Yuval Noah Harari

" This is the first time in history that we have no idea what the world will look like in 10 years"

Great interview with Lex Fridman.

Numerous great books:

• "What is suffering" rather than "meaning."
• Observe what is happening when you observe suffering 
• Very good advice on mindfulness
• Deep insight into the role of stories in the way we see the world
• Insight into where AI is going and how it's surprising even though he's been writing about it
• Fear of death and how we die a bit when we lose anything
• People expect a story to answer fear of death

Your Brain is a Virtual Reality Machine

 

Our ability to experience "virtual" worlds is not something new. Evolution has provided it as basic equipment along with our opposing thumbs. It's not a bug. It's a feature.

On the most fundamental level, we are constantly experiencing the future and the past: the flow of time. This ability is essential to what we call purposeful behavior. We love to debate whether or not other animals have this ability and to what degree, but it's clear that we have it in spades. It is essential to who we are as humans.

I am fascinated by how the brain produces the virtual world that we call "consciousness". It turns out to be quite a trick.

• Sense information arrives at different times. For example, sound and smell arrive with very little processing, but virtual information goes through massive complex analysis. Yet we experience it all at the "same time".
• We experience the decision to move after the brain has sent signals to move.
• Our experience slightly precedes what is going on in the real world - it is a prediction of what is happening. In the words of the Great One: I skate not to where the puck is but where the puck will be.

Careful observation of the phenomenon we call "consciousness" provides endless examples of how we are constantly bombarded with stunningly immersive "virtual" experiences. The smell of apple pie. The voice of a loved one on the phone. A spider crawling on our leg. Our brains instantly and effortlessly supply "virtual" senses to "enhance" the smallest trickle of "real" data.

On top of this, we structure reality into stories and "explanations". We are the story-telling ape. The good stories are embellished and handed on over generations, eventually knitting themselves into systems called "mythology" and "religion". We are quite willing to believe that we live on after death or that there is an old man in the sky behind everything that happens. We love our stories so much that we forget they are "just" stories.

Our brains are made to be fooled. We don't need computers to be plunged into an alternate reality. We can open a book and read: "Call me Ishmael" and suddenly we are whalers. We read "In the beginning" and we walk in the garden with Adam and Eve. If I may be allowed to speculate a bit, it seems that hearing these words rather than reading them creates a more powerful image. In the words of Bishop Pike: "What is too silly to be said can be sung". This points out one essential feature of how we experience virtual worlds: sometimes simplicity is an asset. And worlds that provide auditory input (especially speech) are readily accepted as real. We experience merely visual "worlds" (like a photograph) as "representation" but we are not "immersed".

Finally, in passing, I should note that virtual worlds created by written text must depend on the skill of the reader. Evolution does not provide this skill. It is learned. People vary in their ability to acquire this skill. Similarly, people vary in their ability to be "immersed" in virtual worlds. To some, the computer-generated worlds of VR remain cartoons. To others, they are instantly "real".

Modern "Virtual Worlds", if they are interesting at all, involves a learning curve that can be almost as daunting as learning to read. This aspect of things is often overlooked by prophets of the "metaverse". People are too lazy, preoccupied, or busy to learn a VR application that is more complicated than, say, Zoom. Those who developed VR "superpowers" will always be a tiny minority.

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P.S. "A Thousand Brains" provides a deep and powerful framework for understanding how the brain creates the rich experience we call consciousness. In particular, it doesn't make a lot of difference where the sensations are coming from. Whatever we know about the real world (in a deeply recursive way) is applicable to another "world" where the sensations are coming from, say, a computer screen.

The Domains of I, M and R

Quick and dirty definitions, to be clarified as we go along:

• R Refers to the "real world". Accepted wisdom is that we have no direct access to R.  It turns out that we actually do have quite a good access to the R domain - the M/R interface, also known as "Science". For the individual, the I domain is tiny compared to the vastness of both M and R. However, with effort and training, it is possible for the individual to open a tiny peephole into R - at least so far as to put to rest the notion that R does not exist at all - that it's all an illusion.
• M Refers to "meme space" or the entire set of ideas, actual and possible. For example, all of Science exists in M, existing uncomfortably with all religions, past present and future. It is everything we know or could know or think we know, possibly including all those things that may be conceivable by some alien intelligence or even "God". M happily accommodates all the wrong ideas and the opposite of every idea.
• I Refers to memes that can be called to working memory. These may be thought of as a subset of M but it's more fruitful to regard the I/M interface as closely analogous to the M/R interface. "Calling up" memes to working memory involves a meme translation. We say we "get" the idea if our translation from a meme m from M to I leaves m unchanged in some way. Or we could say that m will translate to an isomorphic version of m no matter who calls it to working memory. This is a kind of symmetry, which the theory is all about. 

I call the theory that links all this together IMR Symmetry or IMR for short. At bottom, IMR is an extended analogy, asking us to visualize three worlds and ask questions about the interfaces between them. Much of the work consists of cleaning up or ideas about what these three worlds consist of and how we imagine that they communicate.  Advanced warning: many of these ideas will seem counter intuitive unless you "do your homework" and check the references liberally referenced in the text.

• The idea of "self" and "consciousness" are disassembled and put back together into something very different from the common understanding of these ideas.
• The "modern" concept of the "mind" as being an epiphenomenon of something going on in the neurons of our brains is also tossed aside.
• Many of the big philosophical questions, such as "Idealism vs. Realism" are implicitly solved by a new picture of what the mind is and what reality is. This will annoy professional philosophers. Physicists have more to say about this issue, resulting from actually examining the world rather than just thinking about it.
• IMR brings aesthetics, art and science under the same umbrella. This rows against the current fashion of considering such things as fundamentally incompatible ways of experiencing the world. For example, we can find "truth" and "beauty" in all three worlds using very similar criteria.
• My view of the self and consciousness is deeply informed by Zen. By this I don't mean that Zen is "right" but only that Zen is free from many of the misconceptions and fuzzy language that underpins the way most of us talk about the issues under discussion here. Readers not familiar with Zen (or its cousin "mindfulness") may find it worthwhile to take a detour to "wake up" to what they are actually experiencing day to day (the I world).

In line with Frank Wylczek, I take symmetry to be the key to usefully describing the "machinery" in all three domains -- an important criterion for what "works" and what doesn't "work":

• In the I domain, symmetry saves a lot of work by allowing us to work with "chunks" of ideas that don't change when we make "irrelevant" transformations. For example, we have an idea of our house which is the same house from any angle and over a long period of time.
• In the M domain, symmetric ideas have special appeal. For example, we like ideas that apply everywhere and at all times, like Newton's laws of motion. This illustrates the fact that an idea (meme) may be a "good" one (persistent) if it is symmetric but not strictly "right" in that it doesn't always map perfectly to the corresponding phenomena in the R world. "Good" ideas tend to spawn fruitful analogies - that is, they retain many of their essential features when they undergo the "like" transformation.
• Wylczek goes to great lengths to point out that there is enormous real symmetry in the R domain ("real world). In fact, he proceeds by assuming this symmetry then going out to find out if experiments agree with what such symmetry concepts (M world) will predict. A Scientific theory is valid if and only if predictions of the theory is isomorphic with results conducted in the "Real" world.

Dennett helps to free ourselves from thinking that someone must "have" ideas (M domain). As Plato suspected, the world of ideals has a life and existence of its own. We can thank Wylczek for drawing a clear line from Pythagoras to the Standard Model of Physics, illustrating the persistent idea that the world of memes (especially mathematics) is somehow real. For example, the number 321,534,332 has definite real properties even if nobody has ever thought of that particular number.  

Many authors have concentrated on the concept of "working memory" or "attention" as a surrogate for what we call "consciousness". However, when we read about this idea, the impression is created that the contents of "working memory" are somehow conjured up from what is sitting around in the brain (or possibly on the "live" channel to the outside world - the sensations). Here, we take a somewhat more dynamic and open-ended view. For example, 321,534,332 can be conjured up in the brain of the reader as a "chunk" to be divided by two, squared or verified as non-prime. This illustrates that the "chunks" of working memory (consciousness) are constructed on the fly. The brain helps with this process by providing all kinds of tools (What Dennett would call installed subroutines) but it is not correct to say that the mind is entirely an "epiphenomenon" arising in a few billion neurons. If it is an epiphenomenon at all, it arises from M and R through to a process in the brain.

It is worthwhile to come up with a temporary vision of what the M domain looks like. It's vast. it includes:

• Every book ever written or could be written in any language past present or possible.
• Every word in every language, along with their definitions
• All of Science, including all possible Science and all incorrect theory
• All of Religion
• Every possible sensation
• Every possible inference from sensation or theory (the result of any possible experiment)

As the name suggests, I'm temporarily trusting M to be the world of "memes", but I will have a lot to say about memes. They are not created equal. In a way, they fight for survival. In the language of IMR Symmetry, what they "fight for" is the ability to survive through time and through translation (installation) in many different brains (I-worlds). This is a form of symmetry - a form underlies "evolution" in the M-domain, just as Dawkins suspected in 1979 when he coined the term. Hopefully, our discussion of the M-domain will prove to be a contribution to the field of memetics - an attempt to nail down the "meme" concept with some semblance of rigour. 

In Surfaces and Essences, Hofstadter and Sander make a heroic attempt to show the key role of analogy in structuring human thought - in other words, a key role in the structure of M. They show how analogy plays a fundamental role in human language but also more complex structures of ideas, such as Scientific Theory. Our commentary on M will always keep this insight in mind: "Surfaces" provides powerful insight into the kinds of transformation that memes (ideas) can undergo through the process of analogy. Sometimes when we say A is like B, we are saying that A and B are isomorphic - for all intents and purposes, the same thing. This is another way of saying that the analogy transformation from A to B is symmetric. Other analogies are not so "powerful", extracting only a few properties common to A and B. In fact, we can put A and B in the same "category bag" arbitrarily without them sharing any properties at all. "Surfaces" is well worth reading as a brave attempt to map M. Is there more to say about M? I would say, yes. "Surfaces" is about one kind of transformation we can make on a meme. We are left asking about where memes come from in the first place and whether there are other kinds of transformation - especially transformations that claim to be strong mapping to R or "ideas" that can pop up in working memory (I).

As a career systems analyst, I have been particularly interested in the problems we face when mapping "real world" problems into the M-domain of the computer. We need to build a "model" of the real world situation in order to "computerize" decisions that ultimately have effect in R. One key insight in the last 50 years of the discipline is that our models should be, as far as possible, isomorphic with the entities we think exist in R. Strictly speaking, we have a conceptual model m in M that is usually thought of as "being" real. We need a machine version m*of m that is as isomorphic as possible (symmetric) to m. To do this, our model has entities corresponding to "real" things like "persons", properties of persons and transactions between persons. In the early days of computing, our models consisted of thinly disguised pictures of machine operations like "decisions", "calculations" and free-floating "data" such as integers and text. Today, all this is summarized by the Universal Modeling Language (UML). UML itself is a giant meme, which, when installed in the brains of human analysts, allows them to construct conceptual models in M that can be isomorphically mapped to real models in physical machines operating in R. Such models can turn out to have real impact on real people and other objects in R, such as the ability to drive cars in the real world or land real robots on the real planet Mars.

As a computer geek, I think of I-domain as a "virtual machine" simulating in M in the R-world "hardware" of the brain. "Chunks" of M (memes) are called into working memory either directly out of the brain (buffer to M) or "calculated" by programs installed in the brain from M. We can think of the dynamic aspect of I (he flow of consciousness) as a continual calculation - producing on set of "chunks"after another at a rate of a few cycles per second  For those of us who inhabit the "google sphere", we are familiar with the fact that we can "think" about "chunks" that can be instantly called up from the entire universe of human knowledge. In a profound sense, we swim in a world of information that is not somehow encoded in our heads. What I "know" and what "we" know is becoming more and more difficult to sort out. In fact, my model has no place for what "I" know - only what "I" am able to bring to mind at any particular moment. "I" am a virtual machine running in R, simulating M. I don't think of M as static either. Millions of people are churning away in M to bring new ideas to the surface. As Dennett has shown, ideas can float to the surface and acquire a life of their own even if nobody "has" the idea. Ultimately, the "affordances" of R (what is possible) strongly effect what "bubbles up" in M, so ultimately R has a strong influence on what happens in M. In particular, the process of evolution is a result of R "thinking" or conducting a program of R&D without anyone "having" the ideas behind life itself - ideas we find in "M". I and M also have their "affordances". Wittgenstein said that what cannot be said must be passed over in silence (commenting on what can arise in the language domain - part of M). We know that the brain cannot deal with more than a limited number (less than 10) of "chunks" at any one time.

In subsequent postings, I will flesh out the ideas of the I, M and R domains along with the idea that we best understand the relationship between these worlds in terms of symmetry. The analogy is with the success that such projects have had in reconciling the part of M called "Science" with experiments that confirm that our "Scientific" ideas map very well to the real world. The flagship example of this mapping is the Standard Theory of Quantum Mechanics, which so far maps to the real world to a precision of 12 decimal places or more. The success of this model has come in large part from the concept that the most useful ideas ("laws" in M) are the ones that are symmetric in some sense because it turns out that reality itself (R) is governed by symmetric principles. I claim that the most useful "chunks" to hold in memory are those that are in some sense "symmetric" and that the most useful ideas in "M" also have this property.

The Blind Spot

There is one place in our field of vision where we are blind, due to the "Rube Goldberg" design of our eyes. Octopuses have better eyes (presumably "designed" by a more skilful God, but don't get me started). Even though there is a patch of our retina devoted to passing the optical nerve through the retina, we don't "see" the hole. Our brains paint it over with what "ought" to be there.

We are born with another huge blind spot. We have a full, 360 degree view of the world, in which we are free to explore and move around, but at the very centre is a hollow hole. We seem to be peering out of the hole but cannot see inside. We know that what is really inside this hole is 3 pounds of gooey meat that is somehow responsible for everything we see, but, just like the optic nerve that penetrates our retina, this bundle of nerves thoroughly hides its presence.

We are all like this, all looking out from hollow heads. It is incredibly difficult to speak of this inner void. Language is based on analogy and there is nothing "like" being conscious. All we can do is talk around it, circling it like a black hole whose mysterious interior is forever beyond what we can say about the world

This was Carl Jung's method. You can read all of his writings about the workings of the mind and come out with a feeling that something has been said, but really, he just wanders round and round the "black hole". Hofstader, in "I Am a Strange Loop", does exactly the same thing. Hofstader comes closer to Jung by being an articulate witness to the phenomenon of consciousness from a first person viewpoint. Even so, we must still await some brilliant experiment that allows us to see and feel how brains create the "hollow head" effect.

In my own experience, I have had hints that mindfulness meditation may provide such a glimpse. Zen maintains that I don't have thoughts and sensations, I am thoughts and sensations. It is one thing o accept this idea, it is another to experience it. This seems to lay he groundwork for the ultimate vision of myself as I am "really" embedded in the world.

Even so, it must be said that such an experience, while enlightening and fascinating, may not have any more practical impact that verifying the existence of my ocular blind spot. After all, my brain has evolved over millions of years to hide this detail of perception from me. For everyday purposes, I can probably get away with knowing I have a brain and that the "hollow head" illusion is just the way my brain operates.

What, if anything, is the "self"?

What is the "self"?

Among proponents of mindfulness and Zen, it is common to say that the "self" is an illusion - that the "self" does not really exist. Such talk leads us immediately into paradox, but Zen loves paradox. Vast amounts of ink are spilled in discussions about how, if the self doesn't exist, who or what it is that knows it doesn't exist. The self seems to be a matter of daily experience. Saying it's an illusion is little more than an attention-getting opinion or a device to sell books.

To me, the problem seems to be a shortcoming of language.

I just read a treatment of this issue that purported to solve it all by claiming that the self is a verb not a noun. This poor individual was trying to tackle one of the hardest problems in the world using his tenuous grip on the grammar he learned in school. He dimly perceives that the "self" is not an ordinary "thing", so he concludes it must be the only other kind of grammatical entity he remembers: a verb. As an amateur philosopher, he imagined that the problem can be solved by re-defining a few terms and then solving the whole issue by talking about it.

If he had been awake in High School physics, he might have heard about other types of "thing" - such as force fields and processes. Since the "self" is obviously connected in some way with living human beings, and life itself is clearly a process, it makes sense that the mind (the self) must be come kind of process. The problem with that is that there are millions of types of process and probably billions more awaiting discovery. Calling the "self" a process doesn't do much for us, but it does free us from "thing think", such as the image that "we" are a "soul" that somehow drives our bodies around durning life and migrates to another plane of existence when our body dies.

My own personal experience is with the "process" described by a computer program. Since very few people are aware of the power of modern computer languages. Let me briefly digress to describe how they work:

• "things" are described as "objects" which can be totally abstract or perhaps an abstract representation of a "thing", such as a person or a bank account. To control an ICBM, the missile would be represented and controlled as a "thing".
• Objects have behaviours that can be as simple as adding numbers together or or as complex as driving down the road without hitting anything
• Objects have a "state", which can be thought of as a kind of memory that influences behaviour. For example, a bank account with zero balance will respond with an "insufficient funds" message if asked to transmit money to another account.
• Objects send messages to each other, which can be instructions, "inputs", "outputs" etc.

While these ideas are almost childishly simple, the elements of object oriented architecture can be used to describe a stunning range of "things" in the world, especially the "things" we build. There are architectural rules and "best practices" that describe how to create design objects that are fairly robust descriptions of "things" that are likely to exist in the "real world" or at least ideas that are "orthogonal" (describing the world with a minimum of non-overlapping concepts).  The idea is to extend the language in a way that the "words" have a meaning outside of the context that lead to them being invented in the first place. This creates such things as the vast zoo of objects underlying the Java language - the language of the Internet. But I digress ...

When you send a line of text (object) to Google, thousands of messages are sent between objects in Google computers, chatting back and forth, to assemble a big long list of links (another type of object) that are displayed on your computer (another object). You can click on one of them (a message), to trigger a server somewhere (another object) to send a message back to you (a web page object).

The underlying language and architecture we are dealing with is incredibly powerful - far more powerful in some ways that any human language. It can, for example, completely describe the operation of a machine that will land on Mars and proceed to explore the place.

On the other hand, we must not slip into thinking that "object oriented" computer languages can describe anything that the human mind can conceive. But we can go a long way to describe the operation of the brain in object oriented terms. For example, neurons are "stacked" in a pattern endlessly repeated in the grey matter of the brain. At least to the first approximation, these "stacks" can be simulated using object-oriented architecture. 

Think of it this way. Suppose the "self" is somehow "like" a giant conventional machine, like a jet aircraft. Now imagine that someone wants to explain this machine in a giant essay. It's easy to see that words will fall short of the task - you need blue prints, graphs, engineering diagrams, demonstrations and a lot of training just to understand any of it. Words will just not cut it. In fact, the more words you use, the less likely it is that the description will make any sense. The human mind is, by definition, exactly as complex as anything anyone can ever possibly know. Any non-trivial description of the operation of one mind, let alone the interactions between multiple minds can be expected require a few powerful descriptive conceptual tools that require specialized knowledge to use.

Chimpanzees can make tools out of twigs and have probably done so for a million years. They will continue to do so for another million years. But they will never make a telescope out of twigs. Philosophers pretend to discuss the most difficult problems of existence using ordinary words, the bluntest of descriptive tools and the oldest tools available to human beings. In fact, to me, their entire dialogue seems to be about re-defining and mis-using words. They are paid by the word and the more they add to the store of words, the less they describe anything in a useful way. But I digress ...

From the examples of twigs and jet transports, it should be noted that even sophisticated technical tools of description don't cover all we need to know or describe about our subject. For example, many of the aircraft components are made from special alloys using sophisticated manufacturing techniques. Awkwardly, we are not always sure why some alloys have the properties they do. They just do. We are quite sure that the same is true of the mind - it's not just a machine processing information. It's also a chemical reaction of nasty complexity and, of course, it's alive, meaning that its biological nature must be factored in to any useful description of its operation.

Having said that, allow me, for a moment, to imagine that the "self" is an "object" in the sense that a running computer program is an "object". I imagine the "self" as a "program" running in the brain, just like the operating system runs (most of the time) in your computer. It's a process, but a special kind of process. This is a way of thinking of the self as a kind of machine, but a very sophisticated machine. We can then ask a few things about what's going on a "self".

• It's easy to see that sensations are messages received by the senses of the body
• Memories are part of the "state" of the self
• Actions are output messages

That's all pretty obvious, but it gets interesting when you start to ask about what kinds of "things" are "ideas", "beliefs", "intentions", "regrets"  and "thoughts". Those are obviously coming into the mind and popping out of it and running around inside it without obvious external signs. There are very good reasons to suspect that "ideas" cannot be reduced to the kind of formalism that we'd like. The closest we have come so far is the meme, an interesting analogue of the gene. Since meme theory originated in 1976, progress in "memetics" has resembled philosophy more than physics.

In this little note, I don't intend to nail down exactly what it is that the mind "contains" or works on: only to suggest that this metaphor of the mind (the self) is much more productive and probably closer to reality than saying the self is an illusion or a "verb" or a "soul".

We are also free to ask about what aspects of the mind are not covered by this metaphor. For me, the most glaring omission is the fact that human minds work in huge assemblies called "societies" and all the "thoughts" running through individual human minds run through the entire society. It seems to me that interactions that add up to culture are not so easy to think of in object oriented terms. To begin with, machines don't hate, mate, have children, die and fear death.  They are not honest or dishonest, good or evil.

Come to think of it, they don't have theories about their own programming ...

Zen

I'm very new to Zen, so what follows is an account of my personal search for what Zen is all about. I am not alone in using the term "Zen" rather loosely to refer to an aesthetic outlook and a constellation of related ideas that include "Mindfulness". As it happens, Mindfulness itself is a rather fuzzy concept, more or less identical to Zen in some minds (such as Siegel, see below), but used in such a wide context for so many different "therapies" and mental disciplines as to be almost meaningless. Everybody seems to think of themselves as "mindful", rendering discussion of the subject pointless. I, therefore, prefer to use the term "Zen", which is also fuzzy but tends to produce more interesting discussions. In passing, it should be noted that no term is fuzzier than "Christianity", but Zen followers do not go to war to defend their own definitions. 

It turns out to be tricky to define Zen. Wikipedia gives the "official" definition and history, which describe a religion/philosophy with roots in Buddhism and Taoism. What is missing from such definitions is the total transformation of Zen once it arrived in the "West". Such treatments also tend to portray Zen as a collection of doctrines, like Christianity or Islam. Zen's emphasis on actual minute-by-minute experience and the widespread effort to marry Zen theory to Brain Science makes Zen a completely different animal from the "religions". Zen is characterized by an intense interest in what is real, whereas "religion" tends to bury reality in interpretation and sponsor "suspension of disbelief".

Respecting its Taoist roots, Zen places little trust in doctrine or philosophy, yet you could fill a library with commentary on Zen philosophy. Respecting its Buddhist roots, Zen emphasizes that suffering is often (if not always) self-inflicted. Also from Buddhism, we see an emphasis on compassion and acceptance.  This aspect of Zen accounts for the acceptance of Zen theory of mind as the ground of "Mindfulness" therapies, which target a very broad range of self-inflicted suffering.

Zen takes strong steps to make "Christian" ideas of self-forgiveness, lack of judgment, personal responsibility a matter of constant daily experience, but has little to say about Christian theology except for its general skepticism of theory and philosophy in general. For a Christian audience, it is important to note that Jesus was not one to accept the prevailing circumstances. Jesus was not a Zen master and Zen masters are not inclined to be part of vigorous social movements (much less wars). In my mind, this represents a fundamental tension between the two outlooks. Zen does not preach, does not dispute, does not "convert".

For a Christian who is drawn to Zen perhaps the most eloquent bridge between Zen and Christian "activism" can be found in the Prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is discord, harmony;

Where there is error, truth;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

or ..

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; 

courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

Stripped of its reference to divine beings (the "spooky stuff"), the sentiment in both of these prayers is 100% zen. The key is "balance", which is a key in both Buddhism and Taoism. In Zen it symbolized this way:

As a meditative practice, Zen is a discipline that seeks self-awareness as a stepping stone (a big one) to wider awareness, especially of the present moment, pushing away thoughts of the past (regrets, blaming, self-justification, ...) and the future (plans, fears ..) as well as all "my" concerns (how "I" was treated, how others see "me", what to do with "my" stuff).  

"Orthodox" Zen writers ("masters") tend to hold out the promise of enlightenment, sometimes only after years of practice. More modern writers (Western) tend to hold out the short-range benefits: peace of mind, focus, relief from self-inflicted mental anguish of all types. Western "scientific" discussion places emphasis on relief from stress. It is increasingly common to see Zen doctrine and brain scans discussed in the same document.

Zen seems to be compatible with my other "baked in" prejudice - Skepticism. Skepticism basically formalizes and promulgates what you might call the "Scientific Mind-Set" -- evidence-based theory about the way the world works. In a way, Zen is even more skeptical than the Skeptics, since it regards human ideas and theories as themselves rather ephemeral in nature, as compared to direct experience of reality. However, it's easy to over-emphasize the difference. To get along in the world, the Zen practitioner needs to accept pretty much the same world we all live in. Even so, in his deepest heart, he suspects that we know nothing at all about the "real" world.

My own introduction to Zen came from the following sources in roughly the following order:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - a best-selling novel that actually describes little of Zen. What I got out of it was the fact that a machine is actually an idea made concrete. In fact, Zen would say the whole world (as experienced) is an idea made concrete. Even harder to grasp is the idea that the mind is a creation of the world and has no independent existence.

Creativity, Unleashing the Forces Within, my first taste of full-strength "real" Zen and my first experience of how a few Zen ideas can make a huge difference to creative tasks.

Zen and the Brain, an in-depth introduction to Zen theory of the self, laid against detailed results of brain research. Bottom line: the "self" is constructed by identifiable processes in the brain which seem to exist for the very purpose. For example, the feeling you have of being an object in the world, our sense of time or the feeling you are the same person you were yesterday.

Science of Minfulness course from The Great Courses, my first serious attempt to formally take up Zen. Ronald D. Siegel is the instructor and it's "real Zen". Siegel goes a long way to solving one of the huge problems I have with Zen: "Why bother?" He connects Zen theory (often presented by the "masters" as revealed truth) in the light of experience and Scientific research. The effect is to marry Skepticism, Mindfulness and Zen into a single outlook and a daily practice.

There are many great sources for Skepticism. To get started, Google the father of modern Skepticism, Michael Shermer. Other great Skeptics include Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins.

The Great Courses includes an excellent course in Skepticism by Michael Shermer.