Biochem and Basement Qualia

 

If the world is one vast gestalt qualia computer and, as Hoffman demonstrated with his evolutionary game theory simulations, the material world that we take as objectively real is just an evolved user interface representing fitness payoffs in the most actionable manner possible - something plays the same role relative to the qualia computing occurring in basement level reality as Windows or iOS plays in regard to the processing occurring in the countless logic gates that constitute the causal basis of the operating system - then what are all the biochemical processes that constitute the body and influence the mind?

Gestalt qualia computation in drag.

Biomolecular interactions are what the causal structure of gestalt qualia computation looks like when rendered in three dimensional space, as discrete objects with identifiable spatial boundaries. Its patterns and regularities are just partial isomorphisms (pattern overlaps) with much more sophisticated patterns occurring at the level of qualia computation.

So what then does it mean to abolish physical and mental suffering by eliminating FAAH and FAAH-OUT? Why are we finding so many anomalous and seemingly unrelated benefits in different sub-systems of the body?

We are interfering with negative valence qualitative processing itself, much like deleting malware at the source code level that doesn't benefit the user, but does benefit some other goal set not related to the interests of the user.

In this case, the user is a conscious being with goals, interests, and priorities that only reference other conscious states. And the other goal set - better conceptualized as an optimization process selecting for inclusive fitness - is evolution, which selects purely for the number of copies of our genes that we can create and that is blind to everything else, including the suffering that it creates by violating the innate interests of conscious beings toward its own ends.

Suffering is an error signal in consciousness - a sign that something has gone terribly wrong. It is chaotic, non-symmetrical, inherently distracting, and functions like informational noise in qualia computers that can motivate us to act in terrible and profoundly self-defeating ways just to shut it off or diminish it.

It's the whip that evolution uses to keep us behaving in its interest rather than in our own, as sentient beings who care about valence rather than about self-replication for its own sake.

We are the union of two optimization processes with inherently conflicting goals: The first is a pure replicator that only cares about making more copies of itself. The second is the complex valence optimization of consciousness. The intersection of these two things is a disaster.

By removing suffering, we remove the chief mechanism by which the optimization process of the evolutionary pure replicator interferes with the complex valence optimization process of conscious beings.

If biochemistry is just what qualitative processing looks like when viewed through an evolved user interface - a very "lossy" compression algorithm that concretizes inclusive fitness payoffs into discrete 3D objects - then it makes sense that by removing suffering we remove a source of noise and chaos from biology, which would be reflected as changes in the chemical language of biology.

We know that low valence sensations like chronic pain, chronic anxiety, stress, fear, and grief can have a profound impact on health; and we know that qualia can change biology - otherwise complex qualitative world-simulations could've never evolved, for qualia must change the behavior of biological organisms in order to be subject to natural selection. Indeed, we could never even talk about red, the taste of chocolate, the sensation of orgasm, nor any other qualitative property if qualia did not alter biology.

We tend to look for biochemical explanations for these things, and, of course, we'll find them, but it's a bit like explaining the causality in a video game by exclusively referencing in game assets. Yes, you can create a simplified story that has its own internal logic and predictive power, but a complex internal logic, the ability to modify source code, and predictive power aren't alone sufficient to make something the causal bedrock of an observed phenomenon. The causal bedrock in the video game will always be game external - the "real world" computational substrate on which the game runs.

Similarly, the causal bedrock of biology exists outside of the evolved reality user interface of discrete 3D objects that has partial functional overlaps with the behavior of the qualitative computational substrate on which it runs.

If I'm right, then a great many seemingly biological issues are actually issues occurring at a deeper level - that of qualitative processing.

However, it should be stressed that this is an idealist identity theory equating qualitative computation with biochemistry. The language of biochemistry is identical to a subset of the patterns instantiated by qualitative computation, arises within qualia computation, and is made of qualia computation. I'm not proposing two things, but two views, one less complete than the other, but vastly more pragmatically useful - biochemistry - and another vastly more complete, but far less practically useful, since it doesn't furnish us with clear intervention points through which we can influence the biological organism with the same precision as biochemistry allows.