Principles of Vasocomputation

Summary

A unification of Buddhist phenomenology, active inference, and physical reflexes; a practical theory of suffering, tension, and liberation; the core mechanism for medium-term memory and Bayesian updating; a clinically useful dimension of variation and dysfunction; a description of sensory type safety; a celebration of biological life. Michael Edward Johnson, Symmetry Institute, July 12, 2023. I. What is tanha? By default, the brain tries to grasp and hold onto pleasant sensations and push away unpleasant ones. The Buddha called these ‘micro-motions’ of greed and aversion taṇhā, and the Buddhist consensus seems to be that it accounts for an amazingly large proportion (~90%) of suffering. Romeo Stevens suggests translating the original Pali term as “fused to,” “grasping,” or “clenching,” and that the mind is trying to make sensations feel stable, satisfactory, and controllable. Nick Cammarata suggests “fast grabby thing” that happens within ~100ms after a sensation enters awareness; Daniel Ingram suggests this ‘grab’ can occur as quickly as 25-50ms (personal discussion). Uchiyama Roshi describes tanha in terms of its cure, “opening the hand of thought”; Shinzen Young suggests “fixation”; other common translations of tanha are “desire,” “thirst,” “craving.” The vipassana doctrine is that tanha is something the mind instinctively does, and that meditation helps you see this process as it happens, which allows you to stop doing it. Shinzen estimates that his conscious experience is literally 10x better due to having a satisfying meditation practice. Tanha is not yet a topic of study in affective neuroscience but I suggest it should be. Neuroscience is generally gated by soluble important mysteries: complex dynamics often arise from complex mechanisms, and complex mechanisms are difficult to untangle. The treasures in neuroscience happen when we find exceptions to this rule: complex dynamics that arise from elegantly simple core mechanisms. When we find one it generally l...