Ricky Williamson

Nietzsche vs The Wellness Industry iai.tv/articles/nietz…

My interview with @romanyam on 'How to hack your way out of the reality simulation'... Out now: iai.tv/video/how-to-h…

Physics cannot escape its roots in phenomenology iai.tv/articles/consc…

When explaining consciousness using only ‘cartoon neurons’, you’re stuck with explaining only controlled hallucinations. It’s popularizing ignorance. What’s worse is Anil’s ‘biological naturalism’ when he’s apparently clueless about brain biology. He’s suppressed and ignored Orch OR, the only ‘biologically natural’ theory of consciousness, and one with more explanatory power, biological specificity and experimental validation than all the cartoon neuron theories combined. Anil, please criticize Orch OR. Why isn’t it the exact ‘biological naturalism’ you’ve been calling for? academic.oup.com/nc/article/202…

I agree with Anil Seth that our experience of reality is a controlled hallucination. I agree with Evan Thompson that the brain is part of the hallucination. The brain is our interface representation of how the interface is engineered. Reverse-engineer it. iai.tv/articles/reali…

Evan Thompson arguing against figures like @anilkseth and @donalddhoffman for the @IAI_TV today: Reality is not a controlled hallucination iai.tv/articles/reali…

Zen and the Art of Space Exploration @IAI_TV iai.tv/articles/zen-a…

This great article came close second in an essay competition run by the Panpsychism and Panentheism project I co-ran with Andrei Buckareff, funded by @templeton_fdn. CHECK IT OUT! iai.tv/articles/consc…

Relationships > Things iai.tv/articles/the-q…

Friedrich Nietzsche is often seen as the prophet of anarchic relativism. His notorious claim that "there are no facts, only interpretations" appears to license a world of competing narratives & alternative facts. But did Nietzsche think that anything goes? iai.tv/articles/nietz…

We have trillions of specific conscious experiences. None has been explained by physicalist or functionalist theories of consciousness. I discuss consciousness, the trace logic, and constructing spacetime physics from consciousness, with Michael Phillip. youtube.com/watch?v=J--0hk…

Many philosophers argue that we are prisoners of our own subjectivity, forever cut off from reality. | bit.ly/3MrDNfB But Danielle Macbeth challenges this sceptical picture, arguing that the world is already rich with meaning and that our rational minds can genuinely grasp it.

Deja vu is weird. Excellent article by @samwoolfe on Bergson, time, and why we sometimes remember the present iai.tv/articles/deja-…

@alieninsect Has this been released?

World’s first long form DMT interview conducted entirely inside a hyperbaric chamber at 120 kPa…

@badcharts1 What about the shale boom?

Either yo think silver crashes before years end below oil... or oil rockets upwards to overshoot silver.

MAKE WHAT YOU WANT OF THIS. But objectively, crude oil has HISTORICALLY been priced HIGHER than silver. Both have also tracked purchasing power (inversely). Not sure why folks are making this more complicated than it should be...

A black hole is dragging spacetime around iai.tv/articles/new-b…

In the future, no one works. Everyone invests their UBI, for a small share of what a few people own. The success of your investments decides 99.9% of peoples’ wealth.

If consciousness is a “controlled hallucination”, then your theory that consciousness is a controlled hallucination, is part of your controlled hallucination, and therefore not true.

@bratton This is better: psychedelicpress.substack.com/p/the-hard-pro…

I have never been more convinced that "consciousness" (whatever that actually is) does not require a living biological substrate than I am after reading Anil Seth's essay arguing that Consciousness (big C) requires a living biological substate to qualify. Every single idea is so clumsily argued, so misrepresents the points it is both trying make and to refute, that the reader is left with the conclusion that whatever this guy is saying is wrong is probably right. Just a few choice samples among dozens possible... He literally suggests that predictive processing in animal brains somehow demonstrates that LLM (which he conflates with AI in general) cannot possibly have recursive cognition. Think about how Transformers work for five seconds and you see why this is.. ahem, unconvincing. He conflates Computation and "computers" in a such way that he *must* know is facile, but can't help himself because he knows the average reader doesn't think that hard about it. Simply put, laptops compute but they are not Computation, like a light bulb is electrical but is not Electricity. He conflates shallow anthropomorphism and functional computationalism and then lands lines like "“Every candidate for consciousness that most people currently agree on as actually being conscious is also alive.” as if that is not the biggest anthropomorphic projection of all. TLDR, one "God of the Gaps" defense of biological determinism after another, self-contradictory and handwavy non-definitions of "Life" and "Consciousness" that nevertheless are supposed be self-evident slam dunks, tautological circles of 'there are conscious things that are alive and so only alive things are conscious', and around and around. One just cannot even with this. noemamag.com/the-mythology-…

The real problem of AI consciousness is that you can’t know either way. I suggested a couple of ideas for an AI consciousness test though. @NoemaMag @anilkseth @berggruenInst @psypre psychedelicpress.substack.com/p/the-hard-pro…