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<p>DaveW , et al-</p>
<p>Fascinating concept and not far from some of the maunderings I
went through when I read <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.zompist.com/snow.html">Snow Crash</a>
(Stephenson) and Jayne's <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind">Bicameral
Mind</a> theory decades ago. I also wandered into similar
territory when I was trying to describe Fred Unterseher's ideas
(and practice) around holographic mandalas here a few months ago?<br>
</p>
<p>Taking your ideation as seriously as my background/understanding
allows:</p>
<p>I think of what you describe as triggering a "refactoring" (using
a system development term). Or an avalanche in <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9701157">"punctuated
criticality" </a>speak. Or Poincare's <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifurcation_theory#:~:text=Bifurcation%20theory%20is%20the%20mathematical,a%20family%20of%20differential%20equations.">Bifurcations.</a>
Or Piaget's <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/developmental-psychology/cognitive-development/accommodation/">Accomodation</a>.</p>
<p>It is not clear to me how one would go about labeling the
training set in this case, I am hoping there will be some
discussion here of that that would look like. I'm definitely a
charlatan when it comes to ML and AI LLM technologies of today. <br>
</p>
<p>I am also not clear "to what end" such a project would be
mounted? I am sure most answers have a component of "because we
can". </p>
<p>In the sense that "seeking enlightenment" in the Buddhist sense
is (probably?) entirely an oxymoron, this would seem on the
surface to be a fools errand at best and perhaps something like
deeply wrong-headed (aka Evil?) at worst. <br>
</p>
<p>Your references to the (in)effability made me think of <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://instituteofclinicalhypnosis.com/nlp/difference-between-deep-and-surface-structure-nlp/#:~:text=The%20terms%20deep%20structure%20and,to%20represent%20the%20deep%20structure.">Chomsky's
Deep Structure</a>, which I am pretty sure others here know a
lot more about than I do. Also the (related?) very idea of an <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Human_language">ur-language</a>
.<br>
</p>
<p>Spike Jonze seemed to investigate/reference this obliquely in his
movie <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_(film)">Her</a> and
particularly in the AI's own development of a
super/transcendent-AI in the spirit of Alan Watts. <br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alan-watts-reborn-in-her_b_4848864"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alan-watts-reborn-in-her_b_4848864</a><br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I am also a little ambivalent on this specific conception,
perhaps because I am probably intellectually more drawn to
Gradualism than to <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitism">Subitism</a> in
ideas of Buddhist Enlightenment. Perhaps because my first
*effective* introduction to Buddhism was through Stephen Levine's
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/402994">A Gradual
Awakening</a> and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samatha-vipassana">Vipassana</a>
Buddhism. And the paradox reflected in my favorite line from
pop-western Buddhism: <i>"The only difference between before
enlightenment and after enlightenment is that you realize you
have always been enlightened"</i><br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><i>"the Lotus Flower blooms in Muddy Waters"</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The general bootstrap structure of the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/book98/com.ch1/vinge.singularity.html">impending
singularity</a> is fascinating to me. I prefer <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/book98/com.ch1/vinge.singularity.html">Vinge's
conception</a> over that of Kurzweil which seems excessively
narcissistic and self-indulgent. And all this lead me to find
this Chalmer's paper on the topic: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://consc.net/papers/singularity.pdf"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://consc.net/papers/singularity.pdf</a>.
A few years ago I picked up Bostrom's book <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence:_Paths,_Dangers,_Strategies">Superintelligence</a>
and found it to be a very good survey of the state of things...
but I now feel that this 9 year old work is quite dated and
nevertheless deserves a re-read? If I can find time between my
DDOS attacks on FriAM here (nod to EricS).<br>
</p>
<p>- Steve <br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/28/23 4:10 PM, Prof David West
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:71202b25-3672-4d0b-a7bf-e43a0cfa5736@app.fastmail.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">This is a serious question albeit one in a realm that many would dismiss as non-serious. First, some background.
Rinzai Zen is the "sudden enlightenment" school that asserts the possibility of a single event serving as a 'trigger' that evokes/instills-in-the-mind a state of enlightenment. The trigger might be a closed fist of your guru striking your ear, or—as was the case with Hui Neng (illiterate peasant who became the Sixth Patriarch) overhearing a fragment of the Diamond Sutra spoken by a passerby of the fish market where he was working.
This kind of "evocative trigger" is analogous to your nose detecting the scent of cinnamon as you walk past a bakery and your mind instantly filled with a complete memory of grandmother's kitchen, all the scents and sounds, and emotions, an activities, in complete detail.
A 'Zen evocative trigger' would, by analogy, fill your mind with—put your mind in a state of—Enlightenment. This might be ephemeral, satori with a lower case 's', or permanent, Satori with an upper case 'S'.
There is a large body of art (calligraphy, painting, poetry, ceramics, ...) that embodies exactly this kind of trigger; one that can be 'sensed' even if its sensing does not trigger (S)satori.
So the question: is it possible to construct a self-learning AI with a training set of such art and, once trained, turn it loose on the Google image base to find other examples of art with evocative triggers?
Of course, there is a hidden assertion: whatever the quality or characteristic of the art that embodies the 'trigger' is ineffable; which means, in this case, it has no "representation" (word, symbol, brush stroke, etc.).
davew
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</blockquote>
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