hundred ass hats
“Hey, Siri, what’s my name?
“You’re Candradasa. That’s what you told me anyway!”
Or:
“You’re asking me, [long pause] Candradasa?”
Yes, I’m asking you! You see, Siri, my friend, of whom I’ve been so fond since you were a wee indie app and not even a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye, it took me quite a while across devices to get you to say it right. To be fair, the ‘C’ in my weird Buddhist name 🧘🏻♂️ is pronounced ‘Ch’ and there’s totally no way you could be expected to know that, so I’ve come to expect a degree of trouble and fair enough. After all, I’m Scottish... 🤷🏻♂️
Still, now that you manage daily on my iPhone (several generations in); on iPads at home and work; on several Macs (desktop and notebook); and the whole thing happens in the Cloud anyway so is presumably all linked up… How come when I did speech-to-text on my brand new Apple Watch you just called me:
“HUNDRED ASS HATS”?
That’s your best guess? In what hell-scape, auto-corrected realm does that make sense? Are ass hats even a thing?!
At this point, Laura comes in and rolls her eyes and looks a little worried. I seem like I might be about to swear at my devices again. I promised not to do that. It’s an ethical issue. It’s not nice to be around. Plus, you know, I’m a Buddhist!
So why a buddhist.tech blog? Because all of it: Hundred Ass Hats and evolution and the nature of self and other (in this world, in all worlds). Because this stuff is not just part of our particular lives, it’s possibly part of our species’ future way of being intelligent, of assessing new intelligence. Which also means our future way of being aware and being kind – or not.
I think that’s partly why Apple has intuitively gone for personality with Siri (annoying as this initial stage of mimicry can be when you just want them to remind you to call Mom and don’t want to be “helpfully” asked for a number first; or have to endure a witticism when you only asked for the weather). It’s long-term human training towards eventual relationship.
And not just to the possible ‘other’ in our ‘self’-oriented, collective dreams of all this. Whether or not AI ever goes beyond mere personality (the furthest horizon most imagined: Majel Barrett-Roddenberry through Stephen Hawking circa OK Computer through Iron Man’s Jarvis through Scar Jo in Her through Ex Machina), we need to get used to relating to AI as an extension of how we relate to our own minds, and to the world we make from our minds. Not something outside of us: that’s a convenient, scary fantasy that lets us evade responsibility. We’re good at that already.
Better to start practising now seeing how close to life all this is already in the theatre of our minds. The ugly and the beautiful scenes. There’s a long way to go. We haven’t figured out how to treat other actual life properly yet. Or our home planet, even as we’re busy trying to think of ways we might despoil asteroids and the moon and Mars. And, as is now widely alarmed, the data we are pouring into our models and feeding to our algorithms is definitively compromised in all the painfully partial ways we should expect (gender, color, class, etc.).
So while we’re trying to reduce the artificial element, we’d do well to focus on the intelligence bit of the equation in relation to ourselves. As the start of the Dhammapada has it when talking about the mind and how it functions in the world:
All experience is preceded by mind,
Led by mind,
Made up of mind.
If you speak or act with a clouded mind,
Then suffering follows
As the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox.
All experience is preceded by mind,
Led by mind,
Made up of mind.
Speak or act with a peaceful mind,
And happiness follows
Like a shadow that never leaves.
(Adapted slightly from Gil Fronsdal, Shambhala 2005; with final line by F. Max Müller)
In this world
Hate has never dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.
You too shall pass away.
Knowing this, how can you quarrel?
(Adapted slightly from Thomas Byrom, Shambhala, 1976)
Here’s an unpacked version of this from the point of view of a writer; a tinkering act of love and gratitude to a text that has been amongst the most transformative in my life:
The world is made up of stories,
Born from stories,
Turns on stories:
We are telling stories all the time.
When our tales about the world are based on
Greed, or hatred, or confusion,
Sorrow follows for someone –
Maybe us, maybe others –
As sure as night follows the day.
The world is made up of stories,
Born from stories,
Turns on stories:
We are telling stories all the time.
When our tales about the world are based on
Trying to pay attention,
Seeking out the truth in things,
The endings turn out better,
Stay with us, and are remembered.
You can tell whatever story you know,
But hatred never solves things in the heart:
Only love can make that magic transformation.
This has always been the way of it,
Like a deep law of the universe:
Everything ends, life goes on,
Our atoms, our energies, returning to the elements.
Seeing this happen over and over,
Being reminded day after day,
Move whenever you can towards harmony.
Hey, Siri, what’s our name? We’re asking, don’t you hear us?
Tell us a story about who we might become.
