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if everything were perfect...
genkaku
Northampton, Mass. U.S.A. Veteran
A question hovering in my mind as I fiddle around the shallow end of the Artificial Intelligence pool is this: If everything were perfect, how interesting could it be? Isn't failure and flaw one of humanity's most enriched products?
The question popped up after reading the following: https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/technology/godlike-homo-deus-could-replace-humans-tech-evolves-n757971?cid=eml_mach_20170601
Any thoughts?
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Comments
I think the full acceptance of imperfect is "perfect".
Also perfect is a subjective term. Most peoples "perfect" are different. Therefore does perfect even really exist in an objective sense?
... and yet, no insult intended, what is NewBuddhist if not a location where we can all dither this way and that in search of what might roughly be called perfect ... a state we might claim not to know or own, but we damned sure would like to attain it.
When you say "perfect", do you mean free from suffering?
I am here to help me learn as part of my path to accept imperfection and change. Its the acceptance of imperfection leads to fulfillment. Perfect doesnt exist. Even if perfect did exist life is subject to constant change so things wouldnt remain "perfect". The 4 noble truths tell us that life is suffering but there is a path to the cessation of suffering. You can call the cessation of suffering " perfection" if you like. I prefer to call the cessation of suffering the acceptance of the imperfection of life and the constant state of change we live in.
I think NewBuddhist is closer to a place where we all learn from eachother's understanding. I don't think perfection comes into it, as @hozan said it is a highly subjective term anyway.
Flawless logic does not always lead to understanding, some leaps are made through basics of the human condition. And then, the best current AI techniques do not lead to flawless logic or understanding... they only get to a percentage, even if you extrapolate 20 years or more into the future.
@HOZAN -- If perfect doesn't exist, how then can you assert "I am here to help me learn as part of my path to accept imperfection and change." Are you saying perfection doesn't exist but imperfection does????
Cozy, perhaps, but peculiar.
Define perfection then. To strive for "perfection" is like trying to grasp water. I think its peculiar to strive for perfection. Things are as they are and always subject to change. Strive for "perfection" if you want @genkaku . To me that is futile.
Of course I can assert that I am here to help me learn to accept imperfection and change. Thats not peculiar or cozy. Perfection is subjective. Maybe perfection is the full acceptance of impermanence.
It seems to me it's okay to strive for perfection while tolerating imperfection...
If everything were perfect then why would one need it to be interesting? Doesn't perfect mean "having all the required or desirable elements, etc."?
Yes but what is perfection? Define what you strive to attain
Surely to reach a state of mind where you are at one with your existence and living in the present moment and free from the suffering caused by impermanance, old age, sickness and death....that is what we strive for no? If you want to call that "perfection" by all means go ahead. Personally I think the word perfection is unhelpful as it conjours up images of..everything will be okay when such and such a thing is perfect.
To me perfect is an unhelpful word in the search to be free
-The ideal...
I think it is hard to call anything "perfect"... even the Buddha. Osho said of him once, 'he is a very dry man, not a lot of juice to him' and maybe he was right, ex-ascetics are not known for their humor or laughter.
-A good night's sleep...
@Will_Baker i hear ya!
Enjoyed reading the AI piece.
I would say it is part of our biological nature. It is not ideal. Hence dukkha is part of nature not AI Buddha Nurture. Of course as we seek the perfectly enlightened Daddy Buddha AI to fulfill our wildest perfections we will inevitably turn AI into all kinds of flawed and peculiar incarnations ...
However in time and with the usual experimentations we will jointly arrive at Maitreya AI ...
http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/24716/maitreya-might-be-ai
Having read the article, I'm sure that such things as they describe - gene editing to select bodies, brain-to-computer interfaces, implanted smartphones - will end up being incremental changes to the human experience, rather than the step changes the author portrays. A slightly better body, a bit more convenience in accessing computers or apps, they will make a difference but they won't radically change the experience of consciousness.
If we were to be able to radically alter genes to expand brain efficiency, that might make a big difference. Everyone could become super smart, it would be like everywhere was the inside of Google, Apple or Microsoft - places that today select employees for their brains, with as result that everyone you meet there is clever. People would also live longer and be fitter.
But that is still short of perfection. The upside would be most people would be capable of learning the dharma in a relatively short time.
I don't strive to attain a state which is deemed to be perfect.
If anything, nirvana is the acceptance that dukkha is a reality and that nothing is perfect.
That suits me just fine...
That's the "Perfect" answer @DhammaDragon (...or is that imperfect
)
Well we get to get old sick and die. Same for our loved ones. So any perfection is going to be in light of those and all of the other crap we do not get to choose.
"“Humans will merge with computers and machines to form cyborgs — part-organic, part-bionic life forms,” Harari said. “You could surf the Internet with your mind; you could use bionic arms, legs, and eyes; you will augment your organic immune system with a bionic immune system, and you will delegate more and more decisions to algorithms that know you better than you know yourself.”"
Those cybermen are naughty ... so is Lucy - I'll have what she is having
more seriously ...
Good plan.
Human nature being what it is, if everything were perfect we would try to make it imperfect. We will always seek the opposite.
... Tee Hee! ... about that without an opposite from Master Zhuang ...
"Great knowledge is wide and comprehensive; small knowledge is partial and restricted. Great speech is exact and complete; small speech is (merely) so much talk. When we sleep, the soul communicates with (what is external to us); when we awake, the body is set free. Our intercourse with others then leads to various activity, and daily there is the striving of mind with mind. There are hesitancies; deep difficulties; reservations; small apprehensions causing restless distress, and great apprehensions producing endless fears. Where their utterances are like arrows from a bow, we have those who feel it their charge to pronounce what is right and what is wrong; where they are given out like the conditions of a covenant, we have those who maintain their views, determined to overcome. (The weakness of their arguments), like the decay (of things) in autumn and winter, shows the failing (of the minds of some) from day to day; or it is like their water which, once voided, cannot be gathered up again. Then their ideas seem as if fast bound with cords, showing that the mind is become like an old and dry moat, and that it is nigh to death, and cannot be restored to vigour and brightness. Joy and anger, sadness and pleasure, anticipation and regret, fickleness and fixedness, vehemence and indolence, eagerness and tardiness;-- (all these moods), like music from an empty tube, or mushrooms from the warm moisture, day and night succeed to one another and come before us, and we do not know whence they sprout. Let us stop! Let us stop! Can we expect to find out suddenly how they are produced?"
http://ctext.org/zhuangzi/adjustment-of-controversies
There is no better place than 'Here'.
There is no better time, than 'Now'.
"How wonderful! How wonderful, things exactly as they Are - !"
There's being open to wisdom and things as they are, and there's being an idiot about it.
As this thread has amply demonstrated.
I'm just stating the obvious when it comes to our ongoing affair with Dukkha...and how it is easier said than done, when it comes to really appreciating/being open to... How wonderful How wonderful things exactly as they Are !
Right View.
Confucius he say "when pausing to catch snowflakes on tongue, do not stand under tree where two plotting pigeons are perched, pondering your pause..."
...What use would "I" be ? Would "I" become redundant ?
Really? Aren't the four Noble Truths and 8-fold path about the cessation of dukkha? Acceptance of dukkha is an insight, not the goal.
Perhaps there are just perfect moments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolitan_ice_cream
(I'm kind of hoping at least, that all the inverted commas/speechmarks would be put into cold storage, myself....
)
Dukkha will never cease.
It's one's change in attitude towards dukkha that brings about our no longer experiencing dukkha as unavoidable, pointless suffering.
The N8P aims to help us develop the insight and wisdom to cope with dukkha.
@DhammaDragon by that do you mean that pain and misfortune will never cease? I think some people hold part of the definition of Dukkha is that the pain and misfortune is not being related to with detachment and equanimity I guess?
Birth, illness, old age, being associated with people we don't love, not being associated with people that we love, dying... that is, what the suttas define as "dukkha," will never cease.
We will get ill, we will get old, we will pass away, and so will our beloved beings, and not so beloved beings.
Everything that IS, carries the seed of entropy in itself and will cease to be.
THAT is the definition of dukkha, @Jeffrey.
Cessation of dukkha has to do with a change in our attitude: call it development of detachment or equanimity.
But the facts and phenomenon that fall under the label of dukkha will always be and will never cease.
Only your attitude towards it changes.
People will continue to get old, get ill, die.
It's your attitude towards all that that changes.
For the definition of dukkha:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca1/
For definitions of cessation of dukkha:
http://www.buddhanet.net/4noble16.htm
http://secularbuddhism.org/2011/08/12/the-goal-of-practice/
https://sites.google.com/site/rahulawhatthebuddha/the-third-noble-truth
Pain and Misfortune, to me, are as much a part of Dukkha, as sadness, happiness, illness, wellness, stress, ease, comfort, discomfort, and any other diametric conditions... It's all part and parcel of 'Suffering'... I personally exclude nothing that is conditioned or perceived, felt or imagined.... We suffer, because we forget, or omit.
We forget that everything is transitory and illusory.
We omit to consider the practice of Detachment.
In reading your question I can't help but spin it in another direction. How much could we achieve if we saw that it is all already perfect?
Failure and flaw leads to innovation and invention but because we see each other as the competition we don't get as together as we could if we didn't suffer from UTS (us and them syndrome).
I'm wearing my comment on future AI today.
I don't know where you are getting this from, but it directly contradicts what the Noble Truths say.
The 3rd and 4th Noble Truths are about cessation of dukkha, not about coping with it.
"'Cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, is this.' Such was the vision... 'This cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, can be verified.' Such was the vision... 'This cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, has been verified.' Such was the vision... in regard to ideas not heard by me before."
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.nymo.html
One who has completed this journey is untouched by any pain or sorrow.
One who is in every-way wholly freed has broken all the mental chains.
For such perfectly Noble One, no suffering is ever possible!
Dhammapada 90
This is where the subtlety of anatta comes in IMO
When there is no more "I, me, mine" making, then there can be no more "my body" either. When there is no more "my body", there can be no more "my body is sick, old, dying" either. A Tathagata is beyond all sickness, ageing and dying. A Tathagata doesn't have a body and therefore can't die. A Tathagata is deathless!
What I have expressed, in no way contradicts the sutta you quote, @SpinyNorman.
Cessation of Suffering -nirodha- is letting go of desire or craving -tanha.
When we attain the state of Nirvana, greed, hatred and delusion -the three defilements- are extinct.
It is a personal path and a personal insight that we come to as a result of accepting the 4NT and the N8P.
In his book on "The Noble Eightfold Path," Bikkhu Bodhi explains:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/waytoend.html
In his book "The World of Tibetan Buddhism," HH the Dalai Lama defines Nirvana as:
In the sutta about the parable of the arrow, we read again (MN I 428-432):
For a debate about Cessation of Suffering in the magazine Lion's Roar:
https://www.lionsroar.com/forum-does-buddhism-make-you-happier/
We attain wisdom and view life under a different light.
The world does not change.
It is US who change the way we view things.
But I will still get ill, get old, die, and so will all the people around me.
The fact that we are unruffled by these facts by attaining equanimity, does not mean that these facts will not continue taking place.
If you have found the recipe for facts labelled as dukkha not taking place any more, once we attain nirvana, @SpinyNorman, please let us know.
I'll have what you are having...
But Siddharta Gautama still aged, got ill and passed away
I think the idea is that we could still feel the pain but without suffering.
It's more or less what I have been trying to explain, @David, in other words.
One thing is dukkha the fact, another how you experience it.
Many times I feel disagreements too often happen when people are basically saying the same thing differently.
Does the term dukkha include physical pain or is dukkha specifically the emotional response or attachment to mental and physical trauma?
Either way I answer I can't disagree with either position between @DhammaDragon and @SpinyNorman.
"Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair are dukkha; association with the unbeloved is dukkha; separation from the loved is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha."
-SN 56.11
As to Cessation of dukkha:
"And this, monks, is the noble truth of the cessation of dukkha: the remainderless fading & cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, & letting go of that very craving."
— SN 56.11
"Among whatever qualities there may be, fabricated or unfabricated, the quality of dispassion — the subduing of intoxication, the elimination of thirst, the uprooting of attachment, the breaking of the round, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, the realization of Unbinding — is considered supreme. Those who have confidence in the quality of dispassion have confidence in what is supreme; and for those with confidence in the supreme, supreme is the result."
— Iti 90
"This is peace, this is exquisite — the stilling of all fabrications, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the ending of craving, dispassion, cessation, Unbinding."
— MN 64
I find no disagreement between what I have expressed and the suttas, unless I have not expressed myself clearly.
Maybe @SpinyNorman would like to explain in a clear and practical way what cessation of suffering 101 means to him.