Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.robotics,comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!panix!ddsw1!redstone.interpath.net!hilbert.dnai.com!nic.scruz.net!earth.armory.com!rstevew
From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Organization: The Armory
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 07:06:26 GMT
Message-ID: <CzyuEv.4Et@armory.com>
References: <3b19lc$2ds@mp.cs.niu.edu> <3b26d9$k0k@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu> <CzyIz0.2sE@armory.com> <3bbmt4$2nd@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Sender: news@armory.com (Usenet News)
Nntp-Posting-Host: deepthought.armory.com
Lines: 55
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:25538 comp.robotics:15732 comp.ai.philosophy:22727

In article <3bbmt4$2nd@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>In <CzyIz0.2sE@armory.com> rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz) writes:
>
>>             The existence of consciousness does not require "free-will" as
>>some idiots mean it when they ...
>
>and:
>
>>                                          We are naught but an idea!!! But
>>so is everthing else, and cannot be shown to be other than an idea!!
>
>If we are naught but an idea, why do you feel so strongly opposed to
>your idea incorporating free will?
------------------------------------
An idea is as real as real gets. There is no way to show that some
"objective" world exists "outside" this place we call "mind", which is just
ANOTHER idea, (Gautama Buddha's doctrine of mu-shin, "no mind"). If there
was such a thing as free-will, people would never be puzzled by their own
responses, never fail to do what they intended to do, and in short, the
"world" would no longer be an adventure, and it would disappear for lack of
interest! That's what happens to predictable controllable worlds! No
adventure. The essence moves on!! Adventure can only be had by giving up
power and re-enjoying the unexpected! It's fun to be a disembodied void
looking out of all our eyes at this adventure without being able to control
it but only witness the part of being we share, and witness the part of
being we seem not to share, the "individual mind", a figment based on the
ideas witnessed, all of them surely wrong and incomplete beyond belief!
One of them, the mechanism of the ego, the idea that we have control, only
to be shown at every turn that the ego is illusory and not to be trusted,
even though its existence is what places us in the adventure!!!

But a Buddhist also believes in mercy and in help of all beings. To do this
I oppose what this ego has you expressing, this blamer's paradise where you
can have "real" "bad guys" and "real" "good-guys" who are intentionally
"evil" so you can believe in a "Gawd" who can condemn "His" "children" with-
out looking like a "God" that is a small and squalid god and not at all
something worth human adoration! If you know that you're kinder than your
"God", then you should go find a better "God"! And if you express this same
thing politically, judicially, and economically by seeking a reason to
assuage your guilt for your advantages in life by believing naively that
people control their destinies, I will trust in the Void to disabuse you of
that notion at some point in your intolerant squalid little life. It always
does, it seems. But I will fight against the damage your foolishness can do
the unlucky while you await your doom and rebirth when the world smacks YOU
right upside the head!!

Remember, oh nobly born, you are just along for the ride on the old meat
machine, despite ideas floating before you that YOU can take credit for
anything you have achieved or blame for anything failed. You cannot! The
thing that looks out of your eyes sees the percepts/ideas, but it is NOT
them. It has NO address, NO phone number, NO features we can discuss, and
to try is ludicrous! The ego ideas clouding the eyes are mere enticements
into the adventure. They are only illusion.
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

