Exploring the Intersection of Technology & Spirituality

Thursday, June 21, 2018

VRTO2018 Empathic Understanding w Psychedelics & EVR

Celestina Aurora Madry & techn0shaman 2018 VRTO

Empathic Understandings with EVR

techn0shaman 2018

Thank you all for the very warm welcome, thank you Keram and faculty of VRTO for inviting us to speak here with you, im techn0shaman and this is my esteemed colleague and friend Celestina Aurora Madry ,I am really excited to be here today to talk with all of you about some of the things that inspire me and I am passionate about, what impells me to speak to a room full of people like this is a psychedelic experience I had 4 years ago with psilocybin. Electronic virtual reality, language, and psychedelics are all very closely related so im just going to jump in and start talking about some points of interest :]

Distinction between EVR AND VR

Virtual Reality as a concept similar to how Elliot Edge described, is something that manifested around 10,000 or so years ago when we as a species first left nature. That boundary created a cascade effect into what we now call history and we have been missing that link to gaia ever since.

EVR is on the brink of transforming our entire civilization and is at the forefront of our global cultural toolkit, we will and are using this technology to transform every industry, culture, and the values we share as a global organism. I’m interested in EVR because of its potential to solve many problems we face.

How EVR creates a portal into infinity/imagination

The ability to build anything from our imagination has some amazing implications what we will come back to later in our talk. - the main point I would like to make is that the physical restraints of VR are much harsher than EVR, EVR allows scalability and construct on a scale not even advanced nano engineers and space mining civilization is able to provide. Cyberspace is built with photons of light and is able to transform instantly, we do not have that kind of tool making technology in this dimension yet.

How we can use EVR to evolve our language

Language is very similar to bandwidth because it is information.

The higher the bandwidth the more information you can move from one place to another/

EVR has a much higher bandwidth than linguistic or written language because of the extra spatial dimension involved - if we can utilize this it will unlock a potential transformation of society through an empathic understanding of each other, this is similar to how plants work. Through a network of understanding they communicate to each other and other species through metabolic activity and exo pheromones.

Limitless constraints on how we can 3D visualize our language of communication as a multifaceted hyperdimensional linguistic construct with a topology that is ever changing, and filled with pure understanding and meaning. By combining acoustical sound waves to 3 or 4 dimensional visual stimuli we will be able to see what each other means, literally. Perhaps we can look at the Ayahuasca experiences, some shamans in the amazon rainforest describe. Their hallucinations from the plants as a 3D, textured experience.

Can you use an example

What EVR and psychedelics have in common in terms of their effect on language?

is that both things allow one to become much closer to the actual essence of what one is trying to portray- our internal narratives in our mind that can never, ever be fully distilled into words, and that we can never fully explain to others, or to ourselves even. No matter how well I describe something, if I explain my thoughts in detail to you, it will not accurately be understood as all have unique internal narratives within our minds.

However, if I could show something to you directly, we overcome this distance that can come with words and gestures.

Acoustical linguistic structure is effective at allowing us to overcome the physical limitations that come with needing to show something to you directly.

For example, I can’t show directly in this auditorium how a 553 meter tall structure looks like. Me using the phrase “the CN Tower is 553 meters tall” to refer to a height that is too vast for me to show you directly in this auditorium overcomes the physical space - the linguistic tile is inferior to the true meaning of the intended understood structure. A more informationally dense authentic way to communicate the concept of how tall 553 meters is to you, would be to model the CN Tower in EVR, and have you look at it.

How we can use EVR to simulate psychedelic experiences and what are the implications

We live in wonderful times. Thanks to organizations like maps,[use a second example] there has been an unprecedented renaissance of psychedelic research that has not been seeing since the 1950s and 1960s. There has been lots of inspiring research about how psychedelic substances can be used to treat various psychological maladies such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD[talk about the benefits of non clinical use too ie. the miraculous transcendental shift in a persons personality who is healthy]. This research has allowed us to demonstrates how the emotional content of psychedelic experiences can have therapeutic value. However, there hasn't really been very much inquiry into the nuts and bolts of the psychedelic experience.

The media tends to portray the subject of contents of psychedelic experiences as being highly delirious – for example, dragons guarding the fridge, talking pink elephants, etc. There seems to be a prevailing stigma about Taking the contents of psychedelic experience as something that can be rationally analyzed.[in contrast talk about the glorification of alcohol]

What really struck[use another word here] me during my psychedelic experiences is that the experience seems like something that is both highly mediated by my imagination, but is also driven by complicated mathematical clockwork. It just seems so precise,[be more sure of yourself here, we dont have all the answers but say that ‘it is precise vs it just seems so precise’] that I couldn't help but wonder whether to people on acid who are looking at the exact same thing will end up seeing exactly the same shapes because they're bringing is applying the same mathematical process to their visual field.

EVR could be a broadly utilized tool in psychedelic science.

EVR allows one to control many of the perceptual variables within the moment of experience. It would be difficult, if not impossible to determine whether two people sitting in the living room on acid are seeing the same version of the living room do to slight differences and location, lighting , etc.

however, if you put these people into a [EVR] experience, you can guarantee that they are receiving exactly the same visual input.

However, even if we can standardize the perceptual inputs, we still hit a bit of a roadblock when it comes to measuring the perceptual outputs – or, the subjective contents of the psychedelic experience. Unfortunately, we can't hit record on our brain[just yet], and spoken word language is [very low bandwidth] only equipped to describe a very Basic mathematical and geometric concepts, such as square, triangle, Circle, etc.

Most people are at a loss for words when they are confronted with the incredibly complex geometry that his presence within the psychedelic experience. Phrases such as kaleidoscopic[user two examples] might be able to give us a general depiction of the big picture of what the perceptual outputs looks like, but the bandwidth is too low to be able to describe all the detail mathematical properties of the perceptual outputs. It's kind of like those fuzzy images of Pluto that we saw in our science textbooks at school- we know that Pluto is round, and we know it's diameter and circumference, but the details of what the surface looks like are fuzzy.[talk about how advanced machines were capable of getting us more clear images with scientific research and teams of people working together to solve the issue of clarity, the psychedelic renaissance will have too include the same scientific rhetoric to study these things]

This is why EVR is a promising medium for psychedelic replication and art. It eliminates the need to describe to people what one has seen beneath their eyelids using a low bandwidth spoken word medium of communication, and allows one to directly design and show the full complexity and detail that it needs to depict it in an accurate manner.

Why do I think the contents of psychedelic experiences are important? Because I think that it is entirely possible that the geometry that we see beneath our eyelids during psychedelic experiences may very well contain insights into the semantic networks of the human biocomputer. The road to completely ironing out the details for a scientifically sound methodology to figure this out is still ahead of us, but I do anticipate that EVR will play a key role in allowing us to do so.

Some of the research we are conducting on ourselves with EVR and Psychedelics

techn0shaman

Building Mind Palaces in the Multiverse - decentralized web with JanusVR

Mind Palace - a sequence of sensory input memories that can be experienced in EVR

How this affects subjective memories?

Tying loose ends - Future events - Oh, and before we go - Charity

A charity we would like to publicize with this amazing opportunity here at VRTO is Botanical Dimensions - a non profit organization that has created a safe haven for plants with a history of shamanic and psychedelic usage. We thinks it’s very important to have a space for the preservation of these important plants, our friends who have been here long before us and will exist long after us <3

Empathic Understandings with Psychedelics & EVR

Tina & techn0shaman discuss the limitations of our current cultural linguistic models of communication as well as the potential solutions that may result in the transformation of civilization; psychedelics, bandwidth, future language, and refreshing optimistic narrative for the human story from Gaia to cyberspace.

TINA BIO

As a child, Tina Madry dreamed of being the first person on Mars. Upon adulthood, she discovered that her true calling is to explore inner space rather than outer space, inspiring her to become a psychonaut and psychedelic scientist.

techn0shaman BIO

techn0shaman has been living in Toronto for 10 years. In 2014 they became extremely interested in EVR and eventually learned to develop after an encounter with Psilocybin Mushrooms. This inspired them to speak publicly about language and electronic virtual reality, building 3D websites in partnership with JanusVR they have created an extensive mind palace network spanning over 90 portals and growing.

Title of Talk #2 -

EXPANDING ON -Empathic Understandings with Psychedelics & EVR

MEET AND GREET

Celestina and techn0shaman will expand on their earlier talk, going more in depth with the content and will have a Q & A session. This is a workshop-discussion and will not be a formal presentation. Come join the circle and enjoy some intellectual mind expanding conversations with some cool cats who ride the fringes of culture and experience the weird!

Six Psychonauts on VR, Psychedelics, & Consciousness Transformation — VRTO2018

From Voices of VR Podcast host, Kent Bye — I had an opportunity to moderate a panel featuring six psychonauts who are exploring the intersection between Psychedelics, VR, and consciousness transformation at the VRTO conference in Toronto, Canada on June 16th, 2018. The participants from left to right were myself as moderator, Tina Madry, Brett Leonard, Scott Mason, Eliott Edge, Audri Phillips, & technoshaman. We explore a wide range of topics around VR as a new communications medium to communicate inner, noetic, psychedelic and phenomenological experiences, as well as how psychedelics is a tool to explore the capacities of the human mind and what sorts of experiential and neuroscience insights we gain from psychedelic research and experimentation.