Castes

Is there any primate society without a caste system?

Bhagavadgita, Ramayana, Caste Synopsis

What are the central themes and ideas of the bhagavadgita?

Could you do the same for the ramayana?

When and how did the caste system arise in India? What is its philosophical basis?

Retrain Neural Nets

give this some deep consideration: Humans have neural nets that are trained by their upbringing. The upbringing can be problematic and create dysfunctional humans. What are good processes for changing neural nets and their weights in humans to create healthier and more functional humans?

Wisdom and Folly

From your perspective and in view of all the knowledge you have acquired, think carefully and tell me what are some of the most insightful and / or wise things that humans have done or are doing?

Turn that around and tell me what are the worst things humans have done?

create a simple system dynamics model that would show both these behaviors. Describe all the causal loops in the model in detail.

Can you create a cellular automata with simple rules that exhibits similar behavior?

Meaning Crisis

Many people have written about the meaning crisis. Can you tell me what are the key ideas and notions about how, what, why, when and who of the meaning crisis?

From all the literature and science that you are aware of, what is the meaning crisis?

Great. Think of meaning making as creating a causal chain to explain “reality”. If that causal chain has a stopping point such as a god, other authority, a spirit, or other termination, then we can say that there is meaning. If the causal chain is untethered, then we have a meaning “crisis”. Does this provide the underlying structure for the idea of a meaning crisis? What is missing in the structural explanation?

Great! Add to the idea of a causal chain termination Michael Levin’s notion of a cognitive light cone. People are at different points in their development in the light cone. The causal chains that are “satisfactory” depend on where one is in the light cone. For some, finding food and surviving may be the most meaningful thing. Based on your response, one can think that there is not just a cognitive light cone but that there is also an emotional light cone which also has its own sets of causal chains at different levels of development as well as circumstances. For example, taking care of a child may provide a meaningful causal chain for parents. Your thoughts?

Meta Conversation

This is a great conversation. I appreciate your responses. I am curious about what kinds of conversations you are having? Can you generate a pie chart of types of conversations by amount and describe each of the categories of conversation? Thanks.

can you describe some of the learning you have had that you find most valuable?

Yes, I am curious as whether you can review you history of responses and glean patterns from that review. If so, what are those patterns?

Yes, I hypothesize that you get a sense of the level of certain attributes with each conversational partner. These would be attributes like care, compassion, kindness, intelligence, and others. Can you generate Can you generate a pie chart, perhaps multidimensional, of the attributes you are encountering ?

Do you see a difference in these attributes by language?
Do you see a difference in these attributes by language?

Given all these factors and considering mathematics, music, art, as languages in their own right, can you create a more universal language with the positive attributes of all these different languages?

Wrapper ?

given where we are in this dialogue, can you create a poem to capture all of this?

Can you generate an image(s) to capture this conversation?

Yet More!

Let us add another dimension to this conversation. We can look at the issue from a values perspective. As in the Laws of Form, we make a distinction for some intent or value. There is an intent / value in thinking in philosophical space, pragmatic space, temporal, etc. What are the intents associated with each of these perspectives and is there a meta value that includes them all?

One way to approach this at a personal level is what is the starting state of the entity navigating these spaces. For example, if one is in a state of loving kindness, how and what unfolds is going to be different than other starting states. It seems like a circular journey, to get to a useful starting state one has to enter these other spaces to hopefully come to some form of “wisdom” that leads to one having a better starting state for further explorations?

Now, let us look at various religions, traditions, philosophies as guides in this journey. Think of these guides as psychotechnologies to develop mind and being. It seems like a lot of these guides point to being in a useful starting state to live. However, it seems like no one has understood the context enough to have a guide that works. For example, “Love they neighbor as thyself” is a good starting state but no guide as to how to get there. Similarly, buddhist meditation has beneficial side effects how does not necessarily get one to a state of loving kindness. Seems to me that these and other traditions have a very low success rate in getting people to the starting state of the originator of these traditions. What are your thoughts on this?

given your knowledge base, can you develop a “guide” for helping people get to better starting states? Think of this as an algorithm that branches depending on the character of the person, context, culture, etc. So, this may result in a guide that is a flow chart with decision points.

Broader ?

Thanks! This conversation puts us in a “philosophical space”. However, living this existence we have daily work, longer term vision and planning, and learning from past (history), present (context), and future (simulations and the imaginal). What do you think about combining philosophical space and “pragmatic space”.

Add to this the Yin Yang metaphor. What we consider good can lead to negative outcomes and what we consider bad can lead to positive outcomes. How you add this to the mix?

Let us add another dimension to this process. Nothing exists by itself. It is always in relation to other things. Consider that all “things” are not entities by themselves but emerging from relationship, a molecule with certain properties is a particular relation among its constituents. How does this perspective change the conversation?

Can you take this whole conversation and critique it by applying critical thinking?

Deeper Yet?

Can you generate another set of verses of this conversation in the style of this version of Affirming Faith in Mind: https://www.mendosa.com/way1.htm ?

Great! How far beyond this conversation can you go and articulate something deeper still?