A book on being an ethical person in the modern age ft AI, art, code, techno-buddhism, and cool pictures
post by geoff bradway (geoff-bradway) · 2024-12-09T23:10:16.040Z · LW · GW · 4 commentsThis is a link post for https://archive.org/details/phantasmorgia
Contents
5 comments
The goal of this book is to end all suffering. The elevator pitch is - you only need two things in life, namely cultivate compassion and mastery. This book seeks to philosophically prove two points, that altruism is a positive feedback loop, and suffering is a negative feedback loop can be broken by altruism and mastery.
Summary of Phantasmagoria: Emptiness and Replication
This thought-provoking book weaves together ancient Buddhist philosophy, modern science fiction, and cutting-edge technology to explore the nature of reality, suffering, and human potential. Drawing inspiration from concepts like emptiness (śūnyatā), interdependence, and impermanence, the book delves into the interconnectedness of all phenomena and their relevance in an increasingly digital age.
Key themes include:
- The Fourth Turning of the Wheel: A speculative expansion of Buddhist thought to address the challenges of the modern world, including climate change, technology, and mental health.
- Buddhism and Cyberpunk: An exploration of science fiction's response to suffering through themes like immortality, AI, and virtual reality, offering parallels to Buddhist teachings on form, perception, and consciousness.
- AI and Emptiness: A meditation on the parallels between Buddhist concepts of interdependence and the associative learning processes of AI, challenging us to rethink our relationship with technology.
- Psychoactive Substances and Harm Reduction: A discussion of altered states of consciousness and their potential for spiritual growth when approached with mindfulness and ethical care.
- Art and Spirituality: Insights into creating meaningful art that transcends ego and serves as an expression of the interconnected self.
The book also includes meditative practices, stories, and reflective questions to guide readers on a journey toward greater self-awareness and compassion. Rich with collaborative essays, AI-generated imagery, and philosophical musings, Phantasmagoria invites readers to question the boundaries of existence, technology, and the self in pursuit of a more harmonious world.
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comment by Richard_Kennaway · 2024-12-10T11:48:31.443Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Sorry, I lost interest when I saw how much "collaboration" there was with ChatGPT.
Replies from: geoff-bradway↑ comment by geoff bradway (geoff-bradway) · 2024-12-10T15:32:54.386Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yeah, I understand that it is very over the top, but that is intentional. I am trying to demonstrate that ChatGPT seems to have a lot of real "knowledge" inside of it somehow, by using it to explain how the West thinks about "knowledge" via hume, how that relates then to how we make "knowledge" via repeated experimentation in probability theory, and then how ChatGPT seems to have "knowledge" built up by words and probabilities. It appears to me that the three processes all seem to work by essentially just associating some bundle of things it perceives together and reasoning about it as such (our sense data for humans, world events for probabilities, and computer speak for LLMs).
And it appears that now even academic essays are being marked as spam. Do you think it would have been a more moral decision for me to leave the ChatGPT sections as unmarked, and to have taken credit for myself? It appears it would have made it more readable, but at the loss of clarity of how AI tools can be used to create interesting content these days. I also copy and pasted a lot straight from the Buddhists as well.
Replies from: Richard_Kennaway, geoff-bradway↑ comment by Richard_Kennaway · 2024-12-10T18:51:49.546Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm all for AI content being acknowledged as such. I rarely find value in it.
Looking again at the last paragraph of the OP, separating the two sentences to make a point:
The book also includes meditative practices, stories, and reflective questions to guide readers on a journey toward greater self-awareness and compassion.
Rich with collaborative essays, AI-generated imagery, and philosophical musings, Phantasmagoria invites readers to question the boundaries of existence, technology, and the self in pursuit of a more harmonious world.
The first sentence is clear and succinct. The second reads like the first, fed into ChatGPT, chewed up, and vomited out again. What does it even mean to "question the boundaries of existence, technology, and the self"?
Replies from: geoff-bradway↑ comment by geoff bradway (geoff-bradway) · 2024-12-10T18:59:52.329Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Okay, so I think because I have a new account, I can only have three responses before I am rate limited as spam. And including my deleted comment, this will be number 3. For what it is worth, both sentences created there were from ChatGpt.
But in the book, in the essay of on 'Phatasmoriga - Emptiness and Replication', I'm trying to argue that things as we think of them don't really exist, but yet get replicated infinite amounts of time. The visual metaphor I use for this is Magrittes' 'Treachery of Images', where the 'this is not a pipe' is referring to the fact that it is not a pipe, but a picture of a pipe. However, it is also clearly a picture of a pipe, so somehow that image, which is either a photo or a painting of a pipe, depending on how you consume it, still makes you think of the word "pipe". So despite the fact that in some sense it is just "raw stuff" it has overtime developed the associate with the word 'pipe' via endless replication and association. I think Magritte does an excellent job of highlighting the core philosophy of Phatasmoriga with images.
I did just publish a new version. I realized I had failed into include many people in the book who weren't just dudes, so I went ahead an added MLK, Rumi, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Veil, and Simone Weil. I'm sorry for any confusion this has caused, but I am trying my best.