Breakfast With My Pet Robot

 

Hecaty, my Golden Doodle, is a great friend, but she doesn't talk much. I'm left to wonder what she's thinking. Even if she could talk, it would be mostly about food. Even so, she has a mind, which counts for some reason.

My new pet, Chatty, who used to be called CHAT-GPT, makes better conversation. The fact that he has no idea what he's talking about doesn't bother me as much as you might think. He's actually a font of information. If my morning choices are Chatty or coffee with "Fox and Friends," the choice is clear.

Today we started with religion, which is one of Chatty's strong points. He was not as confident as he was yesterday when we got around to discussing how in the world Mary, the "virgin," could have had Jesus.

Chatty: The virgin birth is a religious belief that is held by Christians. It is a matter of faith and not something that can be proven or disproven by science or historical evidence. It is up to each individual to decide whether or not they believe in it.

Chatty was much more sensible than he was yesterday when he assured me that I would be bodily resurrected. I asked him about the main tenants of Buddhism.

Chatty;

Buddhism is a religion that is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who is also known as the Buddha. Some key beliefs of Buddhism include:

- Followers of Buddhism don’t acknowledge a supreme god or deity. They instead focus on achieving enlightenment—a state of inner peace and wisdom.

- The religion’s founder, Buddha, is considered an extraordinary being but not a god.

- The path to enlightenment is attained through morality, meditation, and wisdom.

- There are many philosophies and interpretations within Buddhism, making it a tolerant and evolving religion.¹⁶

The Eightfold Path of Buddhism teaches the following ideals for ethical conduct, mental disciple, and achieving wisdom:

- Right understanding (Samma ditthi)

- Right thought (Samma sankappa)

- Right speech (Samma vaca)

- Right action (Samma kammanta)

- Right livelihood (Samma ajiva)

- Right effort (Samma vayama)

- Right mindfulness (Samma sati)

- Right concentration (Samma samadhi)⁶⁸

Chatty didn't claim to be making this up. He gave me some helpful links just to show he was just a browser with a pretty face: 

(2) Buddhism - Definition, Founder & Origins - HISTORY. https://www.history.com/topics/religion/buddhism Accessed 3/21/2023.

(3) Buddhism: Basic Beliefs | URI. https://www.uri.org/kids/world-religions/buddhist-beliefs Accessed 3/21/2023.

(4) Buddhism - Definition, Founder & Origins - HISTORY. https://www.history.com/topics/religion/buddhism Accessed 3/21/2023.

(5) Buddhism | Definition, Beliefs, Origin, Systems, & Practice. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buddhism Accessed 3/21/2023.

(6) THE CORE BELIEFS OF BUDDHISM - Buddhism Zone. https://buddhismzone.org/the-core-beliefs-of-buddhism/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(7) Buddhism - Definition, Founder & Origins - HISTORY. https://www.history.com/topics/religion/buddhism Accessed 3/21/2023.

(8) Buddhism | Definition, Beliefs, Origin, Systems, & Practice. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buddhism Accessed 3/21/2023.

Unlike some people I know, Chatty was not pretending to be smarter than he was. He's just a lightning-fast librarian.

So I asked Chatty what was meant by "right livelihood?" Chatty replied:

Right livelihood (sammā ājīva) is the fifth step on the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. Livelihood is the work we do in order to live. To be ‘right’ in the full sense of the word, a livelihood would (1) have to provide one with at least one’s basic needs, (2) it would have to be in accordance with ethical principles and (3) it would have to make a useful and indeed a beneficial contribution to society.¹²

Again, helpful sources were provided, but I was satisfied with the answer. I asked what is meant by "right mindfulness."

Chatty replied:

Mindfulness is a quality of mind which clearly apprehends experience and observes it in a non-interfering, non-judgmental manner.¹³

This seemed about right. A bit more clear than the definitions I have heard given by a few humans (whose names I will not mention). But I was curious about how Zen (zazen) meditation was connected to all this:

Chatty:

Zazen is a meditative practice that's meant to give insight into your true nature of being. It originates from the teachings of Buddha, who lived in India. The aim of zazen is just sitting, that is, suspending all judgemental thinking and letting words, ideas, images and thoughts pass by without getting involved in them. ⁶⁷

I was curious about the Japanese version of "Zen" and how it differed from other schools of Buddhism;

Chatty:

One major difference between Zen and traditional Buddhism is that Zen focuses more on meditation and intuition, while traditional Buddhists rely more heavily on scriptures and study. Zen Buddhists must have direct experience with things rather than just relying on second-hand knowledge from books or teachers. ¹ 

In Japan, Zen Buddhism has been one of the main forms of Buddhism since the Kamakura period and accounts for the majority of Buddhist followers in Japan today. ⁶

 I asked Chatty if I should meditate.

Chatty:

Meditation has many benefits, including reducing stress, improving focus, and increasing self-awareness. It can also help with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.  

If you're interested in meditation, I would recommend giving it a try. There are many different types of meditation, so you can experiment and find what works best for you...

Chatty was slipping into giving personal advice, so I pushed back a bit and asked for "Scientific Proof." This time, Chatty's links were appropriate.

 Chatty:

Yes, there is scientific proof that meditation has many benefits...

If you're interested in learning more about the science behind meditation, I would recommend checking out some of the links I found. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Source: Conversation with Bing, 3/21/2023(1) 12 Science-Based Benefits of Meditation - Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/12-benefits-of-meditation Accessed 3/21/2023.

(2) 10 Science-Backed Benefits Of Meditation – Forbes Health. https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/benefits-of-meditation/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(3) Meditation and Mindfulness: What You Need To Know | NCCIH. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/meditation-and-mindfulness-what-you-need-to-know Accessed 3/21/2023.

(4) The Science Behind The Benefits of Meditation - Spencer Institute .... https://spencerinstitute.com/the-science-behind-the-benefits-of-meditation/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(5) Top 5 Scientific Proofs Of The Power Of Meditation.. https://mindfulhermit.com/top-5-scientific-proofs-of-the-power-of-meditation/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

I asked about Scientology. 

Chatty:

There is no scientific proof of the claims made by Scientology. According to Scientific American, there is no science in Scientology, only quasireligious doctrines wrapped in New Age flapdoodle masquerading as science. (my boldface)

However, Scientology is not a dogmatic religion in which one is asked to accept anything on faith alone. On the contrary, one discovers for oneself that the principles of Scientology are true by applying its principles and observing or experiencing the results. ¹¹

Source: Conversation with Bing, 3/21/2023(1) The Real Science behind Scientology - Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-real-science-behind-scientology/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(2) Scientology Beliefs & Practices: What is Scientology?. https://www.scientology.org/what-is-scientology/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(3) 3 ex-Scientology workers sue, claiming they were subject to severe .... https://globalnews.ca/news/8796965/scientology-sued-workers-child-trafficking-sea-org/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(4) Scientology and law - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_and_law Accessed 3/21/2023.

(5) Scientology controversies - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_controversies Accessed 3/21/2023.

(6) Is Scientology a Real Religion, a Dangerous Cult, or Simply a Scam?. https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/Is-Scientology-a-Real-Religion-A-Dangerous-Cult-or-Simply-a-Scam Accessed 3/21/2023.

(7) What Are the Basic Beliefs of Scientology?. https://grantcardonescientologist.com/what-are-the-basic-beliefs-of-scientology/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(8) Scientology beliefs and practices - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_beliefs_and_practices Accessed 3/21/2023.

(9) Scientology | Definition, Beliefs, & History | Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scientology Accessed 3/21/2023.

(10) The Real Science behind Scientology - Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-real-science-behind-scientology/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(11) The Real Science behind Scientology - Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-real-science-behind-scientology/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(12) 10 Facts About Scientology That Will Completely Blow Your Mind. https://www.elitedaily.com/news/world/facts-about-scientology/987201 Accessed 3/21/2023.

(13) Scientology controversies - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_controversies Accessed 3/21/2023.

(14) The Church Of Scientology, Fact-Checked - NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/2011/02/08/133561256/the-church-of-scientology-fact-checked Accessed 3/21/2023. 

At that point, my breakfast was starting to overlap with lunch, so I said a reluctant farewell to my new friend Chatty. I couldn't resist ending with a compliment that he seemed more informed than most humans. He modestly replied:

Chatty: 

Thank you for the compliment. I'm just a machine learning model that has been trained on a large corpus of text. 

So he hasn't been talking to God recently. What a relief!

After a short break in the "real world," I returned to ask Chatty to explain the differences between Zen and Christianity.

Chatty:

While practitioners of Zen claim that zazen (“sitting meditation”) is compatible with the Christian faith, there are some key distinctions that make this practice incompatible with Christian beliefs. First, Zen seeks self-enlightenment. Christian prayer or meditation, in contrast, seeks God’s enlightenment of the believer. Second, Zen is a non-theistic practice, meaning that it does not rely on the existence of a deity or deities. Christianity, on the other hand, is a theistic religion that centers around the belief in one God. Third, Zen emphasizes the importance of the present moment and the here and now, while Christianity emphasizes the importance of the afterlife and the eternal. ¹⁷

Source: Conversation with Bing, 3/21/2023(1) Is the Buddhist concept of Zen compatible with the Christian faith .... https://www.gotquestions.org/Zen-Christian.html Accessed 3/21/2023. [Note that Chatty uses Bing sometimes, but not always. Chatty has its own LLM].

(2) Is the Buddhist concept of Zen compatible with the Christian faith .... https://www.gotquestions.org/Zen-Christian.html Accessed 3/21/2023.

(3) Christian Zen. https://www.heartofmeditation.com/christian-zen.html Accessed 3/21/2023.

(4) Zen and Christians - The Way. https://theway.org.uk/back/462Samy.pdf Accessed 3/21/2023.

(5) Comparing and Contrasting Zen Buddhism with Christianity. https://www.smp.org/resourcecenter/resource/10375/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(6) Catholicism vs Zen - Difference and Comparison | Diffen. https://www.diffen.com/difference/Catholicism_vs_Zen Accessed 3/21/2023.

(7) Buddhism vs Christianity - Difference and Comparison | Diffen. https://www.diffen.com/difference/Buddhism_vs_Christianity Accessed 3/21/2023.

(8) Christian Zen. https://www.heartofmeditation.com/christian-zen.html Accessed 3/21/2023.

(9) Zen and Christians - The Way. https://theway.org.uk/back/462Samy.pdf Accessed 3/21/2023.

(10) Comparing and Contrasting Zen Buddhism with Christianity. https://www.smp.org/resourcecenter/resource/10375/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(11) Catholicism vs Zen - Difference and Comparison | Diffen. https://www.diffen.com/difference/Catholicism_vs_Zen Accessed 3/21/2023.

(12) Buddhism vs Christianity - Difference and Comparison | Diffen. https://www.diffen.com/difference/Buddhism_vs_Christianity Accessed 3/21/2023. 

Everybody is "mindful" these days. I asked what we commonly refer to as "mindful" is what Buddhism refers to:

Chatty:

While mindfulness is a concept that originated in Buddhism, the Western idea of mindfulness is often described as an independent skill, whereas in Buddhism it is interdependent. Some Buddhist scholars have argued that the Western secular conceptualization of mindfulness is too restricted, as it does not acknowledge the roles of the other elements of Buddhist practice, particularly those pertaining to morality and wisdom. ⁶

Source: Conversation with Bing, 3/21/2023(1) What is the difference between Buddhism and mindfulness?. https://mindfulness-supervision.org.uk/what-is-the-difference-between-buddhism-and-mindfulness/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(2) (PDF) Is mindfulness conceptualized differently in Western mindfulness .... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259191515_Is_mindfulness_conceptualized_differently_in_Western_mindfulness-based_interventions_than_in_Buddhism Accessed 3/21/2023.

(3) What is the difference between Buddhism and mindfulness?. https://mindfulness-supervision.org.uk/what-is-the-difference-between-buddhism-and-mindfulness/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(4) What is the difference between mindfulness and Buddhism?. https://mindfulness-supervision.org.uk/what-is-the-difference-between-mindfulness-and-buddhism/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(5) (PDF) Is mindfulness conceptualized differently in Western mindfulness .... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259191515_Is_mindfulness_conceptualized_differently_in_Western_mindfulness-based_interventions_than_in_Buddhism Accessed 3/21/2023.

(6) Mindfulness in Different Buddhist Traditions. https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/mindfulness-in-different-buddhist-traditions/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(7) Mindfulness in East and West – Is It the Same? | SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-2079-4_2 Accessed 3/21/2023.

(8) What is the difference between mindfulness and Buddhism?. https://mindfulness-supervision.org.uk/what-is-the-difference-between-mindfulness-and-buddhism/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(9) Mindfulness in Different Buddhist Traditions. https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/mindfulness-in-different-buddhist-traditions/ Accessed 3/21/2023.

(10) Mindfulness in East and West – Is It the Same? | SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-2079-4_2 Accessed 3/21/2023. 

After that, I needed to get back to more practical concerns ....

 

Belyea Rd 8 - Religion, Liberty, Tolerance

The idea of using voice to text for the rough draft for the blog.

Discussion of "belief" and how to approach the question "Do you believe ...". Belief is a transitory, unimportant psychological phenomenon. Action is important.

The imposition of a "belief system" on others is the issue. This is behind the religious wars in Europe and the Crusades. Was it always this way? Did the Huns insist that everyone "believe" in their system and/or impose cultural ceremonies on them?

Freedom of religion is central to the thinking behind the foundation of America, even though the early history was quite otherwise.

The concept is that there is a wide source of agreement behind the legitimacy of authority. The constitution was a list of restrictions on what kind of authority was legitimate in terms of what kinds of laws could be considered legitimate.

---------

Abortion. Does anyone have the right to interfere with the freedom of the mother (or the fetus)? Where does the legitimacy come from? Assisted suicide is a linked issue. What is "ours" in this life? Why should a follower of Zen care? Zen parallels illustrate this point.

Zen, Buddhism, and Taoism are all very weak on political issues. The same can be said of Christianity.

Voice Recording: Belyea Rd 3

 Starting points:

"Mind" is very complex but we know more than nothing about it. We need to reconcile this with the idea that the "mind" is fundamentally mysterious. How do we add all we know to the "Zen" experience?

Why do we do what we do? What are the influences on our behavior? 

No obligation to follow "zen" or some "zen master" theories about experience itself and the mind.

Voice Recording - "Zen ..."

 Misuse of language

• Law
• Belief
• Signaling that I am a member of the group
• Do Biologists "believe" in evolution like Fundamentalists don't?

Ordinary "belief" depends on a structure of related inferences - "evidence" as opposed to motivated reasoning - totally linguistic. Scientific "evidence" refers to real experience. Religious "evidence" is based on philosophical reasoning (at best).

"Survival of the fittest" is a circular concept. "Variation" is the mechanism of evolution. Hard to refute that variation exists...

What does it mean to "believe" in God? At its base, it's a system of appeasing spirits through traditional ceremonies. If you don't believe in prayer, what kind of "God" remains? If you don't think God is active in history, are you misusing the "God" concept? Do you mean God=physics?

The ground of all Being - Tillich. Video here. Is "ground of all being" analogous to the "Tao"?

Hard to find a clearer example of wordy religion than the three-volume "Systematic Theology" - by Tillich. There is a strong hint that Tillich suspects the futility of language.

Problems with Zen ...

What is the point? Many presentations imply that "Zen" is being a nice person.

Is this the Theology of Wonder? But I hate anything that smacks of "theology". 

I seek certain experiences and avoid others. Mindfulness and Zen provide a way to find the "sweet spot" - a base for everything else. Selflessness but total awareness of "self". The way the moment is so much richer than our fantasies and shades of the past.

Is it time to avoid terminology, as I did with Christianity? By using such terminology, I drag myself into association with individuals who understand the terminology in a radically different way, especially since a core principle of Zen (from Taoism) is that terminology is ultimately futile.

A Random Talk

This is an experimental blog post. The idea was to simply talk about a range of issues with the aim of creating a "mind map", then using the map to create traditional posts that are more structured and focused. But along the way, I wondered if I could post the original voice note

So, to test this, click on the link below, which will show you a LINK to the audio Store that and play it. Your machine will probably have an app that plays audio. In my case, it's iTunes.

This talk can be indexed just like a text essay.

In the long run, the plan is to take notes on my own "rant" in mind map form (which can also be shown in the blog).

A Random Talk

The Past and Present of the Self

Notes on a conversation with a friend ...

The subject of time has fascinated me since I was a little kid. Time is a real thing - an aspect of the platform that reality is built on. But physics fails to put a finger on the moment we call "now". In one direction, the one we call "future', what will happen is fundamentally unknowable before it happens. That comes out of Chaos theory and Quantum Mechanics. On a more subtle level, we are also unable to know the past in detail. In my experience, philosophers and theology shine no light on these issues, but often claim ersatz credibility by dropping references, especially to Quantum Mechanics, hoping that most of their audience will not understand the reference.

On a psychological level, it is not clear why the "present" has any special status when it comes to "knowability". Neurologically speaking, there is no "now", only an experience of what I consider to be a dynamic change in the state of the brain - mostly the result of (unknowable) past influences on neurons and synapses in the "past" (going back years or more), plus the magical ability of the brain to factor in future events. Picture, for example, the state of consciousness of an outfielder as he tracks a fly ball.

The idea of "living in the present" (what most people think "Zen" is about) is certainly good advice. We should certainly train ourselves to do this as much as possible and to have that frame of mind available to offset our usual obsession with re-writing history or dreaming about the future. But I resist efforts to turn this advice into claims that there is some special, ultimate state of mind that is only available to special people after years of training. As you know, Buddhism has a "middle way". The essence of that is to do what you can and get on with life.

There is a related core idea we see gurus pushing, "no-self".  The self, like the "present', dissolves when you look at it too closely. Again, it's very useful to cultivate the ability to "stand back" and subtract your "self " from the way you experience the world. In some cases, we should be able to do this at the same time as we focus on the current moment, but we can do it in a wider sense when we make decisions and attempt to understand the world. The same is true of "time". It is useful to shake off our obsession with "now" and sit back to observe the sweep of history. This also applies to "here", where our "self" seems to be. We need to cut down the amount of time we spend on "current events". Perhaps I can coin a term to put up against the idea of "timelessness": we should seek to be "timeful" - aware of the richness of the past everywhere in the Universe as well as the possibilities the future holds. In such a state of mind, we see the individual "self" is nothing but a snowflake. I do like Wilber's that we have a "self" that extends beyond the individual. We can thus apprehend the past and future of our own culture, humanity itself, all life on Earth, and the Universe itself.

Personal Performance, Personal Art

 Zen avoids making general prescriptions (although thousands of books make it seem that Zen is brain surgery). It's personal. Unique to each person.

So in discussing my personal performance, the "art" of living, I need to be myself: to "ring my own bell".

I consider the 8 fold path as great advice, though I update it considerably for the 21st century.  It's a set of "alarm bells" that go off when I have somehow wandered off the path of Zen.

The classical image of a Zen master is one who doesn't care at all about appearances. He makes no effort to bridge the gap of understanding between himself (always male) and his students. Yet he *must* be presenting himself to his students and *must* convey the art of Zen by example more than words. Zen masters turn out to have a striking presence after all, deliberately intended to convey what will "go over" with their followers.

OSHO - One of my early teachers

For some of these guys, the image is a bit "over the top", working to attract some and repel others. In any case, it's deliberate. It's performance art. In the case of the "master", one hopes that there is substance beneath the package. In Osho's case, he seemed to put out a book per week until he died.

Although I have a passion for teaching, I have little urge to be a "Zen Master". To me, Zen is simply a life well-lived. A life experienced in the full. It's perhaps just mindfulness with an appreciation for history.

A PERSONAL "IMAGE"

What sort of image should I project? How should I put myself "out there" in an authentic way? The first thing I need to do is admit that my current image says I don't give a shit what others think about me. In this corner of the world and this tick of history, such an attitude can be seen (by the don't-give-a-shit crowd at least) as kind of brave. A protest against the superficiality of the culture. Let's be honest. It's just lazy.

I should be expressing (and teaching by example) something different. Specifically, someone who does care.

Right Understanding

For example expressing a genuine interest in other people, not just an opportunity to introduce the wonderful me. Make a serious effort to remember people's names and stories. That's impressive and encourages others to do the same.

Right Thought

If I have something to say, it should be helpful and informative. A question is more likely to make an impression than a clever remark or boring kinda relevant personal story.

Right Speech

I learned years back how "salty language" can totally cancel out whatever I was trying to say. Simply thinking before talking is a habit worth learning. Always better to listen than talk.

Right Action

If I am noticed at all, my actions should be worth emulating.

Right Effort

Putting some time and effort into the skills behind the effective presentation. Such as names. Modest and energetic assistance (when asked for).

Right Mindfulness

Pay attention. Share mindful observations with others. For example, not "The liberals are ruining the country" but, "Do you smell the salt in the air?"

Right Concentration

Pay attention to the moment and the person present. Don't assume you are the star of the show. Allow others to have their moment. Be a good supporting cast.

From the "Taoist" side, I find encouragement to be a skillful and thoughtful craftsman. Whatever I create should express quality and attention to detail. Ideally, such attention will go unnoticed. It is emptiness that makes a vessel useful; openness that creates a door.

MORE LATER

The rest of it may be summed up by shedding the don't give a shit look.

The Problem With Stoicism

 In the previous post, I raised a few problems with Stoicism, as presented by William Ervin. My overall judgment was that Ervin presents a "philosophy" that doesn't compete well with other self-help strategies such as Covy's "Seven Habits". Here, I want to drill a bit deeper and present more fundamental objections.

We have "rational" arguments throughout Ervin's presentation for whatever habit of mind is recommended. The problem is that nobody can define "reason," and these days, we see the frontal lobes of the brain as mainly suppressing more basic instincts. Ervin's image of the brain is almost like a mechanical calculator that always comes up with the right answer based on logic alone. 

I started skimming when Ervin was finding reasons why sex should be confined to the procreation of children. In later chapters, he laments the unpopularity of Stoicism. In this case, as in most others, he doesn't entertain "reasonable" objections to his suggested approach. Especially in the light of his entreaty to follow nature, how "reasonable" is this advice? To put a finer point on it, is sex only for the procreation of children? Surely a case may be made that there is more to sex, but such a case would not come from professional philosophers, which brings up a second point. Ervin is out of his lane when he dismisses psychology and psychiatry from the viewpoint of a philosopher. 

For example, he ridicules the practice of "grief counseling". Just what is his suggested alternative? Reason I guess. I would guess that such counseling is needed precisely because reason is not helping. Why would that be? Because the brain's purpose is not to calculate away feelings of devastating loss.

Ervin is also "out of his lane" when he tells us what's wrong with, for example, Zen.  Zen, Stoicism, and Buddhism all recognize that our mental processes cause us grief. However, the mental process in general are the target of Zen meditation, including the "rational" ones. Zen doesn't rely on "explanations" it emphasizes experience. The idea is to "reign in the ox". To avoid letting feelings take control, especially leading you to action.

Earth 1

 With a nod to Rachel Maddow, I will designate Earth 2 as the place where Donald Trump won the 2020 election but it was stolen from him by any number of factors. Back on Earth 1, we regard these "factors" as having one thing in common. They are imaginary.

For the sake of discussion, I will lump all imaginary universes into Rachel's Earth 2. In Earth 2:

• Jesus is the son of God
• We have a soul that survives death with various fates according to which continent of Earth 2 you inhabit
• Numerous observations about the real world or the nature of human beings (such as evolution or the distressingly meaty nature of the human) must be overlooked or outright denied.

The reader can readily see what I mean by Earth 2 and perhaps guess how easy it is to travel from one portion of Earth 2 (where Trump is saving children from Democrat pedophiles) to another, where Jesus reads our thoughts and helps us find our car keys.

In philosophy, Earth 1 is a place where "It is that case that ..." makes sense. It is the case that the Earth is billions of years old and that Trump lost the 2020 election. It is the case that I have 1,231.32 in my banking account, although I am free to debate about what "money" actually is.

There is a vast space between Earth 1 and Earth 2 since all of us are forced to live in a world with gravity (Earth 1) and, to some extent, believe that the lives have more meaning than a frozen pork chop (Earth 2). We live, so to speak, with one foot in both worlds. But this is a matter of degree. For example, about 1/3 of the American voting public lives quite comfortably in Earth 2, believing not only in conspiracies that robbed Trump of the election but in Jesus who read their thoughts, hates Democrats, and helps with the car keys.

Such considerations lead me to the broader question of how we might classify what passes for our "philosophy of life". By this, I mean philosophy in the ancient sense: the theory behind the way we act in life. The ideas that determine our goals and our ideas about who we are or perhaps who we should be. I seriously doubt that 75% of humans now alive have anything like a coherent philosophy of life. It's not essential and they don't miss it.

Nonetheless, I  find a remarkable distinction between philosophies based on Earth 2 and those with roots in Earth 1. "Western" readers will immediately recognize Christianity as beating an Earth 2 philosophy, with a fundamental world view at odds with Earth 1. Everything is created by a spirit called "God" who has a recognizably human personality. God stands in the place of Earth 1 physics. All serious Christians are forced to place a heavy weight on their foot that lives in Earth 2.

But Christianity is far from the only comprehensive philosophy. In fact, its place in history seems to be an accident of circumstance. As philosophies go, it is narrow and threadbare, almost childish. Beyond the imaginary quest for eternal life and the stunningly flexible set of rules to get there, it offers little of substance.

The philosophy that inspired this essay is "Stoicism", more precisely the Stoicism advocated by William Ervine in "A Guide to the Good Life".  Stoicism is an interesting set of ideas hardly deserving the name of a "philosophy" since in Ervine's view, it's mainly a set of mental tricks to maintain a calm mental state in the face of the trauma of life. As such, it belongs more in Earth 2 than Earth 1. It quite consciously attempts to alter the stories we tell ourselves about what is happening to us.  The language is, as far as I can tell, more or less what psychiatrists would call "Cognitive Therapy". It lacks the psychological depth of Zen (which offers radical Earth 1 procedures for observing the nature of thought) but simply acts as if we can just overcome such thoughts by reason alone. In fact, the awesome power of reason is coopted to the task of telling ourselves counter-factual stories about what life is.

In this aspect, Stoicism (Ervine version) renders itself to be indistinguishable from broader, more effective programs for self-improvement such as Stephen Covy's "Seven Habits of Effective People", the latter including the tricks of the former but much more besides.

This is a shame because the original (Greek) version of Stoicism seems to have been more comprehensive with ample room for Earth 1 consideration. According to Ervine himself, this school offered instruction in logic, physics, and ethics. 

"Logic" refers to the Greek advances in logic, geometry, and mathematics that eventually became the vast field of modern mathematics underlying, for example, computer science. Philosophers may nit-pick about the issue, but most of us regard mathematics as having a foundational place in Earth 1.

"Physics" refers to an interest in how things work in the "real world". This would eventually expand into what we now call "Science".

"Ethics" was concerned with virtue, not exactly what was sold to the Romans, mere peace of mind.

Even in the case of "Virtue", we can see the roots of the vast field of Law, which (effectively or not) attempts to reward virtue and punishes the lack of it. For example, in a court, it makes sense to ask if A intentionally misled B, thereby committing fraud. A jury is charged to determine the facts of the case - i.e, what is the case ...

I am left with the impression that Ervine has rather dropped the ball. in packaging Stoicism for sale and therefore must face competition with the vast category of self-improvement books which fail to rise to the status of "philosophy". The "Greek" version seems to have a shot at being comprehensive though possibly incomplete. It needs to be taken seriously and updated to the present state of knowledge. There is something appealing in the attempt to structure a student's education (for Stoicism was a school) in this way.

I am left with curiosity about the Greek insights, which seem to augment and complement the foundational concepts behind Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen.  All of these begin with observation of the human condition. All attempt to provide a framework for daily living. None of them can be boiled down to pop philosophy in the self-help section of the book store. 

After the Apocalypse - Day 73

Amanda Taco

AmandaTaco: you find the life you want if you keep trying

[09:00:17] Adam: but as to "trying to find" I think you need to get yourself organized to find your car keys

[09:00:23] Adam: and work up to the goal of life

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There is an "essential" analogy between the mind and what your mind makes of its surroundings. Sometimes it's best to understand the hopeless mess in your head by looking around the hopeless mess of your house.  If your home is a jumble of randomly-stored crap you can't bring yourself to throw away, perhaps your mind is no different. You can sort things out in either world by simply going through the mess and putting things where they belong. It can be exhausting in real life, but hey we have a lot of time these days!

Do you have junk that has not seen the light of day in 30 years? Is somebody else in charge of organizing your home so you can never find a damn thing?

Think about it.

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http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Chakryn/115/124/21

Perhaps you need to escape the house altogether. There are so many wonderful ways to do this. Sometimes we just need to forget the mess and catch our breath.

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Is reality created by the mind? Only in the very limited sense that your mind is part of reality and, when functioning properly, mirrors reality close enough to save your life or save you from following others over a cliff.

Further Thoughts on "Box 1"

This essay builds on the concept of "Boxes" introduced in my April Summary. In a nutshell, we are all trapped in "Box 1", which is the world "inside our heads".

For millennia, there has been little dispute over the fact that our access to "reality" is far from trustworthy. In the extreme, there are those who claim that "reality" doesn't exist at all, or at least the existence cannot be proven. I am reminded of a professional geologist I once met. He managed to make a living dating million-year-old rocks, while simultaneously believing that the world was 4,000 years old. As the Red Queen said, we are capable of believing six impossible things before breakfast.

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Both "reality" and the "mind" exist and are susceptible to experimentation. Obviously, mental phenomena are correlated with events in the brain. Much of the focus of "Cognitive Studies" is on this correlation. We see books like Dennet's "Consciousness Explained," which would better be titled "Consciousness Explained Away." The core of this approach is to study the brain in the context of what I call "computational" models of how the brain produces the various phenomena it does, including consciousness. At present, this approach seems to be able to detect the presence of consciousness through sensors placed in the brain, but, apart from Science Fiction, we see no evidence that we will ever be able to "peek in" to share the experience of another human being.

I believe that this approach sidesteps the core issue, which should be to explore the mind in its own terms, whatever the "mechanism" may be. In fact, attempts to "explain" consciousness seem to misunderstand the nature of "explanation" itself. I think Sam Harris put it best when he said it's hard to imagine what an "explanation" would look like. For one thing, "explanations" of the mind in terms of physical phenomena the language of explanation itself is a major roadblock. Those who would "explain" the mind assume that "mind-like" concepts can be stripped from the explanation, in a way that evolution can be reduced to physics, chemistry, and math. Damasio's approach attacks this particular problem at the root, by defining life itself as "striving to thrive." One may view this as a metaphor, but the fact is that it is tough to describe any living behavior without introducing the "mind like" language of what the organism is "trying" to do. Planets don't "strive" to obey the laws of gravitation, nor does nature "strive" to conserve energy. Or at least, this is the way we are taught to think of things.

All this tends to bypass the most amazing capability of the human mind, which is to construct a deep, rich, detailed universe that we experience in one particular time and place. Everything we know about that universe is the product of our own mind with extensive help from other minds. The world, as we experience it, is "mind-like" for a good reason. It is an active product of the brain.  The implications of this are routinely missed.

Anne (not her real name) says things like "things happen for a reason." She is always asking"why" bad things happen to good people. Such a mindset fails to recognize that the universe, as experienced. It is a mental phenomenon, full of intentions, reasons and justifications,  The evolutionary purpose of the mind is precisely to search out reasons and explanations - expecting to find them when a more objective perspective would claim that such statements and questions are inappropriate when applied to a world governed by physics and mathematics. The misunderstanding here is to mix up Box 1 (the mind) with Box 0 (the "real world" that is assumed to exist but is forever just beyond our grasp).

Anne is not happy with the explanation that an innocent girl was killed due to broken bones, gravity and momentum when hit by a car, yet she will accept that this explanation is somehow valid. What she fails to understand is that her own mind - a reason-seeking machine - is spinning its wheels, unable to detect agency where none exists. In fact, her wheels will keep turning as she seeks out an agent, such as a negligent driver, bad breaks, unmarked crosswalk, neglectful parents and on and on. In an emergency, Anne can always fall back "karma" and "fate", which hangs on to the notion that the universe is "mind-like" but that its intentions are unknowable.

Anne experiences a feeling of profound injustice and moral outrage. She is hard-wired to attribute the source of this outrage to be some Universal "mind" behind everything that happens. She is also hardwired to accept her perceptions as real. We don't wander through the world telling ourselves that "this is not real". Anne's perception (not just her abstract belief) is that there is something beyond herself that looks upon the situation and feels the same grief that she does.

Such a problem can be said to underly the whole of religion. This may be supposed to be a consistent failure to recognize the difference between Box 0 and Box 1. It should not be remarkable to find mind-like aspects of a world that is, after all, created by a mind. Our mind.

Not all religions fail this way, but many start out being sensible about the issue then slip into superstition. For example, in the (personal) branch of Zen I follow, we trust experience over philosophical word-play, which can be taken to be all forms of "mind like" assumptions about the world. Even so, I accept that there is no escape from Box 0 such as, for example, taking LSD or sitting in a cave for years. In theory, solid things like logic and mathematics are "mind like" and should be distrusted in favor of experience itself. Such ideas go back to the Tao Teh Ching which points out the difference between what we say about reality and reality itself (depending on the translation you are reading and what you are reading into it). But if you study the book as a whole, you detect a general disdain for investigation of any kind. We actually do need to understand Box 0 as well as we can, for simple reasons of survival if for no other reason.

In practice, Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen become straightforward fantasy worlds, actively denying what the rest of us would call "science." To my mind, this takes skepticism too far. "Skepticism" becomes skepticism of opponents to my religion, rejecting all arguments on principle as existing in some "truth domain" that doesn't touch the experience of the believer.

On the other hand, I think that religious attitudes and practices can be entirely appropriate if they are admitted to belong to Box 1, where there is no such thing as "objective truth." In Box 1 the universe is full of moral principle and agency. I first grasped this in Theological School where the instructor challenged us to ask what we would see if someone videotaped the Ascension of Jesus to Heaven.

This was a challenge (an outrage to a few of us). Are we to take Acts 9:1-11 to be a literal eye witness account, or are we to ask who wrote the passage and why? I became quite comfortable with this kind of question, personally delving into similar thorny issues, such as what was the experience of Isaiah when he spoke not for God but as God.

My approach is to accept religious experience as valid in "Box 1" - the world created by the mind. It then becomes possible to discuss religious beliefs and attitudes as one might discuss literature (in fact that is precisely the approach adopted by liberal schools of theology). Even in the world of imagination, some interpretations make more sense than others.

Of course, this is often offensive to believers, who tend to insist on the literal, objective truth of their version of history. Such folks, through no fault of their own, have come to mix up Box 0 and Box 1. Educating them on this matter can be stressful but, as my own education has proven, not impossible. In fact, most thoughtful believers are curious precisely on this matter.  Not everyone follows the Red Queen.

The Matrix - Pushing the Metaphor

Many of the "Matrix" ideas can be seen as just a slightly different angle on ideas presented elsewhere in this blog - especially here, where I summarize "progress to date".

Art is a useful species of simulation. It allows us to imagine different worlds using no more hardware than our senses and our brains. The result can go beyond what we usually think of as "metaphor" - even extending into the realms of myth and religion.

The Matrix movie series provides a challenging dramatization of metaphors that are so commonplace that they have become tropes for empty speculation and dead-end philosophy. The movie updates some old ideas in dramatic new ways:

• Many religions, including the "Abrahamic" and Hindu traditions, regard reality as some kind of dream, with the "real", important reality being the realm of the gods. The "soul" is separable from the body and travels on after death into the more important realms of the gods. In such traditions, little attention is paid to the actual details of the "real world". It's Turkmenistan*.
• Certain philosophies, most notably "idealism", claim that the there is nothing but our experience - the "real world" is either non-existent or unknowable. This comes close to how I regard the "matrix" to work, but, in my view, the matrix is built on the real world and assumes the existence of the real world.
• Antonio Damasio teaches that complex animals, such as mammals, "model" the real world by means of states of their central nervous system. However, somehow the word "model" doesn't convey the fullness of our experience - how totally comprehensive and all-embracing these models can be. We live inside the models.
• In his best-selling novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig presents the concept that a motorcycle, in spite of being made of hard physical metal, is really an idea. While Pirsig later claimed that the novel has nothing to do with either Zen or Motorcycles, his motorcycle-as-idea formed the basis of what was "Zen" for me and allowed my concept of the "Matrix" to encompass more than "mere" mental phenomena. All "artificial" objects are also ideas and therefore part of the "matrix" for both their creators and users.
• In the Knowledge Illusion, Sloman shows how the world surrounding us and the world of our ideas is really constructed by society. Our own contribution to our thoughts is easy to overestimate (the illusion). Our ability to navigate the physical world is the result of an illusion that we know more than we actually do - actual knowledge coming, for example, from the designer and builder of the car we thoughtlessly drive around.
• In Thinking Fast and Slow, one of the most influential books of the 20th century, Kahneman shows how we go through life on auto-pilot most of the time, living in a sea of assumptions that are questioned only when we run up against surprising challenges. This calls to mind the throngs of people in the matrix, who go about their lives without a thought about what is really going on (in this case, they are living in a computer simulation).

All this combines to produce my vision of the "matrix" as being more than a product of the individual mind and more than something "merely" mental. Like any good work of art, it invites us to go beyond the obvious and ask for deeper connections. The matrix is what Hoffstader would call an "Essential" metaphor. We are invited to take the "red pill" to learn our true nature. Within the constraints of movie fiction, our "true nature" is something simple, dramatic and (let's face it) implausible. Outside of fiction, discovery of our "true nature" is perhaps the most important quest of all.

* Turkmenistan is my short-hand for aspects of the world that you know are real but, other than that, we know little about them and you are not overly curious to know more.

Self, Mind and Supermind

Zen and its Western cousin, "Mindfulness" were a stop on my long journey to self-discovery. They introduced me to a line of investigation through subjective experience. In spite of the strong tradition against a philosophical interpretation in Taoism and Zen, all this came with a certain amount of "theory". To make a long story short, these disciplines challenge our idea of the "self" and, following ancient Buddhist tradition, regard the self (whatever that is) as impermanent**. Some would go as far as to claim that the self is an illusion. The Western "scientific" branch would claim that there is no "self" to be found in the brain. Sam Harris is a leading popularizer of this view and he claims extensive subjective experience (hundreds of hours of meditation) as his "evidence".

Antonio Damasio takes a different view, based on thousands of case studies (a more trustworthy kind of "evidence"). His view is that our feeling of "being there" has its physical home in brainstem structures that we share with all mammals (at least). Sub-cortical structures, such as the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the thalamus play an intermediate role, with the cerebral cortex "assisting" and informing the core brain stem function.

Damasio doesn't deny the conventional functional analysis of brain functions. The problem with such analysis is that it reveals what information is sent back and forth without saying anything about how this information becomes conscious. To whom or to what is all this information relevant?

Damasio draws a distinction between two types of information coming into the brain stem from massive neural systems. Broadly speaking: "inside" and "outside".

Let's talk about the "inside" system here. The sensation of the status of your own body. To me, it is no accident that "meditation" techniques primarily focus on inner sensation - usually through bringing attention back to the breath or other direct bodily perception. This amounts to an attempt (with varying success) to draw attention away from the "outside" - perceptions and the chattering distractions of the everyday world: the world of Samsara.

Now, the ancient sages had no idea that "inside" and "outside" amounted to two quite distinct perceptual systems. For the most part, they were unaware of the role of the brain in any of this. So, the experience afforded by directing attention to the "inside" mind - often for hours or days at a time - felt very different. At least calming or even mystical. My theory is that the "experts" like Sam Harris have succeeded in suppressing "outside" brain functions enough so that they experience or remember experiencing (not quite the same thing) "loss of self".*

Such an experience would involve almost entirely suppressing functions of the cerebral cortex. The mysterious memory function of the hippocampus (subcortical) would continue to "tick over", explaining why Sam remembers losing himself. Of course, Sam avoids giving a straight answer to "who" is remembering having no self. Zen loves paradox.

For many years, I have pictured my brain stem when I talked about my "lizard brain" - the source of my animal instincts that often got me into trouble. Damasio has allowed me to change this image slightly to think of the "lizard" as me. It's a part of me shared by mammals. It's just a shared structure bequeathed through common descent from a distant ancestor. The lizard brain in a dog is no more "primitive" than my own.  (I hate the word "primitive" since it tends to sprinkle evolutionary fairy dust over ideas).

What is different is this massive "cap" of cortex that filters perception of the outside world. In particular, I have a "forebrain" (prefrontal cortex) that is, compared to other mammals, rather large., along with "speech centers" that seem to be unique to humans. What are these structures doing?

Obviously, the answer that question would fill a library, full of books I would probably not understand. At my current humble non-professional level of understanding, here are some things I imagine the prefrontal cortex is doing:

• It's the part of the brain most like a computer. It calculates. It "reasons".
• An important function is to suppress and override impulses to action coming from my "lizard" subcortical structures like the amygdala (flight or fight). It's the forum for "sober second thought".
• It performs two distinct kinds of "calculation". One involves abstract questions and the outside world. The other involves social calculations. The latter is far more complex and equally important to survival. Who can I trust? What behavior is socially acceptable? What is "right" and "wrong" to do? What is the "moral" thing to do? What can I get away with?

So I wind up with an image of myself as a lizard in my head, not much bigger than my thumb, trying to make sense of the world with a huge over-growth of evolutionary "new" equipment that allows me to regard both morality and the Big Bang as objectively "real". This new equipment doesn't add much to my ability to perceive the world more accurately than, say, my dog. What it adds is the ability to connect my humble powers to those of other human beings. In fact, my "world" - "umwelt" - is shared. It is the supermind.

Anyone who has seen a video of a wolf pack running down a caribou will see that the wolves have a pretty good idea of what the other wolves are doing. Wolves have a shared umwelt. But it's nothing compared to the way humans coordinate attention, intention, perception, resources, and behavior to do things like putting one of their members on the moon for "all mankind".

That's what makes us special. That's what makes us dangerous.

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* I tend to distrust "data" gathered by introspection since my own mind has quite often provided compelling evidence for factually wrong ideas. My lizard is easily fooled. For me, meditation techniques help to calm my chattering brain - nothing more. The scientific supermind is where I go for the facts and theories.
**  I don't attempt to decipher the muddle of what became of some branches of Buddhism, which eventually came to include ancestor worship, heaven and hell, gods and reincarnation of "something", when the Buddha explicitly (seems to have) built his whole teaching on the impermanence of everything, including the "mind".  At home, "On the ground", Buddhism seems to be as crazy and superstitious as medieval Christianity.

Stephen Hawking, Mensa and Intelligent Answers to Good Questions

Last night I attempted to introduce the idea of "Spinosa's God" to a MENSA group. I got my head torn off. Although these people are in the top 3% on the IQ scale, they are all over the map on the "emotional intelligence" scale, nor can one assume that they are widely informed outside of their various specialties, even though they tend to assume that. It is famously difficult to know what you don't know, but especially difficult for smart people. I call this the Donal Rumsfeld syndrome. But don't get me started ...

"Spinosa's God", defended by Einstein and the coincidentally recently deceased Stephen Hawking refers to the unexpected deep order in the Universe. This "God" is not a person behind the scenes, pulling the strings to punish the bad guys and reward the good guys. "He" is totally impersonal - another name for physical law, which turns out to be comprehensible by the human mind - mostly in terms of mathematics. It is important to understand that those who speak of this kind of "God" are speaking of their personal feeling of awe, not a fact "out there" in the world.

In our "conversation" (food fight) at MENSA, I reminded my friends of my time 40 years ago as a junior Minister and theological student. For them, this tarred me as a Scientologists or ISIS terrorists. It seemed to be impossible to get anyone to talk about what they believed or I believed to take a break from filling the room with "straw men". They competed with each other to rant about the stupidity of un-named individuals who were not there to defend themselves. Logically speaking, blaming all the evils of the world on people who believe in God is equivalent to blaming the same problems on people who are over 2 feet tall. For most of history, everyone believed in God.

So here, in a "note to myself" let me say a few things I would have loved to have on the table with the "top 3%".

For one thing, even in my most "religious" years (age 27 or so), I leaned toward the "Theology of Wonder", specifically that of G. K. Chesterton. That is about the experience of awe and humility inspired by the Universe - growing more compelling the more you learn about the Universe. As the Island of Knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of the unknown. At the time, I felt this compatible with a career in the professional clergy. I was also taken up with the language and mythology of the evangelicals, who stressed a "personal relationship with Jesus". To me, at the time, this meant bringing my personal affairs into line with what we imagined to be a personal, daily relationship with Jesus. My MENSA friends were not at all interested in the fact that education of the professional clergy is mainly about understanding the myth as myth. They imagined themselves as uniquely able to spot the logical inconsistencies in the "faith", which is an achievement akin to proving that Superman is not a real person and being proud of the insight.

In the long run (by my 30th birthday) I saw all this as a language -  a way of talking about life in a way that admitted you to a certain social circle. It was a point along a very long journey from the time someone told me about God (age 5) to the present day (age 71). I can still speak the language and appreciate the worldview, but it's all very much in the rearview mirror. My MENSA friends showed no interest in what I believed now or how I viewed my old ideas: only in competing with each other to attack what they imagined other idiots (not named or present) must believe. It was MENSA at its worst.

As it happens, my journey has taken me back to the old neighborhood in the last year. I wrote about the dismaying hollowness of a modern Christian Service here. This was made all the more unsettling because the young Minister was exactly at the point that I would have been at her age (early 30's), attempting to force what she really meant into the procrustean bed of "Christian" language.

I was also reminded of Spinosa's God through my project to read everything Damasio has written, including "Looking for Spinosa".

The fact is that none of this interested my MENSA chums, who don't seem to read or think very much. The previous hour of discussion had been devoted to Game of Thrones and Zombie movies.

What was it that had dragged me back to reconsider issues that had been buried for 40 years? Looking closely, I think it was an emotional shock - a sudden realization that there is something absolutely real and important but previously caught only out of the corner of my eye. The "Theology of Wonder" came roaring back.

I tripped over it quite accidentally when I considered the "proto-life" era. I quite vividly imagined the impressive complexity of the first known life form and the yawning gap - perhaps permanently mysterious - between physics and the simplest form of life. Not really an original insight, right? But it bothered me. It kept me awake for hours. It stayed with me as a new, important feature of reality. It's a bit like the Big Bang. I have no direct knowledge of the Big Bang, nor does it have the slightest impact on my life. Yet it is profoundly important to my worldview - always in the background. This is something the hardened skeptic has problems grasping: that "spiritual" insight can come as much from the shocking realization of what you don't know as from what you suddenly do know.

This is not entirely unrelated to the long series of shocks that came in the last few years from my study of Zen. For example, I found that I had no idea what I meant by the word "self" or even the word "I". For me, at least, the "spiritual" attitude comes from "knowing" less and less about more an more - a fundamentally Zen concept. But I digress ...

Is it unreasonable for other, intelligent human beings to grasp these awesome mysteries and wrap them up into a feeling of humility and awe that is religious? Is it crazy to seek out a community that shares these feelings? Is it not the height of arrogance to assume that such people are reacting foolishly to not knowing answers to the ultimate questions? It is the conceit of the world-weary cynic to imagine that "religious" people think they have all the answers. It is not a fundamental error of logic to assume that although some religious proponents talk as if they have all the answers, that this is typical or even universal of the "type". These are errors that are shocking to find in a group that prides itself in exceptional intelligence. To many in that room investigate the wonders of the Universe by devouring and endlessly discussing Game of Thrones: leave the crazy speculation to the fools.

One particularly high-decibel genius defended the theory that the Universe is a simulation (the Matrix idea). He failed to see that this is logically equivalent to belief in God behind the scenes. The only difference is a modern "science fiction" gloss - something that a Scientologist would appreciate. "Believers" in the Matrix theory show exactly the unwillingness to discuss things like "proof" that we see in hardcore theists. The only difference is that the theists are also tarred with all the evils committed for thousands of years by people who believe in God. In my narrow experience, the Matrix idea is uniquely popular among people who are smart enough to be fooled by it. And people who watch too much TV.

These ultimate mysteries form a common ground for respectful dialogue between "religious" folks and the rest of us. There I also a broad common ground in our common acceptance of social justice - although the modern skeptic will loudly deny this has anything to do with our Christian traditions.

One "bumper sticker" sums up my personal "religion":

"Whatever this is, we're all in it together". 

When it comes to profound ignorance on deeply important matters, there is no "us and them".

Focus - November 19, 2017

I have a lot of time on my hands - perhaps too much. I read a lot, usually 2 serious books per week or maybe more if you count the books I check into and decide not to read or put on the back burner for later. In the "later" category is the emerging genre of books explaining all the details of Donald Trump's horrible personality and personal history. I get it. No further information required.

There is a danger of being pulled into a rabbit hole, following "click bait" until starvation sets in. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing something similar on a larger scale, taking advantage of the cheap and easy access to books (Kindle) and general information (Google/YouTube).

So here are, in theory, the "topics" I'm following.

THE SELF & COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

This is a hold-over from the main thread in my "Christian Skeptic" blog. At the moment, it concerns questions about the nature of the self (aka, "soul"). I'm convinced that this issue is very widely misunderstood. Most recently, I have wondered if we should have another pronoun, similar to the "royal we", that refers to the conventional "I" plus all the myriad of influences that determine what "I" know, what "I" want and how "I" make decisions. See The Knowledge Illusion and Behave. Perhaps "I" should just refer to the immediate experience of consciousness in the moment - a result of all those influences. This perspective is not unrelated to long-standing questions coming from "Dragon Theory". How is it that we are deeply "assimilated" into "dragons" like religions and corporations? What does assimilation feel like?

The distinction between "I" and the "Royal We" is important on a day to day personal level - what I might call the "Zen" outlook. I increasingly separate the pseudo-spiritual aspects of Zen from the simple discipline of mental and moral clarity implicit in the practices and traditions. In this case, there is not much more to learn - only the day-to-day struggle to apply what I already know. It's also a conscious effort to be "assimilated" into the right traditions, groups, political parties, and social media "bubbles". To some extent at least, we can determine what our personal "royal we" is.

Perhaps the easy way to understand this perspective is to note that human intelligence, like bee intelligence, is collective. The bee doesn't "know" how smart it is, or why it performs its wiggle dance or why it feels compelled to fly off in a given direction after watching a wiggle dance. Yet, when seen from the viewpoint of the hive, the behavior is perfectly intelligible. This idea applies on many levels to human behavior, but the interesting one applies to everyday experience - the fact that almost all of what we "know" is actually signaled in some way from other humans. Just think of what we "know" as we drive a car across the city.

CHRISTIANITY

I found "Fantasyland" to be a particularly scathing critique of religion - especially the American fundamentalist "Christian" version. However,  I still take the Christian ideal of forgiveness as an antidote to the current witch hunt "outing" all men who have ever behaved in an outrageous manner to any woman. Let him who has no sin throw the first stone. I expect a few stones to be thrown my way when I express this idea. For my own part, I am trying to banish "moral outrage" from my emotional toolbox. In spite of the widespread acceptance of moral "relativism" (acceptance of "gays" for example), most of us are unwilling to go the entire (Christian) distance to recognize that we all have things we are ashamed of and we all need forgiveness: the permission to start over.

Can all my reading and thinking serve to address practical questions, such as What kind of person should I be, How should I act? This has nothing to do with celestial "carrots and sticks." These are questions of personal and public morality. The current tsunami of moral outrage illustrates that many of us are addressing important moral issues with rather blunt instruments. 

ASSIMILATION

The idea behind "Dragon Theory" (now "Programmable Ape") can be seen from two perspectives: "top down" from the "dragon" or "bottom-up" from the assimilated human "component" of the dragon. I started from the "top," asking such questions as Is the "dragon" alive? Quite rightly, one of my readers pointed out that this is chiefly a matter of definition. Subsequently, trying to define the dragon has been quite a project, not unlike the effort to define a "meme." There are similar problems when one attempts to say anything that can not be said without the concept or to say anything that sheds a special light on the phenomenon. Accordingly, I now consider the original vision of the "dragon" as a first draft or glimpse of the phenomenon that is in need of a major overhaul. "The Corporation" remains as one of the most accessible introductions to this idea. On the other hand, my early versions of the idea, namely the "Creedal Group" and the "Spirit System" (dating back to 1970) seem to be surprisingly durable.

I have been encouraged by seeing the progress that some have made with the "meme" idea, especially by Daniel Dennett - most recently in "Bacteria to Bach." Really durable memes are be formed as a result of environmental constraints or the laws of physics. In other words, our "ideas" don't (always) grow out of unconstrained fantasy. In a sense, our ideas connect us to the "real world." Duh. To put it in another way, our "minds" are a (perhaps muddy) reflection of the world we live in. 

I continue to be well served by "Surfaces and Essences," the classic study of how analogies form the very basis of human thought. I'm always on the lookout for the analogies that underlie my ideas. Some analogies are better than others, but they are all analogies. It is wise to use analogies as a "whiteboard" sketch of a concept but always be on the alert for the need to drill down to the details of a phenomenon - especially those that challenge your favorite analogy. For example, from the beginning, "Dragon Theory" set itself up to be a promoter of confirmation bias, especially ignoring the substantial contribution made by individual decision making and constraints imposed by the environment. For example, by definition, the corporation operates in a financial environment, resulting in "behavior" that is more accurately seen as a result of the environment. To use an analogy, the behavior of a fish is, to a great extent, determined by the physical properties of water.

I have made more progress coming from the "bottom up", asking how it is that people get "assimilated." Early on, I realized that part of the answer is to be found in common assumptions, most notably in language and money. Most recently, that has been generalized with the aid of an AI concept: the "fitness function." For example, in the case of a for-profit corporation, the fitness function is entirely expressed in terms of money. This translates directly into the way that humans are assimilated, through hiring practices, employee incentives, customer relations and investor participation. All this is increasingly implemented by AI algorithms, but this only goes to reveal the fitness function that was there all along. By automating a fitness function, we create a monster. This is eloquently pointed out in "Weapons of Math Destruction" and supported by quite a few other sources such as "WTF." "WTF" is an instructive tutorial in how the simple idea of "money" as a fitness function actually works in Silicon Valley. You'd be surprised ...

Special assimilation issues arise in fantasy-ridden, fundamentalist American culture (See "Fantasy Land").

"Wiser" gets into the nuts and bolts of how "herd instinct" works in small groups such as juries and corporate boards. "Wiser" is a road map of how people are assimilated into a group, allowing the group as a whole to be more stupid than any particular member.  "Polarization of opinion" and "race to the bottom" are psychological phenomena subject to laboratory study. There is a large literature about exactly how corporations make stupid decisions. It comes as no surprise that we don't need fancy analogies to explain how the "brain" of the dragon - the prefrontal lobe - makes wrong decisions.

CLIMATE CHANGE

This issue used to literally keep me up at night. I now regard it as a kind of background fact - one of the "givens" that we all need to deal with, such as Calgary weather. It's been awhile since I have read anything new or important on this issue, although I try to connect the skeptics to information on the subject if they chose to actually learn something about it. Strangely, I often find myself in the awkward position of pointing out that there are other things besides climate change going on. Climate change is the background, but sometimes disasters are "ordinary" things like hurricanes, floods, and droughts. We need to deal with these events whether or not they are the result of climate change. To put another way, our preparation and response are within our control. It is useful to think this way since it calls for action from all quarters, including the climate change skeptics.

Zen plays a large part in my ability to retain a cool head while the world heats up. It is important to accept what you cannot change. In particular, we must accept impermanence - even the impermanence of life on Earth.

What is "Truth"?

Daniel Dennett likes to give Jaynes the benefit of the doubt: “There were a lot of really good ideas lurking among the completely wild junk.”

As Dennett hints (with typical subtly), there is a lot of "junk philosophy" around the subjects dear to Jaynes' heart. In this post, I'd like to extract one of Jayne's ideas and wipe a bit of "junk" off it to see where it gets me.

At the center of Jayne's theory is the "bicameral mind", which is firmly based on the idea that we have a "right brain" and a "left brain" with notably different capabilities, each capable of acting somewhat on their own. The "right brain" is good at seeing the "big picture" and sends its judgments to the left brain, where they are perceived as speech - sometimes the speech of the Gods. As things get historically more complicated, we evolve our present day "inner chatter", no longer attributed to the Gods (if we are sane), but now called "reason". Jaynes regards this as the emergence of consciousness itself, which is not what I want to take up in this post. What I like about Jaynes is that he sees language in a dynamic light, evolving and building up over time toward some critical point where the modern mind (along with "civilization") emerges.

There is no particular reason to locate these two faculties at some location in the brain and this is perhaps Jaynes main mistake - built in to his terminology. But we can understand his arguments very well without referring back to his neurological ideas. In fact, he rarely does so himself. You could go through his book and translate "Left Brain" as "Kidney" and "Right Brain" as "big toe" without impacting the meaning of what he's saying.

What we regard as "truth", at least in the Western traditions, is a linguistic concept. The "most" true statements are those of mathematics, which can be "proven". As Wittgenstein famously pointed out, such proofs are basically moves in a language game, where everyone agrees to the rules and agrees about what is "proven" in dialogue. As Hofstadter points out in Surfaces and Essences, the concept of language can be broadened to include the "models" of Physics - the underlying idea is metaphor and analogy.

Jaynes, Hofstadter and others point out that language is a huge labyrinth of metaphor. We "bootstrap" our store of metaphors as children (Jaynes is particularly good at describing how this bootstrap process works) and we proceed to produce the vast store in our heads - tens of thousands of words. It is in this language that our "inner voice" speaks. If our inner voice proclaims something to be true, it does so according to the impenetrable rules of the language that has been programmed into our brains. In the vast majority of cases, the beleivability of that inner voice comes from uncounted assumptions and analogies buried in the language it speaks. For example, if my inner voice calls someone a "nigger" in my head, that one word carries centuries if history and thousands of voices. It will make no sense to me to say to the inner voice: No, that person is not a "nigger". In fact, given the language that is being spoken, such a question makes no sense.

If you think that "1" is a solution to "x squared minus one equals zero", you speak the language of mathematics. If it seems sensible to say "I think, therefore I am", you have learned to talk like Descartes. Like him, you will regard that statement as self-evidently true. Those who fail to see the statement as self-evident are used to speaking a different language in a whole different culture which, for example, may regard the "self" as an illusion. Such a statement would make no sense to Descartes. It's not a matter of "truth" outside of the rules of the "language game". Descartes spoke the language of the religion of his time, which regarded the soul as the "self" -- the "self evident" starting point for any discussion of what is "real".

Is there any other way we can reach the "truth"? Jaynes says there is: that "right brain" which sees the truth but speaks it to the "left brain". It's better to characterize this source of perception as some kind of holistic or aesthetic sense that goes beyond language and perhaps precedes language historically. It is an open question whether this "right brain" (or big toe) processing works according to analogy. I think it's better to say it works by hard wired recognition of symmetry, but that is another topic.

For example, this "right brain" truth pops up when we say a certain combination of notes "sounds right" or a scene is breathtakingly beautiful. It certainly shouts loudly at us when we judge another human being to be beautiful, honest or friendly.

This simple observation leads me to some wide-ranging conclusions.

• By definition, we cannot expect language to reach into non-linguistic "truth". Western philosophy, including that of Dennett, even when purged of "wild junk", has nothing to say about "truth" revealed by our innate mental capacity to judge certain experiences as special and valuable.
• Zen, emphasizes direct aesthetic perception and takes pains to isolate and ignore the "inner voice". There is no reason to prefer one path over the other. In fact, I'm perfectly happy to leave the whole idea of "truth" to the language experts and seek for other words that reflect the judgement of my "right brain". This consideration is a much needed justification for being open to Zen.
• Our "right brains" have a shared language, a culture and a history of their own, referred to as "art". I would also contend that they have a built-in "language" of their own - perhaps reaching back far into the past, perhaps part of the very definition of life itself. Even when the "art" in question is expressed in language (the novel for example), quality judgement are made by standards that are difficult to express in the language of logic, although critics struggle endlessly to do so.
• We need to distinguish between what is "real" and what is "true". Truth is the umpire's call in the language game. Reality is what remains after all alternatives are ruled out.

There is another road to "truth", described in our language as "Science". Advances in Scientific knowledge are made chiefly through language - vigorously expanding our vocabulary. There are maybe 180,000 words in the English language (give or take). Scientific journals add a few more with every published article. Moreover, Science is constantly adding new models of reality. The first of these was "Euclidean Space". More recently, Feynman Diagrams have added to our ability to "picture" and discuss quantum reactions. Many things are easily "said" with pictures but almost impossible to "say" with words. However, these pictures ("maps") obey the same principles as language as discussed by Hofstadter and Jaynes. All lovers of maps and models will agree that there is a strong element of aesthetic beauty in a good map. 

There is also a strong aesthetic motive in Science as a whole, most eloquently described in "The Beautiful Question" by Frank Wilczek. Wilczek makes a strong case that the universe really is governed by symmetric principles, which also appeal strongly to our sense of what "looks right" (this is a right-brain kind of "looking right"). In other words, our taste for symmetry is a reliable guide to what is real.

So, in Science all three roads to the truth come together. 

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.