In episode 32 of the quantum consciousness series, Justin Riddle interviews Andres Gomez-Emilsson, the director of research of the Qualia Research Institute. Andres is passionate about understanding qualia, which is the feeling and quality of subjective experience. In this interview, we discuss many of Andres’ theories: mathematical fictionalism, symmetry of valence theory, neural annealing as it pertains to psychedelic therapy, and antitolerance medications to reduce suffering. First up, we discuss the nature of qualia and whether or not there can be a universal mathematical description of subjective experience. Andres posits that the experience of having a thought should not be confused with the thought itself. Therefore, any attempt at mathematical description will be wrapped up within the experience of the person suggesting the mathematics. As he states, mathematics is as real as the Lord of the Rings, a great story that we can tell, but not to be confused with reality itself. Next up, we discuss his symmetry of valence theory which describes that the imagination of certain geometric patterns imbues a sense of well-being whereas other patterns are anxiogenic. The geometric patterns that lead to positive valence (positive emotional experiences) are those shapes recognized as sacred geometry. However, Andres cautions that because these “sacred” geometric shapes generate well-being, people have used this reproducible experience to peddle New Age metaphysics. We should be cautious of the ability to generate positive experience as it can be used to manipulate people into buying into particular belief systems. Third, we discuss recent findings that single dose psilocybin in a therapeutic context can produce a lasting reduction in symptoms of depression. Andres posits that this could be explained as a form of neural annealing. The mind “heats up” and breaks through discordant neural pathways and through neural plasticity during the psychedelic experience will allow for the formation of new neural pathways with higher resonant properties consistent with positive valence. This contributes to Andres’ overall ontological model of reality in which the universe is a unified field of experience that is pinched off into individuals. Here, he starts with an unbroken unity of all things that is topologically segmented into individuals. Finally, Andres is a devout hedonist with the long-term goal of reducing suffering. His group at the Qualia Research Institute is investigating medications that reduce adaptation to molecules over long-term use. Go check out Andres’ YouTube channel and the Qualia Research Institute website!

In episode 31 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle discusses the role of geometry in our understanding of the universe. The discussion begins looking at the manifestation of geometric forms in the world around us in the form of crystals. Crystals are a cornerstone of modern technology as they increase the controllability of the physical world around us through their structure. Many researchers studying quantum biology theorize that when highly ordered structures, often by the creation of a lattice, might enable subtle quantum properties to be magnified. Other researchers look to geometry in their pursuit of a mathematical theory of everything. If only we could understand all of the driving forces in the universe, then we could build more advanced technologies. Surely, a theory of everything must be quite complex. In this pursuit, some researchers postulate that multidimensional geometric forms are the solution. For example, Klee Irwin claims the so-called E8-lattice serves as a unification of all forces and that all things are a projection from this higher dimensional system into our lower 3-dimensional reality. From this perspective, every superposition is a decision between multiple projections that could be selected. Critically, with the same unifying E8-lattice behind the scenes, humans are able to communicate and understand each other by virtue of a shared universal form underlying each of our expressions. My experience of love is the same as your experience of love, because love is a complex geometric form in the E8-lattice. But this has to make you wonder, can love be a geometric shape? Third, I highlight some of the inspiring work from Andres Gomez-Emilsson mapping out the stages of a DMT trip from the standpoint of geometry. During a breakthrough experience, trippers report a direct firsthand experience of viewing hyperbolic geometric objects. Hyperbolic geometry appears to be continuously folding outward. Look up some visualizers as these shapes are inherently bizarre. Could this geometric form explain the bizarreness of these altered states of consciousness? Furthermore, the experience of hyperbolic geometry in firsthand experience suggests that there might be a shift in the mental-space from which we are viewing the object. If we posit that the mind is quantum computer, then this may correspond to a warping of the geometric structure of the Hilbert space of our wave-function mind (the Hilbert space is the multidimensional probability distribution of a quantum system). There are a lot of thought-provoking theories presented in this episode – all of which utilize the principles of geometry as a fundamental aspect of physical reality, mathematics, or our inner experience.

In episode 30 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle sits down with Stuart Hameroff to get an update on current events in the Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) Model. This interview took place on August 30th, 2022 in his home in Tucson, AZ. The interview covered four major topics. Our discussion of these topics is interleaved with my reaction, summary, and commentary on the topic of discussion. First, we discussed a recent submitted study that found coherent transmission of excitons between tubulin proteins in a microtubule. This study provides evidence for long range quantum coherence in microtubules, which is a requirement for the Orch-OR model to be grounded in microtubule function. Second, Stuart explains some unpublished pilot data that find superradiant photon emission in microtubules for multiple seconds. This finding has multiple implications. First off, this could be evidence of sustained quantum coherence in microtubule on the order of fractions of a second to multiple seconds. If true, then this implies that the slow cognitive processes of the human mind could be instantiated in slower quantum computations. In addition, this implies that coherent light emission could be a means by which multiple microtubules become entangled to form a network of quantum bits – in essence, a quantum computer. For the third topic, we discuss a recent review paper published by Stuart that explores the idea that the brain is organized in a biological hierarchy spanning multiple spatiotemporal scales. A collaborator of his, Anirban Bandyopadhyay, claims to have recorded coherent kilohertz and megahertz electrical activity from the scalp of humans in what he calls a dodecogram. This data is currently unpublished and I am personally skeptical as this would require coherent activity in this very fast frequency domain across a large spatial swath of cortex to be picked up from the scalp. At this point, I ask a series of questions to Stuart on the relationship between human cognition and microtubule function. The Orch-OR model claims that slow human cognition is a “beat” generated from much faster microtubule function. However, in my view, this beat explanation suggest that human cognition might be emergent, or epiphenomenal, which is not something that Stuart or myself are comfortable with. Finally, we discuss the recent controversy surrounding a study conducted to test the so-called “Diosi-Penrose objective reduction” model. In short another researcher proposed a similar theory to Penrose’s objective reduction model of wave function collapse. In this other theory, the collapse of the wave function was suggested to emit radiation. In this recent experimental study, they found no evidence of radiation emission upon collapse of the wave function. Therefore, the authors of this study concluded that the Diosi OR model was incorrect, but then drew the conclusion that therefore Orch-OR and Penrose OR are not supported by evidence. Stuart refutes this by explaining that Penrose OR does not propose the emission of radiation. I have included chapters in this video so that you can skip to the interview if you so desire. I hope you enjoy!

In episode 29 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle discusses the phenomenon of synchronicity and possible mechanisms through quantum mechanics that could give way to its rigorous scientific study. Synchronicity was coined by the psychologist Carl Jung and is defined as an apparently meaningful coincidence between your thought and some event in the world around you. Examples of synchronicity include simple moments of non-locality such as thinking about a friend and then they call you, learning a new word and then hearing it everywhere immediately afterwards, or dreaming about something and then it happens. These experiences are often brushed off as coincidental (and likely many are!), however, there are people who have experienced synchronicity to such a degree as to call into question whether these coincidences are statistically possible. Furthermore, there are more complex forms of synchronicity such as a famous example by Carl Jung wherein a patient has a breakthrough in her psychotherapy when a symbol from her dream finds its way into the room at the moment that she describes it. This experience was a critical moment in her psychotherapy and made a strong impact on Carl Jung as well.

If we accept the metaphysical framework that the human mind is a quantum computer, then it is at the very least theoretically possible that the operations of the mind could be meaningfully related non-locally to the external world via entanglement. Entanglement was referred to as “spooky action at a distance” when it was first postulated; and Albert Einstein resisted accepting that quantum entanglement was real because he feared that it opened the door to magical thinking and non-scientific discourse. However, in an effort to be radically empirical, we must look at all the evidence and, unfortunately for Einstein, we do not get to choose to live in a locally-determined physicalist universe. Roger Penrose spelled out the limitations of digital / first-order-logical explanations for reality and suggested that there must be non-computable forces in the universe that defy the physicalist dogma. Could it be that synchronicity is a driving force of change in the universe and that physical events are guided by Platonic forms and meaningful constructs? My own experience with synchronicity has led me to believe there must be additional forces at play than locally determined causality. I believe synchronicity can be a profound source of spirituality for the scientifically minded; however, we must protect ourselves against the risk of psychosis and stay grounded in the scientific method! Enjoy!

In episode 28 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle describes how quantum teleportation works and wonders whether a quantum computer mind could be teleported out of the body. The episode begins with a discussion of the bizarre, yet common, experience of leaving one’s body during a traumatic event to observe the unfolding of events from the outside. These near-death experiences are baffling to scientists, and often dismissed as an unusual chemical or electrical fluctuation in the brain. However, within the quantum computational framework there is a genuine way to teleport quantum information between physical systems. If we were to discover that the human mind is indeed a quantum computer within the brain, then it is at least possible, if not likely, that the mind could teleport outside of the brain. In this episode, the basic component for how to entangle quantum bits and how to teleport quantum information between quantum bits is described. Then, the biological plausibility of teleporting quantum information within the brain is explored. The episode wraps up with a discussion on the nature of quantum information and speculations on the possibility of future forms of computation that utilize the fractal organization of biological systems. Finally, the phenomenon of reincarnation and the possibility of life after the death of the body are pondered. Does the impossible only seem impossible because we have yet to create the technology to replicate the mysteries of nature?

In episode 27 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle discusses the proposal of a quantum soul. The soul is the part of you that survives your entire lifetime. In this episode, we discuss three properties of quantum mechanics that might provide a novel solution to this age-old mystery. First of all, we discuss the curious discovery of Bose-Einstein Condensation. This state of matter was observed in the laboratory when supercooling liquid helium down to two degrees above absolute zero. The liquid helium underwent a mysteries transformation where all of the individual atoms began to share a single wave function and move together coherently. In this carefully constructed scenario, we can witness quantum properties at the macroscopic scale. Bose-Einstein Condensation is relevant to theories of mind because it is the creation of a macroscopic unification of many parts – this might be what it is like to be a single person extended throughout a physical body. What if there was a network of Bose-Einstein Condensation that was quite literally YOU? Alternatively, your mind could be a conceptualized as a “conscious pilot,” a model proposed by Stuart Hameroff, where you move around in your brain shifting between different cognitive streams of information. But this begs the question, how could the conscious pilot survive for your entire lifetime? Even in quantum computer models of the mind, the wave function that is you undergoes a series of collapse events. These collapse events destroy the wave function and then a new wave function is created. What, if anything, could survive the repeated collapse of the wave function? We fall back to the null model wherein the continuity of your life is created through the information stored in the digital aspects of your brain. Each moment is a new experience and you are forever stuck in the present moment. Perhaps there is no soul and this moment is the first and last moment of your life? The continuity of your experience is created through digital storage mechanisms, but nothing beyond this digital information survives past a given moment of experience. The episode wraps up comparing these different quantum theories of the soul. Do you think you have a soul? Which theory best explains the continuity of our lives?

In episode 26 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle discusses Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: the idea that every quantum bit comprises a bit of information and a bit of entropy such that knowledge of one dimension reduced knowledge of the other. We can think of each qubit has having two perpendicular axes: zero/one and plus/minus. The state of the qubit represents a point moving around on these axes. When you measure a qubit in the zero/one dimension, then it ends up getting reduced to a zero or one. From that state, the plus/minus dimension is now equal probability. By knowing about one dimension, we induce entropy in the other. You can only make one measurement at a time, so it is impossible to know whether the system is zero/one and plus/minus at the same time. In practice, physical systems, like an atom, will exhibit uncertainty between their position and momentum. This is more than just our knowledge of the system. When you know the momentum, the position is maximally smeared out across all possible options. This changes what the future of the system will look like. Biology might be leveraging measurement to change the future of physical systems like ions. In an ion channel, the center of the ion channel is so small that the ion gets spatially measured when passing through the channel. This has a dramatic effect on the momentum of the ion which could facilitate the transport of the ion to other receptor proteins. In addition, the uncertainty principle might be relevant to understanding human cognition, in that our knowledge of certain properties might coexist within an uncertainty relationship like that of position and momentum. By learning about one property, we reduce our knowledge of the other property. This is quite the divergence from classical models of human cognition. Finally, a speculation on how the uncertainty principle might be reflective of some deeper uncertainty in ascertaining existential truth. Carl Jung suggested that we can only ever reach a half truth, and that the core of reality is brimming with paradoxes. The more you get closer to some truth, the further you are from its complimentary opposite, which is also true. This form of cosmic censorship through paradox could be the ultimate expression of the uncertainty principle. Join me on this exciting delve into the mysteries of human consciousness through the lens of quantum mechanics.

In episode 25 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle discusses quantum error correction, a protocol by which noise from the environment is actively counteracted in order to create quantum computations that are robust against the destructive chaos of the environment. Quantum computers are on the near horizon with companies like Google and IBM actively working to improve the technology. These computers will revolutionize information technology by providing a speed-up to the run time of algorithms at a scale that our minds struggle to comprehend. The enormity of an exponentially increasing space truly boggles the mind. For example, two shuffled decks of cards have a 1 in 10^67th chance of ending up in the same configuration. This is vastly greater than the number of grains of sand on the beach and atoms on and within the planet. While quantum computers promise to search these massive spaces in feasible time frames, any perturbation from the environment renders these computations unusable. Quantum error correction is required to salvage the utility of quantum computers. In digital error correction, we can provide redundant information about a bit of information such that chaotic forces can be reversed if that bit flips from a zero to a one or vice versa. Quantum error correction is similar but with the addition of a phase flip and bit+phase flip. Quantum error correction is currently being developed and quantum computers will become practical and fault tolerant in the near future, we just need to divide the advertised qubits in modern computers by 5 or 9. Finally, could biology being using a form of quantum error correction to make quantum computation in the brain more feasible? Looking at the Penrose-Hameroff microtubule model as an example, microtubules could each be encoding a single register of one fault tolerant qubit in their multiple topologies, or the topological arrangement of tubulin could serve as a fault tolerant qubit in itself. Furthermore, there may be protein systems designed to interface with microtubules that apply corrective quantum gates to the system in order to actively counteract destructive environmental forces. While speculative at this point, quantum error correction in biology could be the defining feature for how usable quantum computations are sustained for extended time frames giving rise to consciousness itself.

In episode 24 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle discusses why neuroscience is in need of a quantum revolution. This revolution is underway in the field of information technology and low-level biology. Quantum computers are actively being developed and are on the precipice of overcoming the computational power of digital computers. Meanwhile, biology is increasingly acknowledging the role that quantum mechanics plays in various processes, including photosynthesis and magnetic-field perception in birds. But what about neuroscience? Could quantum mechanics contribute to neural function and directly to our conscious experience? There are quite a few reasons why quantum computers align with the human experience: (1) Quantum computer design encourages the creation of a single large system, similar to the creation of single self within a body. (2) The collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics may provide room for freewill. (3) Non-local influences in quantum mechanics provide novel ways to describe meaning beyond arbitrary associations in a physical world.

While quantum mechanics provides novel solutions to solving the mysteries of consciousness, neuroscience reveals that the strongest correlate to human cognition is low-frequency electrical fluctuations in the brain. After a brief survey of recent research in the neural oscillatory basis of cognition, the potential alignment between neural oscillations and principles of quantum mechanics are discussed. While this connection is currently speculative, computational models of cognition are pointing towards human rationality exhibiting principles of quantum mechanics. There could be a very near future where descriptions of human psychology are quantum mechanical in nature and the parameters of these models relate to neural oscillations in the brain. While the details for how a quantum computer could be implemented in the brain is of critical need, cognitive neuroscience research can move forward utilizing these ideas in the meantime.

In episode 23 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle discusses quantum interrogation, the observation that in certain scenarios a quantum system can access the result of a measurement without actually making that measurement. This counterfactual measurement is best exemplified in the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb test, in which a bomb is determined to be real or a dud by sending a superposition at the bomb that shifts the probability distribution (or wave function) of a quantum system. The principle of counterfactual measurement applies to quantum computation: could you get the results of a quantum computation without actually running it? And to quantum cryptography: could you get someone’s password without actually changing the information stream? Finally, we wrap up the episode discussing the implications of counterfactual measurement to the human experience. If we accept the premise that each person is themselves a quantum computer, then could you simulate a possible future behavior and get the results of that simulation without actually performing the behavior? This episode definitely goes off the deep end, so hang in there until the end of the episode!