Hello everyone! There’s a chance you know me as bossboe on X. My name is Kyle Ostboe, I’m 23 years old, and I currently reside in Phoenix, AZ.
Introduction
Advances in artificial intelligence have already accelerated conflict between competing theoretical camps (functionalism, physicalism, materialism, idealism, etc.) in the study of consciousness, and we can’t reasonably expect the public to wait for a scientific resolution before developing popular beliefs about digital sentience. As we see increasingly autonomous agents, we’re increasingly likely to prematurely declare the mystery of consciousness “solved”, or worse, a “red herring” (cue: fanatical reductionism, AI-related mental health crises, AI cults, ethical nihilism, and other psychosocial risks).
It appears we need a “Hail Mary” to mitigate such outcomes. At the moment, the field-of-research is over-specialized, and suffers from inadequate urgency, neutrality, or incentive to reconcile leading theories of consciousness. Nevertheless, I hold that timely reconciliation is possible, though requiring total freedom of analysis at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, phenomenology, mathematics, physics, biology, contemplative practice, and other relevant disciplines.
I’m committed to this effort, and to a broader demonstration of the power a good theory of consciousness has to systematically reduce/prevent general suffering.
Background
I started meditating back in 2019 in my dorm at Arizona State University. In the time since, I’ve been introduced to basic mindfulness, metta, equanimity, non-dual awareness, mild-moderate jhanas 1-5, fire kasina, and other practices. Apart from radical, lasting improvements to my quality-of-life, meditation showed me the profound access I always had to what I’d assumed to be either exceedingly difficult or impossible to examine: consciousness.
At ASU I studied computer science before moving to the neuroscience program at the University of Arizona in 2022, graduating last fall. I do hope to continue my studies in graduate school, though at the moment I’m convinced I can be of at least equal use to the field from outside of academia.
Fortunately, today, anyone with the appropriate technology and background can apply quality neuroimaging and phenomenological reporting to controlled transformations of consciousness. Done properly and scaled to a network of researchers with similar tools (see: QRI), I believe this approach is sufficient to uncover structural and functional invariants of experience, and to contribute relevant data to the research frontier.
Provisional Goals
- Develop precise, reproducible scientific models along with socially digestible heuristics to describe awareness, attention, self, thought, craving, aversion, equanimity, and love, which acknowledge their irreducibly qualitative, physical, and functional/computational aspects.
- Identify overlooked commonalities and hidden assumptions among leading theories of consciousness, and explore theoretical research frameworks which respect the contributions of each.
- Discover to what degree phenomenology and physics are homologous, as strong dual-aspect monism hypothesizes, and if so, translate fundamental physical equations into experientially verifiable meditative pointers.
Funding:
- EEG headset(s) for neural correlate measurement
- TFUS device(s) for targeted stimulation
- Relevant analysis software
- Research journal access
- AI research tools
- Travel (collaboration, conferences, etc)
Research, protocols, and findings will be documented openly on Github, X, and my blog.
With this equipment, and the help of a community of researchers at the Open Research Institute and elsewhere, I’m confident that real progress can be made toward resolving the incompatibilities stalling the field. If your curious about, or would like to help fund my research, you can reach me by email at kyle@ostboe.com, or on X via DM.