Some background: I've been programming some simple artificial life simulations on my laptop over the past month, which has naturally led to me learning a lot about machine learning. Just before tripping, I happened to have read this, and its insights featured prominently during the trip.

I won't go into how glorious the acid experience is (yes, present tense) and, to be honest, I probably didn't get anything sensually from this trip that couldn't have gotten from something like this DMT experience. There are several insights which I think are worth mentioning:

1. There is a place at which happiness (emotion in general) interfaces with the rest of consciousness, and I think I've found it...Smiling is how I communicate to others that I'm well. When I'm smiling, My brain is taking the rational assessment "I'm well" and projecting knowledge that I am well to others, with the intention of setting them at ease (that's the evolved purpose). In smiling, there is a part of the brain that acts as Sender and a part that acts as Receiver. Basically, happiness occurs when the Sender and Receiver parts of the brain are wired together so that they can form a feedback loop. Happiness is therefore a form of communication. It's an internal show, much like a smile.

2. Gender is a type of symbiosis. Currently my Alife simulations are free-for-all in that individuals are given no means of distinguishing between each other. On the other hand, if I gave them the ability to distinguish between other individuals by type (for example, "same type" vs "foreign type" ), then I would start to see more complex behaviors but all of these inter-species interactions and adaptations would constitute some form of symbiosis where the species take advantage of each other. Symbiosis is the only evolvable outcome here, because the alternative behaviors (e.g. cannibalism) do not result in fit populations. Anyways, in my simulation (and in general) the "same/foreign type" species distinction could also result in what we call gender if 2 species find that they can survive better by mixing their genes as opposed to evolving separately.

3. In conscious minds there is a literal focus on uncertainty: We are most fascinated by scenarios which we cannot predict the outcome of, or where the actual outcome conflicts with our predictions, and this is the origin of "curiosity". Psychedelics cause a plucking of that same nerve of uncertainty (and hence fascination). A molecule which can produce a better fascination will attract more attention and thus more synthetic production. For these reasons, it seems like there is potential for an evolving symbiosis between consciousness and psychedelic molecules. This would see the molecules evolve much like any other species, but with the molecular evolution guided literally by "curiosity". The molecules reproduce to the extent that they can trigger a mammal to resynthesize them. To that effect, they are somewhat like the zombie-fungus that you should be familiar with, and they spread like a social virus. The species itself is infected. I'm tempted to go a step further and say that the essence of consciousness is the thing that is like a virus. It is self-expanding by whatever means necessary. Perhaps Earth is the starting point or maybe it was just caught in a passing consciousness stream, like consciousness broke down here on the way to somewhere else.

4. We are essentially the greatest artificial life experiment ever carried out. Conclusions: Life in the universe is extremely rare but its rapidly evolving to become more prevalent as well as more complex. That can be taken as a definition of "life".

Thanks for reading.