Mu

Lucas Perry

Seeking to uncover all that is true, good, and beautiful of our fundamental nature and realize its expression in the world of form.

  1. Federico Faggin on Idealism, Quantum Mechanics, Free Will, and Identity

    07/21/2023

    Federico Faggin on Idealism, Quantum Mechanics, Free Will, and Identity

    Federico Faggin is an engineer and physicist who invented the world's first commercial micro processor, the Intel 4004. He is also the founder of the Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation which is dedicated to the scientific study of consciousness. Faggin Foundation: http://www.fagginfoundation.org Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry Video episode: https://youtu.be/7HgXwbIMRsc Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:54 Federico’s awakening experience 12:36 Consciousness, free will, and identity  18:09 Truth and freedom from suffering 21:55 “The one” that seeks to know itself 26:22 How “the one” becomes the many 28:55 “The one” and classic/quantum physics 41:51 Fundamental entities with free will, identity, and consciousness  44:15 Consciousness needs classical memory to store experience 46:06 Was the Big Bang a free will choice 56:06 The reality of the irreducible  1:00:39 Semantic space  1:04:41 Methods of inquiring into symbolic and semantic space 1:11:17 Will everything eventually converge?  1:14:58 Taking semantic reality seriously  1:21:13 Near death experiences  1:23:33 Taking experience seriously  1:29:28 Quantum information as a representation of inner experience 1:33:03 What do we do given this understanding?  1:35:37 We are not machines 1:42:15 Negating the reality of the soul 1:46:08 Meaninglessness and dynamic truth  1:51:29 Goodbyes

    1h 54m
  2. Bruce Tift on Freedom, Open Mind, Psychotherapy, Buddhism, and Neurosis

    02/15/2023

    Bruce Tift on Freedom, Open Mind, Psychotherapy, Buddhism, and Neurosis

    Bruce Tift is a licensed Psychotherapist and the author of Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation. He is a long-time practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism and was a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Bruce's website: https://www.brucetift.com/  Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry Video episode: https://youtu.be/cESdYTKz0dM Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry Timestamps:  0:00 Intro 3:09 What is freedom?  4:39 What is conscious participation in open awareness? 6:47 Is this the fruitional view?  9:09 The western therapeutic perspective of healing core wounds 11:18 How do the fruitonal view and the developmental view relate?  14:31 Commiting to experience sense of problem without trying to resolve it 19:12 The path of Vajrayana Buddhism 29:42 Belief is a substitute for groundlessness  34:21 I give myself permission to never experience what I most want in life 38:13 What is non-divided reality? 43:29 Freedom is not synonymous with positive feelings 47:47 Neurosis is always a substitute for experiential intensity  51:35 Falling through the air with no parachute 52:25 Challenging our identification with hope 55:17 Bruce’s gradual shift towards freedom 58:00 Being profoundly limited 1:03:03 Asking if what you most want is available right now 1:04:44 One taste  1:05:54 Impermanence and dependent origination 1:10:27 Enlightenment  1:13:24 Trying to experience no-self can be motivated by fundamental aggression to experience 1:15:04 Maintaining a center through problem maintaining 1:18:53 The function of neurosis 1:26:00 What’s fundamentally disturbing about our experience?  1:33:05 How does groundlessness fit into freedom and nirvana?  1:34:33 Do we know anything?  1:39:05 What does it mean to be “Already Free?”  1:43:24 Neurosis is a clever way to pretend to ourselves we’re addressing our life while guaranteeing nothing happens  1:47:08 What’s always available? 1:48:08 Final words from Bruce 1:50:30 Outro

    1h 51m
  3. Andres Gomez Emilsson on Digital Sentience, the Binding Problem, and Fields of Consciousness

    01/12/2023

    Andres Gomez Emilsson on Digital Sentience, the Binding Problem, and Fields of Consciousness

    Andres Gomez Emilsson is the director of research at the Qualia Research Institute where he works to build a science of consciousness to improve the lives of sentient beings. His work at QRI ranges from psychedelic theory, to neurotechnology development, and mapping the computational properties of consciousness.  Qualia Research Institute: https://qri.org/ Andres' Twitter: https://twitter.com/algekalipso Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry Video episode: https://youtu.be/xJzBjBo24g8 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:13Are current AI systems conscious?  4:10 Marr's levels of analysis  9:16 Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment  20:53 The binding problem  35:25 Computers do not leverage the EM field to do computationally useful things  46:46 Equanimity and the sense of self  53:36  Binding is frame invariant and provides computational benefits  56:41 Avoiding strong emergence  58:37 Sidestepping the hard problem of consciousness 59:03 Avoiding epiphenomenalism 1:01:07 Being compatible with modern scientific world picture  1:04:56 Experiments for testing to see if electromagnetic fields of human brain form unified global topology  1:07:14 Merging your consciousness field topology with someone else’s  1:14:07 Summary of if current AI models are conscious  1:16:55 Doing and undoing the topological twist of consciousness  1:24:56 What it’s like to be the field before topological segmentation  1:27:43 Why is there something rather than nothing? 1:32:04 Does valence add up to zero?  1:35:42 The symmetry theory of valence  1:39:20 Does the static field of consciousness have an experience?  1:41:07 Grounding ethics in open individualism and valence realism  1:44:57 Clarifying ethical thought experiments with a science of consciousness  1:47:33 Why does valence exist? 1:48:45 What does it mean for the field to tear?  1:50:51 Infinite universes through the fracturing of nothing  1:53:20 Would replacing humans with happy AIs solve the alignment problem?  1:55:28 If AIs don’t leverage field topology for computation, does that null the alignment problem?  1:58:30 Non-linear wave computing  2:01:08 How does the enteric nervous system fit into sentience?  2:03:49 Why is the electromagnetic field especially relevant to consciousness  2:05:25 Cosmological qualia  2:07:40 Hedonium shockwaves and Andres’ shirt  2:08:32 The perfume “Hedonium Shockwave” by Andres Gomez Emilsson  2:15:47 Using Hedonium Shockwave to explore consciousness  2:17:46 The future of art given the rise of AI models  2:22:42 Final thoughts from Andres 2:23:53Where to find and follow Andres

    2h 38m
  4. Culum Brown on Fish Intelligence, Sentience, Ecology, and Suffering

    12/22/2022

    Culum Brown on Fish Intelligence, Sentience, Ecology, and Suffering

    Culum Brown is a professor at Macquarie University where he is a behavioral ecologist studying fish behavior and cognition. He is a long time proponent of fish intelligence and welfare, arguing for interventions to improve the lives of fish. Culum has over 150 research publications and is in the top 2.5% of Research Gate. Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry Video episode: https://youtu.be/LN6cgNu9QAM Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry Timestamps:  0:00 Intro 2:10 Better understanding fish  4:44 Fish learning and memory 11:20 Social learning and culture 20:56 Cross species relationships: offering backrubs  27:59 Fish participate in predator evaluation together 32:57 Knowing their place in the hierarchy  37:18 Cooperating across species to hunt  41:58 Fish accumulate cultural knowledge across generations  43:46 Machiavellian intelligence in fish  46:12 What brain size means  49:04 Tool use and house building  58:14 Intelligence in parrots  59:28 Breadth of fish sensing  1:03:44 Pain in fish and other animals 1:14:24 The experience of farmed, wild-caught, lab grown, and pet fish  1:27:58 How fish are caught and killed 1:34:19 What do we do given all this suffering?  1:37:58 Policy solutions for fish welfare 1:42:43 Can we abolish the biological roots of suffering?  1:49:19 Why did land animals become generally intelligent instead of sea creatures?  1:52:49 Final thoughts from Culum 1:54:18 Where to find and follow Culum

    1h 51m
  5. Philip Golabuk on the Nature of Self-work and Freeing Ourselves of Contradiction

    11/25/2022

    Philip Golabuk on the Nature of Self-work and Freeing Ourselves of Contradiction

    Philip Golabuk is founder of PhilosophyCenter, where he offers philosophical counseling, self-study courses, and LIFECOACH Training. Their mission is to encourage and facilitate the self-work that leads to greater awareness, creative expression, and personal evolution as well as a deeper appreciation for the miracle, mystery, and opportunity of being alive. Philip is a member of the National Philosophical Counseling Association, has taught college level philosophy courses, and has worked as part of a community outreach program to inmates in jail and prison. PhilosophyCenter: https://philosophycenter.net/ Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry Video episode: https://youtu.be/ZcOcZ_EZDD8 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry Timestamps:  0:00 Intro 1:54 Life principles: Truth and uncertainty  6:50 Life principles: Limitation and responsibility  13:10 Useful questions in self-work  16:40 Being in conflict with your own truth  20:19 Off handed remarks that confess beliefs  23:47 Bottom up and top down self-work  30:29 Accessing and practicing bottom up and top down self-work  35:50 The decisive question: What bad thing happens if I have what I want?  38:18 Willingness being 90% of self-work  44:35 The mind as a good servant but a bad master  50:33 Degrees of certainty, induction, and truth 55:05 A perspective on Universal Love, Said The Cactus Person by Scott Alexander  1:04:20 Outro

    1h 6m
  6. Bernardo Kastrup on Universal Mind, Artificial Sentience, the Great Void, and the Universe's Telos

    11/09/2022

    Bernardo Kastrup on Universal Mind, Artificial Sentience, the Great Void, and the Universe's Telos

    Bernardo Kastrup is a metaphysical idealist, arguing that universal phenomenal consciousness is all there ultimately is. He holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering and another in philosophy. Bernardo is also the executive director of the Essentia Foundation. Bernardo's website: https://www.bernardokastrup.com/ Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry Video episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaCij4vXwpA Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry  Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:42 Bernardo’s metaphysics  4:15 What does it mean for something to be a transpersonal mental process 10:11 What is it like to be nature at large? 12:20 Is the consciousness that underlies the inanimate universe like dust or completely unified?  16:55 How is it that mind at large fragments into particular beings? 22:40 How can we remember our original state if it's formless/contentless?  28:39 What is it like to be the field when it’s completely at rest?  32:17 Is there formless or contentless consciousness?  39:25 The great void state 43:13 Being and seeing god  45:40 Knowledge without intermediation of a mental model  48:03 The role and place of introspection  52:38 Physicalism robs us of meaning as the entities outside of us are their own ends  56:58 Is there a necessary relationship between truth and freedom from suffering  59:28 What it means to be set free  1:08:50 There is freedom is seeing what you think you are doesn’t exist  1:10:22 Surrender and defeat  1:19:16 Embracing duality and the western background  1:35:40 The importance of suffering  1:47:05 The maturation of religion 1:52:45 A spontaneous unfolding can still follow a telos 1:56:50 The telos of universal mind 2:01:43 Innocence, evil, and the asymmetry between truth and illusion 2:12:06 The spirit of our technology and artificial consciousness  2:20:05 The binding problem of consciousness and substrate independence  2:50:30 Testing for consciousness in machines  3:07:35 AGI timelines  3:11:07 Imbuing machines with values  3:08:10 Clarifying intuition pumps for idealism 3:18:45 Outro

    3h 20m
5
out of 5
17 Ratings

About

Seeking to uncover all that is true, good, and beautiful of our fundamental nature and realize its expression in the world of form.