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    hardie karges 2:12 am on January 11, 2026 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , artificial intelligence, , , , , , natural selection, ,   

    A Buddhist Theory of Knowledge  

    You can learn from the Buddha or you can learn from a virus. The message is largely the same: Do no harm. The virus IS normal. That is the realization. Dealing with it has the opportunity for enlightenment. This is the hand we were dealt: old age, sickness and death. That is the stuff of enlightenment, for those fortunate enough to get that close to the underlying truth of the simulation of reality in forms that our bodies (and minds) are equipped to process. Nothing can change that underlying nature of reality, nor our only partial ability to understand it.  

    And that is a fundamental truth in itself, our inability to ever truly understand it, totally and completely. It’s a shame that they don’t tell you that at the beginning of every beginning science class: this is only a partial understanding of what there is to know. Does that mean that the laws of science are wrong? No, only that they are incomplete. And they may be incomplete, not only in our knowledge of them, but in their own characteristics and capabilities.  Like AI, the laws of science may be learning, not only in what they are, but in what they are capable of being. 

    Evolution is one of my favorite subjects, and natural selection is key to that, the somewhat mechanical need to reproduce that every DNA cell seems to have at its heart. But we only know a world that is constantly growing, thanks largely to that same urge. But that’s a world largely empty until recently. But I believe that evolution is self-correcting, also, the same instincts that can save human population decline can also correct over-population, details to be worked out later. That’s the future. But it’s still only a simulation, as Buddhism heavily implies, if never states outright. We don’t perceive protons and electrons, tachyons and quarks. We perceive houses and trees, light and sound.

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 3:24 am on August 4, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , natural selection, ,   

    Buddhism 334: Right Views are not Political… 

    Politics are not a suitable focus for meditation, and in fact are a great disruption. Which should go without saying, it seems, but for the fact that much meditation is of the ‘guided’ sort. So, caution should be a watchword for practice. After all, silence is the foundation of all traditional meditation practices, so any narrative is going against that stream of consciousness, which at its best is a thoughtless stream.

    But politics is particularly onerous, it being often combative, such as it is, and with no remedy to that in sight. It seems that natural selection does not select for gentleness and conciliation, but for the ability to put freshly fertilized genes into the next generation, without which there may be no next generation. Every breeding couple of every species must produce slightly more than two offspring per couple, or we will all gradually go extinct, as the elevated rates for such a situation amply prove in the present climate.

    Still, some people claim that the Buddha had a political side, but I can’t find much proof of that. His Buddhism of renunciation never advocated total renunciation, though, and that’s the important thing. Partial renunciation is another name for daily meditation, and from there one’s daily life can quickly and vastly improve. The same thing can be said for political activism, as long as it’s peaceful, mindful, and respectful. There are conservative and more liberal sides to all politics, and that’s fine. Just leave the hatred and anger outside. And that will help keep your daily meditation healthy.

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 1:36 pm on August 30, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , eukaryote, genetic drift, , mystic, natural selection, prokaryote, shamans   

    Buddhist Oneness in a World of Multiplicity… 

    “WE ARE ALL ONE PEOPLE!” the poets shout, and the racists doubt, for this is foundational to their philosophy, a philosophy of differences, and not in a good way, as if some come from above, trickled down or in torrents for the beneficent blessings on to the huddled masses, while others clandestine creep up only with all due caution from below, dodging headlights and sirens screaming all the way, only to find paths blocked and passages hindered, due to the absence of prior authorizations and neglect of the necessary negotiations, all designed to limit access and forego success. But yes, we are all one people, with common origins. And that is a fact of Science, not an act of Philosophy…

    But it is often promoted that way, as if this were the manifold musings of mystics or the inspired screamings of shamans, when in fact it is inscribed in the most basic texts of the biological sciences, from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, and from there on to the most complex of biological organisms, including us, homo sapiens, wise men waxing philosophical, even though for a billion years we were nothing but the most basic of single-celled organisms, looking to reproduce, asexually, willing to forego all the romance, and most of the drama, just for the privilege of offspring bacteria to have their day in the sun, and various dark moist places, with little thought to an afterlife or the possibilities of reincarnation, just torches handed over in rapid succession, the lifespan of a bacterium, without rank nor rencor, just the certainty that life will go on, with or without consciousness to witness it or self-consciousness to record its random narratives, once upon a time…

    We are the pinnacle of reproductive success, natural selection, the certainty of afterthought, when accurate predictions are limited to Aristotelian syllogisms and binomial equations, and nothing as random as genetic mutation could ever be predicted without divine intervention or the sublime self-musings of subconscious necessity. Thus we proceed, in fits and starts, the evolution of consciousness and culture looking for something so sublime as natural selection and genetic drift to guide us forward from the depths of willful ignorance along a path, any path, toward a paradise of human fruition. But that path will likely be a Middle Path, Buddhist by Nature if not by name, and as conservative and it is liberal, as protective as it is free, conserving traditions while embracing freedom. Life is short. Go forth and add. Don’t do anything bad. Give more than you take. That is all…

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    hardie karges 11:57 am on March 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: natural selection   

    The ferns beneath the eaves of my roof are the best 

    arguments for natural selection that I’ve ever encountered. I didn’t plant them there, nor did anyone else, nor did they plant themselves. Nevertheless the few seeds that found their way there certainly do like it with a direct intravenous drip every time it rains. I still can’t shake the notion that there’s a creative principle to evolution, but in the creative, not the created, phase. If only we could find the transfer particles.

     

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