From 4/21 to 4/27 2014, Tuscon, AZ was host to the 20th annual Towards a Science of Consciousness conference hosted in Arizona for the 10th time. This place is seriously amazing. Not that I have been to any other conferences but according to those in attendance, there is no place in the world quite like it.
The week was full of incredible speakers from many walks of life: philosophers, physicists, biologists, computational neuroscientists, psychologists, engineers, brain-computer interfacers and psychedelic researchers. And a good number of lay people like me. You would be hard pressed to find a place with more interesting hallway conversations. Up and down every corridor of the University Marriott Hotel could be overheard facts about the quantum nature of reality, debates over the mind-body problem, ideas about how meditation might work and in (slightly) more hushed tones, stories of psychedelic consciousness expansion.
The conference started early each day: 8:30 or 9:30 and talks were being presented, the breaks in between only long enough to quickly grab food, coffee, and have a quick conversation about who or what god was, whether or not free will exists, and how long it would be before the mind could be uploaded. In the afternoon there were concurrent talks: people split in to different rooms depending on what research they wanted to see and afterward swapped stories with their new friends and connections. In the evenings were more artistic presentations: Deepak Chopra led a group meditation, a few films were shown, and the less famous people gave poster presentations. On Friday a few very talented individuals did hilarious standup about consciousness and philosophy (believe me it can be done)! And every night there was an open-bar party for the VIP's in the hotel's hospitality suite. Even though I wasn't a VIP, it was never hard to find a way in.
I will do more posts about the conference as I reread my notes. I highly recommend the next one in Sweden and Tucson every other year after that. If you like interesting people and want to understand the world a bit better this is the place for you.
