GaiaBasicResearch projects
GaiaBasic is the home of a series of research projects on sentience. Each one takes an open question, states the competing hypotheses explicitly, and designs a set of worlds to compare them. They started as part of Sentience Research and are developed here in the open.
Is there more suffering than enjoyment in nature?
The question is ambiguous. Simulating it with explicit assumptions about intensity, lifespan and early death shows which assumptions decide the answer.
Concept and simulation designP-zombies and motivation
A matrix of worlds: sentient or not, with or without different outcomes. Some combinations turn out to be incoherent, and that is a result too.
Concept and simulation designUseful or inevitable? Emergentism versus dualism
If sentience is useful, it should leave traces: matter behaving in ways physics alone does not predict.
Concept and simulation designSimulation of pleasure and orgasm
Evolutionary simulations of sexual pleasure, comparing worlds where experience is ignored, epiphenomenal or causal.
Concept and simulation designNon-materialist physicalism
Checking the internal consistency of David Pearce's non-materialist physicalism by building it as a world.
Concept and simulation designGradients of bliss
Can organisms driven only by more or less pleasure behave as well as those driven by pain and pleasure?
Concept and simulation designEvolution of simulated hypotheses about sentience
A genetic algorithm that searches the space of metaphysical theories instead of testing only the intuitive ones.
Early ideaMedical decision support systems
An early idea: how models of sentience could inform the measurement of suffering in clinical settings.
Articles
The ideas behind GaiaBasic were developed in a series of articles by Manu Herrán (in Spanish, most with English versions).
Simulation of philosophical hypotheses about sentience
The founding proposal: a system for understanding and evaluating metaphysical theories of sentience through simulation.
2019What kinds of element make up reality?
Information, ideas, consciousness and identity, plus the operators will, motivation and transcendence.
2014 · 2018A map of the metaphysical theories of sentience
Nine questions (who, what, how much, when, where, nature, origin, purpose, availability) that place any theory on a map.
2018 · 2024A map of theories of consciousness, sentience and identity
Four families of theories (God, Particle, Emergence, Matrix) and the moral circle each one implies.
2019How to demonstrate sentience
Analogy, abduction, and testing theories by simulation and prediction.
2019Simulation of pleasure and orgasm
Three ways to represent sentience in a simulation, and an artificial-life design for the evolution of pleasure.
Collaborate
These projects need philosophers who can state theories precisely, scientists who know what the evidence says, and programmers who can turn both into code. Start a discussion on GitHub.
Created by Manu Herrán
GaiaBasic is a personal project by Manu Herrán, founder of Sentience Research. Since 2014 he has written about consciousness, sentience, identity and the metaphysical theories that try to explain them, and about how to reduce the suffering of every being that can feel.