Self-Organizing Principles Reduction

As a special angle to algorithmic reductions, one can think of a broad subclass we can call “self-organizing principles reduction” where the emphasis is on general principles interacting with each other rather than a, say, step-by-step algorithmic process.

As discussed in a QRI essay about the boundary problem, many of the “algorithms” of the mind could be things like applying a repulsion uniformly from the surface of every point along a tangled cable. Doing this can automatically and gracefully disentangle the cable.

I think that 5-MeO-DMT could be thought of as doing something quite similar to that. It is instantiating a very simple principle all across the board that leads to the disentanglement of internal tension.

There is the notion of something touching a “deep part of your being”. Here I would posit that this could be understood in terms of the network of muscles and the way they contract and expand each other. A “deep part” is like a region in this network that is very central, and that it might be contracted in various ways in a long-term way. This ‘holding pattern’ could be encoding a prior, perhaps caused by trauma (but not necessarily).

As a simple example, one thing that 5-MeO-DMT could be doing here would be “losing orientation” by turning anisotropic patterns into isotropic patterns. This happens in stages, where the concentration of 5-MeO-DMT needs to be above a certain level to start introducing the “melting into every orientation at once” effect locally, and then as if a liquid that slowly saturates a sponge, you become suffused by it. As this happens you experience many different intermediate phases where the substance that has no orientation permeates different parts on you at different levels. Above a certain dose you experience significant phase transitions where all of the orientation at all levels are lost, and then you experience even higher levels of loss of orientation as the layers also cannot orient relative to each other.

A couple of observations: First, I think that microscopic isotropic patterns could be a way to bootstrap macroscopic homogeneous waves. This is because from the point of view of waves above a certain wavelength, the small irregularities are irrelevant. But an anisotropic pattern, even a crystal one, will have various fault lines and maybe aliasing for many wavelengths and orientations. In other words, total irregularity at the small scale could actually give rise to peak regularity at a different scale (where it just feels like a smooth medium).

Second, I think that there is a way in which complete irregularity at the microscopic level also can converge on perfect symmetry by a process of superposition. This is especially so if the material has wave-like behavior and of course if it is quantum in nature. The idea being that a fully scrambled state is actually perfectly homogenous from the point of view of an outside observer because it is in a superposition of all possible states. Akin to how Zero Ontology postulates that Reality is the superposition of all possibilities, this totally scrambled material creates the superposition of all possible waves at a large scale. Perhaps this is also what underlies the “true shape” of a “cessation”, too. Namely, that experience “blinks out” entirely when the medium that holds it loses all sense of direction or orientation due to the complete scrambling of its constituent parts.

So, through this lens, 5-MeO-DMT states could be fascinating alloys of various mixtures of completely scrambled qualia and completely aligned qualia along with everyday (residual) qualia. More so, a lot of the dynamics might involve finding ways to symmetrify the field by pivoting off of completely scrambled states and interpreting them as entirely smooth from a different point of view so they can resonate and smooth a different part of the field. In other words, the state allows you to “find perfect cleanliness in the perfectly dirty” and bootstrap into a perfectly clean state one micro-attention-movement at a time.

Phenomenologically, this is describing a process whereby by paying attention to “the smoothest parts of your experience” spread that smoothness to the whole of your experience, effectively smoothing, in a sense, the whole field. Let’s examine this in more depth:

Perhaps describable in terms of a self-organizing principles reduction, I call this a process with three steps: “detune, polarize, and equalize” (DPE). Here the 5-MeO-DMT is interpreted as having an effect where you (1) detune your attention (this feels like making something blurry by changing the focus of your eyes, but doing this internally), then with this more noisy but smoothed representation you (2) tune into the way in which two parts of your experience are opposites. For example, it could be “left is brighter and right is darker” or “top is hotter, bottom is colder” and so on. Then the state allows you to maximize this polarization, which smooths out the details even more. And then finally you take the polarized state and (3) sort of superimpose it with itself in a different phase (this move becomes intuitive in the state) and that allows you to experience the whole region equalize (it effectively synchronizes with its polar opposite, cancling out in turn). More so, this progression of detuning, polarizing, and equalizing, DPE, is fractal. It happens everywhere more or less at once. Or rather, as a gradient it is present everywhere, but the regions that have the most tension are the most likely to fall into this dynamic, which actually feels really good in its effects, even if along the way it can get quite tense (especially in the “polarize” phase). It is also not really a step-by-step process, even though that helps explain it. It’s more that the detuning happens opportunistically when a region of the field is “ready” to be detuned all at once. Similarly for the polarization and the equalization “steps”. They are more like general principles across the entire field that are being applied all at once and in a massively parallel way. It’s just that regions of the field may be undergoing specific large-scale changes along one of those lines at a given point in time (think of cellular automata of rock-paper-scissors). Many of the finer mystical states are achieved when you harmonize and simultaneously apply all three at once, so that they interact with something that is both stationary and dynamic at the same time.

There is also a simpler path that is accessible to those who can start the session already extremely relaxed (quite rare, given the baseline of tension in the general population, even among meditators and deep explorers). People who can deeply relax every muscle and every mental tension and meditate on e.g. the expansion of spaciousness, they can jump straight to a pure realm of bliss and liberation without having to go through any kind of polarization effects. If you ask me, this is ideal. But also it may not be realistic for most people. We can call this the process of “detune and equalize” (DE). I think this path leads to just more pure and longer-lasting moments of eternity (relative to DPE). This is because you are not oscillating between opposites any more. I think many Buddhists, especially of the Dzogchen variety, would prefer this approach if at all possible.

Psilocybin and ayahuasca, in this framework, could be conceived as instantiating a “detuned and polarize” process that lacks the powerful “equalize phase” of 5-MeO-DMT. Or perhaps even a sort of “detune, polarize, and diversify” (DPD) group of effects, which encourage more complex and sophisticated patterns to achieve internal harmony. Thus the peak valence states of these more conventional tryptamines tend to be rich and complex, whereas the peak valence states of 5-MeO-DMT are much more smooth and simple.

What is remarkable is that either of these processes seem capable of leading you “all the way” to what seems to be a largely defabricated state. The tricky thing with psilocybin and ayahuasca is that the state doesn’t automatically dissolve the patterns you find, unlike 5-MeO-DMT. So one needs to do a lot of the work oneself.

In either case, the general direction that these tools push us along, I might argue, is akin to when the self-organizing principle of “repulsion everywhere at the same time” on the surface of a cable leads to a very elegant, and importantly, complete unraveling. A process of DPE in the moment can feel like disentangling a complex web of associations between one’s fields of experience (e.g. the visual and the tactile domains), which culminates in a totally unraveled state we can enjoy for some time. And with practice, perhaps figure out how to access in everyday life without the need of a catalyst.

• Earlier discussion: Digital Sentience Requires Solving the Boundary Problem
• Image source: Repulsive Surfaces