Uncovering the Mysteries of Affective Neuroscience – the Importance of Valence Research with Mike Johnson

Uncovering the Mysteries of Affective Neuroscience – the Importance of Valence Research with Mike Johnson

Valence in overview Adam: What is emotional valence (as opposed to valence in chemistry)? Mike: Put simply, emotional valence is how pleasant or unpleasant something is. A somewhat weird fact about our universe is that some conscious experiences do seem to feel better than others.   Adam: What makes things feel the way they do?…

On Consciousness, Qualia, Valence & Intelligence with Mike Johnson
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On Consciousness, Qualia, Valence & Intelligence with Mike Johnson

Andrés Gómez Emilsson joined in to add very insightful questions for a 3 part interview series with Mike Johnson, covering the relationship of metaphysics to qualia/consciousness/hedonic valence, and defining their terms, whether panpsychism matters, increasing sensitivity to bliss, valence variance, Effective Altruism, cause prioritization, and the importance of consciousness/valence research . Andrés Gómez Emilsson interviews…

Ethics, Qualia Research & AI Safety with Mike Johnson
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Ethics, Qualia Research & AI Safety with Mike Johnson

What’s the relationship between valence research and AI ethics? Hedonic valence is a measure of the quality of our felt sense of experience, the intrinsic goodness (positive valence) or averseness (negative valence) of an event, object, or situation.  It is an important aspect of conscious experience; always present in our waking lives. If we seek to…

Towards the Abolition of Suffering Through Science
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Towards the Abolition of Suffering Through Science

An online panel focusing on reducing suffering & paradise engineering through the lens of science. Panelists: Andrés Gómez Emilsson, David Pearce, Brian Tomasik and Mike Johnson Note, consider skipping to to 10:19 to bypass some audio problems in the beginning!! Topics Andrés Gómez Emilsson: Qualia computing (how to use consciousness for information processing, and why…