The Qualia Research Institute is a nonprofit studying consciousness from the inside out — building toward a precise, even mathematical account of qualia and valence (why some states feel good or bad), and mapping the full state-space of possible experience. Co-founded by Andrés Gómez Emilsson — whose Qualia Computing | Revealing the computational properties of consciousness is the wider body of work, and who coined “neural annealing” — and Michael Edward Johnson. Equal parts contested theory (the Symmetry Theory of Valence) and real empirical work: EEG studies, psychophysics tooling, psychedelic phenomenology. The most serious attempt I’ve seen to treat psychonautics as a science.
