In general—sampling day 5: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the fifth sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.

Amber's samples:

• Sample 5.1 [0:32]: [Amber was reviewing PowerPoint slides while studying for a class. Just before the beep, Amber noticed that she had crossed out the words "next slide"]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was wondering why she had crossed out "next slide"—this wondering was specific [the center of this wondering was about why she had crossed out "next slide." It’s not merely that she was wondering why "next slide" had been crossed out], and present without words or via any other symbols, images, or hearings. [This is a textbook example of unsymbolized thinking.]
• Sample 5.2 [2:57]:[Amber was watching Law and Order SVU. In the scene, the main character (Olivia) had gotten a cut on her neck, and Fin was pressing a napkin to the cut to stop the bleeding. Just before and during the beep, Olivia and Fin continued to talk]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was seeing a still image of Fin holding the napkin on Olivia’s cut. [In reality, the scene involved movement—the characters were moving their mouths and talking, for instance—but at the moment of the beep, Amber’s experience was a still seeing of Olivia and Fin. The experience was of watching TV—not of seeing an image. [This is an example of creative seeing: experienced as seeing the external world, but what is seen does not correspond to the external world.]
• Sample 5.3 [13:08]: [Amber was watching Law and Order SVU, a scene showing an extreme close up of Elliot’s face]. At the moment of the beep, was watching TV, seeing Elliot’s face as displayed on the TV. Simultaneously, she also heard Elliot talking but she did not hear the words he was saying.
• Sample 5.4 [19:56]: [Amber was reviewing PowerPoint slides about passive diffusion. The current slide showed a red square with black dots and some text (sketched at left)]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was (60%) cognitively contemplating the relationship between passive diffusion and concentration gradients [this was an inchoate, nonspecific contemplation, unlike 5.1, which was specific]. Simultaneously, Amber was (40%) seeing, blurrily, the slide’s red square, but she did not see the black dots or the text (sketched at right). The seeing was literally blurry [that is this was a creative seeing of the real slide].
• Sample 5.5 [32:08]: [Amber was watching Law and Order SVU. At the moment of the beep, the show depicted a person lying in a hospital bed while others spoke off-camera]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was intently looking at the person lying in a hospital bed—that is, she was carried along by the TV but was intently looking at the scene [an almost physical staring-down-ness]. [Nothing else (such as the sounds of the show) was present in her experience.]
• Sample 5.6 [36:35]: [There is a masterclass video about this sample] [Amber was watching Law and Order SVU where Olivia and Elliot were standing next to each other facing their captain, who is offscreen and is speaking. Simultaneously, Amber was holding an iPad in her right hand awkwardly in the crook between her index finger and thumb.] At the moment of the beep, Amber was seeing (75%) the TV except the seen scene was still [in actuality, the scene was in motion]. Simultaneously, Amber felt (10%) weight between her right index finger and thumb [that came from the iPad]. Amber was also simultaneously hearing (5%) the captain’s voice. [This was similar to 5.3: she clearly heard the captain’s voice (it was not merely that she was hearing sound), but she did not hear words or otherwise apprehend what the captain was saying].

In general—sampling day 6: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the sixth sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.

Amber's samples:

• Sample 6.1 [1:19]: [Amber was making lunch and listening to music as she cut an onion. Just before the moment of the beep, Amber had cut the tip from the onion]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was seeing the top part of the onion [that is, Amber was simply seeing the onion she was cutting. Nothing else, including the music, was directly in her experience.]
• Sample 6.2 [9:16]: [Amber was sending a text to a friend. Just before the moment of the beep, she had been searching for an emoji to send with her text, and she perhaps had either found the specific emoji she was looking for or she perhaps was about to or had just clicked on the specific emoji]. At the moment of the beep, this searching/finding was slightly present in her experience. [Nothing else was present in her experience. That is, her experience was slightly more than nothing, but not much more.]
• Sample 6.3 [14:17]: [Amber was putting dishes away]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was walking between sink and cupboard as part of putting away her dishes. This is a repetitive sequence: pick-a-dish > walk > place-a-dish > walk > pick-a-dish > walk > place-a-dish > walk > etc. [It wasn’t clear how much of that was actually before the footlights of consciousness.]
• Sample 6.4 [18:38]: [There is a master-class discussion of this sample.] [Amber was outside walking.] At the moment of the beep, Amber was simultaneously producing and innerly hearing Taylor Swift singing some portion of No Body, No Crime, with the slowed-down so that the rhythm of the song matched Amber’s footsteps [but with no change in the pitch]. [Nothing else was in her experience at the moment of the beep.]
• Sample 6.5 [31:32]: [Amber was watching a video on her iPad while doing the dishes. At the moment of the beep, she grabbed a dish from the dish rack, which caused the other plates/dishes in the rack to shift and clatter]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was (80%) hearing the dishes clatter. Simultaneously, Amber (20%) saw on the iPad a still frame of a man walking [this was a creative seeing: in reality, the man walking continued on in-motion within the video]. [Nothing else was in her experience (including the grabbing-of-the-dish).
• Sample 6.6 [36:31]: [Amber was in conversation that was considering , how much time was necessary for a task ]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was thinking about how long things take. This was a very non-specific wondering [e.g., there was no particular task being wondering about, no specific schedule], and it was present without any words, images, or hearings. [Nothing else (including the conversation) was present.

In general—sampling day 7: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the seventh sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.

Amber's samples:

• Sample 7.1 [0:11]: [Amber was on her phone and had pressed on a hyperlink. The webpage was loading—it was a black screen with a blue progress bar at the top of the screen]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was seeing the loading page—that is, she saw a black screen and a blue progress bar. In particular, she was noticing that the progress bar was exactly halfway.
• Sample 7.2 [2:55]: [Amber was on her computer closing tabs and checking her email. Just before the beep, she had seen that she had received a new email. She was now in the act of heading to new email), moving her cursor diagonally down and to the right across her screen.] At the moment of the beep, she saw the cursor move across the screen [but was not attending to the act of moving it; that is, this was a visual experience].
• Sample 7.3 [7:32]: [Amber was reading and had gotten distracted. Just before the beep, her eyes were darting back to the words on the page where she had left off]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was simultaneously seeing and reading the words "few white lies." By "reading," Amber meant that she was somehow taking these words in in a way that was more than just seeing them, but she was unable to say exactly how. She was somehow taking these three words as a single unit. These seen items were understood to be words, but the words were not semantically meaningful to Amber at the moment.
• Sample 7.4 [15:14]: [Just before the beep, Amber had said aloud the word "alternate" (in which "alternate" was part of a longer sentence.] At the moment of the beep, Amber was (90-95%) feeling stressed, which involved tightness in her chest. Simultaneously, Amber was (5-10%) hearing herself say "alternate" [as though hearing a recording of herself speaking. Notably, this hearing-herself-say-"alternate" was present even though, in reality, she had already finished saying "alternate" by the time the beep sounded]. Amber heard only the word "alternate," not the rest of the sentence.
• Sample 7.5 [26:31]: [Amber was in conversation; she was speaking aloud about a road that’s always closed; she was also rubbing her eye]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was (90-95%) innerly seeing the highway tunnel set into a mountainside with plants/foliage growing around the tunnel’s double entrance. This inner seeing was from a perspective off to the side and above the road [that is, from a perspective that she had never herself had taken]. This inner seeing was clear, in color, with no borders. Simultaneously, Amber was (in her experience, 5-10%) rubbing her eye. Nothing else, including the speaking she was performing] was present.
• Sample 7.6 [34:36]: [There is a master-class discussion of this sample.][Amber was watching Jimmy Kimmel Live. In the show, Jimmy Kimmel was interviewing an actor about the upcoming Top Gun movie; they had just talked about how Tom Cruise had trained himself to hold his breath for 8 minutes and 40 seconds]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was (50%) indeterminately watching TV—the seen TV was directly present to Amber but the content was indeterminate. Simultaneously, Amber was (50%) "thinking about" Tom Cruise and about breath holding. [Amber’s verbal description was of a dry, analytical thought process/recognition, but her body language seemed consonant with a Wow! Amazing! reaction. We tried but didn’t resolve this.]

In general—sampling day 8: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the eighth sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.

Amber's samples:

• Sample 8.1 [0:26]: [Amber had just sighed and she was turning towards a screen she was holding]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was relaxing her shoulders [that is: her shoulders were slumping downwards and was the closing/end of the sigh]. Simultaneously, Amber apprehended the whiteness of the screen [although the screen in reality had text on it, she did not yet apprehend the text]. Nothing else was in her experience at the moment of the beep.
• Sample 8.2 [5:51]: [Amber was walking down her hallway carrying a bunch of items. Her hallway has a light at one end of it (which was on just before the moment of the beep) and at the end of the hallway is a room (which, just before the moment of the beep was dark)]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was (90%) feeling an interruption—a stopping of bodily process/homeostasis/existence. This experience was likely bodily [that is: it was not a feeling or cognitive process]. Simultaneously, Amber was (10%) seeing darkness—a center point of darkness that got lighter moving away from the center [in reality, she was looking ahead to the darkness of the hallway].
• Sample 8.3 [19:17]: [Amber was watching This is Us. At the same time, Amber was being distracted by other noises/things going on in the house]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was (90%) carried along watching TV—she was watching the scene, but the seeing was not that clear. Simultaneously, Amber was aware that she was not focused (on the TV or anything else). There was another 10% of her experience that was somehow not apprehended, likely due to her in-reality distractedness.
• Sample 8.4 [29:36]: [There is a master-class discussion of this sample.][Amber was watching This is Us, a scene involving Kate.] At the moment of the beep, Amber was seeing the two shades of blue—of Kate’s dress and of the color of the walls in the scene—visually noticing that the blues are similar [this was not a cognitive/analytical experience].
• Sample 8.5 [34:32]: [Amber was on the computer: just before the beep, she had selected a group of files.] At the moment of the beep, Amber was seeing the group of highlighted blue bars. This seeing was of plain blue bars [and not of the titles written in text on each bar; that is, this was a creative seeing]. Simultaneously, Amber felt her eyebrows scrunch [in reality, she was scrunching her eyebrows, nose, cheeks, and forehead, a sort of scowl Amber makes when she is thinking; however there was no thinking content in her experience].
• Sample 8.6 [39:15]: [Amber was eating a baked potato, in the process of trying to get sour cream out of a small container that also contained a dollop of whipped butter]. At the moment of the beep, Amber was (approximately 80%) seeing the tines of the fork lift the butter and sour cream underneath it. This seeing was still and exaggeratedly close-up [she saw the fork/butter/sour cream closer than it actually was in reality. There was no background (that is, this was not a figure/ground thing where the figure was central and the ground was present but somehow less vibrant or focused; the surround was simply not seen at all). That is, this was a creative seeing.] Simultaneously, Amber was (20%) tasting baked potato. Nothing about the moving-of-the-fork was present in her experience.

In general—sampling day 9: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the ninth sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.

Amber's samples:

• Sample 9.1 [3:00]: [Amber was eating a California roll; the contents of the roll were being pushed out the back. Just before the beep, Amber had turned the roll to look it]. At the moment of the beep, Amber sees the inner filling spilling out of the roll—this is an accurate) seeing-of-sushi. [Amber’s opening statement suggests that this was a creative seeing that obliterated the ground, but the interview failed to follow up; on that.]
• Sample 9.2 [8:19]: [Amber was in the middle of picking an olive off a slice of pizza]. At the moment of the beep, Amber feels an edge between her right thumb and index finger [in reality, this is the edge of the olive slice, but the olive-ness is not part of her experience]. [Nothing else is present in her experience, including any seeing of the pizza.]
• Sample 9.3 [11:24]: [There is a master-class discussion of this sample.][Amber had been watching The Office with her dad, who had asked Amber why Jim and Pam’s daughter was named Cece. Amber had explained that the name was inspired by Jenna Fisher’s real-life niece. Just prior to the beep, Amber had said "niece" (the last part of a longer sentence, something like "It was Jenna Fisher’s niece," but Amber did not recall the entire sentence); Amber was also in the middle of eating ramen]. At the moment of the beep, Amber sees (70%) her dad, a seeing disrupted by the seeing of ramen noodles. She sees her dad sitting in a chair [she sees a freeze-frame, whereas, in reality, her dad was making small movements]. [As Amber lifts a chopstick of ramen noodles towards her mouth,] she sees ramen enter her field of view from the bottom, disrupting her seeing of her dad. [The disruption is not merely a transition from an experience with one figure to an experience with another figure; instead, the ramen disrupts the creatively still seeing of the dad.] It was a disruptive visual transition, [but Amber did not affectively respond to the disruption]. [She sees just the ramen noodles enter her vision, not the chopsticks that held the noodle (even though the chopsticks were there to be seen from her perspective.] [This this was two creative seeings: a still seeing of her dad, and a chopsticks-less seeing of the ramen.] Simultaneously, 30% the word "niece" is present without any semantic/definitional meaning (it is understood as being a word, but with no connections to the context). [That is, "niece" is not understood to be the last word of a sentence, and the description of a particular person or relationship, etc. Amber’s experience is of the bare word "niece."] [Moreover, none of the previous content/words of her just elapsed, spoken-aloud sentence is experienced at the moment of the beep].
• Sample 9.4 31:32]: [Amber was walking to unplug her iPad from its charger. In reality, the iPad was in a pink case that had two feet (half-inch black circles) on the case (it originally had four feet, but two had fallen off), and the iPad had been charging upside down (so that the charging cable was at the top) and was leaning half against the wall while the other half was hanging out past the edge of the wall]. At the moment of the beep, Amber sees her iPad leaning against the wall. [This is experienced as the seeing of an existing object—but the seen iPad differs from the actual iPad in at least four ways: first, she sees the iPad with four feet rather than the two it actually has); second, she sees the iPad straight up and down against the wall (rather than leaning against the wall); third, she sees the iPad leaning against a continuous wall (rather than the iPad straddling the edge of a doorway opening; and fourth, she sees basically a pink rectangle rather than the curved edges of the actual iPad.]
• Sample 9.5 [46:51]: [Amber had pasted a google drive URL into the search bar of her computer’s internet browser. Just before the beep, as the page was launching, Amber began to unintentionally read the URL]. At the moment of the beep, Amber is reading "drive.google." Amber is somehow reading the entire phrase [not sequentially: drive-dot-google], without comprehension [that is, the reading is just the words, without any semantic meaning] and is present without any innerly or externally spoken hearing or speaking. Simultaneously, Amber’s attention is focused on the word "drive"—this is a mental experience [not visual, innerly spoken, etc.], and "drive" is present without any semantic meaning.
• Sample 9.6 [54:16]: [Amber was on a FaceTime call.] At the moment of the beep, Amber is (90%) intentionally blocking out things competing for her attention so that eventually something will be her quite narrow focus (at the moment she does not know what that is). This is an active process [it is not merely that one thing is naturally or effortlessly becoming the figure of her experience. It is that she is actively eliminating things so that eventually something will be the figure of her experience]. Simultaneously, Amber was (10%) seeing an indeterminate picture on her phone—she sees a vague image of a person on her phone screen as well as the body of her phone [but did not see her hand holding the phone, nor the background behind her hand, and so on].

In general—sampling day 10: All DES interviews are some combination of iterative training (so that future sampling days can be more skillful) and description of experience. The aim of the tenth sampling interview is a combination of experience description and iterative training.

Amber's samples:

• Sample 10.1 [1:36]: [Amber was starting to say "sometimes," which was referencing a joke in a video that they had watched a few minutes before where someone says, "sometimes, my genius is frightening"]. At the moment of the beep, Amber experiences herself as (90%) speaking "sometimes" in a preparatory way. [The beep interrupted Amber in the middle of preparatory saying "sometimes" ("som—BEEP"), but her experience was of the entire saying of "sometimes." Moreover, her experience was of "sometimes" and did not involve the rest of the phrase, nor did involve saying "sometimes" to another person: this experience was simply of Amber silently saying as if out loud "sometimes" regardless of the presence of the other. It was as if she were saying "sometimes" in preparation for actually saying "sometimes, my genius is frightening" at the appropriate time in a conversation.] Simultaneously, Amber is (10-%) smiling—she directly apprehends the physical sensation of smiling.
• Sample 10.2 [11:59]: [Amber and her friend were playing Minecraft Dungeons. Just before and at the moment of the beep, Amber was slouching and bobbing her leg as she watched her friend navigate the settings menu of the game. Amber had just critically/frustratedly said "what are you doing?!" out loud to her friend]. At the moment of the beep, Amber is impatient—a mental, affective experience. Simultaneously—and as a part of the impatience—the words "what are you doing" are present in her experience [but are not spoken, heard, or seen, and do not involve the critical/frustrated tone/bite that was part of her spoken-aloud speaking]. Simultaneously, Amber is (5%) seeing the maroonish-brown screen—a (creative) simplification of what is actually on the screen [in reality, the screen has a maroonish-brown background with other colorized boxes (i.e., the game’s settings), but Amber does not see anything besides maroonish-brown].
• Sample 10.3 [28:57]: [Amber was scrolling through her Twitter timeline, which at the time was displaying a post from Zendaya that included a picture of Mariska Hargitay. At the side of the post is the small circular "profile" picture of Zendaya.] At the moment of the beep, Amber sees a gray circle [this is a creative seeing of the profile picture: Amber has "obliterated" Zendaya from the picture and does not see her at all, and instead sees the circle of the background gray (that is, Amber has extended the background gray to fill the entire circle including where Zendaya’s head actually is)]. [Simultaneously, the screen is displaying a picture of Hargitay from the knees up wearing a coat, but in the process of scrolling, the top quarter of the picture had been cut-off, leaving Hargitay only from the neck downward). At the moment of the beep, Amber sees the bottom two/thirds of the picture of Hargitay, which itself is three-quarters on the screen [that is, Amber is creatively seeing a truncated part of an already truncated image (thus, Amber’s seeing does not correspond to what is displayed to her)]. Amber is focused mostly on the bottom flare of Hargitay’s coat. The seeing of the gray circle is slightly more prominent in Amber’s experience [Amber noted that her attention was shifting from the picture of Hargitay to the gray circle at the moment of the beep].
• Sample 10.4 [41:48]: [Amber was passing her phone to someone to show them a video.]. At the moment of the beep, Amber sees her phone in the bottom-left corner of her visual field moving away from Amber. She sees the phone’s screen—a red field with black circles (which is a creative seeing of the actual phone). [The circles are a simplification of the actual display, which actually are displaying an array of circles with text on them.] Amber sees red field/black circles from an extreme angle.
• Sample 10.5 [50:27]: [Amber had Family Guy playing on TV in the background while she was working on her computer. Leading up to the moment of the beep, Amber was in the process of switching from one incognito Google Chrome tab to another tab]. At the moment of the beep, Amber hears (65%) "you have a baby?!" spoken by a female Family Guy character. [As a fact of the universe, this is actually a delayed hearing—in reality, "you have a baby?!" had been spoken a second or two before the moment of the beep, but Amber’s experience was of hearing "you have a baby?!" spoken at the moment of the beep)]. Amber hears this with comprehension. Simultaneously, Amber sees (35%) the thin gray portion of space above a single tab. She sees only part of one tab [likely only the top part of the tab] (even though there are three or four open tabs. Thus this seeing is a creative simplification of what is actually displayed on the screen. That is: Amber does not, in any way see the rest of the chrome window, the other tabs she had open, and so on].
• Sample 10.6 [1:01:35]: [Amber was watching a Youtube video on TV about an artist promoting features of a card game he had developed and was now selling. Just prior to (and during) the beep, there were animations of creatures that the artist had made for the game popping up on the screen]. At the moment of the beep, Amber sees a gold bug-like thing [she does not see anything else, such as the artist, the rest of the animated created, or anything in the background. They have been obliterated]. Thus this is a creative seeing.