Episode 12: Higher States of Consciousness, Part 2
So last time we finished up a cognitive scientific exploration of higher states of consciousness, awakening experiences, these kinds of mystical experiences that bring about massive transformation. We saw how we can give a psychologically active description of these processes that explain both the experiential profile that people are having and some of the features that they find therein. We were also able to talk about this at the level of machine learning and information processing, and at the brain level. What comes out of this is a picture of a state of consciousness in which we are getting a flow state that is improving our optimal grip on the world, optimizing our performance for making sense of things and enhancing our overall capacity for learning and problem-solving.
We saw that in fact provides a very good justification for the states being the guidance for the transformation of life and that what they do is they give a brain state that is highly optimized, processing things in a way that gives us a tremendous sense of a plausible grip on the world, and that is making use of processing that is absolutely indispensable and foundational for us. It has a kind of important priority in of our processing and what I suggested from this is that while it doesn’t give us any good theories in a sense of propositional claims about the metaphysical structure of reality, these states do justify their claim to give us guidance. So although they are not rational in the sense of providing good argument and evidence for beliefs they are rational in the sense of wisdom, in that they optimize some of our core processing for being in contact with reality in a way that is coupled optimally to our own processes of self transcendence and the cultivation of wisdom.
So this completes Vervaeke’s account (for now) of what’s going on with mystical experiences. They don’t do the thing we might want them to (give us access to propositional knowledge), but they give us some sort of non-propositional guidance through a way to vary our internals in a way that lets us experiment with things / untrap our priors.
This also explains some about why it would be ineffable: consider the difference between describing an idealized algorithm and describing a pernicious bug you found in your code. The first is simple and formal, with many of the details abstracted; the second is almost entirely about the details. Most of these experiences are more like exposing psychological bugs so that they can be reimplemented, in a way that’s not going to generalize between people (as everyone’s implementation of that bit of their psychology will likely be different).
But… I’m not convinced it’s an asymmetric weapon, yet. The thing where you randomly increase variation sometimes breaks you out of bad spots, but it sometimes puts you into bad spots. I think Vervaeke would respond: that’s what the whole practice and community built around it is for! Someone who goes on a trip supported by other people, who know how to cultivate wisdom and challenge foolishness, is much better off than an autodidact who tries it on their own, maybe missing a core preparatory step or foolishness-challenging skill. Also, maybe this is just ‘for extreme cases’; for example, you might want to give psychedelics to almost everyone with PTSD, but almost no one without PTSD.
[I’m not sure why I’m focusing on psychedelics here, since part of the point of meditation is to get to these states, and he seems pretty bullish on everyone doing meditation. I think it’s that the risk for psychedelics seems much higher, and so the story has to be more convincing?]
Episode 12: Higher States of Consciousness, Part 2
So this completes Vervaeke’s account (for now) of what’s going on with mystical experiences. They don’t do the thing we might want them to (give us access to propositional knowledge), but they give us some sort of non-propositional guidance through a way to vary our internals in a way that lets us experiment with things / untrap our priors.
This also explains some about why it would be ineffable: consider the difference between describing an idealized algorithm and describing a pernicious bug you found in your code. The first is simple and formal, with many of the details abstracted; the second is almost entirely about the details. Most of these experiences are more like exposing psychological bugs so that they can be reimplemented, in a way that’s not going to generalize between people (as everyone’s implementation of that bit of their psychology will likely be different).
But… I’m not convinced it’s an asymmetric weapon, yet. The thing where you randomly increase variation sometimes breaks you out of bad spots, but it sometimes puts you into bad spots. I think Vervaeke would respond: that’s what the whole practice and community built around it is for! Someone who goes on a trip supported by other people, who know how to cultivate wisdom and challenge foolishness, is much better off than an autodidact who tries it on their own, maybe missing a core preparatory step or foolishness-challenging skill. Also, maybe this is just ‘for extreme cases’; for example, you might want to give psychedelics to almost everyone with PTSD, but almost no one without PTSD.
[I’m not sure why I’m focusing on psychedelics here, since part of the point of meditation is to get to these states, and he seems pretty bullish on everyone doing meditation. I think it’s that the risk for psychedelics seems much higher, and so the story has to be more convincing?]