “I got a chance to talk to Andres from Qualia Research about this”; “2: Andres of Qualia Research Institute (via email)”; “Andres of QRI”. It most often appears alongside California, companionate love, dopamine.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 5
  • Issue count: 5
  • First seen: September 13, 2022
  • Last seen: November 10, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Unpredictable Reward, Predictable Happiness
September 13, 2022 · Original source
I got a chance to talk to Andres from Qualia Research about this. He emphasized (sorry if I am mistransmitting any of this) his belief that happiness is related to something like consonance of brain states (which I think sort of relates to low free energy / low prediction error). The reward center works because it’s an interchange between many brain regions, and when activated it connects them and globally increases consonance in the brain. But you can also increase consonance other ways, and predictability won’t cancel these out.
Inline links: Qualia Research, consonance
Highlights From The Comments On Unpredictable Reward
September 30, 2022 · Original source
2: Andres of Qualia Research Institute (via email):
Links For October
October 12, 2022 · Original source
6: Andres of QRI: How should the philosophy and science of consciousness affect how we think about ethics?
Inline links: How should the philosophy and science of consciousness affect how we think about ethics?
Book Review: Rhythms Of The Brain
October 20, 2022 · Original source
I read it anyway because of a talk with Andres of Qualia Research that convinced me that brain waves are potentially fascinating. Let me try to explain this, while admitting that unlike the work of the sober Professor Buzsaki, this is all total wild speculation that I can’t back up at all.
Andres suggests all of this is a good match for oscillatory coupling between brain regions, which he says “dissolves internal boundaries”. To give a fake toy example: suppose that you have some brain region representing the normal conscious self (maybe the default mode network), and some other brain region representing some part of the unconscious. When we say that these are “different brain regions”, we don’t just mean anatomically, we mean that they’re oscillating at different frequencies in a way that makes them less than fully communicative with each other. If two brain regions are oscillating at almost the same frequency, they will tend to link together - that is, if one area is 1.9 hertz, and another area is 2 hertz, then probably the 1.9 hertz area firing will trigger neurons in the 2 hertz area to fire (since they are almost ready to fire anyway), and the 2 hertz area will decrease to 1.9 hertz and the two areas will “merge” into a single 1.9 hertz rhythm. And if two brain regions are oscillating at frequencies that are near-multiples of each other (for example, 2 hertz and 4.1 hertz), then something similar will happen, with the 2 hertz region triggering the 4.1 hertz region every second peak, and eventually they will settle into an entrained 2 hertz vs. 4 hertz oscillation with the same peaks. Buzsaki says that in the brain you tend to see only surviving rhythms that are irregular multiples of each other (he says “the natural logarithm 2.17” - I don’t know if this is a typo for e = 2.72 or if something else is going on).
Andres thinks this is part of what’s behind “spiritual” or “mystical” experiences, where you suddenly feel like you’ve lost the boundaries of yourself and are at one with God and Nature and Everything. You’ve done something weird that’s slowed or sped up an oscillator somewhere, and it’s achieved synchrony with another oscillator it doesn’t usually communicate with.
Can People Be Honestly Wrong About Their Own Experiences?
November 10, 2022 · Original source
I’m having trouble understanding the sense Andres means, and whether it corresponds to our intuitive sense. But suppose Andres just literally means to claim that he can see seven-dimensional objects on DMT, and that he isn’t consciously lying. I find I still don’t believe him. Psychedelic trips seem to be a weird edge case; it seems easy to imagine that Andres saw eg a series of wavy lines, and then his drug-addled brain told him “It’s a seven-dimensional object! Amazing!” This seems no worse than somebody on drugs scrawling “JOY = JUSTICE * LOVE” or something on a blackboard and believing that it they’ve discovered the fundamental truth of the universe, which seems like a pretty common experience.
Can we apply the tautological solution here? Say something like “Andres is faithfully reporting the real experience of believing he sees a 7 dimensional object, even though this might not correspond to anything in the real world?”