But what is a good second lens for looking at these conglomerations of atoms that exert power over the future?
One interesting alternative I’ve been learning about recently is the buddhist idea of “dependent origination”. I’ll give a brief summary of some thoughts I’ve had based on it, although these should definitely not be taken as an accurate representation of the actual dependent origination teaching.
The basic idea is that the delusion of agency (or in buddhist terms, self) comes from the conglomeration of sensations (or sensors) and desires. This leads to a clinging on to things that fulfill those desires, which leads to a need to pretend there is an agent that can fulfill those desires. This then leads to the creation of more things that desire and sense(babies, AIs, whatever), to whom we pass on the same delusions. We can view each of these as individual agents, or we can simply view whole process as one thing, a perpetual cycle of cause and effect the Buddhists call dependent origination.
Yeah the shortcomings of the agent model as do seem similar to the shortcomings of “self” as a primary concept, and the Buddhist critiques of “self” have informed my thinking on the agent model.
I had not considered dependent origination as an alternative to the agent model. I understand dependent origination as being the Buddha’s account of the causal chain that leads to suffering.
Do you have any rough sense for how might we use dependent origination to understand this phenomenon of entities in the world that exert influence over the future? I would be very interested in any rough thoughts you might have.
One interesting alternative I’ve been learning about recently is the buddhist idea of “dependent origination”. I’ll give a brief summary of some thoughts I’ve had based on it, although these should definitely not be taken as an accurate representation of the actual dependent origination teaching.
The basic idea is that the delusion of agency (or in buddhist terms, self) comes from the conglomeration of sensations (or sensors) and desires. This leads to a clinging on to things that fulfill those desires, which leads to a need to pretend there is an agent that can fulfill those desires. This then leads to the creation of more things that desire and sense(babies, AIs, whatever), to whom we pass on the same delusions. We can view each of these as individual agents, or we can simply view whole process as one thing, a perpetual cycle of cause and effect the Buddhists call dependent origination.
Hey Matt—long time!
Yeah the shortcomings of the agent model as do seem similar to the shortcomings of “self” as a primary concept, and the Buddhist critiques of “self” have informed my thinking on the agent model.
I had not considered dependent origination as an alternative to the agent model. I understand dependent origination as being the Buddha’s account of the causal chain that leads to suffering.
Do you have any rough sense for how might we use dependent origination to understand this phenomenon of entities in the world that exert influence over the future? I would be very interested in any rough thoughts you might have.