Pavel Somov's Blog, page 27

(No Subject)

Human being: a soap bubble with a brain.

Krzhizhanovsky's Sleep

200 Units of Galactic Meaninglessness

Vast Emptiness, Nothing Holy, Mere Wanderings of Conscious Matter

(No Subject)

(No Subject)

Level Yourself, Bubble

Cavorting with Kauri

Holding a chunk of 50,000 year old kauri wood in my hand... Need I say more?

Crimson Sun Never Sinks on the West Peak

13th century Korean Zen Preceptor T'ageo, at deathbed:

Life is like a bubble - 

Some eighty years, a spring dream.

Now I'll throw away this leather sack,

A crimson sun sinks on the west peak!

Life - an illusion?  Death of an illusion?  Death - an illusion?  Death - an awakening from a dream? 

Ask yourself these kinds of questions.

And ignore the answers.

 

"A crimson sun sinks on the west peak!" - T'ageo, as awakened as he was on his deathbed, did, however, fall prey to a favorite illusion of ours: sun neither rises nor sets; sun simply is as we spin around it.  There is a model of the mind in this.  But I wouldn't ponder it too much. 

-

ref: Anthology of Korean Literature (by Peter H. Lee)

Empathy Training for Robots

Pattern Break #108-a

Initial statement: the problem with empathy training for robots is not software but hardware. Mirror-neuron circuitry is hardware-based empathy that requires no programming.

Refined statement: the problem with empathy training for robots (and sociopaths) is not software (culture) but hardware. Mirror-neuron circuitry (of biological or technological kind) is hardware-based empathy that requires no programming/culture/modeling.

Pattern Break #108-b

All software eventually hardens; all hardware eventually softens.

Pattern Break #108-c

A mind on an autopilot is a robot lost in a mirror.  Mindfulness (and humanity) begins with self-reflection: ask yourself “Who is this who is asking ‘Who is this?’” Break a pattern.