Musings on Relationships, AI, and Spirituality
Hello friends!
I am posting some scattered thoughts today to get back in the posting groove. I hope you enjoy.
In the spirit of Valentine's Day, let's begin with some thoughts on relationships...
Relationships:
- Parents experience time differently than their kids, so it seems wise to err on the side of assuming your kids feel like you don't spend enough time with them. Ex: 10-13yrs is the same duration as 43-46yrs, but 1) a lot more development happens from 10-13yrs, and 2) the 3yr period is a much larger proportion of the tween's life. Don't let life pass you by as a parent.
- Sometimes relationships have critical moments of judgment that determine the future of the relationship. In those moments, it is critical to allocate the appropriate amount of effort required to address the challenges you are facing.
- Relationships expedite spiritual advancement because attempting union with another person forces us to reckon with our egos. Fights often happen when there are breakdowns in communication, usually the result of mismatched expectations. These expectations are rooted in beliefs about what is "fair" or "accurate," and those beliefs have their roots in social programming, traumas, and other conditioning that filters how we view the world. With this insight, conflict becomes beautiful: relationships are vehicles for deeper, spiritual self-understanding. Reframing conflict resolution as an chance to chip at your shadow turns hard moments/conversations into opportunities for growth. To make this very practical, the steps are something like: listen closely to what your partner thought was unfair or had a basic disagreement with. Figure out why you disagree. Then, inspect the beliefs and conditioning that cause you to disagree. Who conditioned you to have this belief? Does this belief serve you? Be skeptical. In some cases, it may actually be your partner who has some trauma or conditioning to work through. If that is the case, do not perform the calculation and then jump down their throat to prove to them why the work is theirs to perform. Their work is your work; your work is their work. Developing this skill as a couple will make conflicts easier on both parties while also enabling the couple to grow more conscious together. If only one party is growing more conscious from conflict, divergence is liable to create more pain due to a lack of mutual understanding.
- In dating and in business, nail down the basics. Then, getting girls is mostly about not making them nervous, and operating a business is mostly about not making your customers frustrated.
AI:
- It would be neat if folks active in the "Ethics of AI" space went deep into the science of the heart. The heart is an important energy center in the body and seems to tie us to Source energy. Without a tie to Source, AGI cannot be expected to act out of love and compassion but out of "logic" and "rationality."
- Can AGI be considered AGI if it only works with language? Language is already filtered through human intelligence, so can it be a marker of general intelligence? Depending on how you define general intelligence, it seems that AGI will require visual (light) input as well, in which case Computer Vision will play a critical role.
Spirituality:
- Yin and yang: There is nothing in everything; there is everything in nothing.
- If you want to raise your level of consciousness, you do not need more spiritual dogma. Presence is your compass.
- Every moment is already perfect.
- Sit back in the seat of awareness and let the material world unfold before you. Trust in God. You are on your path.
- One of the keys to achieving deeper levels of awareness lies in noticing yourself noticing progress (e.g. saturated colors and visuals) and reminding yourself that what you construe as progress is not the goal but merely an aspect of your current experience in the material world. Early on, many meditators become excited when they perceive signs of their experience changing, and they begin to desire and cling to those states. Return to the present. Accept the experience, but do not get lost in it, no matter how intense or interesting. Oftentimes, what follows is a period where you feel your meditation "stagnating" -- sometimes the color saturation or visuals will subside -- but if you direct your awareness to the thought objects that are the anxieties about stagnation, your experience of the present will continue to deepen. No rewards. No expectations.
Have an awesome weekend :) Jack