Alien Information Theory by Andrew Gallimore - book summary and thoughts

Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game https://a.co/d/0bex559s 

Takeaways:

Our brains are products of evolution driven genetics for the physical structure of our brain, and what we’ve been exposed to in our life which forms our world model.   Every brain is unique for these reasons.   We all share a certain similarities due to both evolution and learning within a similar environment, or via shared ancestral lines

We build a world model in our minds, from sensory input.  We don’t see the world, we see our model.   When we look at something with our eye, we are viewing our world model focused to the narrow topic being updated by our visuals from the eye. This is updating our world model however.   

When we turn off sensory input, like when we dream, our world model isn’t fixed and jumps around to what’s been built before, can “see” whatever our focus settles to, sometimes abruptly changing as we know dreams to do.  

Psychedelics and meditation can filter out our sensory input, or just make it easier to index into our own world model and avoid our sensory input completely driving how we index that model.   experiencing visuals, entities, insights, seeing patterns, etc

DMT and psychedelics sort of hyper connect the brain, sort of enhanced pattern matching, and bringing in more of our world model than our brain would normally index on, giving us new insights or perceptions (like faces in clouds), or ability to explore environments in our model, or even talk to entities in our model

DMT and psychedelics differ in that DMT doesn’t work in Cartesian world space, DMT works in hyper space, more dimensions hard to describe, but familiar.  See all sides of an object at once, hear it’s color, feel it’s pointyness as emotion, see machinery behind an idea or concept, weird ineffable stuff that can’t be described when back in 3D space

Think of hyperspace as new pattern mappings between higher and lower level layers of our brain.  With some translation to visual, audio for us to experience it.  It’s basically an enhanced, or remapped, view into our existing world model(s), with some of the remapping allowing access to lower or higher levels of our neural stack than we normally have ability to focus on.   

When we are newborns, we apparently flood our brains with DMT, and we develop fully immersed in a hyperspace brain.   Our hyperspace brain develops first.   It’s our first experience as human.   It probably creates our deep intelligence. 

When we revisit this state with DMT it feels familiar, and some people think they’re revisiting before birth.   Possibly they’re accessing those memories

Basically, we have a massive pattern matching system in our heads, and to make sense of that, we then have layers that interpret this to 3D space for us.   But there’s a lot of intuition going on, which is largely hidden from our awareness.  Which, can be directly experienced in DMT hyperspace as physical stuff, like jewels, machinery, entities, eggs, rooms, all descriptions that are impossible to put into words as I am poorly doing now using 3D words instead of hyperspace ones ;-).

DMT reconnects our model view another way into our existing neural net model, and it’s coherent, like switching on alternate reality that’s vastly more dimensions than 3.  DMT is very fast, minutes and then it turns off.  No tolerance, can do it again immediately (not so with lsd or psilocybin which build tolerance quickly, without addictive desire).

In DMT hyperspace it’s common to see fabrege eggs and machine elves, angels and demons, mythical Celtic lore elf creatures which welcome you “hooray you’re back!”   Happy familiarity.  But a warning there can be an occasional creepy or very rarely a violent entity (representing fear or shadow parts, repressed trauma).   These are from your world model you’ve built for archetypes, generalized personas that drive you or protect you, or generalized types of characters you’ve observed in life - also common to other psychedelics.   DMT is famous for machine elves that welcome you.  

Gallimore then jumps the shark and asserts that we can somehow “win the game”, and get out of “the matrix” and enter hyperspace permanently, and somehow “exit” this game, to be welcomed by others who also exited before us.

…he could have said:    it sure would be fun and informative to investigate this primordial brain state we once had as newborns, for as long as possible.    Therefore, let’s develop an IV drip for DMT to keep the patient “under” for as long as we like, to explore the space.   Like deep sea diver technology, but for DMT.  But no. 

Instead, he asserts, that there is an “other” alien intelligence who creates code that runs on our custom meat hardware.   And there are rules of the game state that a species level of intelligence gatekeeps access to DMT technology required in order to exit the game (achievement unlocked!).    And that when exit is achieved that the rest of the intelligences that have also exited will shout “welcome!!!” Just like the elves do.

I take this to be non literal, and a poetic interpretation.    Or… an intuitive conclusion from experiencing this state, the way this world feels to the DMT experiencer.  But otherwise seems to be a huge stretch to assert there is some reality to escape to (without any discussion about what happens to your meat body, and if your meat dies, do you also?   Can two people go in and exchange information?  Etc…).    

So my takeway, is more like, 

• ok, he’s creating a DMT IV drip.  For long term exploration.  Nothing more nothing less.  Really cool though, quite an achievement
• AND, really interesting, that it’s the mind you had before birth, and can experience and explore that….
• And, the brain’s world model and how psychedelics explore and index that in novel, filtered, or connected ways was a nice way to think about how psychedelics work in general - definitely explains the mechanism behind sensory deprivation tanks and trip like cognitive effects experienced there
• And some handwavey concept that DMT switches on sort of a new lens to view your world model with, that reveals added dimensions and data underpinnings of your mind’s world data model

All cool stuff.

Ok. Notice I explained all that without talking about Conway game of life at all?     Yeah.     He spent a ton of time talking about game of life.    First to describe physics of the universe at the plank level (kurzweil I think has a similar hypothesis).      Later as metaphor for how the brain internal state updates.    At some point in the book, I realized he was telling us Conway game of life as a metaphor for how adjacent stuff (neurons, presumably) in our brain update (and updates differently under DMT)…. So, not literal, but “like” game of life, but higher dimension, and “something like” pattern translation from grids to other grids (clusters of neurons to other clusters of neurons) up and down the neural net stack inside our minds.    But basically he spent a ton of time explaining game of life and all that metaphor, for something that he at one point clarified that no of course we don’t really run game of life in our minds, all this was just an example, a story device, to help you understand there’s information flow, translation, and state updates in our mind!   And the takeaway was that DMT “switches on” hyperspace which simply updates that mapping differently, via a remapping up/down the neural stack.   Yep.  Ok.   Got it.   Did I have to learn so much about conways game of life???

The whole book was laid out for a computer scientist to absorb easily.   But also, I probably could have handled it without the game of life metaphor.  Book would have been 1/2 as long though.   

His concept of the other, the alien intelligence, who created your code, I take that to mean your genetics that grew you in the womb, AND, your DMT brain that grew as a baby -  That’s the alien intelligence your hyperspace baby brain!!.    He goes on to say how there are many code sets out there, and that there’s only so many rulesets that will work to create a functioning brain, implies other humans with their own unique minds which evolved their own hyperspace connectivity pattern, to explain how different humans think differently.   Makes me wonder if you compared enough humans if you’d find themes of hyperspace variations, like scientists tend to see more machinery.    The way he says the other, sounds like intelligent design, he specifically calls out that it’s not.   But he isn’t clear, instead he kind of leaves it as a romantic fantasy device of storytelling.  Haha.  

He gets a little “fantasy” doesn’t he. Which matches with his cute typesetting and layout and color design of the book.  Which was super creative and engaging.    The game, the exit, the test for intelligence to acquire the tech to exit the game, feels like projecting intention onto the universe, as the cosmic game, as if it’s a real game or simulation or something, or at least a back channel in common we can all exit to like a heaven would,  erodes the seriousness of the work.   Puts it a little into poetic embellishment,  or a sort of philosophy territory for the laypeople.   Which, I think he does well, you get a sense for what DMT does.  I worry most peoples takeaway is that:

• … we and the universe are running conways game of life, And I think that’d be a miss.   But for non computer scientists, and the fact he dwells on it so long, it could feel like that’s his point.   When.    I didn’t get that as a takeaway at all.    (I summarized my takeaways above).
• … and that we can exit the matrix to be our true selves with one another.   Which there is zero evidence for.  Other than perhaps that’s what it feels like experientially when in there.   But most likely, the most simple explanation is, that you’re still running inside your meat brain, time stepping away, experiencing your own world model with more/different access to that world model, talking to those modeled entities, hanging out in your modeled environments, feeling like it’s real, like we do in our dreams right before waking up and feeling like it just happened.  With familiarity, since it’s the space you had first when born.

I take the “cosmic game” as natural evolution, and our discovery to access hyperspace as one of those natural selection things that could evolve us due to our fitness to access that… to be determined

Question

• his idea of exiting.    I do wonder if you can spend enough time in there that you could train your brain to connect to hyperspace normally, through meditation/focus, or, learn something that affects your 3D experience.    Like those who speak multiple languages or mathematics has a different view of the world, would time in hyperspace expand your mental model in ways that impact your 3D space experience?    Could you find the fabrege egg, give it a twist, open it, and put something inside it, and come back out to find you know jujitsu?  Haha ;-)

Reflections from the Notetaker