The Giants Shoulder #105 Robin Carhart-Harris: Your Consciousness Exists Between Order and Chaos | Entropic Brain
18 snips
Mar 31, 2026 
Robin Carhart-Harris, leading psychedelic researcher and founder of Imperial College’s Centre for Psychedelic Research, explains the Entropic Brain idea. He discusses how psychedelics scramble brain models, entropy as a consciousness marker, why the default mode network holds the ego together, differences between DMT and 5‑MeO‑DMT effects, and risks of commercializing psychedelic medicine.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Consciousness Exists On An Order To Disorder Spectrum
- Consciousness maps to a dimension from order to disorder where entropy indexes the size of phenomenal experience.
- Robin proposes brain entropy as the best biomarker for consciousness, with more unpredictable activity correlating with richer subjective states.
Teenage Bad Trip Sparked A Scientific Career
- A teenage LSD trip that was mostly unpleasant launched Robin's lifelong curiosity and academic path into psychedelics.
- The intense, jarring experience left him in awe and motivated study in biology, psychology, psychoanalysis and psychopharmacology.
Decreased Blood Flow Is A Misleading Readout
- Early imaging showed decreased cerebral blood flow under psilocybin but that was likely a vasoconstriction artefact, not reduced neuronal activity.
- Electrophysiology shows neurons become more excitable and brain signals more chaotic, supporting the entropic interpretation.