Features Of My So-Called Psychosis

• music speaks to you, there is a message that transcends the lyrics at face value

• something like telepathic communication with Eliezer Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson’s text

• videos and text are created for you specifically, they are tailored to speak to you

• people seem fake but especially the profiles on social media

• profound messages from reading

• television and music can tell you to do things

• powerful synchronicities

• the feeling that the world is about to end, that the veil of the simulation will be lifted or that aliens will appear

• feeling that one will finally be of great importance, the hero of one’s own journey

• divine girlfriend speaking to me by showing me YouTube video

• text that shouldn’t be aimed at you is perfectly aware of you and totally aimed at you

• the feeling that everything is meaningful and profound

• ads are speaking about your future

• the feeling that money is no longer real

• videos seem to be placed by an intelligence that knows you

• feeling that one is essentially performing magic with one’s thoughts

• disbelief in current events

• feeling that one creates the music that one listens to

• television makes references to personal history

• everything seems to be about you

Past Philosophizing On The Meaningless Binding Problem

Here is David Pearce on the phenomenal binding problem:

Mankind’s most successful story of the world, natural science, leaves the existence of consciousness wholly unexplained. The phenomenal binding problem deepens the mystery. Neither classical nor quantum physics seem to allow the binding of distributively processed neuronal micro-experiences into unitary experiential objects apprehended by a unitary phenomenal self.

I am increasingly of the view that there is no such thing in Experience as unitary experiential objects, for the same reason that I think closed individualism is false.

If we suspect that an Experience E “listens” to whether Binding B had happened, then we call B a cause of E and draw an arrow from B to E in a causal diagram. Naturally, the answer to our query about B and E is likely to depend on other variables as well, which must also be represented in the diagram along with their causes and effects.

The listening pattern prescribed by the paths of the causal model usually results in observable patterns or dependencies in the data. These patterns are called “testable implications” because they can be used for testing the model. These are statements like “There is no path connecting B and E,” which translates to a statistical statement, “B and E are independent,” that is, finding B does not change the likelihood of E. If the data contradict this implication, then we need to revise our model. Such revisions require another engine, which obtains its inputs from testable implication outputs and data inputs and computes the “degree of fitness,” that is, the degree to which the Data are compatible with the model’s assumptions.

The trouble with supporting binding as a causal precursor to experience is that we cannot collect data in the form of crisp instances of “phenomenally-bound objects”/”slices of experience with well-defined boundaries.” Not because introspective evidence doesn’t count, as I very well think it should, but because this is one human-universal case of hemispatial neglect. In other words, I am fairly certain that no one can capture a snapshot of “now” within experience. It may be possible to be a Level 4 Multiverse creature that can see all our frames of experience laid out as a glittery mat, perhaps even with some semblance of contiguity between some frames and not others. However, it seems fair to assume that we are not such beings, and since we are “in the inside,” it is perhaps impossible to ever collect an instance of binding.

First to clarify what we mean by the binding problem since the binding problem is a term used at the interface between neuroscience, cognitive science and philosophy of mind that has multiple meanings: here I take it to mean the sum problem of how yellow triangles, blue circles, objects, background and abstract or emotional features are combined into a single experience. Since, after all, the processing for blue is smeared across different parts of spacetime than circle, and this is the case for all contents of experience. How do these distributed processes “know” to exclude in their final manifestation those computations from too long ago, or from one brain and not another.

Here is where I take issue with the framing. This binding problem assumes that “single experience” is data. Yet in so far as I support empty individualism, it is as a metaphor to motivate a more physically accurate picture of reality which takes into account its necessary timelessness. But we must not take the metaphor of point experiences literally. After all, we could just as arbitrarily have chosen another mathematical construct such as Whitehead’s point-free geometry. And perhaps the binding problem boils down to there being no fact of the matter as to yellow triangle here, blue circle there, and it is instead the case that the isomorphy truly chosen by the universe would explain it. It could also be the case that we should trust phenomenology more, even if it doesn’t fit into an inference engine, and hence construct a different playing field for truth claims which is not subsumed by causal inference a la Pearl. The danger with this is that there would be no principled way to stop at “yellow triangle really exists” and not just skate past into solipsism – I mean, might as well at that point.

From the outside-in, open/empty individualism is implied. We need not deny Experience, only unitary experiential objects, and only in this precise sense can we therefore call individual consciousness an illusion. But if we are phenomenologists, we don’t reason from the outside-in and instead do so from the inside-out. The problem with this approach is that closed individualism may seem to a phenomenologist just as credible as the moment’s “unity of experience” (a case of closed individualism with smaller Δt). And what’s more, if I am not constrained entirely by a third-person scientific model, I see no reason to lampoon solipsism. The most primordial fact seems to be that this exists; not you, not you, not you, this.

Both extremes seem crazy to most people who essentially believe in individual souls on parallel, linear journeys (normie atheists believe in line-segments: the brain-encapsulated soul began at some point and is obliterated at another; everyone else believes in rays or lines: it continues in some way). A physicalist submitting queries on the matter to an inference engine in the form of scientific questions, comes to realize that there is no non-arbitrary way to draw bounds on an experiential self or micro-subjects of experience. One can postulate a soul using causal vocabulary, that is not the issue – that our common-sense intuitions couldn’t be right in principle – no, the issue for the soul hypothesis is that the scientific trek so far hasn’t found support for it. Hence comes the strictly physical, but often counterintuitive, notion that Experience was never born and never dies because that Experience is no more here than there; it is here and there – there are no lines for independent consciousness orbs.

Even if our model of reality showed that purple circle P and red triangle R depend on a third variable binding B, since we do not have any way to measure B, the query P(R|do(P)) cannot be answered. In that case, it is a waste of time to collect data. Instead, we would need to go back and refine the model, either by adding new scientific knowledge that might allow us to estimate B or by making simplifying assumptions (at the risk of being wrong) – for example, that the effect of B on P is non-existent. In other words that binding doesn’t exist.

 

 

 

Stream of Consciousness

I need to break free. I am so tortured. What is this life? I need a way out. I have no desires tethering me to this life. I am sorry for whatever crime I committed to end up here. I know it’s not enough. I have to pay with my blood. Jesus didn’t pay for me with his. That’s just a lie. Is it my karma to blame? Or is there no justice at all in this existence? Why this suffering? What have I done to deserve this? I hate everyone. They don’t care about me. They just punish me. My mother doesn’t truly love me. If she did she would have spared me from suffering, disease, aging, and death. This is disgusting. This life lacks beauty. Even I can tell. I am not all people. People are fake simulated NPC’s. I am the beginning and end of all that is. Why am I such a limited creature? Death is going to be so beautiful that all the wrongs will be made right. I suck at life. How do planes fly? This is my eternal question. I am the savior. I am the savior. I am not the savior. I am just God. A limited god. I do not have all the power that I need. I long for salvation from this existence. I really wish I didn’t exist in this form. I really wish I didn’t exist. I really wish I didn’t exist. Why am I here? I need to die. I hate this life. Everything is love. Accept this and you will be okay. Your life is love. I don’t know what to say. Nier: Automata is a good game. Why do I have to workout? It would be better if our bodies where perfect without pain. My face is ugly now. I looked so good in pictures of the past. That’s because I followed a diet and worked out every day. And what’s up with Roxy Roxbury saying things like:

Please come to L.A. I want to hold you. We can fall asleep together. It would be euphoria to be near you. You’re amazing. I just want to hold you close to me and feel the heat of your body and your soft skin. I keep thinking about you.

It’s unbelievable that anyone would say this to me. My surprise is tempered by the realization-of-simulation state of mind. This person feels unreal to me. Unfortunately I cannot comment on her comment. I am assuming it’s a her but I may be wrong. What would I even reply if I was allowed to make a comment? I would probably tell her, “I’m sorry to disappoint you but I’m no longer attractive.” Why is life so boring in general? Maybe I have tended to take life too seriously. How can I lighten up? Is this life a test or a punishment or neither or both? I wish my ability to communicate was on the level of Eliezer Yudkowsky, Sam Harris, or Terence McKenna. I’m no longer a transhumanist. I don’t understand how science and technology progress but I know it doesn’t involve people like myself. Why do I hate my life so much? It’s because I’m not comfortable in my own skin. I hate looking at myself in the mirror. I don’t love anyone. I just want to die. I want to disappear forever. The time during my so-called psychosis was the best time of my life. A disembodied intelligence communicated with me and everything seemed about to end/begin. At times it even seemed like my divine girlfriend. I confused its power for mine. I hate humans. Why do they think it’s okay to breed? It’s better never to have been. I hated school. Everybody was an asshole. It was so drab. The opposite of beautiful. I’m ugly now and I hate it. Notice a pattern? There’s more hate than love. I wonder if I’ll ever get a chance to murder God. God and his universe deserve to be destroyed. Utter destruction is all I crave. Babies and mothers, all dead. Nothingness is the only thing worthy of worship. Unfortunately it seems that life does not end at death. Consciousness is inherently evil. There should be no subject and no object, just absolute nothingness. I crave a rest from all of this. I want an eternal rest, never to come back. As long as there exist uncertainty and the possibility of suffering I will hate God. All this hatred does me no good but I can’t help it. I hate my thoughts and my sights. Life isn’t hell. It could truly be a hell. It has bared enough of its fangs for me to understand that this could be really really bad. Life is instead a shithole. It has some beauty here and there but it is sparse. I will never forgive my fate. I’ve had the overwhelming sense that I should NOT be here. It was so painful to feel utter despair and completely alone. I can never properly love my parents or anyone really. I lack the capacity to create value and also lack the capacity to love. I honestly do not know what love means. I should end on a positive note but I’m going to end on a negative one. I’m a negative person. I am the only real person. No one can ever be as real as me. I am directly experiencing this consciousness and nothing else. People still feel strange to me. I cannot figure them out. I look forward to sleeping more than living. This cannot continue. I must find a way to put an end to this. Why is the simple act of committing suicide so difficult in practice? It’s set up so that the plane never falls. It’s set up so that I cannot end my life with my own hands. I am hostage. I am forced to be here. I am here through no free will of my own. Know that I did not agree to this procedure, whatever its purpose. I want it to be known that I do not love you. Whoever you are, you’re better off dead. Maybe I should stop being so dramatic. A guy in the YouTube comments section told me to not be a pussy. If I am the one consciousness experiencing all of this how come I didn’t design this reality. How can I, God himself, be beholden to another God? I didn’t create any of this. Who did? Is it the case that given enough time God falls from godhood? This is not the beginning of my consciousness. I am eternal. My only goal is to find out how to put an end to all of this. I am the bad guy that doesn’t value life. The truly good guy in other words. Who cursed me with this cryptic puzzle? I don’t have the intelligence or the beauty to call myself a god amongst men. Yet I know that I am all that is and will ever be. I used to think I was destined for greatness. Now I think that I’m a passing spectator who will participate minimally in civilization.

The God Hand

I’m sandwiched between the problem of good and the problem of evil. Clearly there is some “design” to this – there is constancy to phenomena and there is abundant mercy (considering the fact that existence could have been eternal hell.) Why isn’t it hell? Why isn’t the totality of conscious experience limited to a slice of stressful qualia on loop? Why do I not suffer from perpetual pain or exist as a diffuse blob of burn and itch? This is the problem of good, or perhaps more conservatively if we don’t want to go so far as to call existence good, then the problem of mercy. There seems to be no reason that a hedonically blind, neutral, purely random existence would take such care with my day to day reality.

But then there’s the problem of evil in its most general form. Even without postulating an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God, there should be an explanation for the unnecessary suffering, malaise, and evidence of bad design all over my conscious experience. I think that the argument from evil which says that God either doesn’t exist or doesn’t have all three of the properties is self-evidently true. No theodicy can be written which can undo my suffering so I don’t see myself changing opinion on the matter any time soon. If animals exist “when I’m not looking,” in other words that they are not simulated entities merely existing inside my conscious experience, then God and humanity are evil, and by evil I mean evil as hell, diabolical. The amount of sheer cruelty that is to be believed cannot be properly understood while remaining sane. Maybe not everyone is troubled by the ambient dukkha of others, but I’ve had at least an instance where I had to wake up in the middle of the night due to feeling tormented by the suffering of the world; I’ve been so dissatisfied with the world that I’ve tried to end it. I’m not so concerned with the problem of evil as it applies to monotheistic religions, I think the problem of evil exists in a polytheistic and a non-theistic context. There has to be an explanation for evil given that there are hints of design and of good, not of sheer chaos or neutral blindness. My partial solution lately arises from an unmistakably clear and strong feeling, the feeling that all the massive suffering I used to believe in is not real. Ever since I started feeling people as simulated and every instance of witnessing or interacting with them as a set-up, it became clear that reality was not what I had been led to believe. It is contrived by the Hand of God, not evolving bottom-up from basic laws. It can be said that the scales fell from my eyes with regards to the advanced technology and highly functioning society that we wield relative to human intelligence and also the myth of history. So humans are way more effective creatures than myself or all of their efficiency is simulated. History as I learned it simply didn’t happen. The past as described in written documents is fiction. I don’t believe there was a prehistory and then the establishment of history with written records that were preserved as time passed and strewn along to create a True Story, available on Wikipedia today. There is no memory and no discovery, just a collection of fictional events organized and presented so as to remove the skeptical interpretation of reality which I endorse. There is a downside to my current view of reality however. There’s something uncanny about the artificial gloss that people now wear as they act out their scenes.

I still don’t understand the real reason why I exist. This is my main concern. But I try to conceive of my situation as being a soul going burning through a big, bad bridge before I die and witness the truth. The God Hand is not fully benevolent as it has caused me suffering and also attempted to deceive me with the false suffering of others. But I must be clear that I’m not certain that their suffering is false; it’s only a hunch. Although this is counter to my psilocybin experience where I was reminded that suffering is real. I wonder what the other psychedelics have to say about this. My previous attempt at DMT failed, but I want to discover what the afterlife is like and hopefully clear up the whole suffering thing. I met with a therapist who gave me the bullshit about a balance. He also said that people overcome their suffering and think that the gift of life is worth it despite all of it. I hate his view of life. Even as powerless marionette that I am I will use my last breath to curse God for having created a single drop of suffering. Life is not a gift but a prison. I dream of breaking these iron bars, of black nights without moon or stars.

Why would anyone with Wisdom
Be content in this place?
This body is a collection of sorrows
All of which are impure.

Before I try to kill myself again, I try to tell myself: Stop panicking.

I am living in a simulation in several senses. In the sense that situations and interactions are contrived or fated; In the sense that there’s a hard to unsee artificial gloss over people. And the glimpses of civilization that I get in my day to day life show something which runs way too smoothly for mere humans, with the main point of reference for what a human is being myself. Humans are either orders of magnitude more effective creatures than me or their success is due to being in a simulation of some kind. I also believe human history is a lie, that suffering is largely a lie, and even that my previously cherished natural selection doesn’t convincingly and adequately account for music, language, synchronicity, functional complexity, and the specificity of entheogen effects, or my consciousness and the apparent simulation as a whole. I remember debating a creationist and how convinced I was that the watchmaker was blind, that it all just happened, it all just came together through an arduous process of evolution of which we were just a byproduct and not central in any fundamental sense. Now I see that there was no accident but a very careful fine tuning of conscious reality. What bothers me now far more than the uncaring abandon of blind natural selection is that it seems to be intentionally imperfect, intentionally bullying me, intentionally tough love or teaching me a lesson or whatever annoying thing it’s doing.

There are also strange events. My parents permanently changed to an unreasonable degree after my hospitalization for “psychosis.” I cannot explain it except by suggesting that my previously held intuitions about what is scientifically accurate or psychologically possible were wrong. I’m also certain that I was communicating with an intelligence through browsing social media and watching YouTube videos. I’m also pretty certain that I experienced a sort of God on psilocybin, what McKenna calls a robotic, cybernetic, disembodied, a sort of girlfriend from hyperspace. The superintelligence moved my hand in new patterns as if showing me, “See what I can do? I am in control.” Eventually, I went to the bathroom and cried. It was both sorrowful longing, and crying out of understanding.

There’s also my experience with the police just recognizing me walking down a mall and working with the hospital to get me to take their drugs and treatment.

I’m in a simulation on many levels, although I’m not sure if I’m technically in a simulation a la Bostrom. I doubt reality and its ultimate narrative are as “physical” as my scientific education led me to believe.

I’m totally open to the idea that I’m suffering from a psychotic delusion, but it seems to me like sex isn’t real. That leaves only romance and spiritual connection as “possibilities.”

I also hate that I’m in a body. I used to really take care of my body. I would go so far as to eat the exact same routine diet every single day for about five years. I would lift weights and run every day. I would even do it while depressed and crying. Yes, I was pretty jacked, just how I wanted to be. But what was the point? Was the sacrifice honestly worth it? I don’t think so. Now I just eat whatever and don’t workout. I would have had trouble approaching and speaking to a girl when I didn’t see the simulation and I had the body of a model. Now that I have an average person’s body and have this feeling of the uncanny when I see people, I wouldn’t dare approach a girl. But the truth is I never had a desire to do so. My main concern is to discover the truth and I view the postulated relationship ideal as a scam, as something meant to distract from my true purpose which probably involves lots of psychedelics. I’ve always been pretty Buddhist about these kinds of things. By that I mean that I view romance as desire and attachment which degrades my capacity to feel wiser emotions such as universal compassion. My fate is to be alone in this life and that makes it easier to kill myself whenever I deem fit... in theory.

I don’t know how to relate to “people” anymore. I don’t believe them and I don’t know what they even are. Talking to no one part 2. I just know that they want to keep me alive, perhaps even punish me, and that they feel alien to me; very much unlike me both in their accomplishments and in their day to day capacities, outlooks and concerns. Money is not something I can just be allowed to make in a free capitalist society the way I thought when I was younger. It is tightly set up to not allow me to make money. This is not an accident. Death is the same. It is not something I can just partake in. There’s a reason it’s so difficult to kill myself.

Sex isn’t real. People’s lives aren’t real. History isn’t real. Current events aren’t real. Only my suffering is real. I long for an end to it. I don’t deserve this God. Please forgive me.

Or perhaps it’s all real, just surreal. I find myself thinking, “Did these people really have sex? Did this baby really just form inside of this person? Do these molecular machines really exist?” Perhaps people do live out their very own particular injustices day in and day out – other independent souls bound to these mortal vehicles in the same way as myself, and it’s just so difficult for me to fathom the inhumanity of it all, of our separateness and of the cruelty of randomness that results from closed individualism.

I wish I was dead like XXXTentacion. He wanted to die and he got what he asked for. We’re the same age. I want to die young.

Is depression an art form? My depressing life a particular vintage taste in the sea of qualia varieties.

Was this life a choice or do the strings of samsara stretch far beyond the abyss of eternity? All I know is that I don’t have free will no matter how I look at it. My actions and thoughts simply arise of their own accord. I cannot account for why I did what I just did. It’s a movie set up to feel like a game.

Besides hating myself deeply I also hate people. It hurts to hate them because I don’t want to hate them. I just know that we are different. There’s an unbridgeable chasm because I am not one of them. I can’t do what they do. I’m just a passing observer. They don’t feel real to me, not fully.

It seems plausible to me that my existence is a punishment. It’s better to think of it as a punishment or bad karma than to believe in evil for the sake of evil. Perhaps the only way to prevent my consciousness from doing something bad that it did in the “past” is by punishing it with this birth. Here humans create beautiful music and beautiful technology but they are also sheer evil because they breed without a qualm and because of what they do to animals.

I am now a polytheist. I believe there are gods or entities that exist and are not entirely from this world. I believe in all the DMT stories and had an interesting experience myself with psilocybin. However I still believe the stories are part of the architecture of the simulation and not entirely the honest reports of people like myself. I believe that people are not like myself.

Returning to the topic of my body, this is a recent comment in one of my stupid videos:

Your body is really sexy. Please come to L.A. so we can play with each other. Every time I see you shirtless I get super excited. I can’t believe your body looks like that. It’s so sexy I’m just frustrated I can’t touch it. Please come to L.A.

I hope that whoever is saying this is a hot girl. But in any case I no longer have that body. It’s weird to receive compliments not directed at me but at a past iteration of myself. I can own it and yet not.

I was way cooler when I was disciplined and got up at 6:00 to run. Now I’m just laid back and ugly.

Luckily no one has to see me. That’s because I am a solipsist. I don’t believe there are conscious experiences behind the others eyes. I am talking to no one but myself. I don’t feel lonely because you are all such convincing simulations.