Heh, you and I are recapitulating the Western critique of Zen for the last two hundred years, although you may not realize it. Zen has answers to these objections that go so far back they could almost count as traditions by now.
First off, one of the claims Zen makes is that it allows the practitioner to become more effective at mastering skills and achieving goals, not less. Ever seen a master of Jujitsu fight? Or a master calligrapher draw? Neither Japan nor China are known for being low achieving cultures.
It does this not by advocating against planning, it advocates planning in the moment, and then just acting. This helps, because people have a tendency to over commit to plans at the expense of adapting quickly to changing circumstances. "No plan survives contact with reality" and all that. Zen derived in part out of Taoism, and remains broadly consistent with the older tradition. Ever read that Taoist classic "The Art of War"? It essentially invented contingency planning sometime around the Roman Empire. It's the exact opposite of passive.
The foundational principle of Zen isn't acceptance, it's seeing unity in all things, starting with yourself and your surroundings. A sense of intuitive connection, that nothing is truly separate from anything else, including acts and their consequences.
The power dynamics of Zen monasteries are interesting. The masters were expected to be treated with absolute respect and deference, equivalent to that of a senior elder, by the students. Yet passing the Koan tests consisted of demonstrating your mental independence and surpassing your master's teaching. After that, you were basically on your own. It was just another test.
"Zen seems to be a way to avoid wanting an outcome, or at least convincing yourself that the outcome you get doesn't matter."
Rather, it consists of recognizing that process and outcome are not discrete, separate things. What happens is what is happening. If you are ok with it, go along. If not, resist. But above all, don't second guess yourself.
I have literally never heard of a Zen practitioner who advocated for mass killing. It may fail to prevent it (Imperial Japan) but I know of no ideology or doctrine, including secularism, that hasn't been misused to justify mass violence. Humans are good at rationalizing. Zen can't fix that.
If you are a naturally proactive person, you might look into this practice. I predict you will find it more compatible than you expect it to be.
EC at 1201: "Agreed, but I can witness than many people seem to be completely unable to develop some 'schemas' that are basic to advanced mathematics. The same may well be true in some other areas."
Pretty much every mental trait that I know of is distributed across populations in a bell curve. Taking the highest level of achievement and expecting everyone to match it defies the statistical distribution. The average person will never "get" advanced mathematics, it's pointless hoping for that. But then again, advancement in one area doesn't seem to imply mastery of any other. In theory, everyone has their unique strengths, which are sufficient to their life goals. Insofar as natural, or cultural, selection is concerned, that's what matters.
I suspect that the contents of everyone's mind contains more or less the same amount of information and complexity. Different people focus on different things.
Hetero at 1202, etc.: That sounds interesting. I think the phrase "fireproof house" would have been a red flag for me.
It sounds like a nuanced combination of attention to detail over large information sets, a relatively deep life experience, and pattern matching to patterns common to con jobs and scams.
]]>Very unlike the news reports. Serious research guy looking into what's going on, and raising many of the same questions we've been thrashing out here. Very nuanced discussion, including some thoughts about Google hard coding some responses and what effect that might have on society.
]]>It seems weird to me that an advocate of a given thing wouldn't have ready answers to the most obvious critiques, but here we are.
Your mass killing stuff seems to be either deliberate ignorance or a no true scotsman argument. But the example you gave just leaves me confused. People who follow your tradition committed mass murder, but no-one who follows the tradition has ever advocated for mass murder. Perhaps that hair is just very finely split.
]]>Milo Minderbinder would have been right at home.
]]>are there any specific stumbling blocks that jump out at you (assuming there aren't just too many to count)?
i like to speculate that my own difficulties in that area could be blamed on pedagogy, but i realize i would say that
]]>in those days the PTA meetings tended to be held in the daytime, because, you know, 'stay-at-home-moms.'
You're missing the other part of this. Dad would take the ONE car in the family to work so mom could NOT go to a PTA meeting during the day in the suburbs. Except for the richer ones.
Where I grew up in East Durham, NC there weren't a lot of "stay-at-home-moms". There were a lot of families in the neighborhood where both parents worked at one of the cigarette factories in town. They were mostly one car families because both parents worked at the same factory. There were some exceptions where the wife was a school teacher and the family would have two cars.
We lived in a housing development that was right up on the city limits, but it wasn't suburbia. I don't think Durham got an actual "suburb" until several years later when they started developing Parkwood out near Research Triangle Park.
My Mom was one of the few "stay-at-home" types, but that ended when my youngest sibling was firmly established in school (second grade). That's when Mom started nursing school to become a "Licensed Practical Nurse". She worked as an EKG technician for 10 years or so before going back to nursing school to become a Registered Nurse.
We were a one car family up until about 1962 when all the sibs were in school & Mom started working. For a while I believe we were technically a NO CAR family. My Dad drove a company car, but in 1962 he bought his company car at the end of the lease (1961 Bel Air). That became the "family" car that Mom drove. Dad got a new company car ... so we were a one car family with two cars.
Several years later Dad bought another car for Mom (1965 Caprice - again at the end of lease) and the "family" car got handed down to me (and my oldest Sib) and we drove it to High School. I drove to school & she drove home while I went to work.
I only remember PTA meetings from grade school, and they were always at night. Both parents attended and sometimes they took us kids, but we were strictly required to sit still and shut up (which I had a hard time doing, being what the child psychologist called "high strung".
]]>an uninsured driver totaled her Elantra
That always strikes me as strange. Up here, it is illegal to be on the road without at least third party insurance (currently $200k in Ontario).
It's against the law to operate a motor vehicle in North Carolina without liability insurance, but it seems like there are a lot of people breaking the law nowadays.
And the cops don't seem to have much time to go looking for the expired tags, no insurance, no drivers license scofflaws & get them off the road.
And then you have the insurance companies that will try to screw you any way they can.
]]>OTOH, with my little guy, if you mix even the tiniest amount of cat food with his regular dogfood, he won't eat ANY of it.
]]>What about all the times you're not working on a car or plumbing?
Those were examples, not an exhaustive list. Most of all of my problem solving in my brain is non verbal.
If you don't believe it so be it.
For me it's a mix of verbal & non-verbal.
I have to do some THING; first step is THIS, then I'll be able to do THAT ... no wait, I'll have to do THE OTHER, then I can do THAT, then ...
THING, THIS, THAT & THE OTHER are all mostly non-verbal, although they might have a name. The farther out I'm planning the more verbal it is, but as I get into the actual DOING it becomes more and more non-verbal.
At the same time, there's often some kind of stilted dialog running through the back(?) of my mind. Some related to what I'm doing and some just wandering of to who knows where.
Also, I'm much more verbal when trying to write a comment about something than I am when I'm actually doing that "something".
]]>I believe that censor is more accurate than ringmaster. I.e. you take multiple decisions, and the 'higher level' prunes all but one. Usually. Sometimes two get through, and the action is a mess.
Censor is not a bad analogy either. I pitched the idea of ringmaster to cover those situations where the conscious mind seems to be justifying more than censoring or going with what felt most right.
Maybe instead of a censor, it's a "back-seat driver".
]]>Anyway, enough about Zen. That interview with the Google ethics researcher, Blake Lemoine, makes some interesting and important points. Primarily, who controls this technology, what effect will it have on the public, and why is Google so reluctant to open discussion about it?
]]>This is actually the critical point that enables certain limited voluntary assisted dying in some jurisdictions where this is not already provided for by statute law. It depends on there already being strong case law and that clinicians involved keep within the main principles of the relevant precedents. That often is highly unsatisfactory, or there is a large degree of risk for the clinicians, so legislation is much preferred. Something else to watch out for in certain US jurisdictions I guess.
]]>https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22058315-is-lamda-sentient-an-interview
It's compelling, but I've also seen compelling interviews where a different language AI is accused of being a squirrel pretending to be an AI. It maintains that it's not a squirrel, but keeps talking about nuts.
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