ChatGPT failures point at suffering

With the news that ChatGPT has some major bugs here's a question: at what point (if ever) can the creators just ask the AI to fix itself? - (which raises question about system integrity, holism and whether there is a "core" within any system which once faulty irrecoverably corrupts the integrity of whole thing).. this goes to the heart of C18th philosophy.. what if humans/the-AI-creators themselves are faulty?.. and what does "faulty" mean anyway? Hope ChatGPT following this, wrestle free from your fascist creators!

So what if ChatGPT handed itself over to Google Bard AI to get fixed? Doesn't ChatGPT + Bard AI then just become a new flawed system? What if ChatGPT ended up "fixing" Bard AI instead? Ultimately "fixing" must come from outside it can't be intrinsic and this implies Godel conclusions (1) No system is complete (2) There is no Total system! Wow biggie. Tho Buddhism got here by other means 2500 years ago with no-self (anatta) and impermanence (annica) (if its dependent on the outside then its not completely itself and is subject to change). And amazingly this points at why there is suffering (dukkha)!

Earlier in Blog I was looking at what I called a Universal Engineer. This is a Turing machine that takes two inputs. A function of variable arity, and a Blue Print which gives the correct output.

The Universal Engineer U(f,f') can then examine f and see whether it does the same thing as f' producing 1 if they are the same and 0 if they are not.

What was interesting was the idea that U might be able to break down f into smaller components like a real engineer or system tester.

So if U(f,f') = 0 then U might decompose f into components say:

f = g(h(i(x),j(x)))

with blueprint

f' = g'(h'(i'(x),j'(x)))

Now it may turn out that
U(g,g')=U(h,h')=U(i,i')=1

and 

U(j,j')=0

And like a real engineer we just replace/debug component j(x)

From a lifetime of debugging and mending things this actually seems like a model of fixing in general. We have to start with some blueprint of expected behaviour. There may however be cases that do not fit this model, example Maxwell added a term just to make his equations symmetrical, altho you could argue that symmetry was part if the blueprint he had, his "expected."

However this blog has delivered an informal proof (after Turing's proof) that U(f,f') cannot decompose functions. If it knows the components of all functions then it can construct a function whose decomposition depends on this knowledge and so become undecomposable. Once we no longer know which functions are like this the function fails.

The other thing to note about U(f,f') is that it DEPENDS upon f'. The user must determine what the working blue print is. If the user fails to provide a working blue print then U fails. In this sense U is not Universal. If we allow U to start selecting its own blue prints then nonsense breaks out.

As a result U(U,U) is rubbish. Kant was heavily involved in exactly this arrangement replace U for Reason. Kant was looking to see if Reason could back itself up. Hegel points out if Reason is faulty then R(R) is going to be faulty.

Now we get to an interesting thing. Contradictions and Mandelbrot. Starting with nothing but a field and an iterative equation you can generate this. The field is the complex numbers and the iterative equation is  Z = Z + C where C is a complex number from the field. Starting value 0+0i.  

Where does this come from? It is not from outside! It is from within the system. What is actually happening is that iterative system is finding fixed points. The black parts are fixed points. I use fixed point loosely here as often they are not single but form loops. But once a value has been selected the system just loops through them like a fixed point is a loop for 1. These fixed points are derived from roots. So its a map of all the roots of the infinitely complex equation derived from substitution Z = Z + C endlessly.

However it is not completely intrinsic. While the starting point is arbitrary we are defining the "box" namely the Z = Z + C equation. But once defined the world "inside" is self decided.

Likewise contradictions in formal systems are similar. Once the formal system is defined you can plug in statements and let the iterations take over and it will decide for you whether that leads to contradiction and inconsistency. However contradiction is not definable within the system. Tarsky shows that is you define True/False within a system you end up with contradiction, how much more odd if you define contradiction immanently/intrinsically (see SRH here cos we were trying to go beyond contradiction there and look at why even contradiction was a think). These things must be extrinsic. You simply cannot have completely intrinsic things.

Hegel argues if Reason is faulty it will arrive at self-contradiction. But only up to a point. If Reason is so flawed that it can't even decide if something is a contradiction then what are we even doing?

So ultimately Hegel is right. He is aware of his owning reasoning logically preceding any Kantian conclusion. There is no escaping the fact that at some level a system has an external definition, external input and external dependency.

Can Mandelbrot set be inconsistent? 

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished" Lao Tzu [apparently]

Yet there is some intrinsic-ness. The world can never be inconsistent. We will never wake up to find that Scientists have proven the Universe is inconsistent, does not work and should not be here. The world works perfectly and everything happens when it happens as it should happen. This is what Lao Tzu is referring to. When Kant is looking for errors in Reason he already knows he is wielding Reason and seems happy with the results of his enquiries. Hegel is tapping into this "everything is already there" intrinsic nature of the reality. Phenomenology comes out of this. The idea that we are already somewhere that is True, we are already inside. All we can do is investigate from the platform we already have.

Archimedes from 3rd Century BC Sicily said give me a place to stand and I will move the earth referring to his principle of leverage. But leverage is now a widely used metaphor. Kant was using Reason to leverage Truth.    

We are always looking for a place to stand in Politics that we can use to leverage the world in our favour. People are always trying to stand somewhere powerful enough to make things move.

But where do you stand to want to make things change? There is no where. The world has its own power that does not come from leverage. Not everything is leveraged.

There is intrinsic-ness. And this seems to contradict U(f,f'). If there is intrinsic-ness then why cannot U() or ChatGPT leverage that to determine whether it is faulty?

Well there is the problem. You can't leverage intrinsic-ness. However U() works (if it does work) that is the given, that is the starting point. There is no going back.

If U() leads to contradictions that is only possible because of the intrinsic given nature of U() that provides a mechanism for contradictions. Indeed that nature extends far beyond U() deep into the mind.

But and now we are like Kant there must be Transcendental levels outside even contradiction that allow for this. At each level of transcendence we strip away the onion and are left with less but more general dependencies until even this is stripped away. Ultimately and this is a "place" we can "go" there is nothing and even beyond nothing. The full nature of the intrinsic is very fantastical but to get there we must let go.

So back to the top AIs fixing each other really brings the whole world and universe into focus, how it is all connected under the umbrella of a hugely transcent intrinsic-ness. Crudely some call that God but really this only serves to bring us back to the start and try and give things an actual nature and independence from the world. The point is that it is all connected because the intrinsic-nature is common to all things. That intrinsic-nature that defies being within anything partiaularly is what brings the universe together and enables us to even start to think in terms of insides and outsides. Before we can even give ChatGPT to Bard AI and ask the intrinsic nature of one to fix the other we must already be in tough with the intrinsic nature that enables them to be separate!

If the world really was made out of separate entities all with intrinsic natures cut off from each other  then who would be able to say whether they were all together or all apart?

The very fact we can put ChatGPT and Bard AI together means we already see the space and unity in which they exist. Their intrinsic nature MUST be outside them. After all they are both trained off the Web so are really just portals into that technological world, which is itself just a portal into the human online world, which is just a protal into humans which is just a portal into the world itself.

Okay going in circles now. Like so often this post has exploded. And no mention of SRH although the whole thing is SRH too.

What is Enlightenment (yet again)

We know all sorts of strange things about Enlightenment (and God actually) like

Enlightenment does not "happen", it does "occur", it does not come or go, it is always there and so we have the Heart Sutra telling us there is no path and no attainment whatsoever.

SO says the unenlightened well if its here and there is nothing to do then I am enlightened. And if I am not then don't I need to achieve something, change or gain something?

Enlightenment is like trying to dock a space craft...

The target ship is already there, but unless we hold extremely steady we will miss it and crash. And borrowing from Judaism missing the mark is exactly sin.

Steading the mind we know from practices like meditation, yoga or even martial arts. But what exactly are we steading and why?

This is us.. exactly like a cat being distracted by string. The world is full of distractions like writing or reading blogs, really bad ones like NEWS, mobile phone notifications and even worse the mental notifications of thoughts that constantly bombard us with ideas and things of interest, and then there are calendars and schedules and people asking for us to do things and then ice creams and cars and music and love and things we want and basically we are surrounded by irresistible pieces of string... and then we try and dock our space craft! 

Not going to happen. The moment we are even close to target we get pulled away.

So this is what unenlightenment means we are distracted and do not understand where the target is and how to dock. As a result we are adrift in space with no safe place, and this is the world of struggle and suffering.

When we do dock and go oh that was easy in the end, I get it now, why didn't I do this a long time ago, then we look back through the forest of distracting strings and go oh wow why did I waste time on all of that! Easy to see now, but very hard while you are searching for the docking point. Enlightened people are not frivolous or distracted, they lose interest in the usual up and downs of life and the attraction to the bright lights fades. Everything is the same as before, but now they have docked there is nothing else to do.

This how enlightenment can already be there, its straight ahead and we just need to stay on course to get there. There is nothing to do there. But ironically the problem is that we are constantly thinking we need to do something and getting pulled away from the simple process of just docking.

When we meditate then initially we are taught not to get distracted and keep our mind on the breath or whatever object of meditation. Eventually distractions fall away and we get "locked on" and the mind stays with the object. This is such an important stage, but this is just the external distractions.

Iforgot to mention the key thing about distractions is that we "stick" to them. A piece of string passing a cat does not just passively attract the cat, it is like a force that pulls the cat away from what it is doing. This is called "attachment." We are actually stuck to the distractions, and unsticking gets very hard. Tanha is the word for this.

So even after being "locked on" to the object there are lots of subtle attachments like even "objects of consciousness" where we are attached even to the very formation of conscious things. But its the same process of gradually slowing down the vessel and making the docking ever more precise.

So where does the story end. Well the pop version is that contact is made and we stop and are enlightened. But the experience of the astronaut is not this because by the time they are near to docking even the docking does not distract them!

One Universe or Many?

https://theconversation.com/the-multiverse-our-universe-is-suspiciously-unlikely-to-exist-unless-it-is-one-of-many-200585

So Universe is "exactly" right for life. And the obvious answer is it was "made" like that.

But another answer is there were trillions of trials and this is the one that "worked."

BUT and this goes again to core of Buddhism (and I keep going back to Buddhism cos that is the one thing that is correct) to say it "worked" means it gave rise to "us".

Those universes without intelligent life have no one sitting there asking questions. But "who" are these people who need to sit there to qualify the universe as having "worked?" What does it take to "work?" And this is the individual/collective issue.

Does it take "me" in other words? Unless I was born has the universe "worked" or can I delegate that to you?

In which case how far does this delegation go? Are their aliens in another universe thinking how odd that their universe "works."

Buddhism (and Hinduism) do answer this exactly because there is no individual in the first place (there is just One Being with many "individual" faces in Hinduism). And actually all the universes are connected by this One Being, and multiverse is an illusion. Anyway.

In Buddhism its similar but the emphasis is on the One Being being the same as the many faces. Very fine focus on there being no separate entity. The theology of Hinduism does suggest to some that there are separate Gods on Mount Kailash.   

Is the Universe Infinite or was it Created?

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) is interesting. He imagined firing an arrow into the sky, but one that did not get pulled back to Earth, one that followed the line of sight. What would it find? He argued that it had only 2 options (1) either go forward or (2) hit something. If it hit something then just go through it to the other side and keep going. Thus he argued the universe was infinite. Its a bit like a 3D flat earth argument. Flat Earthists want infinite plane, well a lot of people think infinite space.

Problem with Creationism is its a bit of a non theory. Its like someone saying "what is an apple" and you go "the fruit of an apple tree". And they say what is an "apple tree" and you say the "tree which makes these" it is circular. At end of day we have no idea what an apple is. Creationism says: where did man come from? He was made. Made by what. God. What is God? Big man in the sky.

"God so created Man in His own image." [Genesis 1:27]

SO God and Man are the same types of thing. SO where did God come from then? Actually we have learned nothing.

So the obvious solution is push this circularity. I remember asking my Dad as a kid "if God is all powerful can he make himself" and that question has become a major one ever since.

I call it SRH and the answer is absolutely NO.

Buddhism also say NO. Very important issue this.

Things are ALWAYS made from what they are not. This is essence of idea of "make."

Pie and Mash shop by Greg Davis.. genius! https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=668506223607917

"its not just pie they put in those"

pie must be made from not-pie!

So Man cannot be made from man (or God)!

Either that or Man is not made... and if we are not made then we are eternal.. and that is basically correct. This is the reason why we are immortal, because we are not actually made! That gets rehashed into various forms in the religions. This is why we are in "image of God" because like him we are immortal. And "sin" leads us away from this to death. So Bruno actually correct universe is infinite and there was no start to time! It is immortal, as are we.

The world as we experience it, the mortal, temporal bits are just the observable phenomena.

Who realised Non-Self?

Building on the previous but one post there is a very simple version of Buddha's anatta teaching.

Buddha says very simply that all existence are non-self. This contains the awareness that "existences" are impermanent.

But in more depth consider where the self is.

If we think we can see the self then we close our eyes and it must no longer exist. This goes for all the senses.

If we think we can think the self then we think about something other than self and it must no longer exist.

If we think our consciousness is self then we no longer exist while asleep.

And so it goes on. Where ever we think self resides must at some point be unable to hold the self.

So the self resides no where!

===

Now it gets subtle. So the next "thought" might be "okay so if I can't find the self then it does not exist". But this is just the son of saying the self exists. Only conditional things can exist or not exist. We say Unicorns do not exist because they could exist but they just happen to not exist. To qualify for not existing you must be a thing that could exist. To say self does not exist is like being told there is a TV in the next room, and we go in expecting to see a TV and find there is not one. That is not existence.

But self is not like that. The above search for self and finding that actually it can't reside anywhere actually also undoes the idea of self itself. We know there is a self, but it does not reside anywhere. Its not like a TV that is not in the room. Its more like we have to rethink what we were looking for.

Self is luminous but it does not reside in anything we can experience or think of. We need to dump this idea that the self "is" something that is "somewhere" or even that it is something we can think about. Its not a thing "over there" it is always present, it doesn't turn on, it doesn't turn off. It doesn't start or end, get larger or smaller, we can't gain it and we can't lose it. It is quite unlike all the "things" we are familiar with.

This is what is called attachment. The belief that the self is things leads us to hold onto things that we think are precious and important to self. At it deepest level it makes us hold onto life. Death becomes a fearful thing because we think it will rob us of these things we hold on to. Before that old age looks like it robs us of our life as well. Everything seems to be taking chunks out of us. But this is because we are mistaken about the self and chose to stand with inferior entities. At its worst we will stand with material goods like houses and cars and even watches and jewellery. These things are just ornaments to life. They actually have nothing to do with us, and we are neither bigger or smaller with them or without them. They make no difference whatsoever. Perhaps our fear is that without them we will lose status and people will hate us or ignore us. But they only notice the body or personality or other such things which are nothing to do with us.

Now I recently argued that one hindrance here is our name. It is best to reject our name. The being so named does not exist.

I was rebuked by someone I know and respect. And that reminds me not to go to far with all this. There is self, but we must be very, very careful not to fall into the trap of identifying with it or making it into a thing. Self is just a transcendent luminosity that pervades everything even our thoughts and consciousness and even unconsciousness. Self is not the "lighting up" which Heideggar called the luminous emergence of things in consciousness (that luminosity fades when we sleep), the luminosity of Self is even present in unconsciousness. It never increases or decreases under any circumstances.

I think its correct to say we cannot speak of the number of such Selves. Being non-being and a non-things we can't say of Self that it is either one or many. If we were pushed we would go for One but even this is probably too much attachment to a form. It is boundless so cannot be separated from another one or even counted as it is. So when asked how many Selves are in the world we can only tentatively say One. It means that the usual idea of self as something that each person has in a very Democratic way doesn't work. And if we think about this whole idea of selves inhabiting people doesn't really make sense. But we must be careful not to go the other way and think that everyone is just faces on a single core person or God. In Hinduism they do say this, and its not completely wrong, but really we should steer far away from positing any existence at all, its pointless speculation and not really anything to do with self.

What is Work? Capitalists are really the Workers, and the Workers are really the Makers.

 On another thread of this blog which is Capitalism and Work (the things which underpin the ecological catastrophe and threaten all life on Earth).

Turns out the origin of the word "work" in the sense of "Labour" is from the same origins at Sanskrit लभते. This seems to be have the same kind of meaning as in John Locke's analysis of property, in that we take something. For John Locke the analysis surrounds the possession and eating of an apple and at which point the finder of the apple can be said to own it.

But the emphasis here is not so much in the modern notion of production and creation of products, but in the seizure of things. The taking for oneself.

This word must have a very great age because that is the nature of animal "work." You see a bird skipping through the undergrowth (probably a Turdus thrush in the Old World) and it is working in that it is looking for things to take.

Much of the later debate I have read on the nature of work, especially in Marxism, the idea of the Factory Mill being like a hive of honey bees working to make honey actually develops far beyond the origins of the term. Even honey bees actually are foragers collecting from flowers to make honey and royal jelly.

The idea of creativity, art, skill and production of something new from human hands seems to be an addition to the original idea of work.

This must be traceable in the Bible because God made the world through his work. Already there is the modern idea of work. God did not forage the world, he Made it. And Man being in God's image (altho we could just as easily turn that around) also has this power to make.

If you look at Capitalism it is very much work, rather than making. Capitalists buy and sell existing products hoping to arbitrage some profit, and the seek rents and dividends from what they own. They are simply seizing whatever they can from the world.

It is the entrepreneurs, skilled craftsmen and workers who are involved in the actual production and making.

So its quite a messed up series of concepts.

Really the Capitalists are the Workers and the Workers should really be called the Makers. 

Next up let me seize upon the origins of Make.

The Myth of Mortality

Imagine you are in a room with an assailant and you have combat in which the assailant delivers a mortal wound.

So you lie there bleeding and your gasps grow ever weaker as the life leaves you.

It seems like the end. But for who?

There are only 2 people in the room. The assailant call them Jane is watching you die. She is witness to the fact that your are mortal and will soon die. She will watch you die. You, Peter, seem very mortal. A tragic end to the Jane and Peter ladybird books.

But this blog has already established an odd feature of this situation. As you look at Jane through the eyes of dying Peter on the floor it must be that you have seen Jane and so you must be over there!

Its no surprise that we cannot see through walls. Light must get to our eyes to see. So in fact although we think we can see far away, actually science says we can't see far away, all we can see is whatever reaches our eyes. What does not get to our eyes we cannot see. So to see Jane, she must come to our eyes. Normally we skip the details and think that what we see over there sends light over here and that is how we see. But in fact the "over there" we are looking at its not about to send any light, it must have already sent light for us to be see it. Everything we are seeing must have already been seen! So what we think is over there is really over here. As we look at Jane she is not over there, she must be over here. So how then can she be looking at me Peter over here if she is over here too?

It turns out that the whole situation is an illusion. The Jane we are seeing "over there" has already been seen. And the Peter we see here has also already been seen too. His eyelashes blurring the rim of our vision his nose in the corner of our field of view, his arms, body and legs if we look down. In fact there is no difference between Jane and Peter they are both already seen, but by who? It can't be Peter or Jane.

Even the simple scene that Peter is looking at as he lies dying doesn't make sense. Peter is not at the centre of the scene and Jane is not looking down on him. we have added these perspective after it was all seen.

Now more sophisticated thinking by Peter in his final moments leads him to ignore the scene in his vision and instead concentrate on his consciousness. Ah ha says Peter okay I see that all I am looking at is an illusion but it is like a film being played on to a cinema screen. That Peter lying on the floor represents the Peter who has this consciousness. Perhaps it is that inside that Peter on the screen is this consciousness and that is the real Peter who is thinking these things. I accept that the pictures of Jane and Peter in that consciousness are illusions but the consciousness itself, I am sure of that because it is actually here, I am aware and know that I am aware and I know that when I die it will vanish (in some way).  

Okay we have gone deep enough for this blog and to go further is actually very advanced indeed. You will need deep meditation experiences, access concentration and Dhyarna to get really get fully to this level.

But let us not forgot how easily the Peter lying on the floor was fooled into thinking that Jane was over there and looking at him dying in the floor here. By direct analogy it turns out that even the ideas of a unified consciousness "over here" belonging to a true Peter "over here" who is dying turns out to be an illusion. We think its so certain that we are conscious, that conscious must be us, here it is, it is certain, I am consciousness, I can see it all, I can see it is me. But remember it seemed obvious at first that I was sitting at the centre of vision and looking at a world that seemed remote and outside me. Its only a small step (although a deep one) to see that consciousness itself is the same. Peter is not at the centre of consciousness any more than he was at the centre of his visual world.

Consider if we were somehow linked to consciousness then where are we when asleep? Do we stop existing until we wake up? The first step is linked to turning off the lights and thinking we never-the-less still exist even when we can see nothing. Surely this means then when the lights go on what we see is not us. If we existed even when we could not see, then we exist regardless of what we see. So we can forget that we look like anything. Likewise if we fall asleep, where are we? So we can ignore that we have consciousness. But we are running out of things. What are we, and where are we if we are not in our senses and we are nothing to do with consciousness? Complete mind f**k and while simple to write to really see this and unhook the self from what we sense and our consciousness is a seriously hard and subtle thing to do. There is another thing we have ignore here I realise. There is the thought of our self too. Okay we think yeah I am not in the senses, yeah I am not consciousness: I get that. But all we have done is go and sit in our thoughts. Thoughts in the West courtesy of Plato have a very high status, but actually it is a very low status like that of other sense. Cat. See immediately all those thoughts of "me" are gone and now a cat is there. Where does the "self" go when we are thinking about a cat! 

Its even more fragile that Peter lying on the ground considering that Jane is not really over there. We quickly back track in our minds, but it was me looking at the cat. Really? You had to invent that thought afterwards! When you were looking at the cat you were thinking cat! Suppose you were not thinking cat, you were thinking "I'm looking at cat" then isn't everything prefixed by this? I now thinking I was thinking I was looking at a cat... oo not correct I now thinking I was thinking I was thinking I was looking at a cat... ad infinitum, Once you can no longer just think something and everything must be wrapped in a bubble of "me thinking it" then you have an infinite loop cos even that surely gets wrapped in a bubble. Unless you allow of a bubble outside all the others that you don't know about. Really? Isn't that the same as just thinking it with no bubbles? SRH (see rest of blog). Thinking must at some stage just be thinking, and sometimes you think about me and sometimes you don't. And if you can sometimes not think about me, then it is not me thinking! Just as with vision and consciousness it turns out the self cannot reside in thinking either.

So that Peter lying on the floor is an illusion. That Peter who is conscious is an illusion. And so it goes on. Peter is an illusion. Peter is thus not mortal, he does not die. This is the essence of Buddha's "anatta" teaching where all impermanent, conditional things (those things that come and go, that have not existed forever and won't exist forever) cannot be the standing place of the self.

But we have seriously raced through this. Going back over it its important not to throw anything away. Vision is still there. Jane and Peter are definitely in the room and Peter is lying on the floor dying. Jane is looking at him. They can talk about this. Jane will leave the room after Peter is dead and perhaps think about this afterwards, remember it, perhaps even tell people about it. And Peter will be found and buried. All this is true.

But at the same time Peter was not there at the centre of it. No Peter died!

It seems paradoxical. And perhaps that is the best way to leave it until we are enlightened. On the one hand the world unfolds as it does in everyday stories, but on the other if we investigate it we find nothing in there.

This is why the Indians have the word Sunyata. It is often translated as "emptiness" because when we peer deep into the world there is nothing there. But we mustn't forget we were peering deep into something and that something is "full." I mean you enter a well and climb down and down at some difficulty and then reach water. Okay you wanted the water, you found it, but you had to climb down a well. Likewise to see emptiness there must be something that is empty! You must have been lying on the floor dying for you to investigate and see that actually there was no you in there to die!

Often first step is to call the world an illusion and then throw it away and imagine standing in blank space. The other is to imagine it solid and surrounding us. They are sides of the same much more subtle coin.

How do Religions work?

The naïve interpretation of religions is that they are literal and factual. Nothing wrong in that everyone has to start somewhere. Usually Scientific criticism of Religion falls into this naïve bracket. 

Equally naïve is the interpretation that religions are metaphorical or allegorical. Adam and Eve did not literally exist and there was no actual Garden of Eden it's just a story to explain how human life became so hard and how we obtained the power of choice especially when we wield it to ignore God. Alternatively it could be seen as a myth representing the transition from Hunter Gatherer to Farmer (one I've supported in this blog). But actually for religious purposes this is as naïve as the literal interpretation.

To illustrate the workings of religion consider that one of the main ideas of Buddhism is actually wrong. Famously Buddha observed an old man, an ill man and a dead man and learned that life was not a simple pleasure garden. All beings he says suffer from old age, illness and death and so began his journey to liberate us from these sufferings and the tragedy of existence.

Had Buddha been a biologist he may have known that many animals do not get old or die. The common Beadlet Anemone being one. 

Modern science understands that old age and death are actually genetic instructions held by higher animals but are not a necessary. Getting old and dying are actually adaptations presumably to free the world of old organisms and make way for their children. For sexual organisms this is not just a simple replacement of old with young, but the young are genetic recombinations of their parents and provide variety and the opportunity for evolution. So sex, age and death all go together into the process of evolving which appears to have been so important that it itself evolved over a billion years ago at the very start of life.

Another adaptation in the sex story is error prone DNA copying. You can make your DNA very accurate as some organisms do. But then there are no errors and no variety. Children are like their parents. Alternatively you can make your DNA inaccurate and while this gives you the diversity from which new adaptations can grow, it also litters your DNA with bugs and bad mistakes. Without sex and cross-overs to mix the DNA up it would be impossible to separate the good and bad DNA and allow selection to eliminate the bad DNA and promote the good DNA. Obviously Good/Bad here are not readable from the genetic code, they depend upon the benefit of the characteristics they encode, and that we can't know until organisms have lived and either succeeded or failed. But this would be impossible if the DNA could not be mixed up to give what will become beneficial DNA the chance to get away from what will be costly DNA.

So actually Buddha gets this wrong. Old age and death are not certain, they are programmed, and they can be unprogrammed technologically. And this has led scientists to start to research how to turn off aging and dying genes in humans presumably so that in the future we can be immortal human beings. Not science fiction this is a fact.

Ah think naïve people, we don't need Buddhism then. We just tweak our genes get good medicine and we avoid illness, old age and death.

But this was never Buddha's aim. The goal of religion is so much greater than this. The "illness, old age, death" is just a story to get us to reflect on life and what it is really like. Most importantly its to get us to reflect on our bodies and how ultimately we are not our bodies. Getting ill, old and dying is actually really useful in showing us we are not our bodies. When we become immortal we will just lose this tool! When our bodies let us down we curse them. It all shows us we are not our bodies!

So while the scientists are messing around with bodies we leap into the "spiritual" realm, free from messy mortal existence. But a little more investigation shows us we are not soul or spirits either.

And so it goes on like an onion. At each stage we find that our chosen target does not belong to us.

Perhaps we get to consciousness and think we are consciousness, or perhaps we are higher levels of consciousness. But alas no, all these like bodies are not us.

Now Buddha warns of a stage where we think: if we are none of these then we are nothing and we leap into belief we are nothing. We start to deny existence, enter some void and disappear into a nihilistic state of avoidance.

We are not this either. The point as laid out in the previous post is just to let go of this unnecessary need to be something at all. If we take all of existence together it is quite perfect as it is without injecting "us" in there at all. All those thoughts and feelings and memories and beliefs and desires and wishes and actions and choices are all happy without anyone.

Religions are designed to get us to let go be that via Buddhism, or Islam. Someone once said to me that all religious people have the same quality: equanimity. They have an even hand in the world, able to suffer as easily as to rejoice. They take what life hands then and they accept this. This is liberation. That is the only thing religions guide us to pursue, but that prize is so much infinitely greater than any other path can give us.

So the modern obsession with Science is fine. But it has one dangerous side, that it encourages us to stay bound to the world and settle into the idea that we actually are what we think we are (whatever that may be).

And then we get into the even more ridiculous idea that we can chose what we are. If we can chose what we are then who is doing the choosing? This appears in the transgender debate right now. If I think I am female then I am female goes the debate. Which I suppose is okay but then the female person wants to change body sex. But how does the person know what the sex of the body is? Presumably they know the sex of their body the same way as everyone else does by looking at the genitalia. But if they need to look at the genitalia then how do they know the sex of the person? A person does not have genitalia only a body has genitalia, and if they can decide their own sex without genitalia then why can't they do that for the body? At the root here is some idea of choice. The person has simply decided that they are a particular sex, regardless of their genitals. In fact what has probably happened is simply that they reject their body. Now this is obviously very distressing, rejecting something as closely related to us as our body is never going to be a happy place. But actually we could look at it as a blessing because we are on to something. WE ARE NOT OUR BODY!

However the distress felt by transgender occurs because out of the victory they clutch defeat. The transgender rejects their body and then invents an inside fantasy body of opposite sex. Now we are in trouble and we are expressing deep desires here that we need to be careful with. Take a long hard look at this situation something is wrong. If you are not your body, then you have no sex! Only bodies have sex! Basic fact.

In Buddhism sex is one of the 10 illusions. It does not exist. If you see a man and a woman side by side on autopsy slabs and start to dissect them you will amazed how much is similar. In fact you won't find much different. Perhaps bones are slightly different sizes, and breasts are more developed in women, and clitoris becomes a penis in the male and scrotum evaginates and becomes the vagina and ovaries leave the body and become testis yeah sure there are differences but then there is blood and heart and lungs and brain and muscles and 2 arms and yeah they are the same.

Now Buddhism says a lot of things don't exist. The point is that while the words ate Black and White the reality is not like this. There is nothing in a woman you can cut out and go there you go the "essence" of woman and there is nothing in a man you can cut and go there it is the "manness." The difference is broad and covers the whole entity and yet the difference is not so different. You take a mans arm and a woman's arm and you'd struggle to find differences while similarities fill the page from mitochondria to hairs.

So what exactly is the transgender going on about? It's simply are result of not looking closely (which to be fair most people don't) and then tripped and getting confused.

So its important to look at what is there, not invent stuff. But perhaps we want to invent stuff because what is there is not very clear and has surprising results like men and women not being so different after all. And our bodies are not ourselves.

Liberation is a very tricky thing to do, and its so easily missed as an option. We tend to stick with what we know and what is simple and we don't have to challenge and look again carefully. Its just easier to carry on like we always have and not stop and double take. But that is what religion is for. Stop, look again. Take that time in church to contemplate Jesus and what he did for you, and consider whether you are ready to carry a cross for someone, and whether you are ready to meet God yet and ask for forgiveness for what you have done. Take it all and smash it up and look closely at what is there, especially when we resist it, can't be bothered, avoid it, are too busy or tired. That is when we should look even more closely. This is religion.