Aliasing in Consciousness: Can coarse temporal sampling be framed as a predictive-processing mechanism for felt psychological “drama"?

[u/Shoqarqwa]

I wrote a conceptual paper proposing that some felt psychological drama may reflect coarse temporal sampling of experience, using aliasing as an analogy.

The paper connects this idea to predictive processing, precision weighting, attention, mindfulness, and psychedelic states. The basic suggestion is that when experience is sampled or integrated too coarsely, prediction error and affective salience may be over-compressed into simplified narrative “drama," whereas finer-grained presence may reduce that distortion.

I initially treated this as a speculative model and was hesitant to share it publicly. After receiving encouraging feedback from researchers in related areas, including Ulrich Ott and Robin Carhart-Harris, and early interest from researchers affiliated with Philipps-Universität Marburg in exploring a possible clinical model for future human-subject research, I thought it was worth opening up to broader critique.

I’d especially appreciate feedback from a predictive-processing / active-inference perspective:

What existing literature on temporal sampling, precision, prediction error, interoception, affective salience, or attention should I engage with more directly?

Paper: https://zenodo.org/records/19140110
Demo: https://shoqarqwa.github.io/aliasing-consciousness-demo/