QRI Research Revealed: From Theory to Consciousness Engineering (2026 Fundraiser)

https://qri.org/donate

The Qualia Research Institute is fundraising $1.5M to carry out its 2026 research program. This is the video of our fundraiser presentation delivered on November 20th 2025 at the 16th floor of San Francisco's Frontier Tower. We make the case that for cutting-edge consciousness research and suffering reduction initiatives, QRI is a top organization in terms of cost-effectiveness.

In this video, Cube Flipper presents on QRI's think tank approach to psychedelic research over the past few years, including our work on modeling phenomenology using principles from non-linear optics and the launching of heart.qri.org. Andrés Gómez Emilsson then covers QRI's current most promising research paradigms, recent empirical findings on characterizing dynamic system changes from pharmacological agents, and the vision for the organization's strategic plan through 2026.

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Endorsements of QRI:

Scott Alexander: "I do think that if you are going to understand consciousness, you need this really rare combination of being brilliant and erudite and focused and extremely crazy. And I think that QRI is in this exact sweet spot."

Christine Peterson: "There is nobody out there who is doing this kind of work and it's hard to imagine something more important... We are so lucky to be alive today, right now. Think of what we're going to learn over the next 10 or 20 years."

Daniel Ingram: "Did anybody when you saw differential equations feel like you were looking at the mathematics of God? ... It seemed a dream that you could possibly apply this to consciousness. And yet... these fundamental principles should so cleanly map to so many of the aspects of psychedelic and meditative experience is just mind-boggling."

Matthew Baggott: "We need people who can do self-experimentation and be just very careful in how they're observing and how they make formal models. And I believe that is the way forward. If you just look at Nobel prize winners, it is totally overrepresented by self-experimenters. So this is how we're going to get there, so please give them all the support you can – it's going to make a difference."

Balázs Szigeti: "I see QRI as something [...] like this weird, eclectic, outside of the system, cool little thing – and I'm not sure where it's going, but it's going somewhere where it's going to be I think freaking awesome"

Shamil Chandaria: “QRI is a creative and first principles consciousness research group. Their original and pioneering approach is opening new territory in the field and is exactly the kind of fresh and insightful research that is needed. I always feel inspired by their ideas and have an intuition it will be these bold ideas that will help to make genuine progress in understanding the nature of consciousness.”

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What's happening at QRI:

We're moving our theoretical work (Coupling Kernels, Neural Field Annealing, Valence Structuralism) into practical applications: consciousness engineering, incubating startups, and working on alignment problems. This video shows data-driven empirical validation of the Coupling Kernel paradigm with solid preliminary results. Expect QRI in 2026 to deliver peer reviewed papers validating core research threads and concrete technologies that ease pain, enhance baseline wellbeing, and facilitate access to therapeutic extremes of positive valence.

Timeline:

0:01 – Introduction & Christine Peterson
5:08 – Scott Alexander
6:34 – Matthew Baggott.
8:32 – Cube Flipper
1:08:52 – Daniel Ingram
1:14:09 – Balázs Szigeti
1:16:10 – Chris Percy
1:30:22 – Andrés Gómez Emilsson
3:00:11 – Q&A Session
3:13:29 – Community Introductions

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About QRI:

QRI is a nonprofit think tank and R&D lab studying consciousness. We run retreats studying high-energy states (https://heart.qri.org) where we rapidly prototype experiments and tools. Our approach incorporates physics, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and psychophysics.

Careers: https://qri.org/careers
HEART: https://heart.qri.org/get-involved
Oscilleditor: https://qri.org/oscilleditor
ClusterFree (Alfredo Parra) - Advocating for DMT as cluster headache treatment: https://clusterfree.org
CF-Debate (Chris Percy) - Digital sentience debate quiz: https://cf-debate.com/quiz/

Thank you to Taru Hirvonen, Till Holzapfel, Scry and Symmetric Vision for their work on prototypes of our Tactile Visualizer, and to Emil Hall, Taru Hirvonen, and Symmetric Vision for their development efforts on Oscilleditor.

https://QRI.org |   / discord  
Blogs: https://qualiacomputing.com/ | https://smoothbrains.net/
X: @QualiaRI | @algekalipso | @cube_flipper | @qualiacomputer | @chris_percy | @alfredoparrah | @ClusterFree_
Substack: substack.com/@andrsgmezemilsson