The inaugural Fools' Research Lab will investigate how embodied practices — contact improvisation, circling, constellations — shape human mental representational dimensionality and geometry in the face of highly complex moral and political scenarios, in contrast with purely verbal interventions.
…and explore the implications for the (in)adequacy of verbal constitutional alignment of large language models.
"By paying a certain kind of attention, you can humanise or dehumanise, cherish or strip of all value. By a kind of alienating, fragmenting and focal attention, you can reduce humanity – or art, sex, humour, or religion – to nothing."
― Iain McGilchrist
"What we attend to, and how we attend to it, alters what we find."
― Iain McGilchrist
Embodied practice · getting weird · going meta on the getting weird · not resolving the contradictions · co-created sessions · good food · octopus cuddles
We are selecting for a group whose collective experience spans this entire space. Somatic practitioners, relational facilitators, cognitive scientists, AI alignment researchers, artists, fools. The programme will be co-created. The research questions are ours; the sessions are yours.
1 – 5 April 2026 (starting on Fools' Day)
Where
Fools' Valley · Near Lisbon, Portugal
Format
Residential · Invite-only · ~15 participants
Cost
Daily fee €20–60 depending on accommodation and means
3 meals a day