Guided Meditation: The Thermodynamics of Consciousness and the Ecosystem of Agents

Building a Science of Consciousness

In this guided meditation, Andrés will take you through QRI's recent work, focusing on two key aspects:

1. The Thermodynamics of Consciousness: This part of the meditation will explore how energy flows from various sources such as sensory stimulation, valence, attention, surprise, and the background noise signature. This energy is directed towards the bound field of consciousness, which is then shaped via the energy sink landscape of symmetry and recognition. Finally, the processed consciousness exits through motor action or what is referred to as "outer field radiation."
2. The Ecosystem of Agents: Drawing a parallel to next-token prediction engines like GPT-4, this part of the meditation will explain how our minds work similarly, where existing constraints help resolve ambiguity in our experiences. To make accurate predictions of the world, our minds simulate agentive behavior because the world is full of agents. To achieve this, "subagents" are created to play the role of agentive forces, which can be predicted to ensure safety.

Throughout the meditation, you will explore a series of strategies to deal with these subagents and harmonize them within a healthy and wholesome ecosystem of friendly subagents that help each other in beautiful ways. Some of these strategies include:

1. Improving the training data for subagents.
2. Guiding lost subagents to a pool of love to re-absorb them.
3. Cultivating good vibes as a base to provide evolutionary selection pressures for friendly agents to arise.
4. Emphasizing equanimity and metta to reward clean intentions rather than flattery.
5. Exploring different network structures for agents that are more easily manageable.

By engaging in these practices, you can create a harmonious and beneficial ecosystem of subagents within your mind.