Join EA San Francisco for a talk by Andrés Gómez Emilsson (Qualia Research Institute) on new approaches to understanding and reducing suffering!
QRI’s recent work focuses on formal, testable models of subjective experience and their application to high-impact interventions. A central example is ClusterFree, an initiative targeting cluster headaches, often described as the most intensely painful condition known, with “torture-like” episodes that can drive suicidal ideation.
Despite low prevalence, cluster headaches affect millions globally and may account for millions of days of extreme (≥9/10) suffering each year. QRI and collaborators argue cluster headaches are one of the largest sources of preventable extreme suffering in humans today and present a tractable opportunity to eliminate vast amounts of negatively valenced qualia.
Other recent QRI work includes the Symmetry Theory of Valence, heavy-tailed models of wellbeing, field-based (wave/EM) theories of brain computation, and research on meditatively and psychedelically induced altered states.
Andrés will discuss how these ideas connect to a broader effort to identify and reduce the most intense forms of suffering. *Hell Delenda Est!*
Readings (optional):
https://qri.org/blog/log-scales
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vzG8wu9b6vuoRxD3z/announcing-clusterfree-a-cluster-headache-advocacy-and
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24 Going · 32 Maybe
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