Erik Hoel Erik Hoel

The Unbearable Whiteness of Neptune

Maybe one day it will sputter out altogether and only

whiteness will remain, even inside our heads...

...Or maybe not. Maybe one day that small irreducible flicker will become a flame, and then there will be a roar of expansion as every color under the rainbow begins to spill across the frame of the world once more, out and out, until the whole universe is technicolored with magic once again.

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Prophetic Prophetic

The Qualia Factory

Qualia Factories will mass produce extraordinary conscious experiences that create an abundance, not of material, but of qualia.

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Erik Hoel Erik Hoel

Neuroscience is pre-paradigmatic. Consciousness is why.

Trusting our own introspection about the primacy of consciousness, and trusting how we all use consciousness to understand the behavioral repertoire of not just humans, but also other animals, the argument for neuroscience being pre-paradigmatic becomes very simple…

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Erik Hoel Erik Hoel

The Planetary Egregore Passes You By…

Perhaps we needn’t hypothesize based on the edges of scientific thought. If social media were actually transforming us into a group mind, wouldn’t this be obvious? Unfortunately, I think not. In fact, I’d even propose there are good reasons to think that the process might instead be extremely subtle.

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Prophetic Prophetic

Dreaming of a Theory of Consciousness

Everything that exists was once either a dream of man or a dream of God. It is through dreams that the prophets of all great religions receive their wisdom, that scientists contemplate the mysteries of the physical world, and that artists conceive works that bridge the divide between the sacred and the profane. Indeed, the entire universe dreams of itself. Since the beginning of time, evanescent particles have danced through the quantum vacuum in a cosmic reverie so potent that if you were to awake, you would swear that it all really happened.

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